Defense Scheduled - Thesis Done

I got the approval of my thesis today and scheduled the defense. It's next Wednesday (August 8) at 1PM. I'm going to finish up some edits on the paper tomorrow and get it to my committee by tomorrow afternoon. It's going to be nice to be done with that.

Lots of baseball news today, but no one who reads this blog (that is, Lee) cares about sports. I'm excited, at least.

I've got a little more I want to get done tonight, so I'll leave you with this quote from tonight's Futurama:

She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes,
She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes,
I'll kill you, Amy!
She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes.

More tomorrow.

Sick Day

Not mine, Dr. Moeller's, which means I haven't heard back on the new chapters I gave him and haven't scheduled by thesis defense. I did talk to Drs. Vakili and Schulz, and they said Wednesday at 10 works for them. Lee later told me that Wednesday at 10 is when they are supposed to be doing their Experimental Methods final projects. First, mine is more important, and second, there's no way they finish those in two hours. Sorry, you guys are all going to have to reschedule.

I finished the last of the writing on my thesis today. I still have to put the final touches on the Table of Contents, Table of Figures, and the Appendices, but those are mostly cosmetic. I need to finish it, though. I'm waiting on the last edits, from Moeller, before I get too far into the last changes. I should finish everything by tomorrow.

I forgot my lunch today, so I grabbed a Blizzard and fries on the way home. I have to say, it was better than any lunch I would have taken in. Granted, at 3pm, old shoe leather would have tasted pretty good. And a Blizzard is no old show leather.

I'm boring tonight. It's because I'm tired. More tomorrow.

Mmmm, Steak

I know it's not an original title, but it was a good steak. Kroger had ribeyes on sale, and I had a taste for steak. I really like grilling, too. Just a man, meat, and an open flame. I did catch the grill on fire tonight, though. The actual grill piece. I know the whole thing is a "grill" (it's not a barbecue, whatever the BestBuy commercial might say), but the piece you put the meat on is a grill, as well. Anyway, when you cook stuff on it, it builds up a layer of char. Mostly it's fat that sticks to the metal, sometimes a useful piece of meat is lost to it, too. Well, I scrape most of that off before putting meat on the next time I use the grill. I did that tonight, too. After I had the steak on the grill, the flames got higher than usual (I generally grill on hot coals with little or no flame), and starting burning some of the char. It wasn't huge flames or anything, it's just that they eminated from the char layer on the grilling surface. I had never produced that before. Also, my steak was really, really good.

I was just reading an article from the Washington Post (by way of Google News) that some scientists have looked at the number of tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico / Atlantic Ocean over the past 100 years and concluded that the huge increase is due to global warming, and it got me started on my global warming kick again. Not so much the science of finding what you're looking for (which is what the study that everyone cites did), but the science of attributing correlation with causation. That is, the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. For those who don't speak Latin or watch The West Wing, that fallacy stems from assuming that just because Event B happened after Event A, Event A must have caused Event B. The traffic light turned red, and I stopped is probably causation - I stopped because the light turned red. I woke up at 9 this morning, and it rained is probably not related in any way. Related, but not the same, is the idea that we could be looking at two effects from an unknown cause. More tropical storms AND a higher mean temperature caused by an unknown something. Maybe humans, maybe the sun, maybe we aren't smart enough to see what it is yet. I was surprised that the Washington Post presented the counter argument to the claim the researchers were making. They didn't present it very clearly, only citing some guy saying the researchers were inconsistent in their data usage (something like that, at least), but the claim didn't go completely unchallenged. Al Gore is stupid. (That had nothing to do with the article, but is still true.)

Someone at UTSI is getting into some big time trouble, seems like. I need some details. More tomorrow.

Internet, Come Back!

My cable service went down for at least an hour tonight. No TV, no internet make Jeffrey go something-something. That's the reason for the late update tonight.

I didn't think to mention yesterday - I told MDA that I could start September 4. My assistantship ends August 31, then there's the Labor Day holiday, so that's as soon as I could start according to my contract with UTSI. I may commute from here for a while at the beginning. It's mostly due to a problem with timing my lease here with any lease down there. I have to give 30 days notice here, and I doubt anyone there would want to start a lease contract on some random day mid-month. If I can arrange a lease starting September 15, that's what I'm going to try to do, but it may be October 1 before I move. I don't look forward to the drive everyday (it's close to 60 miles each way), but it's not the end of the world.

I got my MATLAB program commented up and copied into Word for my thesis. I don't know what they're going to say about leaving it in MATLAB fonts and colors, but that's a small matter to change, if I have to. I need to have most of the paper done by early this week, because it's only about another week until I have to defend, and I think my committee is supposed to have a copy of the thesis a week before I defend. I hate pre-deadlines like that. Knoxville only lists "Thesis due by August 17" on the schedule, but it has to be defended a week before that, and given to professors a week before that, so in reality, the completion deadline is August 3. Mine is a little sooner than that, just because Dr. Vakili will be gone for a couple days right at the end of that deadline period. Still, put the deadlines on a calendar, not buried as footnotes somewhere.

Almost time to enter the real world. I feel old. More tomorrow.

Almost Forgot

I was about to shut my computer down for the night when I realized I hadn't blogged. It's not a big deal, it's not like anyone I don't talk to often reads this. And my challenge from earlier this month has gone unanswered, so there's no risk there. Still, though, like to keep up with things.

I got my Conclusions chapter finished up today. It's not too bad. The writing it better, I think, than yesterday's work. I still need a good last paragraph for it, but that's not content so much as filler. I also need to write the Abstract and Introduction. Those aren't hard to write, but they tend to be hard to start writing. I've also gotten the feeling that Dr. Moeller wants this thesis to be much more about the project in general than I've been making it. He mentioned that Sonya wrote a long introduction, with a good description of the project and its goals, and that he could get me a copy. My opinion is that the program doesn't really matter, it's the work I did that this thesis has to stand on. I don't need details about funding or overall project goals, only what my goals were and how I set about achieving them. Dr. Moeller wants to sell his project, which I completely understand. I want to sell a thesis and get my degree.

Now, it's time to get to sleep. This earlier schedule has been working for me for the past couple of weeks, and I don't want to let the weekend change it too much. More tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Amy

I got next to nothing accomplished today. I was supposed to meet with a researcher on my project to get combustion data, but neither he nor I really knew what I needed, and my advisor is gone until Monday. He showed me some adiabatic flame temperatures and what those become at the throat and exit of a nozzle, but those are just numbers. They don't tell me anything about my project. So that was a bust.

