Feelin' Old

I get this way every now and then. 'Course, it seems to happen a bit more frequently nowadays. It was a surrealistic experience yesterday as I attended my niece's high school graduation, and later followed her car to meet up with her family to eat out. I remember when I first met her, she was maybe a few months old. I had just started dating Donna, and her sister-in-law visited college with her newborn. And fer her a McDonald's cheeseburger. (Yeah. I know.)

So 18 years later and she's an adult now. Wow.

Tonight I watched Grease with my family. I have two girls old enough to watch and understand a movie like Grease. I was thinking back to the last time I watched the movie... and I believe it was in college again. What was I thinking about when I watched it last? Could I have imagined having kids of my own, experiencing the sort of things I do with them? Living my life through them, with them, for them?

This summer it's been five years since Donna has been cancer-free. Went to her usual checkup, and they found a lump in her neck - seemed to be squishy enough to not be a cyst or anything serious, more likely sinus-related. But still, they did a biopsy, and Donna has to go in for a CAT scan next week. She called me at work to tell me, and the first thing through my head was "God, no, not again, how could we have the strength to go through that again..."

But we could, and we would. We did it once before, we're just hoping and praying that the doctor was right and it's no big deal.

I'm just feeling... old. And tired.

McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues

Haven't posted in awhile again. I'm going to try and catch up (if I can stay off Facebook long enough - curse you addictive game app programmers! I cannot stay away from Mobwars or Knighthood!).

So this piece was posted yesterday afternoon on Slashdot:

Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks.

I'm an affirmed Obama supporter - it's easy enough to see why from a tech standpoint for anyone who knows me. Just peruse his whitepaper on the subject.

The most telling comment made from the article is this:

Politics can get pretty shallow, but there's more to it than being a bitch for the polls. I think this little Q&A is a case in point. Not the answers themselves, but the people chosen to deliver them. McCain chose a lawyer with strong connections to a major media conglomerate that many of us have reason to loathe. Obama chose a computer scientist with connections to a university that played a big role in creating the Internet. That, by itself, should tell you where there respective priorities are.

And just one final point to leave you with, in response to another post expressing interest in paying more in taxes for the manned space program:

Wouldn't that be a neat option on your tax forms? It would be cool if you could designate x% of your tax dollars to go to some government program (education, military, NASA, CDC, etc). Whatever you are most concerned with would get a boost come tax time. The dollars would go to where we as a nation really want them to go.

I know that there are a lot of problems with distributed government plans, but the reason we have elected representatives as we do is because 200 years ago it was the only feasible way for everyone to have a semblance of a voice. With tech growing as it has (wikis, dBs), the possibility of getting everyone who cares to chime in is no longer an impossibility.

Wikilaws.gov? Congressional budgets via W-4s? I know it would be a disaster, but maybe some hybrid of our current system with a distributed system could work.

Pipe dream? Perhaps. But like he said, wouldn't that be cool if it were implemented?

Free-to-Play MMORPGs

I know I posted awhile back on kicking my MMORPG additcion (well, specifically WoW) but as luck would have it, all this MMORPG news comes across my inbox. I found via Xfire news that there are two free-to-play MMORPGs out.

The first, Metin 2 (ranked #84 on Xfire currently), is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that is packed with great features including quests, guild battles and wars between nations.

The Kingdom that wins the war will gain possession of money and land; those that fought in the war and succeeded will gain Glory, Honor, and earn a higher Military Ranking. Do you want to be a Hero? Join the War!

Last Chaos (ranked #16 on Xfire currently) is a free fantasy MMO in which players can upgrade their courage and battle skills through adventures, quests and crafting skills. It is set in the land of Iris, a place where anarchy, terror and ambition reign after an epic struggle between the Gods.

In addition, Clan of Conan is rolling out soon.

We are only a few weeks away from launching Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and the entire team is working hard with preparing the battlefields of Hyboria for your arrival.

