amazon fail

I am so annoyed right now that it is a good thing for them that I have had several good buying experiences from them in the past. I was using their registry feature, selected some items, check this is a gift on each one, get almost to final checkout step and ONLY then do they announce they cannot ship one item to the address. Then I can't find any button to go back to shopping so I could pick a replacement item from the list. ARGHHHHHH I am back to "I'm just going to give cold hard cash and I don't care how gauche anyone thinks it is"

politics/philosophy

Read a very well written blog post today by guardwife about needing for there to be a reason life was turned upside down. Made me think of my own trite feeling that dear God, let the country electing Barry have been the life lesson we needed to shake us awake before it was too late. I do not know how I will cope if after *I* finally woke up to the MarxSpewMedia et al it turns out the country overall refuses to see reality and chooses to continue to spiral towards the drain instead of trying to return to a country built on principles of rule of law, protection of property for all and freedom for all with the consequence of possible failure for some. As an engineer I want to try to fix things, keep plugging away at something. Atlas Shrugged reference: I will by my nature want to be a teeny, very much less effective Hank Reardon type, continuing to try to make my little corner of the world work --BUT I will also now believe that the John Galt character is correct and that I should withdraw whatever help I am giving to a broken society because if we have the inevitable hard crash faster it will improve the odds of having enough people who remember freedom who can rebuild a good society versus ending up under an islamic theocracy that demands everyone submit or having long term anarchy or a brutal dictator who comes to power just by being the most ruthless and or cunning among a group of competing tribal factions.

I STILL don't understand the ballots this year

It is a mail in ballot. Oct 25 was the last day to request a mail in ballot (only as replacement for lost ?? or for anyone???) But one can CALL to get a replacement ballot, even on election day? WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot? Sounds like I should have a ballot at home since I am a permanently registered voter. I should be able to drop that off in the building that houses the car registrations office, and if I can't find this ballot that should have been mailed to me? perhaps I can get a replacement ballot. That better be the case because I am going to be PISSED if the damn commiecrats sneak through crap because I was not expecting things to be run differently than usual and didn't realize I had to request to have a ballot mailed to me by no later than this PAST tuesday to participate.

Okaay, Sadie has shoes, my car has an emissions cert....

I mailed in my car and p/u registrations at the same time -- I really really scrutinized the fine print on the back of the cards in case I needed to send a copy of the insurance paperwork because I thought I remembered they wanted it now. However I did NOT scrutinize the front of the cards. They wanted emissions on my car and proof of insurance for the p/u and I totally missed those bits. I had already chronically forgotten to send it in for the car and my 1 month grace period is up on monday.

So after calling the farrier and establishing "we thought you were coming today --pushing back 1 day from the snowstorm not 1 week" he came out about 11 am. Sadie was quite good for the first 3 shoes getting nailed on and then she decided she was done and was just bratty trying to take her last foot away before he was done, but he got that last shoe nailed on. Lady got her feet trimmed and was pretty good, a nice change from how she has ususally been for hoof trimming. Very late start getting headed to work but I got to thinking I should test my car today because if I waited until friday and it failed I'd have almost no time to get repairs done and get retested. Thankfully it passed, even the gas cap test (I thought that might fail because my check engine light is always on and the gaskets around the cap look slightly cracked.) So now I can swing by tomorrow after my chiro appt and get my new tags.

Now I have to do some web research and find out if the election is just a mail in ballot and I have missed seeing mine or what. I dang well intend to vote NO (they wont have a HELL NO option) on the tax increase to fund schools. They are not making the case very well when they announce in the ominous voice "some students even have to PAY to ride the school bus" oh cry me a river, I had free bus service about 1/2 the time I was in school, parents had to get us there when we were a country school, we had to walk when we lived in town a couple years.... oh and Colorado happens to fund "higher education" very poorly -2nd worst in the country or something so sinister voice tries to imply that this means primary education is also under funded.

