Miscellarikneous

Hey, looka' that! It's been a while since I've done this.

Our topic for today is Iraq. And why I think the U.S. needs to be there.

Simply, that country is seriously fucked up right now, and it doesn't much matter to me who did the up-fucking, it's the kind of situation that the nation-haves of the world need to address. The U.S. being the havest of all nations, I think it is the correct role for us to attempt to cleanup the mess there. I don't think we should have taken it upon ourselves to oust their dictator for them. But given that he's ousted and the question of what will take his place is quite a large, open question, outside help is needed.

If Hussein had been ousted by someone else, and the chaos we see in Iraq now is what resulted, the U.S. ought to be there. If your nation is the richest, most powerful in the world and also uses the lion's share of the world's energy, the least you should do is help to take care of the rest of the world. It is my belief that beyond simply defending its own, the most powerful nations need to use their power to protect as much of the world as possible. So, my point is, even though the U.S. caused the problem, the fact remains that there is a problem and the U.S. are well positioned to fixed it, at least, resource-wise.

What muddies the question seriously is the fact that any one who looks like an American might as well be wearing a bullseye in Iraq. That seriously calls into question whether the U.S. can be effective in cleaning up and stabilizing post-war Iraq, or if our being there is just making matters worse.

I have no doubt, however, that it takes longer than a year to rebuild a nation and form a government, and if the U.S. were to pull out with no one to take its place, utter chaos would result. Americans might feel better about it because that chaos wouldn't be claiming American lives (which, you'll note from contextual clues in news reports, are more valuable than mere Western lives, which in turn are more valuable than Arab lives), but the situation would be much, much graver.

I think, and have thought for a while, that the U.S. should immediately and completely turn over control of the post-war Iraq-rebuilding to the United Nations, with its resources playing as large a part as needed in that effort. It may be that minimal numbers American soldiers should be there, since their presence only fans the fire. But certainly a nominal behind the scenes presence, along with much-needed money and/or technology to help the rest of the world clean up the mess, seems reasonable to me.

I hate to see the death toll rising. Hearing the accounts today of American civilians' bodies being burned and dragged through the streets made me feel ill, and furious-- angry enough to start thinking about how fierce the U.S. retaliation for that should be. But that was my gut reaction. Fortunately, most humans have brains, and some of those brains work well enough to reject their gut reaction and instead use reason and intellect to determine a course of action.

I have no confidence in the current administration to get it right by any other means than dumb luck. And even though there is plenty of dumb and more than a little luck among GWB and his band of hoodlums, I'd rather not risk the fates of millions of people by relying on that method.

George, say you're sorry, turn over the mess to the U.N., help however you can. Then do the world a favor and lose the election in November.

We're in the middle of trying to refinance our mortgage. Our mortgage broker just recently informed us that there was a collection showing up on our credit report, so today I phoned up the wanna-be collectors to look into it. I got through the prompts and got to a person, told them my account number and gave them my name.
Her: What's your wife's name?
Me: Naomi.
Her: It's not Linda Jones?
Me: Uhhh, no.
Her: You don't live at 1234 Counting Street? [Note: not real street address. Don't go trying to contact Linda Jones there and telling her to pay her friggin' phone bill.]
Me: Nope.
Her: OK, it doesn't look like this is your account.
Me: Great! Can you send me a letter telling me whose account it is so I can show it to my broker?
Her: I'm sorry, I can't send out any information about that account because it's not yours.
Me: But all I need is for you to put in writing what you just told me on the phone...

You all know where this leads, so I won't harp on it. Talking to the supervisor didn't help, either.

So, I had to tackle it the new version of the old fashioned way-- contacting the credit reporting agencies, who have up to 30 days to respond. It turns out that it's not really that hard. You go to equifax or experian (or the other one) and order your credit report for $9, then just click on all the things you want to dispute. Fun! It's definitely worth the money to get your credit cleaned up, even if it ends up costing you $9 x 3 x 2. They had Naomi having lived in Miami and some duplicate student loan accounts that I needed to get offa there, in addition to the bogus Pac Bell collection thingy.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids!

I told people I was going snowboarding for the first time this weekend. Everyone told me how sore I'd be! Naomi took me out to buy knee pads so I wouldn't destroy my knees from repeated landings.

As it turned out, I had a great time, the snow was slower and kind of slushy, so it didn't hurt too bad, and I didn't fall down too much, except when I tried to stop after trying to go fast. Toe-side and heel-side didn't seem to make a difference so I guess I was lucky! I think that both skating helped me to trust my edges, and descending on a bike might have helped me deal with the downhill speed.

Here's me with too much weight on my back leg:

I know it looks like I'm posing, but really, I was moving at the time.

