Friday, November 23, 2007
Sticks in Your Ears
This morning, while I was looking at my morning newspaper, I found a children's educational cartoon called "Kidspot", by Dick Rogers. This installment of Kidspot read as follows:
Before and after: One word will fit between the two words to make a new word before it and the word following (Example: In-door-stop).
1. Blue b_ _ d house
2. Eye b _ _ l room
3. Trap d _ _ r step
4. Moon L _ _ _ t house
5. Ear d _ _ m stick
6. Saw h _ _ _ e shoe
The first one has the answer of "bird", as that makes "bluebird" and "birdhouse". But the tendency is to read the entire group of three words as if it were one word or phrase. After all, that's the way it is displayed. So number 1 suggests "bluebird house", or "blue birdhouse" to me, both of which make sense.
But what about number 2? I don't think I want to be in an eyeball room. I don't want to be in a room with googols of eyeballs on the ceiling, floor, and walls, all googling at me. Google "eyeball room" and you may find something that looks like this. The night has a thousand eyes. Big Brother is watching you. Homeland Security is watching you. Sounds creepy to me. Further, eyeball rooms don't have much to do with either eyeballs (which usually are in a person or animal before they are in a room) or ballrooms.
It gets worse. I don't think I want to walk onto a trapdoor step (yiiiii!!!). A moonlight house sounds really romantic, but it may also suggest to some a house with a moon on it; for example, an outhouse. I have never heard of anyone putting shoes on a sawhorse. I suppose maybe sawhorse shoes could be used to protect the floor from the legs of the sawhorse.
But the worst of all is eardrum stick. This one will have health professionals shrieking. I don't think it is a good idea to encourage children to stick drumsticks in their ears, or something they may call a drumstick, such as a Q-tip. Health professionals say not to put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow. This one could result in a busted eardrum. Let's hope it doesn't.
So I hope Mr. Rogers is more careful with his column. His examples are sensible, silly, and sometimes dangerous. Let's hope he keeps the dangerous ones out of his cartoon.
Before and after: One word will fit between the two words to make a new word before it and the word following (Example: In-door-stop).
1. Blue b_ _ d house
2. Eye b _ _ l room
3. Trap d _ _ r step
4. Moon L _ _ _ t house
5. Ear d _ _ m stick
6. Saw h _ _ _ e shoe
The first one has the answer of "bird", as that makes "bluebird" and "birdhouse". But the tendency is to read the entire group of three words as if it were one word or phrase. After all, that's the way it is displayed. So number 1 suggests "bluebird house", or "blue birdhouse" to me, both of which make sense.
But what about number 2? I don't think I want to be in an eyeball room. I don't want to be in a room with googols of eyeballs on the ceiling, floor, and walls, all googling at me. Google "eyeball room" and you may find something that looks like this. The night has a thousand eyes. Big Brother is watching you. Homeland Security is watching you. Sounds creepy to me. Further, eyeball rooms don't have much to do with either eyeballs (which usually are in a person or animal before they are in a room) or ballrooms.
It gets worse. I don't think I want to walk onto a trapdoor step (yiiiii!!!). A moonlight house sounds really romantic, but it may also suggest to some a house with a moon on it; for example, an outhouse. I have never heard of anyone putting shoes on a sawhorse. I suppose maybe sawhorse shoes could be used to protect the floor from the legs of the sawhorse.
But the worst of all is eardrum stick. This one will have health professionals shrieking. I don't think it is a good idea to encourage children to stick drumsticks in their ears, or something they may call a drumstick, such as a Q-tip. Health professionals say not to put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow. This one could result in a busted eardrum. Let's hope it doesn't.
So I hope Mr. Rogers is more careful with his column. His examples are sensible, silly, and sometimes dangerous. Let's hope he keeps the dangerous ones out of his cartoon.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Campaign Tactics
This morning I got a computer call from 877-460-9274. It was from Governor Kaine urging people to vote for Ree Hart. I don’t know whether it was the governor’s idea or Ree Hart's, but I still regard it as an unacceptable campaign tactic. Phone calls interrupt people, whereas US mail and email don’t. I regard such calls as an invasion of privacy. If I receive such calls, I regard that as a point against the candidate who was referred to in the call. I still regard the invasion of the county by developers and the resulting deterioration of our living styles to be far more important, so I will still vote for Ree Hart. But I still regard this as an unacceptable tactic.
