Traveling around, home for thanksgiving

We've been traveling around the last few weeks, Milan, Vienna,
Bucharest, Athens and Madrid, and now we're in the usa for thanksgiving.
The security people at the Bologna airport know us by sight, which is always
a sign that I've been working too much

We have managed to do some sightseeing though, and I've tried to setup
meetings on thursdays so that I can take off friday and the weekend to
play tourist. So the travel in europe seems to be better than what you'd get
in south lousiana and texas.
Here we have the acropolis in
athens, which would be similar
to the gas station and restaurant
in port fourchon.













Below is a picture from Ploesti in Romania. Apparently a good
topic of conversation isn't "was the damage very bad from the
bombing campaigns carried out by the us army air corp in world
war 2?" Since every former axis city I've been to has buildings that
are in the guide books as "mostly destroyed during the 2nd world war,
but rebuilt to match the original 13th century construction", I find myself
guiltily quiet around locals when the topic of history comes up.

I was really curious
how old the smokestacks
in the refinery were, if they
were the same ones in the
famous b-25 raid picture,
but it's probably not a good
topic to bring up.

I for one welcome our new socialist overlords

Good luck tomorrow america

It's 7 am here in Italy, ,just turning midnight back at home and I'm wishing I was back
there to vote.

From an email from John McCain straight to my work email address that didn't get stopped by the spam filter or filed in junk:

Throughout my years of service, I've been faced with challenges where I could have taken the easy way out and given up. But I'm an American and I never give up. Instead, I choose to show courage and stand up and fight for the country I love. Today, I am asking you to stand with me and to fight for our country's future.

Our country faces enormous challenges and our next president must be ready to lead on day one. My lifetime of experience has prepared me to lead our great nation. I'm prepared to bring solutions to our economic challenges, bring our troops home in victory and improve our nation's healthcare system.

Time and time again, my country has saved my life and I owe her more than she has ever owed me. I have chosen to show my gratitude through a life of service to our country and tomorrow, you will have a choice before you.

I humbly ask you to make the choice that will allow me to serve my country a little while longer by casting your vote to elect me as your next President of the United States.

go vote america, pull the lever for McPalin.

TANSTAFL

Obama's Plumbing problem:

(linked from mostly cajun)

Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it. Joe drives to Obama’s house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood where it’s obvious that all the residents make well over $250,000 per year. Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes.

Obama asks Joe how much it will cost. Joe immediately says, “$9,500.”

“$9,500?” Obama asks, stunned. “But you said it’s an easy repair!”

“Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free,” explains Joe. “It’s always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.’ Surprised you haven’t heard of it, senator.”

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves. Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe’s price, Obama does nothing. The
leak under Obama’s sink goes without repair for the next several days. A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there’s a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return. Joe goes back to Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says “Let’s see – this will cost you about $21,000.”

“A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!” Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. “Well, because of the ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act,’ a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I’m doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day. “Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they’re not being replaced – nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won’t make any money. I’m hurting now too – all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their fair share.”

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: “Of course you’re hurting, Joe! Don’t you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you’ll be broke, and then what will you do?”

Joe immediately replies, “Run for president, I guess.”

From Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

flashback 2004

Here's what I wrote this week back in 2004, one indication that the WOT
is going ok is I don't feel this negative anymore:

Kerry and the Dems will have to put up or shut up. They'll have to deal with reality in the present tense instead of using that weird verb tense that begins with "if bush hadn't stolen the election"... . Since Spanish has so many more verb tenses than english, we'll try it in spanish, "el indicativo anteganancia del ladron Bush".

Changing events from the past isn't possible in reality. We can look at the past to see what happened and what that might teach us about the future, but the past is past and is unchangeable. Any possible action starts at where we are now, like joining a game of Risk in the middle of an ongoing game. You don't get to reshuffle the cards and move the little plastic armies to where you wish them to be. Our armies are where they are, and the enemy is where he is. In Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea...some safe house in New York, wherever.

The newly elected democrats won't be able to say: "Bushstoletheelectionpipelineafganistan bloodforoilhaliburtonbushliedpeoplediedairnationalguarddaddysaudiinfluencecarlylegroup
bushisanidiotsuperevilgeniuscontrolledbycheneycontrolledbybigoil blaaaaaaaaaaaarghhh"
(I've never actually heard anyone say blaaaaaaaaarghhh, so maybe that should be outside the quotes) Maybe when they actually have to do something instead of just name-calling and criticizing there will actually be some cold assesment of reality and what needs to be done. Maybe they'll do everything right, and then we'll sing we are the world with the French and Germans in a perfectly democratic Irag. I can hope anyway, even though I think they'll pull out of Iraq and create a malaise in the United States that makes Jimmy Carter's presidency look like the happy happy fun times of yesteryear. Who knows though.

