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I voted.  And I’ve deliberately kept the TV off any channel likely to be analyzing the election or announing results.  It’s not been easy (I watched other, pre-recorded stuff, or did some work).  I will catch the result in the morning!

My predictions:

Presidency: Obama by 100 electoral votes.

Senate: Dems gain 6

House: Dems gain 25

Pretty much just guesses…

9/11/01 showed the world the worst and the best in humanity.

RIP to the victims and heroes who didn’t survive.

Thank you to everyone who has worked to heal the physical and mental scars, and to get those who share an ideology with those who committed the acts.

We didn’t capture Bin Laden ‘dead or alive’, but I still think he’s dead.  Good.

So this morning I was going to help my wife power wash her horse barn. She’d emptied the 3 stalls, and I showed her how to use the backpack blower to blow out the dust/hay first. So far so good. I brought the power washer over, started it up, put a spray tip in the wand (securely I thought) and hit the trigger and PHOOOM - the spray tip flew out into the grass!  Hmm… go get the tip, put it back in, make sure it’s in properly this time, then pull the trigger… sh—- whaa— water spraying everywhere, f-#, da–… turn it off.  Check spray tip, looks good, try again, same (soaking) deal. $#!+ After a few attempts to fix, I figure I broke the spray wand coupling somehow, and go back the house - somewhat unhappy!

I finished the mowing I had started earlier, showered, ate, had a swim, ate dinner, and the power washer was still on my mind.  I decided to look at the wand again to see if I could figure it out. I thought maybe a rubber seal ring had somehow become dislodged or something. I decided to look carefully at the area where the spray tip landed in the grass and voila, I found a rubber o-ring! Took me half an hour to figure out how to install it (goes completely inside the wand coupling) but I knew I had it. Put the tip back on (SECURELY!), fired it up —– YAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

Another maintenance mystery solved. I was so pleased I didn’t have to buy parts or deal with warranty or get someone to fix it that I power washed her horse’s stall.  Just another of life’s ups and downs on the farm.

I just saw the new Disney/Pixar movie WALL-E and I was blown away.  I think critics of this movie may have been expecting a comedy, perhaps a Toy Story with robots, but it’s nothing of the kind.  It certainly has humor, but it’s in a dark, tense, but ultimately uplifting (hey it’s Disney) backdrop.

To me it contains parts of many science fiction books and movies, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, all of Isaac Asimov’s amazing robot books, even Rendezvous With Rama, my favorite book by Arthur C. Clarke.

The movie’s web site is also amazing.  Here’s a free embed they provide:

I recently saw Bjorn Lomborg interviewed about ‘global warming’ and his views on what we should do seemed about the most practical and effective imaginable.  Instead of the shrill, slick, non-scientific, and dishonest ‘marketing’ by people like Al Gore, Lomborg looks at the effectiveness of solutions proposed by others.  For example, he says if all the goals of the Kyoto treaty were met (no chance, but ok), the world would still only delay the predicted effects of ‘global warming’ by a year or so!  So Al Gore and cohorts want to cripple the global economy to delay global warming by a year?  Ok Bjorn, now you’ve got my attention.

He goes on to say that efforts to save arctic ice will likely save 1 polar bear a year, a popular cause among environmentalists.  He said humans SHOOT 400 polar bears a year, so maybe stopping that would be more effective!

His new book “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” will be available in August, and I’ve pre-ordered it.  Finally a cool head on a hot subject!

With all this talk of oil and energy, I decided to look at the Department of Energy web site to see what it claims to be doing.

Loads of good sounding info, but I decided to go to the budget, as that’s where things usually reveal themselves (follow the money…).

I had no idea how much money the DoE spends, but for ‘09 they’ve requested $25 BILLION. Now I’m sure govt lovers and Bush haters will come right out and say “that’s cheaper than Iraq in a week” or whatever, but ignoring that bogus comparison, how much is $25 BILLION?

Well if there’s 300 million men, women, and children in this country, that equates to about $83 EACH, a year.

So, are you happy, that you, your relatives, friends, children, everyone, is paying $83 a year for this fine organization?