I tried to write my last chapter of my thesis (last in order of finished thesis, I'll still have one more to write), but just wasn't feeling it. Also, my notes from my thesis board meeting were indecipherable. I could read them, I just didn't remember what they meant. They were all things I was supposed to address (or address better) as I finished my thesis, and now they're worthless scribbles. The one that I could figure out was Axial Heat Transfer, which I already knew I needed to address. I got about a page done before I just lost all motivation. It feels like some of my worst writing, and it's the most critical section. People read the intro to see if you're doing what they need, then the conclusions to see if what you did worked. Then, they might read the middle parts to see how you did it. I can't find a good voice for the section - it's too abrupt, too clinical. Clinical works well in describing the process or discussing differences in graphs, but conclusions need something more. I really want to write it more like a blog rant, with rhetorical questions and short, choppy thoughts. That doesn't work so well for a thesis. Maybe tomorrow will be better for that. I'd like to finish it by tomorrow afternoon so I can leave it for him for the weekend (he said he was going to pick up anything I left him either late Friday or Saturday). I usually wouldn't do that to a person, but this stuff needs to be reviewed pretty fast. That, of course, means I need to finish it pretty fast.

When I wasn't failing at finishing my thesis today, I was helping Lee get into his apartment. Locking our keys up happens to us all. While I've never exactly locked myself out of somewhere, I did lose my house key during Ice Storm '94 and was locked out for a couple hours. Well, out of the house, I went to a friend's house and wasn't even chilly. And junior year of high school, I had a 1990 Chevy S-10, no power locks or windows. I left my truck running, got out, locked the door, and went to class. I got a note at the end of 3rd period that my truck was running. I grabbed my spare door key (separate door and ignition keys at that point), opened the door, turned off the engine, and made it to 4th period before the bell rang. We just had to track down the apartment manager, meet him at his office, get a key, and open the door. Lee had turned the lock on the knob and walked out, but didn't have his keys. His extra set was locked in his car, and the car keys were with the apartment keys, inside the apartment. After school, he had more copies cut, and hung one set on the key-storage nail in my living room, just in case. I doubt they'll ever move from that spot until I move out, but they're there if he needs them.

I just can't write a thesis, NASA is having a very bad day. Not only that, I wouldn't be buying any tickets to space through anyone else any time soon. More tomorrow.

Getting Close

I took all of my thesis chapters and combined them into a single document today. I might could have waited until I had the last two chapters done, but I wanted to see how long it was. The answer is really freakin' long. More than 80 pages, and it doesn't even have the MATLAB code in it yet. I've really got to write those last chapters tomorrow. And try to get some of the combustion temperature data. I don't wanna, but I don't think Dr. Moeller is going to let it go. I keep trying to hint that it's not part of what I did, so I don't want to include it. His theory is: he's not doing the work, so let's include it. It would fill space, but I'm going to top 100 pages without it, so I don't need filler.

Lee is working some evil, evil problem and having me spot-check some derivatives. I'm really glad I didn't take that class. Don't get me wrong, I still like math, but that class is too much busy work in too little time.

I'm running late on my nightly schedule, and I'm really out of things to say. More tomorrow.

I'll Be in Trouble Tomorrow

Well, if Amy reads far enough down into my blogs, which she will now that I mention it. She did not realize that I'd started back blogging and missed all my early-month posts. I've been doing a better job of updating AIM with the correct latest post date, but she's not online a ton, so it wasn't until I told her tonight that she knew there were updates. If I have a black eye or busted lip tomorrow afternoon, it was Amy.

The Superfriends went out tonight for Amy's birthday. Her birthday is Thursday, but tonight was Wing Night at Buffalo Wild Wings, which is where she wanted to go. I ate way too much, but that's kind of the point of Wing Night. It's cheap(-ish) and good, and I'm still a college student. At this point, I don't know when I'll stop being a college student. Stupid Missile Defense people not telling me when I'll start. I'm just the type of person who likes to know this stuff, I understand it still depends on a lot of things.

I'm really starting to hate my thesis. No reason, just sort of like being locked in a room with a person who is just a little annoying to begin with. Eventually, you want to kill them. It may be an hour, it may be a day, but it'll happen. Fortunately, people aren't often locked in rooms for longer than a two-hour class, so there's some cool off time. Otherwise, I think our Superfriends dinner might have included sneaking a file into the Coffee or Franklin County jail where Lee was being held on murder charges related to the death of one Hot Rod. I'm getting some work done on my thesis, but I'm really ready to be done with it. Unfortunately, that means spending even more time with it. It's a wicious cycle.

Politics has been boring the past couple of days. Maybe I've missed the good stuff. More tomorrow.

This Lady is Going to Hate Me

At the request of Dr. Moeller, I've been in contact with the Thesis / Dissertation Consultant in Knoxville working on the formatting of my thesis. There's a 60-page PDF handbook of guidelines which all theses are supposed to meet, and the job of the Consultant is to make sure they meet these oh, so important standards. I emailed the first formatting draft of my thesis to the consultant lady last Monday, and I had not heard back as of Friday, so I emailed again. She was apologetic about taking so long when she got back to me today. I'm understanding as long as I'm not trying to meet the final deadline. Anyway, her only real problems were margins (1.5" on the left to account for binding in the future) and my placement of figures. I've written dozens of engineering papers, a senior project report that was the equivalent of a thesis (in my mind at least), and two published papers (I didn't do so much of the writing on those, but my name is on them), and I have never heard that a figure can only be at the top or bottom of the page. In fact, if the figure is over 1/2 of the page, it has to be on a separate page by itself. Huh? I've got formatting changes to make, and I know that. Changing the margins will change everything in the document, so I'm not going to worry about anything until I do that (which will be after I finish writing the current edits to the chapters), and I'll even try to put figures the way Knoxville seems to think they should be, but that's a stupid standard. You put figures as close to the reference as is feasible. That's the way it's done. It's done that way so that the reader doesn't need to flip back and forth across pages of a document to reference a figure which is explained in the text (or needs to do so less, since sometimes it isn't possible to get a figure and its accompanying text on the same page). According to Dr. Moeller, they let Sonya get by with figures in the middle of a page, so maybe she'll stay swamped, not really look at mine again and just green light the thing when I finish it. That would be useful.

The weather is amazing. It's late July, and I have my windows open. The high today was 81. That may be a touch warm, at least when it's sunny, but I'm excessively cheap and didn't want to pay for air conditioning when it really wasn't any warmer upstairs than it would have been with me paying to run the A/C. Tonight should be even cooler than I can normally get it. And I'm rackin up those pennies of savings. Won't quite add up to Lee's part of the rent, utilities, and cable, but I'm not starving. I could stand to for a few days, but that's a different issue.

At the Superfriends lunch the other day, we were talking about $25,000 being a nice down payment on a house, and I mentioned there were houses that could be bought for that price. Within a week, my dad told me about a $12,000 house he went and looked at for the bank he works for. He did say house, and not trailer, too. While I can imagine that a $12,000 house might not have gold and jewel encrusted fixtures, they do exist. Just for reference, that is less than I will have paid to live in this apartment for a little over 18 months (not counting the savings I got from Lee living here for about a year of that). That's a cheap house.

I lost about an hour somewhere tonight. Don't know where it went. If you see it, please return it to me. More tomorrow.