Colorado universities manage to get by with low state funding because they draw in lots of out of staters to the engineering and business colleges at CU and the veterinary and perhaps other colleges at CSU; plus CU is drawing in "liberal arts students" that want to go to a party school, perhaps within driving distance for skiing and the parents apparently are willing to pay or have their kids take on mongo loans to do so just to get them out of the household for a few years and get a college degree even though its got to be considered fairly worthless on the spectrum of college degrees. And then they have research professors that enjoy living in scenic foothills so they can offer somewhat cheaper salaries and attract researchers that bring in grant money from the various federal agencies (NASA, Dept of Def. NSF etc etc) that makes up for a fair bit of lack of state funding.

Man from Snowy River it was NOT ... but

I love my BayRab, she has the bestest mind. I've been taking her across the irrigation ditch now thats its dry, mainly as a confidence booster for her. Today I asked her to go down at the spot where its about a 8 feet fairly steep slope instead of going along to the ATV crossing that is much more shallow. So she is hesitating and taking itty bitty steps down and suddenly I realize the saddle has slid onto her neck Such a good girl, stood still while I dismounted from that awkward position, noticing the saddle pad was very nearly worked out behind the saddle. Led her across and fixed the pad and finished our ride. Today I pulled her out just to trim her bridle path and get some pictures. I hadn't gotten any decent ones of her in ages it seems.

WOohoo

I put in a hack fix to a computer program at work to force it to consider some data of a new type it had been ignoring and it improved my test case hour I was playing with. I wanted to announce it in person to my supervisor but he's at the U this afternoon and everyone else in the group that would know that we are even processing this data had left early or was working off site as well.

I have been riding a bit again. I am so blessed to have that outlet to keep me sane. I've been taking Sadie out and have had her cross the now dry irrigation ditch where it has gradual banks and the ATVer's have made good paths to improve her confidence. The first time I led her across then mounted rode a bit and she was ready to cross back to the home side with just a little urging. Yesterday I asked her to cross without dismounting and it took just a little patient urging to get her started. I have not told dad yet that CJ will probably have to tote whatever rifle I'll use in its hard-sided ATV case while we ride out and RazzMo may have to lead quite a bit since I'll be on a greenie instead of taking Grey Moun. Razz prefers to let another horse be in front, he doesn't seem to feel much need to stay alert for stuff from behind so he mentally relaxes when he is not leading.

Shade is back to being in pretty good weight and I'm starting to ride her again too. She was so tense on sunday because we could hear someone plinking in the general direction I wanted to go. I was like "no wonder I think Sadie is such an easy greenie horse, my old solid horse always keeps me in practice for that kind of thing." Better today although Shade was all intent on an ATV that looked to be running a dog inside one of the pasture sections that backs to the dirt road I was riding on for a while and I changed up the route rather than go right by that pasture. A fun ride but dumb dog Ole lost track of me and I had to send dad out to fetch him because I was going to be late to work and we have a theoretically regular thursday meeting --of course they skipped it today -- seems like that happens almost every time I push something aside to make it on time when I'm having a very late start to my workday.

I'm probably going to get into some more reading for fun this winter. I had stopped reading books this summer to do more riding and stuff --so much easier to walk away from a blog than a really good book; but I brought up the kindle app on my laptop this weekend and started a sci-fi ebook I had downloaded this spring when it was offered as a freebie to introduce the new author. Finished the story this morning and I did enjoy it enough that I'll probably buy one or two of his books now; although I am not sure that I'll like the whole series. It was pretty good other than corporations as the villains -- *I* just can't see it being all that profitable for a company to fund their own military and take over worlds from other 'colonists' have slaves etc. But the good guys were modeled after a republic, with anyone free to develop and have an independent business and laws that protected everyones property rights, an elected parliament that controlled the military etc. so I set aside my "but it takes a stronger motive than profit to drive actual wars for territory etc" and enjoyed the story. Shoot, now I'll have to edit this post when I'm home and put in the author name and book title.

Book was "Origins (Spinward Fringe series) by Randolph Lalonde.

Slideshow I made for the retreat

Who knew? Setting sideshows to music is very easy on the mac. Getting it to sound good when exported in any way, not easy. Playing with it.