Here's me & Naomi: (photo by hottie pie instructor, Brynja):


We left around 4:30, after the last run, and drove back on hwy 88 instead of 50. The scenery was gorgeous, and the traffic was light until we hit Stockton, pretty much. When it got heavy in Tracy, we spotted an In'n'Out and let the traffic clear.

In case you were wondering, after all my whining, why I'm able to blog today, here is the answer:



I dragged my butt all the way to Menlo Park, and I can't get in to the freakin' application I need.

I catch flack all the time from my blogzy wife that I don't blog enough. I try to tell her that I blog just as often as the mad ponies, to which she replies, "yeah, but they're...." The unspoken end to that sentence is "way cuter."

On top of being not blogzy enough and not cute enough, I'm not home enough! I've been spending all my time between SLAC and work, and even working a bunch of overtime at work. I don't blog from work because I don't trust big brother. True, the IT department seems to be pretty inept (e.g. we all get set to be local administrators because otherwise we can't load the company intranet page), but all it takes is one ept person to screw it up. Bottom line, and it's probably stupid, but I don't want BSW Co. to have ownership of my blog-- which they would legally if I created stuff on work time from a work computer.

So, yeah, all my time between work and SLAC, and all my other time riding my bike, going through Naomi's discrete maths homework, muddling through learning Italian, and getting back into hockey. And of course, all the normal homeowner crap, too.

I will keep trying to blog on a regular basis. I'll also try to be cuter.

Played with Lynx last night for the first time in about 4 months. I didn't do my nigh-patented tripping just as I reached the bench that I usually do when I haven't skated in a while, which got my hopes up to start out.

Overall, I thought I had a pretty good game considering, but I did plenty wrong. My passes were generally off the mark (which is why I tried to stick to safe plays), and my decision-making was about half a second slower than usual. I was out of position more often than usual, too.

Brian had said he needed me on D because I wasn't afraid to move people, so I took it to heart! I tried to get on people and move them whenever possible. I can see why he said that, too, because our D corps almost never boxed the guys out from in front of our goalie.

I ended up leveling a guy as he entered our zone because he had his head down. How it works is like this: he's skating in with head down, I move in and take the puck off his stick, but I've committed to taking the puck, and he doesn't know I'm there, and WHAM! I'm prepared, so I stay upright, and he's not, so he doesn't. Of course, to the refs, who couldn't reason their way out of a gazebo, it's a penalty. My argument, which I never have enough time to make, is that I took the puck away first, which gives me the right to hold my ground and he should have to get outta my way. I always seem to get called on this, so either I should stop doing it, or more likely I should really just level the guy and forget about playing the puck.

I'm pretty sure this was recorded on video, so if it gets posted to the Lynx site, I'll link to it so you can see for yourself. All 3 of you who read this blog, that is.

Anyway, the rest of the game, the refs were kinda watching me closely. So when one of their guys took a shot after the buzzer (really lame shot, no where near our goalie). I went over to make sure he knew I was not happy about it. Really we were just pushing a little-- but not in that way that says it's about to escalate-- when the thuggy ref came over and grabbed me around the neck to pull me off. Effective, I guess, but really not very cool. But, I kept my cool and didn't drop 'em with the ref. That usually doesn't work out too well.

We ended up tying, which was a result of Lynx playing down to their level. Frankly, our guys looked like they weren't trying very hard from about the second period on. Not that they didn't want to win, just that they didn't skate all-out for loose pucks, win the little one-on-one battles, keep guys away from our net and goalie, etc.

It was good to be back on the ice, and I didn't pull any muscles!

Naomi was gone for the weekend. The cats don't like it when she's gone, and they get at once clingy and spazzy.

I was trying to get some sleep so I could get up for the club ride the next morning, and every time I'd get close to being asleep, a cat would land on me. Jake landed on my head, and another cat landed on my gut. My eloquent response to this was to yell "Mother Fucker!!!" loud enough to wake the neighbors, for sure.

And it made me think of Haiti, how as events were unfolding last week, you wanted to just get on a big megaphone and say "YOU GUYS JUST CUT THAT SHIT OUT!"

No doubt Aristide was not a great leader, so not a ton of sympathy there. But you don't just throw out an elected (maybe) leader, especially when your democracy is still trying to keep rolling. Then again, our country started from the notion that one has a right to rebel if treated unjustly.

Our government's brilliant response was to ignore it, except to say we wouldn't be accepting any of your poor, your tired, your weary, etc., thank you very much. And then when the going got tough, the tough went kidnapping! Whee!

No, they definitely had to get on the phone and say, very sternly, you folks knock that wacky shit off, we'll be right there, and then we'll figure this out.

Back to the cats. Later that night, still not sleeping, the other two climbed on top of pop, and Jake kinda sat in the doorway in a loaf. I told him I forgave him, since he was only a cat and had a cat brain, and that made him feel better, better enough to climb on board.