Wrong in So Many Ways

Facebook lists the results of a poll everyday. I've seen a poll for "paper, rock, or scissors" or "how many times do you log into Facebook in a week." Today, the poll results were for the question: "Will humans be able to overcome the global warming crisis?" The choices were "It's not really an issue . . .," "Yes," or "No." I really love that their option for the choices "global warming doesn't / might not exist," "if global warming does exist, it isn't a crisis," and "I'm uneducated about the issue" are lumped into a single response of "not an issue . . ." My guess is that someone not directly associated with Facebook wrote the poll. (There's an option to do so on the results page.) Still, this has to be one of the most loaded questions I've ever seen. First, it assumes a condition that no one can establish as true (that a "crisis" exists, not whether any warming is occurring anywhere). Second, it assumes that the crisis requires an active approach to overcome. Now, the results: 50% of respondents say "No," 31% say "Yes", and 19% give the definitive ". . .". Just over half of those polled (502 of 1001) think that global warming is going to kill every human on the planet. That's all I can assume from a response of "No, humans will not be able to overcome the global warming crises." Are aliens going to come down and save us, or it is going to kill is all? Those are the only two choices, because if it's something that will correct itself naturally, it's not so much of a crisis, now is it? I would be willing to bet that not one of the respondents is a climatologist. We're all just fumbling around here, assuming that the scientists don't have an agenda of their own. I mean, what motivation could scientists have to put forth a theory that requires them to get lots of TV time explaining it, lots of money studying it, and lots of fame trying to fix it? Couldn't begin to imagine. But if Al Gore says so, it must be true, right? Al Gore is an expert, isn't he? He has a Ph.D. is climatology, doesn't he? He has some sort of advanced degree in something related to the environment, right? Something more than a Bachelor's degree in government? According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia - no. At least my degree is in a scientific field. Anyway, enough badmouthing the former Tennessee Senator from Washington D.C. We should clearly be panicking, since we won't be able to overcome this crisis. We need to dig caves and store food and water. We must ensure the survival of the human race during this oncoming disaster.

OK, I'm done, you can start reading again. Al Gore is a moron. Sorry, just kind of slipped out.

Not much to talk about today, after that Facebook poll. I grilled some pork chops tonight. They weren't very good - they were old and needed to be dealt with one way or another. They'd been frozen and so were safe, just not all that flavorful.

My mouse is making weird noises. It shouldn't be doing that - it's an optical mouse, after all. It's the only moving part - the scroll wheel - which seems to insist on annoying me with its incessant noise. More tomorrow.

Mmmm, Grilled Meat

I dusted off the grill tonight and fired me up some hamburgers and hot dogs. I cooked several of each so that I'll have some for lunch this week. They're a little dry left over, but nothing can beat food you've grilled yourself over an open flame. It's what separates us from the animals, and Yankees. Speaking of, there's a new Best Buy commercial where a dad hides his daughter's backpack because he doesn't want her leaving for college yet. The Geek Squad guy and the sales rep convince him to let her go, and he yells "I found it. It was in the barbecue. Weird." I will never shopat Best Buy again, simply for calling a grill a barbecue. There are apparti that can be used both for grilling and for barbecuing, but this was not one of those. It was a very nice gas grill (I prefer charcoal myself, but I understand that gas is awfully convenient.), but it was in no way a barbecue. It's a pet peeve of mine. Another is one is something that Lee was telling me bothered him, and now it drives me crazy as well. The year (now) is two thousand seven. It is not two thousand AND seven. In spoken numbers, the word and denotes a decimal point: seven dollars and sixty-two cents, for example. Something cannot be only two thousand and seven, it must be two thousand and seven tenths, or seven hundreths, some fractional part. I don't make the rules, don't complain to me about it. I hear it on TV from announcers and newscasters a lot, too. People think they sound smarter, I guess, but they really don't. I haven't noticed any friends or relatives do it, which isn't surprising because I haven't talked to any of my relatives who seem to always speak incorrectly and think they're God's gift to grammar.

Got off topic there, a little. Good thing this isn't expected to be an English essay with a topic sentence, everything else on point, then a conclusion. It's my blog, I can choose to ignore whichever English rules I like. I'll have you know that my thesis advisor complemented my writin style to the department chair, who then told me. I used it as another opportunity to take a swing at the technical writing class, but at this point I feel like I'm on the wrong end of rope-a-dope - I keep swinging away, but technical writing just won't go down. In a month or so, I'll be gone, and it'll be around to torment Heather. My advice: "forget" to go to the first couple of classes. It's not like you register for it or that it goes on your transcript. Better yet, have some critical conflict: "Oh, no, I promised my sick grandmother I'd visit her at the old folks home. It's bingo night, and she loves her bingo." Of course, if they offer to reschedule, you'll need another conflict: can't do it Wednesday: church. Thursday is out - that's when I volunteer at the children's cancer wing. Friday - are you kidding me? Monday doesn't work - Heroes is on. Only use those if you have to, otherwise, just don't show up. What bothers me more than anything is that physics majors get it waived, EE's get it waived, never saw anyone from Aviation Systems in the class, but Schulz won't waive it. I don't blame him - he's the one actually following policy. It's a bad class at a bad time with a bad teacher.

I'm tired of venting for the night. I'm also just plain tired. More tomorrow.

Some Book Comes Out or Something?

Hasn't been much news about it, so I'm not sure.

I like that Harry Potter has gotten people, especially younger people, exctied about reading again. I know I loved to read when I was younger, and I still enjoy it, I just don't have the time like I used to. A 2-page report on mammals isn't quite the same as a 100-page Masters thesis. And yes, it's going to be almost that long. Just printing copies for my thesis committee is going to take nearly a ream of paper. This will easily be the longest single paper I've ever written. It already is, really.

The internet has been boring all day today. More tomorrow.

The BACONATOR

You can tell I'm blogging too much when my titles are from the day before. Or is that not blogging enough? Since I'm not going to blog more than once a day (on average), it can only the the former. Back to the hamburger. It's from Wendy's, and it's freakin' awesome. Two quarter-pound patties, cheese, and 6 (SIX!) strips of bacon (SIX!). I tend to forget about Wendy's. It's the only fast food place not on the main road here in Tullahoma. It's probably closer than some of the other places I do remember, just a little out of the way. I'll have to remember it more often with a burger that good.

Today, I had to get up early to go to a meeting with my thesis board. I got the thumbs up on amount of content, with just a few suggestions about things not to forget. I tried to schedule the defense, but both Drs. Schulz and Vakili wanted to check their calendars before committing to a day and time. As I told them, I'll work my schedule around theirs so long as I meet the deadline. Dr. Vakili is having an eye surgery near my deadline, so we're going to have to move it around a little. He did say that if he had to come to the defense after the surgery, he'd only be able to see it with one eye, so he'd be half as critical. I vote for an eye-patch, and I'll borrow Lee's ninja sword. I can see the headline now: Master's Thesis Defense Comes Down to Historic Battle - Ninja vs. Pirate.