This looks very cool, but again is a pay-to-play. I know it's a business model, and a very good one at that, but it gets awfully expensive after a time. Most MMO players justify this by citing the fact that since they play only the one game, they save the money of buying new games as they come out. Well, that's nice, and I used that justification myself until I realized I was still wanting to purchase new games to play and try out.

So I may give Last Chaos or Metin2 a try. If only they had Linux clients... sigh...

=> Download Metin2 (Xfire)
=> Download Last Chaos (Xfire)
=> Xfire Games Page

Six Ways to Win The Iraq War Debate

(OK, so I've been trying to stay off the political commentaries on my blog. Really, take a look back, I've been biting my tongue so hard it has holes in it. Today, I just have to let this one slip in...)

Posted by Lee Camp at 6:39 AM on April 11, 2008 on AlterNet.

Recently I was arguing with one of my dumber friends about the Iraq war. He loves Bush, and thinks bigger bombs is the answer in Iraq. I wasn't gaining any ground in the argument until I used a simple analogy. I said, "Your solution is like shattering an expensive vase and then saying, 'We need to keep smashing it until it's fixed.'" I stumped him. He was silent. So here's a brief list of other analogies you can use on your dumb friends. And the truth is, I've seen similar ones work on some of the smartest political pundits.

1) The country of Iraq has essentially been demolished. The right-wingers keep saying the answer is continued large-scale military action. That's like if someone got into a car accident, went into a coma, and the doctors believed the patient could be healed by more car accidents. So they just keep putting him into cars and sending him off cliffs.

2) I've heard people say that being against Bush or Petraeus or the war in Iraq is equivalent to being against the troops. That's like if I knew someone who repeatedly sent brave puppies out into traffic. I called that person an asshole for abusing the puppies and abusing their power. Then you accused me of being anti-puppy.

3) The administration talks about the success of the surge because violence has decreased, but we're in fact paying the militias not to kill each other or our soldiers. It's like if you were treading water, two sharks approach and begin biting you, you give each one a small piece of fish to distract them. While they take a moment to eat the fish, you sit there treading water and yelling, "Problem solved!"

4) At the Petraeus hearings, he refused to give any sort of definition for "victory" in Iraq. That's like running a foot race, you've gone 30 miles, you're exhausted, and when you ask your coach driving along next to you how much farther, he just keeps saying "You'll know it when you get there." He keeps saying that until you collapse and die.

5) KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies have huge pull in our government (such as the vice presidency). So essentially they decide when the war is over. They also happen to be making millions upon millions of dollars from the war. So asking them to decide when the war is over, is like asking an ugly guy cast in a threesome porn movie to decide when the scene is over. Chances are the scene would go on for months, if not years. The entire crew would be standing around asking, "It's not over yet? When will we know when it's time to end it?" And the ugly guy would respond, "Um, it's a bad idea to set timetables. Just trust me on this."

6) Lastly, President Bush is like a colorblind child with a Rubik's Cube.

Lee Camp is a comedian and writer in NYC. He tours clubs and colleges across the country, writes for Huffington Post and 236.com, and does comedic commentary for various television shows (but no longer Fox News).

Every GOP Presidential Candidate (Except Ron Paul) Pledges Allegiance to Iraq War

Sorry I've been quiet awhile, things have been busy. Just wanted to pop in for the main reason I will not be voting Republican this election: McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Giuliani think the Iraq war was a GREAT idea.

During Thursday's Republican debate in Florida, moderator Tim Russert asked the candidates: Was the war in Iraq a good idea and has it been worth the blood and treasure we have lost? ...With the exception of Ron Paul the Republicans give mind bogglingly ignorant responses. Giuliani's bullshit about not letting polls (how about the feelings of the majority of Americans Rudy?) push you around might be the worst. Whatever the flaws of the Democratic contenders, not a single one of them would try to argue now that the war was a "good idea", which makes them at least on that level preferable to any of these fools. How could they all be so out of touch?

Follow the link to watch the video on AlterNet.

At least Obama pulled out a win in SC. The results so far show him pretty well ahead of everyone else... but obviously, it's still early.

