HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

to the best damn little brother on the planet.

DonnieLove, there are not many people in life that you can truly count on to come through in the clutch, or just be there to listen when you need to bitch about stuff, and YOU are one of those people.  I only hope I have done as well for you over the years as you have done for me.

Happy 29th yet again, kiddo.

I think it is because we both discovered that we had a lot more in common politically than either of us might had thought possible when I was younger.*  That, and she was able to impart a LOT of insight as how the exec branch affected her job**, which was more telling than any press conference could be as to how any administration would be doing things to affect the country.

While I do have a small handful of people that I feel mildly comfortable talking politics with, it’s just not the same.  Maybe part of it was knowing that even if I joined up with the Anarchists, Mom would be happy that I found a party I could identify with and support and she wouldn’t give me shit about it.  That, and she’s probably nicely quiz me on their platform, if nothing else if to see if perhaps they were a good fit for her as well. ;)

At least little bro & I seem to be running on the same wavelength, so I have someone I can rant to about various political things without worrying about upsetting anyone.  But it was always fun to have a partner in righteous indignation on Friday-night-pizza&beer&ranting-with-Mom night.  (She always won on the “whose employer is more screwed up” game every week.)

I think she’d be tickled as hell that Obama is a viable candidate.  She moved from CA to GA as a little kid and discovered segregation - and being a little one, didn’t understand it one bit.  (And regularly drank from the “colored” fountains because there was no line and couldn’t understand why it made a damn bit of difference.)  I think she would have liked to see the progression from separate fountains, schools, and everything else to candidate for the Presidency of the United States.  Hell, all I know is what she told me over the years and *I* think it’s cool as shit that we’ve managed to come this far in a relatively short period of time.

I still wish she was around so we could crack a couple Guinnesses and split a pizza and solve the problems of the world on Fridays.

*  She genuinely wondered where the hell I could go politically, given that folks tend to get more conservative as they get older, and as a senior in HS, she described me as “one step right of Attila the Hun” - it was delivered with love, but also accurate as I was leaning fairly right at the time.  I think she’d like the fact that I discovered and have lovingly embraced my inner hippie.
**The most basic description of her job:  Government HR rules and regs.  Fine line between fairness to employees, screwing employees and protecting the gov’t from it’s employees.

I did fully admit the possibility of insanity arising from the arrangement, but knowing that my brother had the same hermit-ish tendencies as I did, I figured we could make it all work.  And we have - quite well, since our paths only cross once a day at best in the house.

Everyone assumes that because we live together that we have these awesome, deep conversations.  Well, yeah, not so much, LOL.  Our “in-house” conversations are usually along the lines of, “I’m going for lunch, would you like something?” (D-love) or,  “I’m hitting the store, what do we need besides Coke?” (Me.)

Our very deep conversations over sports or pop culture take place up at the pub.  Honestly, for the most part we might as well live quite far apart and have the same pub.  (That and he helps when my cable box decides to go Linda Blair on me like it has done this evening.)

That all being said, the bugger has been out of town since Thursday, and I miss having the little git about.  It’s not quite the same to text him about how I’m sorry that MNF turned out the way it did vs. being able to holler down the basement stairs.

He’s back tomorrow, and the next lunch is on me.  (Or tomorrow night at the pub, whichever situation presents itself first.)

Amazing how you get used to having someone about, even if they’re the perfect “invisible” roommate.

Oh, and in his absence, I have become the SUPER-PROVIDER of biscuits to the pup.  The morning biscuits (99.9% me), the “heading to the pub” biscuit (70% me), and the, “I just got home from the pub and you go out and be done by the time I am done going to the loo and getting a drink” biscuit (95% little bro) - I AM THE QUEEN! ;)

*To be sung to the melody of “Come home Snoopy, Come home!”

