Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

My previous observation about logic vs. emotion by political parties was based on a very small sampling from several years ago. Since 9/11, things have apparently changed.

I don't read a lot of political blogs. However, if I read a political post by filkertom, I often observe a very visceral reaction without a lot of logic contained. I don't get that emptional charge when I read something by billroper or owlsforodin.

Many of the people I used to work with over the years were engineers and computer/IT types, and they typically skew toward the conservative side. They're even more conservative if they work in the defense industry as active-duty military, retired military, civilians, or contractors.

I am on moveon.org's maliling list, and I occasionally respond to their calls of action. I've noticed that a lot of their posts (besides asking for money) urge their readers to Act Now!

I also tend to avoid political conversations with conservatives, since I'm not good at quickly recalling specific examples to defend my position.

I would like some specific examples to refute my initial observation. I'm a logical kind of guy.

Mercury. my gray cat, is licking the screen and chasing after the mouse pointer on the screen. Silly cat.

He likes to keep me company while I'm on the computer. So much so that I have to put the keyboard on my la while he lays in front of the monitor.

Anything silly your cats have done today?

5 days after the storm and some people are still without power. This cleanup is gonna take a while. And we'll have plenty of firewood next year!

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones this time around, since my power came back on early Monday morning. I attribute that to having the wiring to my condo complex underground. I had phone service throughout the entire power outage, and as far as I know, my cable TV didn't go out either.

Needless to say, M was bored without the power, so we went driving around on two separate occasions. I remembered that traffic lights without power are like 4-way stops. M wanted Spaghettios for dinner, so I put some in a saucepan and heated them up on the gas grill outside., That night, I had my battery-operated camping lantern in the house with me while I listened to a battery-operated radio and lit a few candles. I didn't fire up the propane lantern; that's strictly for outdoor use.

mariasmom didn't have power until Wednesday, so her and M spent Monday and Tuesday nights with me.

zorya_thinks reports that she's still without cable TV and high-speed internet. Which has me wondering: how many Time Warner customers in the area have digital phone? Is it working yet? And how many people are going to switch back to regular phone service after this is all done?

It's not likely that a wind storm of this magnitude will come through again, but I feel I should be prepared for it anyway. I'm trying to think what I still need.

Help me load the jukebox for an upcoming virtual Halloween Party and/or Witches' Ball. What are your favorite Halloween party tunes?
Here are mine:
Oingo Boingo, "Dead Man's Party"
Ministry, "Every Night Is Halloween"
Bobby "Boris" Pickett, "Monster Mash"

Let's hear 'em!

From The Daily Kos: McCain campaign admits mailing 1 Million bad ballot applications to voters in Ohio

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that "About one-third of the absentee ballot applications received at the Hamilton County Board of Elections have been ruled invalid because Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign printed a version of the form with an extra, unneeded box on it."

This is verified; read the original story. "Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner says that if the box isn't checked, circled or initialed, the application is no good. Those voters are essentially admitting they're not eligible, she said....'The outrageous partisan maneuvering by Secretary Brunner is putting the integrity of this election at risk, and it needs to stop immediately,' said state Republican Chairman Bob Bennett."

I don't like this one bit. The election process should be sacred and non-partisan. Instead, there's the appearance of corruption inside the county boards of elections. To paraphrase Mr. Bennett, the outrageous partisan deception by the Republican Party is putting the integrity of this election at risk. This is clearly unacceptable, for any county in any state.

As previously promised, here is last night's special comment by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, in which he addresses the 9/11 "tribute" video shown at last week's Republican National Convention. A transcript is also available under a cut tag on the page.

Just finished checking the course syllabus and first week's assignments for my object-oriented programming course.

This week, I need to read chapters 1 and 2 from the book that hasn't arrived yet (it shipped today), and do some homework assignments based on those readings. The assignments are due midnight Monday, which I'll assume is one minute before 00:01 on Monday morning and not one minute after 23:59 on Monday evening. That means that Sunday night may become my crunch night. But I have all week to finish the readings, and I don't want to fall into the "wait until the 11th hour" trap.

Once I get the notice about access to ELMS, which should include my username and password, I should be able to get my copy of Visio 2003 from the CIS lab. I can only borrow one title at a time, but I would like to see what else I can get. Office 2003 would be nice to have. I've been making do with Office 2007 on the desktop, and I have OpenOffice 2.4 on the laptop.

Back when the original Battlestar Galactica series aired, I thought about doing a parody of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds Of Silence" to reflect the show. (This was back before I even discovered filk.) But alas, the words never came, and the only thing I could come up with was that the words "of Cylons" would be sung in a Cylon voice.

One Google search later, and I'm proud to say that someone else had the same idea, picked up the ball, and ran with it. The words are here: http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/simonandgarfunkel108.shtml

I am so adding this to my covers book.

Yesterday, I signed up for an Object-Oriented Programming Concepts course (CIS 112) at Sinclair Community College. ( But it wasn't as straightforward as I hoped. )

Today, based on a tip from athenawindsong, I ordered my 2 books through amazon.com. One was new, the other was used. We'll be using a language called Alice and doing OO diagramming in UML using Visio. So I downloaded Alice and installed it on the laptop.

The next thing to do is to obtain a copy of Microsoft Visio from the campus library or whoever handles the software distribution for students. I'll probably take care of that tomorrow morning, unless I have to wait until the quarter starts before I can acces the ELMS system.

I'm enjoying this "new" radio I got a couple of days ago at my friend's garage sale. I still have my late uncle's old Hallicrafters shortwave radio, but the 4 shortwave bands on it are a lot more narrow than the "new" radio. It even marked key stations by location on the panel, although I'm sure they're obsolete by now.

( Listening to faraway stations was an old hobby of mine. More radio geekery behind the cut. )

So, what stations near you should I try to listen for? And has amateur radio been supplanted by the Internet?