Whoa!

These are the lengths to which certain people will go to in order to circumvent your right to decide your own fate.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4569111

I'm particularily amused by the transparent attempt to prevent the feeding tube removal by congressional Republicans by ordering her to appear before their hearings.

Again I find my personal definition of "Contempt of Congress" validated. However this time I voted against the fellows we have in there now.

Bored

Well I was bored and had been poking around in some blogging software Erik set up and changed my template. This one is different but it's more narrow so the links on my sidebar stretch out more and I'll have to scroll to get to all of them. We'll see how I like this, I suspect it might change again soon.

D'oh

Well we looked up my record and from what I saw I did start working here on 1 November 1995, which makes it ten years this November. Hmmm

I found a new motto for

the neocons.

A couple of weeks ago John sent me a free month of netflix. I signed up and put up a queue and started getting movies I hadn't caught in the theater but wanted to see. Last weekend I saw "Napoleon Dynamite", "Being John Malkovich" and "12 Monkeys". All very odd but I thoroughly enjoyed them. The next on the list was "Mean Girls". That arrived yesterday and I started watching it last night before West Wing (which is followed by South Park and Good Eats).

I found the funniest thing I've heard in quite awhile and it stuck me as a wonderful motto for the neocons.

Homeschooled Boy: "And on the third day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle, so that Man could fight the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals."

I'll prolly finish watching it tonight.

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Schiavo died finally. And reading a summary of the last 15 years it seems that the basis of the whole fight was money. Shortly after her initial incident (which apparently was caused by a potassium imbalance resulting from her bulimia) they won a malpractice case worth a million dollars. Her parents didn't start trying to have him removed as guardian until after the court split the money and gave him 30% of it.

Figures.

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Got a note from the University congratulating me on my 10 years working here. Odd, since I've only worked here 8 years. Let's hope their math skills don't extend to the payroll department!

For the record

And just for the record (for the people who read this that I don't personally know), my sister Robin, died of a brain tumor in 1993. She went through kimo twice and ultimately died because she didn't want to go through it again. Fortunately she was conscious and coherent enough to tell us her decision.

So I'd say this entitles me to something of an opinion on my previous post. I didn't have to make the decision but I've almost BTDT.

Kill me now

Actually this is about Terri Schiavo. Take a look at http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ and the one below it. Of course I don't have any links to sites or blogs talking about the other side of it so I don't have a fair basis for comparison. But then even after finding out about the facts of the case I think I'd side with the husband. If the state law is that he's her custodian and he says her decision was DNR then that sounds like the end of it to me. My first thought was "how could her parents want her to suffer like this?". Then I find a CNN piece with more of the facts of the case (at least they claimed the information was "facts"). I found it interesting that every "medical" opinion that I read was rendered by a lawyer. Now I'm not a doctor (nor have I ever played one on TV) nor a lawyer but I have friends who are (no one person is both). Based on the little I do know, the two professions seem pretty dissimilar. So a lawyer rendering a medical opinion strikes me as pretty oxymoronic.

I can't help but think that the whole situation arose because of some ambulance chasing lawyers got ahold of each side (or even just one side since the other side would then have to get a lawyer) way back when and they don't want to let go of their sugar daddy. 15 years is a long time to go with no improvement despite the claims of the religious right (as long as she breaths and we pray there's hope).

Then the politicians jump on the bandwagon. I maintain that they're doing this so they don't have to do any real work. Work which might require that they take responsibility for their actions or actually make a decision and stand behind it in front of their constituents. Ryan and I were talking about the topic the other day when he was looking at the "Terri Schiavo blog" (apparently a site that's pretty damn funny and incredibly wrong). He was incensed by the amount of money being wasted when I offered my opinion. He's right, while it's sometimes safe to keep politicians busy with this sort of thing (so they don't screw something else up), there are a lot of judges, their staffs and the like, who could be doing things which help society. How far are we from tyranny if the government interceeds in this case. If they can tell me when to die then all the lesser freedoms are, indeed, lost. (yea, that does sound pretty melodramatic but if take it at face value how will we react when they do take some more freedoms away?)

I did hear of one good thing which resulted from this fiasco. More and more people are putting their wishes down on paper, just in case. And overall I think the prevention of litigation is a good thing, especially in this country. Now if we could just stop idiots from getting elected ...

KBIA

Well I did it finally. Found NPR's website and searched for which stations it has here. Then this morning I switched the radio in the bathroom to it instead of listening to the commercials from exceptionally untalented marketing folks on BXR. It was a much calmer morning, I got in to work sooner and wasn't nearly as upset by people's moronic "driving" habits.