Speaking of headlines, some janitor guy at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) was arrested for trying to sell nuclear secrets to a forgein entity. It was actually the FBI he was selling to, and the theory is that it was for the money, not ideology. I just can't see that. I understand needing money, but I was always raised that when that happens, you get another job, you work longer hours, you don't sell national secrets. I guess that's a good attitude to have since I may have access to some sensitive material at some point in my career. And on that subject, I confirmed that Brent isn't a terrorist today. Some investigator handling his background check called me this afternoon to check up on him. It's starting to get scary how long I've known people. Brent since about '95, Sheena '97, Garrett '01 (that's 6 years now), Lee '02, and the winner by a wide margin: Melissa since '89. That's 75% of my life now. That is crazy.

I would also like it on the record that I watched tonight's Braves game from start to finish tonight. It helps that nothing else was on, and the Braves jumped out to a huge lead then held on for the win. Those games are always more fun.

In conclusion, I hate Keith Olbermann. Don't even bother to look up why, just trust me on this one. More tomorrow.

Write 16 Pages and What Do You Get?

Another day older and more work to do for your thesis advisor. I've been "forgetting" to do a sensitivity analysis for inclusion in my thesis, and Moeller keeps asking me about it. It's not hard, just annoying, and I don't want to do it. He's right that it can only help my cause, but that doesn't mean I want to tackle an extra mini-project. He also wants me to find an independent method for calculating heat flux in a rocket nozzle. Dr. Schulz is looking for his copy of a method he knows of, but he also gave me the name of the method so I could look it up on my own. I'll do that sometime, because if I find something, I have to use it. If I don't look, I won't find anything, and I can't be forced to consider it. Genius.

The Superfriends went to El Mochajite (Spanish for The Mochajite) for lunch today. Lee, Heather, and I had gone before with Danger and Matt Duran, and the Speedy Gonzales was tasty. Today, I got the taco salad, and it was also tasty. And a lot of food. It was more of a giant taco than a taco salad, but I ate it with the tortilla chips, so it worked out just fine. Cheap, too. I paid $6, including tip (15% and he didn't even deserve that much).

Unfortunately, I spent prime work time tonight watching the World Series of Pop Culture and Cash Cab with Lee, who had come over to use my washer and dryer. I have to make a bullet-point list of conclusions for a thesis board meeting in the morning. If the meeting were any later than 9am, I'd say screw it, I'll do this in the morning, but I'm going to be doing well to be awake by 9am. I'll be at school, but I may not be awake in the technical sense of the word. Therefore, it'll have to be more tomorrow.

10:30 Again - Time for Another Update

I'm liking this nightly schedule I'm forcing on myself: stop working about 10 (or earlier if I can convince myself that I'd be starting a new "project" that requires more time than from then until 10pm), blog at 10:30, turn off lights, shower, etc. at 11, read until midnight, get to sleep at a decent hour. I'd like to move everything an hour earlier (including waking up in the mornings), but I doubt that will happen until I start working. This schedule is better than nothing, though.

I know I talked about getting a lot of work done yesterday, but I got a lot more done today. I'm meeting with my thesis committee Thursday morning, and Dr. Moeller asked me to pull together some bullet points of conclusions I've reached. I'm the type who can't generate summaries without the detailed results, so I just sat down to write the next chapter of my thesis. I made it about halfway through tonight. I'd like to finish by tomorrow afternoon, get a copy to Moeller, and write up the bullet points tomorrow night. That will put me with only two chapters left to write (overall conclusions / recommendations and introduction), plus all the stupid, stupid formatting. And a PowerPoint, and the actual defense. Looks like that defense will be no later than August 8. The deadline is August 10, but I think Dr. Vakili will be out the last couple of days of that. As long as I keep going at this pace, I could defend anytime in August without any problem, I just need to pick a time. I'm just ready to get this thing done.

Bring me a taco.
Yes, Mr. President.
HA! Tacos rule.

More tomorrow.

Emotional Poop

That was going to be my title last night, but I forgot it, so I used the big baseball story instead. This title comes from The 4400 where one of glo-stick goombas had the ability to be a therapist. Really, her special power was to listen to people. In so doing, they felt better. It's like blogging, but with someone pretending to care. After her sessions of sitting comfortably and listening, a small solid-ish thing would appear, the person's emotional poop. All your bad feelings would be released into this poop-like thing, and you'd be free of carrying them around inside of you. It was really creepy. So was this kid whose power seemed to be being really annoying. Oh, and being able to stand around holding his mouth open while an air horn sounded. One guy was able to make fire from nothing, but no one else in this town of power-granted people seemed to have a cool power. I'm not even going to mention the apple pie.

They are getting a little heavy with the cute little Biblical / religious reference. In that episode, they had the Jesus character, Jordan Collier, bathing in a river (think: the river Jordan). I would not have caught the reference, and Lee almost missed it, but some writer stayed up for a week over that one.

Somehow, I managed to come home from school today and get work done. I did this sometime between taking a nap, cooking food for myself, and playing enough games online to give me carpal tunnel (if I didn't already have it). I produced another chapter of my thesis - 31 pages with 72 graphs, almost 1MB for the file. It looks like I'm going from a 5 chapter thesis to 6 chapters, but it's still going to cover the same ground - Moeller just wants me to split it into separate chapters. It doesn't matter to me either way. I just want to pass the defense, get the thing approved in Knoxville, and get my degree and pay raise.

While I'm thinking about it, some of the security clearance forms are reaching people today. So if I put you on the form I filled out a while back, you should be getting one of those soon. I know at least two people got it today, but it's the US Postal Service, so it could be any time between now and next Christmas. Feel free to be honest, but remember, you may need me as a reference some day. I wonder what they'd think if they found my blog? I hope they get my sense of humor - that could be bad if they misinterpret things.

Now, I have a notebook of Schulz's I need to give back - where did I put that thing? More tomorrow.

10,000

The Philadelphis Phillies lost game #10,000 in the history of their franchise tonight. The team has been around since 1883 and, obviously, had some terrible years. As a note, the loveable losers in Chicago (the Cubs) are around 9,400 losses. I'm not sure if they're #2 on the list, it's just that they are the team that was cited on Sportscenter.

I did nothing productive today. We're still trying to iron out this next chapter of my thesis and how to structure it so that it's readable and complete without being too much data. I was going to include all of my results in the chapter, but since that's 28 graphs per run and 30+ runs, that might get a little long and boring. At two per page, that's still 450 pages, and any more than that on a page is unreadable. I'm OK with unreadable (see, this blog), but I doubt anyone else is.

I wanted to reference a song tonight, but I'm afraid I'll be hunted down and killed if I do. This coming from a Republican. More tomorrow.

