ACE

2010-11-03T20:25:00.005-07:00

Now that the much anticipated Republican resurgence has taken hold in the more sensible parts of the country, it's time to consider just what it would take to unseat the Marxist-in-Chief in light of our newly conservative-leaning electorate.

Let's do some simple math, starting with McCain's low watermark Electoral College results as a baseline (173). Thanks to what's expected to be some favorable migration trends in the 2010 census figures, several Republican states will gain electoral votes, mostly at the expense of Democratic states that are hemorrhaging residents fleeing excessive taxation and regulatory overreach in droves. Factoring in rough estimates of this redistricting effect, McCain's Republican Electoral College total gains 4 votes to 177.

Next, let’s review the 2008 results for states The ObaMarxist won that are most likely to flip back to the Republican column, presuming a particularly lackluster or polarizing candidate isn’t chosen. It’s a short list, but a weighty one in terms of post-redistricting electoral votes: Florida (29), Indiana (11), North Carolina (15), and possibly (hopefully?) Ohio (18). Add these combined 73 votes and we now stand at 250, a short hop from the 270 victory threshold.

It may be a short hop, but it’s a daunting one. Looking again at the 2008 results for possible Republican pickups, we’re left with few easy options. Virginia (13) appears to be the best hope for a flip given its Republican tilt in past Presidential elections. After that, what state would be next? Is Colorado (9) ready to reverse course in spite of its recent embrace of liberal idiocy? Maybe. Iowa (6)? The site of His Holiness’s ascendency? Doubtful. Nevada (6), with Harry Reid’s machine at full steam? Unlikely. New Hampshire (4)? Unpredictable. New Mexico (5)? Probably not. Pennsylvania (20)? That’s a tough road, even with the fresh Republican shift and a stalled economic recovery.

So, that's the situation as of today. Taking back the White House is doable, but let's not kid ourselves. It's likely going to be a long, grinding, bruising fight, focused on a handful of swing states. Ready to party like it's 2004?

Back of the envelope figures below:

---------------------
2008 EC Results:
DEM: 365
REP: 173
---------------------
2010 Census EC Shift:
TX +3 + ->3
FL +2 + ->5
AZ +1 + ->6
CA +1 - ->5
GA +1 + ->6
NV +1 - ->5
UT +1 + ->6
IL -1 + ->7
IA -1 + ->8
LA -1 - ->7
MA -1 + ->8
MO -1 - ->7
PA -1 + ->8
NY -2 + ->10
OH -2 - ->8
EC Net Gain: +8
---------------------
2008 EC + 2010 Shift:
DEM: 365 - 4 = 361
REP: 173 + 4 = 177
---------------------
Likely Changes:
FL 29
IN 11
NC 15
OH 18
Likely Net Gain: +73
---------------------
Possible Changes:
CO 9 (2008 Margin: 9%)
IA 6 (2008 Margin: 9%)
NV 6 (2008 Margin: 12%)
NH 4 (2008 Margin: 9%)
NM 5 (2008 Margin: 15%)
PA 20 (2008 Margin: 11%)
VA 13 (2008 Margin: 7%)

Possible Max Gain: +63
Required Gain: +20
---------------------

2010-03-27T09:55:00.005-07:00

With the stroke of a pen last Tuesday, His Holiness The ObaMessiah dealt a crippling blow to Canadian national identity. For decades, most Canadians have answered the question “What is a Canadian?” with the obtuse reply, “We’re not Americans.” Inevitable prompts for a more substantial and less sophomoric explanation were almost always met with the equally insipid “Um…we have national healthcare”, as if their embrace of socialized medicine was somehow unique in the Western world. Taken literally, the standard by which many Canadians blithely define their national character could be aptly applied to Australians, Danes, or Mexicans. Such has been the existential crux of Canadian identity for a generation: a nation defined first by what it is not, then by the sacred cow of a welfare social program their reviled neighbors have only partially adopted. Now that His Holiness has set the wheels in motion for a gradual implementation of universal healthcare in America, Canadians will be forced to come up with another answer to the age-old question. Sure, “We’re not Americans” is still factually true of Canadians, but neither are they Brazilians, nor Klingons, nor Hobbits. The corollary is the key; if Canadians are to persist on pitting their identity on some socialist handout their cousins do not provide, then they must up the ante and devise a bold new welfare program to tout. How about Universal Housing, or Universal Food Provisions, or a guaranteed living wage for all citizens? Any of these initiatives would quell the looming identity crisis nicely.

With that same historic pen stroke, His Holiness also implicitly recognized the sovereignty of Imaginationland. By enacting sweeping universal healthcare reform legislation to cover 32 million people, reduce deficits, lower costs, and maintain a world class standard of care without the threat of rationing, fantasy has officially become reality. Of course, this obviously settles the case of Cartman v. Broflovski. It also poses a grave new threat to personal security. Sure, passing the Senate healthcare bill means that we as a nation now believe that unicorns and leprechauns are real, but then so are zombies and vampires. I don’t have nearly enough ammo to fight them off. Plus, like many of you, my house is frame-constructed, not brick, so zombies could just claw through the walls if they were so inclined. In short, we’re all fucked.

All hail His Holiness The ObaMessiah. Praise be unto Him.

2009-12-22T20:13:00.007-07:00

George Washington would approve...

Newt laying it bare...a must watch clip, even for the moron swing voters who now regret drinking The ObaMessiah's tainted Kool-Aid last November...

2009-12-08T22:47:00.004-07:00

If only...

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

2009-12-06T18:29:00.006-07:00

Saving the planet, Hopenhagen-style

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Money Quote:

"We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars."

Just f#*king priceless...

2009-12-05T18:56:00.005-07:00

A poignant, rational assessment of the ObamaCare monstrosity lumbering through the Senate...Are you listening, California?...

2009-12-03T17:32:00.002-07:00

My New Toy...

2009-10-23T10:38:00.008-07:00

I’m forming a Mock Squad. Who’s with me?

I think it’s due time that we collectively, as a civil society, revisit the concept of shame and to whom shame-inducing humililation should be directed. I have come to this conclusion after having been dragged yet again to a U2 concert by my wife. No, I’m not suggesting U2 should be ashamed of their latest indulgent, hackneyed album, which is unlikely to spawn a single memorable hit despite glowing reviews by the fawning music critic corps. I’m referring instead to U2’s rapidly graying female fan base, many of whom are now in their mid-30’s to late 40’s, the prime bonbon-eating house-frau demographic.

