Yes, I twittered about it too. So? I’m kinda pleased with myself.

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During my lunch reading on BoingBoing, I came across an article concerning a bill in the Kansas house of representatives that affects campaign contributions and indeed seems specifically aimed at, conveniently enough, the challenger of the rep who’s sponsoring it. Sean Tevis ran against this representative, Scott Schwab (R) Olathe, collected a bunch of money, netroots-style and nearly pulled off an upset. Now he wants to quash this innovative means of raising funds by essentially holding the small donors’ information out there for potential publication.

I can’t vote, but I can write my rep, which is what I did. Here’s the text of the letter, with minor redactions. I copied Sean on this. Hopefully, it’s ok that I put it up here.

Dear Ms. *,
I would like to express my concern about a bill currently in the House, HB 2244, regarding campaign donations. It may interest you to know that the bill’s sponsor, Scott Schwab (R) of Olathe, faced a competitive race in November against Sean Tevis. Mr. Tevis utilized his understanding of technology to mount a successful web-based fund-raising campaign. He was able to collect a large number of small donations to help in his run for the seat. The bill being sponsored by Mr. Schwab is clearly aimed at discouraging such innovative uses of technology. Accepting that, as an incumbent, he has an interest doing what he can to shore up his strategic position, including weakening the base of support of his prospective rival, I still find the nature of the bill to be cynical and unfair. Mr. Tevis has outlined his reasons for opposing the bill in a blog post at:

Robert C*

Edit: here’s a link to the text of the bill:
http://seantevis.com/images/uploads/hb2244-big.gif

As I cannot vote, not being a citizen, I will blog.

I tweeted about a certain uneasiness concerning the election. I made a clumsy attempt at humour to attribute the jitters to working in an office full of McCain supporters, but I was thinking about the somewhat storied history of the Dems of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” A thought occurred to me, however, contrasting the likely reactions of the supporters on the losing side. This is how it looks to me.

If John McCain loses, I believe the bulk of the reaction will have to do with his supporters lamenting who won. That’s been the tone of the campaign and comments I’ve heard first-hand so far. The screwy pronouncements and rumours on everything from Obama’s clandestine religious affiliations to his desire to socialize everything he can get his hands on. I’d say it’s ridiculous, but it appears folks’ minds are set.

If Barack Obama loses, the reaction will be much different. People are already set to believe that a McCain win will essentially guarantee at least 4 more years of the policies put in place by the Bush administration. There will be plenty of angst about that and to some lesser degree, the qualification’s of the VP given the actuarial probability that she will have to step into the president’s shoes at some point during his term.

What’s different about an Obama loss for a large number of his supporters, the people that organized and “worked the room” for him, is the sheer depth of the disappointment. I don’t get the sense that there would be the same profound sense of loss on the McCain side. Disappointment sure. Apprehensiveness about the image of the shadowy figure that they’ve built up around Obama. For Obama supporters however, a loss would cut far deeper. To have gone for so long with such a high degree of passion and been so disciplined, only to get this close and to lose it. “Disappointed” would be an incredible understatement. Try “utterly crushed.”

Trying to guesstimate the opinion my McCain supporting co-workers would have to this sentiment goes something like, “Tough.” I honestly believe they believe that an Obama win would be disastrous for the country. I disagree, but get the strong sense that that mindset is prevalent enough that should Obama win, it will anything but smooth sailing. My opinion is that he’s got the temperament to deal with it, but when I look at how the last couple of presidents visibly aged while in office, I can’t say it will be pretty. Hell, just look at Obama now compared to when the primaries started. The man’s aged. It’s an amazing and unsettling process to watch.

The next while will be interesting to watch, in the Chinese way, as one of the people I follow on Twitter said (I’ll get around to saying ‘tweeps’ eventually - I just can’t bring myself to do it now). Sure the numbers look good for Obama, but there are plenty of ways it can still fall apart. And none of them can be affected at this point. All we can do is wait. Well, and vote, of course. That would be the royal we. By which I mean you, of course. ‘Cause I can’t vote. Like I said. Anyway. So, yeah. I’m jittery.

It’s interesting to me, considering how animated I was on commenting on things election-related during the last presidential cycle, that this time around I can barely be bothered to post. Part of it, I suspect, is that this time around it looks like someone I like may actually win, so there’s less angst. Part of it is alternative outlets for my quasi-exhibitionistic tendencies (Twitter and Facebook, I’m looking at you). And part of it is simple cyclic fatigue. I love writing, but I love not writing too. It makes sense to me, anyway.

One thing I will say, and I think I said this the last time around is that I actually sort of like being in a place where my political views are in the minority. It helps keep me honest. I think if I lived in Massachusetts or Chicago, or god help me, California, surrounded by good-hearted liberals, I would be truly mystified by people who held such divergent views as you’re likely to find pretty much anywhere around Kansas City. I like living in a neighborhood where McCain/Palin signs sit in one yard and across the street could be decked out with Obama/Biden signs, although I have to say I’m (secretly) pleased to see more of the latter.

