Thoughts about Family, Friends, News, Politics, Technologies, …
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this at all or very often in this blog but Kathy and I are doing a large remodel of our kitchen, dining room, and laundry/mud room.
So far, I must say that the company we hired to do this job has some really hard working folks. I think they have really made some progress given their schedule.
If you’d like to see progress check out our Photo Gallery with remodel pictures. There are before and ongoing pictures.
Kathy and I like having a white board and a place to hang things (via magnets or such). We came up with a space in our Laundry Room/Mud Room to hang it so that defined the size.
I’ve taken a quick and dirty way of making something for the space by combining two inexpensive boards. I’ve even left space for a basket below.
I still have to “finish” it by adding a frame around the outside to give it some polish.
If we are not satisfied with this, I may have to look at other ways including paints (metallic, erasable surface paint) or laminate surfaces (metallic, …).
In my few years of voting, I have rarely seen that voting for one candidate versus another would radically change things. First, most candidates have little leverage to do things. Governors and Presidents may be an exception, at least somewhat. Next, even if a candidate can do things the views of one candidate overlap the others by a lot. Lastly, things in government change slowly.
This political season has most candidates in most positions fitting this history.
The aggravating part of this season though is in the race for President.
I’ve seen the difference between when President Bush started to today. We, as a country, are not doing well financially, internationally or in regards to personal rights. I’ve also seen statistics show that John McCain has supported President Bush 90-95% of the time. I’ve also read today that former fed chair Greenspan, who supports McCain (since Greenspan is a professed Republican), said that McCain’s tax policy will further stress our economy.
With this kind of data, how can people even consider voting for McCain?
Also, I’ve seen analysis of undecided that shows even though most support everything Obama supports and nothing that McCain supports still have not decided.
With this kind of data, does this mean that they are racists?
In my life and career, I have found that experience is important but judgement, insight, and creativity are more important. McCain has more of some experience than Obama. McCain supported and continues to support all of the policies of President Bush even though they are causing problems for our economy and our lives – that is poor judgement. Obama has discussed a few items that will likely change our economy and our lives for the better. Obama has always been against the Iraq war while McCain has been supportive of it.
With this kind of data, again how can people even consider voting for McCain?
I’m far from a rabid supporter of Obama or Democrats. In fact Obama has, like many politicians, went back on a promise (the renewal of the Patriot act with the Telecom immunity).
These points confuse me and aggravate me.
I was talking Presidential politics with my brother today. My brother is very opinionated and even passionate in his cynicism…errrr…viewpoint. I can’t say that all that cynicism is unfounded though.
As I’ve stated in past posts, I am rooting for Barak Obama. I even spent a bunch of time this week watching the DNC showing off. It was a good show.
Now, my viewpoint starts with the likelihood that John McCain will continue with the policies and actions of Bush. That just frightens me. I mean our economy is either in the toilet or heading there. Our rights that the Founding Fathers gave us through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being pushed aside because we, the citizens, are too fearful of things that are less likely to happen to any of us than getting stuck by lightning. Living with someone who will carry on these trends would be about the worst that I could see from our government.
Next, I see Barak Obama as an inspiring speaker. I think we’ve missed that in our President for quite a while. He talks about health care. He talks about a better focus for our military. He talks about responsibility for citizens and government. He does it in a way that inspires us to be better.
Yet, I worry that he still does things like other politicians. He promised he wouldn’t give immunity to the Telecoms yet did. He talks about the evil of ignoring Constitutional rights by Bush and his administration yet he gave them increased rights to do so (same bill actually). My brother claims that he promised gun rights but didn’t deliver (I’m not sure how true this is as I don’t follow gun rights much and I saw/heard him indicate – tonight – a clear position to ensure gun rights though not without some control/restriction). This worries me though I suspect given comments I’ve seen/heard John McCain give that McCain would be worse.
Anyway, while I support Barak Obama I understand the he is an Imperfect Candidate for President.
Recently, Matt from Matt’s Basement Workshop podcast (go find it on iTunes) had talked about replacing his workbench. It motivated me to try the same.
I had a workbench that was collapsable which was a benefit since my shop is small. After looking at it and considering the actual workspace on the bench, I decided a fixed workbench would work better. The length and height are the same as the collapsable bench but I made the depth narrower though the actual workspace is larger.