Huckabee Equates Homosexuality With Bestiality

What a nutjob. Huckabee also managed a "gigantic flip flop and jumped on the largely discredited Tancredo "send all illegal immigrants home" bandwagon." Here's the interview quote from Beliefnet.com, after establishing that marriage has meant "a man and a woman in a relationship for life."

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.

HUCKABEE: Well, I don't think that's a radical view to say we're going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we're going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what's been historic.

Also, Huckabee Channels Man-on-Dog Santorum.

Gah, what a frustrating week...

So all week now I've been working (unsuccessfully) on the same project, trying to reimage these two particular servers. It's just not going well. I've got all the procedures, the scripts to transfer the backups, I know all the files that need edited to make it all mesh together... but it just won't work. I've lost count of the times I've started over to reinstall on the same box. I might be on number eight or nine. And it's not looking good this time either - I mean, having a server with broken processes is fine, I can fix things, but the bloody thing won't even boot all the way properly, and then when I get a login prompt - nada. I type the root user and password, it hangs for a sec and then returns me to the login again. Grr. And I can't get into it remotely which makes me inclined to think I missed something with the networking somehow...

I'm about ready to thrwo in the towel and broadcast a request for help to those more knowledgable peers of mine. I was hoping, after having taken a break yesterday to "work from home" (hmm, yet my Xfire shows quite a few hours logged into my new Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II game, curious...) due to the snow storm, I'd be ready to tackle this with fresh energy. Nope. It's just pissing me off more.

Well, let me go back into the server room and see if it's booted all the way yet.

I don't think I've been in my actual office since Monday. (I'm at the NOAA buildings right now. Nice not having anyone looking over my shoulder tho...)

Anyways, y'all have a nice holiday weekend. Go do something for the community on Monday, keep the dream alive.

Who Owns Your Social Data? You Do, Sort of

Another post from Slashdot on 2008.01.04 questions just how much of our information online is actually ours to do with as we like...

Mad about Facebook's treatment of Robert Scoble? 'The idea for people to move their social graph from one service to other is a fabulous benefit,' Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales told eWEEK. 'To me, it's a benefit to customers. People should be very wary about services that are uptight about that kind of thing in an effort to lock you out of the customer.' The problem is that while the profile data may be yours and yours alone, your address book contains the names and e-mail addresses of your friends, family and business contacts. So who owns the data?

Robert Scoble was booted off of Facebook and lost all his profile info (including over 5000 friends) for alpha testing an upcoming feature of Plaxo Pulse. According to Robert:

It is a Facebook importer that works just like any other address book importer... it’s trying to connect Facebook names with names in its database.

For instance, it learned that of the 5,000 people in my Facebook account about 1,800 were already on Plaxo.

Apparently he was just trying to sync up his Facebook contacts who were in Plaxo into his Outlook address book. But, as it went against the TOS, he got the boot.

Scientist Suggests We Explore 'Universe is a VR Simulation' Theory

Slashdot post from 2008.01.04:

A New Zealand physicist has written a paper saying that physicists should seriously explore the possibility the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation. He says that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation and also claims his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more. It should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis too. He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual.

I know we've talked about this before (not that I can find the post)... I think he's just watched the Matrix one too many times...

HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix

On Slashdot today, Jeremiah Cornelius points us to Davis Freeberg's blog, where he discusses his "nightmare scenario" of losing access to his DRM-protected purchases by upgrading his PC monitor.

"When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue. Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup."

Could there possibly be any remaining questions as to why DRM is evil, and benefits only the corporations?

Politics, Politics, Politics...

So looks like the Iowa Caucus results are mostly in. Obama came out on top of the Dems, and Huckabee for the Republicans. Fruitcake Ron Paul got only 10% (my apologies to my republican friends who like the man, but he is a certifiable nut).

AlterNet has some interesting perspectives on what Barak Obama's win means for everyone (even if it is only one caucus in one midwestern state):

Obama's win gives us all hope. It signifies the kind of country we imagine ourselves being: optimistic, forward-looking and unafraid to take risks...

