Chasmo’s Place
Just a biomed, ma’am, just a biomed.Archive for April, 2008
Clinton Wins PA, Looses The US
Yesterday Clinton won the primary for PA. You go girl! 55-45. This is great Clinton gets to stay in the race, would have anyway, by all accounts. But is that what is good for the Democrat party? I don’t think so.
Let’s face it with all of the W fiascos, this race is the Democrats race to loose. Last week the first poll I have seen with these results came out, McCain beats either Obama or Clinton. Up until then all of the polls had either candidate beating McCain. Why? Well I think its simple, every week the Obama/Clinton campaigns get ugly and uglier, with most of the mud being thrown at each other, instead of whom it should be thrown. Meanwhile McCain can sit back and watch the slugfest. Both of their ratings are falling, and even Obama is saying McCain is better than W, while not an endorsement, not bad. By Clinton staying in the race, which by all accounts, she really can’t win anymore, she is keeping her party divided, and in fact helping the division grow. Now after the Conventions it will be much harder for them to pull the party back together to show their unity which we now know is really non-existent. How can either say they are unified now? After all this mud slung.
If McCain were smart, instead of playing his own ads, he should play theirs and help their own little mud slugfest. They keep adding fuel to their own bonfire, and unfortunately they have tied each other to the post in the middle.
On another note, last night made some fantastic burgers on the grill, but forgot I still had some fresh corn. I guess tonight I have that. Yum! Oh, and this AM, I can’t find my watch, how rude!
Primary Day In PA
Well as I am not registered as a Democrat I can’t vote in this Primary. But apparently the zealots outside the polling places can still harass me with their ludicrous ideals. Its very funny actually, because these people seem to think that because they are involved in someones campaign they know everything about the elections, and yet when you ask them a question, as I did of someone this AM with a Hillary T-Shirt on, outside the firehouse polling place, “Hillary was in charge of Bill’s health care policy, and could not get it passed then, why does she think she can now? And more importantly, she, as her husband did, if the polls change on what is important to Americans, will she change to the new subject and drop(thats the issue, things didn’t get finished [this happened to their health care]) the last subject?” They just give you a blind stare and smile. Or my favorite was one of her cohourts, “It’s better than Bush!” Well yes, it would be, but that is irrelevant, Bush isn’t up again, and too the candidates own admission we need someone who can run the place, not someone who is better than someone that isn’t even running. The problem is we are still too worried about who is to blame, and in fact all of the candidates are too blame for the problems with this country as they are all elected officials now, and have all partaken in getting us here, weather they want to own up to it or not. We have a tendency in the United States of thinking if we deny something, it is the same as wiping it away and it never happened. Not so. Hillary and McCain voted for the war, Obama wasn’t there. The whole, we were lied to to bullshit, is just that, if you look back pre-war you can find speeches of Bill Clinton stating that he was given intelligence saying Saddam Hussein had WMD. The fact is if we were lied too, it started over a decade ago, prior to W’s policies. Yes we shouldn’t be in Iraq, no, we never should have gone. But the fact is we are there, and no we shouldn’t run away from it, as Obama and Clinton think we should. And no we shouldn’t be there for 100 years as McCain thinks we should. What do you say? I oversimplified their arguments. Yes I did, to show another point, most of us know what Katie Couric, or whomever we watch nightly, if we watch, told us, not what these candidates actually said. And why? I think its because we are sick of hearing these sound bites. This election has gone on entirely too long, we need election reform, and these are my ideas:
1. Abolish the whole Primary thing. If the big parties think we still need it (who is running the show, the Parties or the people?), fine, 90 days prior to the election, on the same day for the entire country(everyone’s vote matters), we have a Primary. Everyone can vote, not just if you are registered Democrat or Republican, everyone. That way we see whom the people really wanted running. And to make it better, those running have 90 days prior to get their word out. We are in the 21st century now, we now when a candidate farts in a corn field, not ten minutes later. We don’t need years for the election, we need less than one.
2. The Candidates must have a better than 90% attendance rate at their current position. If they are not showing up for work now, who says they are going to once they are elected. Its that simple.
