Month: April 2007

Categories
technology

Spam Watch – Refinance Loans

Three days ago I got a great idea from my spam email folder – wouldn’t it be funny to report the vast sums of money I have been approved for to “refinance” my house. I have since saved those refinance spam messages so that I could post the total. I thought it might also be fun to post all the lottery money I am apparently winning in random drawings. Instead I have decided that I will post any interesting information from my spam box when the fancy strikes me.

In the last 3 days I have been approved for $12,428,000 in refinance loans. The beauty of it all is that the largest of these loans is under $500,000. That’s starting to make my credit limit look puny.

Categories
politics

Rudy Giuliani

Another surprise in the endorsements. Before doing my homework I did not expect to find Rudy Giuliani to have good potential as a president. I knew that there were some positions he held which were not consistent with my own views though I do not expect to endorse only candidates whose views fully parallel mine. If I did, I would have to endorse nobody unless I was running – which I can’t quite yet and don’t dream of even when I can.

I found that Giuliani’s views are generally pragmatic which matches the mood of most voters despite any ideological views being espoused by some vocal people. He certainly has the experience of governing and facing tough problems. In short, I endorse Rudy Giuliani.

Categories
politics

Political Prognostication

A random train of thought today brought me to a very interesting destination. Let me preface this by saying that I am not among the ranks of those who would have anyone but Hillary for President although I have no intention of voting for her at this time. For all those in the anyone-but-Hillary camp here’s a hopeful prediction. This is the one and only real chance that Hillary will have to become President of the United States. If she is not elected in 2008 she would be facing an incumbent in 2012. Beating an incumbent president would be much harder than winning what is essentially an open seat in 2008 – unless the next Republican president was as unpopular as George W. Bush has become.

If she were to lose the Democratic nomination and the Democratic nominee were elected she would not even have a chance in 2012 (unless she were to become a Republican -which will never happen) and by 2016 she is unlikely to have the kind of support that she has enjoyed during the last decade. Also by 2016 she will be 68 years old which is older than nearly all the presidents we have ever had. So in reality this is her only real shot at moving back into the White House.

The other side to this story is that if Hillary were to be elected in 2008 she would be a very safe bet to serve two terms because she is smart enough politically to avoid any mistakes which would make her particularly vulnerable as an incumbent.

So my prediction is that Hillary will be President from 2008 – 2016 or else she will never be President.

Categories
culture life

Family Life

I work with the scouts in my area and get to interact a lot with young men because of that. I have noticed a disappointing pattern. Anytime we try to plan an activity the response from at least one, but often more than one, is “I’m busy that day/night/weekend.” Sometimes this is really an indicator that they aren’t interested in the activity, but more often than not it is an actual conflict in the schedules. No matter what we want to do, or when, they have a school activity, a vacation, or practice for a sport, or band, or the school play. The thing that disappoints me is that with so much going on, when do they ever spend time with their families?

As if these boys weren’t busy enough, we try to do activities and campouts for our troop and frequently we find that scheduling is a problem because the district has something planned for almost every weekend – a campout or a merit badge pow-wow generally. It seems like every activity (scouts, football, marching-band) is designed to be all consuming so that you must only choose one thing and devote your life to it.

I have written before about what I call the cellphone culture – this is an example. Once again I am determined that my family will not be like that. I would like to encourage my kids to try activities according to their interests, but I know that I will have to be very careful about how committed we get to the various activities lest our family becomes as fractured as our society. If the kids have similar interests so that they can participate in some things together that would help, but I will not have one child feel obliged to do something just because others want to do it. I expect it will be challenging to encourage the kids to develop their individual interests without compromising the cohesiveness of the family unit.

Categories
life meta

Lunar Day

I enjoyed watching the full moon set this morning as I was out running. I watched as the last wisp of the moon fell behind the mountains in the west. This evening I was driving to the store with my kids and we all watched the moon rise in the east from the first tiny slice of the moon until it was fully risen. How’s that for bookends on the day.

As I came here to post on that and share with my hordes of readers that we got a new tree and many of our flowers in for this year I discovered that the spam bots had discovered my site today.

Thanks to Akismet, nobody had to suffer through anything – not the porn, the dubious pharmaceutical products, nor the offers to lose real money in virtual casinos. What surprised me was that before today only about 10 spam comments had been caught by Akismet (and none missed) and none of them were of the variety mentioned above. Tonight there were over 60 comments that had been caught by Akismet and all of them, unless my skimming missed an anomaly, were of the types listed above. This is much easier to maintain than the blacklists etc. that I was relying on two years ago.

Categories
life

Needed: Waterless Bathing System

Someone needs to come up with a way to get kids clean without involving water or a bathroom. My kids have just used the necessity of a bath as an excuse to break every possible rule in the bathroom. Toothpaste behind the toilet, toilet paper down the sink and water, or the remnants of water, in various unwaterable places.

Truth be told, this is not really about bathing. It’s about a certain unnamed person who has decided after two months of nearly angelic behavior, in which no significant disciplinary action had been necessary, that it is time to find out if the rules will be enforced. This bathroom incident – in which not a single bathroom-related rule was left unbroken – is just one of many tests to see if we have just forgotten to apply the rules.

There was outward disappointment to discover that all privileges magically evaporated for the night. I doubt there will be very many more infractions before the inward rebel goes back into hibernation.