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November 29th, 2009
11:52 pm - I got rest
I got more posts done on this project.
I watched Sunday Night Football. Dennis Dixon could be a good QB but he's got to get the hang of full-speed football again after practice squadding all this rookie season. He's not going to get the chance with Pittsburgh, though, and using him in a wildcat package for a few plays a game a la Michael Vick isn't enough of a use for him. Really, more teams need to take the wildcat to the next level and run some sort of Flexbone or Triple Shoot style offense where you can interchangeably run an option package or a spread pass play, a standard pro set style run or any variation of trick plays.
If anything, I think this is a route the 49ers can take on offense in 2010. Get a couple of option-experienced QBs (like, I dunno, Michael Vick and Seneca Wallace... or even just use the in-house option of Alex Smith since his coach Urban Meyer ran a spread option when he attended Utah) and interchange them, or even line both of up wildcat-style out of the shotgun and just go to town with all sorts of different plays. You can roll them out and leave the D guessing if they'll tuck it and go, pitch it to Frank Gore or throw on the run. There's no need to bother with a pocket blocking scheme ever: Have your guards pull block all day and focus on exploiting defense gaps and getting into open space. Hell, even the hopeless Browns could probably move the ball better with receiver Josh Cribbs running an option under center than with one of their loser QBs.
Okay, enough of that. Back to work tomorrow. Vegas in two weeks!
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01:51 pm - Live from ¡EL DIABLO! but not for long
I'm fortunate to have found my old Limit Hold'Em trial charts. I was worried for a bit that I'd have to redo those all over again, which would have taken weeks of dedicated research aside from all the other stuff I do.
I slept until 10 am after getting to bed around 1. Well, actually I woke up starving around 7:45 and ate, but went right back to sleep. I called my mother after waking up, showering and heading up here for tea and Cuban espresso. I'm heading into town in about two weeks!
Soreness remains, and it'll probably be a couple days before it subsides. Football was such a good workout that I'm looking into ways to involve a similar workout on a regular basis. Sure, I get benefits from my strength training, but I've neglected the cardio side and clearly my core muscles could use more of an athletic workout if three hours of exercise left those and my abdominal/leg muscles sore afterward. Football itself is out, as you need people to get a game going and the physical contact and injury risks makes it a risk anyway. Carruth used to screw around with a soccer ball before football games back in the day, which even granted that he liked playing soccer isn't a bad idea in general. Getting a ball and learning a few individual drills would combine cardio and agility exercises with hand (or in this case foot)-eye coordination for an excellent 40-50 minute workout during off-strength days. I could also get a basketball, but outdoor basketball isn't as rewarding given wind screws with shots, and inclement weather pretty much derails any session: There are indoor and covered courts but then I'm going out of my way to get in a workout, and is that really worth it? I'm ambivalent.
Anyway, I'm going to try and be somewhat productive today, and resume getting rest. More later.
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November 28th, 2009
11:52 pm - Checking in
Post-football soreness report: My quads are stiff, quite sore and need every moment of rest/recovery it can get before I go to work on Monday. Soreness also in my obliques and abs. Some soreness also in my hamstrings, not so much in my upper body. I wondered how my shoulder would feel after taking that block but it actually feels fine, so there you go.
I spent tonight watching Notre Dame and Stanford. Stanford's defense was just too porous for an average-to-decent Notre Dame attack and the Irish looked like they had it in them to get a two-score lead and take Stanford out of this game... but just as it looked like their momentum was gone, Stanford uncorks an epic TD drive followed by another epic TD drive and that was that. You can see how Jim Harbaugh's been able to squeeze 8 wins out of this team: They have a tailback named Toby Gerhart who is like the white Jim Brown. He's not fast and you can get a few guys on him quickly, and you'd better because one or two guys are going to either bounce off him or drag from his body as he carries them an additional five yards.
After football yesterday we talked about sports (of course) and we got on the subject of how there are no white tailbacks in the NFL. They're literally all black, and the only white runningbacks you see are either fullbacks, H-backs in one of those weirdo offenses or backup tailbacks. White athletes on average just don't have the speed and strength combo that black athletes do (and that's not a generalization: Chris Rock explains why we see more successful black athletes, starting around 1:10 in this NSFW video). If we're going to see a white tailback, it'll be a power back like Toby Gerhart.
Oh yeah, and he's pushing for the Heisman too, but East Coast bias will assure that overrated lefty twat Tim Tebow wins (before he gets drafted and subsequently destroys his career with the Raiders once he's exposed as the white Michael Vick). I guess he can settle for becoming the umpteenth sleeper the Patriots draft and turn into a productive "unsung" hero (that makes like four Pro Bowls) that Peter King textually fellates in every single MMQB column for the next 10 years.
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12:13 pm - If you're interested, I'm knee deep in a huge stat project
Described here. It's long and involves a lot of stat wank so consider yourself warned. Start at the bottom and work your way up if interested, and this will receive updates during today so check back.
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November 27th, 2009
11:52 pm - On today
I met up with some old friends from LL and played some flag football in the CD. Not having played in over a year and not having done a lot of cardio lately besides any rigorous walking against the clock up and down the hills in the morning, I had doubts about my ability to keep up without running out of breath. But turns out I did have the stamina to play a full couple of games over 2-3 hours. We encountered four stragglers, one of which was a 7-8 year old black kid who turns out can take contact and run really well, though go figure given he was playing 2 on 2 football with what appeared to be his brothers before we asked them to join in. I have a feeling he's going to be a beast in HS football :P
There was a lot of bumping and running, and I even took a stiff block in the right shoulder, but I held up fine even after I thought I had strained my knee at one point. I quickly considered taking myself out of the game but discovered that I could run fine on it without pain and was able to keep playing. Other than being as sore as someone who plays 3 hours of football is, I don't feel any injury pain so I'm good to go. I do need to get my chops back with catching passes and running routes, plus I need to do a better job of actually making 'tackles' as I was blown by on far too many plays even when I got in front of someone, which fortunately I did a fairly good job of doing consistently. Eventually I just decided to play 'obstacle' defense and try to lead opposing ballcarriers as an obstacle into teammates who could tackle him.
We had a meal at Elysian (which I had game planned in advance for so financially I am where I am) and I forgot how big those burgers were. I could barely bite into it.
Afterward I caught a bus into Downtown, and we had to jump off near 6th and Stewart because apparently they close off Pine on Black Friday due to hordes and hordes of people. I hopped the next bus up QA hill, which happened to be the 13, and I decided to stop into El Diablo and do some more research on a project I undertook in the last couple days. I may look to do a writeup this weekend.
Off to bed. I will probably sleep well tonight.
Also:
In case you're skeptical of the skepticism, fakeness is confirmed
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November 26th, 2009
11:46 pm - You asked for it! Well... someone did ;P The Annual Thanksgiving List
I am thankful that people who seriously argue that building roads will lead to the death of polar bears actually get elected to public office.
I am thankful for the usage of racial bias among hiring managers, rather than the simple racism their predecessors used.
I am thankful for reality TV and the multiple distractions it creates from the fact that we at large are not too far removed from the neuroticism that produces those high-ratings meltdowns.
I am thankful for the negative karma that has turned the supposed quality organization of the Seattle Seahawks into a crappy football team that nobody other than fans of the opposing team likes to watch. I am also thankful for any coach that seriously still thinks Seneca Wallace is a pocket passer, that still thinks the Seahawks defense is good, and that Matt Hassel(broken)back doesn't need a good backup QB.
I am thankful that Carlos Silva made more in the time it took him to take a shit in the Mariners clubhouse than I ever have in a calendar year.
I am thankful that despite my willingness to accept a reality where money is not an issue, my bills and bank account remind me on a regular basis that such a reality is just not possible.
I am thankful for Grant Cogswell because- hahaha hell no, not even in jest.
I am obviously thankful for bad jokes on account of good lord don't you see how often I tell them.
I am thankful for poverty and the many lessons it has taught me about my spending habits, living habits and not having an actual job that pays a living wage habits.
I am thankful I cut way down on my drinking, to better accept the great Cleveland Steamer of cynicism.
I am thankful for grudges and the people in my life who choose to hold them.
I am thankful for the people who don't remember the previous years I did these who are going to read this and flip the sanctimonious fuck out about how ungrateful I am for all the good things in my life and such, like poverty, backstabbers, white people with racial bias, rising costs, $2.75 bus fares and roachy solicitors in the U District, such as, the Iraq.
Oh, did I mention those misguided cochroaches? Yeah, I'm thankful for your Greenpeace and Save the Whatever kids too, and your insistence that if I really give a shit about the Akifran kids that I should give you my credit card number right there on the sidewalk, because, you know, identity and CC theft is totally not a problem in today's society.
I'm thankful for your next price hike, [INSERT NAME OF LOCAL RESTAURANT HERE].
I'm thankful for your next fare hike, Metro. I mean, the one after the next one you're going to do after the one that's coming up in a month. You know, the one you're going to insist we need in order for you to keep running.
I'm thankful for a state government that's going to stump for an income tax while claiming they will cut property and sales taxes once they get it, and then back off on cutting those taxes once they get their income tax, claiming 'ERRRRR we're in a budget crisis so we need that money sorry'.
Speaking of which, I'm also thankful for continued reckless government spending, with little more than token attention paid to exactly how effectively each dollar is being used. I'm thankful for $160,000 a year public officials swearing they have no other way to cut costs while laying off $35,000 a year employees and expensing another four lunches at the Met with some lawyer friends.
I am thankful for the general public's continued ignorance at really how easy it is to get in some sort of shape and lose weight.
I am thankful for Must See TV and the irony that, clearly, I Must Not.
I am thankful for consumerism, Black Friday and the public's inability to realize that you don't actually need to participate.
I am thankful for not and never wanting anything for Xmas, and that no one in my family ever believes me, making any gift a true gift since I expect nothing.
Happy Thanksgiving
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02:03 pm - Today is a great day!
Yes, I'm exaggerating!
I have actually had a mellow and enjoyable day off today. I woke up around 9 am, showered, cooked a full tilapia and Calrose rice breakfast with a side of soy nuggets, watched a bit of the Packers-Lions game, walked up the hill and had a bit of coffee and Cuban toast slowly over the last few hours as I pound out more articles (to be posted later), along with a piece or two that I have quietly posted.