Ladies, if I may speak frankly, I understand your natural temptation to tart it up for a special occasion, but a night out to see Saint Bono and his potato-eating minstrel show does not give you carte blanche to embrace your inner groupie whore and transform yourself into an offensive eyesore for the rest of us, particularly straight men. For the most part, we’re not winking at you; we’re whincing at the sight of you. We care not to gaze upon your saggy, braless racks swinging pendulously in your low, low tank tops. Those little butterfly and dolphin tattoos placed strategically somewhere on your now ample torsos have long stopped being cute and suggestive. Now they’re just creepy and sad. The low rider jeans you’ve donned were created with a specific body type in mind, and are not intended for mommies who still retain a good portion of their pregnancy weight. (Here’s a good rule of thumb: if it looks like bread dough is rising from your gut and hips, take them off.) Coping with aging is hard, but no amount of badly applied makeup and curiously unnatural hair dye will hide the fact that you’re not 22 anymore. Just accept it and present yourself accordingly.

Guys, you’re not entirely immune from some well deserved ridicule, either. Though you’re thankfully less prone to revealing flesh than your desperate housewifes, much of what you wear to cover that flesh on a night out has taken on a distinctly douchebag-ish tone. Can you please just stop with the superfluous Ed Hardy T’s, the shirts with the inexplicable eagle crests emblazened on them, the tight partially faded designer jeans, and the hipster Fedoras? (Here’s a good rule of thumb: if it looks like something Jon Gosselin has been photographed wearing, take it off.) Men look their best by keeping it simple. When they embrace ill-conceived style fads like a Eurotrash metrosexual, they are ripe for well deserved mockery.

In the old days, shame kept people in line and saved the rest of us from being distracted by the buffoonery of those trying way too desperately to relive their youth. Ah, what a lovely time it was. It’s up to us to end this lunacy and bring shame back with a vengeance. I’m forming a Mock Squad. Who’s with me?

2009-08-27T09:17:00.002-07:00

Do you believe in unicorns?

I’m not being facetious; it’s a legitimate question that goes to the heart of the raucous health care reform debate in which the whole country is currently mired. I’ll explain.

Various incarnations of socialized medicine have been implemented in jurisdictions spanning the entire globe since the 1920’s. That’s over 80 years of accumulated empirical evidence we can examine to determine what sorts of government mandates and interventions in the health care arena appear to work, and which ones do not. For policymakers, the rational approach to reform would be to consider this evidence and advocate policies implementing the measures that are clearly beneficial and eschew those which have proven most consistently to be detrimental. Based on what is buried in the competing mammoth bills of what has thus far been labelled ObamaCare (or KennedyCare now that the senior Senator/murderer from Massachusetts has finally expired), it is abundantly clear that no such rational approach was taken in the name of "reform". It seems as more and more people actually take the time to read the bills and share their findings, more details emerge about how extensively the core of the Democrat "reform" effort emulates the failed policies of distressed and bankrupt socialized medical systems at home and abroad.

Far be it from me to impugn the motives of liberal Democrats as sinister. So, short of that, what am I to conclude from the approach they have taken in drafting their proposed "reforms"? I’m left with only one other explanation as to why they would ignore the lessons of history and drive forward so vigorously with such flawed proposals. Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result." Ergo, the sanity of The ObaMessiah, his acolytes in Congress, and the 30% of Americans who still strongly favor his version of health care "reform" is suspect. If you can convince yourself so thoroughly that adding 47 million people to the health care system will not only cost nothing, but actually save $1,000,000,000,000, then you are certainly capable of believing fictional characters are very real and walking amongst us.

So, if you support The ObaMessiah’s health care "reform" agenda, I ask you, deep down...honest to God...no kidding around...for reals...Do you believe in unicorns?

2009-06-27T00:41:00.001-07:00

Zeke’s eye and some thoughts on ObamaCare...

Zeke, my six year old Beagle/Retard mix (see profile pic), punctured his right eye last Monday chasing a bunny through some thorny brush, which prompted a trip to the closest animal hospital with a 24-hour emergency room. As I sat in the waiting room with the furry moron, it occurred to me that I was smack dab in the middle of a pure market-driven, fee-for-service medical operation, albeit for veterinary care. It was a bonafide working model of a system that is far more efficient and desirable than anything His Holiness The ObaMessiah was pitching on his ABC infomercial in typical snake oil salesman fashion.

Granted, I wasn’t overjoyed about shelling out $166 for an emergency exam and some eye salve, but Zeke did receive prompt and professional care from a skilled and courteous vet staff. Had I purchased pet health insurance for him previously, it might have been preferable to my own coverage. Unlike me, Zeke is unemployable; he does not have opposable thumbs, a brain larger than a kiwi, or the ability to speak. Consequently, his range of insurance options is defined by the marketplace, not by his employer, and is mostly free of onerous regulations. His insurance would not be subject to artificial inflationary pressures from state-bound coverage mandates or bureaucratic meddling with reimbursement and rationing. Lucky, care-free little bastard. I haven’t decided if I’m actually going to buy him some insurance in case his next bunny hunt goes horribly awry. If he gets hit by a cement truck in the process, I can always have him euthanized.

My trip to the animal ER also reminded me of a story about a former boss of mine (a committed liberal of the 60’s hippie variety) who once paid $10,000 for a series of surgeries to save a stray cat that died a few months afterward. He was also a huge proponent of single-payer universal health care. I don’t think the rationale behind these threads are unrelated, as they offer a glimpse into the pervasive empathetic reasoning that has obscured rational assessments of socialized medicine’s true cost. The mainstream news media and Hollywood have worked diligently the past two decades to push hard for the universal care agenda by playing the empathy card to a society that seems increasingly swayed by feelings and imagery over substance and reasoned argument. By exploiting exaggerated medical horror stories in a two-pronged approach, they have consistently demonized HMOs, the insurance industry and greedy doctors, and lauded the supposed greatness of socialized medicine in other counties while conveniently ignoring the substantial drawbacks. The true source of America's healthcare problem, government, is never labeled as such; rather, government is invariably celebrated as a benevolent provider to the ever-ailing masses.

Ultimately, the inflation and inefficiencies that plague the US medical system stem from market distortions caused by Ponzi-esque government programs and burdensome regulations that pervert the price mechanisms necessary for a viable and free health care marketplace. In spite of this rather obvious fact, here we are, 15 years after the death of HillaryCare, on the cusp of adopting myriad radical changes at the federal level which would distance us even further from a free market solution, with guaranteed disastrous fiscal and medical consequences. I can't say I'm entirely surprised. This is, after all, just the sort of “change” His Holiness promised to deliver. Sadly, we've drifted far from the days when less bombastic presidents could speak openly about affirming the limits of federal power without being considered a cruel heretic. It was Silent Cal who once said, “Government should not assume for the people the inevitable burdens of existence.” Now that's the sort of “change” I can believe in. Yes, I can!

