Administration Leak Comes From the Very Top - "W" Hisself!

From U.S. News & World Report comes this wonderful bit of news about our commander-in-chief:

Animal House in the West Wing

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.

Yes, you read that right. Bush lets out a fart as a first impression. Thank you red state voters.

Actually, that sounds pretty much just like his domestic policy and his foreign policy.

New Floors, Part II- Finished!

Just a quick followup on an earlier post to say that our floors have been finished and we love them. I've updated the photo set with the final pictures. Now we just need to paint!

CUTEK, the Symitar conference, and the Village People

IMG_3561
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

Last year, Jim Stickley of Trace Security threw a great party during the Symitar conference. Billed as "I Hung with Trace Security", William Hung performed several songs and a lot of drunk clients, Symitarians and vendors danced and sang karaoke. It was a blast.

Well, they topped themselves this year and CUTEK got to be a cosponsor. The 2nd annual "I Hung with Trace Security" brought back William Hung as the opening act, but featured an hour-long Village People concert. I even got to go back stage and meet the "people". (Well, actually, we were herded in for a quick photo and then herded back out.) They haven't given us that photo yet, but I did manage to take a bunch of photos myself during the show. You can see them here.

The party was great, the Village People were, well, they were the Village People so what else can you say.

The best part of both the Village People concert and the whole Symitar conference this week wss getting to see old friends, ex-coworkers and my clients, both from my many years at Symitar and my last year at CUTEK. It was really great, but am I ever exhausted.

Why the Hell Hasn't This Woman Been Sent Back to Mexico?

I live in San Diego and I like to read the newspaper, so I subscribe to the only daily newspaper available in San Diego, the Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Time. I receive delivery Friday through Sunday and a story from Friday's edition caught my eye. Here's an excerpt:

An illegal immigrant couple with six children were already living in poverty. Then the quadruplets arrived. They're still in a daze.

This story has everything: illegal immigration, drug smuggling, "trying for a boy" as a reason to have more children than you can afford, blind-faith in religion, and your tax dollars at work. Go ahead and read 6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence and then come back for my comments... I'll wait.

First off, I'm a liberal. I'm not a Democrat and I'm not a Republican. I believe that governments have a duty to provide for the health and welfare of their citizens, guests, and visitors. I pay taxes and I'm happy to pay taxes because I believe that good government is a good thing. And that's why I believe that the goverment absolutely should provide for this woman and her children -- with the important distinction being that it should be her government (Mexico), not the U.S. government and not the California government.

This woman has spent 22 years in this country illegally and there is nothing in the article to indicate that she has ever been deported, that there has ever been any action by any government agency to ever try to deport her, and there seems to be no action to deport her now. Instead, she is allowed to live here illegally.

To add insult to injury, this woman admits to taking fertility drugs that were smuggled into this country from Mexico. Did she have a prescription for these drugs? Is our government investigating this illegal drug smuggling and illegal drug use?

Is this article supposed to make me feel bad for her? I don't. She and her husband already had two teenage daughters (not counting her husband's children with other women), were living beyond their means, when they decided to have more children by illegal means in a country that they were illegally living in. She even had her tubal ligation reversed so that she could try for a boy (her husband is quoted as saying, "I wanted a son because I didn't have one.")

Oh sure, she tried birth control, but gave that up "when it made her nauseated". And then she's "stunned" to find out that she was pregnant with quadruplets? The title of the article should have been "fertility drug abuse + failure to use birth control = consequences for stupid people".

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe she's not stupid, maybe she and her husband are just selfish. After all, she's one of 10 siblings herself. Never mind that they can't afford any of their children.

Or am I looking at this wrong? After all, "God never gives us more than we can handle" (paraphrased from I Corinthians 10:13). Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.

---

Lest there be any doubt, I am an Athiest; I don't believe in any god and I surely don't believe that The Bible is anything other than a collection of myths that, unfortunately, have had far too much influence on the world. Personally, I prefer The Boomer Bible.

I survived another Comic-Com

IMG_3336
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

I spent 4 days at Comic-Con this year and I've got the photos to prove it.

My favorite sessions (in no particular order) were the screening of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (and the Q&A with the filmmakers after it), the Superman Returns blooper reel at the Bryan Singer session, Quentin Tarrantino and Robert Rodriguez discussing their Grind House double feature, the Daniel Clowes session and the Clerks II screening (with a Q&A with Kevin Smith after it).

Actually, the Clerks II screening was separate from Comic-Con, but since I found out about it at the View Askew booth and since it was populated heavily by Comic-Con attendees, it's related.

All-in-all, an exhausting experience.

www.flickr.com

Bush is Holier Than Thou

As he issued his first veto of his presidency, Bush also issued the following statement:

Yet we must also remember that embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed for their cells. Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value.