They had a piece about the RIAA and they're pursuit of file sharing software manufacturers. It struck me that they claim 2 billion dollars in lost revenue. Do they really think that the people doing this are going to fork over the cash for music and films to them if the illegal avenues are closed down? I'd say probably not, they'll go back to renting videos and copying them with 2 VHS players and borrowing CDs to make copies. So it will just become as difficult/tedious as it used to be rather than as easy as it is now. I don't think the problem will go away until we get some moral backbone into our society again and stop doing things that are illegal. (like that's ever going to happen) Of course if it didn't cost an arm and half a leg for movies or music then there wouldn't be as serious a problem either. But that means that rich people can't engage in as much profit taking and that'll never happen either.

Your sink is clogged, we have to

tear down your house.

It's an ad on TV right now from the AARP talking about Social Security Reform. Their position is that the system needs reform but trashing the whole thing is like tearing your house down when the sink gets clogged.

Given what I know (which is obviously not complete from a fact perspective and from an accounting lack of experience - accounting, wherein one plus one does not necessarily equal two) I can see where they're coming from. If young people put their money into the President's individual account plan then there won't be as much money in the pool itself for older people currently getting benefits to draw from. So benefits will likely drop. Bad for people on it. However over time the situation should improve since the money people put into the program will be ear-marked for them (theoretically, however I don't plan on trusting the government with MY future).

I don't trust the President, I believe that his plan for Social Security is only intended to give his cronies on Wall Street a bone in the form of bunches of Federal money. The general idea that the money you put into the program is tagged for your retirement strikes me as a good concept in principle, however I believe the government and modern politics will munge it up royally. His plan is as short-sighted as most of the rest of American business practices. However their ad didn't propose any alternative and anything I've seen is nearly as short-sighted as the President's plan. A lose-lose proposition.

You may have a cute butt, but ...

I don't really think it's the place to keep your head stored!

Won't accept the truth????

My browser home page is Google News and I saw, at the top of the page, a headline that I thought said "Palestinian Militant Group Refuses to Accept Truth". I thought 'Well duh! That's the major part of the problem, none of them will accept that the others aren't going away.' before I realized it said Truce rather than Truth. It almost sounded like one of the funny Onion headlines.

Erin Go Bragh

<Irish brogue on>
And a happy Saint Paddy's day to ye!
<off>

Been awhile since I posted, been home sick with some sort of sinus thing. It's dried up to the point where I don't have pounding headaches anymore or my nose is sore from the kleenex. However I'm behind on a project so I'd better get to work.

However for some history on the Irish and the holiday, take a look at the history channel's website. (I got 9 of 10 on the Irish quiz!)

Read this book

Sunday I finished reading "In The Company Of Heroes" by CWO 4 Michael Durant. He was one of the blackhawk pilots shot down in Mogadishu in October 1993. It's a hell of a story and a great book. Read it.

It was eerie though, he finished Flight School at Fort Rucker in November of 1983. I graduated from the University of Illinois is June of 1985 and was posted to Fort Rucker for Flight School. By then he had spent a year in Korea and been posted back to Fort Campbell, assigned to the 101st Airborne. If I had finished flight school I could see myself having gone down the path he did rather than becoming a Combat Engineer in Germany. I've been thinking about writing him a letter but haven't decided yet.

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The last game of the Retreat is done now. We played Jason's Fourth Age game and discovered that one of the Palantir was on top of Mount Everest. And Moria is apparently underneath it. Cool. All of us survived this one but it was a near thing in a few cases and it seemed we missed more skill checks than we made!

I'll have the pictures up today some time but the rest of them are already up including a great group shot that Jeff turned into an album cover.

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Tricia told me that they've found some information on the web which describes Matt's behavior very closely so they're going to a new psyiatrist and see if they can't get him tested for this. It's got something to do with lesions on the frontal cortex of the brain. Pretty serious sounding stuff. But if we can get a correct diagnosis then we're that much closer to getting him the help he needs.

Well guess I'd better go get some work done!

We're baaaacckkkk

Well the retreat is over and Great Fun was had by all. The games were all cool and we even had to postpone Jason's Fourth Age game till this Tuesday because he had so much fun with all the others. In Aaron's Fung Shue game Jeff's character could only speak one phrase of English (which it turned out in the end was "Cooper County Sheriff! Get down on the floor" in honor of Garrett's character in Aaron's game last year) and the rest of the time he had to use these printed out "sub-titles" to speak to us. Brand's game was a zombie fest at Six Flags and Jack's was a troop of boy scouts who got zapped over into a fairy tale while camping outside Cincinatti.

