Memnison Journal

Yes, the operation went well – though I lost about a pint of blood. Under tight orders to stay off the Foot And keep it elevated. Under Strong pain meds. Will Not Be at the réunion because the skating meets have drained our money and time. More when I get PC access.

There are now more contractors in Afghanistan than soldiers; just another part of the dumb practices that I’ve seen over and over again in the US government – all the way back to my mom’s job with the feds in meat and poultry procession oversight. When in doubt, contract it out, and claim that that’s [...]

Languages are a hot item of discussion at our house, because – well, there’s a big language gap here. Susan’s family is a mix of Norwegian, Danish and variations on British Isles, and there’s a little bit of the ‘Fargo’ Scandinavian-American accent there. Not much, mostly in word choice and the occasional ‘ya, sure‘ delivered [...]

From time to time, I’ll throw in a post on new stuff showing up here; 99% are books, in whatever format.   I intend on spending a good deal of the day relaxing and reading and resting.  I’ve been either on full-steam-ahead or sick-as-a-dog for a while, with no chance to just kick back, and I [...]

There was a discussion in an earlier post (lj version) about Bush’s negative impact on the economy between me and Bill Roper on a Senate bill in 2005 (S. 190) that allegedly would have prevented the whole mortgage debacle.  A year after the bill was sent out of committee with huge changes, McCain added in [...]

This from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo summmarizes the whole thing pretty well, with the exclusion of the whole business about the new top trooper that replaced the guy she fired leaving after a few days because of sexual harassment charges against him coming out in the press that Palin didn’t bother to look [...]

There is a glitch in the crossposter device that I wasn’t aware of. For a long time, you could not easily crosspost from WordPress (the operating stuff for the Memnison journal) to LJ. I like LJ for the community, but I want the freedom to have the perpetual journal on my own turf, with software [...]

Lieberman. This says it all. If he wins, he’s beholden to the GOP, and if he loses, they aren’t out anything, and it keeps the Democrats busy. And Lamont has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s Molly Ivins on this and the GOP efforts to use the British arrests for political fearmongering. Tom [...]

Early reports that a woman who caused a plane from the UK to divert to Boston said that there were Things That Could Be Used As Weapons on her and notebooks with Al Qaeda stuff in them. Turns out none of this was true. Later reports said that she had a panic attack and flipped [...]

Meredith’s in the hospital in Birmingham, and one very sick kid; Susan is with her, of course, and the Harringtons are supportive and helpful.  I’ve asked about dropping everything and coming down, and Susan wants me to stay put for now; we don’t know all the details about what this is, or what can be [...]

Here’s my suggestions: “I call him ‘Snuggles’, ’cause he’s my bear.” “Stop! In the naaaame of love. Before you break my heaaaart!” “This time, we can’t miss.”

I’ve had a nightmare of a time trying to set up my new website as a dynamic one from several ways, mostly involving portal CMS software like Joomla and Drupal, and blog/journal software like WordPress getting snarled, noninteroperable, and what have you, and it’s eaten me alive. Here’s the story: The idea was to set [...]

It’s obvious to me after these last few days that to be truly happy, productive and on anything resembling a schedule, I need outside interfacing.  As in ‘someone to bump and rumble against’.  I don’t seem to have a true circadian rhythm, unless it’s imposed on me, and I’ve noticed that between that and my [...]

rabid_chemist notes the way that the Something Awful people picked up the AOL search logs and looked for the weird and squicky. They found it. Some is amusing, some is just sad, some is scary. You are warned.

The Hartford Courant, which endorsed Lieberman in the primary, doesn’t think much of the post-election stuff where the Republicans are equating Democrats with AlQaeda emablers, etc: Cheney’s comments about the election were ugly and frightening. They show once again that he and his party will stop at nothing to wrap Republicans in the flag and [...]