I would like to be a fly on the wall at the transition briefing where the Bush people have to explain reality to the Kerry people. Kerry guy: "So you're saying there's a group of people out there that don't care about discussion of gay marriage, in fact their first action after the establishment of the caliphate will be to cut the heads off of every gay person. Why that's appalling."

So I think a Kerry victory might provide me with some sweet sweet moments of I told you so. Few things better than that. Too bad about New York and Washington though, I really liked those places.

Both literally and figuratively

Political Spam

One of my sister's sent me a bunch of links showing why veterans should
support obama and not mccain. One of them is the IAVA congressional report
card that give's McCain a D and Obama a B+. The mudville gazette helpfully
edit's the list to include the candidate's party. To me the correlation is perfect,
demo's get b or a, republicans get c or below.




Here's the Ranking from the IAVA with the senator's Party included:

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/milblogs/archives/2008/10/09/#030938

The same group attacks McCain voting against the gi bill.
here's what McCain said about the gi bill:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/mccain-now-supp.html

"When the Senate had considered its version of the war supplemental, McCain had argued, along with the White House and the Pentagon, that the new GI Bill, which got support from a veto-proof majority of Senators, would encourage service members to leave the military. He had offered a less generous counterproposal that would have given service members a much smaller credit for college and given better benefits to people who served longer. "
.......
"With the addition of the transferability provisions sought by Senators Graham, Burr, myself and others to give service members the right to transfer earned G.I. Bill benefits to spouses and children, we will have achieved in offering vastly improved educational benefit while also offering incentives for continued service by the most capable, experienced NCO

Disenfranchised

The deadline to send in my absentee ballot was last week and I
missed it. That was really stupid because I was thinking since
February that i need to get it done so I can vote against Hillary. It
turns out though that I would prefer Hillary to Obama, at least
I think I understand her blackened cruel soulthat would beam
down from washington with an unblinking red eye. But I could live
with that.










I can accept voting for Sauron if all she wants is some power so that
she can demonstrate that she was the smarter member of the clinton
royal family. Voting for Obama would be like voting for Gollum before
we get that brief glimpse at Smeagel's life at the beginning of the 3rd movie.
He's just some guy that will say or do anything to get the ring of power, and
we don't even know what kind of animal he is.

As much more clearly said by Mark Steyn:

But Obama is defined by his indefinability. When I pointed out to my Vermont gals that he lives in a swank pad that was part of some shady real estate deal with a convicted fraudster (Tony Rezko), that he entrusted his daughters' entire religious education to a neo-segregationist anti-American nut who preaches that the government created the AIDS virus to kill black people (Jeremiah Wright), that he attended fundraisers with a political patron who's an unrepentant terrorist proud of plotting to blow up young ladies just like them at a dance at the Fort Dix military base (William Ayers), when I pointed all this out, they looked at me as if I'd brought a baseball bat to a croquet match. Mere earthbound politicians are defined by their real estate deals and sleazy buddies, but Obama is defined only by his vibe. As his many admirers in France would say, he has a certain je ne sais quoi. And, if you try to pin down quo precisely, then they don't want to sais.

By disenfranchising myself I might be helping to elect Obama, which might have
some disastrous consequences down the road. Help me out please. Go cast a vote
for McCain next month, or if you are going to vote for Obama stay home and watch
the lord of the rings dvd's all in a row until the polls close. I think we'll be glad you
did.

Where's David Palmer when we need him.

Here in italy it apparently takes a note from the pope to get telephone
and cable tv setup. We've been trying for a month, but we're mostly just
going around in a circle, first we need a codice fiscale, then a copy of
the apartment contract that we can't seem to get from the owner, then the world's
slowest electrician has to come and hook everything up. I thought south america
was bad, but this place gives new meaning to 'manana'.

Luckily one of our dvd players has a dual power supply so that it works with
120 or 240 v, surprisingly it was the $40 dvd player from walmart that is very
flexible, my $500 sony dream machine system will need a transformer to work.
I do have some dvd's to watch now, I fired up the walmart player and I'm watching
"24" season 1 that I never saw on fox. The first one I saw was the 3rd season
and that was pretty good. I've been saving the first season for a rainy day.
It's raining.

On the show David Palmer was just told by his chief of staff that he's the most important
presidential candidate in generations. I wish someone like David Palmer was really
running for president, I'd vote for him. I really don't want Obama to win, and any
time I have expressed that at work the clear assumption is that I'm a racist hick.