Some Guy No Longer Running for President

Jim Gilmore (R) is no longer seeking his party's nomination for President of the United States. This is probably a good thing since no one in his party had a clue who he was. In other campaign news, the little whiney Democrat guy, Dennis Kucinich (that's spelled wrong, but I'm too lazy to look for the right spelling, though I will type this long explanation instead), doesn't want to be left of the debates. Clinton and Edwards were overheard discussing leaving out the minor candidates in future debates, and little dude (I think he's short of stature, at least. Whether he is or not, I'm calling him little dude or some variation from here on out.) doesn't like it. He'd rather try to pull a Ross Perot. Shorty is just left of Karl Marx and really has a Napoleon complex. I wouldn't want him around, either. Maybe if he dressed up and performed acts of physical comedy - midgets are funnier when performing physical comedy.

In case you didn't guess, real news was somewhat short today (you thought I was done, didn't you?), but maybe the doubling of the bin Laden reward will set some things in motion for tomorrow. Really, what can you buy with $50 million that you couldn't with $25 million? If I were the #2 man at al Qaeda, I'd turn bin Laden in and use the money to fund my terrorism. Then again, if bin Laden weren't a coward, he'd have been on those planes, or on the subways, or in the trucks at the Trade Center the first time around. He could make a ton of money for his organization AND be a martyr, but he's too much of a coward for that.

I almost forgot - I need to catch up on The 4400 before the new episode tomorrow night. More tomorrow.

Love's Labours Won

Doctor Who does some very good episodes. I kind of hate that it's a British series and airs over there first, but it's owned by the BBC, so they get to air it first. Take a lesson from that, SciFi, and stop airing my other series in Canada first. The episode tonight involved going back to meet William Shakespeare and his play Love's Labours Lost, and it's lost sequel Love's Labours Won. The play really did exist and really has been lost. Lots of sprinklings of famous quotes ("to be, or not to be" among others). British humour, too, which you either get or you don't. It's not roll-on-the-floor funny, but it has its moments.

I got roped into doing quite a bit of work up at the school today. I was hoping to pop in and pop out, but I did get quite a bit done. I've got a little to do over the weekend, but it's mostly collecting what I've already done and putting all together in a form where others can do something with it.

I did finally hear back from the thesis consultant at UTK. I didn't send in my draft yet, but I know that she's going to be mean to it. I wrote it without directly consulting the guidelines then looked at the format requirements and saw dozens of things I did wrong. I know I mentioned it last night, but it's really stupid, and it's going to bother me until I get the thing through final approval. I haven't decided if I'm going to make changes to fit within the requirements better before I send it in, or let them tell me what all I've done wrong. I will say that the Technical Writing class was useless when it comes to this stuff. I really hated that class.

And for the record, I don't care about soccer or David Beckham. Quit covering it like it's news or like people care. More tomorrow.

In the World of Internet Forums, Keith Ellison Loses

From Fox News tonight:

Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison — the first Muslim member of Congress — says Bush administration actions following 9/11 remind him of the way Adolf Hitler's government expanded its power after the burning of Berlin’s Reichstag parliament building in 1933.
Ellison told a gathering of atheists recently — "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [September 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box — dismiss you."

Ellison later told a writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune that examples of Bush administration actions fitting his Nazi parallel include the Iraq war, certain provisions of the Patriot Act, and the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence.

(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289157,00.html)

The standard for forum flame-wars is that the first person to compare the other to the Nazis loses. That, however, won't happen here, because it might get mentioned as a footnote on the only even slightly conservative news channel, but no where else. I did find this (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/keith_ellison_goes_overboard.html) opinion article that also gives some nice background for those not familiar with the reference to how Hitler gained power. How does this sort of thing not draw an uproar? It's hard to make the argument "you may not like him, but he's no Hitler," I suppose, but if a conservative white guy makes that reference about a black politician even close to that, he'd be skewered alive by the media. Suggest Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton are ripping off their own donors? You could only be a racist. It can't be that their "charities" are just fronts for them to get rich. Nope. That's not it.

Well, Moeller pretty much told me I need to redo all the work I'd done over the weekend. And the way I was going to have to do it involved manually setting the maximum value for each axis individually. I found a way to automate it like I did before, though. It's not perfect (the legend sometimes overlaps the data), but I can fix the few problems manually and still save a lot of time. I'm supposed to meet with him and another researcher tomorrow morning to discuss which data sets to use as primary references and which to include only in the appendix. I also think I'm going to have to change my format since the thesis format regulations are stupid. They're written for all majors, so they assume things like "words are more important than figures" which is pretty much the opposite of how engineering actually works. Words are important, but they mean nothing without appropriate data. English majors is stupid.

Don't use your MP3 player in a thunderstorm. Could be bad. More tomorrow.

On Behalf of All the Red-Shirts

I'm honored to say this line: I'm the only one who brought a gun.

Bok-bok-bok.

I was going to use a "Weasel Stomping" quote, but I figured I'd over done that the last time I saw that sketch on Robot Chicken. Even the reruns of that show are funny.

I spent most of the afternoon up at the school today. I printed off some graphs to talk to my advisor about tomorrow, but mostly I just sat around killing time. I tried to talk to the registrar, but she was gone for the afternoon. I did take care of my FedEx bill in the business office, so it wasn't completely a wasted day.

Before I bother to keep going - has anyone started reading this thing again? I'm not going to keep this thing alive if no one reads it. More tomorrow.

If He Screws Up, Kill Him

That seems to be China's policy when it comes to public officials. The former head of their food and drug administration (whatever it's called) was executed within the past few hours. If you remember, there have been several scares related to Chinese food-type products being contaminated. Canadian Colgate toothpaste comes to mind immediately, but I know there was something else that affected the U.S. that I just can't remember right now. Back to the story: guy was executed by the government for this. Can we apply this to the people who screwed up Katrina? Mayor Nagen (sp?) and Governor Blanco. Sounds fair to me.

I am back in Tullahoma after a fairly uneventful drive. I think there was a real bad wreck behind me that really caused some problems, so it's a good thing I left earlier than I had originally intended. I brought a few more things up here for Lee's apartment, too. I was dreading driving back in the rain (the radar showed rain all the way from Memphis to Nashville), but it didn't rain a drop. It was a very nice drive - overcast without being dark and very little traffic, other than some Nashville rush hour. I will say the drive from Memphis to Huntsville is shorter and usually much lighter traffic than this drive, though. I may only make this drive once more. Now there's a thought.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Facebook is the devil. Not that that's a bad thing. More tomorrow.

If you work in the Chem Lab building you’re probably hot.

I just thought that was funny coming from the head of maintenance at UTSI. The air conditioner is broken, so the temperatures were high there, but it's the implication that I'm sure never crossed his mind that made me chuckle a little.

Sorry about the lack of update yesterday, these pirated wireless signals are a little tricky sometimes. I was trying to reconnect and post, but without any luck. I'm still on a good pace for the month, even if I've been a little off since coming home.

