Opining Online

This article — Our Epistemological Depression – makes a lot of sense. It’s been my feeling all along that the bailouts and stimuli were frantic panic motions. No, make that emotions. I don’t see any evidence that any of the 535 members of Congress really have a clue what’s happened, much less why.

Barack Obama and his advisors and cabinet haven’t done or said anything much different. Should we call it Do Something Syndrome Even If It’s Wrong Syndrome? DSSEIIWS?

I think we’re screwed because our leadership does not know how to lead, merely that they must react, even if their reactions make the situation worse.

In Too Big To Fail? Or Too Big Not To Fail? I wrote:

What about that old saying warning one not to put all their eggs in one basket? Would heeding this have helped the “too big to fail guys” in fending off disaster?

Muller explains how this strategy, when carried to extremes had “…unintended and unanticipated negative consequences. The purported virtues mutated into vices.”

There was a belief in the financial sector that diversification of assets was a substitute for due diligence on each asset, so that if one bundled enough assets together, one didn’t have to know much about the assets themselves.

Well, almost agreeing anyway. She’s advocating putting the screws to Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters and I have to admit I’d like to see that too. At least to the current crop of nincompoops. The problem is that stupidity is not a crime and that’s all they are guilty of. So far.

I want to see them suffer much more than humiliation and ridicule, though I’m disappointed that Ms. Dowd thinks these gentlemen would be trustworthy enough to fill an ATM with cash.

Nor would I trust most of the Representatives and Senators to do such a job either. And that’s where I’m in disagreement with Ms. Dowd. ”Let the show trials begin.” she writes. The show trials we have in this country are Congressional investigations and that’s like asking the Mafia to turn over one of its own. I’m not interested in sacrificial lambs, I’m interested in actual reform. Trials before juries of their peers, with the understanding that their peers are average Americans, whether they want to believe that or not

Let’s wish Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, good luck in his investigation of the $4 billion in bonuses paid as Merrill Lynch was failing.

Crack That Code - It’s going to be fun when my grandchildren are old enough to have toys like these. And chemistry sets! Yeah.

Origin of Black Lawn Jockeys - I did not know this, but it is a wonderful example of how NOT knowing history can turn something upside down.

Under the Hood - the making of the inauguration.

I never have this much fun at the grocery store.

The White House kitchen. More photos, a virtual tour. A note says the site is under severe strain. I guess everyone is interested in the White House these days!

Why are women emotional? Good question.

We have hired a dog trainer to help us with our Great Pyrenees puppy, Maverick. He is not less affectionate, he is not more aggressive, but he is big. BIG. HUGE, in fact. In sheer affectionate joy, he can knock me over and walking him is not fun, it’s an exercise in who is strongest and he wins.

He is one and 1/2 months shy of a year old. He hates my mouse because he thinks I’m petting it instead of him. He loves hugs. He’s sweet.

He’s uncontrollable. And he barks incessantly.

Needless to say, my neighbors are not fond of his nocturnal barking. Nor would we be if we could hear it. Our neighbors have had their houses soundproofed by the Airport Authority as well as ours is… it is merely the location of their bedroom relative to our dogs’ pen that matters.

We really like our neighbors, for the most part. So, what to do. We like our dogs and we like our neighbors.

We’ve hired our own special ”dog whisperer” to help us understand the needs of the dog as well as our own. His website — alldogscan.com – states his methods and goals for dog training.

So far, we’ve had only one lesson and Maverick has half way mastered “sit” “down” and “stand” and my husband has 1/3 mastered the training techniques.

Yes… the dog is smarter in this respect than my husband. Dog trainers will tell you that they train the owners more than they train dogs. This is, of course, because the owners are smarter! (I tell myself….)

Here’s our dog whisperer’s website – All Dogs Can. 

Confusion coupled with a poor memory is not a pretty sight. I’ve blogged about addictive nature of genealogy and about trying to define what I want from the research. When I started this, I could keep track of people in my head to a much greater extent than I can now. I can still remember most of my straight-line ancestors, but you don’t learn a lot about their lives unless their brothers and sisters are included.