Bullshit, I say.


Yes, embryonic stem cells come from human embryos, but these human embryos are at the blastocyst stage. For those of you who missed or forgot human biology, a blastocyst is a very small collection of cells that have not yet been implanted in the uterus and might never be implanted in the uterus and might never grow to become a baby. To call a blastocyst a "unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value" is to call an acorn a tree.

Bush likes to frame his issues in terms of moral values, but they're his personal moral values and not the moral values of the majority of Americans and they're certainly not my moral values.

Scientology Museum: Industry of Idiocy

I was driving along Sunset Blvd in Hollywood the other day when I passed by a building that proclaimed itself, "Museum of Psychiatry: Industry of Death". Only later, after someone forwarded me an email solicitation for a free "Personality Test", did I realize the building was a new Scientology museum. Los Angeles CityBeat reported on this new "museum" in an article earlier this year, shortly after it opened.

If you're an idiot or just curious (hopefully, my readers are the latter), you can read the press release from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

New Floors

New Bedroom Floor (IMG_3162)
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

We are in the process of having our carpeting and most of our tile replaced throughout the house with new hardwood floors.

The first phase of the project is complete and our master bedroom has a new wood floor.

The second phase of the project is demolition of the carpet and tile and nailing down of the new hardwood floors.

The third phase is final sanding and finishing.

We have finished the second phase and are waiting for the third phase to begin in 3 weeks.


I've posted photos of the process to my Flick site and will continue to add new photos as the project progresses.

An Open Letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

Dear Senator,

As one of your constituents, I was horrified to read your editorial in USA Today announcing your support of a constitutional amendment to ban "physical desecration" of the U.S. flag. You should know that such an amendment would effect the desecration of the first amendment by banning a (currently) protected form of political speech. I have a hard time believing that you call yourself a Democrat yet would have the constitution amended for the first time since the 18th amendment to take back our rights.

Of course, it should not surprise me that you support such an abomination as you have publicly supported another attack on the first amendment when you pushed for funding of religion in California (The California Missions Preservation Act).

You seem almost eager to repeal the first amendment and this is deeply troubling to me. I urge you to reconsider this issue, come to your senses, and realize that any constitutional amendment that takes away citizen's rights for political reasons must be rejected on the same principle and using the same arguments that you currently use to support it.

Thank you for your consideration,

Ray Pennisi

Google Conspiracy Theory Followup

As a follow-up to my previous post, Google Maps has changed their software and I get much saner results when I search for shooting range near 92102.

Blogger Template Tweaked Today

I spent several hours today researching and then tweaking the templates for both this blog and my GGHPC blog. I started with the Minima template and made the following adjustments:

• Switched orangish colors to navy (mostly post headings)


• Changed hover color to red


• Changed from fixed-pixel widths to percentage widths


• Changed the fonts


• Adjusted margins

I also experimented with a custom styles for printing, but I could not get the results I wanted so I left printing alone. Everything looks great in Firefox, but IE looks terrible - the blog titles are partially obscured by the navbar and I can't figure out what to change to fix it. If you know what to do, please let me know.

Oh, those damn Mexicans and atheists

I need to brush up on mi español so that I can sing the national anthem in Spanish while waving my Italian flag and marching up Mt. Soledad to tear down the cross. Oh, and I need to do this while not buying anything... oh wait, that was May 1... damn, too late.

I consider myself lucky. I only received one or two racist emails (from people who should know better) that were absolutely outraged that the Mexicans were going to have a boycott. You know the complaint, how dare these illegals criticize America when they're the ones both (somehow) stealing our jobs and clogging the welfare rolls. Don't they know that freedom isn't free? Oh wait, am I mixing up my self-righteous indignation causes? Is it the Mexicans or is it al Qaeda that was responsible for 9/11? Or maybe it's those goddamned atheists that want to ban the pledge, take prayer out of the schools, and tear down crosses. Hey, I just realized - al qaeda... una quesadilla - OMG!

Anyway, these racist emails advocated shopping on May 1 to counteract the effect of all those damn immigrants not shopping on May 1. Wow. Now, that's a grasp on economics that you can only get by listening to Fox News (or getting drunk at Yale with your daddy's money). Of course! The solution to the immigration problem is more shopping!

I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert at world affairs or that I understand what drives the global economy, but I've paid close enough attention over the years to realize that the people that are complaining the most are the same people that got us into the trouble that we're in. NAFTA was signed by the first Bush in 1992 and, it could be argued, is what caused this huge increase in illegal immigration. Well, at least China's economy is getting stronger.