3. Ads. We will start with posters. Put your posters up wherever you want (public spaces), but 72 hours post election they must all be down. Hefty fines to be imposed on those who don’t take down their posters, lets say $5 for every standard letter size poster found. $10/every 4x letters size poster… Those fines to be paid by the party to the cities they are found in for their parks commission or such. Keeping the city green. Within 30 days. TV ads, everyone is sick of these things. All candidates are allowed 1 commercial per night, 3 during the day(must be used between midnight and 6PM, don’t you lose them, no banking), per day. Those ads may not be of the negative variety. If they are, there opposing Candidates will be granted 1 more Prime Time ad (even if the negative ad was done during the day), to be paid for by the candidate who did the negative one. These ads are to inform us why we are to vote for you, not why we shouldn’t vote for the other candidate. We, the people, don’t want to see your ads all the time, and hopefully with these ads you, the candidates will get out the information you want. These ads include those made by those extremist groups such as Move On. So if they put up a negative Democrat ad, all of the Republican candidates lose that prime time ad, thus they are hurting the candidates they supposedly support.
4. Debates. There will be 6 3 hour Debates during the election season. Approximately one every other week. This is the way you word really gets out. All questions will be sent in by the people, not the press, to be chosen randomly from a hat, during the debate. The candidates may see all of the questions prior, but will not know which of the thousands will be asked, during the debate. The time will be divided equally among the candidates, to answer the questions. All debates will be televised as well as shown on the internet and radio. Any station may televise all or any of the debates, but must be shown in their entirety commercial free.
5. Campaign contributions. This is a tough one, debated by all. First of all this is a government for the people, by the people, that being said, corporations have no business buying into the election, and all should be banned. Second of all, individuals have and should continue to have limits to what they can contribute, but what should be mandates is all contributions should be anonymous. If no one knows who gave what, benefits and retributions for those contributions can’t happen. How to do this? Well all contributions happen to a central “bank”, stripped of all information IDing the contributor, and then passed to the candidate.
6. Press. This country has one of the greatest things going for it, freedom of the press. But the press very proudly proclaims one candidate over another. The press in the US, does less reporting these days that editorializing things. For instance in one paper a headline may be “Firefighters Loose 2 to Fire” and another paper “Firefighters Save 3″. Its the same fire, but one chose to highlight the 2 that were killed over the 3 that were saved. The same happens in politics. In fact newspapers proclaim whom they endorse, TV has yet to outright do that. How to stop this? Well one way is to have them mandate the last page in the front section be a page where the paper has to print whom they have endorsed over the last 2 years. This way you can look, in the same place, to see where they are leaning, and they can still print whatever headline they want, without effecting it. TV is more difficult, maybe putting the D or R after the reporters name? I am not sure what to do, but that is the way I am leaning. Radio, maybe TV also, a special time a day a disclaimer played. Now this disclaimer can’t be at 4AM or a time when most are asleep, maybe at the end of the main newscast, stating the leanings of the station. I don’t really like doing this at all, but most people don’t understand that the news can, and knowingly does, lean one way or another.
…to be continued…
Walkabout
Squish and I walked the city for a few hours yesterday. It was a beautiful day, I think it got up to about 85°F, Squish got a little sun burned, and I took over 200 photos, two of which seen here, actually they are made up of ab out 12 photos, but stitched together into two. I have to work on the coloring of the Delaware River one, but I still think they cam out ok. Had lunch at Mrs. K’s Koffee Shop, came home and died on the couch, well got to work on these photos. It was just nice to gt out and play a little.
This morning I am running over to the Hot Begal and replenish our supplies. Yum! (Can I say that even thought the Hot Bagel isn’t Red Robin?) Squish has to work a this afternoon at Traffic. Probably do a few other errands today. Anways, thats all for now.
Digital Media
So, on my way to work, I was listening to the latest Mac Break Weekly, and again the topic of NBC and iTunes came up. For those whom don’t know last year NBC took down all of their shows from iTunes citing that the copy protection isn’t strong enough. Then they started their own online service, Hulu.com to show their wares. The difference is that on iTunes you pay once, $1.99, and on Hulu you get the media for free. On iTunes you can watch it anywhere, on anything. On Hulu, only there, in your browser, with all the ads put into the show. Now NBC says they will come back if Apple fixes their copy protection. The thing they really want is to be paid the $1.99 every time you watch the show, and for every device you want to watch it on. For example, if I watch it on my Notebook, pay the $1.99. If I want to watch it on my iPhone, $1.99, my media center, $1.99. They think they can get away with that because the advertisers do pay them for every time you watch it. They don’t understand that those days are ending. We, the consumers are fighting back that model. How many people Tivo their TV viewing and skip the commercials when watching back now? I rarely watch live TV, I will wait an extra half hour so that I can watch and skip thru the ads. If they want to keep ads, product placement is the way to go now. Have House drink a Coke, have Denny Crane eat a Whopper and so on. Yes we don’t have way to know their specials anymore, but do we really care? Local TV, reruns can all show their ads like usual. Then NBC can charge Coke and Burger King every time the episode is shown. NBC says they will put these $1.99 episodes up on the internet, and people can download these for free, pirate them. Well someone has to explain to them that there are plenty of programs that will rip episode from their flash players, and thus they can still do that, only now they only got the pennies(if that), from the advertisers, instead of the $1.99 from iTunes, and they can still pirate them. Surprise.
