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big & growly dragon's own entries
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| following up |
[19 august 2008|13:38] |
I called Citibank. the Citibank lady laughed, and laughed, and apologized becuase I'm sure she's not supposed to.
the new car will be 7-10 business days. she asked me what kind of puppy. I told her a Rottie, and she was "what a cute little guy!" I said well, cute yes, little no.
then she told me about her two dogs: Newfoundland and Jack Russell. the former 10x the weight of the latter.
ok, he's little.
I think I made her day. even if I didn't cave into the required hard sell of 0% interest cash advance until March.
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| damn it dog! |
[19 august 2008|00:48] |
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Dasko ate my Citibank card
hmm, where's my wallet?
oh, there it is.
damn it, I need a new wallet
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| feel like shit today |
[17 august 2008|16:49] |
I am claerly super stressed. not sure why. I think it's a combination.
yesterday I took care of a lot of paperwork. I didn't think I had that much to do, but I knew somewhere on my desk was the car insurance renewal and concluded instead of ruffling through the papers it was really best that I just deal with them until I found it.
I ended up doing a combination but it took, like, three more hours than I expected. I got cranky as I'd wanted to go to the gym. but I finally found/got to the car insurance renewals - the Hybrid had expired - and wrote out the cheques. they got added to a phat stack of bills. so Dasko got his first walk across highway 1 as we walked them, with dogs, to the post office. with 10 mins to spare before the last pickup of the day.
which also meant 10 mins to spare before the Saddleback Forum in which some rich OC preacher interviewed bothe Obama and McCain. Obama went first. the questions were neat - since it was outside the format of a political debate, topics that are normally taboo for politcal debate were asked. like about moral failures of America, the nature of evil, etc. also some straightup queries on abortion, SCOTUS, gay marriage. Obama, caught without rehearsed answers to the questions and told not to fall back on stump answers, clearly backpedalled and said "uh" a few times. as in, uh, uh, uh, uh, way too many times. I think a couple of his answered boffed it - he clearly ducked the question on the wisest people he'd rely on in his administration, and singling out Clarence Thomas as unqualified for SCOTUS wrt jurist experience was a surprise.
but then McCain took the stage and answered all the same questions pretty easily. ...no way. he had some of the answers pat. the rabid pro life stance was pretty surprising, but not as surprising as McCain literally anticipating a couple questions and answering them before they were asked. lame.
anyhow that took 2 hours. then we had dinner and then basically played Wow for a while. I had wanted to gym but despite being called "24hr fitness" on Saturdays, it closes at 8pm. before it got too late, we decided to head to bed. and at that point, I simply could not sleep. all this crazy energy. maybe it was the moon, I dunno.
anyhow talk about consequences. we'd wanted to take the dogs to this "dog social" with the trainer from Dasko's puppy class at 10am this morning. nope. we slept in. Dasko was all kinds of energy, and so kept waking up and falling asleep. I ended up dreaming about one of the developers at work flying an X-wing and crashing behind enemy lines and the Empire capturing him, just so he could be dramarific about his woes. finally I got up and looked around. o, the front door was open! and the dogs were on guard. yes yes, the screen was still shut. but the street noise had been coming in, which is probably why I slept so badly. meanwhile, good dogs.
today it's been about the little things. I don't feel all that great so I've been sitting around, but we did manage to go to BB&B to pick up a couple kitchen things I needed, and some new toothbrush heads. my ESO is looking for my passport. me, I keep going over where it could be mentally. so my looking for it is useless, I think even if it was there I wouldn't see it. so she's looking. can't find it. not sure what to do. I can't imagine that it's left the house in a couple years. but a couple years ago, my ESO moved in. so where it is, a mystery.
I want to go visit Bay of Fundy next month. I don't know if the Canadian/US border requires a passport right now, but I'd rather not find out they do and not have it. meh.
if how I'm feeling keeps up, I think I will WFH tomorrow and do the minimum I can get away with. meh, meh
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| BPA, scientific integrity, and the 3-letter agencies |
[16 august 2008|10:40] |
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kate bush |
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so becuase it's a pushbutton issue for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) topteddy, this article's heading from the New York Times caught my eye, and I thought I'd post it:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite safety concerns of parents, consumer groups and politicians, a chemical used in baby bottles, canned food and other items is not dangerous, federal regulators said Friday.
Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration said the trace amounts of bisphenol A that leach out of food containers were not a threat to infants or adults. The plastic-hardening chemical is used to seal canned food and make shatterproof bottles.
The agency’s draft report is the latest in a growing pile of assessments of bisphenol, which has been used to package food for decades.
The agency previously declared the chemical safe, but agreed to revisit that opinion after a report by the federal National Toxicology Program said that there was “some concern” about its risks in infants.
Based on a review of animal studies, the government working group said bisphenol could cause changes in behavior and the brain, and that it might reduce survival and birth weight in fetuses.
About 93 percent of Americans have traces of bisphenol in their urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the F.D.A.’s report concluded that those levels were thousands of times below what would actually be dangerous to adults or children.
now, I've read it, I immediately tied it to a magazine article I'd read this morning while I was cleaning my teeth. the most recent issue of Mother Jones actually has an article, "A Return to Reason: And an end to faith-based science," that discusses how the Bush administration has over 3000 political appointees in every science-based government agency whose purpose is apparently to vet research results to match conservative values (in areas like reproductive health) or be favorable to industry... like the NYT article I just posted.
unfortunately, the Mother Jones article isn't free online yet. (I subscribe to it, so it sits in the bathroom next to my Science News.) but it does cite my favorite organization for donations: Union of Concerned Scientists. I love that organization becuase on issues that are based on science, such as global warming or pollution, they first take the research, and then conclude what to do. sort of data-based activism. but since the Bush administration took the reins, their website has grown an enormous section dedicated to Scientific Integrity and resisting Political Interference in Science:
The United States has an impressive history of investing in scientific research and respecting the independence of scientists. As a result, we have enjoyed sustained economic progress and public health, as well as unequaled leadership within the global scientific community. Recent actions by political appointees, however, threaten to undermine this legacy by preventing the best available science from informing policy decisions that have serious consequences for our health, safety, and environment.
Across a broad range of issues—from childhood lead poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health, and nuclear weapons—political appointees have distorted and censored scientific findings that contradict established policies. In some cases, they have manipulated the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions.
They have also undermined the independence of scientific advisory panels by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have no bearing on their expertise, and by nominating under- or unqualified individuals—some of whom have industry ties that could represent a conflict of interest. Other scientific advisory committees have been disbanded altogether.
with that sort of history - here's the list of documented, irrefutable interference - I find myself reacting to the NYT article, well, pretty much the same way I react to any other government in the world when I know they are lying, such as then Myanmar said all was well after the cyclone, or Sudan says there's no genocide in Darfur, or China says of course the Olympics reporting is uncensored.
before the Bush administration, per the Mother Jones article, many of the political appointments to those agencies had real, non-censoring roles to play. however it sounds like about 20% of the appointments are literally there to make sure the scientists toe the party line. here's hoping that whoever the next president is, he will restore the preexisting roles to those positions and nuke the purely party-line ones. after all all those guys are on the taxpayer's tab. if it's even 300 people and they make $50K/year... that's a lot of annual savings right there.
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| $51 million |
[16 august 2008|10:23] |
...that's what Barack Obama raised in July per the Wpost blog.
*loved* this comment:
Why do taxpayers have to pay for the old white hair guy? Is paying for his campaign part of his social security benefits? Having presidential candidates raise money for their own campaign is change that my wallet can believe in.