If you want my thoughts on the matter (actually, I don't care if you want my thoughts or not - this is my blog), amnesty is a bad idea. I'm not against immigrants, but I am against illegal immigration. Amnesty would be unfair to all the legal immigrants that have been waiting 5 or 6 years for a green card. Also, with a current 5-6 year backlog and the Republicans averse to funding anything, any amnesty program that they propose would never have enough funding to actually work. No, my suggestion is to crack down on anyone that hires an illegal immigrant. Impose stiff fines or tax penalties on these companies and make it not worth their while to hire someone that is not here legally. Then, use those funds to actually fund the existing system to allow the immigrants that are here legally to get their green cards in a more timely manner.

But, enough about immigration, let's get back to something more dear to my heart. The Mt. Soledad Cross. Not the cross, itself, of course. I hate the cross. No, it's the 15-year old case to take down the cross that is dear to my heart. The case of the Mt. Soledad cross is clear to any reasonable person; a giant Latin cross on public land is painfully obvious as a violation of both the U.S. constitution and the California constitution. And it was ruled unconstitutional back in 1991. And every court in the land has agreed with this decision since then. The cross needs to come down, the cross should have come down, and if there is any fairness in the law, the cross will come down soon. Of course, our gutless elected politicians will spend as much public money as they can to appease the Christian majority in this town and to keep fighting for the cross and against what is the right thing to do.

Prayer! huh-yeah What is it good for? Absolutely nothing

Turns out that prayer is not only useless, it's been scientifically proven to be hazardous to your health:

Article: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | If you want to get better - don't say a little prayer

Wimps, Sausages, and TV

I really wish the Democrats would get their act together and actually do something. Bush's ratings are at an all-time low, the American public has overwhelmingly turned against the war in Iraq and is convinced that it's a "bad thing", the majority of Americans know that Bush broke the law with his domestic wiretapping program, and yet, the Democrats are afraid to support a censure of George. Come on! It's a no-brainer... just like W himself.

No, the Democrats are too easily intimidated by words. Words from Republicans that claim that if you're not for the administration, you might as well be giving handjobs to the terrorists. I've always been disgusted by the Republican leadership, but the Democrats have shown that they also serve the Republican leadership with their inactions.

Off my soapbox, let me check in with my local world. Kara and I just had a wonderful dinner at The Linkery, followed by coffee at Rebecca's Coffee House. We dined and sipped with our friends and former-closer neighbors Tony and Edith. The Linkery is a local restaurant that specializes in homemade sausages and serves delicious food with an extensive and varied menu. This is our third time dining there and the food has been excellent each time. Tonight, I had seafood sausage tacos (made with mahi mahi, scallops, and shrimp) and the "sun salad" and we all shared the picnic plate appetizer with a chicken tarragon sausage. They have a menu on their web site as well as a blog that read regularly. Rebecca's is our local coffee house with the best scones in the world (I don't think they have a web site, so I can't link to it).

Finally, I want to mention that we've finally given up on Netflix due to their discriminatory DVD distribution process (the more DVDs you rent per month, the slower they ship new DVDs to you). Also in the last month or so, we've upgraded our TV antenna to DirecTV (with a DVR) and opened a membership in Citizen Video, a brand-spanking new DVD rental place in our neighborhood that specializes in foreign and independent movies. Thanks to the DVR, Kara has been able to watch all those Law & Order (all the different flavors of L&O, of course!) episodes that she never got to see before and I get to catch up on Daria.

See Dick Shoot, Penguins, and Kudos for Amazon.com

It's really too bad that Dick prefers hunting lawyers with a lawyer over hunting with G.W.

We just finished watching the DVD of March of the Penguins, which includes some very cool extra documentaries and shorts that, combined, are longer than the feature itself. Very charming, indeed.

Speaking of DVD, I received a copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High as a holiday gift and I just got around to watching it the other night. I've seen the movie many times in the past, but Kara had never seen it before. It's a bit dated, but still a very good movie. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the DTS track to work and the track advertised as Dolby 5.1 would only play as stereo on my receiver. But, this gets to the point of this post. I was rather disappointed with the sound but since Kara had given it to me at the end of December and she had bought it from Amazon back in October, there was no way I could return this defective disk and expect a refund.

Thinking that I might have a shot at an exchange with a personal appeal, I filled out the contact form on Amazon.com, explained my predicament, and asked if there was any possibility of an exchange, since this was obviously a defective disc (after all, my other DTS discs played fine.)

The next night, we rented Junebug and I noticed that the sound wasn't right on this disk either. Uh oh, something was wrong with my receiver, I surmised, and started fiddling with the controls. I have a Sony STR-DE995 audio video receiver that I purchased 3 years ago and I had misplaced the manual. Fortunately, Google came to my rescue and I figured out that I (or Kara) had somehow ... well it's a bit technical, but suffice it to say, I changed some settings and miraculously, the sound was back to perfect. I quickly checked my Fast Times DVD and, voilá , the DTS track sounded wonderful.