Last night at Metropolitan Market I browsed the big-meal options but ultimately decided after much ado to get nothing more than distilled water, a frozen Wolfgang Puck Tuscan pizza and an organic energy drink that I'm saving for later today. I baked and crushed the pizza when I got home: Good stuff, and if you don't abhor meat and can get such a pizza on discount I'd say give it a shot. I stayed up too late while watching bunches of YouTube videos, trying and failing to play NBA Showtime on N64 and reading up on sports. Exciting life I lead and all.
Tonight I'm looking to charge up and maybe get some more writing done. Maybe not. Tomorrow is flag football. Let's see how much (or how little) running it takes to gas me.
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November 25th, 2009
06:36 pm - Live from ¡EL DIABLO! but not for long
The long weekend is upon us! Well, upon me and several others. Your mileage may vary.
I may pick up a bit of brisket with a side dish or something and give myself something to nurse over the next couple days. Honestly, though, I'm looking forward to staying close to base, getting plenty of sleep and getting a lot of writing done. I'm happy that a few coffee places will be open tomorrow during the day, as there's several writing projects I want to hit hard after my brain defragments from an actual full night's sleep.
Imagine my somewhat unpleasant surprise when I woke up this morning and heard the voice of Colin Cowherd from my alarm radio. No, not necessarily because he's bad at his job or anything... but given the time I should wake up, I should not hear Colin Cowherd's voice on ESPN radio, and you can see where this is going.
I look up and it's 7:00 am. By this time, ideally, I should be in the shower and finishing up before packing up and taking a quick exit. Instead, I'm laying in my bed in the dark, having slept through the typically annoying chatter of ESPN radio for 30 minutes, and I have less than 10 minutes to get out the door if I'm going to catch my commuter bus.
Realizing there was no way my 30-45% groggy ass was going to fumble up some clothes, shower, pack up and go in 8-10 minutes, I went with the morning routine's equivalent of an emergency exit: I got up, used the bathroom, brushed my teeth, threw on a dress shirt (I do sleep in my clothes) and packed up my stuff immediately. A brief check revealed that I actually didn't smell discernibly bad, though I sprayed on some of my cheap vanilla cologne and slapped on some deodorant just in case. I hurried out about 4-5 minutes late, too late to feasibly catch my commuter bus, forcing me to head down the Galer hillclimb to catch my Plan B commute via the 16 and 44.
Thanks to some quick driving by the 16 and a timely catch of a passing 44, I waltzed into worked 12 minutes early. That's not how running late is supposed to go but I'll take it.
After work, I headed home, showered and came up the hill to do more writing over coffee. I spent most of today rewriting old material, and I don't mean edits or patchwork updates... these were full out rewrites from scratch. As a result, I didn't compose any new articles, and hopefully a full night's sleep will recharge the batteries enough to take a shot at that tomorrow and throughout the long weekend.
I will have a welcome interruption on Friday: A couple friends have talked me into rejoining some friendlier members of the Lookout Landing crew for some flag football in the CD. This will be the first time I've hung out with a sizable portion of the LL crew since getting run. Most of the crew are friends of mine, and pretty much all the LL faces are either cool people or old friends from the site I haven't seen much of since getting run. I'm looking forward to hanging out and playing some football with everybody. Without getting into that whole issue again, I'll say that I don't have any problems personally with anyone, and that it's more an issue of key people having a (somewhat inexplicable) problem with me. But to be honest few if any of the above are among that small but influential minority.
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05:53 pm - Week 11 NFL Photos
"Hey Derrick, how you catch a football?"
"Catch it like this, Bullitt [catch hands]"
"You mean like this [catches pass]"
"Yes like tha- HEY GIVE THAT BACK"
( Attempts at hilarity before the jump )
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November 24th, 2009
11:22 pm - Long weekend approacheth
Usually work is pretty quiet, but along with some monitor work for an overseas job, I got a set of resumes for an in-house position dropped on me, with more on the way, plus the boss wants extra details on these resumes over the usual, so suddenly it got busy at work. I'm not one to complain about an actual workload at a job that for stretches has lacked in one, so huzzah.
This time I hopped the 30 to the hill climb and went straight home. Well, first I got a breakfast sandwich from Tully's after work, because I was HUNGRY thanks in some part to forgetting an orange. Still, I took in 1000 calories this morning, drank about 30 oz of water, and it wasn't quite enough. I think I need about 1200 minimum to get through the morning without serious hunger pangs. I pounded 20 oz of soy milk when I get to work, a cup of shredded oats, a quarter cup of sunflower seeds and nursed a couple cups of black tea. Around 10-ish, I crushed a banana and an apple with a 2-pack of granola bars. How much of a difference would the orange have made? Calorie quantity says not much, but the constitution of an orange is fairly bulky. I would think it would have helped to remember it.
So even after the sandwich, I got home, took a bit of a nap, then cooked and ate some multigrain hot cereal, which even though it's only 260 calories can fill you up and sate you for a while. I grabbed my bag and walked up to the main drag again. I'm starting to get into the habit of getting some writing done over a cup of coffee. I pounded out a bunch of articles today and am starting to get my chops back to where I feel I've got several more in the tank, instead of having to fish for the will and material to pound out just a piece, let alone a few.
Having gotten into the habit of writing during the free afternoon, I've also gotten into the habit of walking home and doing not all that much over a couple meals. I figure a couple solid hours of writing over coffee is enough for now and we can work our way up from there... maybe during the long weekend!
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November 23rd, 2009
11:24 pm - On today
After work I felt like some exercise a lot more than I felt like waiting for two buses before a rigorous hill climb, so I walked down 11th to the trail and just kept walking, all the way to Fremont. It took about 50 minutes. I got a slice of pizza from PCC because why not, it's not going to make or break me, because I forgot granola bars and an apple for work, was hungry, didn't feel like attempting the Galer hillclimb on an empty stomach and hadn't had pizza in forever. Mmm. After that, go figure, I luck into a 26 sitting at the corner, hop on and ride to the hill climb, where the fatty meal made climbing the endless stairs just a bit easier.
I took a nap, watched some City Council proceedings on Seattle Channel while eating hot multi-grain cereal, walked up the hill, had a cup of coffee and pounded out some more pieces that I'll post tomorrow. I caught up on things, then took a walk back home where I did the following workout:
Modified Pushups, 2 sets 12 reps
Reverse Plank, 2 sets 30 seconds each
Plank, 2 sets 30 seconds each
Crunches, 2 sets 12 reps
Standing side bend with towel, 2 sets 12 reps
Back extension, 2 sets 12 reps
Bridges, 2 sets 12 reps
Tricep curls with a bag full of books, 2 sets 12 reps
Bicep curls with a bag full of books, 2 sets 12 reps each arm followed by 12 reps with both arms
Then I had a tilapia fillet with Calrose rice and that's honestly about it. I think the only troubleshooting tomorrow requires is to remember the apple and the granola bars with everything else.
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09:16 pm - Gomez's Ultimate Black Friday Shopping Guide
Stay home. Eat a nice meal or two. Watch some football.
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November 22nd, 2009
09:52 pm
I stayed in tonight but I stay in every Sunday night :P The difference tonight was that I fired up the tee-vee and watched Sunday Night Football's Bears and Eagles game.
I'm spare you excessive sports analysis since I have a place for that but it seems to me that Jay Cutler was psyched way out for this game after that 5 interception disaster last week and it affected his play. Physically, he's fine, but like the USC defense when Oregon ran them over, Cutler froze up a bit in this game and it screwed with his accuracy and composure. He was moping and cussing at himself a lot in the 2nd half, and he screwed up what would have been two or three easy TD bombs. Philly QB Donovan McNabb had a long conversation with him at midfield after the game and I bet it had a lot to do with suggestions for improving his mindset. To credit McNabb, Donovan's probably one of the most measure and composed veteran QBs there is.
Today I didn't feel like eating much and only took in about 2300 calories. I did a lot of walking for a nothing day, wandering the west side of QA hill during the afternoon, and taking a walk to Trader Joe's and back once I realized I needed apples and some protein bars.
Short week this week, and I'm looking to keep it healthy into the long weekend. I may start hitting my agency contacts this week about trying to lock up January work. I've rarely seen traction with such advance notice, but at this point I figure it can't hurt to get and stay on their radar. Maybe something productive comes up that can start on 1-4-10. Can't hurt.
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November 21st, 2009
12:40 pm - Live from ¡EL DIABLO! but not for long
Got a full eight hours sleep last night. Walked up here after a sort-of breakfast of granola bars and granola cereal, then had an incredible product for $3: The egg/cheese/mushroom empanada. It looks like a pierogie about 5" by 3", filled with whitish cheese, mushrooms and a hint of egg. It's not too big but tastes SOOOOOO GOOD. I won't advocate making a habit of blowing $3 a pop for them, but there's no reason not to try it at least once.
Once again, I started writing an article for Helium, and as I expounded I realized that no amount of editing was going to pare it down to a Helium-like 400-500 words without losing substance. 828 words later, I posted a piece on a topic that became near and dear to my heart during the last couple winters: Walking in snow and ice. It's a topic with popularity potential since many locales get icy and many residents in said locales will struggle with the icy conditions.
Off to walk through the cold and potentially drizzly conditions. More in a bit.
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November 20th, 2009
04:40 pm - Diversifying my (article writing) portfolio
I not only write for Helium but HubPages, and have accounts with a few other article outlets as well. When I last obsessiwrote, I pretty much posted everything to Helium.
But I realize Helium has its limits:
- Lack of ability to format your piece. No images or HTML (beyond hyperlinks) allowed.
- Once articles get beyond 400-600 words in length, reading them on Helium becomes tedious as the site arbitrarily page-breaks the piece, and most Helium readers don't want to read long pieces due to the site's format.
- You get limited control over your ability to edit the piece (you receive a limited number of 'leapfrog' editing opportunities, and edits must be approved by readers via rating), and you have no real control over removing the piece from the site (unless you petition site stewards, a process that is frowned upon).
- You end up in direct competition with other similar pieces, which can bite into your article's exposure if your piece isn't top rated... not so much in your ability to promote, but in the loss of readership once casual readers discover other articles on the subject are 'rated higher' and the tendency to gravitate to such items.
My longer pieces tend to rate poorly on Helium, and most of the pieces for which I earn residual income or high ratings tend to be the succinct 400-600 word pieces.