2009-05-29T21:34:00.005-07:00

An old friend of mine recently texted me to say my Facebook profile pic (see right) was coming off "a bit creepy". This was the cyber equivalent of earnestly taking someone aside at a dinner party to politely inform them they are embarrassing themselves in mixed company. I replied that the pose I struck was quite deliberate, a form of performance art, really; a hyperbolic caricature that reflects what my urbane friends (mostly Canadians) think about Americans who cherish their 2nd Amendment freedoms. Bluntly, we're all insane zealots.

As expected, I’ve had more reaction to this nifty self-portrait than to anything I’ve ever posted on Facebook or written on this blog, including the time I wrote pseudonymously as an intelligent person trapped in a mongoloid’s body (this was way before Down Syndrome suddenly became all the rage after the Palin pick). The reactions were decidedly mixed. Some people were on to the spoof and laughed along. Some were mildly alarmed and jokingly questioned my sanity. Some said I likely torched any lingering aspirations for a political career. Some congratulated me on the purchase and wanted to go shooting with me. Some wondered why I would ever want a handgun in the first place because, "you know, guns kill people". Some, perhaps envisioning an imminent rampage, expressed concern for my family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Some chastised me to varying degrees, the most extreme of which I found quite hilarious. One person, with whom I have not spoken in nearly 20 years, added me as a Facebook friend for the express purpose of sending me a blistering private message. In a nutshell, they said they always knew deep down I was a disturbed individual destined for the electric chair, then immediately de-friended me.

Needless to say, the more absurdly over the top reactions were exactly what I had hoped for. Perhaps it’s a perverse pleasure, but I love drawing out the real loons that walk among us. The routines, banalities and courtesies of everyday life tend to obscure nuttiness. In general, that’s sort of a good thing; nuts are destabilizing entities that tend to provoke nutty reactions from the otherwise sane in return. Personally, I’d rather out the nuts and take my chances, if for nothing else but to know who to avoid. Thanks to my inspired self-portrait, I now know there are a couple of acquaintances I should maintain a safe distance from in case they once again become completely unhinged about something as trivial as a picture.

2008-10-11T16:59:00.012-07:00

Eddie asked if anything was up with me since June. Truth be told, the past 4 months were marked by protracted periods of profound boredom, interrupted by some seminal events and the realization of long anticipated achievements:

1) I attended my sister's wedding in Vancouver. For the record, whoever is in charge of Vancouver's transportation planning division needs to be executed, slowly...

2) I visited my brother-in-law's new digs in Seattle. Now I have to listen to my wife's incessant pleas to sell everything and just move up there because she's a water person, pronto.

3) I attended my grad school ceremony at The University of Phoenix football stadium and listened to Stedman Graham give the keynote address. Who knew Oprah's concubine was also a motivational speaker? See more of Stedman here.

4) I took the American citizenship oath, along with 1700 other immigrants from 107 countries in the largest naturalization ceremony in Arizona history. Yes, it was promptly followed by a sing-a-long to Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American. I think even natural-born Americans would have found this to be over the top, but nobody seemed to mind in the least.

5) I registered to vote as a Republican. Alas, my ballot will probably be for naught, as an ObaMarxist White House and an emboldened Democrat Congress appear ever more likely with each passing day.

6) I went through a brief bout of mild depression as I came to realize that not only do I hate my job, but the entire technology field I've built my career upon for the past decade as well. If it wasn't for the decent paycheck, I would have chucked it all and embarked on a 3 month roadtrip by now.

7) I witnessed my adopted country lurch disturbingly towards socialism as its leaders passed historic financial "bailout" legislation to avert an economic meltdown. I can feel a slight whirring vibration as many dead Austrian economists spin in their graves.

8) I continue to root on Harper's Conservative Party of Cuba North as it systematically destroys the once venerable Liberal Party under the leadership of a feckless and incomprehensible Stephane Dion. Though a Harper majority may be barely out of reach next Tuesday, I think it's safe to say Dion's political career will be officially over.

9) I watched many movies since June, practically all of the new ones. Most of them were crap, but the trailers were awesome. Case in point, the Coen's Brothers' Burn After Reading had an awesome trailer, which featured a couple of cool tracks (check out Elbow's Grounds for Divorce). The movie was only so-so, just like the overrated No Country for Old Men. I've come to the conclusion that a great trailer can make for a decent opening weekend, even if the film is awful. The moral? Check out TrailerAddict.com before going to the theatre on a whim and judge the clips critically.

2008-06-16T11:23:00.002-07:00

Some idle ruminations...

1) I saw The Happening Friday night. I think it’s time for M. Night Shyamalanamanalamayalan to hang up his writer/director hat for a few years.

2) Based on my casual observations, there are many people who can’t fathom McDonalds’ “Breakfast Only Until 10:30am” policy.

3) An introductory economics course should be mandatory for all students entering Grade 9, with a follow-up comparative economic systems class as a graduation requirement.

4) I know it’s impolite, but I take great pleasure in pointing and laughing at people in SUVs as I pass them on the highway in my Corolla.

5) According to a Chicago jury, my preconceived notion that R. Kelly is a pedophile is unfounded. By the way, has he endorsed Obama yet?

6) I concur with most of the planet: Coldplay’s Chris Martin is officially a douchebag.

7) My Costco membership is worth it for the free tapas alone.

8) What ever happened to Boz Scaggs?

9) People should really listen to Reid Bryson. Seriously.

10) What exactly is the appeal of the Dirty Sanchez? Do I dare ask?

11) I’m amazed that more people with terminal illnesses don’t commit murder. If you were told you had 3 months to live, wouldn’t you be compelled to take out some prick you hated with a passion?

12) My grandmother is ambidextrous. I think that’s neat.

2008-06-08T12:37:00.004-07:00

The lady who lived across the street from me had her house foreclosed a few weeks ago. According to my neighbors, this is a woeful situation deserving of our collective pity. Being naturally skeptical, I reserved judgment for the time being and resisted the pity parade peer pressure, opting instead to probe a bit more deeply into the matter. I suspected the woman in question was really done in by her own fiscal incompetence, not by the allegedly evil and unscrupulous lending industry that's routinely lambasted by the mainstream media and Democrat politicians.

