Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

I for one am a bit thrilled by the recent mediocre Court ruling that the government cannot regulate power plant emissions. It is the first news we can see that there are some of our fellow human beings who do not live on this planet.  Clearly, it is not in our best interests to regulate emissions if we have another place to live, and so I'm happy that this group of nutbars has decided that the emissions coming out of power plants aren't subject to government control. You see, when I was a kid, the basic idea of having a government was to do those things jointly that individually, we cannot do.  I mean, things like build roads, because if I go and build my own road, then it's mine, only I can use it, so that will get rid of the traffic problem - for me.  For the rest of you, well, build your own damned road.  So long as it doesn't interfere with mine, we're fine.   And there's the whole regulation thing.  I don't mean like what you can or can't do in th...

When I was a kid, it was fairly reasonable to expect that decisions announced by the highest court in the land represented careful review and thought by nine ... well, men, who seriously considered all sides of the issue.  Today, I see that former spot now occupied by rote philosophical vermin, and a few judges.  No, I do not feel that court is supreme, in any way other than they have a fancy building with a lot of history.  Unfortunately, today they showed just exactly what they stand for.  Nothing.  That is, they did not review the law based on the precedents set in the prior court rulings.  They rather chose to change the law of the land after it had been confirmed by most every one of the vermin during their testimony before Congress that it was settled law. Look, I'm no lawyer.  I married a lady who is far far more interested and captivated by the law than I am, but even I know what stare decisis means.  Nope, it's not "Stare at a ten-sided ...

 Okay, so I should probably note up here that I went through 16 years of Catholic Education.  That is, aside from Kindergarten, I attended a Roman Catholic Elementary School, St. Francis Xavier, in Sartell, I attended a Roman Catholic High School, Cathedral High School in St. Cloud, and a Roman Catholic (mostly) College, St. John's University, Collegeville. And so with that out there, I should also probably note that Dr. Joe Gothard, Superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, was previously the Burnsville Superintendent when my kids were in school there, and I've met the man.  Granted, we did sit aside one another during my son's Senior Year Robotics banquet, which celebrated their trip to the world championships that year. So with all of that out there, I see this article which should take you to the local TV news station with a story about a Native American religious practice which the school district is apparently preparing to approve to occur within district building...

No, that's not my new Rap name.  Just a mistake I made. I guess in reviewing my history, I've been a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to browsers.   Back in the dark ages, when we were all connecting to the internet the original way - putting the smaller flat rock on top of the larger more rounded rock and then using it to pound sand to send the morse code representation of what ever it is we couldn't send in smoke signals, well, I relied on, yeah, the old original standard.  That is, Netscape.  Remember that?  The old standby.  The stalwart.  I used it for many years, and was temporarily, for a few days, seduced by that new browser, Microsoft Explorer - er, I'm sorry, that was a typo that seems to have made it into production.  That was Microsoft Exploder. Mind you, for some few months, I enjoyed the combination of Explorer working with Front Page, allowing me to slap all manner of cool widgets into web pages without having to learn t...

Throughout my career, or rather, my time in various positions of employment, I have been privileged to work for some pretty spectacular people, for some truly great organizations, and despite all of that, there have been times when the first two fingers of one hand are providing encouragement to the team, while the third finger is definitely countering the positive messages with some real ... well, profanity is probably the best way to put it. I am no great leader.  I'm working on that.  I need to focus on my communication skills, and work on keeping the message consistent, and more so, making certain that I don't counter the message I want to project with a message that destroys what I want to accomplish. I say all of that due to my recent experiences.  And I'm not trying to focus blame on any one individual - I am certain that there's more than enough pressure going around to keep everyone on the knife edge of tension.  But it's pretty widely acknowledged that lea...

So when I end my work day, these days, my "commute" starts.  I get up from my "work desk" and use the bathroom, then stagger into the laundry room and sit down at this computer.  My personal machine.   And then I take off the blinders. For pretty much the entire day, I have the television on behind me.  It's usually tuned to one of the all-music-all-the-time channels my cable system offers.  No, not MTV, VH1, or any other video channel.  This is pretty much like radio, except there are no DJs, no commercials, no news breaks, just music. And I keep it on the "classic rock" station.  About a month ago I noticed a change in their playlists.  Where I could count on hearing Baba O'Reilly, that song by the Who that some folks think is titled "Teenage Wasteland" - it's not.  But it's right in the pocket of songs which I love to hear.  I'm a bit of a sucker for music that starts out maybe not softly, but simple - sort of the solo up f...

As ever, I hear some of you muttering, but, well, yeah. The other day, I read an article about the Voyager 1 experiencing some as-yet undetermined issues .  Or, if you're even later than I, as in that link has gone to the dead end also inhabited by the dodo, well, there's a news story about some signal anomalies which are occurring as the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, sends signals back ... well, give or take some 14.5 billion miles.  Or to put it another way, it takes over 21 1/2 hours from the time Voyager 1 says "beep" and we hear that "beep".   And that is dependent on a couple of things.  First, let's be crystal clear.  If you're fortunate enough to live in a climate where the sun rises and sets on a regular basis - that is, somewhere on the earth, which does pretty much narrow my audience down to a few billion, but to the best of my recollection, that does seem to be a rather exceedingly large majority of all the humans currently known to ...