In case anyone wonders, the time of this post is going to be way off, too. I started writing it at the time Blogger says, but then I went to lunch and stayed gone about 3 hours, so I won't post this until more than 4 hours after I started writing. Oh, well.

Onto some news stories I liked:

Forecasting Bet
Last week we told you about an expert in forecasting who challenged Al Gore to a $10,000 bet over who could more accurately predict global temperature increases.

Professor Scott Armstrong contends that most climate change forecasts use bad methodology, and that global temps will not rise dramatically as Gore predicts.

Now the professor has received his answer from Gore — thanks, but no thanks.

A Gore representative said the former vice president is too busy to take on any new projects at this time.

Environmental Concerts
Gore's Live Earth concerts are set for tomorrow at several sites across the globe.

But now thePeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is furious that the concerts will feature vendors who sell hamburgers and hot dogs.

PETA says selling meat at an environmental concert is like selling cigarettes at an anti-cancer fundraiser. PETA campaigner Yvonne Taylor says in Life Style Extra — "There's no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist. It would be hypocritical to be serving meat at an event for the environment, and if you really cared about the environment, you wouldn't be eating meat in the first place."

A U.N. report says the meat packing industry, with transportation, preparation of feed and then all the methane emitted by the animals creates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined.

(copied from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288492,00.html)

The first one isn't really news, and I won't even knock Gore's people for not accepting the bet, but it does show that not everyone thinks it's going to be as bad as Gore says it will. The second one is fun because I love liberal in-fighting. I also love the fight over greenhouse emissions such as methane. Do you know the #1 greenhouse gas? Water vapor. By quite a sizeable margin. I also heard a quote over the weekend (maybe it was in the paper), that 'the planet is dying, anyone who says it isn't is lying' (possibly a paraphrase). First, that supposes that you cannot honestly disagree with an opinion, whether widely held or not. Second, even taking anthropogenic global warming as a fact, that does not mean the planet is dying. We have seen periods in the Earth's history where it was warmer and cooler. There is some type of cycle to this stuff (ice ages, etc.). I remember being told in elementary school that Earth was coming out of an ice age (in geologic time). That would have been in the early 90s sometime. If an ice age (by definition a time when the Earth was colder) is ending, would a period of warming not be expected? One of my favorites, I was reading a book on global warming for an Honors seminar in undergrad where the author (an "expert" in the field) said that in the last century, there was an average temperature rise of 0.1^o per year (I don't remember the scale used, but it doesn't matter in this case), but in the past decade, there had been a monumental total rise of 1^o. For readers who don't want to do the math, that's 0.1^o per year, or exactly what it has been. I'm no expert, but it doesn't sound to me like they can get their story straight. I'm up for a debate if anyone is interested. I haven't changed the comments setting, so I assume they still work. Knock yourself out.

I'll try to write more tonight.

Yippee-ki-yay

That's the IMDb spelling, but I think it's short a syllable somewhere. Good movie, though. Explosions, gun battles, F35's (the new, awesome, Joint Strike Fighter). It's all you can ask for in a summer movie.

Not much else to talk about tonight. I'm far less loquacious when I'm tired. More tomorrow.

Asps... very dangerous

You go first.

I think if I stay in Memphis too much longer, they'll have to lock me up. I really hate this city - the drivers, the stores, even the "cultured" people. Stores and drivers are obvious, but culture requires some explanation: Memphis has a nice theater downtown known as the Orpheum. During the summer, instead of Broadway or off-Broadway productions, they run "classic" movies. It was explained that the theater started with both Vaudville shows and silent movies when it was opened, so the movies pay homage to that history. Anyway, a small group of us went to Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Orpheum tonight. The "cultured" people in the crowd insisted on clapping (and not always at the scenes where you'd think clapping was at least somewhat warranted). Not only that, I had a running commentary during the short film preceeding the movie and for about the first half of the movie itself. Don't get me wrong, I like to snark and offer thoughts on a movie when I'm watching it in the comfort of my own home, but not in the theater. I almost turned around and asked them if they would just shut up and let people watch the movie.

I also just checked - the second unit director, Michael Moore, is not the one in the news lately. That might have been enough to make me hate the movie, too.

I actually got some work done today. And while I was out tonight, too. I set up a MATLAB script to run all my data through the main program while I was gone. It didn't take all that much work to write the script (it's really just a for loop), and I didn't have to sit here while all those data sets ran.

Sleeeeeeeep. More tomorrow.

HA! I got you, wireless network!

Well, I'm at home. I figured out the problem with the wireless network I've been pirating - some genius added another network of the same name near enough that Windows won't play nice. I'm probably at the outer edge of the range of the new one, so the overlap area does affect the owner of either network, but effectively keeps me from accessing either one. My solution? Find another network. There are now about 7 in the neighborhood. Most of them are secure (those people are losers), but I can access one good network, if I go to the other end of the house from my room. It's really not too bad. Not that conducive to work, but if I'd wanted to work, I wouldn't have come home.

I did remember one thing I wanted to mention about the cookout - right before dark, Will "Danger" Robinson and Tony "You Best Stop Dropping My Flag on the Ground Unless You Want My Foot Shoved Someplace Uncomfortable" Saad brought out their instruments. Tony plays a guitar, and not all that poorly. He wasn't playing "Freebird" or anything. Will plays the oboe. Yes, the oboe. I wouldn't know what good or bad oboe sounds like, but it wasn't a horrible screeching, so we'll say it was pretty good.

I can't decide if I'm looking forward to my job because it's going to be awesome or dreading it because it'll effectively end my professional procrastination. I would like to get my thesis finished, keep getting paid, and continue to do nothing. Maybe at my new salary, though, because it's a real job and pays like one. I need an intern to do this programming for me. I'll draw conclusions and write the paper, I just don't want to do all the code-writing it's going to take to get all the graphs done.

Well, I'm tired, so I'm going to get to bed early tonight. Somehow, I can do that at home, but never when I'm where I spend close to 90% of my time. More tomorrow.

Heppy Freedom Day!

Freedom!

I didn't do a lot this morning when I really needed to. I did get some work done this afternoon, and I'm in a good place to run a lot of MATLAB cases. I should have done those today, but instead, I went to the UTSI Independence Day cookout. Nothing spectacular there. I met Amy's boyfriend and another of her friends from college. I also met Tim's wife. I talked to her for a while, and she seems nice. I also talked to Erin for a while, which is weird because I didn't think she talked. Tim's wife asked the new German student if he'd ever had a fourth of July before. His answer was correct: of course they have the day in Germany, but he had never participated in an American Independence Day celebration. I told him we were lazy patriots. I mean, come on, no flags, no bunting (whatever that is), and the fireworks had been cancelled (something about a drought - what is this? We can't celebrate with a little forest fire?). I blame our SGA VP of whatever Amy's office is. Oh, while I'm piling on blame - the school has four grills out in the picnic area, and they only used one of them and couldn't keep up with the demand for burgers at all. Amy also said they had lots of food, and while no one went hungry, there wasn't just a ton to spare. Her definition of a lot of food, and my definition of a lot of food are significantly distant. Granted, there was a decent turnout (probably 20+ at the peak), but I could have easily polished off another burger and a hot dog, and another Coke or two (which needed more ice). Nothing wrong with what we had (and I ate plenty, I didn't need the extra food), but I was under the impression she'd bought out the frozen hamburger patties at Kroger. Tsk, and tsk again, Amy.