Thus on pieces originally inspired by Helium topics... for longer pieces, or pieces that I feel I want long term creative control over, I'll post instead to HubPages. I do this for the good of the site, as I post my shorter and more topical pieces there, as well as pieces I'm willing to intellectually 'give away'... while I can post pieces not as well suited to the site elsewhere. This is more win win than the previous method of just posting everything there.
Diversifying my portfolio (in this case literally) is always a good idea. And it's not like I'm hurting my presence at Helium: I have over 120 articles of mostly high quality permanently posted there, and that number will grow either way.
I only bring this up in light of an article I originally began writing for Helium but as it grew past 1000 words and into several sections I realized it wasn't going to work there. EDIT: The piece, on living with a low income, is now live here. It's definitely a v1.0 piece and will receive updates as I see opportunities to improve it.
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11:46 am
re: Finance situation...
... on the plus side, I did something that nowadays makes me cringe whenever I go to do it: checked my online banking budget. It only makes me cringe because I have to look at the actual number of my mounting debt.
I am apparently under budget on both my grocery and restaurant budgets. Even with the one or two splurges over the past week or two, I'm 25% under budget on a thinnish restaurant budget that I typically blew past back when I had a full income. And despite doing nothing but grocery shopping I'm 23% under my $220 monthly grocery budget. As always, this is no invitation to go on a bender, but I worried that as always I was pushing my reduced limits and it appears that with just under 10 days to go in the month I am not.
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09:52 am - Tolling and "Disincentives to Driving"
One of the plans for the tunnel slated to replace the SR 99 Downtown Viaduct in Seattle is the usage of tolling. This is nothing new in Seattle: Tolls were used to finance the original SR 520 floating bridge once it went live (remnants of the tolling plazas are still visible on either end of the bridge).
Yesterday, ECB made the argument that one of tolling's benefits is that it provides a disincentive to driving. I countered that disincentives to driving get people to stop driving the way torture gets a terrorist to talk (Hat tip to Feit for taking notice, even in disagreement).
Now before you disingenuously take that statement literally and attack me for directly comparing tolls to torture (when clearly that's not what I'm doing)... observe my paralleling of the logic: Both methods involve involuntary coercion in the name of voluntary compliance. A criminal that is tortured into confessing crimes technically gave his confession voluntarily. How he was compelled to give his 'voluntary' confession is omitted from the technical definition of 'voluntary confession'.
Likewise, let's say we took PWC's advice and just did away with the viaduct entirely. Someone driving in from Northgate sits in the resulting traffic snarl along I-5, 1st or 6th Avenue to try and get to work on the South End... before capitulating and taking two buses to work... technically gave up his car for transit 'voluntarily'... even though he did so because the chain reaction of the roadway's loss coerced him. Taking the long bus commute was more (relatively) attractive than sitting in traffic with all the other displaced viaduct users and the existing users of the other roadways.
Now, does this not happen if the tunnel is tolled? I would think to some extent, though not a great one. Any study from any side will conclude that several thousand motorists (more like something tens of thousands) will brave possible logjams on alternative routes rather than pay $5+ a day for the ability to use the roadway. Many will just cave and use it, especially commercial vehicles like cargo trucks and others who can just expense it. The additional lo$$ to pay the toll is offset by the gas that's not wasted sitting in traffic or going out of their way along alternative routes, as well as the time not lost from the additional commute.
But the toll argument and the argument of disincentives as benefits are separate (albeit related) arguments. Feit thinks I oppose tolling, but honestly I see the benefit of doing so both on the SR 99 tunnel and the forthcoming replacement SR 520 bridge... despite the conundrum that Turner pointed out to me a long while back:
People support tolling for two reasons: To fund projects and promote alternatives to driving. However, if more and more people do seek out alternatives, whether transit or using other roads, then fewer and fewer people are using the toll roads, which means the state collects less and less money, which means they have a harder and harder time paying for the project.
Granted, this was from a previous discussion about proposals to use tolls to pay for transit projects. And that tolling conundrum can make an argument against the tunnel: If the WSDOT expects X money from tolling, it's likely that if the toll discourages enough motorists, they won't make the money they need from the toll end to pay off the project, which can lead to cost overruns when bonds don't get paid off.
But back to the original idea of this post: The 'Disincentive' argument. The foul abscess of morality that we refer to as "Grant Cogswell's heart" championed 'disincentives to driving' as one of the cruxes of the original PWC construct of what eventually became the Surface-Transit option (removing the viaduct and not replacing the superarterial at all) once Cary Moon cleaned it up to emphasize the infrastructure improvements.
Incentives are positive and motivate people positively, which promotes paradigm and lifestyle changes. Transit expansion, streamlined street/bike/pedestrian grids, timed traffic signals... these encourage alternatives to driving in a positive way.
Disincentives are negative and while they motivate people, they do so negatively in a way that only fosters sociocultural resentment for the paradigm you're trying to shift people to. Removing highways, removing parking, choking up alternate routes, and making motorist commutes miserable in an attempt to coerce people onto the bus... these may get a few extra people on the bus, but either way it generates a lot of anger, and could even galvanize the efforts of political rivals who are anti-transit, as people see who caused their misery and begin siding with their opponents once the inevitable political rabble-rousing begins. These sort of things can get politicians driven out of office if not handled perfectly. And if we know one thing about Seattlites, it's that intellectually and production-wise, that are very, very far from perfect.
You can get a terrorist to spill the beans on his bosses with a little water-boarding and sleep deprivation. But he is going to grow to hate you even more, and any hope you had of reforming him is gone.
You can get a motorist to take the bus by eliminating his route to work, forcing him and 110,000 others to cram onto other side streets and I-5, and probably squeeze him into finally taking the 41 and 150 to work instead. But when you tell him, "See? transit is great!" he will probably only going to grow to hate you, hate transit and hate your urbanist movement, and when an anti-transit Republican runs for the Mayor's office in 2013 stumping, "See what these liberals did to ruin your lives, runing your commute, turning our city into gridlock, and then raising your bus fares once you were forced to take the bus?"... guess who he and 100,000 other Seattlites are going to vote for?
Disincentives fail and the disincentive argument should, for the sake of your agendas and the future of this city, be ignored. Focus on incentives. Focus on positives. People gravitate to positive movements. Negative movements only generate negative energy.
Can't wait to comment, huh? Sorry, since most of those interested in commenting here have already decided what they think before they read it, and therefore read this piece with prejudice, I'm not really interested in your input since you haven't objectively considered the matter. E-mail or message me if you feel I really need to hear a biased take.
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08:34 am
I definitely will draw from savings this month. The paycheck I received this period was even smaller than the smaller-size paycheck I expected. In all, I'm roughly $220 short. And I get to repeat this next month, since I roughly work the same number of hours, so that's fun. And that's if no surprises occur and money doesn't disappear from my account between now and 12-1-09 that I'm not expecting to.
Basically, I need to hit the ground running on 1-4-10. Since I won't work December and I'm probably not eligible for unemployment (since I'm taking a trip that precludes my landing another job; an agency will receive their insurance statement with my name on it and make an offer they know I will decline to get off the hook)... I will only have three paychecks with which to pay all of January's expenses, including rent. I'm on borrowed time from the moment I get off the plane in Seattle 12-31-09, because I'll have minimum credit payments (on debt that is BTW mounting) that will total around $200-300 due AND a $160 student loan payment coming up on 1-21-10.
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November 19th, 2009
09:17 pm - Mindmap, mapping relationships and cross application
As some of you know, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mcfnord worked* on a project called the LJ Mindmap where for a given LJ user he analytically mapped relationships between LJ friends, through the connections they forged with other friends of the LJer in question, as well as various other factors that served in turn to illustrate more about the person being analyzed once he graphically illustrated these relationships on each particular map.
* - Last I checked it was still an active project but the website was down
Now, who knows where John was ultimately trying to go with this project in particular (because who knows what's going on in his head lololololol). But on a divergent note: Now and then, the relationships of people on internet communities and how it affects not just interaction, but prevalent community opinion, crosses my mind.
One facet of politics is that there is often a direct relationship between the stated public opinion of a person and the people/interests to which that person is connected. When a Democrat criticizes the arguments of a Republican, obviously the fact that the speaker in question is a Democrat and that the argument came from a Republican comes into play. There's little independent thought involved: The Democrat is disagreeing with the Republican because the two groups are opposed, and whether or not the Republican's original argument was spoken with a Republican bias... to lend credit in response to the argument is to side with your rival, which almost every Democrat considers an act of subversive capitulation, which people generally feel undermines the credibility of a movement.
On a civic scale, we see transit advocates disagreeing with naysayers (not necessarily opponents) to their agenda, almost regardless of the actual arguments the naysayers make, because to agree that the agenda has problems and inherent drawbacks is to subversively capitulate. If there's an argument on a political forum, you can almost always connect the dots to the people/orgs the person supports and see that the basis of their beliefs are 5% personal and 95% adopted, with that 5% basically being the personal intellectual rationalization of the beliefs for the bandwagon(s) said person chose to hop on.
On a social scale, we've all interacted with varying communities, and seen the alliances that form or were formed when we walked in the door. You say something someone doesn't like and then suddenly all his friends hate you. These seem like a excessive sample of negative examples, but we see these effects far more in the negative sense than in the positive sense. For example, do you make friends with someone and then all their friends like you? Yes, it happens, but not as often as you pissing a person off and then all their friends banding together to hate you.
Now, these are basic examples, and as this entry approaches a peristaltor-like length/density volume (haha sorry Jim), you're wondering where I'm going with this.
One problem I see with online polls and reader reviews is not so much the ballot-stuffing risk (someone using proxies to bomb a poll and skew it their way) but the Bandwagon Factor. For example, Yelp's usefulness as a resource for information on restaurants is diluted by the wealth of hipsters who jump on and write glowing reviews of hip nightspots and eateries: Maybe they like it because of the experiences they had with friends and loved ones there, rather than the actual product. Maybe they all have decent incomes and don't mind throwing too much money at dinner, or go to so few places that they can't tell the difference between good and bad service or food. You'll often see several reviews by the same social circle, not necessarily friends but like minded people who follow the same social drumbeats.
The average rating of a restaurant on Yelp whose review section has been plowed with hipsters of a particular circle gets diluted. A more objective 2 or 3 star review gets buried below a dozen five star reviews from a cultural circle rife with $45K well-to-do white kids that can't tell a good meal from a bad one after two drinks.