What I’d really like to have is a huge wall-chart that would show where the various ancestor’s families have married into the same group of families, for example two sisters of one family marrying two brothers of another. There’s ample evidence that these families moved together from Virginia and South Carolina westward together. So many of them ended up within a 100 miles of each other either in Texas or Arkansas.

This is a small house. I don’t have a wall that big!

But, I’ve got to get organized and soon. I’m starting here, but I realize no one “system” is going to fit my idea of what I want. I’ve got to find (or design) one that integrates my paper files with my digital ones.

If anyone reading this has suggestions, let me know!

P.S. I would be willing to trade a week of babysitting for a week of organizing! hint… hint.

Six Degrees of Separation theory may leak like a sieve. It’s still an intriguing idea and fun to play with, though it may be a Big World after all. (via Gene Expression)

Time Out.

“Is it a faux pas to make a gift of faux poo?”

Give Geese A Chance.

Meerkats, ferrets, children, and VapoRub.

2D reality in a 3D illusion.  (via Marginal Revolution)

Kudos to Jeff Skiles. This was a team effort of many people, some who had trained for it and some who hadn’t (the passengers on the plane and on the ferry boats, for example.) People were on the wings almost immediately after the plane came to a stop. Well, as much of a stop as it was going to come to in the river’s current. In less than 8 minutes, passengers were being taken about ferries and rescue boats. (via Rachel Lucas)

Strangest search term ever: 1a8846fefa19f4391919f99ef11ece80785de72a25fd20c9. But what’s really neat is that Google asks “Did you mean to search for: 1a8846efa19f4391919f99f11ce80785de72a25fd20c9″ which returns no results, but might after I post this!

And shouldn’t they get what they want? The dog is obviously for them, as neither of the adult Obamas has shown interest in owning a dog.

But more importantly, how can dog lovers show more love for a rescue dog than for a “breed” ?

Aren’t both dogs? Don’t both deserve a loving family? It isn’t like the Obamas are special ordering a specific breed, but that they’ve narrowed their choices down to breeds acceptible to their family and situation.

As we’ve just brushed away about a pound of hair from our Great Pyrenees puppy (he’s 10 month old, near a 100 lbs. now) I can’t recommend that breed for any child who has allergies. But, for one who doesn’t, this breed is the most gentle I have ever seen for his size.

When it comes down to basics, children love dogs and dogs love children MOST OF THE TIME. Get the girls a dog and everything else will work out.

Just because I can.

My LittleSister can’t get to her website dependably. Neither can I. Bet you can’t either. Nobody could yesterday. The really huge problem for LittleSister is that she can’t even get into backend to point the domain name somewhere else and just move the site.

Thing is, the tech support at ThinkHost is just horrible. Back in October, she opened a support ticket about a specific issue. It was something she’d always been able to do with other hosting providers with a few clicks – additional FTP functionality. That’s so easy on the three providers I’ve used that even I can do it.

Like a good customer, she went to their Knowledge Base for information. She found they suggest using a virtualFTP thingie (whatever that is) and that ThinkHost would set it up for a fee and it would then triple her monthly hosting fee.

The funny part is that they finally answered her original question after 15 days of telling her they couldn’t. This was after a message from tech support telling her how to cancel her account if she wasn’t happy with their service.

Now, I’ve got to let you know that I would never have signed up with this hosting service in the first place. And yeah, LittleSister knows that. She’s OK with me bursting into laughter within seconds of viewing the homepage.

What made me laugh? The logo tag: powered by wind and sun. Of course that explained LittleSister’s problem! She lives in Scotland and probably hasn’t seen the sun in several days. Yes, this is nonsense, but it’s just the way my mind works. Then again, ThinkHost is based in Portland OR and I’m wondering how much sun they’ve had recently too.

The site says “we provide world class hosting powered by renewable energy. let’s change the world together — join us today.” That is misleading because it is, of course, impossible. What they are doing (and is discussed on their site, so they’re not trying to hide it) is buying renewable energy tags, which sound a lot like carbon credits which have always struck me as similar to complex financial instruments, ie., useless and worthless paper.