I did have to bite my tongue at one point when Katie (Tim's wife) and Erin started talking politics. Both claim to be uninformed, and happily so. Katie had seen An Inconvenient Truth and said it was really convincing that global warming existed. I didn't say anything, but of course it was convincing. When you only present one side of an argument and make up facts where none exist, it's fairly easy to be convincing. Erin did say she hated Michael Moore (who she thought had made that movie), so at least I didn't have to walk away and shun her for the rest of my time here. Shhhhuuuuunnnnnn.

I guess I better try to get some of my stuff packed up if I'm going to try to make it to Memphis tomorrow.

Away Message of the Day:
Take that, King George.

More tomorrow.

Stupid Explosions

Tullahoma decided to have its Independence Day fireworks tonight. I think they're out at the high school, but you can see them from 90% of the city and hear them from everywhere. I walked outside to take a look, and I could see most of them, but there were some trees blocking the view. The fireworks for the Air Force base are tomorrow night, out over the lake. I think I'm going to drive out to the school for the SGA cookout and watch them. I'm torn because I don't really like many of the people at the school, but it's free food.

Somehow, I lost about an hour tonight. I thought it was close to 10 when I started writing this, and it was really almost 11. So much for going to bed earlier.

Amazingly, I don't have a rant for tonight. The news cycle is just spinning around the same old stories right now since everyone important takes this whole week off. I, however, get to work everyday except the actual holiday. That's not exactly representative, though, because as long as I get work done, I can set my own schedule. And with my boss gone Friday through Wednesday, I'm going to set my schedule for Memphis over the weekend. I've been trying to find time to get back and lack of internet at home since the nearby wireless router died will set me back some, but it'll be good to get away for a few days. I'm going to try to get as lot of MATLAB work done before I leave and just write the paper itself over the weekend. I can at least get a framework down for the last bits of MATLAB I'll need to do.

At times, I almost miss having classes, if only for the structure in my schedule. They're a pain, and often not worth the time they require, but it's somewhere to be at a specific time. I don't miss classes enough to take any more than I have to from here on out, though.

I'm all for celebrating our freedom, but this is getting ridiculous. More tomorrow.

Headlines

I've been trolling Google News a lot recently and thought I'd share some of the more interesting stories:

First up, 12 top-selling 7-11 stores are converting to Kwik-E-Marts in a promotion for the upcoming Simpson's Movie. All stores will be offering Simpsons-related merchandise (including pink-frosted sprinkle-topped donuts, mmmm) as well. The only thing missing, according to one report, is the lack of an armed robbery. Thank you, come again. (http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=4082c01a-a201-4b22-8c30-1f51e4a41a5a)

I've been trying to find a good link for this one, mostly so I can get more details, but the article I want to read seems to have been slash-dotted (not exactly, but that's the term for a server being overwhelmed because the link is on the front page of the geek-and-nerd site, and this is the top link about the story on Google Neews). What I have already read goes something like this: the Supreme Court ruled that race can no longer be a deciding factor in public school placement. My guess is that this goes all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education and similar rulings of the era where segregation was ended and diversity achieved by busing students from one district to another. I'm not sure how we're supposed to achieve racial diversity if we can't make decisions based on race. Then again, I'm not sure we should be in the business of forcing racial diversity on people. I understand the arguement that people need to be exposed to different ideas and backgrounds, and I agree with it, but when that boils down to just bringing in people of a different race, how is that fair to either side? Maybe you have a poor district near a middle-class district (and I'm not going to assume that the black neighborhood is the poor one, which it seems is the assumption 99% of the time). High school students in the poorer neighborhood need after-school jobs to get by. They won't be going to college because, in general, they can't afford it. Most of the students will be getting a job right out of high school while a lucky few will go to a trade school or earn an associates degree. In the middle-class neighborhood, almost all the students will be going to some post-secondary school, mostly state universities with some going off to the Ivy League. How does the mixing of the schools benefit the students? Those who are college-bound are now in classes with those who have no reason to be there (and, speaking from experience, often show it). It doesn't matter if the college-bound students are white or black, being around a bunch of people who don't care means you don't have to try as hard to succeed, and that means you don't work as hard at it. In four years, when these college students graduate, they are going to wall themselves off in their own middle-class neighborhoods and remember how the other kids held them back in school, creating the very class differences that this law was trying to tear down. You want to remove some of these distinctions? Great, it can only help bring the country together, but the education system needs to be where we teach kids how to read, write, do math, and, God forbid, think. What would this world come to if instead of having kids memorize the year the Magna Carta was signed, we have them think about the changes that brough to Europe, how those changes affected people's lives, and how the new way of thinking lead to our own Founding Fathers' ideas about government? And that's just history. Rather than memorizing the 206 bones in the human body, why don't we teach kids how to understand the physical world around them? Science projects shouldn't be about going through the motions and following a set of steps. They should be about inquiry and understanding something new, then fitting that understanding into a clear, logical format. That's how science and engineering work. That's how discoveries are made. Imagine, explore, create, then bring it together in a way other people can follow what you did. I'm often critical of majors with no redeeming value (i.e. liberal arts), but I should be careful to point out that without a well-written report, engineering is just a stack of paper that only one person can hope to decipher. Understanding your audience and presenting things in a way they can read, understand, and be convinced is crucial for development. My criticism stems from the fact that most of the time, these majors avoid science like the plague. Professors, and often students, feel that the degree stands on its own, when it really has to stand as support for our science-driven world. There are no industrial philosophers and very few professional book-readers (critics), but understanding the philosophical basis for morality and ethics is key in science and engineering (whatever your position on things like stem cells, you need to understand what the argument is before you start sounding off). Reading and dissecting other people's writing is probably the most important thing a scientist can do to advance knowledge. Examples can be found in almost all liberal arts fields (except Latin, that one is just for fun). The problem is that when I walk into a liberal arts building, I'm walking into enemy territory. They don't want me there. I'm conservative, I think for myself, and I won't put up with their [expletive deleted]. That's not to say all of them are bad people, or any of them are. A lot of what they do is helpful to the understanding of the questions of how and why, and I'm not saying we get rid of any programs. Psychology is often mis-defined as a liberal art when, if done right, is as much a hard science as biology. History gives us perspective about hows and whys of the past, which are often paralleled in the present. Languages are how we communicate. Everything has its place, but in a science and technology driven world, the place for English majors and teachers isn't to produce literary critics. It's to improve everyone's ability to read, understand, and then communicate back the important details. No one, in their job, is going to be handed Frankenstein and be asked to analyze the metaphor of the monster as a symbol for the industrial age (I made that up, good essay topic, no?). They'll be given a sales report, or simply raw sales data, and asked to summarize the key points for their boss. The perfect end result is as short as possible while providing all the information needed to make the right decision. The end result is not "write three pages then stop."

