Neuroses of a computer programmer - I realize time and again that I tend to look for new ways to be self-sufficient in the case of complete civilization breakdown. I think that stems from the fact that my job, clearly, could not exist without an extensive infrastructure to provide electricity and network connections throughout the world. So I just keep learning new handicraft skills, expanding the foods I know how to make, and learning more about survival in nature so that I will still have skills in the case of a state of chaos.
I am trying to restrain myself, but failing. The NYT has an excellent quote in an article about how the GOP spent more than thrice the average American's salary on clothes for Palin. "To be scrupulously nonpartisan, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., her Democratic counterpart, seems to have a deep wardrobe of ties." I will admit it. I am just jealous. I am afraid to buy a few essentials because of the economic instability and this one has lucked into a wealth of clothes on top of the nomination.
There was something else, but I am highly distractable this morning.
After seeing all these debate-watching social events pop up, I began to wonder - will we soon see the advent of voting parties? I will vote via the mail, and as it is very common in my state, I assume so will many of my friends. So I am thinking why not have people over, open a bottle of vine, and vote together. Not that every decision would be automatically made public, but more that as less well known races and issues are addressed, they can be discussed publicly by all. Sounds like fun.
Second thought - they always talk about kids testing their limits, and I realized I too am testing my limits with the baby. I am seeing what he can handle as far as play time next to but separate from myself, when I respond to a cry at different speeds how he reacts, things like that. Interesting.
Dpending on how this presidential election goes, I wonder how long it will before another Alaskan will be welcome in national politics. She tends to paint a rather forceful picture of Alaskans in power, and in conjunction with Senator Stevens, there are good reasons to wonder if the law is slower to apply to our nothernmost state's politicians.
Think replace "Sarah" with "Sam" Palin, and just judge the resume and platform in a less gender- and family- focused context. I believe she was chosen for her gender and this blatant pandering is in some part working.
I would also like to hear more about Joe Biden. I only recently leaned of his history in the several Supreme Court justice vettings. Perhaps the media assumes that everyone of voting age will know enough about Biden to be able to make an informed decision about him, but I could use some refresher. Perhaps they had planned on it before everything was sidetracked by the GOP's Palin ploy, who knows.
One problem with all search engines is that they cannot determine the instantaneous popularity of a site and therefore have a historical bias. In fact, depending on how they weight past click throughs to determine ranking, that historical bias could in fact date all the way back to their date of inception. This would obviously lead to a lag in promoting innovative and upcoming sites, which hampers creativity.
Another intrinsic problem with search engines is that they are, I believe, either the primary or at least a primary factor in the institutionalization of the internet. The way a site becomes institutionalized is through its visibility when a person is engaged in a particular workflow. I.e. - I need to find a bread recipe, I search for bread recipes, the top sites will be more likely to get more clicks, and therefore become the seeming experts in bread recipes. This is true even given that in this example, the top results are often allrecipes.com, which I personally despise, but at least some of the time I click through to see what they have anyway, since it is so omnipresent in the tops of recipe searches. Therefore even a bad product can become institutionalized, and mostly due to the performance of the major search engines with respect to its content.
Finally, the economics surrounding searching favor searches which return financially valuable results. Why give a user a result which can help them learn, conserve, reuse, or recycle, when they *might* be interested in shopping instead. There is no incentive to hinder the already outrageous tendancy of modern (especially American) people to consume as a way of live. So even if you didn't know your search was a form of window shopping, suddenly you find yourself confronted by titillating potential purchases. Turn even a small fraction of those into sales and suddenly you can build a corporation as large as Google.
Where does that leave us? Every modern search engine I know of has these issues. Searching has become part of most people's repertoire of solutions to common daily problems, so it is no simple to choose to give it up cold turkey.
It's intersting that the existance of Google drastically decreases the likelihood that future game changers will be able to break into the market with systems that solve these sorts of problems, as by their nature search engines will tend towards monopolizing as much as possible and obscuring the existance of sites with which they compete. So it may take some time before we see solutions.
This is the basis for my complaint: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/370097_townhouse09.html
(Summary is that Seattle's mayor would like the city to have essentially an HOA governing new townhouse construction, forcing unreasonable design requirements and necessitating higher prices for new construction.)
Ok I am hesitant to malign my neighbors here in the lovely metropolis of Seattle, but over the course of several months as a townhouse owner, well, I feel rather maligned myself. So here goes.
How come no one is calling for regulation of house construction? Let's be honest, there are more ugly single family homes in Seattle then there are ugly townhouses, largely due to their greater number. Look around at the houses. Sure there are nice ones. But there are a lot of rundown houses with tall, unfriendly fences, overgrown shubberies, refuse in the yard, or any number of unseemly characteristics. How come no one is clamouring for them to be over-regulated?
And let's be even more blunt. Look around Seattle some more and you may notice that the ugliest buildings of all are not single family homes or townhomes. They are the aging population of apartment buildings. I should know, I lived in one of the 1970s era. I loved the place, don't get me wrong, but it was rather unsightly. So if I had to pick the lowest hanging fruit, I'd go after those!
See here's the thing. It isn't about property values, as most of the home owners who don't want townhouses going up in their backyards complain that builders are giving unsoliticted offers for tantilizing amounts, making them feel pressure to sell. So clearly their land is worth quite a bit due to this trend. It isn't really about ugliness or they would pick on the eye sores first and then move up the chain, and I'd say townhouses, especially new construction, would fall above average in appearance. Let's be honest. They are being classist and racist and agist and trying to keep their neighborhood composition they way "it has always been." Well too bad. I like living here. And I love that my place is "double stacked" (in the second row away from the street). And unless you are willing to sell your house for the fraction of the market value which I could afford, you're going to have to accept that townhouses are an economically and environmentally valuable offering in our fine city.
This week has been great so far - I've left the house at least once a day and did a 2.8 mile walk in there. Yesterday's walk was about a mile, but I used the carrier instead of the stroller so it was still challenging. Woo!
A shoutout to all y'al fathers out there. Hope today is great!
Stop losing! Thanks!