I also got a call from 703-488-9929, calling itself “PS 07”, that asked us to vote for all Republican candidates in the state and reportedly from the Republican Party. Therefore, I will not vote for any Republicans this election, no matter what their merits otherwise. And by the way, the number that promoted Ree Hart today also promotes Republicans:
I have opted out of this service twice. The calls show up on my caller id and will leave a voicemail if I don't answer. The messages are pre-recorded and always political messages for Republican candiates [sic]. When I called the number back, it rang into a VRM and allowed me to request that my number be blocked. It told me that it would take one business day to block my number but then two days later, I got another call. I requested it be blocked again. My next call it to Republican National Headquarters in DC. I don't have time for this.
This is from http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8774609274.
I am asking candidates in future elections to please refrain from computer calls on the telephone. I will vote against candidates who do this, and may even campaign for their opponents. It may decide who I vote for in next year's Presidential primaries.
The other tactic that I find objectionable among candidates is signs. This year I find that all three Supervisor candidates have posted signs all over the place, but they are smaller and more dispersed than in previous year. Ree Hart and Dorothy Jaeckle had moderately sized signs, while Roy Wallace had small signs that seem to be as numerous as squirrels. I regard all of this as acceptable. The really bad signiots were Mark Tubbs, a candidate from the Matoaca District, who posted huge signs like billboards on the highways, and Jack Wilson, who had signs even bigger than that last spring in the Republican primary. Fortunately, he got voted out by Dorothy Jaeckle, who had much smaller signs. So back off from the signs, candidates; they could cost you the election.
Later in the day, I got a computer call from 804-706-5891. It asked me to vote for Perry DeMay, the Democratic candidate for sheriff in Chesterfield County. He thereby lost my vote for sheriff. I haven't been as interested in the sheriff's election, as this position does not affect our way of life that a Supervisor does. So a computer call can decide my vote. I won't vote for Profitt either, as he is a Republican, and I am not voting for any Republicans because of the computer call referred to above. So I will vote for Kendrick Hall, an independent candidate for the job.
And I will edit this post if I get more computer campaign calls today or tomorrow.
I also got a call from 703-488-9929, calling itself “PS 07”, that asked us to vote for all Republican candidates in the state and reportedly from the Republican Party. Therefore, I will not vote for any Republicans this election, no matter what their merits otherwise. And by the way, the number that promoted Ree Hart today also promotes Republicans:
I have opted out of this service twice. The calls show up on my caller id and will leave a voicemail if I don't answer. The messages are pre-recorded and always political messages for Republican candiates [sic]. When I called the number back, it rang into a VRM and allowed me to request that my number be blocked. It told me that it would take one business day to block my number but then two days later, I got another call. I requested it be blocked again. My next call it to Republican National Headquarters in DC. I don't have time for this.
This is from http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8774609274.
I am asking candidates in future elections to please refrain from computer calls on the telephone. I will vote against candidates who do this, and may even campaign for their opponents. It may decide who I vote for in next year's Presidential primaries.
The other tactic that I find objectionable among candidates is signs. This year I find that all three Supervisor candidates have posted signs all over the place, but they are smaller and more dispersed than in previous year. Ree Hart and Dorothy Jaeckle had moderately sized signs, while Roy Wallace had small signs that seem to be as numerous as squirrels. I regard all of this as acceptable. The really bad signiots were Mark Tubbs, a candidate from the Matoaca District, who posted huge signs like billboards on the highways, and Jack Wilson, who had signs even bigger than that last spring in the Republican primary. Fortunately, he got voted out by Dorothy Jaeckle, who had much smaller signs. So back off from the signs, candidates; they could cost you the election.
Later in the day, I got a computer call from 804-706-5891. It asked me to vote for Perry DeMay, the Democratic candidate for sheriff in Chesterfield County. He thereby lost my vote for sheriff. I haven't been as interested in the sheriff's election, as this position does not affect our way of life that a Supervisor does. So a computer call can decide my vote. I won't vote for Profitt either, as he is a Republican, and I am not voting for any Republicans because of the computer call referred to above. So I will vote for Kendrick Hall, an independent candidate for the job.
And I will edit this post if I get more computer campaign calls today or tomorrow.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Comcast's Downgrades
Something needs to be done about Comcast. They are now messing with my web pages.