Their budget “highlights” document is 113 pages. Yikes.

It says they need that money to “address the growing demand for affordable, clean and reliable energy; preserve our national security; and enable scientific breakthroughs that could have significant impacts on our quality of life and the health of the American people.” Yeah, right. But what do they actually DO?

This is their mission/strategy page: http://www.doe.gov/about/index.htm

On their strategic plan page it says:

By implementing DOE’s Strategic Plan, we are enhancing America’s energy security and sustaining our economic vitality.

EPIC FAIL! Oil is what, $139 today????

So I looked under achievements and awards to see what we might all be getting for $83 a year.

What’s this? Part of their funding went to the human genome project. What has that got to do with energy?

So then I find that their ‘researchers’ helped with research on Climate Change that lead to the IPCC winning the ‘07 Nobel Peace Prize. And this is about energy and not weather HOW? This research was done at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee which has 4200 people and is entirely funded by DoE. Facts about ORNL.

Your tax dollars at work folks.

Sooner or later I guess this topic was going to get mentioned here.

U.S. gas prices have doubled and more in the past couple of years.  It must be hurting millions of people directly (getting to and from work or school for example), and hurting many businesses too, which must deliver things and have things delivered to them and so they must raise prices on everything in turn to make up for it.  It seems the U.S. government has totally distorted how it reports inflation because gasoline and food prices alone are skyrocketing.  Maybe the drop in house prices is counteracting that some!

The politicians are arguing over causes and remedies, but while they do NOTHING, quietly, millions of people are driving a little less, maybe trading in the old clunker or big SUV for something much more efficient, sales of hybrids have skyrocketed, and the American people are being very sensible about all this.

We’ve all heard it’s ‘greedy oil companies’ that are the cause but that really isn’t the case - they process crude oil and refine it, etc., and pass along the costs they must pay.  Now global demand for oil and gasoline has been climbing and is projected to climb a great deal more as prosperity increases in China and India in particular, as they hold almost half the world’s population!  U.S. gasoline consumption has not increased significantly in decades.  Increasing overall demand puts upward pressure on prices if supply is not increased. Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Randy Pausch is dying and he knows it, of liver cancer.  But this inspiring wonderful man decided to inspire his students with his final lecture, telling them what’s really important in life.

You can see his last lecture here: google video or visit his web site at the above link for this and other videos and information.

I learned a few years ago the best way to get the house cleaned up is to invite people over.

So a friend came by this morning and I felt pretty good - I’d tidied my office (although some was cheating - took notes and papers spread across the desk and stacked them in one ‘neat’ pile) and the infamous ’staging area’ kitchen table. Also felt good because I got the pool paver power washing and clean-up done a week or two ago (tedious and time-consuming job, but looks great!) and all the grass is cut!

A temporary victory in the race against entropy.

Complain? You want to complain? It’s tax return time and the forms are SO annoying! The grass has started growing fast and that means I’m going to have to spend a lot more time cutting it than I want to. …

Complaining is expressing grief, pain, or discontent. It’s a complaint if you express how you feel something shouldn’t be the way it is, and usually you don’t offer a solution as to how it could be the way you want it.

We all complain, but does it do any good? No! Not only doesn’t it help, in fact it often just makes us feel worse about things and not just emotionally, but physically. We seem to think it will help ‘get it off our chest’ or maybe subconsciously we justify some perception of superiority by complaining about other things and people, but overall there’s NO benefit to it, to ANYONE, including the complainer.

Will Bowen, a reverend serving at a church in Kansas, talked about this in a sermon on finding prosperity, and this lead to him giving out little purple bracelets to his congregation and he told them to be ‘complaint free’ for 21 days, and if someone with a bracelet complained, to put the bracelet on the other arm to consciously remind them what they’ve done. Well, this has become HUGE. 5 millions bracelets and a book later, it’s still going.

Links:

• The bracelet web site and further information
• FAQ (frequently asked questions about how it got started, where the money goes, etc.)

Answering the question “how do we find happiness?” the Dalai Lama answered something like “stop doing all the things that make you unhappy.”

Complaining less is probably a good start.