A mere 48 hours ago, I was sitting on a second floor balcony overlooking the intersection of Bourbon Street and Orleans Avenue. Going back to work today was a definite letdown.
Although my aunt’s funeral wasn’t the happiest reason to visit New Orleans, I spent three days catching up with assorted friends, relatives, and various extended families. I’m glad I went.
Category Archives: Assorted Ramblings
Wylie's Recipe Book
Pooched Eggs are one of Wylie’s all-time favorite breakfasts. Every morning he curls up on the couch, watching me in the kitchen, waiting to see if this treat will be forthcoming.
Pooched Eggs
In a bowl, combine two eggs with three teaspoons of milk.
Melt a small pat of butter in a frying pan over medium heat. As the butter finishes melting, add the egg mixture. As the eggs begin to set, stir the mixture with a spatula, allowing more of the liquid to come in contact with the pan. Continue until no liquid remains and the egg mixture has solidified.
Serve over a bed of kibble.
Feeds one.
Variants: This recipe also works with small pieces of ham or sausage stirred in. Instead of scrambled eggs, you can substitute fried, dogs aren’t overly fussy about that sort of thing. Dogs are omnivores, so stirring in small amounts of vegetables should be OK, just don’t go overboard (Wylie doesn’t want a huge chunk of tofu either).
Every Time Someone Says "Maverick", You Take a Drink
Well that wasn’t what I expected. I missed last week’s Presidential debate, but tonight’s debate between Vice-Presidential candidates was interesting.
I particularly liked how well the candidates spoke of not only their opponent, but also of their opponent’s primaries. (And that was interesting too. This is the first time I’ve heard someone refer to the Presidential candidates as “primaries” relative to the veeps.) I don’t think anyone pulled their punches, but it was a very civil debate. One such nice touch, almost lost amidst the applause, was when the two candidates came out and Sarah Palin asked Joseph Biden, “Can I call you Joe?”
A pleasant surprise: Based on debates I’ve watched in the past, I fully expected the initial question to be ignored so the candidates could thank the moderator, the presidential debate commission, their families, the American People, God Almighty and anyone else they could think of for allowing them to appear there instead of actually answering the first question. Instead, both of these candidates were brief with their thank yous and actually spent some time giving meaningful answers.
I liked this debate format. I know there’s some controversy surrounding the choice of moderator, but I liked how the candidates were given a choice of responding to an immediate question or responding instead to previous comments. It gave the entire proceedings more the air of a conversation rather than an argument. (I’m quite tired of the endless arguing, hearing a conversation was nice!!!) Having questions that were directed at each candidate, more along the lines of “Tell us about yourself” instead of another point to debate was also a nice touch. (The sort of stuff we want to know about who the candidates instead of about their policies.)
Also surprising: I hadn’t expected to hear a Republican candidate use the word “blunders” (plural!) in reference to the current administration’s actions in Iraq. That earns Governor Palin a nod of respect that she’s willing to publicly think for herself rather than toe the party line.
More memorable points:
Both candidates agreeing about gay marriage. Not whether it should be allowed, but rather the point that a lot of people seem to be overlooking: instead of fighting over the meaning of the word “marriage,” folks should instead be discussing the civil rights of committed couples.
Senator Biden’s tears. When Biden spoke of knowing what it was like to be the only parent, “to not know if your child was going to make it” there were tears in his eyes. Instead of making him look weak, to me he looked stronger. (Joseph Biden’s first wife and year-old daughter died in a traffic accident in 1972. His two sons were critically injured but survived.)
Exxon Mobil’s Windfall profits. It seems that the Obama-Biden ticket is deadset on taxing Big Oil’s “windfall profits.” This makes me nervous. How will they tax non-US companies? And is it really fair to tax them because of the dollar amount? Sure, Exxon Mobil has profits in recent years that are larger than those of any other company in history.
People love to go on about that. But those are only record profits when you measure them in dollars. If you instead measure them as a percentage of revenue (the “margin”), they’re relatively small, something like 20%. By comparison, companies in the software industry tend to have profits in excess of 30%.
The difference is that our lifestyle is built on cheap oil, not cheap software. so “Big Oil” is an easy target. Beyond that, I’m just not comfortable with the government deciding how much profit is “acceptable” and how much is “too much” based on the passions of the moment.
Overall, I think Senator Biden “won” versus Governor Palin. I’m looking forward to visiting FactCheck.org to see who was right, but there were several times where Biden corrected Palin along the lines of, “I know which vote you’re talking about and here’s the background of why I [or Obama] voted that way” or “I know which vote you’re talking about and here’s the details you’ve left out.”
All in all, I found the debate informative. I’ve not made up my mind yet, but it was all useful input.
One question though, did anyone count how many times the two candidates used the word “maverick”?
Mantis
At least once a year I find a Praying Mantis somewhere around the house. (This time on the back of the house, about two feet from the basement door.) I’ve seen a number of them (including some young, less than half an inch in length), but this is probably the best photo I’ve taken of one to date.
Geek Humor
using System;
using System.Reflection;
namespace GeekHumor
{
public class MyMadness
{
public bool There()
{
return true;
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Type t = typeof(MyMadness);
MemberInfo mi = t.GetMethod("There");
if(mi != null)
Console.WriteLine("There is a method to MyMadness.");
else
Console.WriteLine("There is no method to MyMadness.");
}
}
}Build that, run it, and you’ll at long last have a solid demonstration that There is indeed a method to MyMadness.
Explaining the Financial Meltdown
Katie sent me a link yesterday to a “SubPrime Primer” which gives you the background on the whole subprime fiasco. It seems like a fairly accurate if jaded description of how we got into this mess.
When I bought my house nine years ago, I had no end of people telling me how instead of a fixed rate mortgage, I should have gone with an lower adjustable rate mortgage and refinanced to a fixed when the rate eventually went up.
Yeah. That would have been a good plan.
I’m a bit nostalgic for the days when “conservative” meant “cautious.” Nowadays it seems to mean “reckless.”
Happy Anniversarry to Me!
Today makes three years since my first post. This is my 457th post covering 14 very loosely defined categories, resulting in some 337 comments (not counting the several bazillion spam comments I’ve deleted). And with all that, the exact purpose of Dividing by Zero is still not defined. There may be a trend here.
An Unfortunate Resemblance to Miss Spears
Despite all the hints and tips on the last go-round, I regret to report that: Oops, I did it again. (At least this time I caught it before the exploding stage.)
Putting It Back Together
It’s been a while since the last update on putting the house back together. Part of that’s because when it comes to putting things off, there’s nothing amateur about it, I’m a pro-crastinator. But I have been making some progress lately.
One of the big changes is that the home office is somewhat back together, albeit in a different room.
In addition to the desk, the bookcases have made their way out of the basement along with a large percentage of my books and the big bulletin board. There’s even space for a chair for a second person!
For the first time in the nine-plus years I’ve lived in this house, none of my houseplants are on a tem-permanent card table!
A few months before the big renovation project started, the house started falling apart when the railing going to upper floor pulled out of the wall. The railing needed to come down anyhow so I could paint, so it went into the basement for a while. As of this evening, the railing’s back on the wall.
And now for the next project:
Hurricane Damage
Looking through photos of the devastation left by Hurricane Ike, what really strikes me isn’t the photos of the damaged houses, or even the incongruity of photos such as a boat in the middle in the middle of the interstate.
No, the thing I find most surprising is the occasional photo showing where an entire neighborhood has been removed from the face of the Earth, but one or two houses remain, apparently unscathed. That just blows me away.