On a lesser scale, even if none of the reviewers know each other... if you're dealing with someone who has Carolyn Wardle Syndrome, i.e. gives glowing reviews and high marks to everything because anyone who takes their order and brings them a product that looks presentable is head and shoulders above their wildest dreams, you'll end up with a skewed total rating that tells you nothing thanks to people who give out nothing but 4 and 5 star reviews. Maybe they don't like to bad mouth others. Maybe they only think to write a review when they love a place. Either way, you get a poor sample of opinion, because you've got a bunch of glowing reviews of varying motivation, few honest reviews of the places (that you have to sift through the mindless accolades to find), and an average rating of 3.5 to 5 stars for just about everywhere.
I'm about to give a trite treatment to what honestly is a much more complex idea... but what if we were able to map the relationships of everyone on Yelp, and adjust the ratings accordingly. If you were to somehow weigh down (or in effect normalize) the 15 reviews by the people who seem to rave about every restaurant, or catch onto a group of people who rave in common about each of their favorite hangouts, or even a group of trolls looking to just bad mouth a series of targets... you could give the reader a much more realistic view of public opinion.
This is by no means a direct request. I'm not sure John or even anyone reading has the direct capability to take on such an ambitious project. And of course, there are countless other situations where such a 'mind mapping' project could serve to illustrate biases that affect what is commonly believed to be a democratic sample of opinion. History is often written by the winners, and often public opinion is dictated by an influential and connected few. What is there developed a way to level the playing field and expose the biases, to allow a reader a better chance to weigh the objective data given?
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09:45 am - Get to work(out)
There have been a couple times in the last few weeks where I almost fell off the workout wagon. Friday I actually didn't work out at all on account of 'listen to your body' and realizing that sore muscles indicated I needed more rest. Generally, after a long week or short sleep and cross-terrain urban hiking, I consider the Friday workout optional, in a "if you feel good you do it and if you don't you don't" sense.
The Monday and Wednesday workouts, however, must get done. I realize that, while the end of week may call for some rest, the early and midweek workouts must get done or I run the risk of giving up the ghost. I've done it enough times to know that it becomes a distinct possibility once you skip one of those in-workweek workouts. These workouts are vital to remaining on an active workout plan. Not getting in these workouts is akin to saying you're an actor when you haven't performed in a show in years.
So when I felt tired last night around 8:30, as I have many workout nights before, I flirted with the thought of an early bed time and just letting the workout slide for that day. And then I realized that what muscle I've built and what fitness I've developed in the last couple months was a direct product of a disciplined loyalty to the workouts, and that not doing it tonight was akin to a relapse for a drug addict. In this case, the irresistable drug was sloth, a sociocultural heroin that has destroyed so many others around me, before me, and will destroy countless others in the future and long after I'm gone. I consume 3000-4000 calories a day for a reason: If I don't work out, I'm just giving it all an invitation to pile on my abdomen as fat.
Though I didn't rationalize this in so many words: I think my actual conscious thought process was, "Quit being a bitch and do your workout like you're supposed to."
And that's how you've got to do it. Don't make excuses. Don't let excuses make you. Make a goal to work out 2-3 days a week and MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY DO IT. That's common knowledge to many of us, but it's amazing how easy it can be to fall off that wagon.
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07:55 am - Brief note
I'm taking a leapfrog approach to taking my multivitamin. For the first time in my life I'm eating a diet where I can see I'm getting most of the nutrients I need. And I understand that there are some vitamins in a multivitamin that you can overload on, but also that the body stores excess supplies of many of those vitamins. Everyone's mileage varies on how damaging certain quantities are of certain vitamins of even what the dangerous quantity is, but I'm sure that for many there's a point you don't want to pass.
So... I have decided to start taking my multivitamin every other day. If my body is short on something like Vitamin D or E, it either is only short by a little bit (say, 50-75% of the needed amount), or it's okay because I'm going to pop a multi the next day. I want to see how my body responds to partial usage of the multivitamins instead of compulsory daily usage, now that I'm eating a diet rich with whole foods, whole grains, fruit/vegetables and lean protein... unlike the crap that most people eat.
Also, I posted my not-too-funny Week 10 NFL Photos, but I also back-posted Week 9 Photos, which are a bit better.
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November 18th, 2009
11:00 pm - Busy day somehow some way
After hopping a 30 to Fremont, eating a pork mole breakfast burrito (at 12:30 in the afternoon) at PCC, I walked across the Fremont Bridge and climbed the neighborhood streets into Queen Anne. I stopped in at El Diablo and caught up on events and things over cheap Cuban espresso, then after a while walked down to test drive the coffee at previously undiscovered Caffe Fiore, a place on West Galer a block west of Trader Joe's. The organic coffee was smooth, the decor was rich and colorful, the lighting subtlely warm, and the music not too terribly loud. It closes at 6 pm but since I was only staying until 5 that was no big deal. I researched some sports and waded through rush hour hilltop traffic to get home.
My apartment's as clean as it's been since when I moved in. After the two day clean I did in preparation for the complex inspection, my apartment looks fresh and it's time to bring some ho's over ERRRRRR have some tea parties.
I had gone a bit too long without eating, so quickly I crushed a protein bar and two granola bars, since I hurried out the door and forgot virtually everything I planned to eat this morning. I bit the bullet and ingested a Tully's fat and cholesterol bomb ERR breakfast bagel to tide me over for the morning. I went most of the morning without feeling hungry, and hit the banana I managed to remember to bring to deal with that pang before I jetted.
I've been rather busy at work lately, a few little projects that all snuck up at once. It's passing the time a little more quickly than it usually does. I'm still a lame duck so nothing I do is going to resonate between now and my final day, and that's fine.
At home I cooked and ate some brown rice and egg whites, and got cracking on this workout.
Crunches, 2 sets of 12 reps
Standing Side Bend with Towel, 2 sets of 12 reps
Plank, 2 sets 30 seconds each
Back Extension, 2 sets of 12 reps
Bridges, 2 sets of 12 reps
Modified Pushups, 2 sets of 12 reps
Reverse Plank, 2 sets 30 seconds each
Tricep Curls with my damn backpack full of books, 2 sets of 12 reps
Bicep curls with my damn backpack full of books, 2 sets of 12 reps for each arm, then 12 more with both arms
Then I destroyed three soy nuggets, three asparagus stalks, 2.5 cups white rice and a 3 oz turkey breast cutlet while downing some green tea.
I'm going to sleep great tonight.
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02:41 pm - NFL Photos for Week 10
"EXCUSE US... WILL THE PEOPLE SMOKING THE GIANT BONG IN THE BOX SEATS PLEASE PUT IT OUT, AS NO SMOKING IS ALLOWED IN THE STADIUM. THANK YOU."
( I'm not sure this is as hilarious as past editions )
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November 17th, 2009
04:50 pm - Back on the wagon
I'm at ¡EL DIABLO! getting a bunch of writing done out of nowhere. I pounded out five articles for Helium, four on basketball, and I've got a few ideas for generating ideas on subsequent articles in different outlets. I'll keep it close to the vest in case they don't pan out, but for now I've got to find time/space to work on writing tonight while tidying up at home in anticipation of tomorrow's inspection. There's still some stuff to take care of, but essentially my home looks reasonable presentable, probably no worse than anyone else's in the complex.
Stasis concluding.
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November 16th, 2009
10:07 pm
Today most of the office buggered off down the street for a training conference, so I had the office to myself for part of the day. Funny how I got more work done while they were gone: It's not as if anyone bothers me all that much when everyone's here.
I headed straight home after work and passed out for about 3 hours. It's been a while since I had a good long nap, but after a fitful 5-6 hours sleep last night, I certainly needed it.
Tonight I'm doing some laundry and cleaning up. My place isn't exactly a huge mess, but the complex management's doing a structure inspection on Wednesday and I'd rather the place look relatively neat. There's a lot of stuff in here so there's only so much I can do, but I made some progress, cleaning the kitchen counters, taking out the trash and some paper recycling while cleaning out my desk. Experiences with moving have hardened me to the cleaning process so it's not exactly a painful endeavor. I just do it so infrequently that it ends up a tough task when I get around to it. Fortunately, I'm somewhat organized with my food and possessions so it's not as bad.
I focused tonight on exercises that improve posture. It's mostly about improving core strength, and I think doing some on Monday, doing the rest on Tuesday, doing upper body exercises on Wednesday and doing my standard all-around workout Friday sounds like a plan.
Today I ate a bunch of fruit, had white rice and meat before and after my nap, and had some shredded wheats just now before bed.
That is all for now.
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November 15th, 2009
01:29 pm - Live from ¡EL DIABLO!
Some quick things:
I did not work out Friday nor did I do a make-up workout during the weekend. My biceps still felt sore on Friday after Wednesday's workout so I decided against a Friday workout. I did quite a bit of urban hiking during the week and my legs felt worn out too, so considering the amount of effort during the week, some changes in my diet rolling out, and enough signals on Saturday that I might be going under the weather, I just decided to bag it, stick to hiking during the weekend and just reload for Monday.
Changes in my diet? Nothing seismic: I bought some carrots and oranges to go with the usual bananas and apples. I also hadn't bought asparagus in a while, so I bought a few stalks and put them on water to keep them fresh. I included a few open-pot boiled stalks with dinner last night and I'll include them for the next week to see how the additional greens impacts my physical state. I didn't buy any additional burritos and will see if I can do without them this week.
I blew a few extra bucks at Smith last night. I had a couple drinks and a plain burger there. To my credit, last month I spent 30% of my month to month average on restaurant food. I have cut way down, and when I restrict myself to a couple of big restaurant visits a month and occasional store deli food instead of making 1-2 visits a week, I save a ton of money. Or in my current case, I slow the accumulation of debt.
I mentioned signs that I felt during the weekend indicating that I was getting sick, sluggishness, muscle soreness, an occasional throat tingle... but last night I felt better and today I felt no ill symptoms. I'll just listen to my body and keep at it with good eating and exercise, and hopefully I can continue to stave off illness.
That is all for now. I'm working on some additional writing and projects, and we'll see what comes of them as they develop.