Sure enough, a review of her publicly recorded deed and mortgage documents at the Maricopa County website confirmed my suspicions. The docs, combined with my casual observations of her big ticket purchases over the past two years, reveal a classic case of a looming financial disaster finally coming to the fore. She bought her home with no down payment in January 2006 and financed it with a $236,000 2-year Interest Only balloon payment ARM mortgage at 9%. The prevailing rate for this type of suicide loan at the time was 5.5%, so right off the bat we know this woman either had very bad credit or a high loan-to-income ratio to begin with. Two months after closing on the mortgage, she secured a $20,000 home equity line of credit on the home. A month after that, she somehow was able to get another line of credit for an additional $30,000. Based on my recollection, this is roughly around the same time she started driving a spiffy, new BMW 335. Retail price: $40,000. I also noticed several big ticket items appeared around this time, including a top-of-the-line 56” television that was clearly visible through the living room window from the street, and the delivery of various furniture and new appliances.

Granted, I don’t have all the details of my former neighbor’s financial profile, but from my vantage point all signs pointed to a fiscally reckless individual living in the here and now, from paycheck-to-paycheck, skirting on the edge of foreclosure from Day One. My assessment? Pity for this foreclosure “victim” will not be forthcoming from me. Nor will it be offered for most of the swelling ranks of homeowners who have been foreclosed on in recent months. I’m willing to bet 90% of those people chose a strikingly similar path of fiscal incompetence fuelled by greed and a lust for instant gratification.

2008-05-24T17:00:00.008-07:00

I exercised some cherished American freedom today and made a belated trip to the Ben Avery Shooting Facility, the country's largest publicly operated firing range, which is conveniently located just 3 miles from my home. Here are a few quick pics:

My shooting post, with my tiny Walther PPK/S .380 Auto sitting atop the block.

Some considerably larger fire power to my immediate left.

Even more impressive fire power to my right. Suddenly my penis seems very small.

2008-05-17T11:33:00.005-07:00

Allow me to introduce Richard Doucet.

Richard and I went to junior high and high school together, though he was a couple of years ahead of me. He was considered something of a phenom back then. An excellent student and a precociously gifted orator, Richard led our high school debating team to their first provincial championship. He also won numerous national and international accolades for debating and public speaking. He was elected President of the Student Council and was named Student of the Year. By all accounts, he was a bonafide rising star who was well-liked by both his teachers and peers for the most part (I thought he was a sanctimonious prick, but I digress…).

After he graduated, some of my friends and I found it strange that he chose to pursue an education degree, rather than follow another path befitting his enormous talents, like law school and a sure fast-track to Parliament. In retrospect, perhaps his choice of profession arose from sinister motives. You see, Richard, who teaches elementary grades at an exclusive Montreal private school, was arrested in Fredericksburg, Virginia last week after soliciting sex over the Internet from a cop posing as a 13 year old boy. Now he’s facing a 20 year jail sentence and some serious anal raping if convicted.

I’m not one who shocks easily, but this news was a real stunner. Granted, I didn’t know Richard all that well; it’s been nearly two decades since I last spoke to him, so I wasn’t privy to any signs of his “alleged” perversions if there were any to be detected. The point is we don’t really know who the surreptitious pedophiles are walking among us. I certainly never would have pegged Richard for someone with a penchant for pre-pubescent t-bagging.

This guy, on the other hand, I would have spotted from a mile away.

2008-05-01T07:57:00.007-07:00

It's over...finally.

After 16 1/2 months of studying, I now have a Masters degree in Information Systems, with a 4.0 GPA and a 98.44% cumulative average to boot. On paper that means I'm a genius. In reality, I'm just another victim of the grade inflation trend that seems to be running rampant across academia these days. I'm certainly no expert in my field, though I did learn a few things that might be useful going forward.

Overall, my impressions of grad school, particularly The University of Phoenix, are mixed. To echo sentiments I expressed in earlier posts, UOP certainly is not a degree mill, as a substantial amount of work does have to be completed in order to satisfy their program requirements; however, the quality of the education is sorely lacking. One of my biggest quality gripes is about the school's insistence on the use of learning teams. Here's a sample of what I typically wrote to my instructors in the course evaluations about these so-called "teams":

1. What are the most important concepts you have learned from the Learning Team experience?

None. I can state confidently that the learning teams are a complete and utter waste of time. In most courses my classmates have been either too preoccupied or too clueless to add anything of value to my educational experience; in fact, I think the learning teams detracted from my educational experience at UOP. Perhaps if the university had stricter entrance requirements the learning teams would be comprised of higher quality students, which would enrich the learning environment. As the entrance requirements are virtually non-existent, I believe many of my classmates are grossly unqualified for graduate level studies and may in fact be mentally handicapped.

2. How will you use this learning to improve both personally and professionally?

I didn’t learn anything from the Learning Team experience that would serve to improve my personal or professional aptitudes, other than to hone my ability to make honest assessments of my teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, and not to trust otherwise intelligent people to follow basic instructions or own up to their responsibilities.

My other big complaint is that there seemed to be a wide variance in quality between courses, though this may not be a UOP-specific problem. Some instructors were quite engaging, while others pretty much phoned it in. Some course materials were well-researched, timely and salient, while others were dated, redundant and irrelevant to the topics at hand. Most of my classmates didn't seem to notice or care about quality variances. For the amount of money they were paying, roughly $2000 per course either out-of-pocket or through loans, you'd think they would pay more attention to such things. Thankfully, I didn't pay one red cent for this program, otherwise I'd be livid.

Now that my attention can be turned to other things, my first priority is to find a new job. I currently commute 70 miles round-trip daily and it's killing me. The only reason I endured wasting nearly 2 hours of my life each day was to get the free education. This has got to stop. Plus, there are credible rumors swirling about that several good people with whom I work closely will be jumping ship real soon. Without them, my job gets a whole lot harder. I'd rather take my chances elsewhere than work with the people who are likely to replace them.

2007-11-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Long lost footage from the Queen's University Model Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons, circa January 1995. I was pitching a fisheries reform bill to attack foreign fishing trawlers.

2007-11-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

More family hijinks:

2007-11-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

For those of you who met me after I lost most of my North Shore accent, this YouTube video of my uncles should give you an idea of what I used to sound like.

2007-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, Eddie and Val! Look! A blog post!

What I've been up to?

1) I’m officially half-way done my Master’s program. 5 courses down, with 5 more to go. I’ll brag a bit by declaring my 4.0 GPA remains intact thanks to a 98.6% overall average; however, those grades are only partially attributable to my academic efforts. The laxity of the University of Phoenix grading curve deserves some credit, as well.

2) I just returned from an Oracle PL/SQL Developers conference in Newark (ugh!). It was an informative event headlined by several of the world’s foremost PL/SQL experts, including Steven Feuerstein, Bryn Llewellyn and Paul Dorsey. Learned a lot, specifically that my coding methods are still somewhat archaic and that there’s still a lot of backend Oracle development work out there, despite what the legions of smug web platform developers would have me believe.

