Entry 55: Olio

I went to brunch in Stockton last weekend with some folks. Stockton is an island across the Hunter River from Newcastle. There are bridges into it, but we took the ferry. There is nothing particularly interesting about Stockton, but it was somewhere new to go, so I went. At brunch, I ordered pancakes and didn’t particularly enjoy them. They were too cakey and sweet, and they didn’t serve the syrup on the side, so I couldn’t ration it out properly. The side of bacon was the only saving grace of the meal.

Anyway, a few pics.

[The ferry to Stockton from Newcastle.]

[An aerial shot of Stockton I pulled off the Internet.]

[A big ship photographed from Stockton.]

[NBA legend John Stockton. The best white American basketball player of the past 20 years, and the last guy to rock the nuthugger shorts.]

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I haven’t been sleeping enough lately. Midnight is really the cut off for me and for a variety of reasons (most of which involve me and crossword puzzles), I haven’t been hitting that mark recently. S is away at the moment, which throws me off a little bit, but it’s mostly just that I don’t like going to bed at night. I once heard somebody say, when you go to bed, the night wins. That’s how it feels to me.

As a result of going to bed late, I’ve been tired at work which hurts my production. On Wednesday, I felt hung over all day, and I didn’t have a single sip of alcohol the night before. From a productivity standpoint, I would probably be better off sleeping in when I’m that tired and going in to work late, but I’m worried that that’s a slippery slope. I want to maintain normal working hours. I don’t want to slide back into the 12pm – 4am hours I carried for much of grad school.

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I started a new thing: not showering. OK, that’s not completely accurate. I just shower less, and when I do it’s a quick rinse-soap-rinse. I only shampoo about twice a week now. It’s going good so far. I don’t feel nor appear any less clean, and I don’t waste a bunch of time scrubbing myself with all sorts of exfoliants and cleansers just because “society” says I have to.

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I’ve been following this Scott Walker/Wisconsin story a little bit. I’m disappointed in the outcome. In general, I have mixed feelings about unions, but agree whole-heartedly with the following commentary by Paul Krugman.

“Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.”

This move is an obvious power grab for Walker and his big-money financiers (the Koch Brothers). It only ostensibly has to do with balancing the state budget. This is made glaringly obvious by the fact that the unions were willing to make big concessions, but Walker refused to negotiate with them. It’s amazing to me that everybody doesn’t see right through Walker’s bullshit.

I read a piece about how some democrats are calling this "a gift", saying essentially that Walker won the battle at the expense of the war, because this new law will be such a big rallying point. It sounds like a lot of spin to me, but this article by respected analyst Nate Silver indicates that there could be some truth to it.

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I mentioned Paul Krugman above. I used to listen to him when he would appear on the old “The O’Franken Factor” (what a great radio program that was), but only recently have I started reading his column (and blog) regularly. I highly recommend him. He’s the mainstream columnist whose political views are the closest to my own (great minds think alike). He’s left-leaning, but doesn’t give dems a pass on anything, and he doesn’t automatically vilify republicans and big business. He’s just a good thinker and a solid columnist. Actually, we could use people like him in office, but I think people like him are turned off by the idea of holding office, which is part of the reason we have such shit leaders.

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Speaking of great minds I caught an “error” in a rerun of the TV show “The Big Bang Theory”. In the episode, Sheldon has to teach a class. Afterward, Howard asks Sheldon, “So, how did your lecture go?” To which Sheldon responds, “In a word, triumphant.” Would somebody as smart and pedantic as Dr. Sheldon Cooper really use the adjective “triumphant” when the adverb “triumphantly” is appropriate? That’s what we should all be asking ourselves right now.

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I had to change a password today as part of a regular security update. I hate doing this. Somebody needs to invent some way that people can have online security without having to remember a bunch of passwords, because it’s a serious hassle. Also, why can’t we just come to a password consensus about the characters that can / have to be in a password (some can’t have numbers, some must have numbers, some must have a capital letter, some aren’t case sensitive, some require a non-alpha, non-numeric character, etc.). I don’t think any characters should have to be in a password. Doesn’t this shrink the password search space, thus making things less secure? If you have a 4-10 character password and any one of those characters can be a number, then that will give you more possibilities than if one of those characters must be a number. Therefore, it seems to me, the former is more secure than the latter. So why do so many sites require the latter in the name of security?

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Mike Tyson has to be one of the funniest dudes of all time. Sadly, most of the time he doesn't know he's being funny (or he's the greatest Andy Kaufman-esque comedian ever). Watch this clip of him on Ellen. The funny part starts at 1:45. He must mean The Michelin Man?