yael

OK, it's been three months. I've gotten my breath back. I can post again now, right?

This is one crazy-ass world.

She's finally at peace. We were all with her.

Thank you all for the slew of kind text messages and e-mails and voice mails and comments. I'm not really sure what to say except that I appreciate each of you so much. There is not much other condolence to be found in this world.

Hey guys.

I expect this is probably the hardest post I've ever made, and a difficult favor to ask, but I have to anyway.

I've been spending the weekend watching my mom die slowly and painfully. I'll spare you the details--rest assured it's been the most soul-rending, horrifyingly unbearable event in my life. We got to say our good-byes, hear her last wishes, at least. Now she's lying unconscious indefinitely on a morphine drip because the Powers That Be can't do anything other than 'make her comfortable'. She has DNR and DNI orders, but this is no way to live, or die for that matter. She expressed her wish to die before she slipped into her hypoxic state, and has always made clear that she would never, ever want to live this way.

And so, my friends, I beg you to pray or hope or wish or whatever you do that my mother will pass away peacefully and quickly and mercifully and that this already agonizingly drawn-out affair can come to an end, so that she can finally be at peace and that my family can properly begin to grieve. It would be the tiniest sliver of relief to me to know that others have us in their thoughts.

Thank you all, and now please go tell your family members you love them.

-Y

On the one hand, they don't support the Boy Scouts and they do support Planned Parenthood and similar orgs. On the other, I despise their accounting, their ethics, and how lots of businesses strongarm their employees into donating.

Yep, we just got handed the annual United Way form and were commanded to return them to our secretary because apparently she has to show "them" "100% acknowledgement". This bothers me. First of all, this is not my job. I am not required to do a goddamn thing with any donation form. Second, we JUST got an e-mail reminding us that project policy prohibits any kind of personal, political, or religious solicitation over company e-mail lists (emphasis on lists), because all of this shiznit is gov't-funded and intended for business purposes only. How does United Way get a pass?

I am tempted to provide "acknowledgement" by means of a big Sharpie'd "LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE" where I'm supposed to write "No contribution this year".

What would you do in my situation? Be nice and just do what they ask? Or is there some subtle (or not-so-subtle) way of expressing discontent?

I can't wait for this campaign to be over if only so I can stop getting those damn donation solicitations in my e-mail every day.

That said, only two months to go. Anyone up for another round of donation-matching? You give, I match. Or, I give, you match. Or, I give, and five of you match. Whatever. I can start low. I'm curious to see at what level people would start matching me. $20? $10? $5?

Your motivation should be this: Who will John McCain put on the Supreme Court? What would Sarah Palin's first executive order be?

I signed up for some Jewish community thing a while back. I mean, I'm not entirely comfortable with limiting my friends by ethnicity, but it's better than nothing as far as meeting people goes, at least until my time here is up and the ship sails on.

Anyway, those bastards put me on some stupid singles mailing list, and I'm sure anyone who knows me would see my blechhh face. So I get these periodic e-mails inviting me to some or other speed-dating event. Then I get an e-mail again, hours before the actual event, saying, "We're short on women! More women need to come by!" but NOT LOWERING THE PRICE FOR WOMEN. Seriously, they want women to come and pay $30 so the organizers' desperate asses can get people to keep coming to these sausage-fests? Have they not noticed what every nightclub for about a billion years has been doing? LADIES FREE. Or FREE DRINKS FOR THE LADIES. OR LADIES [some trivial cover charge].

Stupidity pisses me off more than usual today. Also I am mosquito-bite covered and my muscles are broken and the Potomac is kicking my ass.

Here is the relevant information about Joe Biden, culled from Wikipedia, which for the sake of this list we will assume is accurate.

Good Things About Joe Biden:
1. He opposes school vouchers.
2. He opposes Arctic drilling.
3. He's for biodiesel but not ethanol.
4. He was given an 'F' by the NRA.
5. He's mostly pro-Mexican. (See #2 below.)
6. He voted to repeal tax subsidies for companies that outsource.
7. He voted for more restrictions on personal bankruptcy.
8. He's pro-my kind of health care.
9. He opposes abstinence education in Africa. (See #1 below.)
10. He's pro-Israel.
11. He supports stem cell research.
12. He's been mostly pro-choice, and opposed parental notification laws.

Bad Things About Joe Biden:
1. He's for abstinence education in the US.
2. He wants to build that bloody wall with Mexico. Seriously, do we have nothing better to do with our money?
3. He essentially wrote the PATRIOT Act--in 1995.
4. He opposes 'nuclear proliferation', which is secret code for NIMBY/NIABY, despite nuclear power being more or less the cure for everything.
5. He wants to continue the Cuba embargo.
6. He voted for the 'Partial-Birth' Abortion Ban Act.
7. He's virulently anti-drug, despite his generally liberal views on criminals.
8. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act.

Eh. Not impressed. Would like a real liberal in government now plz, thx.

"An area LOI console will be ... located remotely."

LOI = Local Operator Interface

Decipher and/or extract meaningful information from the following:

"Interface to the Profibus radio has been proven via the Seller's testing of the radio via the radio interface."

Guhhhhh brain bleeds

To Japan for two weeks! Enjoy the rest of July, everyone. :)

Please tell me some of you can't bear to watch the stock market any more either...

(Well, at least my commodities futures are doing well.)