3) I recently came to the conclusion that my boss is a moron. This deduction came about last month as I had to collaborate with him closely on a new project. Pulling back the curtain on his managerial incompetence has been an unsettling experience for me. I, along with most of my colleagues, have regarded him as somewhat of a rising star within the IT Division. It is now abundantly clear that his promotions and accolades were due to racial preferences. How sad.

4) I was cajoled into joining Facebook last month. Now I’m an addict. Thanks, Mom.

5) I just found out I can apply for US citizenship 3 months earlier than I originally anticipated. So, there’s now a fighting chance that I’ll be eligible to vote in the ’08 election. Speaking of which, I have not been paying any attention to the race thus far. I think this abnormally early campaign cycle is absurd. Hence, I am abstaining from consuming any election related news until December.

6) The wife has decided to chuck dental assisting for good. She recently woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming of drilling into a child’s tooth. No, it wasn’t the kiddie tooth drilling that spooked her; it was the fact that in her dream she was 45 years old and still working as a dental assistant. Yikes! Now, now, there’s nothing wrong with being a 45 year old dental assistant, you might say. To which the wife would wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that every 45 year old dental assistant with whom the wife has worked turned out to be a dowdy, catty shrew of woman who resented wasting the last 20 years of her life staring into decaying mouths day in and day out. To spare herself of a similar fate, the wife will now prepare for a new career as a pastry chef starting December 3rd, having enrolled in a very reputable, yet very expensive cooking school.

2007-06-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Scissor me, Xerxes!

With that strangely inapropos exclamation, I’m proud to announce that my graduate studies are now 30% complete. Three courses down with 7 to go. By this time next year I’ll be finished, hopefully with my current 4.0 GPA intact.

My impressions of the quality of my University of Phoenix education so far? Well, it’s no Ivy League school, that’s for sure. The first two courses were beyond bird; however, the last one did involve some real effort, which was nice for a change. That said, I wouldn’t characterize UOP as a degree mill, as some traditional brick & mortar college snobs have done. I’d rank UOP on par with a third tier graduate school. The education may not be the best around, but it’s not entirely worthless either.

My biggest complaint about UOP is that it does a terrible job of screening its graduate applicants. In fact, the screening is virtually non-existent; basically, if you possess a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution, you’re in. Of course, one may presume that someone with such educational credentials would have a solid understanding of the rudimentary principles of written English, but they would be so very, very wrong. My classmates, with whom I must collaborate on team assignments to satisfy 30% to 40% of my grade, are mostly functionally illiterate. In a typical online class of 15 students, I’d say 3 have a good command of English and 5 are able to string together a sentence on occasion. Of the remaining 7, I’d be hard pressed to say English is their first language. Their work is usually meandering and convoluted, not to mention riddled with grammatical errors that even a 6 year old with dyslexia could spot at a glance.

I wish the school would encourage their instructors to be more proactive in reining in students who insist on dumbing down the whole class. Seriously, when you see someone in a Business Systems class go on a bizarre, unprovoked rant about the evils of Walmart, replete with poetry about sunshine and pretty flowers, you know you have a problem on your hands. Although such incidents have been rare, they are disconcerting nonetheless. I hope my instructors going forward will bitch-slap these ‘tards.

2007-01-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

The first of ten graduate courses for my master's degree is complete: COM/526 Managerial Communication. This was a mandatory bird course designed to get everyone acclimated to the online learning environment, and had nothing to do with the actual content of the program. I submitted a few individual papers, one larger group paper and a PowerPoint presentation. Simple as pie. Scored a 99%, which is great but I'm still peeved over being docked the 1% for something extremely minor.

So, that leaves nine more courses to go. If all goes according to plan, I should to done the program by the end of April 2008.

2006-11-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

It’s the day before the long Thanksgiving weekend and I’m in a very laissez-faire mood. Something tells me my work day will be unproductive. I’m debating whether or not I should skip out early to play some poker this afternoon. That’s a judgment call I’ll make around lunchtime. Unlike my old job, I’ve done very little intraday slacking here at the University of Phoenix over the past few months, so I figure I’m justified in tacking on a few extra hours to the long weekend.

Not that anyone here would really blink an eye if they knew I was contemplating playing some hooky to hit the tables. These days I’m known as the office poker champ after having placed 3rd and 1st in consecutive No-Limit Hold’em tournaments at the UoP IT Division picnic two Fridays ago. I put up a good front, having boasted profusely the entire week heading into the picnic that I would win both events handily. In truth, I was doubtful. I hadn’t played Hold’em of the No-Limit variety in nearly 6 months, and all the nifty tournament strategies I read about in the past year had long since been forgotten. No matter; I won, so until the next picnic I get the respect of all the nerds with whom I work.

As for my negligent blogging, it’s likely to remain sporadic at best for the next 18 months. In a few weeks I’ll be starting my Master’s degree program at UoP, leaving me precious little time for random musings. I’ll try my best of pop out a terse paragraph every now and then on the latest disturbing, Earth-shattering events, like the Britney/K-Fed divorce and the TomKat nuptials. For some truly talented writing, bookmark this blog by an old friend of mine. He’s just emerging from his personal blogging hiatus, and his stuff is better than ever.

2006-09-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

<<NEWSFLASH>> Ex-Mistress Outs bin Laden as MacGyver Junkie

"The Americans are closing in?

Hmm...What would MacGyver do?...

Quick - hand me those goat hoofs and that old tube sock!"

2006-08-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Nearly another month has passed and I still haven't resumed posting regularly. Work has become crazy busy, but a good sort of busy. When my thoughts aren't consumed with Oracle coding, they turn to poker ... lots and lots of poker. I've decided not to wreck my winning streak by cluttering my mind with idle ruminations. That said, until the streak goes sour, you may not hear much from me. In the meantime, check out some Sunny clips.

2006-07-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted in exactly one month. Things have turned busy at work. Rest assured, I am very much alive. I have not been whacked by one of the two serial killers running amok in the Greater Phoenix Area.

2006-07-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday afternoon, my wife posed a question that I found oddly thought-provoking. She asked what would we do if we found ourselves in a situation like the opening minutes of the Dawn of the Dead remake: waking up as our neighborhood is being overrun by flesh-eating zombies?

The first thing I considered was what sort of zombies are we talking about here? The lumbering dolts from the Roger Corman movies, or the frenetic beasts from Danny Boyle’s 2003 film 28 Days Later? Believe it or not, it makes a big difference. Corman’s Undead are slow, plodding creatures that are easily subdued by a swift blow to the head. Though very lethal, a sole Corman zombie won’t pose an immediate threat, but they do have the advantage of strength in numbers. Should a swarm of them surround my house, escape would be nearly impossible, and it would only be a matter of time before the throng unwittingly shatters the ground floor windows to gain entry.

