Choose life….with a side of cheesy bites…
Yes, the pro-lifers are out protesting in front of a Pizza hut... Apparently they've forgot the first rule of being an annoying fringe group: "Location, location, location."
Apparently the local pro-lifers can’t choose between Life or a Meat-Lover’s Pizza from Pizza hut.
For me it’s no contest, but I prefer the Super Supreme.
And yes, before you point out the obvious, I know I’m going straight to hell. Let me know, I’ll save you a spot by the fire…you bring the marshmallows.
Can’t. Stop. Laughing.
Ok, as many of you know, thanks to the wonder that is GoogleVoice integration with sprint phones, I can not only read my son’s SMS chats in real-time, I can also send messages on his behalf, without him knowing…
In the above chat… “Me” is my son, “Danielle” is his girlfriend.
The lines with the orange arrows however were sent by “Me” as in dad. ”Me” as in son can’t see these on his phone. (And doesn’t have the password to the GVoice account 
)
I’m going straight to hell aren’t I….
On Motivation… (and motivating others..)
Warning: Political post
Republicans believe two basic economic principles.
First, that in order to get poor people to work harder you have to take away from them. Remove their benefits, make them poorer. This will supposedly motivate them to work harder.
Second, they believe that in order to get the rich people… erm…excuse me: “Job Creators” to create jobs, you have to give them more of what they already have too much of.
Why is that? Why don’t rich people work harder when they lose their tax-breaks? Do you think big business is going to sit back and cry and give up if they lose their hand-outs?
No, they’re going to get off their asses and MAKE SOMETHING new to attract business to make up the loss.
I’m not an economist, I don’t know for a fact which one works better. But I have some experiential knowledge.
If I go by experience and my observations alone, trickle-down economics doesn’t work. It’s my experience that when the very rich get a few extra dollars in their pocket, it doesn’t change the way they spend money one bit. It increases their bottom line, makes their balance sheet look a little better. (Or if you’re Mitt Romney it gets shuffled off to live in a tax-free swiss-bank-account.)
However. If the lower and lower-middle class gets even a small bump in their paycheck through, say, a payroll tax break, it MEANS something to them. And they’ll take that $40 or so per paycheck straight to WalMart and Target and they will spend every dime of it. More spending = more revenue for corporations, more sales tax revenue for state and local governments, better schools, more police, etc.
I’m all for returning to the tax-rates during the clinton years. I think the ultra-rich can afford the extra 4% without tightening their belts.
But I’m also for a return to Clinton-Era welfare reform. Yes, let’s take care of the very poor with the safety net, but let’s SPEND THE MONEY on training, child-care, etc to give them the opportunity to do something.
Most poor people aren’t poor because they want to be. They’re poor because they lack opportunities. Give them the opportunities but make them work for them.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Wordless Wednesday….
…because there really are no words…
*Full disclosure…These pics weren’t taken by me…a friend’s wife took them as I was in the air somewhere over Montana at the time…
If I had missed my flight, I would have seen it.
I missed my once in a lifetime opportunity to fly across country to a job I hate to sit in a cubicle across from people I hate, for a company I’ve grown to HATE over the last few years.
Now I hate them for making me miss this.
On Donating to the internet….
Sometimes the plea comes out asking for donations for one cause or another. A lot of the time we’ll just pass on by it for one reason or another.. Times are tough..
I ran across the following on the blog of my good friend Pauline @ classychaos.com.
I strongly recommend you sit through the whole thing… It’s ok, I’ll wait.
So this kid reminds me a LOT of me when I was his age. I broke stuff, I built stuff… At that age, like Caine, I broke more than I built.
But it was a big part of how I became who I am today.
Now there are a million reasons not to give a dollar, or two, or ten. But I can think of one excellent 9 year old reason to give even a little.
I didn’t go to college. I’m not a degreed engineer even though for the last 15 years my job title has contained the word “Engineer” in one form or another. All I can think is that if *I* had had the chance of going to college…I would NOT have had to kill myself to get where I am now.
And the chance, even the smallest chance, that my $10 can help someone else avoid that, it’s totally worth it.
There’s nothing like the feeling that comes with doing the right thing…
And to Caine – if you’re reading this. Keep dreaming big.
I did.
Updated: If you’re interested in donating, go to CainesArcade.com and click on the paypal link in the right sidebar.
Fear the corpratocracy…
Just remember – Corporations are infinitely more like to do things like violate our privacy than the government is. If there is a profit in it, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.
The problem is, while laws are designed to keep the government from violating our civil liberties, the same laws, written for corporations (by corporate lobbyists) are only designed to punish corporations for the same transgressions when/*IF* they’re caught.
Preventative legislation vs. Punitive legislation.
You can either put the fire out after it’s started, or you can work to stop the fire from happening in the first place.
I fear the corporatocracy MUCH more than I fear the government.
“I don’t know which species is worse, you don’t see them fucking eachother over for a percentage.” -Ripley, Alien
Defending the Affordable Care Act with Logic…
The argument for the Affordable Care Act is highly logical. Pre ACA people with insurance already paid for the healthcare of people without insurance through increased premiums directly resulting from people using hospitals as their primary care physicians.
This is exacerbated by the fact that people who wait to go to the hospital are usually in much worse health and require much more (and more extensive/expensive) care.
Enabling preventative care for the poor would save the “rich” millions every year in healthcare/health-insurance costs. Businesses would pay less, get more, and as such be able to hire more people since costs go DOWN per employee.
This isn’t socialism, it’s capitalism at it’s finest.
American Taliban..