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| I don't want this to a a political blog... |
[15 august 2008|14:35] |
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it's my journal. I should be talking about, how I've been really busy at work, how the puppy has grown, how I am trying to plan a vacation to see Bay of Fundy, how much I love my ESO... how fun the Wow is, how great it is that Dasko can take longer walks, how we walked the dogs at 1:30am last night... how I had fabulous Thai food with friends, and talked about the horse herds on the outer banks... how I woke up this morning with "20 Eyes" by the Misfits stuck in a playback loop inside my brain... and still want to see Batman, and don't want to see Clone Wars... observations on global warming and freeway construction... this new nifty calculator website on solar panels...
but then, I get busy at work, and while things build, I see shit like this in the news:
Campaign says McCain didn't hear question on attack book
(CNN) — John McCain's campaign is denying Democratic charges the presumptive Republican nominee flippantly dismissed a new book attacking Barack Obama that includes several documented falsehoods.
Asked by the Associated Press earlier Friday what he though of author Jerome Corsi's new book, "The Obama Nation," McCain said, "gotta keep your sense of humor."
...McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said later Thursday the Arizona senator actually did not hear the question, and would not be commenting on the book.
now. my dad was hard of hearing. like Senator McCain, he too served time in Vietnam. in fact, he was there pertty much when it started, on the USS Kearsarge which was the group that responded to the Gulf of Tonkin attacks. in fact, he was on deck for part of that during operations. under the 5" guns. BOOMBOOM!!!!
and so I was stuck growing up with a father who was pretty damned hard of hearing. I saw a cat scan of his head once. there were no holes where his ears should be. his body was under those guns and said "FUCK YOUUUU!!!!" and just grew the bone over the opening. to this day, if a person makes me have to repeat myself more than once, I will get unreasonably upset with them, and that upset takes a long time to cooldown.
so with Senator McCain, we either have someone who is hard of hearing, to the point where he'd make what's effectively a major gaffe like that at some unfortunate point in a diplomatic discussion; or someone who meant it when he said the book full of falsehoods is humourous, in which case the charge he isn't, really, going to be a change from what we have with W Bush, is probably much more accurate than I had previously thought.
gah. the 72 year old dude didn't hear the question isn't really a vote-getting response, people
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[13 august 2008|09:21] |
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there's something amusing and poignant in watching a Rottweiler puppy chase his tail.
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| the most frequent word in McCain's blog? "Obama". |
[13 august 2008|00:50] |
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an interesting analysis of the media coverage, showing how McCain's campaign is actually dependent on Obama for its message is over here at www.fivethirtyeight.com.
they cited in part this interesting graphic over at the Boston Globe. hope it shows up. the image URL is from a cache...
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| "come into the light my child" |
[12 august 2008|18:31] |
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Dasko ate my sunglasses this morning.
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| fucked up news: sex with one's boss |
[9 august 2008|21:46] |
Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules
by Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.
She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.
"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.
Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.
Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.
Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.
Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.
Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.
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| maybe he just wanted some pancakes |
[7 august 2008|15:25] |
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Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, flush from a hefty fundraiser the night before, stopped off for a meet-and-greet at a St. Paul diner this morning.
Obama ordered pancakes, signed menus and greeted patrons at the Copper Dome restaurant in St. Paul near the corner of Hamline and Randolph avenues early today before departing from town. Managers of the long-time St. Paul landmark said they were told only minutes before that Obama and his entourage would be arriving.
Obama, who was in Minneapolis last night for a fundraiser, also shook hands and spoke briefly with passers-by outside the restaurant, chatting with a woman about her pregnancy and with a group of schoolchildren about track practice.
A spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain said afterward the home-spun nature of the Copper Dome visit should not overshadow the real reason for Obama's trip - a high bucks fundraiser that included a $28,500 a plate dinner - and that Obama's recent decision to decline to abide by public financing restrictions was an indication of the real kind of politician the Illinois Senator has become.
ok so here's *my* take on this: he had a fundraiser in a city he is visiting. such things involve small talk. "where can we go to get good pancakes and a good local feel?" came up, just like it would when anyone who travels a lot is in an unfamiliar town. and people made this suggestion.
in otherwords, not only not news, but lame that the GOP felt a need to attack it. jeez. maybe the guy likes pancakes. I know I sure do.
now, I want pancakes.
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| Tracking the money |
[5 august 2008|22:32] |
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this map in the LA Times is all kinds of interesting I'm finding hard to articulate. I could poke at this thing for hours.