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November 14th, 2009
05:27 pm - Good calories, bad calories and ugly calories
At the recommendation of a couple readers, I snuck up to Queen Anne Books this afternoon and took a look at the Gary Taubes book Good Calories Bad Calories, a book focused on exposing the dietary perils of refined sugars, grains and flour to lend credence to the merits of a low-carb diet centered around protein, fats, fruits and vegetables. Obviously, there was no way I could read a 300+ page academically written tome cover to cover in one sitting, so the best I could do was digest as much as the intro as was feasible, and look up some relevant points, such as his thoughts on rice, diabetes and info pertinent to the below:
Last night, while looking up information on the book, the Amazon reader reviews pointed to this article by Vance Lehmkuhl. Lehmkuhl, while carrying a vested bias himself as a vegetarian who obviously does not support any diet that emphasizes meat and dairy... does point out a few telling factoids.
First of all, Taubes himself is an Atkins disciple. Years before writing this book, Taubes published an overlong article entitled "What if it's All a Big Fat Lie?" Lehmkuhl astutely points out Taubes' admission late in the anti-carb article that he follows the diet (though to be fair Taubes also made it clear from the first paragraph that he took great interest in Atkins' work). Lehmkuhl took the following a bit out of context but it is telling:
I have interviewed researchers whose computer models have calculated that cutting back on the saturated fats in my diet to the levels recommended by the American Heart Association would not add more than a few months to my life, if that. I have even lost considerable weight with relative ease by giving up carbohydrates on my test diet, and yet I can look down at my eggs and sausage and still imagine the imminent onset of heart disease and obesity, the latter assuredly to be caused by some bizarre rebound phenomena the likes of which science has not yet begun to describe. The fact that Atkins himself has had heart trouble recently does not ease my anxiety, despite his assurance that it is not diet-related.
Lehmkuhl proceeds to tear into the logic of Taubes' analysis within this 2002 NYT article. There is an admission that there lies some truth in the middle (that grains aren't necessarily a healthy catch-all staple to our diet), but takes issue with Taubes' oversimplification of conventional wisdom, a conventional wisdom that nearly every resource on nutrition to a man/woman/child has called into question. One example Lehmkuhl cites:
Shortly after this piece appeared, an American Dietetic Association survey showed that most of us get our nutrition advice from commercial television. But in Taubes' world, that's irrelevant: We eat junk food because of USDA "low fat" guidelines. We guzzle soft drinks, he says, because "they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy." That's right: Soft drinks "appear intrinsically healthy!" Have you ever heard ANYONE make a health claim for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew because they're "fat free?" It's no secret that these things are heavily branded sugar water, or that sugar makes you fat. But it's more important to be cool, to be refreshed, to obey your thirst, to get that jolt of caffeine and sugar right now.
Lehmkuhl also discovers that Taubes' research, prior to publishing the book, took out of context several of his own sources:
CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen (7/8/02) spoke to three of the Harvard researchers spotlighted in Taubes' piece - the ones representing a major shift in thinking about Atkins - and heard from them that Taubes had misrepresented their positions on the matter of fats vs. carbs. They all explained that there are good fats and bad fats, and good carbs and bad carbs, making the categorical distinctions that Taubes had worked so hard to elide. And "...cheeseburgers, pork chops, butter and bacon," Cohen says, "the folks who I talked to said: 'You know what? We don't like that kind of fat. We don't think that's good for people."
Now, ALL OF THAT SAID, I gave the book a quick read, at least parts thereof as mentioned above, with a skeptical but otherwise open mind while realizing the biases of both Taubes and his critics.
( tl;dr for all but interested parties )
Bias or no bias, Taubes may have make a point or five worth exploring beyond his research. And we can all agree that sugars and refined foods such as flour, not to mention various random chemicals in processed foods, are a problem item in promoting diabetes and possibly heart disease among other problems (like cancer). But the book just makes too many general leaps, ignores too many factors in health and of course was researched and written with a distinct bias towards the dubious Atkins diet. His ideas may be great if I were a totally sedentary individual that drove everywhere and had no intention of being anything but. And granted, that may describe most of America. And that said, that may be as big a part of the problem as our diets.
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November 13th, 2009
07:46 am - Checking in on the Friday of a curious 2-off-1-2 workweek
Memo to rhonan and relevant others: It appears they may have caught the Greenwood arsonist.
Good morning! It's Friday! The 13th! REEEEEEEEEEEEEE
One thing I like about the midweek holiday is how it neatly broke up the workweek, allowing for plenty of midweek sleep and a day to do whatever, like a mini-weekend. And last night I turned in early and got about 7.5 hours sleep, a boon in a workweek where I typically string together five consecutive 5-6 hour nights. Part of me wonders, should the U.S. migrate to a four day workweek, if instead of a three day weekend every week we should look into a standard two day weekend, and then put the 3rd day off on hump day to break up the workweek, kind of like how halftime breaks up a football, soccer or basketball game. But then again, a four day week in itself would be radical enough to make heads explode, so let's not push it :P
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November 12th, 2009
10:07 pm - Let's talk about my diet
I thought about doing a video today but of the ideas swimming around my head I couldn't flesh anything out enough to put it to video. I don't want to just show me sitting at a desk babbling in one shot about stuff. I'd rather show me babbling over several shots about stuff with weak graphics, obv.
Anyway, I hit 3200 calories today, and after averaging 3400-3600 since I began tracking, I've camped around 3200 over the last three days. I try to stay between 3100 and 4000 calories and only four times since I began tracking have I finished outside of that range, three times over 4000 calories. Restaurant/bar benders can explain a couple of them. Generally, if I have to eat out for any significant portion of my meals or I have a huge meal somewhere, it all goes to hell. I have a feeling I'm going to voluntarily side with a tame Thanksgiving meal plan this year ;P
My fat intake is down. After a few days where it got up there (100-110g), the last three days clocked in at 60, 78 and 57 grams. It's just all about staying at home with meals and protein/carb loading.
Speaking of carbs, I'm hanging in the 490-520g range to fuel my escapades, which I've certainly needed in taking a few extended walks over the last few days, whether from Fremont to my home, from the U District into Wallyworld, through the Queen Anne neighborhood, or to Trader Joe's and back.
Protein's been a bit lower than usual, though I set my new minimum at 118g after a bit of research, and I've stayed above that. Save for bombing 160-170g on Monday and a good 150g day today, I've generally kept my intake within 110-125g.
Thanks to restoring fortified orange juice to my diet and being more diligent with taking protein shakes, I'm doing a better job of getting enough calcium. I had fallen short quite a bit over the last couple weeks, after consistently hitting my needs throughout much of October.
After regular spikes, I have kept my sodium intake at 3000mg or below each of the last six days, and on Sunday I even kept it below the recommended max of 2300 mg. Since I used to eat a crappy and/or salty diet over much of my lifetime, I'm sure 2500-3000mg a day is a huge improvement anyway.
I get too much folate and vitamin D. My scalp itches. Any idea if that's related? :P
After regular struggles with cholesterol in October, I'm happy to report that I only busted the 300mg max three times this month. Every other time I've fallen under that, and most days I've only managed 130-150 mg. And that's with regular servings of beef and pork. Very good.
Generally you're supposed to get between 25 and 35 g of dietary fiber a day. My mother used to tell me about she and Sam taking in 50, which I hear can be a shitty experience. Me? Many days I exceed 35g by just a bit. On Tuesday I had 45g thanks to a Shredded Wheats bender :P A couple days I finished under that mark. But generally I either hit that range or go a bit over it. I'm regular.
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November 11th, 2009
07:49 pm - After we left off
I was actually in Fremont when I wrote those last entries. Afterward, I took a long walk home, then worked out.
Modified Pushups, 2 sets, 12 reps
Reverse Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Back Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Crunches with Twist, 2 sets, 12 reps
Hip Flexor with Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Squats, 2 sets, 12 reps
Lying Triceps Lifts, 2 sets, 12 reps
Bicep Curls, 2 sets, 12 reps
Despite not having any dumbbells, here is how I did the bicep curls: I loaded my backpack with about 10-12 books of varying weight and size. I'm not exactly sure how much weight the total bag was but it had to be somewhere around 12-15 pounds because when I zipped up the bag, held the top strap and began doing single-arm curls with the bag, I had to put in serious effort around the 9th or 10th curl. When I last did curls, 15-20 pounds was the most I could do with a single arm. Here, for a set I would do 12 curls with one arm, do 12 curls with the other, and then hold the strap with both hands and do 12 curls with both arms.
This will work because I keep track of how many books I put in, and as I get stronger I can just add more books. Poor man's dumbbell!
I also nursed during the workout my first protein shake in a while. I have soy milk to burn but I'm almost out of powder. I had used Rainbow's Protein Energizer, some low grade stuff I got at Metropolitan Market a while back. It was okay, but I'm going to try Trader Joe's Whey Protein, which is cheaper, more plentiful and should provide a simpler source of protein, as the prior powder consisted primarily of a bunch of random amino acids.
After I worked out, I called my mother and we talked for a long while. I considered making another video but realized I didn't have much material for one so I let it be. Soon soon.
I don't expect to get much sleep tonight (I took a bit too much time getting the brown rice cooking on the stove), but after the 8-9 hours of sleep I got last night I think I'll manage.
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01:54 pm - On the 2009 Election outcome
With a surge of votes that left him with a 5000+ vote lead, Mike McGinn is clearly the new Mayor of Seattle, and last check shows that the clown car KC Assessor's race is firmly in Lloyd Hara's hands, with a 11K vote lead over urbanist choice Bob Rosenberger (the also-ran I voted for, GOP Eastsider Graham Albertini, had a stronger showing than I thought he would with over 20% of the vote).
So I suppose I need to weigh in on the Seattle Election results.
City Attorney: Pete Holmes routed Tom Carr out of office. While Carr had his problems and I understand why the public would oust him (he is associated directly with the Nickels era and voters wanted to flush City Hall of that), a lot of people supported Holmes for the wrong reasons: Some of his biggest supporters weren't so much in favor of Holmes as they were opposed to Carr for his opposition to the pot initiative I-75, and for that reason many of those peole banged the drum against Carr more than they otherwise would have when he launched his Operation Sobering Thought and other initiatives to tackle nightlife crime.
Carr took the wrong direction to addressing City crime, focusing less on actual causes (narcotic drug dealing chains, rampant theft and gangs) and more on silly things like nightclub compliance (it's possible the State Liquor Control Board's interests and developers had a hand in this or that he had marching orders from Nickels more than any sort of personal crusade). He did at the same time create several alternative programs to curb the jail population while addressing the crime issue, and much of Holmes platform proposed ideas that the existing programs were already in place to address.
