September 2008 Archives

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein
Floor Statement on the Economic
Rescue Proposal
September 26, 2008
 

           As to executive compensation limits, simply put, Californians are frosted by the absence of controls on executive compensation. Virtually all of the 50,000 phone calls and letters mentioned this one way or another. There must be limits. I am told that the reason the Treasury Secretary does not want limits on executive compensation is because he believes that an executive then will not bring his company in to partake in any program that is set up. Here is my response to that: We can put that executive on his boat, take that boat out in the ocean, and set it on fire. If that is how he feels, that is what should happen, or his company doesn't come in. But to say that the Federal Government is going to be responsible for tens of millions of dollars of executive salaries, golden parachutes, whether they are a matter of contract right or not, is not acceptable to the average person whose taxpayer dollars are used in this bailout. That is just fact.

I miss 70's basketball uniforms. Here are the Padres, taking me back.
Who knew Hooters was so nostalgic?
Also, why DO basketball players wear those giant shorts, anyway?

We at kmbrknits do not have the "cable" or "dish," we get our tidbits from the interwebs. This one in particular is amusing. I am so confused!

Finally, America is ready for small town politics!! Lets take it global!!! We have not humiliated ourselves enough on the world stage. Its funny how the people who purport to most value family and community keep forgetting that we're a family of humans—a community of countries—in favor of alienating everyone else in the community. Even when they want to help us! Well, they used to. We kinda squandered that.

That Sarah Palin is something else. I think I met her in high school: you know, the mouthy chick who won class president and homecoming queen because the rest of us had better things to do than try to battle past her onslaught of personality. The chick with too much energy and kinda crazy eyes. So this is what happens when these girls grow up. I can't see her sitting in a room with Putin—at least I pray I don't. Can people seriously imagine her at the Pentagon with the people running the war—How degrading would it be for us to put our top military strategists, who have likely spent their whole lives working for the knowledge base they posses, in a position where they are required to brief this superficially adept person, and follow orders? I personally do not want to be one who requires that of them. I respect the troops too much.

She's certainly a great speaker, I think she'd be fabulous at motivation conferences. Alaska is a thinly populated state that is awash in oil money. If you're pushy enough and savvy enough, I can't believe its that hard to get elected. Apparently, she was quite a polarizing element in Wasilla. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't have the launch codes....

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

That totally cracks me up.

After years of construction and months of testing, the LHC is going to get fired up for real tomorrow!! That's the Large Hadron Collider outside of Geneva, Switzerland (and under France). I can't pretend to really know exactly what the thing does, but I get the gist. I love the sciencey stuff, not enough to do it myself, but I think it is fascinating to read about, once its been translated for the masses—me. I like to know how to make stuff. Including the universe, that's interesting, too.

Aaaaanyway, there's finally a super duper particle collider that will answer some questions I guess have been pestering physicists for a while. For me, that means a ginormous interesting machine, and tons of fascinating science articles in my future after they fire it up and analyze the terabytes of info they get out of it every second or so (eek!). (And no, its not going to implode the planet, in case you were worried. Well. As if I know, but that's what I've read from the people who should.)

Incidentally, we were going to make an even bigger one of these here in the US—in Texas, of course—but our government decided it was too expensive to fund that and the International Space Station simultaneously in the early 90's, after they had already done a fair amount of digging. I can actually remember being disappointed when I read about it's being canceled.

Wait, how much have we spent on Iraq so far...I forget.

I wouldn't have even mentioned this minor fetish of mine, but some of the multitalented geeks at CERN have made this wonderful educational rap about their project. Enjoy!!

YouTube directly



More information is available at the LHC homepage, and the Wiki about it.

One of the great things about being a graphic designer (though you'd never know it from this site), is that I get to learn about what other people do, how things are made, and all kinds of obscure stuff about different industries. I've also been employed by a couple of software companies that did very different things, where I had numerous dealings with the technical staff, some of whom were academic refugees of the 80s government research funding cuts in the sciences. Interesting people. Turns out, I like to learn about all kinds of stuff that I was positively allergic to during my school years. I'm a dilettante, and proud of it.

I'm off to see if I can find another video on the human genome project. Or epigenomes!

