Throwing In With The Laws of God and Man

Today's title brought to you by Dinosaur Comics.

I got a call on Tuesday from a volunteer for the Keith Ellison campaign, asking me if I was going to vote for Ellison. I said, No, I'm going to vote for Ember Reichgott Junge. He said, "Okay, thanks," and hung up.

I don't get it. No attempt to change my mind? No pitch about Ellison being a better candidate? No quiz about why I'm going to vote for Junge? What?

Which brings me to the real question, whatever happened to polite debate? When did we develop this inability to change each other's minds through asking questions or sharing information? When did we come to the conclusion that if someone doesn't think like us, we shouldn't spend time trying to understand each other's point of view? I don't get that, either.

Monday, monday

This made me laugh, because I can absolutely sympathize with both kid and mother. It's from mimi smartypants:
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"4. Nora is getting really particular about what she wears. Dresses are RIGHT OUT, as is anything with "curlies," which she defines as the slightest hint of a gather, or a ruffle, or that lettuce edging that little girls' turtlenecks have, or even sometimes puffed cap sleeves on t-shirts. For the most part, I let her wear what she wants and try to shop accordingly, but occasionally I will pull out one of the adorable barely-worn sundresses and try to get her to put it on. The "but a dress is so much cooler!" argument sometimes works, since my girl has a horror of being hot, but not always. A few weeks ago I tried to appeal to her inner jock by postulating that the sleeveless cotton tank dress was really a "basketball dress." And yes, the whole time I was jiving and conniving I knew how ridiculous I sounded. But I wanted her to wear it at least once before the season was over, and it worked.
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For a while. The whole rest of that morning, Nora acted like a total shithead. She whined and acted up and backtalked and was hyperemotional and I have never seen such bad behavior from her, ever. I was trying to get ready for our outing and doing eight million things and it just kept getting worse and worse, so finally I said, "Nora, what is WRONG with you?"
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That's when she started crying hysterically, hiccupping and sobbing, "I DON’T WANT TO WEAR A DRESS!"
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Well JESUS, you don't have to! Go ahead, take it off! Particularly if it means you will act like a human again! I knew Nora had no love for dresses and skirts but I did not know that wearing one for a few hours would color her ENTIRE WORLDVIEW. The dress-hate runs deep, apparently, and I won't ever try to pull one over on her again.
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---mimi smartypants eateth not the bread of idleness but makes no promises about the cupcake of idleness. "
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We spent the weekend finally making progress on house projects. After last weekend's disjointed spasms of usefulness, I really wanted to get a lot done this weekend. It mostly worked.
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On Saturday, Adam and I were at the MN State Fair. We spent some time at the Wells Fargo stagecoach, handing people in and out and rocking the coach for them. Then we walked around the Horse Barn and the Cattle Barn before fleeing the mass of fair-going humanity. Jen and Becky and I hit the MOA for lunch and new boots for them. I didn't even buy a book--I'm so good! That afternoon was given over to more Malibu repair contemplations, since the coolent system continues to be schizophrenic. Adam and Jesse and Chris thought they might replace some gaskets, but Adam decided that we should get mechanic's quotes first. I thought that was a wise choice. We'll see if I still think so after calling a few shops.
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Sunday morning meant a lovely dim sum brunch with the usual suspects plus the entertaining Mr Postle. Afterwards, Adam was good enough to put off having a nap, and instead we did some paint stripping on the big window. He also cut the lawn and swept the house, while I did laundry and other housecleany things. I helped Jen move some bookcases in her house, since she can't carry anything yet. We commiserated about having, "Oh, just put it there," piles left over from moving in. Don't worry--those are on the project list, too.
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Hopefully this week, we will buy the picture rails and paint them. I would love to get them up next weekend. Then we only have a little more stripping before we can seal the woodwork. We've decided to keep it pretty rough-looking, and just put a clear coat over it, the better to clean it when the children have food fights.

The Laziest Post Ever

The pictures from our recent trip to Grand Cayman are up on Flickr. Some explanation:

1. The resort is still under construction, rebuiding from Hurrican Ivan in 2002.
2. All of these pictures were taken on the last three days that we were on the island.

Enjoy!

Accomplishments and Activities

Things I've done recently:

1) Fixed the car. With the help of Chris Smith the Chevy Malibu was diagnosed as having a bad alternator, and said alternator was replaced. I'm fairly impressed with the with this, but there isn't much to say about it. Next time I have to put a serpentine belt back on, however, I think I'll put it over the toothy gear and then try to slide it onto the smooth gear, instead of the other way around.

B) Go Tournament. There was a Go tournament a while back, and I went. It was the Minnjin tournament (a play on an existing Japanese tournament for the title of Meijin), and it was sponsored by the Japan-America Society of Minnesota, or somesuch. They asked me what strength I was and I said "I have no idea." They rather arbitrarily put me down as 16 Kyu (AGA scale). There were maybe 15 or 20 people there. My record went like this:

• Game 1 - Reggie 14 Kyu (Black) vs. Adam 16 Kyu (White), No Handicap - I won this one on time due to Reggie not understanding the Ing game clock. We played it out anyway, and Reggie took me: Black 65, White 57.5 (with a 6.5 point Komi). Who knows how it would have turned out if Reggie had had to hurry some of his critical decisions a bit more?
  