Unfortunately Clinton's campaign rode the same fear-mongering horse that Bush and Cheney have been flogging to death, this time directed at Obama (Be afraid of something new, something different. He might meet with our enemies. His middle name is Hussein. He went to a madrassa school. A vote for him would be like rolling the dice..) - and funny enough, Obama beat Hitlery (sorry, had to throw that bone back to the Ron Paul fanatics) by a decent margin (9%) in what was supposed to be a dead heat three-way tie. Huh, go figure.

Further question posed: Why should ABC and Fox get to decide who is a viable candidate for president?

And in case you're wondering as I am, why Iowa and New Hampshire are considered such a huge caucus deal when they just don't represent a good cross-section of the American electorate, AlterNet ponders the same.

It seems like we go through this every four years. People bitch and moan about the inflation of importance (and influence) of early primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa in selecting presidential nominees. According to an AP article today, neither state represents a true cross section of the American electorate…

The AP article in question discusses the frustration that voters in other states feel with the current nominating process.

According to national survey conducted for The Associated Press and Yahoo News, just over half of all voters said New Hampshire and Iowa have an extraordinary amount of influence over who wins the two nominations.

Doesn't seem to draw any conclusions or offer any insight as to what could change. They just seem to quote people defending the process. Ah well. Unsurprisingly, the Iowans and NH residents who participated in the survey didn't have a problem with their state's influence on politics (actually, the NH folk want more).

But out of all the news bits that have come across from yesterday (and I'm sure there are already pundits theorizing on a Obama-Huckabee matchup) there was one particularly interesting insight I found on CNN.com that I wish to close with. What isn't remarkable about the Iowa Dem caucus is the fact that Obama beat out Clinton and Edwards. What is remarkable is the way he did beat them, by beating his opponents across a stunning demographic spectrum.

Obama won Democrats, Republicans and independents; men and women; and virtually every income bracket. People most worried about the Iraq war gave him their vote. So did voters most concerned about the state of the economy. And those whose top priority is fixing the nation’s health care system.

Huckabee seems to have pulled off his expected demographic: evangelicals. Though he managed to attract a wide demographic of income and age (excluding the over-$100K income bracket).

So, stuck with the system we have still, we move on to New Hampshire. Can Obama keep his lead? Will Clinton change tactics, or stick to the same? Can Edwards still prove he's a contender?

And will Huckabee, faring well in a state where more than half the voters are evangelical, make a similar showing in the (admittedly) less-pious demographic of NH?

EDIT: I just came across a very funny piece on the Burbia blog. They had written a prior article questioning why we're holding caucus' in IA and NH, and got some very funny outraged replies, mostly from Iowans. In short, they say "Get over yourselves."

101 Things in 1001 Days

I'm constantly amazed by Felicia Day, by her focus and drive and creativity in putting together the Guild movies and with her blog posts on the Flog... but this latest has blown me away. This is something that her brother has put together as well, and I recall her mentioning previously that there was a movement of sorts online for people to assemble such lists. But there it is now, in all its glory, 101 things to accomplish over the next 1001 days. Wow. I'm feeling partly motivated to do something similar myself, and partly intimidated on the organization this would require for my cluttered and preoccupied and distracted mind.

If I want to do this I need to get hopping. 1001 days from Jan 1 would be... let's see, 3 years is 1095 days, so that would be late 2010... ok, somewhere around late September 2010. Hm. Maybe it's not as urgent as I thought. Heh.

Some of the things I see on Felicia's list include a running task list, like things to do weekly. I think if I were to do this I would lean more towards actual accomplishments that I can tick off and say "yep, did that!" Heck, I could make a whole category for Home Improvement. That may take up half the list...

I shall dwell upon this further.

Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America

Published on AlterNet, December 29, 2007. Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag.

"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater ... Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later ..."

Read more...

Why is it...