Although I am a Comcast high-speed Internet user, I get my email and initially had all my web pages on Mindspring, which still exists as a domain name and was an ISP until Earthlink bought it out just before the turn of the millennium. However, I exceeded Mindspring's 10 MB limit and so had to spill over into Comcast, with 25 MB, for four of my seven blogs.
Recently I was told that there were going to be some upgrades, and that my limit of 25 MB would go to 1,000 MB. That I would like. Then I could use that to transfer huge pictures to people. But when they converted to 1,000 MB, for several days, I could not post anything to my Comcast web pages, including this Beyond Opinion. They assured me I now have a gigabyte of web space. Great. But first I must have a web site that people can access, and that I can upload to. During this period, the web pages were readily accessible.
Not so this morning (2007 November 4). When I tried to open up Beyond Opinion, I got instead "Sitebuilder is undergoing maintenance", whatever Sitebuilder is. I called Comcast to ask what was going on. While this was going on, the pages' behavior changed to "This page cannot be displayed". The Comcast agent said that my web page was changing its URL. I severely objected to this, saying that it would upset all my Google references and it would require that I change all the references I have to the Comcast pages. The Comcast agent asked me to access instead www.beta.comcast.net , and all I got was a list of results from sea.search.com . It also seems that this man could not understand that I meant my web pages, and not www.comcast.net . Finally he transferred me to someone else, but then all I got was a set of computerized messages as though I had just started this call. Further, these message made an incorrect guess as to what my phone number was. Then they gave me an infinite wait. So I hung up and tried again.
This time I got a woman who also insisted that I go to these beta pages, and to something called indexold.html . I don't have such a file. I have an index.htm , but that's a duplicate of the index.htm on my Mindspring web page. While this was going on, I noticed that the page came up OK. Then it didn't, giving me an infinite hourglass. She told me that they were still working on it, that there were some more upgrades that they were doing to the system.
No, Comcast. These are not upgrades. They are downgrades. They mean intermittent outages, putting a padlock on access to my web pages. This is not the first time that Comcast has been unreliable. In 1999, when I first got the service, I was greeted with about a dozen half-day outages, so that I kept my Mindspring email address rather than switch to Comcast and have the gremlins at Comcast put a padlock on my email. To me they got the definition of "comcastic" wrong. To me "comcastic" means "slow and unreliable". Outages like these on my web pages this morning have never occurred to my Mindspring web pages. If these happen again, I may very well convert my blogs to Blogspot blogs and spread negative information about Comcast. In the meantime, if you want negative information about Comcast, go to Comcast Must Die! .
Although I am a Comcast high-speed Internet user, I get my email and initially had all my web pages on Mindspring, which still exists as a domain name and was an ISP until Earthlink bought it out just before the turn of the millennium. However, I exceeded Mindspring's 10 MB limit and so had to spill over into Comcast, with 25 MB, for four of my seven blogs.
Recently I was told that there were going to be some upgrades, and that my limit of 25 MB would go to 1,000 MB. That I would like. Then I could use that to transfer huge pictures to people. But when they converted to 1,000 MB, for several days, I could not post anything to my Comcast web pages, including this Beyond Opinion. They assured me I now have a gigabyte of web space. Great. But first I must have a web site that people can access, and that I can upload to. During this period, the web pages were readily accessible.
Not so this morning (2007 November 4). When I tried to open up Beyond Opinion, I got instead "Sitebuilder is undergoing maintenance", whatever Sitebuilder is. I called Comcast to ask what was going on. While this was going on, the pages' behavior changed to "This page cannot be displayed". The Comcast agent said that my web page was changing its URL. I severely objected to this, saying that it would upset all my Google references and it would require that I change all the references I have to the Comcast pages. The Comcast agent asked me to access instead www.beta.comcast.net , and all I got was a list of results from sea.search.com . It also seems that this man could not understand that I meant my web pages, and not www.comcast.net . Finally he transferred me to someone else, but then all I got was a set of computerized messages as though I had just started this call. Further, these message made an incorrect guess as to what my phone number was. Then they gave me an infinite wait. So I hung up and tried again.
This time I got a woman who also insisted that I go to these beta pages, and to something called indexold.html . I don't have such a file. I have an index.htm , but that's a duplicate of the index.htm on my Mindspring web page. While this was going on, I noticed that the page came up OK. Then it didn't, giving me an infinite hourglass. She told me that they were still working on it, that there were some more upgrades that they were doing to the system.