Merlin Mann on the episode was talking about how the NBC(Big Media) model is dead. The world is now digital, and NBC can’t turn it back, no matter how much they want to, todays kids expect all of these things for free now, they won’t pay, its that simple. My generation will if we can, but if you take that away we will find another way to get our content. I now I look at iTunes first, and then go another route. NBC has taken that away. I would use Hulu, but many of the times I want to sit at my computer and watch a show, I don’t have that internet connection, so I simply can’t. If I buy it I can watch it at my convenience. So I have to find my own way. Again, todays kids go the other way first, and hulu only reinforces that model. Andy Ihnatko understands, but thinks that NBC is too big with too many people that depend on that money to pay their mortgages, and thus can’t really change. My feeling is that many of the big media companies have been gouging their consumers for so long they think that they are entitled to that money now. For example, for many years when CDs were new the record companies were paying close to $5(very conservative estimate) for making a CD, and selling them for $16 to $20. They would say that next year they would drop the prices to get closer in line with the realities of cost, but right now not many people have CD players so we have to have the prices high to make a profit. Ok, but next year never came, but their cost kept dropping. Hmmm. Guess what the execs at those companies salaries were growing at a much higher rate than the average. Hmmm. Now they want their increases to stay the same and yet the consumers have less money. Does that work? No. They fact is they have to change. The music is out there. The TV is out there. Understand that. Its time to change your model. I think that a major problem is the executive salaries are highly inflated and you have gotten away with it too long, so you think they are actually the value of the service. This is not just the media companies that have this issue, its really all major industries in the US, hey kids the vast majority of the countries can’t carry your colossal weight anymore, you are going to have to cut back, you are the fat that needs to be trimmed. You are not as valuable as you think. In most cases if you took all of the higher echelon out the companies would run the same or better. Think about that, talking about turning the wheel doesn’t turn it, the people pushing that gear do.
NFL Fires Shots at Comcast
This little snip was sent to my by my friend Buster:
NFL | NFL Network filing complaint
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:15:57 -0700
The Associated Press reports the NFL Network is filing a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Comcast. The network announced Thursday, April 17, it served Comcast with the required 10-day notice of its intent to file a complaint. The NFL Network is accusing Comcast of discriminatory and anticompetitive treatment in violation of the Cable Act of 1992
I doubt that anything will come of this, but it would help if other groups go after Comcast also. I don’t think that the NFL is made of Angels, they have their own way of gouging the consumer, but how many companies to I want to slap?
Photography
Lately, actually since Thailand in November, thanks to Chet Gordon (http://chetgordon.blogspot.com/), my photography roommate there, my joy of photography has grown leaps and bounds. I find myself listening to TWiP and Nikonians podcasts all the time. I am playing in Photoshop, just having fun taking pictures all the time. I know one reason is because I can’t wait to start to take picts of B/C, and I want to be ready. I am very much still an amatuer, but I think I am getting better slowly but surely. This week its all about creating panaramas(the current banner at the top is a panorama of SW entrance to Washington Square Park, taken with photos from my iPhone). Right now I am building almost always from pictures from my iPhone, because they are smaller files and I always have my iPhone with me, I can’t really say that about my Nikon D300, its just too heavy to carry with everything else in my pack daily, but this weekend I plan on taking some more with it, maybe the Battleship NJ, and a skyline of Philly shot. We will see what mess I get into. Check out my photos on my flickr acount: http://www.flickr.com/chasmo
Comcast Continues Shananagins
This time its not me its the Father of Blogging, Dave Winer, whose account can be found at http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/04/16/aNewReasonToHateComcast.html . Its really shows how sad Comcast is. Now that I know they actually read and respond to blogs, to nail the guy who started RSS feeds, which really power blogging and podcasts, is really just plain stupid.