I had at least one more thing, but I have to get to school now. I didn't mean to get on quite the rant I just did. More later, I hope.

La Dolce Vita

I'm going to try to do better about updating this now that I have a little free time again. Not that I didn't have free time before, but I'm making an effort not to stay up until 1, which means I should be able to sit down to write about 11 and still be in bed by midnight or so. The reason for shifting the schedule back is that I'm eventually going to have to get up for work, and I'd rather not be a zombie my first week or so at the Missile Defense Agency.

Speaking of, I don't know much more about the job. I did get the official offer. Either you know me well enough to know the salary, or you don't. They did tell me that when I finish my Master's, the number will be adjusted, so I should be quite happy with things. I have completed my security questionnaire. I was long, involved, and awful. Most of you should know if I listed you as a contact. I assume the FBI is handling the background check, so if you see men in cheap dark suits, they're probably there to ask about me. I wouldn't smoke a joint in front of them, but you're probably safe enough not to run away.

I also have close to 40% of my thesis written and approved by my advisor. I still have a lot of graphs to generate and include for the next chapter, but that's mostly computation time, not real writing. The conclusions section is going to be the last big writing I have to do, then sum it up with the introductions, and defend it. I've got a month, but I need to be done with the graphs by the end of the week, if I can.

I am going to close tonight by issuing a challenge: out blog me. In the now close to 6 years I've been writing a near-daily blog, no one who I keep up with has out-posted me two months running. I'll even buy dinner for anyone who beats me fair-and-square (e.g. no creating 15 posts a day that have no content just to win numerically). Contest starts today and runs through the end of August. Everyone is already down two posts (see my rant below), so you better get to typing. Oh, and in case I am defeated by more than one person, I choose the winner. Final rule: I have to acknowledge that the contest applies to you. I don't want random bloggers who actually live for these things to track me down and expect me to buy them food. So, if I know you, you can win a free meal simply by out-blogging me for the next two months. Talk about motivation for me to keep up with this thing.

This time, I promise, more tomorrow.

Does President Bush WANT the Democrats to Have the White House?

In case you didn't hear, President Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby today. It's not a pardon. Libby remains a convicted felon, still must pay the $250,000 fine, and is still on probation for 2 years. He will not serve the 30-month sentence associated with his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The timing of the decision is related to a judge's decision that Libby must be encarcerated pending an appeals court ruling. I don't know a ton about the case, but the charges related to Libby testifying to at least two different timelines regarding the leak of information about an undercover CIA agent whose spouse had been critical of the administrations policies. No charges were related to the actual leak of the information, only when he knew and who he told about it when. My guess is that he told someone something he shouldn't have about the undercover agent, later found out that it was a political enemy, and tried to cover up what he said. I seriously doubt he tried to blow the cover of anyone. (Not saying that he didn't, just that I don't think he did it on purpose.) Once he got caught, the case got blown out of proportion and every inconsistancy was scruntized for an ulterior motive. Again, I think he's probably guilty of the crimes he was convicted of, but I don't believe the intent was political payback.

The real question is what is President Bush thinking? I know he's a friend and that it's a legit Presidential power, but has Bush gone off his rocker? The Democrats jumped on this before the ink was dry. My dad told me he heard on the news that an analyst said it's probably not going to cause much turmoil because the people who get up in arms over it were already against Bush and those already supporting him weren't going to leave him over this. While I'm sure this analyst is well paid and probably has a political science degree from a great school (local community colleges can be great schools, so I've been told), but he's flat wrong. Democrats who didn't like Bush but maybe were sitting back because none of the candidates are all that impressive are going to jump in now because this is a clear example of Bush's "corruption" or "cronyism" or whatever you want to call it. Republicans who supported Bush are going to scratch their heads over this and mayeb stay home on election day. I will say, there is an advantage to the timing - the election is still way away. Yes, everyone is running already, but it's still more than a year until the actual voting. Most people wouldn't normally remember this a year later. Except I doubt the media will drop it. I know Osama, I mean Obama, and Hillary will use it to fundraise as they try to win the nomination. I'm sure Obama needed the help, what with only raising $31 million last quarter (lowest estimate I've heard).

Lee and I have talked about the fact that Bush is probably the worst public speaker we've ever seen in the White House. Granted, we've only seen 4 presidents and Reagan and Clinton were two of the best speakers ever to hold the office. Until now, I haven't seen a major policy decision which, at the time, I disagreed with so strongly as this commutation. No Child Left Behind has failed, but it was worth a try at the time. I still support both military actions, whether to remove a terrorist government in Afghanistan or a psycho from Iraq. Some revisionists are going back and saying those were bad decisions when they supported them at the time. No sane person could have asked for a better campaign in either place. Perfect world, yeah, I guess we don't lose a single soldier, but we've been in Iraq for more than 4 years, freed an entire country, and lost fewer than 4,000 soldiers. Do I like that it has cost lives? No, but American servicemen and women know that they'll be called on in the service of freedom. Two countries are free today that weren't free when President Bush took office. While I'm in the neighborhood, I love that Hollywood wants us to get involved in Darfur when our military, they claim with the same breath, is already overstretched on two fronts. What's going on over there is terrible (educate yourself if you don't already know), but we do have to pick and choose our battles. We have committed to freeing two terrorist regimes who wanted nothing better than to destroy us while committing their own genocides, so we do need to concentrate on those. It's not that the military couldn't do it, but why actually stretch it? When did it become the business of the United States to get involved with every conflict in the world? We're expected to solve Israel-Palestine (because that hasn't been around for more than a few millenia), stop the genocide in Darfur, quell riots in Liberia and Nigeria, but not Venezeula, because all the Hollywood actors like Chavez down there and ignore the fact that he's not-so-quietly killing dissidents, destroying all but state-controlled media, and generally starving his people while he gets rich off oil.

This started with the Libby situation, so let me get back to that. Libby did the same exact thing that Clinton was charged with (perjury and obstruction of justice). Libby gets a big fine, a prison term, and probation. That's probably a fair sentence for those offenses, and I don't even mind the sentence being tougher because he was a public official. Clinton got a pat on the back and a new box of cigars (yeah, I went there). Adultery with your intern doesn't compare with leaking classified information, but those weren't the charges. The charges were lying about it.

President Bush isn't as dumb as people want to believe, but this was the wrong way to handle this. A pardon at the end of the term? OK. I don't like that he'd be forgiven for the lying, but he's a friend and was a high-ranking guy in your administration and pardons are there for political favors (come on, they are). Bush needed to let this go away quietly and handle it on his way out the door.