No, Comcast. These are not upgrades. They are downgrades. They mean intermittent outages, putting a padlock on access to my web pages. This is not the first time that Comcast has been unreliable. In 1999, when I first got the service, I was greeted with about a dozen half-day outages, so that I kept my Mindspring email address rather than switch to Comcast and have the gremlins at Comcast put a padlock on my email. To me they got the definition of "comcastic" wrong. To me "comcastic" means "slow and unreliable". Outages like these on my web pages this morning have never occurred to my Mindspring web pages. If these happen again, I may very well convert my blogs to Blogspot blogs and spread negative information about Comcast. In the meantime, if you want negative information about Comcast, go to Comcast Must Die! .
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Ree Hart for Supervisor
There are now only 3 days until Election Day. Halloween has gone, and we had our share of ghosts and goblins. Among these were Dorothy Jaeckle and Ree Hart, who sound like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
But no joking here. There is a lot at stake in these Supervisor elections. How well we live the next 10-20 years may depend on the actions of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors in their handling of developers' attempts to McMansion and Walmart the county.
There are three candidates running for Bermuda District Supervisor: Democrat Ree Hart, Republican Dorothy Jaeckle, and Independent Roy Wallace. I have seen in person two debates of these candidates, and have read their articles in Village News and Chesterfield Observer. I have also talked personally with all three of them, and have had email exchanges with them. After considering these three people, I have concluded that Ree Hart is by far the best choice among them.
First of all, Roy Wallace has not got much of a campaign going. I have seen his comments, and he has not come through with the determination and knowledge necessary for the post of Supervisor. To be a Supervisor, you have to know a lot about the County, and I mean a lot. You need to know about all the zoning cases that are going on, as well as a variety of other issues and problems including watering restrictions, killing of black vultures, and so forth. I am not sure if Roy has this knowledge. He has many good ideas; for example, he was the one who brought up water shortages as a result of growth in the county. When asked what he wants his legacy was, he hoped that he would bring about action on growth and other problems in the county. If I were to select a mythological hero that corresponds to him, I would select the trickster god Loki of Norse mythology or Coyote of Navajo legend, who threw up all the stars into the heavens in random fashion.
Then there's Dorothy Jaeckle, who accomplished a major feat for our county by knocking off Jack Wilson, the hand-picked developerite to succeed Dickie King. This means she is like the mythical Biblical hero David, who slew the giant Goliath. She is also for keeping growth in check, and that was the theme of her election campaign against Mr. Wilson. She echoes the same points that Ree Hart does, so the two candidates seem equivalent to each other. But there is a difference. Ree does not want to get too party-concerned, but Dorothy insists that she is a Republican and that means less, not more government. She has not answered my questions to her on more-government Republican actions such as passing the Defense of Marriage Amendment or trying to put "God" into government buildings or documents. In general I would go along with less government. But how are we going to keep these marauding developers in check other than to use government action? In fact, that is what she is urging in her campaign - to use government; i.e., Supervisor, action against the developers. This is a contradiction, and it leads me to conclude that sooner or later, with that less-government theme of hers, she will play the developers' tune. Further, she would like to be known as the person to turn things around in Chesterfield County.
Ree Hart has no such problems. She is a Democrat, but she emphatically does not want to get party affiliation mixed up in things. She feels that growth, water shortages, taxes, and the like are problems that are independent of party affiliation and that need to be dealt with in the county. When asked for her legacy, she said that she does not care that much for her own as for what the legacy would be for the county, making her the most selfless of the candidates. She has knowledge of a lot of things in the county. I heard about four to five instances in the debates when, when asked a question about something, she replied that she has been there or done it. That's the experience we need. This means that she is like the mythological hero Athena, the patron saint of Athens and goddess of wisdom.
Based on all this, I would recommend Ree Hart as Chesterfield County Supervisor from Bermuda District and that is the way I shall vote.
The Matoaca District has four candidates, one of whom is only 19 years old. That is good, that a precocious individual wants to get involved in our community this early, but he needs to stay in school and learn more about the world first. Tubbs, the Republican, utters rhetoric that emphases a good economy and good business. That means developers, too. We don't need any more growth. Hastings, the Democrat, is on the right track, but his answers to Village Voice questions seem weak. The choice is definitely the independent, Marleen Durfee, an advocate of smart growth. That is where my recommendation goes. I think the county will go far to solving its growth problems if we can get both Ree Hart and Marleen Durfee on the Board. They make a fantastic duo.