Sheesh, even putting in one of the youtube audio substitutions has gaps in the sound. I guess the apple movie formats are different and the sound is just not integrated nicely when exported somewhere.

good retreat overall.

I'm actually feeling more enthused about the work than I have been in ages. My slideshow was disappointing to me. The sound system distorted the music I had added to it. But I got a lot of good comments. There were about 5 other non music bits. Our program director did a demonstration on tai chi marshall arts, the new software guy demo'd the traditional taiwanese costume his wife sewed last halloween, our administrator showed slides of the landscaping (plantings) that she did on her house, and a few slides of some drawings done by one of my direct bosses, and one of the PHD students did a jump roping demo --the rope was too limp or long or something and kept tangling but you could tell she really knew some fancy steps. It was really fun having different stuff rather than just music and with a lot more volunteers the music part was shortened. Heh, sounds like I'm a music hater. I like music, but I don't have a great ear and can't appreciate technical stuff that is not easy listening, and I do get my fill fairly quickly even of well done easy listening stuff.

The working stuff was pretty good too. I am enthused to pursue some things myself. Our program is trying to hire a new chief scientist (offer has been made but he needs some outside pieces to fall in place before he will accept) He was at the retreat and I really hope he accepts, he is very energetic as well as very skilled in the field. I think he will add positive energy to the whole group.

AND one sour note: --on the good side the NOAA program guy admitted that *THIS* administration put in 9 appointees to NOAA vs the std 3 and is "determined to show he can cut spending just as much as other admins" (rolling eyes here, given the huge spending increases under Barry's watch, Barry just doesn't want to risk objective science interfering with his agenda IMO) but its progress over this guys thinking last year. But at lunch today I heard our administrator spouting off on things --making excuses for him and blaming the new tea party congressfolks for "not understanding how things work" OH PLEASE, the demotards passed one pork filled budget after they rolled in in Nov 2008 and now they keep doing Continuing Resolutions thinking they won't have to own the waste if its not a new budget.

All I could think was "USEFUL IDIOT" This gal has totally bought into AGW as well. THe thing is she, and the other folks spouting off at that table think they are intelligent and sophisticated, they totally don't understand that they are just being used to repeat propaganda to advance the personal fortunes of Al Gore, and whatever G Soros' agenda is .

GAAH its after midnight

and I cant launch processing because I need the data genius/perl guru to build one more grib to netcdf converter than he bothered to do while he was at it. Oh well the work won't run away before monday. Possibly I can write the converter using one of the other data types as a template? Too tired and way TOO late to deal with it now. I have to be in Estes Park by 9am tomorrow. Ugh, finding my way there on a short night sleep will suck.

No riding this week

I rode Grey Moun on sunday. Weather was threatening to get windy and it was cool and I was too lazy to ride greenie Sadie or sometimes complete goofball Shade. It actually got more sunny and was nice but I enjoyed riding my old guy. He rounds better in Shades Little S hackamore bit than he ever did in the sidepull. I had always thought any curb chain action would make work against a horse rounding; I only switched him to the hack after I took him on a fun ride one ride weekend in 2009 where I was riding a 50 on Shade the first day to make sure he was sound before going hunting with him and he pulled like a freight train almost the whole way he was in such a hurry to get back to her. I've had so many misconceptions with various horse mechanical things, if I had them all written up it would be a good book "WHAT NOT TO DO to improve your riding" Oh well.

My work is having a retreat thursday and friday. I hope I am not going "AAGH! stupid liberal thinking" like I was last year. I have some revenge though. They always have group entertainment which is mainly the folks that play a musical instrument and/or sing performing. There are some very talented folks in the group that also get that its supposed to be entertaining "the masses" NOT impressing an insider by almost mastering some technical piece that is melancholy or otherwise not fun to listen to even if done absolutely perfectly, but always one or two bits that are not nice to inflict on an almost captive audience. This year they pushed for new participants, can be comedy or "anything" So I put together a slideshow of pics from various riding trips. I set it to Ramblin Man, by the Allman brothers (sp?) so at least there is semi-decent music while they are subjected to my *vacation slides* but its still basically *vacation slides* MWAHAHA.