It's not the color of Obama's skin that bothers me, it's that I don't agree with
anything he says or anything that he plans to do. I also tend to think that he
was sent by someone in the chicago machine, or sent by a diabolical marxist organization
that is bent on undermining a free and capitalist america or sent as a product of
an extremely liberal education that was then baked in an oven of an anti-american
preacher. All those ideas might be believable or laudable in some situations, but
I don't want them as part of the makeup of the president of the united states.

I'll try and stay hopeful even though I think Obama will win. Maybe it'll be
like 1992 when Clinton won even after I spent a good bit of time trying to convince
my coworkers to vote for Ross Perot, but in the end Clinton turned out to be not
as bad as expected. Except for the long term economy and the war against terror.
Oh well. I'll stay hopeful, and hope that David Palmer runs for election next time.

Future company mergers

From Atlas Shrugs, a list of future company mergers:

Watch for these consolidations later this year:

1. Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

2. Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.

3. 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

4. Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa.

5. FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and become: FedUP.

6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become: Fairwell Honeychild.

7. Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become: PouponPants.

8. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become: Knott NOW!

And finally, ...

9. Victoria's Secret and Smith & Wesson will merge under the new name: TittyTittyBangBang.

Breadlines R us

The house just voted down the bailout procedure and my stocks to
watch list on Yahoo is entirely red. Gah. One benefit of being in
Italy for the next great depression is that if there are breadlines the
bread here is yummy. Not that crummy bunny bread stuff for me.

If it gets that bad I'm sure we'll be shown the door pretty quick
though. It'll be "no bread for you", and out the door we go.

The Black Swan Decade

I'm reading "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb, it's a pretty
fascinating look at the gaps in our knowledge when we think we're safe
because we're staying near the average in a non volatile market, but
really we've already driven off a cliff and the smooth sailing that we feel
is because the wheels aren't on a road. He's also got an essay in edge
magazine that hits some key points that a lot of bankers should have read
about 2 years ago...

I've always wondered what this decade will be called, my old man simpson
voice always says it's the oughts, and I'll be able to grumble when I'm an old
man "that hurricane happened back in ought- five". Now I'm afraid that this
decade will turn out to be the black swan decade, where everything from
hurricanes and tsunamis to bank failures and assholes flying planes into buildings
has happened. Personally it was the best decade, but for world history purposes
it seems like one continuous pile of poo.

Hopeful panicking

We've been traveling for the past week while the double storms hit
back home, one the hurricane in galveston, the other the collapse
and possible resuscitation of the financial system. Watching events from
europe my face took on the appearance of several smileys from msn,
especially the one with teeth gritted and hand up in fear.

Hurricane Ike doesn't look like it was as bad as it could have been.
A little more severe and a little further west and galveston and south
houston would have been tostada. The mayor of Houston and Judge Ed
have things firmly under control and made adjustments to federal delivery
drops that made things better. (I think not perfect outcomes from the
feds is inevitable, it just demonstrates why most power should be at the state
and local levels)

The shitstorm in new york is even worse and left me bouncing from one foot
to another deciding if I should try and move whatever cash I have to euros
right away and sell every stock. Apparently I'm a good indicator for panic
because right at the point I was about to sell what stocks I have, everything
rebounded 10%, I'm lucky it takes me a couple of days of bouncing from foot
to foot to make a decision.

I'm in the hopefull panicking stage now. Maybe this bailout thing will work
and the government pledging it's full faith and credit for all this bad debt will
win the day. I feel more like I'm at a bar and I'm watching two drunks trying
to pay the tab. The first drunk is fairly shabby looking and hands over a beat up
nearly expired mastercard, the bartender runs it and it is declined. The second
drunk says " no problem, I got this one" and pulls and equally shabby looking creditcard
out and hands it to the bartender. If the bartender runs it, it might be declined
then he'll be short on his register. He does the safer thing and just takes a paper
imprint and sends the two drunks off into the night. The bar might never get paid
but at least he won't be short that night.

Zoiks!

I think the NWS and government have been lax with this storm, trying not
to repeat the Rita evacuation. Now they'll be ramping up quickly this morning
to shrill, but it might be too late to evac all of east texas. They better put some
thought into this and evac starting with the coastal areas first and not stampeding
out the whole city.

Yikes for Houston

If I were in Houston I'd be hauling ass out of there right now to someplace
that won't be without power over the weekend. The folks at weather underground
have added another plot to their repertoir, it is the ensemble model plot. I'm not
certain what that is, but it looks like they are initializing the gfdl model with
different initial conditions and and plotting the multiple runs. On the latest
plot there are two different clusters, one at south padre island and one at
galveston bay. What is really different about the plot is they are doing a
model verification on the same display by plotting the current hurricane positon
on 6 hour old models. It looks to me that the hurricane is trending more northward
and is following the northern cluster towards Houston.

