The Daily Diversion Archive For July, 2004

Wednesday July 7, 2004

What's cool?

Back to back shutouts for the Twins, Park and Ride lots and popsicles.

What sucks?

Waiting to see how much a fine will be, unannounced exit closings and sleep deprivation.

The Twins are back on top in the AL Central and that's how it should be. The White Sox have acquired a decent pitcher for the second half of the season, but I still don't think that will help much. The Twins will be getting Stewart back soon and, if he stays healthy, should be the X factor that will put a few games between them and the Sox.

I've been riding our new light rail transit system instead of parking downtown. I've been using the Park and Ride lot down at Fort Snelling and I have a few observations. The new trains are very nice. They're clean, quiet, smooth and cool. Here's hoping the maintenance crews can keep all this up. The train is fast enough between stops to make you feel that you've made the right choice in transportation. Traffic on Hiawatha is screwed up, mostly due to the LRT itself, but I remember it sucking pretty heavily even before the LRT contstruction began. I think traffic on Hiawatha will speed up once they figure out how to get cross traffic across in a timely manner and when they finish the 55/62 interchange off.

The ride itself is nice, but I find the seats are a bit small and there's not a lot of legroom. I guess I can always diet. A lot of people are saying the LRT is just a boondoggle for the state. This may be true, but LRT is saving me between $3.50 to $6.50 a day in parking fees. To this I can only say yay.

The only fly in this ointment is that MNDOT has decided to close the onramp from HWY 5 to westbound HWY 55 with no notice. This adds a few minutes to my commute. Tuesday I ended up going around the whole stinking airport to get to Fort Snelling. Today I just did the turnaround at the on/off ramp at Post Road. What a pain. I hope they get done soon.

Popsicles. Bomb Pops, root beer float bars and Edy's fruit bars. Yum.

No news on the speeding ticket fine yet. I don't expect the bad news for a while yet. Drag.

Gus has been having difficulty sleeping of late. It takes him forever to get to sleep and once he's asleep, he's not sleeping very deeply. Worse, he's started to get up every half hour to an hour after about 3 AM. This doesn't make for nice sleeping for either Sarah or yours truly. So now I'm kinda doing the zombie thing. I'm good with that as long as it doesn't go for very much longer.

Wednesday July 14, 2004

What's cool?

Bad boy pitchers getting rocked, AL over NL and feeding baby solid foods.

What sucks?

When babies don't sleep, paying speeding tickets and when babies don't sleep.

Wait...

Um...

Huh?

Whatever.

Lack of sleep sucks pretty hard. Gus hasn't been sleeping so well again. We thought we had his ailment covered, but he's up to the same old thing: waking 10x per night. This doesn't leave us with many options for sleep. Since he wants Sarah when he wakes up, pretty much all I can do is to sleep in the guest room. There's no need for both of us to be horribly sleep deprived.

Roger Clemens got his ass handed to him last night by the American League All-Stars. That is as it should be. I think Clemens is a great pitcher-- surely hall of fame material. However, he's not been the keenest sportsman throughout his career. Somehow, it seems fitting that on the night where he picked up some honorary award from Bud (Bastard) Selig, he would get shelled and not return for a second inning in an All-Star start. Thanks to you Mr. Clemens for providing me with a good bit of mirth.

The AL won. Anyone care to guess why? I don't follow the NL much, so I'm kinda amazed to find that save the unbearably stupid All-Star game tie of a couple of years ago, the AL has won like 7 of the last 7 All-Star games. Truly, the pitcher batting doesn't really matter in the All-Star game. Most will get substituted for and that pretty much evens the advantage of the DH. I'd be interested in what anyone would say about this. Special note to Louie: You can't say the NL sucks. We already know that.

Gus is eating solid foods. Well, sorta. He's eating baby food out of jars and pre-chewed stuff. He's doing pretty well, but if anything is too solid, he tends to have a hard time with it. He still doesn't have too much in the way of back teeth, so really solid foods might be a bit of a ways off yet. Speaking of Gus, check the right column for his gallery. There are new pictures in the June and July galleries.