Either way, the public wasn't happy with Tom Carr for reasons of varying legitimacy, and he's gone. I'm not opposed to Pete Holmes even though he spent seven years overseeing a paper watchdog (the OPA Review Board, whose role basically consisted of wagging a finger at people) rather than doing anything substantial. As I say with any politician, let's see what he does with the City Attorney role.
City Councilmembers Elect: Richard Conlin, Sally Bagshaw, Nick Licata and Mike O'Brien. Conlin and Licata were shoo-ins. O'Brien, the Sierra Club darling, only netted 57.5% of the vote despite his darling status, significant additional support, and running against a perpetual also-ran in Robert Rosencrantz, whose best efforts at a campaign were some laughably fallacious attacks against O'Brien. The New Seattle Gay News flipped over after the primary and sided with Bagshaw (a candidate they originally weren't fond of), and with R-71 supporters damn near voting in lockstep with the gay media's recommendations, Bagshaw had a disinteresting race in the bag.
Referendum 71: Now, let's talk about R-71 (a 53-47 winner) and Seattle a minute. Notice that a lot of the SECB's picks came through.
Do they have their finger on the pulse of Seattle's political future? Not quite, and here's why: In an off-year with typically little vested interest involved, R-71 obviously mobilized the gay vote, and that doesn't just include gays but straight liberals who support gay rights as well. The Stranger, for all intents and purposes, is basically the loudest cultural media voice of the gay community in Seattle.
With the gay community mobilized, and with few of them having any real knowledge of local politics outside of what Dan Savage and his biased team of writers (whose "news" staff is now fronted by the agenda driven homo-combo of Dominic Holden and Eli Sanders) tell them... their default approach is to vote in lockstep with the paper's recommendations. Add in the small-but-not-insignificant pocket of liberal voters who still loyally follow the weekly rag, and a remaining voter base that is otherwise no better than partially interested in this election... and you've got the makings of a bloc pretty much dictating the outcome of this election.
Does this swing happen without R-71 on the ballot? I highly doubt it. Granted, several of the candidates who won would have won anyway as most of these races were routs. However, is the McGinn-Mallaspam race closer? Does I-1033 turn into a nailbiter? Does David Bloom or Robert Rosencrantz actually have a chance in hell (despite himself in the latter case)? Possibly in all cases.
But any predictions coming true is more of a product of the circumstances than any foresight. The SECB damn near swept their picks, except Seattle is only part of King County and Lloyd Hara had enough support throughout to walk away with the Assessor's race over pick Bob Rosenberger. With an off-year and R-71 on the ballot, the stage was set for the gays to dictate the outcome this time around and they did. I will frankly admit I did not see that coming, but that's why I don't make election predictions.
At the same time, many of these races were foregone conclusions. Conlin and Licata were not getting beat. Even without hipster support, O'Brien would have been hard pressed to lose to a tool like Rosencrantz. With Bloom's support limited, Bagshaw probably still wins. Dow Constantine had huge support across King County while Susan Hutchison had huge backlash throughout. The Housing Levy had huge support. Tom Carr would have gotten run no matter what. And of course, R-71 had a ton of support and even with the bigoted right-wing population voting in lockstep against it, the support among liberals and moderates was just too great.
Predicting this election is kind of like predicting college football winners without point spreads. Yes, a couple of the races were close, but some of the winners were so foregone-level obvious that getting it right isn't too big a deal. Florida's probably not getting beat by Troy State, and David Ginsberg was probably not beating Richard Conlin. Chest thumping over picking Florida to beat Troy straight up would be kind of silly. Likewise with picking most of these races. Going 8 for 10 isn't an act of clairvoyance. In fact, if your predictions didn't go 8 for 10, you probably weren't paying attention or you engaged in some wishful thinking. Even with tens of thousands of ballots to count, most of the races were clearly over by the first drop on Election Day.
Mayor of Seattle: Getting out the Vote was an admirable act of passion by the McGinn campaign, but it was ultimately unnecessary. The few hundred votes they may have added to the tally were a drop in the bucket to the 5000+ vote margin of victory that McGinn will eventually finish with. This was probably the only questionable race given both candidates came to the table with shortcomings, but ultimately McGinn clearly won over much of the voter base while Mallahan clearly did not. It's interesting that McGinn's supporters focused any effort on attacking Mallahan, since aside from spamming everyone and hiding from the media, Mallahan did little to distinguish himself in any way and much of his support derived from the fact that he was not Mike McGinn. Still, enough people didn't like what McGinn was selling that the race was an interesting question mark, one that has clearly been answered as later voters, probably realizing that Mallahan wasn't selling them much of anything, went with the guy who at least had ideas (whether or not they were his own), even if his one issue platform collapsed down the stretch.
The question now is how McGinn will handle being Mayor in 2010 and beyond, as will how the Council's new additions, how the new Assessor and City Attorney and new KC Executive will handle the future. Predicting the 2009 election outcome wasn't a huge feat. Predicting how McGinn's term and everyone else's will go, however, is.
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12:26 pm - Good morning!
Happy Veterans Day! Any veteran who is alive, has full functional use of his body and has a comfortable living arrangement has plenty to be thankful for. I'll spare you a gratuitous tribute: I would prefer to pay tribute by going to work as usual but alas, UW disagrees. I'm drinking coffee and producing some output.
My circadian rhythms sure didn't complain, as I got 8-9 hours of sleep last night. I rolled out of bed this morning at 9:15. By this time on a typical Wednesday, I have already been at work 75 minutes and have been awake for nearly 3 hours after maybe 6 hours sleep. Clearly my rhythms are out of whack with where they need to be for an 8 to 5 life to work :P
THE MARINERS HAVE RESIGNED JUNIOR!!11 One of two things needs to happen:
1) Ken needs to get in shape and drop 20-30 pounds before Spring Training to take pressure off his damaged knees and restore some of the core flexibility that allowed him to turn on a dime and destroy every bad pitch he saw in his younger days.
2) Ken needs to accept a reduced role as a pinch hitter and part time DH, a role he can still be effective in, especially if the team signs a good bat (Overbay, Nick Johnson, etc) or someone in the system emerges (Mike Carp, Bryan LaHahahahaha j/k about that last one)
More in a bit.
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09:52 am - Take a close look at the details of this graph
The NY Times on national unemployment rates. Shaded lines represent where certain demographics sit relative to the national average.
Notice where the blacks and Hispanics sit on the graph, relative to the whites.
(FTR my demographic is towards the bottom of that graph, meaning we're not as jobless)
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November 10th, 2009
10:27 pm - NFL Photos for Week 9
"THE SHIP IS SINKING. PLAY FOR YOURSELVES."
"Sorry guys, he coaches the Bucs so he's not used to winning"
( More NFL 'hilarity' below the cut )
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07:59 am - Factoid of the morning that may only interest me
For the second year, they played the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event in November after playing down from thousands to nine players in July. Last night, 21 year old Joe Cada outlasted eight others to win $8.55 million and a bracelet that's basically impossible to win purely on skill. So much luck is involved even in a small poker tournament that the best player at the table wins infrequently. Maybe he cashes regularly. Maybe he doesn't.
So when you take a tournament with over 6,000 players, many of which are very, very good (online poker has created a monster of young, savvy poker players with too big a bankroll for their own good), some players which aren't good but run well, lock in and play well, and some of which just aren't good, run well and go deep even when they don't know what they're doing... and given the simple fact that any two cards can lose, and that you can play absolutely perfect poker, make perfect decisions every single time and still lose because of suck-outs, bad breaks and bad cards... it's not a tournament where a star player can consistently go deep, the way a star tennis player can count on going deep in Wimbeldon or the way lance Armstrong can count on being in front at the Tour de France every year. Hell, Phil Ivey making the final table (with a pittance of chips, granted) made me wonder if the fix was on. But he fell quickly and heads up play came down to a 21 year old "professional" and a 46 year old logger who won a Main Event seat in a satellite and doesn't own a computer.
( On Joe Cada, online poker and poker in general )
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November 9th, 2009
11:11 pm - Monday monday
MOAR:
Modified Pushups, 2 sets, 12 reps
Reverse Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Back Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Crunches with Twist, 2 sets, 12 reps
Hip Flexor with Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Squats, 2 sets, 12 reps
Lying Triceps Lifts, 2 sets, 12 reps
Close-Arm Wall Pushups, 2 sets, 12 reps
I took in over 4000 calories and discovered that the maple frosted shredded wheats I bought over the weekend claims to give you 90% of your RDA of iron. This is good if you're a veg that gets enough protein but not a lot of iron. This is not as good if you're not a veg and already get enough iron, because you run the risk of an iron overdose. I need to be careful.
I had two servings today on a bender because after I got off work, I hopped a 30 to Fremont, hung out at Fremont Coffee for a spell, then walked up to the Aurora Bridge and took the LOOOOOOOOONG walk across, cut up Raye to the staircast that took me up the hill to Halladay and eventually 4th and almost took the usual back route home until I realized that my Eureka Maxima vacuum is long overdue for new bags, so I took a long bypass to the QA hardware store on McGraw, found that they had every bag model but the one I needed, took a walk further down McGraw, grabbed a menu from the somewhat infamous Malena's Taco Shop, and took a very long walk back home.
Malena's is one of those Yelp joints, a hip restaurant where some standard fare is sold at a markup and everyone raves about it, but is probably not all that much better than the same item for a few bucks less somewhere else. In this case, it's a cramped cash only Taco joint with dinner costing on average $6-9. I suppose when I finally pull things together (sometime in 2010) I'll look to give it a shot, but honestly I'm not holding my breath.
Mike McGinn is your next Seattle mayor. He took a commanding lead in the latest ballot drop this afternoon and Joe Mallaspam conceded. I'm curious as to how the City Council will interact with his rabble rousing (though obviously having fellow Sierra Clubber Mike O'Brien on the Council will help a little), what measures he'll try to take as Mayor and how they'll be received. There will be inevitable conflict as McGinn tries to mold the City in the Sierra Club's image, while trying to find some way to impose the PWC's surface/transit option on the City's viaduct replacement efforts. I have a feeling the Surreal City Life with Mike McGinn will be equal parts learning experience, train wreck and eye opener.