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I heard a remark in passing from Garrett the other day about Lorie and the guy she's dating now so I guess that door is finally closed. For the longest time I figured if I gave her room and was nice enough she'd start dating me again but I guess the chemistry just wasn't there. Story of my life actually, so nothing new. But it would be nice to have something work out once in awhile.

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Things with Matthew aren't very good right now. Jon called last week to ask me if he could come stay with me. I was pretty negative on the idea initially and it probably sounded like I was pitching out excuses right and left to avoid it. What would he do during the day when I was at work (and would my house be standing when I got home)? How could I help him with all the behavior problems he has? I asked my doctor friends for some opinions and they weren't too helpful (how could they be when they didn't have anything like a complete history and hadn't seen Matt in person so I don't fault them and am very grateful for their help) but mostly agreed that moving in with me probably wouldn't help a great deal.

I began, however, to emotionally work through my issues with the idea. I got past the "it's not my fault/problem" and into the "it's not their fault, Matt's not their son" and it's certainly not Matt's fault (while some of the things he does ARE his fault he's only 13). I'm fairly certain my sister had no desire to die of a brain tumor and leave her children motherless. Which means it's not really anyone's fault so that issue got set aside.

And I always do right by my family, at least I like to think so. So I knew I would eventually decide to do the right thing (although I'm still not certain what that is). Giving them a break and a chance to be a non-broken family would be the right thing for them, I'm not trained to know what the right thing for Matt is.

I sat at the restaurant on Saturday night (at the retreat) looking at all my friends who are all happily married. Noticing the pretty waitresses (some of whom were married too) and being melancholy about my life and my aloneness (female-wise). But overall I've spent an awful lot of my life pining like this so I really should get over it. Then of course I find out that things really are done with Lorie so that doesn't help.

But I feel better today, about helping with Matt and life in general. Being depressed really just takes too much energy from me anymore so I don't think I will be.

Now THAT'S Bogus!

I heard an ad on the radio this morning for one of the "night school" kind of colleges in town. They were plugging a "Bachelor of Science in Management" degree. As far as I know "management" isn't a science. From where I live (which is to say *not* a manager) it's much more of an art. An art most people who do it don't get (since there seem to be so few good managers). But I suppose you could use psychology (which I've never looked at to see if it's an art or claims to be a science) in your argument that management is a science but to me a science has relatively repeatable results. (I say relatively since sure as shit the first time I make a definative declaration it will prove me wrong!)

If I pick up this keyboard, hold it out over the open air behind me and let it go, chances are awfully good it's going to drop down to the ground, moving toward the center of the largest (densest) body in it's immediate neighborhood. I have yet to have this phenomenon fail. Repeatable results. So gravity is a science. I defy any of the proponents of "management as a science" to display for me repeatable results. (saying this I doubt that anyone will take me up on it but you never know who reads your blog)

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I heard a McDonalds radio ad yesterday making fun of Jacques Cousteau. I thought it was the height of poor taste but that's mostly because I idolize the man. However I realize that he was French with their penchant for drama and screwed up personal lives. And that he often made fun of himself. But since I don't usually eat at McDs my being angry with them and boycotting them really doesn't do much.

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Jack's Aberrant campaign has taken off and we've having a blast. The juvenile-delinquints-with-super-powers are behaving exactly as you'd think 15 year olds with super powers would. hehe

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The Retreat is this weekend. Things seem to have come together and I get the groceries tonight, do a load of laundry and then pack. John and Brand are riding with me, everyone else with Jason and Aaron is driving in. We've got a cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks and games lined up for the weekend. I'll take my digital camera and we'll see what hijinx ensue!

It's started

Well we got word (via the media rather than something through channels) that 60 million dollars of the University's budget would be withheld for three months. "It's yours but we can't give it to you now." Well that sounds like it's not ours. I hope I can keep my job! All these Republican promises about not cutting education funding actually mean squat. Figures. (which is not to say the Democrats would have been any better)

And Blunt is cutting money for programs to aid disabled students too.

It's all a clever plan. If people are less well educated then they may be more likely to believe propaganda which will keep a certain party in power longer. Clever. Very clever. (goes to get his tin foil beanie)