Overall, I’m happy with the results. I was able to do it with stuff I had on hand (though I needed a 2×6 so I had to get that) so that made the ultimate project better.
The design is basically the same as the collapsable bench. It has a front bench vice and a side bench vice. I improved the bench dog holes and added some along the front to provide support for longer boards (when edge planing).
Here are two pictures. The first shows the overall bench including the storage below. The second shows the clamp and bench dog holes (I made the bench dogs myself which I’m also pretty happy with). You can find these photo’s in our Photo Gallery (check the tab at the top of the page) under Hobbies then Woodworking.
I’m not the sort that loves to discuss politics (outside of this blog of course) but I also don’t steer away from it.
In my occasional discussions, I find there are a few sorts of people with regards to political discussions.
One type are people that seem to relish talking politics. Sometimes, these people are knowledgeable and sometimes they aren’t. They may be open to different points of view or they may be fixed in their views. Often the passion they have for politics, or more specifically their view point can be very uncomfortable.
Another type are people that will talk politics but clearly don’t seek it out. These folks may be comfortable with their view point but also open to other views – even if those views may work towards changing their own view point. I feel that these people in many ways are the strongest democrats (not party, rather supporters of democracy).
Another type are people who run away from political discussion. I’m sure this category can be further categorized but I fear that the majority of this group is made up of people who are not very knowledgeable, do not desire to know more, and are comfortable with their uninformed view point. I suspect that the majority of the electorate may fit into this group.
I hope guesses on the last group are untrue and instead hope that our electorate is made up of primarily group 2.
Even though we are a smidge more than a month away from our big Kitchen Remodel, the stress has already begun.
Late last week, we found that fixing our current refrigerator would cost nearly as much as buying a new one. This fridge was going to the garage. Because we are far enough away, we had to replace the fridge.
Kathy and I decided to put it in the garage right away so now we have to traipse the the garage to get anything from the fridge. Inconvenience is not fun.
Of course the big inconvenience hasn’t started yet.
Kathy totally disagrees with me on this but I believe that I have a decent color sense. Mind you, I can be lazy with regards to pick clothing but that doesn’t mean I don’t know things don’t work. Also, I can’t give you the accurate color name but again it doesn’t mean that I can tell the difference between colors.
I suggested some colors for our upcoming Kitchen remodel and Kathy wouldn’t even accept them as choices till the designer we are working with said that they would be good choices.
Now, once we got them on the wall Kathy didn’t like the color. In my view is was a very bright color while she just said it had too much orange in it. Kathy is very conservative so it’s not surprising that she wanted a tamer color.
We got an alternative which was darker and richer and seems like a good fit. Overall, I think we got to the right color pretty easily. We are still debating the white accent/cieling color but that should be easy.
I touched base with my folks yesterday. I probably talk to my Mom (sometimes my Dad though he’s not much of a talker and never really has been) once a week on average. They travel during the summer (since living in a dessert gets really hot during the summer) so it may be slightly less during the summer.
When ever politics come up, my Mom wants to shut the conversation down right away. This means that we have never really had a substantial or meaningful conversation on politics.
I suspect the reason has 2 major parts. First, on subjects that I am informed, I can be a persistent debater.
Second, my parents approach on politics is that they are emotion based and don’t get a thoroughly fact based understanding of the candidates (this gives a person an insecure feeling on their choice). I don’t think my parents are unusual in their approach and have seen evidence that people in all demographics follow the same approach.
I am far from an expert on politics or any particular candidates but I do follow various political sources. When the election closes in, I do further research especially for candidates that I have yet to have enough data to push me one way or another.
I’m a Barak Obama supporter at this point. I like his position on Iraq, Afghanistan, Energy, Taxes. I’m luke warm on his Health Care position. I’m down right upset over his position on Security (specifically his vote to support the Domestic Surveillance bill which included telecom immunity). I am a bit concerned about his experience but feel that he is intelligent and can work through it. During the primaries, I never felt that Hillary’s claim to have more experience was false since I don’t believe that being a First Lady is experience valid for being President. I do tend to think that Governor’s have a more valid basis for experience than do Congressmen.