I paid my speeding ticket today. $210. Now that's el sucko. I can think of more than 210 things I'd rather be doing with that kind of cake, but right now, I can think of nothing better to do with $210 than to ransom my driving priviliges. What a deal. I've found out since my trip that New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio are in the top 5 states for writing speeding tickets.

So.

To those three states I say with all due respect, BITE ME.

Friday July 16, 2004

Lileks has had it and so have I. I keep reading the news. Not the mainstream "we absolutely can't say anything positive about the war or our President" media, but the rather more even handed blog/journal media. I keep reading about how we're doing well in Iraq given the situation and how we're doing OK in Afghanistan given the situation and then I read mainstream media and I want to go crawl in a hole and hide. Specifically, I'm talking about incidents such as this and this. I don't fly much, but I must say that I'm starting to be heartily disinclined to do so in the future. Sure, there are air marshalls on the flights and sure, there are security checkpoints and blah blah blah. One of the articles I've read lately said that there are currently airport restaurants behind the security cordon that are using metal knives and forks for their customers.

Okay, what again?!?

Metal knives. Behind the security cordon.

I also noticed on my last trip to the airport last month that most of the concession workers on the concourses are people who are, you know, um, uh, kinda, um, you know, foreign. Minneapolis has a large number of Somalis. Last time I checked, a lot of Somalis are, um, uh, sorta, kinda, um, uhh, muslim. There. I said it.

Yes, the fact that most of the shit jobs out at the airport past the security cordon are staffed by recent immigrants does give me the willywahs. If you work at a place for a long enough time, you know how to bend the rules. Security is only as good as the persistance of the people who enforce the procedures. Although I have no reason to believe that the security screeners at our nation's airports are unprofessional or lax in any way, I have worked in loss prevention and driver education/reeducation. I know and have seen first hand how rules that are there to protect EVERYONE get bent for no reason other than the fact that they're inconvenient. To someone who is persistant about achieving a goal that security is trying to prevent, vigilance will eventually lose. To someone who works a shit job for shit pay and who knows, KNOWS that a beautiful glory awaits them upon the achievement of their goal, vigilance is just a momentary setback. It's just a matter of time.

Thoughts such as these just make me want to just disconnect. I've been a news junkie since I was in 5th grade or so. I started carrying newspapers back then and until the internet became a reliable and convenient way to get news, my fingers were stained with newsprint nearly every day. Now I have tons of different sources. They all tell me different things. Most of the stuff I'm reading today shows me that our print and TV media really have it in for Bush, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel. This dissonance puzzles me.

Bush I can understand. I'm no fan. However, failing to report positive developments from our war front, or cacheing those positive reports inside negative coverage is somewhat bewildering. Why? Why would our media outlets want the U.S. military to fail. Why is France's opinion on anything being given a shred of legitimacy. Everyone says that the U.S. aided Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war. We did. However, France and the USSR/Russia equipped Saddam's ENTIRE army. Those weren't surplus Sherman tanks oru M1s were decimating in Iraq. Those were RUSSIAN tanks. France didn't want Saddam overthrown why? Up to a million Iraqis killed by Saddam wasn't a good enough reason for them? Our left says this war was for oil. Perhaps, but the biggest holder of oil contracts in Iraq was none other than good ol' France. Similarly, who's not encouraging doing anything in Sudan? The holder of most of the oil concessions in that country. France. Should the genocidal government of Sudan be overthrown, France says goodbye to their oil contracts, just as what happened to their contracts in Iraq after our war.

It's not about people, it IS about oil--and the status quo.

Israel's coverage just frustrates me. Here's the only democracy in a cesspool of countries chock full of dictators and religious fanatics and we're being critical of them? Sure the Palestinians got a raw deal, but most of those refugee camps are full of people who never lived in any territory Israel currently occupies. They were Jordanians and Syrians. After Israel was founded and won their first wars, the governments of Jordan and Syria gave the boot to their "Palestinian" populations in order to put pressure on Israel with perpetual "refugee" camps.