The first day of school has come and gone, and boy was it a doozie. The Things tripped off to their new classes, seemingly unphased. I tried not to be the sobby mom as I walked to school behind Thing 1, who was being cajoled to stop dawdling on the way to kindergarten about two weeks ago, in my head. This year he's in 4th grade, and prefers to walk ahead of me—and Thing 2, who is a professional dawdler, still, in 2nd grade. I do miss the fat snuggly babies.

I started work on the first day, too. I work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so it was a short week for me. Just long enough to find out that the teachers had somehow talked the new principal into the idea that I can get the lab up and running with new software and server in 3 workdays (usually I get 9. 6 is barely feasible.). They are so cute. Not going to happen, but cute.

After school, we three came home, had a celebratory bowl of homemade ice cream, kicked back and talked about the day. Then it was time for violin lessons. Sigh.

Thing 2 was, shall we say, less than compliant, in the paying attention following instruction department. His lesson was cut short, which is dissapointing, but means more time for me. Yay! Normally, Thing 1 is pretty good at sitting quietly during our lessons, but today, he was completely undone once Thing 2 was set free during my lesson. This particular lesson was a regular brawl between the two of them. The frequent interruptions to stop them batting at each other were preferable to the having to stop them crawling under the chairs/running on top of them that happened next. Did I mention the greco-roman wrestling that happened at the end? (Apologies to the next student, who had to walk over them.)
I was so proud. I swear, the ice cream had all of 4 non-toxic ingredients, I don't know where this came from.

I think I did pretty well keeping my cool, considering the fact that in my hand was the functional equivalent of the kind of hickory switch employed on the backsides of previous generations in these situations. My bow is carbon-fiber, it won't mind...I just made them walk home. Stupid new-age parenting guilt.

A bit of batting back and forth is normal for them, albeit annoying. This level of disruption is not. Also, totally unacceptable. They're getting good at writing apologies, right now. Next time: ebay.

I sent SysGuy and the Things to northern CA to visit VolunteerLady and HappyGuy for the Labor Day weekend. I stayed home ALONE, in our house, for the second time ever. Last year I got to stay home, but the power went out and it was 100°, so I spent the weekend floating in the pool. Not a productive time period, so I've decided it doesn't count.

I basically holed up for the weekend and got stuff done; organized for the upcoming school year (Thursday!!!). Threw out the craptastic toys acquired at "science" camp. Made new valances for several windows in the house (fabric has been lying around for ages for this opportunity). Went through a couple years of school papers and decided what is worth keeping, tossed the rest. Assessed the Things clothing situation for the Fall. Cleaned like a fiend. Also, watched chick flicks that SysGuy would hate. Thing 2 asked what a chick flick was. I said it was a movie where women sit around talking about kissing boys, or actually kiss boys. "Oh. That sounds boooooorrrring." See why I need some alone time? I'm inundated with anime and Jackie Chan.

I topped off the weekend by doing another thing I have never, ever done since we moved into this house in 2000. I mowed. the. lawn. All 1000sf of it. It seems, at some point, SysGuy acquired a self-propelled lawn mower. Interesting. I have to admit that getting married in 1995 was the demise of lawn mowing as one of my chores (thank you darling SysGuy, our yard was much larger and bumpier then). In my defense, I did take on the totality of grocery shopping since we wed. Just sayin'.

Anyway, our neighbors, who practically never see an actual homeowner mowing the lawn (shudder), were treated to the sight of my chubby self laughing her head off while being drug across the driveway by this strangely sentient lawnmower. Seriously, I should have read the instructions before I started it. Who knew mower technology had got to this point? Also, the labeling on the dead man switch (and, separately, what turned out to be the drive control) could be a little more clear. "Blade control" does not mean "dead man." Well, at least not to me. I guess they're averse to the word "dead?"

I got it done, though I did spend 5 minutes trying to start the damn thing with the "blade control" inactive, since it seemed like the blade would be unnecessary to the engine. Heck I don't know, I figure if the thing can drive itself, its just as likely that nowadays the blade spin can be separated from the engine turning, too. Turns out, not.

Total mowing time: 10 minutes. Total dicking around time: 10 minutes.

Kempt yard: priceless.