Yes, it’s another socio-political post from yours truly…
Let’s start with one of many definitions of “Marriage” from Dictionary.com:
Marriage: any close or intimate association or union: the marriage of words and music in a hit song. Synonyms: blend, merger, unity, oneness; alliance, confederation. Antonyms: separation, division, disunion, schism.
Saying you support gay “Civil Unions” but not gay “Marriage” is like saying “Separate but equal” in the US in the 60′s. It’s a sham. A thinly veiled discrimination. You can’t be pro-equality or pro-freedom but restrict someone from using whatever words THEY feel fit their relationship.
It’s a word. It baffles me why conservatives CARE what words are used?
I’ve also *YET* to hear one person give me a legitimate example of how their “marriage” is harmed by allowing gays to marry.
It occurs to me that you can’t be “Pro-Freedom” and “Anti-Gay-Marriage” any more than you can be “Pro-Freedom” and “Anti-Choice” (Or pro-life if you prefer)
Freedom of choice isn’t just enshrined in our constitution, it’s god-given.
And who the hell is Rick Santorum to take away what god has given?
Getting to know you…
I do web-hosting. A little like those ‘take-your-credit-cards-and-hope-we-never-hear-from-you-again.” hosting companies, but I do it…better.
I know most of my customers from Twitter. And 100% of my business is referral / word-of-mouth.
Am I going to get rich working like this? No. I’m hoping for break-even.
I do this because it’s fun stuff for me. This is the kind of stuff I enjoy doing when I’m bored. (Don’t judge.)
But some of my customers I get to know better than others. Namely the ones I move from Google’s blogger platform.
Blogger seems to have been designed to make it almost impossible to migrate out of cleanly. Business model? Only google knows, and I doubt it’s searchable.
The importer script that grabs posts and comments usually works flawlessly – however in some instances it doesn’t.
And the one thing it doesn’t seem to even attempt to do is to grab images/attachments and translate them to the new site.
So I’ll try caching a few using the WP Image Cache, and that kind of works… And some of them I have to do the old fashioned way.
Copy and Paste…
In the process I get to know a few of you fairly well. 
(Going back through three years of blog posts will tend to have that effect.)
So Hi. I’m Jesse. I’m your blog-host, and you have really adorable kids.
Wow – a month – Boring Personal Life Update
A month goes by without an update….It’s sad, but I’ve been busy and kinda forgotten this place is here.
New updates…let’s see.
- Had the site down for what was supposed to be an hour on Friday night, turned into almost 4. It was one of those nights that from the moment my plane touched down nothing went right. AVIS screwed up my reservation, another customer was getting DDoS attacked and that prevented the switches from accepting the new hardware. I spent 3 hours troubleshooting something I could have ignored and it would have gone away on it’s own.
- Related: I got home (effectively) at 4:30am on Saturday morning. At 6:30am my wife woke me up because we were “Running” in a “Fun-Run” to support the elementary school. Those of you who know me know that A> I’m well over 300# right now, and B> I don’t run even if a zombie with a machette is chasing me. So a 1 mile “walk” right? Nothing like coming in DEAD LAST and finding that the next race was waiting on you to finish. If the idiot who took my picture puts it in the paper I’m going to sue them for managing to make me look worse than I felt. I was dead tired, sore, etc
- We celebrated our “run” with a trip to IHOP. I like IHOP – I never feel fat there. There is always at least one person there who outweighs me 2:1.
- The builders are here to finish the fireplace I started. You know you’re admitting defeat when you are willing to pay someone $1,300 to finish a job you should be able to do but just plain don’t feel like spending the time on it.
- #1 son is driving…Got his learners permit on my last journey back home and so now he wants to drive anywhere we’re going. Yesterday he took us out on the main drag through town. Needless to say, we survived it. I think he’s more likely to kill us in a parking lot than actually driving. I’m not dead yet, so he seems to be doing ok.
- #2 started Karate lessons this week. From a short, squat Japanese man. It took a LONG time to find someone who met my wife’s standards, but I think this guy is going to do well. We’re both very concerned at the numer of “idiot-white-guy” studios that crop up taught by some idiot who read a book on the subject. We wanted our son to learn from someone who learned from his dad growing up, and that’s exactly what we found.
- #3 is having toileting problems. He frakking almost 7 for christ’s sake. We also had an issue with him refusing to eat his dinner because we’d moved his chair (because #1′s girlfriend was having dinner with us) and he absolutely refused to eat until we put the chair back in it’s “rightful spot” (his words.) (mental note: #2 is our autistic one, not #3)
I’m now 8 weeks from pending unemployment. This isn’t a cause for alarm yet.. lead-time on new engagements is about 6 weeks usually, but they like it better when it’s <4 weeks out.. But now is the time i start advertising my availability.
The gig that the clock is currently running out on has been both one of the best and worst of my existence. I’ve learned a LOT of the new technologies but I’ve also had to work in a completely dysfunctional environment for 10 months now, with people who had a consultant thrust upon them by management. They don’t want me here, and spend every day letting me know, both subtly and not-so-subtly, that they don’t want me here.
All I know is in 8 weeks I *MIGHT* get to come home, or I *MIGHT* end up stuck in yet another state for another year…At which point I might have to ask that, as a part of the contract my family gets to come out with me for the summers and vacations at their expense.
I guess I can’t complain. I’m working when there are STILL a lot of people out of work. This is the second recession I’ve worked through because my field is so specialized. I’m one of the lucky ones.
I just wish being employed didn’t mean going through this scare every year.
My Pictures