But, I will admit I was very surprised when I heard that various Rep’s said their constituents were overwhelmingly against today’s package being passed.  (Of course, this was after the Republican’s came out and said, “Pelosi hurt our feelings so we changed our votes.  Oh, the maturity!)  But somehow, the S&P 500 dropping 8.78% in a day is OK?

Has it been reported everywhere else in the country as just a mechanism to protect “The Rich” on “Wall Street”?  Cause the current credit and banking liquidity issues that the country is facing really do extend beyond the hedge fund managers and bankers on Wall Street.  Regular non-Wall-Streeters who *haven’t* bought a house they can’t afford, or a car they can’t afford and have saved and invested are having their portfolios hammered.

I really do wonder how this is all being reported outside the DC area, and in non-business-focused news programs.

ETA: After it was all said and done, I went to see how my rep voted.  Both my current rep and the one from my last district, both Republicans, voted for it.

Looks like Wachovia Bank is next on the chopping block.  Of course, my grandmother has 2 accounts there…

Given that her FAVORITE activity is to actively seek out things to worry about and to then expect me to have all the answers, this should be fun.

Hopefully a few things will happen:

1.  She’s not paying any attention to the news.

2.  That it is just a matter of the name changing on the bank - trust me, having her deposits liquidated and sent to her will cause more heartburn than I even care to imagine.

It would be more comforting if the members understood what a reverse auction was.

Here is someone’s comment on all this:

Do people not understand volume that has hit the markets today? It is not necessarily the company you trade with, but more than likely your computer or router. The amount of data streaming into a personal computer will close certain ports if it exceeds what the computer sees as safe. The problem is on you, and your equipment, and your connection….not the multimillion dollar broker systems. Try using some common sense, and blame your mistakes and lost profits on the user.

Why on earth would E*Trade be sending me any more data when I log in today than it would any other day?  OK, there is that one extra hyperlink on the home page so I can read the list of financial companies that can’t be shorted for a while (pdf), but somehow I don’t think that is enough to shut down the ports on my computer and keep me from the website.

If a site is overloaded, it’s overloaded.

I wonder if he’s trying to justify upgrading his computer and buying a T1 line to his wife…

– Had a sense of humor
– Wanted to be helpful (though there really wasn’t anything he could do)
– Saw no need to “pull up my account” just to give me info on the outage in my area

I called to see if I could get any info on the cable beyond the generic recording of “they’re working on it” and I got a very nice guy who explained that they didn’t have a timeline on when it would be done, because it was a fiber cut and they just didn’t know how long it would take to fix it.  Then he asked,

“It wasn’t you that did it, was it?”
“Um, no, pretty sure it wasn’t me.”
“Are you sure?  Because if it was, I am going to call all the other customers and send them to your house.”

Usually I get some cranky beeyotch who insists on pulling up my entire account history before she sees fit to give me any system status information.

However, if you are like me and actively follow the stock market, you may agree that today is a really crappy day to have the cable go out and not be able to get your CNBC fix.  (But Cox Communications has assured me that “technicians are in the area and they’re working on the problem!”)

Still picking through multiple news pages to get the details of what the government has in mind for all this.  Fun!

Not much wind, lots of rain.  Scattered power outages, Huntington is flooded (not unusual) and Rt 1 is shut down in several places.  Went out to run some errands, roads are a little messy with standing water but nothing really bad.

Nice day to stay in and bake up some pumpkin bread.

Why?

Because this week I finally got out and picked up the weather radio that has been on my to-do list all summer long.  It occured to me that I am rarely watching live TV, so I miss pretty much all the severe weather alerts, and our weather has been getting more screwy lately, so I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea.

We have flashlights and batteries and non-perishable snacks and water and the grill, so we can reasonably deal with a couple days of no power.  I just really hope we don’t lose water altogether like we did with Isobel - our hot water heater is gas powered, so as long as we have water pressure, I can still take hot showers.  (Honestly, I think that was the most annoying and icky part of Isobel…)

Let the tropical storm parties begin!