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| equal time |
[5 august 2008|20:33] |
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| a bad day in the game of life |
[5 august 2008|19:52] |
last night my ESO's little cat Aurora came in and sat on her lap.
this was no big deal although it's been less frequent of late since we got Dasko. my ESO was happy and petted her... to find a giant lump on her right cheek. ooo, abcess.
of course that meant today was a day for the vet. and I already had a dentist appointment in Santa Cruz, and my ESO had a 10:30 "can't miss" meeting. well.
she managed to call into the meeting, and then I drove them both to the vet straightaway. looking at my day shaping up to be going back and forth from San Francisco to Santa Cruz (not the most ideal of transportation scheduling IMO), I just took the day off. bad bad timing for me, but o well.
the dentist was not only running late, my 8 fillings ( :-( ) ran over, as it took a while to get my bite adjusted. but the cat had to be left at the vet to be picked up later. so we just got home, and now have a cat with half her face shaved and a drain installed and an e-collar, who now must be kept inside for a few days.
on the bright side, not only did my CDs arrive from Amazon, but my ESO found 3 more of hers when cleaning up the room we're going to keep the little cat in. I ripped them all in and had some new music to listen to as my ESO drove me to and from the dentist. and yay for her doing that, instead of my being shaky and freaked out, I got to doze off and on in the passenger seat and let the dentist-stress drain out of me.
on the down side, the dogs have not been worked, or walked, or anything. they will be feisty and demanding for the rest of the night. and even though it's already been a full day, the day hasn't ended, we still have more cleaning to do, and we agreed to pick up wendelina2 at the airport, and kavavita has plans for the evening and won't be around. we could play ro-sham-bo for who gets to go and who gets to stay and watch the dogs and cat, but I'm not sure which of those is considered a win or loss.
ok, time to get back to it
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| stale address book |
[2 august 2008|12:15] |
ok so my addresses are a bit more stale than I thought. e.g. bellacrow is in there as living in Illinois still.
I'm trying to migrate the birt'days out of the "Notes" field and into the official "Birthday" field. that part sucks as it really wants a year. as if I am going to get anyone telling me that info in this age of identity theft. whyn't I get mother's maiden name and SSN too while I'm at it...!
any of my Gentle Readers who think I ought to have their address and/or birt'day, please put the correct info in a comment here. all comments screened. I don't need the year for the birt'day :-) of course if LJ is untrustworthy as a communication medium for that sort of thing, email works too.
please to note: the accuracy of one's address in my address book is directly correlated to the odds of getting a holiday greeting card come Christmas time.
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| o MAN |
[2 august 2008|10:52] |
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so I got my Treo sync'd to my laptop I haven't cleaned up for selling yet. got the contact info onto my new fabu laptop. then, it was time to sync the iPhone....
the iPhone is tied to a single iTunes instance. swap, and it erases everything.
I don't care about that for the music - that's more than fine - all my digitized music is on a little mini whose only purpose in my life is to deal with that music -
which of course means it does NOT have my addressbook, nor do I want it to.
which means I will get to chose either to have music on my iPhone, or contacts.
:-(
booo.
the user interface sure looks like it oughta be able to distinguish between music management and contacts/ringtones/calendar etc etc.
blah. I guess Apple doesn't really want its customers have more then one computing device each.
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| well, I got it |
[1 august 2008|21:37] |
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the iPhone is activated and supposedly functional. I named it "jubjub". same cel #.
too bad my address book is on my old laptop.
there's a thing in iTunes that will let me sync ringtones! that gives me thoughts. my first thought was, damn I have lost my Katamari tracks. but... I guess it's possible to generate them from scratch with the right software... built in to a Mac.
now. how can I pull some sound effects out of Wow... ok ok. just kidding. contacts in there first.
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| homo triumphans |
[1 august 2008|12:01] |
Dasko gave me His Paw right now.
twice.
he got an extra cookie and good dog all around.
why is this important?