If that trend continues tomorrow morning local time will be a different situation
with the first calls for evacuations. Better to be ready to leave at first light.
(our family policy was modified after hurricane Lily to say that we're not staying
for any hurricane, that looks like it might hit on the 3 day forcast. Just to remove
some of the decision making worrying.) I might foolishly evacuate sometime in the
future, but I don't want to sit and sweat with no lights or a/c for a week either.

Space-alien viewpoint of hurricane

Another great thing about google earth is the ability to turn
on weather and forecast layers. It's possible now to let GE run
and pretend to be an astronaut or space-alien looking down
on puny earthlings....then holy heck there's a big-assed hurricane
about to smack houston!


It's only a matter of time until we have near Real-time update of the
satellite imagery. mwa ha ha hahahha

I tried to be a community organizer

Back in 1992 during the time I was laid off from the oilfield I reached a point
where I couldn't find an engineering job, and I had to go out and seek as Simon
and Garfunkel said "only workman's wages". One of the few jobs I applied for that
I actually got was working for ACORN. I responded to a classified ad and went
down to a storefront office off of tulane avenue (not a great part of the city). Since
I was the only white face in the place the lady interviewing me gave me the "he's
a crazy white boy" look, but offered me a job and told me to come back for a day's
training. Then I'd be going door to door registering voters.

My father heard what I had done and insisted I call them back and not take the
job. He was probably correct in assuming that the life expectancy of a white guy
going door to door in New Orleans' projects would be pretty low. Luckily the next
week after that my Air Nat'l Guard unit hired me as a temporary worker, and I
turned wrenches instead of trying to organize the community.

watching gustav go ashore

I've been watching Gustav all day with the radar loop playing on main
monitor and trying to learn how to use vmware on the external monitor
but making little progress. It looks like New Orleans dodged a bullet
and the storm is going ashore just west of port fourchon. In the past
few hours it seems like the storm has moved more WNW than NW, and it
will follow Hurricane Andrew's path straight up highway 90 to Lafayette.

It might be pretty bad for Grand Isle. Fourchon doesn't have much in the
way of permanent structures that aren't built up 15' off the ground. Grand
Isle is also built up, but the storm might just eat away all the sand that makes up
the island, all the buildings could be standing in 4' of seawater after the storm.
There's not much else for the storm to hit until Morgan City, and by the time
it reaches lafayette it won't be much more than a strong tropical storm.
(he says with crossed fingers)

Of course on the morning of Katrina the storm was passed and the nytimes
said that New orleans had dodged a bullet, so I'll wait a few more hours before
I stop worrying. The local stations are showing the industrial canal with the
water to the top of the steel wall on top of the levee. I always wondered about
that as a kid, if those steel walls would do anything...appears so.

updated at 17:21 local time- John Snell on channel 8 just made a good point,
the water is about 1 foot below the top of the levee and some water is spraying
over the top, he suggests that once the category of this hurricane is firmly established
it will make a good calibration point for where the levee system is right now.
If the levees will be close to overtopping every 3 years, then the levees need
to be upgraded.
John Snell on channe

Obama on WDSU

The weathernerd linked to a site that is showing streams of all
the tv stations in new orleans. Pretty cool stuff, and I was lucky enough
to tune into channel 6 when Barrack Obama called into the show. He mumbled
through some platitudes about how Fema and the state appear to be working well
together, then he got some direct questions from Margeret Orr asking if he would
support:

- category 5 levee protection
- wetlands restoration

he said he would support both and he has supported both and thinks we
should have been further along in wetlands restoration. So maybe an obama
win would be better for Louisiana. Wetlands restoration would help the flood
protection for the west bank, and restoring the MRGO would help chalmette,
but the only thing to do for the east bank is higher stronger levees.

I watched Katrina from outside the country and before the storm the government
made all the noises of cooperation, supposedly with boats and airboats prepositioned,
but in the end the coast guard and local and state boats did most of the rescuing.
The main difference I'm seeing this time is that the evacuation is mostly finished a day
and a half before the storm, and they are searching for people who haven't evacuated
and need help. During Katrina the evacuation was just getting started at this point,
so much better performance this time. I think it is due to proactivity from the state,
and a local government which is what is supposed to happen.

Kind of worried

If I put the candidates in terms of who they look like from the entertainment
industry, I'm kind of worried. We've got an old guy with a younger hottie.
They've got will smith and an old guy, but with laser guns. It might be kind of
hard to win this battle, because tj hooker doesn't have laser guns. Maybe Mccain
does though. hmmm.