Not that there’s not money to be made on carbon credits — my father owns timberland and has been approached with offers to buy his carbon credits. His scam-o-meter alerted him to the fact they don’t really make sense and he didn’t sell because he didn’t want to be involved with scammers on any side of the scam.

To LittleSister, this green thing sounded good. She is a good-hearted person and wants to do things in a way that is best for the ecology. And she’s a progressive and we agree on very little politically. But durnit, she’s my sister and she was scammed and that really irritates me.

I have little doubt that the collective at ThinkHost thinks they are doing good and no doubt at all they are trying. If they want to succeed, they are first going to have to refine that little thing about “world class” hosting. It doesn’t mean leaving your customers in the dark to save electricity.

What I do not believe for one minute is that the “green” and “progressive” angles are not marketing tools. When someone signs up for hosting with ThinkHost, they are buying conscience relief; psychological carbon credits. They are paying higher (in my opinion, at least) prices for the hosting because the company is in political agreement with them, plants a tree for each customer and gives progressive non-profits discounted hosting.

OK, that’s a bit snarky, but geez… I can’t help it! (sorry LittleSister). But you agree that non-profits are not helped by poor service and technical support. I know you do.

It occurs to me that these greenies may be simply capitalists/opportunists with a niche product designed to empty the pockets of greenies and progressives. Except they picked on my sister. Nobody should pick on my sister, ya know?

I’m through. For now. If you are in the market for web hosting, please overlook ThinkHost. How green can a site be if their service increases one’s desire to throw things which will then have to be replaced?

“Opinions, about almost anything” is my theme for this blog. Nowhere does that imply that I must be seriously profound in my opinions. Nor does that imply that I must post about seriously profound subjects.

That also does not imply that I am not deadly serious when I say I have the cutest, most awesomest grandchildren ever (pictorial proof will be provided!)

There are occasionally subjects about which I choose to be very serious. If you are of normal intelligence, you will be able to distinguish these by their tone and a faint semblance of formal argument.

I’ve been tagged with a meme. A very non-important meme. (Is that redundant?) Cassandra at Villainous Company calls it a crappy meme, but I’ll not go there.

First, the Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
Done that.

2. Post the rules on your blog.
Done that.

3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
Coming up below.

4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Do I know six people????

5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Now all I have to do is try to find six non-important things or habits or quirks to tell you about myself…

1. I wear Crocs. I realize that some of you may find this disgustingly non-important and block my ISP from ever accessing your site again. But, isn’t it important to know who your “REAL” friends are? Maybe this is not so non-important, but I’m not deleting it because I have to think of 5 more things.

2. My fear of crowds extends to blogs that consistently have over 100 comments on every post.

3. I drink way too much coffee.

4. There are ten small post-it notes hanging off the bottom of my monitors. One of them reads “Insane Complexity” and I have no idea why I jotted that down and put it there.

5. I cut my waffles on the grid. I don’t understand why some people think this is strange.

6. Breaking the rules is fun, so I’m not going to list the sixth thing.

I’m tagging AspenDew, Talina, Lori, the Venomous One. That’s all. Maybe #6 should read “I can’t count.”

Members of the Texas Poms pose with my granddaughter Isabelle at a Phoenix Texas Exes party prior to the Fiesta Bowl, which Texas won 24-21 over Ohio State.  

I’m worried about Baldilocks. It’s been over a month now.

Last night, I dreamed I was marrying Tom Cruise. This is just bizarre because I’ve never had any type of crush on him, not even on any of the characters he portrayed. Now, if it had been Sean Connery…

Knitting Math. (via Tigerhawk) It’s the first time I’ve ever run across the term “dorkosterone”.

Go vote for Junkfood Science in the 2008 Weblogs awards. You can vote once a day. Then go to JunkFood Science and just start reading. You will learn something. Guaranteed.

Public restroom dilemmas.