By contrast, Boyle’s Undead are speedy creatures with enormous physical strength. Like Corman’s breed, taking down a Boyle zombie entails inflicting a fatal head injury, though accomplishing the task would be much more difficult. A single Boyle zombie could burst through my sliding glass door and slaughter me, my wife, and my dog in a matter of seconds. The best way to engage this type of zombie is with a firearm from a distance, provided you are exceptionally good at hitting highly erratic moving targets. My aim is good, but not that good. If only one or two of them were lingering near the house, I might be able to get a couple of shots off as I pulled the car out of the garage to make a hasty escape. That’s a big might. If dozens of them were congregating, forget about it. We’d be as good as dead.

Assuming we make it out of the neighborhood alive, then what? I could go on, but I’m suddenly compelled to go count my ammo stash. Will 250 rounds be enough to get me out of Zombie-Ville?

2006-06-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

$200 and a couple of camcorders: that’s all it took for three struggling actors to create the original pilot of the irreverent and utterly hilarious F/X Network comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. As part of the network’s campaign to hype the much anticipated second season of Sunny, F/X is running a contest calling on Hollywood wannabes from all across America to submit 5 minute tapes showcasing their ideas for the next great low budget sitcom. From thousands of entries, F/X narrowed the field to the Top 20 pitches, each posted online at MySpace.com/SunnyFX for the viewing public to cast votes for the best ones. The winner will receive $50,000 and a production deal.

With absolutely nothing but garbage on the tube to occupy our time last night, the wife and I checked out the F/X contest entries online instead. I’m sorry to report that if the Top 20 contestants represent the best of diamond-in-the-rough comedic talent in America, then I fear for the future of television. Most of the entries were devoid of anything that would be considered even remotely "funny". They were loaded hackneyed sight gags, lame and/or indecipherable inside jokes, limp attempts at satire, and blatant rip-offs from successful sitcoms, both past and present.

When I first heard of the contest, I half-considered submitting my story about the twisted characters and strange machinations of a grassroots political organization based my experiences with the Arizona Young Republicans. Thinking a sitcom about the life of political nerds might be too esoteric to be considered funny, I let the idea go. Now that I’ve seen the pathetic standard set by the so-called Top 20, I’m kicking myself for not taking the time to scribble down a 5 minute screenplay.

I will, however, give credit where credit is due. There are three contest entries that are worthy of your votes. Go to MySpace.com/SunnyFX and vote for Party Animals, Side Show and John Wang’s Nebraska. These garage pilots may not be “laugh til ‘you spew milk out your nostrils” funny, but the creators showed just enough off-beat originality to be light-years ahead their competition.

2006-06-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Remember the posts on my OEX Option Model? Here are the results for November ’05 thru April ’06:

Nov 2005: 16.10%
Dec 2005: 4.48%
Jan 2006: 20.00%
Feb 2006: -12.10%
Mar 2006 : 7.08%
Apr 2006: 20.41%

Overall Return: 64.96%
Return after Slippage, Commissions & Interest: 58.68%

As you can see, the model did very well over the 6 month test period. The main performance driver came from accurately capturing the big moves in Oil & Gas stock options. I stopped testing the model after the end of April because I no longer work from home and can’t monitor the market properly while I’m at the office. Consequently, I missed an opportunity to test the model against the equities sell-off of the past several weeks. I think the model would have responded well compared to the broader market due to the fact that it was designed to capture gains from both long and short trend momentum for S&P 100 stocks.

2006-06-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

It's safe to say that no one could accuse me of being a proud, flag waving Canadian. On a rare occasion, though, the swell of national pride comes over me, as it did yesterday whilst I listened to Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

Hugh: I'm talking with Bill Roggio, Counterterrorismblog.org's embedded correspondent from Kandahar tonight. It is the next day, it is Thursday in Afghanistan as we speak. Bill Roggio, which units have you been with, and how is the morale among them?

Bill: Sure. I've been with the Canadian soldiers from the Princess Patricia Canadian light infantry, 1st Battalion. The Canadians have the free run of Kandahar here at the Kandahar Air Base. We have Dutch...this is the main staging area for Southeastern Afghanistan, so there's British, Dutch, American, Canadian, a whole assortment of the NATO allies are out here. But I chose the Canadian troops, because they're fighting really hard, and I wanted the American public to understand that in Afghanistan, this isn't just an American mission here. This is a NATO mission, and the Canadians fighting here in Kandahar, this is again the heart of the Taliban insurgency. I spent...I actually got out in the field for about...since I got down here in Kandahar with these guys, with these Canadians, and I'm extremely impressed with how they operate. They look like U.S. Marines to me. Well, they dress like them, they use a lot of the same equipment, have a lot of the same problems that the Marines have, you know, as far as with training and equipment. They make do with what they have, and they fight really hard out here, and their morale is high. There is a big controversy in Canada, whether the Canadian army, are they peacekeepers or are they soldiers. And to a man, the soldiers will tell you no, they are soldiers first and foremost, and they're very proud of what they're doing here in Afghanistan...

You can read the entire interview here.

2006-06-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

People who habitually make poor financial decisions annoy the crap out of me. I’m not talking about teenagers who max out credit cards, or welfare queens with lotto scratcher habits; I’m annoyed most by the people who should know better, the ones who are familiar with the basic concepts of money management, but choose not to employ them. These people annoy me because I am invariably subjected to incessant bitching about their woeful financial situation when the inevitable consequences of their poor judgment spoil their fun.

Money magazine recently profiled several people, mostly typical white bred suburban professionals, who now find themselves facing the prospect of huge jumps in their mortgage payments. Why? Because in the past few years they all bought homes they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford by using short-term adjustable rate interest-only mortgages. Now that the fixed rate period of the mortgages are due to expire, these homeowners will have to begin paying down the principal portion of the mortgage, along with more interest as rates steadily rise. Some of the profilees are about to see their mortgage payments nearly double overnight. What gets me is that they grasped the basic math, they understood the contractual obligations of the mortgage, they were aware of the risks of holding interest-only (I/O) loans in a rising interest rate environment, they knew full well that when the fixed term expired they would have to pay down principal plus bigger interest payments, they knew their income wasn’t going to significantly increase to offset the greater costs down the road, yet they signed on the dotted line anyway. Considering all of that, the bitching is really hard for me to swallow.

