Category Archives: observations

I guess this could also be called “opinion” since it’s thoughts on life or happenings where I feel like I want to “weigh in”.

The Debt Fight and Just How Much We’re All Screwed

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On Monday, I read this excellent piece on Charlie’s Blog and just had to extract two of the sections that I though were particularly correct. I have excised the profanity to fit my standards (apologies to the author, click the link at the end to read it in its unmodified state), but his points are so clear and true:

It blows my mind to watch this whole debt limit drama, and people get upset because their […] welfare check might not be in the mail. This is where we are at as a country. We allow compassion and sympathy to trump intelligence and morality. Here are the two facts you have to consider. The first is that welfare erodes the strength of this nation. The second is that WE ARE […] BANKRUPT. When I watch the same sort of […] in a place like Greece as lazy worthless […] take to the streets to protest their loss of government benefits, it blows my […] mind. People believe they have a divine right to the fruits of other people’s labor.

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What Government Is

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There was a wonderful post this morning on the Cato Institute’s Downsizing the Federal Government blog. It’s a short little piece on why we need to minimize the size of government and its oppressive effect on our lives.

Most interesting, however, was a quote by Sheldon Richman from his article Bondholders and Victims: Who’s less worthy of compensation? over on The Freeman blog. I think it very accurately sums up the problem:

Government is not some higher super-competent entity like the man pretending to be the Wizard of Oz wanted the people to think he was. It’s a coercive organization of limited, flawed, and essentially ignorant men and women who, having been anointed in an election after campaigns hawking snake oil, are presumptuous enough to think they are capable of making wise decisions on our behalf.

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This news is HUGE…

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This morning, Apple kicked off their annual World Wide Developers Conference with a keynote address. In it, the likes of Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall introduced, demoed and talked about a host of really cool upcoming stuff in Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and what promises to be an amazing new service, iCloud.

But what I think is the most important key news item is that iOS 5 will be “PC free”.

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Osama bin Laden is dead. Meh…

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I had just gone to bed Sunday night when my dad called me and said “They just killed Osama bin Laden”. I replied with something clever like “Oh well” and went to sleep–I thought I’d heard “Qaddafi” and was nonplussed. It wasn’t until Monday morning that I read the reports all over the internet and finally realized who had been killed.

But that pretty accurately sums up how much I cared in the end–a resounding “big whoop”. We’ve spent nearly a decade, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives chasing the bogeyman. Now he’s dead. And life goes on.

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Playing Games…

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I’ve always been a big player of miniature wargames, ever since Junior High School. It still provides my weekly Friday night entertainment and I’m even getting ready to spend 3 days at our local HMGS convention this weekend, including running two different games.

But lately I’ve been really interested in playing other kinds of games. It started when I dug out my copy of Carcassonne: Travel Edition to play with my Mom & Dad. Well, it was a huge success and the family now owns two sets of the regular game as well. My nephews have really become cutthroat players; we pretty much play every Sunday.
A while back I also purchased a Mahjong set in Chinatown thinking it would be something interesting to learn. So far, we’ve begun playing it on Sundays as well using a super-simplified version of the Chinese Official Rules that I found online–it’s starting to get pretty fun now that everyone’s getting the hang of it.
I also recently bought a book about chess and signed up at chess.com. My grandpa Kendrick taught me the game when I was a kid and I’ve played on-and-off for years (mostly off), but it’s yet another game I’ve been wanting to play recently. I’m also determined to learn to play Shogi (Japanese Chess) and actually use the set I purchased off eBay a couple years ago. Oh yeah, and now that I’m working in Thousand Oaks again, I seriously mean to attend the Ventura County Go Club on Wednesdays and start playing Go again.
There’s just something really interesting to me about playing these old standards right now. I think part of it is because I can play with my family and other friends as opposed to wargaming with my wargame friends (i.e. miniature wargames don’t seem to be quite as accessible to the “average” person).
Anybody up for a game? There’s also Scrabble and I suppose I should dig out my Backgammon set. I’m even thinking about hosting a once-a-month “Non-wargame Game Day” at my house on some Saturday…

Testing, testing, 1-2-3!

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I cannot believe that almost AN ENTIRE YEAR has passed since I last posted to my blog. And I left it on such a sad note, too (Victoria’s demise).

Well, here’s a new post. And I’m actually doing it directly from my iPhone. Maybe that’ll encourage more frequent posting–though I’m not so sure about writing long missives from its tiny keyboard.

Oh, and I’m also attaching a random photo to test how it works.

Blog again soon!

FINALLY! The 180-pound barrier broken!

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Today, I’m ECSTATIC! After waking up and taking my 4-mile morning walk, I got home, weighed myself and was 179! This is the first time I’ve been under the 180 pound barrier in years! Obviously my weight loss/diet/exercise program is beginning to work. Now I’ve just got 30 more pounds to go. I was happy that—even after eating at McDonald’s for lunch in Vegas AND that chocolate shake on the way home—I didn’t gain any extra weight on my trip. Playing tennis with Mike last night also helped, I’m sure. Coming up a week from Saturday will be the adult swim coaching class I’m planning on starting. If I can take everyone’s advice to “take up swimming because it’ll be easier on your bad knee” and learn how to swim for real, then maybe I can get back in shape quicker.

So Victoria is home with me again. She really didn’t fatten up at all (I guess I was too optimistic for the 4 days). She seems happier and her eyes are brighter, so she’s feeling better. I still get to give her hydration IV’s for a few more days and finish dosing the Epogen. Beyond that, nobody from the vet said what to do next—guess I’ll have to give them another call later. Now that I’ve spent so much money and time on her, I hope it’ll be worth it and she’ll be happy and her sweet self again for a while.

I’ve GOT to find work. I did manage to sell a couple things on eBay while I was away, so that’s a tiny help, but I MUST find something very, very soon. I’m working on it as best I can, but have no leads yet. I’m going to spend the rest of this week searching and posting online, but then will probably sign up with the temp agency across the street. Even SOME money coming in is better than NONE. That, and I’ll continue posting eBay ads. And maybe following the next voice workshop I do, I can get something going in that direction as well…