The new Mac laptop I got for work has share buttons that suggest it may even be possible to put it in a format that will show up on you-tube or FB so I may put it out with a link for friends and family, but they can just hit pause if they find it boring. I was annoyed with the limitations of the macs again though. Some of the pics were getting chopped in the slides and there was no easy way to just resize them in iphoto . Overall the MACs are great for me as I am a very bad and lazy sys admin for the home cpu's but I can understand why folks who like to do more custom stuff prefer to get a PC.

I think I'll take Sadie on the hunting trip

That way I can focus on getting some good exposure for the youngster. Otherwise I will tend to fret about the fact that there is not much hunting going on and consider it just a time sink. I'm such a four eyes, just horrid at spotting wildlife just for fun while riding and I am really bad with binoculars so its doubtful I'll even have to worry about my low marksmanship --I'd want a pretty close shot. I wish I actually enjoyed shooting, I feel like I should develop the skill a bit but there is very little fun factor in it for me. But with taking Sadie she can get some miles and lots of practice just standing tied and waiting around, it should really benefit her training and that should allow me to relax and just let dad do his thing. However I am thinking of asking brother if he might want to go with dad next year. I'll buy a plane ticket from Calif if he is willing. Ed actually has good eyes and natural hand/eye coordination and could probably be ready to take a medium or even longish range shot with just a little practice getting the feel of the gun again.

Heh, I am psychic

I didn't think Palin was going to run. Its too funny, except when its crosses the line, all the comments on Ace about this. She had only raised like 1 million dollars in her PAC and I'll go out on a bit of a limb and guess a good bit of that was people chipping in for her to fund tea party outsiders like she did in 2010. I can't say I followed her very closely but her statement on the PAC and everything I ever read from her only ever said the PAC was to promote conservatives, not one word saying she would run for the GOP nomination. Now the movie and the bus tour might have been probes to see if she had likely support if she ran, or she could have just been making some dough and having some fun with the MarxSpewMedia.

I do understand the "oh crud all of the folks in the GOP field disappoint in one way or the other" blues but OTOH any one of the top 3 would be a fine president, as opposed to the SCOMF we have now, who is driving the country into a pit. We are not going to get someone who is conservative realization of all that the Media painted Barry to be, but come on we are supposed to be about reality.
Barry is not actually a good speaker -- face it only the media or a bunch of bigots cooing over the fact that a black man could accurately pronounce all those big words on the teleprompters could have ever said that he was a great orator with a straight face.
Barry was not actually a clean politician out of Chicago --boy that one was a massive whopper.
Barry was not actually any kind of uniter. etc etc.

Perhaps sudafed shortage is a college town thing?

I used to buy my generic sudafed at Target and pick up a few groceries for office lunches at the same time. Well starting this summer they are always out of both their store brand and the brand name sudafed. At first I thought this was a systemic shortage but the local town Walgreens has had it in stock the two times I've dropped in there. I'm going to have to give up on Target and get myself in the habit of swinging by that Walgreens 2-3 times a month instead or maybe also --the Walgreens has a teeny grocery selection with high prices. Target has decent prices on the heat and eat stuff I bought there, but not sure its worth it to me to go in just for that, especially with the restricted fridge space in the new office I may need to just get in the habit of taking a few things from home once or twice a week and then I could just really stock up once a month at Walmart or something. Blech, I hate having to change a routine that had been working well for me. Oh well, unlike the AGW folks I do understand that change happens continuously and we cannot stop it.

But it does have me curious, is popping sudafed(tm) the latest kick for aimless young punks? Or maybe Target has decided not to carry it anymore for some corporate reason. There is no Target in my local town, and its not very handy to stop at other places in the PRofB so I couldn't say if its a store thing or town thing. Perhaps I'll ask online if anyone has noticed a similar deal, I am not curious enough to spend a lot of time finding different Target stores in other towns or running around the smug yuppie college town that delights in restricting access to and egress from most shopping parking lots.