The territory beyond the original Israel was won in WAR. Conquered from countries that attacked Israel. Taken from countries who want Israel gone. Israel gave some of that property back, but kept some as a buffer zone between herself and those that would wish her gone.

The Palestinians want a state. Fine. Give them what's left of Gaza. Let them rule it themselves. The only problem is that these people are unworthy of a state. They have trained their children to kill themselves. They live in a cult of death. They want nothing less than no Israel. This hatred of Israel is widespread amongst the middle east.

How do I know that Iran still hasn't developed a nuclear bomb? Because Israel still exists. I figure they won't even test their first bomb. They'll just light it off in Tel Aviv and see if it works.

Anyway, this whole situation makes me want to withdraw. I won't because I'm a sucker for punishment. I do wonder how long it will be before that person with a shit job out at MSP figures out a way to blow up him or herself and half a concourse of innocents so that they can get to their heaven.

They are playing for keeps and we're fucking around. It's not a comforting feeling.

Saturday July 17, 2004

It seems my trusty server crashed sometime within the last 24 hours or so. I was out doing stuff and didn't notice the sites were down for quite a while. I'm not sure why the server crashed. I noticed some things when I rebooted, but I doubt they were the cause. It looks as if the hard drive may be on its last legs. Drag.

Well, this is notice, then. This server may come and go in the next few weeks. I'll try to keep it up as much as possible, but for now I'll just say that until the hard drive gives up completely, I'll be planning what the next box will be like.

More fun.

Wednesday July 28, 2004

I couldn't tell much from the logs as to why this server crashed out last week. I suspect it was just one of those things. I think this server will be reinstalled in the near future. I'd really like to go to FreeBSD 5 in a Stable release, but I'm unsure as to when that will be. Anyway, if it crashes again, then it might be time to adjust my hopes.

Baby is having trouble sleeping again. Actually, it only got as good as tolerable. It seems that he's going to bed OK at night, but he's having a hard time staying asleep. This is in no uncertain terms a bad thing. Tonight I'm moving the crib into another room. I suspect this will lead to a few more days of not much sleep, but at least this is leading us to the way we'd like it to be from now on.

I see the Twins took my advice and started winning. My advice was to win. Simple, really.

I'm sad to see the Twins looking a bit beat-up. I really enjoy watching Mauer catch and hit. I'm very impressed with their pitching staff. Mulholland has proven to be good for his start and Radke and Santana are just dominant. Nothing to complain about there.

Koskie getting plunked three times in a game last night is something to complain about. I have no doubts that all three were accidental. None of them were in the right situations that one might plunk someone on purpose. Perhaps they were just well disguised, I don't know. I don't think much will be made of it due to Hunter's mean collision with the White Sox catcher the other night. I think that it's true that there was room for a slide towards the back of home plate, but I also think that Torii wasn't going to take any chances with the throw coming in. It's hardball. It's the same kind of hardball that gets Koskie two steals on a night he gets plunked 3 times. It's all part of the same cloth that is hard-played baseball. Another example was Punto's excellent try at the put-out in the first inning of Monday's game. He missed the ball and ended up breaking his shoulder. Although I don't think he meant to break himself making that play, the fact he was trying to make that play really set the tone for the way the Twins have been playing the Sox.

I hope it's a sweep. It's only fair as the last time the White Sox were here in town, they swept the Twins. What remains to be seen is if the Twins can hang on to any lead the leave Chicago with.

It is with some sadness that I hear the Twins are looking to deal Doug Mientkiewicz. He's one of my favorites. I really love a decent fielder. I like his approach to the game. I like the fact he doesn't wear batting gloves and pulls his socks way up for that old-fashioned look. I understand this is just baseball, but I don't have to like it much. If he does go, here's hoping he plays everyday and is happy with his new team. Here's also hoping we get something decent for him.