Most of the people I work with are straight-ahead red-staters. One of them is even fond of regurgitating some of the rumor-mongering BS that’s been bandied about on Obama this time around. I’ve gently tried to call her on it, but she blusters a lot more than I do and I usually end up demurring. I think I get a pass on my lefty views because I’m from Canada. The logic is a bit dodgy, but there’s enough there that I don’t fuss too much about it. One of the guys is just really irked that Obama is doing as well as he is. I can’t feel too sorry, obviously, but in my mind at least, I console him with this: Given the perplexed frustration I’ve had that the current resident of the oval office could get elected once, forget twice, I can sympathize with your sense of ire, even while feeling much the opposite.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I was actually leaning slightly for Hillary. I think it would have been a very different campaign. I can’t say if the (likely) outcome would have been different, but the rhetoric would have had a different tone. Probably meaner, if that’s possible. Anyway, that’s my armchair analysis. I think my audacity of lunch is done. Later.

Maybe it’s the (election) season, but anymore I feel like I should rename this blog “Lefty in the twilight zone,” because every time I turn around I find myself being circumspect about my political stance seemingly despite the trend of things away from the so-called “Bush Legacy,” the Palin bounce (sounds dirtier than it is) notwithstanding.

The reason, I suspect, has to do with the fact that I live in Kansas City, which despite its moderate size and going kinda Democratic the last time around, is still about the most conservative town its size you’re likely to find (never mind Urban Archipelago although KC and Douglas County did go blue). I haven’t researched this extensively, but I’m reasonably confident. Must be all that barbecue. I don’t know. Anyway.

This observation came to me at our first cub scout meeting last night. Yes, middle child J and I are going to give Tiger Cubs a go. He’s gung-ho. I, not surprisingly, have had a somewhat more wary attitude toward the BSA since their rather public membership policy scuffles a few years back. I’ll save the needless explanation and direct you to the Wikipedia article on the dirt. In addition to the expected reservations with those stances are the striking reverence for the flag and rather thinly veiled militaristic references. Philosophically, from the perspective of a member of a historic peace church, these also give pause.

When E wanted to get into Girl Scouts, it was relatively painless. As an organization, their stance seems to be a lot more tolerant than that of BSA and there didn’t seem to be the same “my way or the highway” aspect to membership. Now, granted my wife J was (and is) more involved with that than I was (and am). She also possesses a measure of pragmatism about the whole endeavour that I have yet to achieve.

And really, all that said, there are a lot of things about the scouts that I do really like. I did cub scouts and boy scouts when I was a kid, although policies in Canada are a bit different than they are here. From the boys’ perspective, however, much of that is not part of their experience. No, as far as J is concerned, it’s a chance for him to do some fun stuff with other boys and he’s enthusiastic to give it a whirl. He doesn’t share my concerns, and at 6, nor should he.

I’ve never been a “storm the gates” kind of revolutionary, but I do take some comfort in sites like Scouting for All. I guess in a measure of rationalization, I’d like to think that I could be a moderate presence in some of the more rah-rah aspects of this activity. Boy, there sure are a lot of them though. Natch. : )

I know, I know. Late to the party, but I’m still seeing ads for Microsoft’s attempt to stanch the hemorrhage of mind share being fueled by Vista - The Mojave Experiment. And I have to call a bit of shenanigans. Yes, I must question the rigour.

If you’re not familiar with the play, MS ran a faux focus group to supposedly introduce people to the next version of Windows, what they called Mojave. They started by sitting people down and asking their opinion of Vista, and of course what MS shows in the videos are people’s near unanimous dislike, despite or perhaps because of never having actually tried it. They then proceed with a “demo of Mojave” and to a one, the people ooh and ahh and generally drop their drawers about it. The point seems to be, “See? Vista ain’t so bad. Even people who were ostensibly predisposed not to like it were blown away!!!”

As I watched a few of the videos I saw a few things, though. I noticed indications that the people were generally Windows-friendly, probably because they had little or no experience with the alternatives, but essentially, they wanted it to work. I won’t quibble with that. I know plenty of folks who don’t care about the OS, they just want it to work. That’s fine, but it does constrain your frame of reference somewhat. Another thing was that I didn’t notice that the people they showed appeared to be particularly technically oriented. This may be related to the first point somewhat and I have to be careful not to make too many assumptions based on the video bites they include on the site. I’ve sat through enough demos, though, by people trying to sell me something to ask a few groundwork questions like what are the specs of the machine you’re running and for something like Vista, which appears to come in about a zillion different flavours, which version of Vista are you showing me? The Home Basic or perhaps Home Premium, which I suspect is what comes on most pre-installed systems, differs in a number of significant ways from the top of the line Ultimate, which is without a doubt the version they were demoing in these videos. And for only better than double the retail price.

The importance of the hardware specs can’t be overstated either. Hardware that’s even only a couple of years old would struggle to do all the bells and whistles in Ultimate, if it could do some of them at all. By Microsoft’s own estimate (and we can trust them, right?), Ultimate requires a 1 gHz processor, 1 gig of memory and a 3D accelerated video card with at least 128 MB of memory. Experience tells me to add 50% to whatever MS says about their hardware requirements. A lot of the informal reviews I’ve read have said much the same thing. The upshot is, if you’ve got hardware that’s more than, say, a year old, expect to have to upgrade if you want the shiny. The Wintel-opoly rolls on.