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07:31 pm - I chimed in on a discussion about the death penalty and noted the following
It amazes me how much sympathy people drum up in these arguments for individuals that, damn near to a person, have committed some horrific, unjustifiable crimes against humanity. If you had half the heart for the average joe that some of you have for these sick as fuck cold blooded killers, and put your energy towards helping and augmenting the lives of the otherwise good people in the rest of society (i.e. those that haven't, say, killed fifteen people for the hell of it) instead of focusing on finding a way to spare some of the shittiest members of humanity, the world might actually be a better place.
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10:34 am
No weekly meeting at work today, a welcome relief... and the office indeed is closed on Wednesday, an unwelcome... um... non-relief. Granted, having Wednesday off is the feel good story of the week on gomezchannel.org, but losing $40-45 will lead to a savings drain. You see why I stashed money all this time instead of pumping all my surplus into paying debt? There are some things credit can't buy, like the rent.
So many finance and savings plans, the ones that tell you to pay debt first and invest in 401K's, IRAs and such... predicate on having a substantial, continuous, uninterrupted income stream. If you don't have that revenue stream or if you lose it at some point, you have compounded your problem by locking your money into a place where it can't help you in cash-only situations... or where it can only help you with a significant interest charge or penalty fee. Investment advice hinges on taking things for granted, when we live in a day and age where you can't.
Find me a permanent job and I'll be willing to change my mind on this. Until then....
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November 8th, 2009
11:28 pm - Okay, so anyway
No, no gratuitous webcam videos for you. Those will rear their head on an as-need basis. Opportunities will arise, so I'm not going to force the issue.
Today I took forever to get out, and feeling a craving as I walked down the hill for the oily, unhealthy mess they serve you at McRatburgers, I walked into McDonald's and got a double cheeseburger, fries and apple pies. From there, I took a long walk around Seattle Center, caught a bus up the hill, stumbled to Queen Anne Books, read a few books for a while, walked down to Trader Joe's and got some orange juice and took the walk home.
I hung out a while, did some laundry, cooked a couple meals, Screwed around with the ranker and this ranker with referential help from these. You chill out and kill time by watching TV, I chill out and kill time by comparing/contrasting sports teams for fun and... well... fun.
That's all. Back to work tomorrow. As for losing a day this week to Veteran's Day... maybe not. Rumblings Friday during a workplace get together were that while it's a UW holiday, we'd be open for business. That I can live with. I get the workday back on my paycheck and it's a little less of a problem for the month.
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10:44 pm
I'm watching more Seattle Channel this evening, and they had a docu-infomercial on for the old Frederick & Nelson department store in Downtown (which is now occupied by Nordstrom; F&N closed down in 1992), after the umpteenth re-airing of the documentary about the 1909 AYP Expo.
You know... I know the score with Seattle's demographic history, so I'm stating the obvious when I say that everyone in the stock footage for this biopics is white. I find it cheeky that whenever you see a minority on this channel, they have to painfully find some way to work in the 'diversity' label, or make the person's appearance about diversity.
I don't think Seattlites are racist. But I'm certain most of them operate with a distinct racial bias. And hell, I'll even include some of the transplants, and I'll even stand to reason that some of them moved here (among other, more substantial reasons) in part to be around more white people. A lot of circles of friends are straight up lilly white, which given the current Seattle population is 75% white does not necessarily create a sample that represents the actual population, so citing 'hey how can you expect me to make minority friends when everyone is white' doesn't really fly here.
That's not to say people ought to contrive minorities into their inner circle as some sort of sociocultural affirmative action. But I also notice a distinct trend of social forgiveness towards whites with a tendency to come down hard on minorities. I don't hear appeals to racial stereotypes that often, but I do hear "figures that [racial minority] would [do something socially or professionally unacceptable stereotypically associated with that racial minority]" often enough to know that even though whites don't say it (and often even go out of their way to say or do things in order to come across as racially unbiased), whites like other whites, they prefer other whites, and just don't care for non-whites. I'm sure all of them have a black or Asian friend, or make it a point to ask the Latinos on the floor at work how their day is going, or held a door open for an Asian over the weekend, and may even rail against news items depicting racism... but a survey of their close social circles shows that they like whites better than other races and that this subconscious bias is a part of their operating procedure, how they interact socially, how they do their jobs, how they interact with the rest of the world.
You can act like and state that this phenomenon doesn't exist en masse in Seattle and that perceiving it is a product of perceptual delusion. But you're lying.
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November 7th, 2009
08:55 pm - Look what I did today
Yes, the production value is weak as I just wanted to throw something together. Subsequent videos will have better lighting, better sound, better editing, better substance and be a bit more organized.
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02:10 pm
Once packed up and ready to go this morning, I'm kitted for the rain, but I hadn't to date worn my rain boots, as my new shoes had done a fine job of averting sock leaks. But I walked down the hill climb to Dexter in the windy, close to freezing rain and my pants managed to get soaked enough that by the time I got to the 99 connector entryway, my socks were soaked and I realized that if I didn't turn around, go back, reload with fresh clothes and the rain boots, the rest of the day was going to be miserable. To that point the wind had been at my back, so as I walked back I had freezing rain blown in my face and all over my quads, which compounded the challenge of walking up the hill climb to my home once I got to it.
I disrobed, took another hot shower, got some fresh clothes, put on the boots and got the stray umbrella, went back outside... and the wind and heavy rain had subsided to a harmless drizzle.
What could I do after that but walk to Fremont like I intended?
******
Also, prior to that happening, I stopped at the Starbucks on Dexter near Comstock hoping for a breakfast sandwich. They don't have an oven. I mean... doesn't corporate standardize these places? They couldn't even toast a bagel (though they had some available: Well played, genuises). I settled for an oatmeal raisin cookie.
******
Hungry, I clomp clomped into Fremont and bit the bullet for my first burger ever at Blue Moon Burger. Like many Seattle hipster options, it costs more than you'd expect for what you get.
I walked up to Fremont Coffee and had a couple cups while catching up on things. I do need to get to the library and return a book or two.
I should get a bunch of writing done this weekend. I've let it lapse for too long. More on that later, perhaps.
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November 6th, 2009
11:33 pm - I almost forgot
1. Skater Squats, 2 sets 12 reps
2. Lateral Lunges, 2 sets 12 reps
3. Two-Part Pushups, 2 sets 12 reps
4. The Plank, 2 times, 30 seconds each
5. Superman, 2 times, 30 count each
6. One Arm Side Pushups, 2 sets 12 reps
I thought about just going to bed without it but I felt bleh and decided to feel less bleh so what the hell, and I'm glad I did.
Today I got dragged to a couple of random meetings at work, caught a bus to Fremont, spent some time at Fremont Coffee, a place I hadn't been to in a while and a place I don't go to enough, caught up on the world, walked back up above the Troll, caught a commuter route back up Queen Anne, hung out a bit at El Diablo over Cuban Espresso and hoofed it to Trader Joe's, where I got food for the week before coming home and spending hours watching the Seattle Channel AGAIN. I used to watch it a lot when I lived near U Village, so here I am again. It's a look at civic history, local art stuff and city government in the present.
Also, the hood coat was a terrific investment. It rained quite a bit today, and I didn't notice all that much... maybe when the wind blows rain my face or the rain's tilted towards it, but otherwise not really.
More tomorrow. The Mayor's race has shaken out, and I've got some thoughts on that. I for one may as well welcome our Sierra Club overlords.
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November 5th, 2009
07:56 am
Next Wednesday, UW's closing campus for Veteran's Day. It's nice to have a hump day off and all, but it plus the Thanksgiving holiday presents a problem: Right now, I'm shoestringing month to month until this assignment (and in turn the calendar year) ends and I can work full time assignments again. But 'shoestringing' assumes I work a full time schedule during the month. I don't get paid for those days off, so I'm going to lose three days pay in all, about 10-12% of my typical wages. Because the org's budget is limited and tied to the UW calendar, they're not going to be keen on just letting me work extra for a day or two to make up the difference because at that point I put them overbudget.
Likely, I'll have to tap savings to cover the gap in paying rent and bills, not including the savings I'll have to tap to cover any random expenses that arise during my two weeks in Vegas. I have some money saved up but I'm not sure how far it can take me. If I lost my job right now, it pays for little more than this month.
I'm not going to act like I never dwell on this problem. But honestly, all I can reasonably do right now is take matters one day at a time, finish out this assignment, and hope that a blitz of correspondence with agencies over the last couple weeks of the month leads to a new long term assignment at the start of next year. UTemp's is essentially out of the question as I'll only have ~300 hours (about 7-8 weeks of full time work) before hitting my yearly cap, which cycles over in May. They don't really help me and could hurt me if I take another assignment and I hit my cap during a down period for jobs.
I'd rather not keep temping. I would rather land a full time job at a workable wage and tread water for the next year even if the job wasn't that interesting, because economically and psychologically it'd be paradise compared to the last few months. I make living on the equivalent of $12K a year seem a lot easier than it really is. But if no one's interested after so many interviews, so many queries and so much correspondence, I can't sit here waiting for the phone to ring. I'll just have to keep temping until an opportunity comes... IF it comes.
I do believe this half-time experience was valuable. I had to scale way back and trim way down over a long period, and make matters work somehow. Even now, the workable solution is only temporary: I've relied on credit to eat and camp a monthly bill, with small monthly payments to keep the creditor happy. That's going to run out in a few months at this pace. If I get a full time job, this pace ends and I can start reversing all the debt I've run up. But if not... actually, though I can fathom how life would go if I don't, I don't want to consider it. Some of you privately take a peverse joy in my failures (and I'm not just talking about anon's, but actual (alleged) friends on my flist) and it would tickle you to no end if I had to, say, pack up and move away. Which BTW is nothing more than a nuclear option, and is ahead of 'move in with someone' on the options list.
But again, I'm focused on staying on track, getting back to full-time work in January 2010 (or sooner if the opportunity presents itself) and turning things around. I've proven I can survive on far less than full time. With full-time wages, I can thrive.
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November 4th, 2009
11:05 pm - Fitness watch
I'll take this time while pounding soy milk to get my calcium in to go over some things.