...the train only runs 20 minutes late when the wind chill is 10 below freezing.

My unmentionables have been frozen in carbonite.

Merry Christmas Daddy

Last night I was sitting here at my computer in the study when I heard a loud BANG out front and the sound of tires pealing out. I go out and find the inflatable Penguin deflated with holes and a very large tear in it. Great, the damn neighborhood teenagers have struck again. Awesome. Merry friggin' Christmas.

So after we got home from the Girl Scout outing to the Belle Boyd house (Confederate spy) Carrie is helping me finally string up the icicle lights around the house when she notices the Penguin was down. ("Medic! We got a large balloon penguin down, need bandages stat!") I'm not about to tell her the reason why he's been mortally wounded, so I just explain that he's got a hole in him and won't work.

Carrie proceeds for the rest of the half hour we are out there to declare how awful it is that the poor penguin is hurt, and people will think we're crazy to leave something broken in the yard, the penguin is just her favorite and I just HAVE to fix him, and did you know Daddy that Christmas is my favorite time of the year? (Yes sweetie, you are your mother's child.)

We wrap up and clean up outside, get everything put away in the garage and pull in the cars in anticipation of the inclement weather. And after she goes inside with her parting shot (Merry Christmas, Daddy!) I stand there looking at the roll of duct tape. Well, crap. I'm freezing, tired and dirty, I just want to go inside and warm up and enjoy the time with my family (the girls were soon to depart for a movie and a night over at their friend's house).

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the next 20 minutes or so were spent sitting on the cold ground, cussing at the bloody cute penguin and the damn dung-eating punks of the neighborhood and doing a field surgery proceedure with the roll of duct tape.

He's looking a little worse for wear but he's fully inflated and waving merrily at the neighborhood again. (C'mon punks, is that the best you got for me??)

Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas. ;-)

Those damn kids!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning... Uphill BOTH ways... Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! ! We had to actually write somebody a letter with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a friggin fire ... Imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled!!!!!!!!!

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!


Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

Abstinence

In A Stunning Development, Telling Horny Teenagers To Save It For Jesus Proves Ineffective

Gee, no one could've predicted this.

In a troubling reversal, the nation's teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years, surprising government health officials and reviving the bitter debate about abstinence-only sex education.

The birth rate had been dropping since its peak in 1991, although the decline had slowed in recent years. On Wednesday, government statisticians said it rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.

The reason for the increase is not clear, and federal health officials said it might be a one-year statistical blip, not the beginning of a new upward trend.

However, some experts said they have been expecting a jump. They blamed it on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education that doesn't teach teens how to use condoms and other contraception.

Some key sexually transmitted disease rates have been rising, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The rising teen pregnancy rate is part of the same phenomenon, said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.

"It's not rocket science," she said.

I think the pic says it all.

And though I dread having the conversation with my girls (not the birds and the bees, already had that with Katie, but I'm dreading the birth-control talk) when they hit teenagehood we're having one. And dammit, if my dad could buy me condoms, I could do the same for my kids.

We'll see what my wife says. LOL

Bush White House Tries to Redefine "Truthful"

There are some blog posts you come across, where merely paraphrasing or linking to it just wouldn't do justice. This, my friends, is one of those. So I'll repost the whole thing. This came from AlterNet, written by Steve Benen, and originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report.

--

The problem with Bush's fairly transparent lies about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran isn't just that they're obvious; it's that they're clumsy.

Asked when he learned about Iran's halted nuclear-weapons program, the president said it was "last week." White House officials then conceded it was actually in August.

Asked about the August briefing, the president said the Director of National Intelligence told him there was "new information," but "didn't tell" him what it was. White House officials then conceded Bush was told that the August briefing included a discussion about Iran possibly having suspended its nuclear program four years ago.

Asked about any warnings he may have received in August about toning down his rhetoric on Iran, the president said, "[N]obody ever told me that." White House officials then conceded Bush was told to "stand down" when it came to Iran, advice the president chose to ignore.