Out of curiosity, I logged on to the Maricopa County Recorder’s website and looked up the escrow documents of several of my neighbors to see who in my immediate vicinity is financially savvy and who is a complete moron, based strictly on the mortgage options they selected. To my dismay, I discovered I’m surrounded by idiots. Considering that almost every single one of them concurred at a recent neighborhood BBQ that it was their intent to stay in their homes for a good long time, not one of them has a mortgage with a fixed rate period that extends beyond 5 years. Most of my neighbors’ mortgages are of the I/O variety, including one couple who purchased their home with a 3 year I/O adjustable rate loan that carries a massive balloon payment, a huge pre-payment penalty, and an interest rate that was 2% higher than the prevailing rate at the time the home was purchased. I shudder to think of how low their credit score is.

Personally, I’m a big fan of I/O mortgages, and of any other non-standard mortgage that offers buyers more choices to creatively finance their real estate investments. That said, potential homebuyers need to investigate their options carefully and use basic common sense in choosing the right financial instrument for their situation. Short-term I/O loans are not for people who want to buy a massive dream house and live in it forever. I/O loans work best for people looking to flip a house within a couple of years in a hot housing market and save money in the interim by avoiding principal payments. If you could not afford your dream house if you had to get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, then you should lower your expectations and look elsewhere. Forgo the temptation to sign off on a short term I/O loan because you will have to pay the piper for living beyond your means sooner or later.

The same common sense principle applies to car loans, too. The Detroit News recently ran a story titled, “Car Buyers Stymied by Negative Equity”. Duh! If you buy a rapidly depreciating vehicle with a 72-month loan you’re bound have significant negative equity until the car is about five years old. Don’t cry because you’re sick of the 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse shitbox you thought was so cool a few years ago, and you can’t trade it in for a new Dodge Charger because you’d have to roll $10,000 from the old loan on top of a new one. Use a few brain cells for once and stick with what you’ve got until you can afford something else. Don’t go further into debt because you absolutely have to have the latest, hottest wheels on the road.

Case in point, I used to work with a guy who got it in his head that buying a truck with a Hemi engine was equally as important as eating food for sustenance. He traded in his perfectly functional Ford pick-up for a brand new supercharged Dodge Ram, complete with Hemi engine and a massive loan with $4000 negative equity rolled into it from the Ford. A year later, after months of bitching about gas prices to anyone within earshot (including me), he came to the conclusion that the 10 mpg fuel economy he was getting on the Ram was just too low, seeing as how he had a 20 mile one-way commute to work. He reluctantly traded in the Hemi for a sensible, fuel efficient, 2005 Subaru Forester. His net negative equity rolled into the Subaru car loan after the Hemi trade-in: $12000.

I could go on, but I’m getting peeved just typing about this craziness. Bottom line, it’s your money. You worked hard for it, sort of. Spend it as you wish, but don’t go complaining to your friends, your family, your co-workers, or your local newspaper when the consequences of your poor financial decisions come back to bite you in the ass. It’s annoying, it’s rude, and it’s a scathing indictment of your stupidity.

2006-06-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Warning: Poker Post Will Follow...

Thanks to my wife’s newfound interest in Texas Hold’em, I’ve been playing low limit poker at Casino Arizona practically every weekend for the past several months. Having logged nearly 100 hours at the tables since New Year’s, both locally and in Vegas, I’ve come to discover a few things about my hobby du jour:

- Limit Hold’em is maddeningly frustrating at the lowest limits. Too many people play the game too loosely, calling too many hands, sucking out too many miracle cards on the turn and river to make improbable straights and flushes at the expense of my bankroll. Geezers are especially bad, as most of them play like they are sitting at a bingo table. They’ll call raises and re-raises pre-flop with almost any two cards just in case they flop a shot at a bad beat jackpot. To fight these sorts of players, leading experts call for tight, aggressive play to take down the loose fish at the table. However, I have found many of the experts’ recommended starting hands for tight, aggressive play at the low limits a bit too tight. I have adjusted my play to allow for more suited and connecting hands in later position to outdraw the fish (thanks to suggestions at LowLimitHoldem.com), and the results have been encouraging thus far.

- The higher the limit, the better I do, at least according my results spreadsheet. I’ve played at 2/4, 3/6, and 4/8 limits this year, and so far my analysis says my per hour loss rate is highest on the 2/4 tables. It’s only about half as bad on the 3/6 tables, and on the 4/8’s I’m actually profitable, having no losing sessions at that limit yet this year. Unfortunately, since most of my playing time has been on 3/6, I’ve chocked up a small net loss overall. I’ll be playing more 4/8 from now on. It tends to be a slightly tighter game than the 3/6, and the competition in general is a bit better. The dumb-luck suckout artists (i.e. Geezers) don’t like to leave the 3/6 pool.

- Other players, and even some dealers, find it curiously odd that I play with a cheat-sheet, specifically a 2 inch x 1 inch card I printed with a tiny starting hand matrix on it. Honestly, I don’t know how occasional players even think of sitting at the tables without one. Anyone who has read a decent poker book knows that proper starting hands are critical to becoming a winning player. The problem is that memorizing the myriad hand/position scenarios is a big task, so why not use a cheat-sheet to jog one’s memory? They aren’t illegal in any poker room that I know of, and they can help you apply consistent rules that will keep you out of tough situations later in the hand, and hence, save you money. It’s just common sense to me.

2006-06-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Allow me to introduce, Mongoloid Savant.

2006-06-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

My first couple of weeks within the belly of a multi-billion dollar corporate beast was interesting to say the least. The company has dozens of systems, dozens of ongoing projects, and is short about a dozen critical technical employees. That means there’s plenty of work to be had, but no one can spare barely a minute to show a new hire like me the ropes. When they do take a few seconds to explain something, I can’t understand a word they say under their soft, mumbling, Indian-accented voices (see post below).

On my first day I was handed a requirements document that read like gibberish and told to work on some system called UTR. Two days later I found out what UTR was short for, but its purpose eluded me for yet another two days. By the end of week I was asked how the UTR project was coming along. I just did my best deer-in-the-headlights routine and shrugged my shoulders. My boss gave me a sympathetic “yeah, that’s how things are around here” look of resignation. I trudged forward, determined to put my deductive reasoning to the test by decoding some of the most convoluted programming logic I’ve ever seen.

Now I find myself riding out an unexpected lull in my work week. Yesterday I received an urgent email telling me to cease working on the one and only project I was tasked since starting this new job over two weeks ago, and await further instructions before proceeding. Summing up the internal corporate restructuring issues that prompted a sudden halt to the project, my boss’s boss had this to say:

“My perception is that things are so chaotic on the business side that they don't even know what they want. I am 100% for embracing change, but this is lunacy.”

And with that, I find myself idle.