Modified Pushups, 2 sets, 12 reps
Reverse Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Plank, 2 sets, 30 seconds each
Back Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Crunches with Twist, 2 sets, 12 reps
Hip Flexor with Extension, 2 sets, 12 reps
Squats, 2 sets, 12 reps
Lying Triceps Lifts, 2 sets, 12 reps
Close-Arm Wall Pushups, 2 sets, 12 reps
The workout's getting easier. This will probably be my typical Monday/Wednesday workout until further notice, with the Friday workout being a more aggressive core workout. Next week I'll look to increase the number of reps.
Today I had to squeeze through the workday on just an outsourced bagel sandwich, two slices of pita bread and some roasted soy nuts. Needless to say, I felt a bit hungry by the end of my workday. Once I got home, I hit a banana and went to work systematically catching up: I went right to the boneless pork loin and Calrose rice at 2 pm. I drank some British black tea and eventually got to eating some Irish oats around 5 pm. By 8 pm I worked out, cooked up and ate some brown rice and egg whites. Did the trick. Instead of my body slipping into shaky fasting mode, I regained form and felt fine the rest of the day.
Longer review of the last three weeks via SparkPeople: Power Eating says that 70-80g fat may actually be too low for a workout maintenance diet. I'm planning a diet for a 160 lb body, which is slightly less than my previous cruising weight range of 162-165. My ideal high end for fat intake is closer to 110g, which is cool because I average around 80-85g, and most of that is a healthy mix of unsaturated and saturated fats. If I wanted to taper fat later, I'd have to cut down to about 45-50g and add in a lot more protein, but that's a bridge I'm not too interested in crossing right now.
My average protein intake is camping at that 150-175g range. My carb intake sits at 500g or so. I'm still not getting enough potassium but I'm getting about 3500mg a day. I still struggle with sodium but I've managed to keep it around 2500-3000mg per day. After a string of high cholesterol days (300-500mg), I've kept it under 300mg for two straight days. Since I began tracking on 10/14, I've finished under 300mg nine times and been just over the mark (10-20mg or so) another four times.
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10:02 pm - I'm watching the Seattle Channel
They have the Traffic Justice Summit from 10/14/09 on, with Tom Carr, the Cascade Bicycle Club and a bunch of cyclists and pedestrians. It was largely an FYI to illustrate what the City had researched w/r/t pedestrian and bicycle safety in light of fatal accidents, and why they, say, can't just make it a capital crime to hit a pedestrian/cyclist. The presentation was your usual vapid, charisma-free boredom of charts and facts, but they opened the floor for questions and it just turned into a sociocultural circus.
The first guy goes off on a tangent about how he keeps going to the City of Shoreline to get them to add something like loudspeakers at intersections, and he just rambled on for five minutes with the sort of self confidence that indicates why the City of Shoreline didn't give him the time of day regardless of the content of his complaint. That he directed the question at Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr is a bit ironic.
Some young girl turns her question about proposed legislation into one of those five minute ECB-style activist rants about how we need to teach motorists a lesson.
Then this old crank from Lake City wastes a bunch of time complaining about cars blocking the crosswalk because she's old/infirm/victim/etc and when that happens she has to step off the curb and on and on for like five minutes. Understandable even if she overstepped the bounds of the Q&A... but later on, the emcee's fielding a question and she storms down the aisle (rather agile for someone who's so crippled that stepping off a curb is hardship) and flips the emcee shit about the screeching from the mike hurting her ears.
I almost feel sorry for Adam Cline and Tom Carr for having to put up with such lunacy. The emcee finally had to hit the brakes and tell people, 'Look people, just ASK A QUESTION. ONE QUESTION. WE NEED TO MOVE ALONG.'
Ah, the perils of being a public official. Fortunately that quasi-ultimatum moved things along more smoothly from there. But the whole policy-making responsibility is almost a secondary pain to having to do these public events and battle with the lowest common intellectual denominators of various backgrounds and scales bringing everything down, while trying to distill the valuable input from citizens and figure out what actually needs to be addressed.
******
As for the purpose of the meeting... again, the problem stems from bad driving, and bad driving stems not from the lack of criminal laws towards bad driving, but from poor licensing practices. It's too easy to get a license in this state and there's no real practice towards regularly verifying one's ability or restricting the driving of poor drivers.
I think the mindset of revenge on the part of wronged pedestrians/cyclists and loved ones thereof definitely clouds a lot of judgment on this issue. You can definitely rewrite the letter of the law (state and local) to give teeth to punitive options for drivers who hit people. But to humor their greatest ideas in full would make driving far too dangerous, not from a personal safety standpoint but from a legal standpoint, as a genuine accident could land you in jail or other legal hot water from which you can't really recover. Yes, a cyclist or pedestrian can't easily recover from getting plowed either, but it won't make sense to correct a wrong by instituting an even greater wrong.
Also, as someone who has walked the streets for years and ridden my bike down a fair share of streets... I think many cyclists/peds want an unreasonable degree of complacent comfort. The streets are always going to be dangerous and there are always going to be inattentive and/or malicious assholes behind the wheel of motor vehicles. You're not going to legislate away in a perfect world most of the dangers of cycling or walking. In the city, you just need to be vigilant, street smart and aware that anyone at any time can hurt you, whether or not they intend to, and to be careful. You've got to accept that traveling the streets carry some degree of danger at all times, and that legislation can never totally eliminate that.
And I just wouldn't bike or walk along a rural street with no sidewalks or anything other than a shoulder, as some of the anecdotes (told during an appointed 'story time' by accident survivors) confirm the danger of riding on a highway.
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10:39 am - Chase is so horrible, you're so going to ditch them, but first you have to go wash your hair
File this under 'things I understand but at the same time don't': Former WaMu customers who bank with Chase. Find me a former WaMu customer that's happy with Chase and I'll find you a member of Chase's marketing team.
Now, some people have shredded credit and are stuck with Chase just like they were stuck with WaMu (they can't open an account elsewhere because their credit denies them), and to a great extent that's their own fault. But many people out there not only have okay or better credit and know better, but when WaMu went under and Chase swooped in, many said they were going to jump ship and get with another bank or credit union. And yet here they are, still with Chase, complaining about how unfair Chase's fees and practices are and how much Chase has screwed them.
Didn't you losers say you were going to switch? Hell, credit unions are very easy to open accounts with, BECU especially. Yes, changing all your direct deposit and auto-pays is a pain in the ass. And so is getting charged for things you should be getting for free.
The only reason I don't make the switch is because I bank with Wells Fargo, I've developed a good arrangement with them, they've never given me any serious problems and their national coverage means I can go to another city and do business with them. Those of you who aren't in the hole, what's your excuse?
I'll answer that for you: You just won't get off your ass and do what it takes.
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10:23 am - On the American political and voting process
We have returns for the election and while many of the races have decisive margins already, I'll at least wait until the next set of returns piles in to write anything up.
I will say that, while I care as much as the next informed voter about who is what and what happens with the government, I don't share the liberal fatalistic view towards candidates I don't support. If the person I vote for doesn't win, the world in Seattle, in Washington State, in America and the World, is not going to end and I am not going to pack my shit and move to Portland because I didn't get my way. Who we get is who we get once the public has made their choices en masse.
I'm also not going to play the old liberal troll of 'well you had your chance to vote so don't complain' towards people who are not happy with the results. This is a popular and ignorant, if not disingenuous, blast by emotionally insecure poliwonks (which one can argue is largely redundant yuk yuk yuk). As the voting population increases, the value of your vote incrementally decreases. The greater the voting population, the less likely your vote makes the difference between victory and defeat. I can't blame people for not being happy with what the system produces when they only have 1/100,000th of a say in who gets to run it... yes, even if they work with a popular campaign, since they're one out of many who are trying to proliferate a person of influence's causes and messages. You're either a grain of sand in the political fishbowl, or a cog in the political machine.
If anything, our elective voting system is not Democracy but a form of coercive populism. Get out the vote campaigns, phone spams, advertising campaigns, campaign rallies, advocacy blogs and orgs... are intended to not to encourage discourse and thought... but to get as many people to vote one's preferred way as possible. We want people to exercise their right to vote... so long as they vote for the people and things we want.
I don't fool myself into thinking that my vote is more than simply one of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of up-or-down opinions. I cast my vote, send it off and what happens happens. Unfortunately the political system for many is about intellectually strongarming people into seeing things your way, and getting as many people to passionately regurgitate your opinions as possible. It is a product of the utopian mindset that Daniel Quinn claimed in Ishmael would be the ultimate downfall of man.
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November 3rd, 2009
02:53 pm - Today I voted to walk home from work
Since it's not going to rain for the next couple days, and since I've found life in a coat rather warm, I decided to go without my coat today. However, I forgot that I had kept my FlexPass in one of the coat pockets, having stashed it there instead of my wallet for easy access since I took for granted I'd be wearing my coat. WHOOPS. I didn't realize my gaffe until I had already reached the bus stop. I fished for my ORCA pass as a contingency but at some point it too left my wallet, and I was forced to pay $2 in stupid-tax once the bus arrived.
Rather than pay another $2 to come home, I decided that since today was a theoretical cardio day, I would walk all the way home. It's been a while since I've taken a good long walk. I'm currently at Canal Coffee after walking into Fremont via Wallyworld. Eventually I'm going to pack up, hoof it to and across the bridge and then make the climb up Queen Anne hill.
Today is election day, and I shouldn't have to tell you to vote. You either have or you haven't, and that's your business. I really don't want someone who has no real opinion on the issues casting votes on races that affect me anyway: Pushing it for my own gain is disingenuous, and either way in all likelihood you'll cast underinformed votes for sides I don't support. There's no sense in shooing you to the polls in WA anyway since voting is all mail. You've had plenty of time to vote if you were so inclined.
One kick to all-mail voting is that counting the votes goes much more glacially, since instead of hundreds of precincts counting a neighborhood's votes, a manageable number that can typically be accounted for in an evening, you have a handful of central locations ripping open double-sealed envelopes and counting tens of thousands of ballots. Save for the lopsided and uncontested races, we're not going to know for sure who won tonight. We'll see occasional drops over the next few weeks, and it could be a week or two before we have a winner in some races.
Thus election night parties don't carry the weight they do in jurisdictions with conventional precinct-based voting. Typically, you can count the lion's share of the votes in one night and we know the winner before the party's over. Not so in Seattle. You're basically meeting up at parties to wonk with other wonks, and see who picked up the first segment of counted ballots. It's like the Bush-Gore Florida saga, usually sans the controversy, acted out every election cycle.
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