• Game 2 - Sam 25 Kyu (Black) vs. Adam 16 Kyu (White), 9 Stone Handicap - Sam was just a beginner, but he had a good sense for grabbing territory and not getting stuck in loosing battles. It looked pretty close until we factored in his prisoners. Final score Black: 52, White 81 (no komi).

• Game 3 - Xing 25 Kyu (Black) vs. Adam 16 Kyu (White), 9 Stone Handicap - Xing was also still a beginner, but he had a much greater willingness to jump in and fight against me. Unfortunately for him, this led to his slaughter. We didn't bother to count the score.

• Side Game - One of the guys who looked like part of the regular crowd challenged me to a side game. I forget his name, I think it started with a 'B'. He said he was playing as a 5K that day, and that I could take however many stones I felt were necessary as a handicap. 16k - 5k = 11 stones, but 11 stones sounded like a whole lot. I opted for 7, and was able to force a resignation from him. He said he thought 4 stones would result in a better game.

I went in not knowing my strength. I feel like I played about on par with Reggie who was a 14k. This made me pretty happy, as I was hoping that I'd come in 15-20 kyu. If someone were to ask, I think I'd tell them that I'm about a 15k. But I beat that 5k pretty handily. If I take him at his word that I should have 4 stones from him that would suggest that I would be 5kyu + 4 stones = 9kyu. I don't think I'd buy that I'm down into the single digits, but I am glad to have played well against him. =)

I was happy to have established my strength, and I had a couple of good games, but I felt like the tournament was unfortunately bad. For one thing, I only got one official game against a similarly ranked player. The 25k's I played were nice people, but on the goban I just pushed them around. Oh well, I guess there weren't enough people in the 15+ kyu range to really flesh out the lower ranks. Also James Kerwin, a local Pro, was supposed to show up and do an analysis of the top games. But James called in sick. These things happen, but since I paid $10 to take part I was expecting a little something. It's not like there were any prizes or anything, no final standing was announced. Basically I just showed up and played the 3 players closest to my own strength. The best local players did some analysis on some games (BTW, having the 2 players give commentary on the game they actually played is comedy gold, especially if one of them is really cocky), but basically that was the regular group commenting on the regular group, mostly for the benefit of the regular group. It was a 1dan/3dan game, a 1dan/1dan game, and like a 4kyu/5kyu game. It would have been nice to see dan level, 5-10 kyu, and then 15+ kyu games, just to broaden the appeal.

I had fun none-the-less. I hope to make it to one of the local Go club gatherings that the 5k mentioned to me, and maybe see some of those people there.

iv) Fixed the Garbage Disposal. I have carved another notch on the psycho-fix-it-guy toolbelt. While it is true that I was the source of the fishtank gravel entering the garbage disposal, I don't think that diminishes the fact that I have fixed it. Anyway I now have a good knowledge of how to remove the disposal from underneath my sink and unjam / disassemble / backflush it.

There is also the matter of our recent vacation, but we'll get a picture post up about that soon enough.

Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket?

So, we're back from vacation, which was very nice. More about that later, once the pictures get organized.

Just a note now to let you know that I've added the Google Calendar button under Links (over there--->) so that you can see our schedule, if you want to. Those of you who have Gmail should be able to see the calendar no problem, since you already have one of your own automatically. Otherwise, it's a sign up dealio, which is obviously completely up to you. If you prefer, you can simply click on the first link, and that will give you just the current month.

So now you know when we're available to be entertained by you. So get right on that, people.

And then there were none....

So, we'll be on vacation until the 14th. We'll be in lower MI for a wedding this weekend, and then in Grand Cayman for a week with Mom and Dad Thorne. So don't bother complaining about no new posts, 'cause we won't care. We'll be at the pool bar.

Au revior!

Picture Post

Here are some photos from just before and during my trip to CA. I went out to visit all of the Wells Fargo History Museums in CA, which took four days and was a ton of fun. It was nice to meet folks that I work with, who I've only spoken to on the phone. These are the non-work related pix. For pix of each museum, go here. Next up in the catch-up posting: Cars Were Invented By Satan.

Here are some views from the WF tower in LA (I don't know what parts of town we're looking at), as well as a super cool sulpture in their courtyard:

Here's a weirdly dark picture of Amanda and I, and a better pic of Tabetha (who is platinum blonde as of yesterday):

Here is a view of San Francisco's Chinatown, as well as the "silver" ware I was given at the SFO airport. If the DHS would hurry up and do its job, we could all eat lunch easier.

Here is the one work-related photo that I'm posting from my trip. This is an example of the scales that WF agents would use to weigh gold dust from the 49ers in the gold fields. These scales are so accurate that you can make a pencil X on a sheet of paper, and weigh the difference between that and another unmarked sheet.