Lots of speculation that the young lady had no say in the matter as far as keeping the baby and marrying the father are concerned.  Then again - I doubt she’s the only teen to get pregnant that found she had no say in the matter.

I did read the rumors that Palin had faked her 5th pregnancy and it was really her daughter’s child.  Just a tad far fetched, don’t you think?  Though I’ll admit I did giggle at the Fark headline of “Bristol Palin pregnant with second child.”

What really surprises me is that McCain supposedly knew and still picked Palin as his running mate. I really would have thought that would have been a dealbreaker.

Consider this a test to see what happens next…

Still absorbing McCain’s VP pick. I know Palin is very well regarded among her constituents and it doesn’t appear that Alaska is about to fall into the ocean so I assume she’s not done too badly there. But, she’s pretty conservative and McCain didn’t really need that, cause the hard core conservatives weren’t going to be crossing over to the democrats anyway. Hate to think it was nothing more than a pandering move, but maybe it was.

Upgraded WP again and went ahead and blew away all my customizations and theme, which should take care of the disappearing posts issue, because it was something in the comment form, I just never figured out what - but now that I’ve got a shiny new untouched form, that should do it. Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time finding a theme that I like, so I’m going to give some of the theme generators a try and see if I can get things back to looking somewhat like they were before, if not better.

…

Moose - when you commented on my last post, did you use the subscribe to comments button?

It’s also MUCH faster than the old one.

So far, I’m not finding that Vista is that different from XP, and I’ve really not had any problems navigating it.

Now, Office 2007 is more annoying with it’s changes, but I’m getting used to it.

Now, I have to go back to watching the Olympics 24/7.

All the gory details can be found here.

But the jist of it was that I met Dicky Betts of the Allman Brothers Band.

I seem to have lost all my categories in the process of upgrading?  At least in the write post page.

In season, dogs aren’t allowed on the beach in Southern Shores.  (One neighborhood north, they are allowed year round.)  I understand why - in any given population, there is X% that don’t clean up after their critters.  In the offseason, in real numbers, that percentage is tolerable.  During the season, it’s not tolerable as far as this neighborhood is concerned.

Well, when we got back from dinner this evening and I took the pup out for his evening sojourn, we headed for the dune deck to just take a look at the surf in the near full moon.  Mox was having none of this “watching” stuff and headed down the steps to the beach.  I gave a wide sweep with the maglite to see if we had company.  Well, we were alone and I had all the necessary accouterments should cleanup be necessary, so off we went.

I know, I know - we shouldn’t have, especially since the local gendarmes here already have my name on file.  But Mox doesn’t know the difference between on and off season and when he’s here off season, he is perfectly behaved on the beach and tonight was no different.  We chased a bunch of ghost crabs and had a lovely walk under the moon and left nothing but doggie footprints.  (Which seem to be around every morning on the beach. so I’m fairly certain we’re not the only miscreants about.)

Have to say, he’s a pretty good tracker.  He’d get a scent of a nearby crab and would go nose down into the sand and well, if you didn’t know he was following the track of a crab, you’d think he was drunk for all the weaving and figure 8’s as he followed the scent until he caught up with the crab, which of course would immediately head for the water.  Undaunted, he’d just start looking for the next one.

He’s a pretty good beach dog for being bred for the wilds of Tibet.

I was down on the beach, on my stomach & propped up on my elbows reading a book and minding my own business when something went skittering under my chest.  I sit up and find myself face to face with the biggest, boldest sand/ghost crab I have ever seen.  And he was rather insulted that I had abruptly taken away his shade.  He spent some time on the towel, then under my chair, then back up around to my book again as if to say, “Whatcha reading?”

Couple more pics:

Mine is 3 years old and starting to overheat again on occasion, and I’m trying to figure out if this is the beginning of the end or if taking it to the shop would make sense.  (Even if it is a huge pain in the ass and I’m not sure I want to shell out a lot of money on repairs if it’s just going to be a band-aid fix.)