Tonight, after a long commute to HelL.A. and back, I check my e-mail and I see that Amazon has written to say that they're making an exception to their return policy in light of my circumstances and that they're already sending me a brand new copy of Fast Times along with a return label so I can send back in my "defective" disk. I feel bad that I was wrong about the DVD being bad, but I really have to point out that Amazon.com has just provided excellent customer service. Kudos!

On a separate note, Junebug was an odd little movie, but Amy Adams really did deliver a standout performance.

Google Maps search for Shooting Ranges identifies government buildings and local newspapers as targets

I found out that you don't need own a gun to take advantage of a shooting range and it seemed like a fun way to blow off some steam on a weekend afternoon, but I wasn't sure if there was a shooting range near my neighborhood. So, I turned to Google Maps and searched for shooting ranges near 92102.

Sure enough, Google produced a list of nearby shooting ranges in the left pane, but what was initially amusing became disturbing as I continued to click the markers on the map. In addition to legitimate shooting ranges, Google maps identified these sites for shooting ranges near 92102:

• San Diego Daily Transcript, a newspaper
  
• San Diego Union Tribune, a newspaper
  
• California Public Utilities Commission
  
• San Diego County Library Law
  
• San Diego County Superior Court
  
• Downtown Information Center
  
• San Diego Public Library
  
• San Diego Convention Center
  
• Yellow Cab Company
  

I'm not sure what to make of this, but if I was a conspiracy theorist...

Here's a photo of the search (click for a larger version):

Heading to Columbus and Canarsie Memories

I'm heading to Columbus, Ohio for a week of work. I was last there about 13 years ago and I really liked the town. Of course, that was a mid-summer visit when the weather was very nice. This time I can look forward to possible rain, possible snow, and overall cold weather (compared to San Diego).

Grandma's Corner (112_1271)
Taken by me.

On a separate note, a simple (dark, even) photo of street signs at East 92nd Street and Bay View Place in Canarsie, Brooklyn, NY, has inspired more comments than anything else I've photographed.

Amazing!

Roman Catholics are Smarter Than Fundamentalist Christians

According to a report from the Associated Press:

The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.

Also:

"This isn't how science is done," he wrote. "If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."

I was having an argument a few weeks ago with a friend who I would categorize as an agnostic (he might or might not agree) and he was vehemently in support of teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. If I was a better debater, I might have been able to convince him of the error of his ways. Since I'm not that great at debating, I'm going to forward this to him to see if it changes his mind.

Of course, the guy is an Apple evangelist, so I might as well give up on trying to change him.

Alito, No!

I had to drive up to HelL.A. three times this week, which means I spent over 12 hours in my car listening to San Diego, Orange, and L.A. county radio stations. Much of that time was spent either listening to Alito hearings live or listening to the coverage of hearings on "progressive talk radio" stations.

I'm not sure what I think about Alito, but I do know that it's not the same as before the hearings. Before the hearings, the liberal press had demonized Alito as someone who would roll back Roe, suffocate civil liberties, put God back in schools, and would essentially hand the judicial branch over to the Republicans.

I will cede one thing to the pro-Alito side: the Vanguard issue is a non-issue. I listened to the questions and answers on this issue live during the hearings and I think Alito acted correctly. In this case, the Democrats/liberals were making much ado about nothing.

I wasn't even bothered too much that Alito refused to answer the question about whether he still believes that the Roe vs. Wade decision was unconstitutional, which is what he stated twenty years ago. It's pretty much what I expected from any nominee these days, whether they are Republican or Democrat; they're not going to answer that question. Of course Alito wants to overturn Roe and of course the Republicans and the Bush administration expect this to be true or they wouldn't be so gung-ho on the guy. It's just something that wasn't going to be "discovered" during the hearings.

But, the thing that troubled me the most about Alito, even more than his snub of his wife at the end of the hearings, is his dance around the issue of whether someone who can be proven innocent in real life after being proven guilty in court has a constitutional right not to be executed for the crime that they are innocent of. Instead of giving a common sense answer, "of course they do", Alito showed his lack of common sense and his bureaucratic leanings by rambling on about how the person would have to avail himself of the court appeal process. In essence, he would have no problems with executing an innocent person.

Is this the kind of person that we want on the Supreme Court, deciding our fate for the next 30 years? Well, I take back my initial statement of unsuredness - I can't support Alito and I hope that the Democrats stop his ascension to the throne court.

Goodbye Annie, I'll miss you

Pictures