This isn't complicated. When Bush says one thing, and then White House officials tell us that reality is something different, then necessarily what the president told us wasn't true. Now, this could qualify as a lie (if he knew the truth at the time), or it could qualify as incompetence (if he just doesn't know what he's talking about), but it really has to be one or the other.

Unless, of course, you're the White House press secretary.

"OK, look. I can see where you could see that the president could have been more precise in that language. But the president was being truthful."

I can enjoy rhetorical parsing as much as the next guy, but in no way is it possible to characterize obviously-false remarks as "truthful," unless the Dana Perino changed the meaning of the word when no one was looking.

It's gracious of Perino to concede that Bush could have been "more precise," but precision isn't really the problem here. When "last week" is "last August," Bush is being more than just imprecise. When not being aware of new information becomes being aware of new information, those are opposites, not shades or degrees.

Also from the briefing, CNN's Ed Henry, building off a report from the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, brought a new angle to all of this.

Q: Can you just clarify one more thing? What day was the president actually briefed on the NIE?

PERINO: I don't know. I don't know.

Q: Well, because Mr. Hadley left the impression that it was last Wednesday.

PERINO: Oh, on the NIE, specifically?

Q: On the NIE.

PERINO: Yes, last Wednesday.

Q: Last Wednesday? OK. But there have been reports that the president briefed Prime Minister Olmert last week, maybe on Monday.

PERINO: I don't know.

Q: Did he brief Prime Minister Olmert? And how could he brief Olmert on Monday about a report that he found out about on Wednesday? Can you...

PERINO: I don't -- I will check.

And just for the fun of it, I thought I'd mention that according to the standards Ken Starr established in 1998, if a president is caught lying -- even in response to a reporter's question, whether he's under oath or not -- it's an impeachable offense. That's not my standard; it's Ken Starr's.

Just sayin'.

--

Personally, in terms of qualification (lie vs. incompetence) I'm just as likely to believe that he's a fracking moron.

The Constitution

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.

Insomnia

It's pretty rare that I can't fall asleep at night. I mean, when my body is used to getting up at 4-5am, it lets me know that its ready to crash pretty early. Even if I do try to be a night owl at times still.

So I have no idea what was up with me last night. No pun intended. I lied awake in bed for hours. My youngest was in bed with us for a time as she couldn't sleep (scary book) but she fell asleep first. Carried her into bed. Then Donna falls asleep. And I'm still lying there. Nothing is working, no counting sheep, dreaming of peaceful meadows, nada. I get up at midnight, thinking I'll read a bit until I was tied enough. Finally went back to bed at 2am. I think I fell asleep by 2:30am.

And then got up at 5:15am.

Somehow I'm operating on under 3 hours of sleep. Not quite sure how, actually. Caffeine? I drank a Diet Mountain Dew this morning to get me to the train (remarkably, didn't sleep past my stop, and kept waking up the whole trip, so nope, no sleep caught up on there), and I'm drinking another now. I am armed with my trusty Bawls Mints.

At some point I fully anticipate walking hallucinations.

Speaking of which: This morning on the Sirius Big 80's channel (thank you God for satellite radio) they were talking about the sold-out Motley Cruise. Yep, a cruise with big-name hairbands and personae like Vince Neal, Ratt, Skid Row, and Slaughter performing. On a cruise ship.

Could there be anything to top that in ultimate coolness?

Well, true there is this:

Hm. Yep that would do it. Heh, the Emperor on the cowbell. LOL. Wait, what were we talking about again?

I'm actually working on a genuine article to post. Well, two really. I need to do my own review of Call of Duty 4. The multiplayer side, as I haven't finished the singleplayer yet. Or I could just rip off another person's review (well, not rip off, I just repost and give credit, but it's still a wimp-out). But I was mentally making a list of things I have actually accomplished in life. We'll see when I can get to it. Especially as I've got an afternoon filled with meetings, and I need to get home on time so Donna can get off to her work.

So, no hallucinations yet.

Though my Yoda figurine keeps looking at me funny...