My own experience with Vista is mixed. I bought a laptop last year with Home Premium pre-installed and after a few initial hardware woes - I’ve given up on getting the ethernet to work consistently - I’ve pretty much settled in. I never really seriously considered downgrading to XP. Whatever else Vista is, it is 5 to 7 years ahead of XP and it’s what MS will be supporting going forward. That said, I won’t be upgrading our desktop machine anytime soon. Overall, I’d summarize my opinion of Vista as such: It’s modestly attractive, in a conservative sort of way, but it takes up too much space, both on the HD and in memory for what it does. In typical MS fashion, they go to some length to hide the gory details of what all it’s doing protect the user from having to see what all it’s doing. Maybe my dabbling with Linux has spoiled me, but I like being able to see under the hood a bit more easily. Sure it can be a bit messy, and anymore it’s not like you need to “get your hands dirty” with the modern distros of Linux, but MS’ black box approach sure makes it difficult to tweak the system to get better performance. They don’t make it impossible, but they sure make it hard.

Microsoft’s seeming ineptitude at clever marketing is near legendary, but this effort is probably a modest stand-out from the rest. They had to do something though, seriously, because Vista was turning into another ME or, god help us, Bob. Of course, technically, Vista is nowhere near the level of sheer crap either of those two were, but that is the impression a lot of people who really don’t know any better have about it. Given the amount of time, money and effort that went into it, the situation was not tenable. Dire situations call for bold efforts, I guess and this shows it, even if some of the underlying reasoning was a bit hinky.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an old PIII with 256 MB of RAM gathering dust that I think might make a good gOS pc, just for a bit of sport.

A relatively recent addition my already somewhat ridiculous amount of reading is TechRepublic’s Digest. As suggested by the name, it comes to me via e-mail, pre-chewed and ready for consumption. I got on at TR about 6 years ago and dropped it after a while before being turned back onto it by my dad, of all people. Anyway a Friday staple of the digest is something they call Geekend. I won’t quibble about the originality or cleverness of the name, since the salient point is that they usually have something worthy of looking at that swings more toward the geeky/amusing/intriguing end of the tech spectrum.

One of this week’s items is Everything I need to know about my boss I learned from Star Trek which redirects to a post over at io9, The 7 Types Of Bad Bosses According To Star Trek (And How To Survive Them). io9 is a site I’m marginally familiar with, but has always satisfied whenever it’s come up. This post is no exception.

“There is no way we are possibly going to trade technology with the Gherkins,” seemingly attributed to Janeway. I could totally hear her saying that.

Being a blog, I suppose there’s an obligation to opine on bosses, and while this article does make me look at my current and previous bosses, I have to say I’m more inclined to speculate on the sort of boss I would be in that unfortunate alternate universe where I had underlings. I think I can save you the speculation and state that, if I were to characterize myself as an all-bad boss using this dichotomy I would probably be equal parts Father Figure, Cold Fish and Blamer. Of course, there was no entry for forgetful and disorganized, but what Star Trek boss would possess those traits? Hm. I’ll have to give that some thought. I’ve always kind of identified with Reg Barclay…

I’m trying something a little different. Lifehacker had a post last week about training to perform 100 consecutive push-ups in six weeks and I figured I’d give it a shot. What the heck, eh? To be twittered, of course. That seems like a natural thing to twitter.

Ok, first off: I don’t know this guy and didn’t know about him until he showed up on Boing Boing a few of days ago, the fact that he lives, maybe, 25 away minutes by car notwithstanding. He appears to match my age, politics, temperament, humor and career field so, for what its worth, he has my endorsement. I’d donate, but I’m one of them “damn fer’ners” technically speaking, although I’ve been here (legally BTW) for about 16 years.

Most people reading this will not know anything about me, but can probably guess a bit. I’m middle-aged and married, I have a family, I live in the suburbs of KC. I may not be the most liberal person you’re likely to meet (if you get out at all in an urban/suburban setting), but I’m probably in the 90th percentile, as far as Kansas City goes. If that hasn’t driven you off totally, well hell then, welcome!

If I can offer any insight into Sean’s candicacy at all, it might be this: Knowing what he does for a living and the little bit else I can see, I would seriously doubt he’d do this if he didn’t think he could do it better than his opponent. Given that his constituency includes my brother-in-law and his family, republicans at all costs, I’m a bit skeptical that that will do it, but I’m just a grain in the pile, right?

Seriously, give Sean a look if you’re in the Olathe district that he represents.

How is it that I missed this fluffy bit of goodness? Oh yeah, that bit about the missing cable tv connection. TGFH (Thank God for Hulu).

Really, this should have been a Twitter post. Ah well, the day is young. And Gabrielle Anwar? She’s doing quite well, and who knew she could do an Irish accent that wasn’t quite total “shoite.” Apologies to my relatives, past and present for the more or less phonetic spelling of that word.

And Bruce Campbell? Well, he’s a gimme. Man, I love that guy.