Jumping off point

I was watching the Daily Show and got a great quote. "Maybe Congress Should molest medicare", which is a reference to how much the news covers Michael Jackson's arrest and how little it covers major issues.

Since all the major newspapers are doing terrible coverage of the Energy bill that just passed the house and is probably going to be filibustered in the senate I thought I'd join in. I did see a single nice story from Solar Access, that at least got the piece of the story they were interested in correct.
http://www.solaraccess.com/news/story?storyid=5561 free registration required

Overall this bill is reasonable. In an ideal world we would switch to electric cars and produce all our electricity from photovoltaics. But in reality change takes time.

There is a tax credit for installing photovoltaics (solar electric) and solar hot water. It is up to $2000 for each, and is the first time there has been real support for solar on a national level. If I had some money to invest right now I'd buy me some Evergreen Solar stock.

There are rumoured to be tax breaks for energy efficient appliances, such as refrigerators.

There is support for coal, under the guise of "clean coal", which is like saying healthy cancer or low acid acid rain. Still, we do have a lot of coal, and it is a cheap source of energy. Hopefully we will start moving to renewable quickly.

Gasoline gets required percentages of ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol, usually produced from corn. The advantage of it is we don't buy it from the middle east, and we can grow more of it. Yes ethanol could be produced much cheaper from cane sugar, but our horrendous cane sugar tariffs are an entirely different subject. But as a slight digression ever wonder why most products you buy have high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener? It is because the corn lobby has kept congress imposing ridiculous tariffs on imported sugar.

Uranium makes a comeback as well, a new plant producing radioactive waste will be built in Oregon.

Finally a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope (Alaska, where my father used to work). Maybe after it is done there will be better price stability in heating our homes and in electric prices. I'm fairly disappointed they didn't decide to drill in ANWR, as I'd rather send my money to Alaskan's than to Saudi Arabians or Iranians.

Often we get caught up in a whilrwind. We are like paper being blown from crisis to crisis. Mostly at work. We prioritize our schedules.

I think we should schedule our priorities, and not schedule anything else. Learn to say no. Because something is urgent does not mean it is important. Don't fall into that trap. I know a lot of people who work very hard, but never find time for the things that really matter. The solution is to stop doing the things that don't matter.

Now that my audiance has expanded from myself to my wife and my sister and myself I thought I'd write about what I do. Only to be careful and not get in trouble by revealing some confidential information I thought I'd provide some links.

I write Operating Systems stuff. Used to work on AIX, now I work on linux.

Not me directly, but definatly my department and typical of the work I do:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33953.html

I do have code running on all of these machines:
http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US/eServer/pSeries/pSeries.html

And of the fastest computers in the world my code runs on a lot of those from IBM:
http://www.top500.org/list/2003/06/?page

Want to save for your kids education? Upromise is a great way to do it. Besides offering Vanguard 529 accounts (tax deffered/free) they give you money. They have restaurants and grocery stores and gas stations and online stores and regular stores all signed up so when you spend money they put some money to your kids college fund. There are also credit cards that give you the 1% on all you spend, or American Airlines miles can be redeemed, etc, etc. They've got more ways to get free money than I can name.

So you don't have kids? Do you have nieces or nephews or cousins, or is your wife going back to school? That's right you can save for other relatives education, and not just young ones. If they don't decide to go to school you can assign a different beneficiary, or take the money back (at a slight tax penalty). This stuff is great.

Best part is you can sign up to help my kid go to college. No cost to you but Emlyn will appreciate it.

http://www.upromise.com for more info

There is no salary to change the world
Revolution has no health plan
no 401K
no direct deposit
There is a reason Jesus didn't have a mortgage
or a day job
or a golden retriever
Jesus was a bum
His day job was being poor
The 9 to 5 may be noble
and put food on the table for the kids
and the golden retriever
but noble reasons don't change the facts
we have sold out
we can't lead the revolution
we can't change the world
we have other responsabilities

It's my blog. I say that in apology because I've decided to write a few poems, and I'm writing them here. They are not going to be good. They won't rhyme or have meter most of the time. They might even use really bad metaphors (like this one).

On a shelf lies the man I used to be
He sticks up slightly crumpled and bent over
On page 110 or 111
It is hard to tell which because I have forgotten
not just the page where he stopped caring
stopped having the will to contine to page 112
and on though the end
but have forgotten what got him that far
what he used to do to get worked up to get to page 1
Because all the hopes, dreams, projects, and relationships sit on the shelf next to the unfinished book
but they have never been opened
no pages have been turned
And the man I used to be is a bookmark
and he is a better man than I

My brother in law, Daniel Hougey, wrote a piece that I've been told is published in the local paper there. It's another of the violence in films is bad genre of opinion pieces, but still worth a read.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/cctimes/entertainment/movies/7094158.htm

I tend to agree with him, but not totally. People watching films know it is not real. There is something to be said for fulfilling the primal urges by watching a film instead of channeling those urges in real life. I'm probably less violent because of watching action films. I'm still not going to see the movie myself, because I find it disgusting and vulger, but I'm not going to dismiss something that has captivated a society so lightly.

Just read a New York Times no registration required article about the recent partial birth ban. I thought it was out of the opinion section, but no, it was passed as an unbiased news piece.

This just goes with my opinion that news sources should quit pretending and come right out with what they believe. If a person is biased it is impossible to set that bias aside while writing, no matter what the professional journalist will tell you.

So here is a equally biased link in the other direction from the GOP

Another wine reccomendation. http://www.sutterhome.com/html/wine/wm_fact.html It is also a "blush" wine, meaning it has a pinkish color. Also cheap ($4 at HEB) but good.

I've decided to start drinking more. A glass of wine with dinner and a margarita or pina colada on the weekend (preferably used in combination with a hot tub).

So I have my first wine recomendation. It was like $6 at target, but is suprisingly good. It is a beringer white zifandel. It is from California, which I consider a bonus.

http://www.wine.com/product/display.asp?msg=452&Product_ID=54579

Also there is a good wine judging site http://www.winejudging.com/ for finding other good wines.

If I see one more story about cojoined twin seperation I am going to have to rip my own eyes out of their sockets.