I do not like John McCain. I admire his service through elected office and especially his service during Vietnam (I was young enough not to have an opinion of that war though after the fact, it was clearly a bad choice for our country). I did like his previous approach to the Presidential campaigns though what I have seen is not the same approach for this election. I do not like his positions on Iraq, Taxes and Economy, Security. I’m uninformed on his Health Care position. It seems that he has flipped recently on Afghanistan and Energy which can be ok but in this case seems like he doesn’t really know the topic or maybe just is going with a more popular position. I think as a senior Senator, he has potentially more knowledge than Barak Obama on a variety of topics but given his support (nearly blind support) for Bush and Bush’s policies, he seems weaker.
I would have enjoyed the conversation with my Mom – maybe she’ll read this (or not).
Yesterday, a friend of ours popped out of the blue via Facebook. It’s great to hear from old friends and see how their families are doing.
Via this friend, we found a few other old friends too. This is great as I haven’t really been using Facebook for anything more than playing games with Kathy.
Maybe we will find more old friends this way.
Figuring out how to get my friends on twitter so it can be useful/fun!
I am trying the new WordPress application for the iPod Touch/iPhone. It as simple to set up. The keyboard makes it hard enough that I am not likely to post very often.
I’ve just setup up a new virtual machine under VMWare’s Fusion. Since Kathy has been having good luck with Vista, I decided to take the plunge too and used Vista SP1 for this new virtual machine.
My purpose for this installation is to run a few simple programs that I have yet to shed myself of.
1) MS Money is what Kathy and I use to manage both our daily money and validate and sanity check our financial planners work. If I found something that could replace it on OS X, I probably would at least for the long term planning work. NOTE: If there is anyone out there using something that might work, let me know.
2) Alarm programming and control using HAI’s software only works under Windows. This is not likely to change.
3) UPB home automation software, like UPBStart, is currently only Windows compatible. This could change though maybe not. People have to have a motivation and mostly that is about making money so I’m not sure OS X is a target market for home automation.
4) I’m the treasurer for our kids’ school’s PTSA and so I use Quick Books. I could go to a OS X version but Intuit does a lousy job for transferring the files between OS X and Windows. Also, after I serve my second year, the replacement would likely be using Windows so keeping it there makes sense.
I’d go nearly instantly to OS X versions for the first 3. Maybe someday!
Upgraded both my blog and our Family Twitter blog to the latest WordPress release which is version 2.6.
I immediately had a problem with a plugin (WP-DowloadManager from GamerZ). After going to the plugin site which had a discussion forum, they had already found out that WP 2.6 is now using the same function name as the plugin hence the error. Of course the developer is just awesome (as are all of his plugins) and he had a quick beta fix right away.
The WordPress community is really fantastic.
Like many users of an iPod Touch (or iPhone though I don’t have one of those – because of AT&T) and Mac computers, I’ve been waiting for some updates.
For the Mac computers, we’ve been waiting for Mobile Me updates which will allow for push updates of mail, calendar, contacts across multiple computers and updated iPod Touch’s and iPhones. I have 2 computers that I use – one is my laptop – and this kind of functionality sounds perfect and better than anything out there if it works.
Apple really horked the process on this one. They took down .Mac services to update to .Me services which took more than a day when they initially advertised it taking about 4 hours. Also during this time, no one could get the update for OS X 10.5 Leopard. Lastly, they even had to do a patch update to fix issues.
Now as to how it works, it looks pretty good now that it is up. I’ve seen the stuff pushed and synched between all the devices. I’ll keep an eye on it but I’m generally happy with it.
For the iPod Touch, the update was promising the ability to add applications from a store on iTunes. On the iPhone, they have some additional things depending on whether you keep an older iPhone or go for the iPhone 3G. I’m not getting an iPhone so I only care about the iPod Touch features. In addition, this update works with Mobile Me.
Apple really horked this process too. The update was supposed to be available Friday morning but it wasn’t really up till Saturday during the evening. For a user, this is very frustrating and lowers loyalty.
As to the update, it’s nice to get apps but none of the apps that are really for the iPod Touch are great. They are fun and simple but no app truly adds the functionality that says it’s the new killer app for the device. As Apple opens up the store to more apps, maybe we will see one but not yet.