Please share with me your Google Reader feed! :)

Mine: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06527810992302446061

So... raise your hand if you busted out laughing or at least nodded in agreement at today's XKCD. :D

Apparently I'm incapable of investing competently (in my defense I only seem to find spare cash during bear markets), so I think I'm going to start putting money into my car. As I need the occasional break from reading vendor manuals, here is some speculation about things that can be done to my car. This is just speculation, most, possibly all, of this stuff will not be done. You can stop reading now if my car talk bores you to tears. (Prices shown are just parts, not labor.)

-- APR Stage I ECU Upgrade. $599. (More likely $748 if I want to be able to run it stock at will.) The first step for any wannabe modder, this adds 52 hp (when you're filling up with 93) and nearly 100 ft-lbs of torque. Jeebus. As it is my tires can't keep contact with the ground under full throttle. Easiest, least intrusive modification you can do.

-- that said... New frickin' tires. Even with the TPMS, I think all four can be replaced for less than $1000.

-- New windshield. $500. Stupid giant crack will make me fail inspection some day.

-- FSI Intercooler. $1049. This is a must with any other performance mods.

-- Quad-tip cat-back exhaust. $1229. (+$533 +painting for the Oettinger bumper it's designed for) OK, so even I will give into vanity on occasion... c'mon, at least it's not bloody taillight masks or ground skirts or something ridiculous.

-- I lied... one other vain thing I'd want to do is get my brake calipers powder-coated orange to match the rest of the car. (They're red now.) No idea how much this would cost.

-- Kenwood Excelon in-dash nav/DVD. ~$2000. I'd really like in-dash navigation, but I'm hesitant to tear up my interior just yet. If I were doing this, I'd also want to replace the speakers which could reasonably be done for under $500. Hell, the speakers will probably be changed long before then.

-- APR Stage III turbo upgrade (includes intercooler and fuel pump.) $7299. (Plus cost of replacing "engine internals" as recommended.) 383 hp. 332 ft-lbs torque. Hahahahahahahahaha. A girl can have wet dreams too, right? Unfortunately it's only available for manual transmission GTIs, which is weak. DSG is superior.

-- Some wildly overpriced boost valve. $389. It's made of 6061T6 so it must be good, right?

-- 14" Brembos -- just fronts. $3320. Or apparently you can get OEM brakes from an R32 for like $1900.

Hmm... I'm sure there's more...

Dear American Automobile Manufacturers,

Years of making inferior, gas-guzzling behemoths of cars, combined with massive advertising campaigns designed to convince people they could afford things they couldn't, have finally come back to bite you in the ass.

Please use the money you're spending lobbying against fleet fuel economy standards to, I dunno, hire some goddamn engineers.

Love,
An Engineer Who Would Love To See GM Actually Compete With Toyota Or Maybe Even A German Auto Manufacturer

I can understand why we'd want to know the medical status of our elected or potentially-elected officials, but something about demanding the release of these records is still appalling to me? I can't entirely put my finger on it.

The House just passed a bill (324-84) allowing the DoJ to sue OPEC. Yes, that's right, we now want to sue Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and Iran, because, assuming they are not in fact just going with supply & demand, they are now magically subject to our anti-trust laws and should be giving us all the oil we want at a price we deem reasonable. In no way could these countries possibly construe this move as imperialistic (i.e. attempting to commandeer the resources of foreign, sovereign nations) and further limit supplies accordingly.

The White House, in one of their very few (but all recent?) thoughtful moves, is threatening a veto. The Dems, while generally shameful in this arena, have at least kept us from drilling in our own territory, which lets the value of our native oil supplies rise over time.

I am glad to see gasoline topping $4/gallon, glad to see the Metro packed, glad to see fewer massive SUVs and more Priuses on the highways. I am glad to see auto manufacturers making a point about fuel economy and companies advertising their greener products. I am glad people are starting to turn the lights off when they leave a room. I am glad the NRC has streamlined their licensing process, I hope we see nuclear plants soon and my company is counting on that too. I look forward to cheap stick-on solar panels. I want to see the US switching from cars and planes to trains, especially regionally. I don't want to see any cross-country trucks, ever.

We are not entitled to cheap gas. We are finally coming to equilibrium with the rest of the world.

From NYT regarding the gas tax holiday:

--
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.

"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.
--

Jesus fucking christ. As I recall, the "common sense is a creation of the elite and educated" tactic was reserved for President Bush and the neocons. I can't believe that anyone, not just "elite opinion" economists, with at least two brain cells left would find the McClinton plan anything but jaw-droppingly stupid. Which spurs my letter of the week:

Dear Indiana,

I hate you. Apparently you are the lowest common denominator, and the world's dumbest ideas are now being proposed just to cater to you. Do something useful and annex yourself to Ohio and Pennsylvania so we don't have to deal with this shit three separate times every election year.

Love, the Elite and Educated

Holy crap! When is this coming to DC???

Today, the House of Representatives voted 414-1 to ban employers and insurance companies from making decisions (e.g., hiring, firing, setting premiums) on the basis of genetic testing results.

Who was the lone dissenter? In a surprise to absolutely no one, Ron Paul. Undoubtedly this sort of federal regulation is in his eyes as illegal as the Civil Rights Act, which was clearly a heinous imposition by the government on private businesses. And as we all know, businesses are totally equal to people and should have all the protected rights thereof, and this sort of legislation should be left to individual states, because if history has taught us anything it's that individual states have always done a simply fantastic job of protecting individual rights.