next step, retention

i learned something again today: when in doubt, just keep your mouth shut. i've lost track of how many times that would have been a good idea, but i'm hoping that one of these times--preferably this one--the lesson will stick.

the good, the bad, and the ugly

the good
senator cantwell (D)
rep. hastings (R)
rep. inslee (D)
rep. mcdermott (D)
rep. mcmorris (R)
rep. reichert (R)

the bad
senator murray (D)
rep. baird (D)
rep. larsen (D)
rep. smith (D)
rep. dicks (D)

the ugly
h.r. 1424, on which i'll have more to say later

boo

looks like the senate overwhelmingly passed a new version of the bailout package. they also managed to tack even more spending onto it--apparently to make it palatable to the majority of senators--in the form of what appears to be a rather odd set of earmarks, including funds for (or tax cuts for... it's hard to tell) virgin island and peurto rican rum, race tracks, and wool research. wtf do those have to do with credit problems, mate?

it sounds like the house will be voting on this (and probably tacking more crap onto it) on friday... hopefully they've got the good sense to shoot it down again.

ouch

so, i made it to my first cougar football game this weekend. and man, did i ever pick a bad weekend for it. oregon walked all over them, and the clock finally put an end to our misery with the score 63-14. i'm hoping to make it down for a basketball game as well... hopefully they stay pretty good

son of the year

the award goes jim richardson, who managed to track down and buy the m1 garand that his father had used in korea, and presented it to him for his 79th birthday.

h/t wp

bats!

found this little bugger hanging off the side of the bank today, and got right up in his grill for some pictures. hopefully he'll (or she... hard to tell with bats) still be there tomorrow, and i'll get some more.

you know what's really awesome?

spending a good chunk of your day cleaning up messes that you didn't create, so that you can keep the auditors happy, so they can keep upper management happy. on the downside, once you get all that fixed, nobody notices that half of your workforce is not so much helping things as actively making them more difficult, even if unintentionally.

random thought

obama '08: hope. change. hopechange. and with that, a side of vice presidential candidate who's been in the senate for over half his life... since nixon was president, mccain was still a "guest" at the hanoi hilton, and obama was 12 years old.

obama '08: hope? maybe. change? not so much.

there's gotta be a better word for that

it's probably unnecessary, but i get pissed when people (usually PETA, but a few others as well) talk about the humane (or inhumane) treatment of animals. they seem to be missing the key part of that word: human. the royal humane society, for example, was originally founded to rescue/resuscitate drowning people, and they still give awards for doing so; i saw no mention of the treatment of animals on their site.

animals shouldn't be treated humanely, because they're not human. that's not to say they shouldn't be treated well; just that we need to come up with a better term for doing so. "animalane" just doesn't sound right, so i'm open to suggestion.

dale soden is the man

i enjoyed most of his classes (even dale couldn't do anything with "ideas about history"), and just got to play pool with him a few months ago.

man, i am freaking lazy

that's the only excuse i can come up with for such light posting. in my defense... no, i really have no defense. i've pretty much been reading, playing WoW and another game i just discovered, and hanging out with the only friend i've got in the area before she heads back to pullman. and work, of course, but i think that's part of what leads to the laziness. unless it's a friday and i stay up fairly late, i spend more of my waking hours at or traveling to/from work than i do at home.

i am hoping to pick up writing again at some point. not just the blog, but actual writing as well. i recently finished reading a book that was written by a girl i went to school with. while not the best writing i've ever seen (though mine is far from perfect), it was a good story, and i'm looking forward to the sequel. she went through authorhouse to publish it, which is something i'll definitely look into. i've started and dropped more stories than i can count... usually i just don't have the motivation to keep going on them, or once i actually started writing they didn't come out quite like i expected. i do have a pretty decent outline for one that i liked floating around somewhere, which i'm going to try digging up again one of these days.

other than that, not a whole heck of a lot going on. i'm hoping to build a new computer sometime this fall or winter. my current machine (just hit 3 years with it) does everything i need it to and then some, but it doesn't do everything i want it to anymore. but then, this is something i was thinking about last summer as well, and nothing came of that, so maybe i'll just hold onto my money a bit longer. i'm setting some aside every month so that hopefully in the next year or two i'll be able to make a lump payment and no longer owe the government anything on my student loans. which really just means i get to start paying my parents more for the ones they took out, but it will still feel good.

on which note, i need to go to sleep, so i can wake up and go to work, so i can come home and not do anything productive tomorrow, but possibly avoid writing run-on sentences, even though this one was semi-intentional, just to piss off all those english majors out there.

bride to be?

iliza shlesinger, will you marry me? it would be great!
*you're incredibly attractive, i'm not bad looking; we'll call that one a wash
*you're a standup comic, i'm a sitcomedian; we'd complete each other! except not in those words, because that sounds cheesy
*we're both winners: you won last comic standing, i won an election

that's all i've got for now, unfortunately, but it's a start

candidate nicknames

i'm sure there are some out there that are more clever, but to me, the election this november looks to be a contest between BO and Old Spice.

i wish i were good enough to come up with this

the story of the obamessiah.

good news!

from the cuba front: the government is planning to allow more private ownership of land. it seems like it's mostly a practical measure, designed to cut down on the amount of food that cuba needs to import. but whatever the reason, it's a huge step forward for freedom on the island, especially if coupled with this:

"He [Raul Castro] has also announced that workers can earn productivity bonuses, doing away with the egalitarian concept that everyone must earn the same...."

so wait... if i work more, i can get paid more? sign me up! if these reforms go through, it will definitely be time to start easing our trade and travel restrictions on cuba.

context is overrated

we actually ran into this one while designing the whitworth college republicans t-shirts, but didn't end up using it:

"A wise man's heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man's heart directs him toward the left" (Ecclesiastes 10:2, NASB)

i had been looking for that one for awhile, but couldn't remember exactly where it was. and then the other night, i randomly opened my bible up right to it. that's gotta be a sign of some sort...

hero of the day

in an unusual form.

good question

yeah, i'm with rachel on this one... how exactly does this change anything? shouldn't this be considered more evidence in favor of what christians believe, rather than "rewriting the bible"?

yarrrgh...

so, last night i stayed up waiting for my little brothers to get back from young life camp at malibu. they were supposed to be home around midnight, at which point i was supposed to pick them up at one of the local churches. at 03:15, somebody else dropped them off right at our house. which means i could have been in bed for three hours at that point. good times.

i'm alive!

believe it or not, i survived my trip. at some point i hope to have up a more thorough account of it, along with pictures; but for now, here are the highlights:

sunday
arlington national cemetery
the white house (just the outside)
washington nationals baseball game (vs texas, lost 5-3)
smithsonian national museum of natural history

monday
supreme court (handed down three decisions [1, 2, 3])
library of congress
tour of the capitol building (including about 5 minutes of a house session)
navy memorial
washington monument

tuesday
jefferson memorial
wwII memorial
vietnam memorial
lincoln memorial
fdr memorial
korean war memorial
us department of the treasury - bureau of printing & engraving (the buck starts here!)
national archives (constitution, bill of rights, declaration of independence, among other things)

wednesday
gettysburg
harpers ferry

thursday
national zoo
smithsonian national air and space museum
marine corps memorial

friday
15 hours of travel
my birthday!

saturday
ft. drum centennial air show

sunday
walking tour of sackets harbor battlefield

monday
i'm home!
sleep