Recently the Gainesville PD conducted a prostitution sting that busted a particularly vile couple who solicited sex in front of the woman’s six year old son. In addition to the prostitution charge, the woman was rightfully charged with child abuse. I heard about this on the radio, and the report included a quote, I’m guessing from GPD, stating that (I’m paraphrasing) “this shows that prostitution isn’t a victimless crime.”
Life
Right thinking on Healthcare
I see this as the bravest statement made in the 2nd Obama-McCain debate:
I think [healthcare] should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills—for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.
Healthcare is something that no one truly wants any person to be without, but few politicians have the guts to declare it a right because of the fears surrounding the notion of “national healthcare” and the slippery slope towards socialism.
Marriage Rock I
Yeah, we did it. I was in charge of the music and spent most hours from weeks before up until the morning of with my head stuck inside MediaMonkey. I can’t say enough good things about the “Gold” version, but these posts will shockingly not be about the boring machinations of software.
Look For Me As You Go By – The Innocence Mission
Our first dance. I was warned it seems like an eternity when 60 people are staring at you, so I chopped 19 seconds from the end chorus. Love this song.
Keep Sending Me Black Fireworks (wedding edit) – Of Montreal
Lately this is the closest Of Montreal’s come to a straight up pop love song, and it’s perfect. I did cut some weirdness to keep guests bouncing.
Uncontrollable Boasting
Three awesome tunes that pretty much glued themselves together. “Going Back to Miami” is courtesy of the ever-awesome Bubblegum Machine.
I forgot how uninviting makeshift reception dance floors can be, and how quick people file out once the cake is cut, but no matter; these songs became our soundtrack for weeks before and after the ceremony.
A lot more to come…
Why I hate upgrading computers
Last month I spent many, many hours researching the seemingly simple tasks of upgrading the RAM on two of our PCs and upgrading the CPU on one.
“Compy” is our old Sony Vaio, which, after swimming through the documentation, I found requires extra-expensive and rare-ish RAMBUS RAM available from basically 0 reputable sources, so eventually I won an eBay auction: $40 for 256MB. This was 19 days ago and it’s yet to arrive. Long story short the seller had “Paypal problems” and didn’t get around to sending it until yesterday.
Compy also has an old P4 1.3G CPU and very foggy documentation told me it was “upgradeable” (but to what?) I figured out the fastest chip for that socket type was 1.7G. Fair enough, I found a “working pull” 1.7 for $20–for a 30% speed increase that’d be worth it. Chip shipped quick, never worked and, of course, I’ve no way to tell if it’s a MOBO compatibility issue (there’s no researchable MOBO chipset/model#, it may just not support the higher voltage) or if the chip was just DOA. $20 wasted.
“Homey” is my main desktop and, after much research, I determined it requires dual-channel RAM, but not the kind you see advertised everywhere, rather the much rarer “low density” dual-channel RAM. Maybe I should’ve just paid the extra $15 for RAM from crucual.com, but a man’s gotta save money! I dug and dug through eBay listings and random vendors until I eventually found 512MB for around $58. It was an enjoyable two weeks before a power surge at our house managed to kill it tonight (when windows repeatably failed to load, I used the very handy memtest86 to verify the DIMM was dead).
Why do I suspect the RAMBUS RAM is gonna fail, too?
Update 9/23: (sigh) 26 days after paying for Compy’s RAM I got in the mail incompatible Samsung “ECC” RAM–completely different than the pictured non-ECC NEC RAM. Along the way the seller refused 4 requests for the shipping confirmation #. I’ve filed a complaint with Paypal.
The Late Greats
Missing a show twice
Saturday night. Josh called from Common Grounds to remind me to come to the Holopaw show. It’s a bit after 11, so I still have time to see them. When I get down there it’s some sort of free event and Neko Case is a surprise opener! She starts playing Buddy Holly’s “Baby Won’t You Come Out Tonight?” with the rockabilly “go baby, go baby…” and I’m thinking Kathleen needs to be here. Since she loves Holopaw I don’t know why she didn’t wanna come but I run toward the entrance to head out and go get her. When I get out in the parking lot I realize it’s raining and I’m not wearing shoes. I run back inside and start waiting in line to talk to the doorman, because CG has some weird policy now where you have to check your shoes in at the door. As I start to get frustrated, I wake up.
Not only do I miss the dream show with Neko Case and Holopaw, but I check the clock to see it’s past 5 and we’ve missed the real Holopaw show as well. My brain is mocking me! At least earlier that evening we got to see Neko Case on Austin City Limits (wow). I’m so pissed at myself because I’ve been waiting to see Holopaw for several months and I don’t know why I didn’t just buy an advanced ticket as a reminder.
Yelp! I need somebody.
No more CC applications, please
Cost = 1 stamp. I’ll see how it goes..
Feeling better, thanks
Wednesday morning I came down with a cold/virus/something and for three days my temperature bounced between 97 and over 100. Wed evening I had terrible abdominal pain and was paranoid it was some sort of appendicitis or something so we spent two hours at the Shands emergency clinic until I just couldn’t stand to sit there anymore (we heard some people had been waiting 5 hours). I took a triple dose of Advil and went to bed. Thursday was dull, I don’t remember much other than being supremely frustrated not being able to sleep from coughing. I came to the conclusion that I’d just have to sleep sitting up somehow. I tried this in bed, on the living room sofa and finally made it to sleep out of pure exhaustion, but only after Kathleen gave up trying to get any sleep next to me and she slept in the guest bedroom. Fed up from my 3 hrs of sleep, Friday I went to a walk-in clinic, where they tested for the flu (negative) and sent me home with antibiotics and cough medicine with codeine. I’ve been able to sleep, but I have to admit regular old Nyquil knocked me out better than the codeine has.
And now it’s a cool Sunday night. Kathleen and her mom are doing something in the craft room, Evey is roaming trying to figure out who to hang out with. Laundry’s spinning, The Last Beautiful Day is sounding great as ever. I rearranged my office desk a bit and I don’t know if it’s more attractive or comfortable, but it’s at least different and a step away from the standard level of mess. Over the weekend Kathleen finished painting the office and we finished watching season 1 of the sci-fi series Farscape. I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 and finally took my Jazzmaster to a friend to have the new bridge and tailpiece installed. We’ve loaded up the van with a bunch of equipment that we’re glad to see out of the house. Today’s been a nice time of checking off todos after a mostly wasted week.
Eveydiet
Some feats simply must be documented. For example: What our dog will try to eat (preserved in public tada list form).