...I'm guessing he's 50 pounds now. we are still steadily feeding him 2-2.5 lbs of food a day and he is still ribsy; but his shoulders are above the coffee table. inoah stopped by last night and was surprised at his size. the assertion "he's gonna be 130 lbs" now carries the silent "only" and "we hope" attached to it. watching him play, for all his timidity with strange doors and cars, we think he might be an alpha dog after all.
the "paw" behaviour is a way of indicating non aggression, just like wagging the tail. for a dog of the size Dasko is going to be, both "paw" and "wag your tail" on command will defuse feedback situations where the dog wouldn't necessarily be a problem (after all, he's awfully damn mellow), but an intimidated human can trigger an aggressive response, which will intimidate them more. humans are suckers though, and unless they are phobic about the dog, will much more genuinely relax if the dog wags his tail and will offer a paw on command.
Bohdan could wag his tail on command too.
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| NSA psych meme from rightsock |
[30 july 2008|17:14] |
The good folks over at The Memory Hole have (legally, via FOIA)
obtained copies of over 400 blank forms used by the NSA ... for
purposes ranging from laying out seating at conferences to
psychological evaluation.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/2008/07/over-400-nsa-forms/
One of these is simply entitled "Incomplete Sentences".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOCID: 3114399
INCOMPLETE SENTENCES
NAME (Last) (First) (Middle) DATE
FINISH THESE SENTENCES TO EXPRESS YOUR TRUE FEELINGS.
1. I always wanted to be
2. I can't
3. If my father would only
4. People think of me as
5. I suffer most from
6. What upsets me most is
7. Most men
8. My family treats me like
9. My greatest worry is
10. Some members of the opposite sex
11. Most women
12. I regret
13. The main thing in life
14. Secretly
15. If my mother would only
16. I don't like people who
17. I wish I could forget the time I
18. When troubled
19. It bothers or annoys me that I
20. What most angers me is
FORM P5590A REV JUN 2000 (Supersedes P5590A REV JUN 76 which is obsolete)
Approved for Release by NSA on 02-16-2007, FOIA Case #42877
------------------------------------------------------------------------
how would you fill these out?
1. I always wanted to be an astronomer
2. I can't turn a somersault
3. If my father would only not have died before I got home
4. People think of me as a tempermental bitch
5. I suffer most from a lack of diplomacy. or perhaps bad hair
6. What upsets me most is how people are self-deceptive hypocrites
7. Most men think differently than women
8. My family treats me like I'm special
9. My greatest worry is global warming
10. Some members of the opposite sex just don't get it
11. Most women focus on communication and manipulation instead of direct command and control
12. I regret not demanding Xrays when the tech pointed out Bohdan's belly was bloated Saturday morning
13. The main thing in life is to appreciate things for what they are, and what they could be on their own, not what you can turn them into
14. Secretly I often think about the "spirit of place"
15. If my mother would only have gotten the quentin catheter on the other side
16. I don't like people who distort reality so strongly it sucks me in
17. I wish I could forget the time I hurt you
18. When troubled, I bury myself in a book. or go driving, that's awfully calming
19. It bothers or annoys me that I am more likely to lose my temper when I'm taking extra care not to
20. What most angers me is when I'm told to do something I've already started to do on my own
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| originality |
[30 july 2008|14:51] |
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Barack Obama has been compared to prominent political figures such as President John F. Kennedy, but opponent John McCain’s campaign on Tuesday tried to portray him as an arrogant Hollywood diva, who doesn’t have the credibility to be commander in chief.
“Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world, comparable to Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton,” Rick Davis, Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager, wrote in an e-mail addressed to interested parties after throwing out a similar line on a conference call with reporters.
“Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand “MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea” and worry about the price of arugula,” Davis said.
cmon now. can't these guys have at least a little bit of originality? didn't Jon Stewart already cover this last week? I loved the clips of Cher.
let's let the inside voice out again: and even more subtle - what guy cares about divas? why, *fags* do. and nobody wants to be a *fag*. especially if you are a white republican who drives a white pickup with a shotgun rack around the southwestern desert. o OOPS I did not just type that, no no no. maybe draNgNon stereotypes people too eh
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