Comcast he knows how to get the word out. I know you think you control the internet, but the fact is you only control some access, and people have tons of choices on how to get online. They are not forced by the municipalities that you take tax breaks from, and don’t return with what you promise. We know how to get the word out, and we are doing just that. Your actions will catch up to you.
Rearranging The House
Well for those of you have been to your little house, you know how little it is. This weekend we decided to move our living room, in the back, and our dinning room, which was in the front, and much smaller. Now we only really had to move the dinning table and chairs, our couch and a big chair. We thought that the couch and big chair would fit into the smaller room, tightly but fit. Turns out, not so much. So after we did our big move the couch fits, but the big chair is in the dining room. Now we just have to figure out where everything that was displaced will now go. If you knew me in the the 90s and visited you may remember the bedroom that I had called the submarine, because it was little more than a walk-in closet that I made my bedroom. I liked it then, but the rest of the place was kind of spacious, here we don’t have that. And now with B/C on the way, it will indeed be tight. We are trying to prepare, but to you ever really get ready for this kind of change, doubtful.
More Comcast Stuff
comcast-play-games-is-now-chilltm
Yesterday, a Dave from Comcast called and left me a message. I am assuming it is to further discuss what happened last week, as he just asked me to call him back, I am not sure. But I have called him back. On another couple of notes, 1. I got the email I attached to this, showing their new Chill service. I found it funny as it is only available on Win 2K and XP, and yet they show a Mac G4 notebook in the ad. Funny, another point on how they just don’t get it. And while, yes I a understand a non-techie may not notice, if you own a Mac, you notice because they show you the service on a machine like yours, and yours can’t run it. Just a funny thing. The second thing is something they are doing, possibly too well. Last week during this outage, I also couldn’t log in, probably mistyped my password too many times, so I reset it it. At this point I have received no less than 7 emails and 5 snail mail letters, notifing me that I have changed my password. I can tell you, if they are so cash strapped that they need to keep raising our rates they could saves tons of money by just sending one snail mail letter notifying me that I changed my password. For just me that may not be much, but if they do that for all of their customers it could go to the hundred of thousands of dollars in postage. Just an idea. Thanks for keeping on top of it though, and it is much better than most of your other standards, and the way to err, in favor of the customer instead of yourself Comcast. You get enough bad word of mouth, as I can attest from the emails I have gotten in response to my blog.
Another Day
Baby Doppler Heartbeat(not B/C, generic)
The other day, Tuesday, Squish and I went to Dr. Ufberg’s office for her second visit. I like him, quite positive and still able to give you the what-ifs. I have found usually the positive Docs choose to forgo the what ifs until they become a reality. I just like knowing what could happen, but dwelling on the good that has actually happened. So I find Dr. Ufberg great. After some probing with the Doppler, we got to hear B/C’s heart whoosh-whoosh. Squish cried, I smiled. Doc told us it was a rate of 160, which according to the old wives tale, means a girl, so B it is. Still smiling. We really don’t care what it is as long as its healthy. I still tell Squish its going to be a monkey, still want a monkey.
As most of you know I am usually a Mac user. And recently I have noticed that my MacBook Pro has been acting funky. So last night I decided that I would back it up, and do the reformat and reinstall of Leopard. That is usually an easy thing. Just boot up the Carbon Copy Cloner and do a full, fresh back up overnight, and then the following day while working have it reinstall and restore my mac. So far the back up worked well, as far as I can tell, I can boot from that HD so I am trusting it. It does what I call a file for file backup not the vault back up that so many back up programs do. So I can actually browse my files and see that they are there, which I prefer since I have done the other and found that it wasn’t a good back up only when I try to restore. And take it from me that sucks worse than Comcast customer service. What’s worse is when I rebooted, my Vista side booted and realized it needed to update 12 things, so I let it do it, and it seems to have worked, although I haven’t really done anything with it, other than play games, its what windows is worth. Thank God it didn’t give me the usual, you have changed you computer we need to reactivate…not valid please call India for help, note I usually get for no reason, but thats a whole other rant. Anyway, I booted up to my leopard DVD, here at the office, and and it got thru about 3/4’s of the install and crashed. I took the DVD out, cleaned it and tried again, no such luck. Luckily I have access to other copies here, so we are trying again with another DVD, wish me luck.