As far as the other three Supervisor elections are concerned, each one has a candidate that gets heavy support from developers. So I say vote for the other candidate. That means Jim Holland in Dale District, Floyd Bayne in Clover Hill District, and Dan Gecker in Midlothian District.
But no joking here. There is a lot at stake in these Supervisor elections. How well we live the next 10-20 years may depend on the actions of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors in their handling of developers' attempts to McMansion and Walmart the county.
There are three candidates running for Bermuda District Supervisor: Democrat Ree Hart, Republican Dorothy Jaeckle, and Independent Roy Wallace. I have seen in person two debates of these candidates, and have read their articles in Village News and Chesterfield Observer. I have also talked personally with all three of them, and have had email exchanges with them. After considering these three people, I have concluded that Ree Hart is by far the best choice among them.
First of all, Roy Wallace has not got much of a campaign going. I have seen his comments, and he has not come through with the determination and knowledge necessary for the post of Supervisor. To be a Supervisor, you have to know a lot about the County, and I mean a lot. You need to know about all the zoning cases that are going on, as well as a variety of other issues and problems including watering restrictions, killing of black vultures, and so forth. I am not sure if Roy has this knowledge. He has many good ideas; for example, he was the one who brought up water shortages as a result of growth in the county. When asked what he wants his legacy was, he hoped that he would bring about action on growth and other problems in the county. If I were to select a mythological hero that corresponds to him, I would select the trickster god Loki of Norse mythology or Coyote of Navajo legend, who threw up all the stars into the heavens in random fashion.
Then there's Dorothy Jaeckle, who accomplished a major feat for our county by knocking off Jack Wilson, the hand-picked developerite to succeed Dickie King. This means she is like the mythical Biblical hero David, who slew the giant Goliath. She is also for keeping growth in check, and that was the theme of her election campaign against Mr. Wilson. She echoes the same points that Ree Hart does, so the two candidates seem equivalent to each other. But there is a difference. Ree does not want to get too party-concerned, but Dorothy insists that she is a Republican and that means less, not more government. She has not answered my questions to her on more-government Republican actions such as passing the Defense of Marriage Amendment or trying to put "God" into government buildings or documents. In general I would go along with less government. But how are we going to keep these marauding developers in check other than to use government action? In fact, that is what she is urging in her campaign - to use government; i.e., Supervisor, action against the developers. This is a contradiction, and it leads me to conclude that sooner or later, with that less-government theme of hers, she will play the developers' tune. Further, she would like to be known as the person to turn things around in Chesterfield County.
Ree Hart has no such problems. She is a Democrat, but she emphatically does not want to get party affiliation mixed up in things. She feels that growth, water shortages, taxes, and the like are problems that are independent of party affiliation and that need to be dealt with in the county. When asked for her legacy, she said that she does not care that much for her own as for what the legacy would be for the county, making her the most selfless of the candidates. She has knowledge of a lot of things in the county. I heard about four to five instances in the debates when, when asked a question about something, she replied that she has been there or done it. That's the experience we need. This means that she is like the mythological hero Athena, the patron saint of Athens and goddess of wisdom.
Based on all this, I would recommend Ree Hart as Chesterfield County Supervisor from Bermuda District and that is the way I shall vote.
The Matoaca District has four candidates, one of whom is only 19 years old. That is good, that a precocious individual wants to get involved in our community this early, but he needs to stay in school and learn more about the world first. Tubbs, the Republican, utters rhetoric that emphases a good economy and good business. That means developers, too. We don't need any more growth. Hastings, the Democrat, is on the right track, but his answers to Village Voice questions seem weak. The choice is definitely the independent, Marleen Durfee, an advocate of smart growth. That is where my recommendation goes. I think the county will go far to solving its growth problems if we can get both Ree Hart and Marleen Durfee on the Board. They make a fantastic duo.
As far as the other three Supervisor elections are concerned, each one has a candidate that gets heavy support from developers. So I say vote for the other candidate. That means Jim Holland in Dale District, Floyd Bayne in Clover Hill District, and Dan Gecker in Midlothian District.