2006-05-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

I started my new job last Monday. I’m now a Senior Software Developer for Apollo Group, Inc., the parent company of the University of Phoenix. By and large, it was a good first week, though I must say I’m experiencing a bit of culture shock. No, not because I’m now working for a strong, growing company that isn’t perpetually teetering between stagnation and bankruptcy, but because about 75% of my new colleagues are Indian imports.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with Indian programmers before, and have found them to be very courteous, diligent and capable. It’s just that I’ve never worked in an environment where they dominated the entire office. As the week wore on, I slowly became acclimated to the cultural oddities of this mini-Bombay in the heart of Phoenix. Here’s a quirky example: Monday morning as I walked through the cube farm and read everyone’s name plates I became quite tongue-tied. Check out these plates in front of my cube and see if you can spot which one is the Indian:

Give up? Manivannan is from India. The other one is me, obviously. How about this one?

Thankfully, Ramkumar goes simply by Ram, which makes things nice and simple for the minority of us in the office who are accustomed to names that don’t look like some twisted alphabet soup jumble (though I’m sure some uninitiated Indians may wonder why Sean is pronounced Shawn despite its spelling). It turns out that most of the Indians actually prefer to be called something other than their impenetrable monikers. When I attempted to read Manivannan’s name plate, he politely spared me further embarrassment and said I could call him “Mike”. I don’t know how Mike is derived from Manivannan (I would have thought “Manny” or “Manuel”), but I’m not complaining. I appreciate the truncation, though it would probably be helpful for everyone in the office, Indian and native alike, if the name plate text included the preferred short form as well, like Manivannan “Mike” Arumugam, Chandrasenkar “Sanjay” Adumbadi, and Raghevendar “Ragu” Jaliswali.

2006-05-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

The fearless media, covering the salient news of our times...

2006-05-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

Cripple Fight - Redux!

2006-05-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

Cripple Fight!

2006-04-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a tiring couple of weeks...

After hosting a house full of relatives, road-tripping all over Northern Arizona, and making my 15th trip to Vegas, I came down with a pretty bad flu that's been a real bitch to shake. To top it all off, I received a call Monday afternoon from those people I interviewed with a month ago, asking if I'd still be interested in coming aboard, and at a senior level to boot. That threw me for a loop; I didn't think the interview went all that well, and since they said they were looking to make a decision within a week, I wrote them off entirely. Apparently, there's a critical shortage of skilled Oracle developers in the Phoenix area, hence the offer. We're currently negotiating terms, and it will probably be official before the day is out.

I can just imagine the conniption my boss and my clients are going to have after I tell them I'm leaving, considering that I'm about as close to a veritable indispensable employee as you can get. Oh well...

2006-04-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

For a second there, I thought this story was related to this one.

2006-04-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

I’m an immigrant, yet I was not compelled to join yesterday’s “Immigration March” in downtown Phoenix. Why? For nearly 8 years I've put in my dues, followed the rules, and endured the uncertainty and constant unease that comes from dealing with the labyrinthine mess that is the US Immigration bureaucracy, and so should anyone else who seeks to come here. I'm not about to support a protest movement to make the whole process easier for some people simply because they made a mad dash across the Mexican border without getting caught.

Should there be no consequences for breaking the rules, and conversely, should there be no reward for following them? For the march organizers, the answers to those questions are "No" and "Who cares?" Their ultimate goal, carefully omitted from the media soundbites, but clumsily displayed amongst the colorful banners and creative chants calling for equality and justice, is expedited amnesty for the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. They want legal, citizen-track status for them all, quickly. Ask the immigration advocates behind the march if, in addition to “amnesty”, they think there should be tougher border enforcement to stem to tide of bodies flooding into the country, and the answer is no. Do they think there should be harsher penalties for employers who hire illegal labor? Absolutely not. Should immigrants residing here illegally be held to account for breaking the law, even if it only meant paying a small fine? Again, no way. There is only one solution, amnesty for all. No conditions, No concessions, No exceptions, no penalties for anyone, and no border enforcement, ever.

Seems like a rather simplistic solution to such a complex problem, doesn’t it? One has to wonder whether the hardcore immigration advocates are just ignorant of the scope of the crisis, or if there are other motives at play? Hmm…

2006-03-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

The new face of terror?

2006-03-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

In vapid Hollywood celebrity news...

Mid-East peace "is just a breath away", says Sharon Stone. Here's how.

What's more disturbing? Sharon Stone waxing idiotic about peaceful co-existence in the Middle East, or Sharon Stone offering unsolicited sex advice to young girls in clothing stores?

2006-03-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

<<NEWS FLASH>> Canadian Seal Hunt Starts Saturday

Let the bloodbath begin...

If seals looked like this creature, would anyone care how their ranks were culled?

2006-03-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Interesting development this afternoon: I just received a call for a job interview with a huge company headquarted here in Phoenix. A friend of mine who works there submitted my resume to his bosses a few months back on the off chance that some internal postings would open up. I guess they did.

I wasn't considering leaving my company for at least another year, but if the right offer came along...

2006-03-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have to get this book.

2006-03-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

A UC Berkeley prof released a study saying whiny, insecure brats grow up to be conservatives and confident, self-reliant tykes grow up to be liberals. Hey, as long as they get it right in the end.

2006-03-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

Here's my funny video of the day.

If you're curious as to how a cat can survive an 80-foot fall, it's apparently due to a paradoxical feline phenomenon called "High-Rise Syndrome" that explains how many cats can survive multi-story falls with little or no physical damage, yet still sustain fatal injuries from heights as short as six feet. Go figure.

2006-03-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Newsweek is running a story online about the recent rise in polygamy activism.

Reading the article got me thinking: Are we ready for Polygamist Pride parades? Would annual convoys of flamboyant floats carting haggard Mormons in buttless chaps hurt or harm their cause?

2006-03-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Finally...

For my Maritime readers, here's an old policy paper by the Altantic Institute for Market Studies that details how the region can break out of its chronic economic funk. Originally published in April 2004, it appears that the paper's five key recommendations have gone largely unheeded.

2006-03-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

More required reading...

Reason Magazine's Science Correspondent takes on one California legislator's plan to impose a Canadian-style single payer healthcare system on her state.

2006-03-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

Prof. George Reisman weighs in on the Global Warming Bugaboo. Good stuff.

2006-03-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

I recently attended my first HOA annual meeting. For those of you who do not reside within the hallowed perimeter of a gated community, HOA is short for Homeowners’ Association. What is an HOA? In a nutshell, it’s a quasi-governmental body that polices the gated community by enforcing a litany of by-laws designed to keep the neighborhood from looking like a microcosm of Nogales (i.e. South Phoenix). For this privilege, I pay a monthly fee, get full access to the clubhouse and community pool, and get invited to the annual meeting.

After wolfing down a half-tin of Costco brownies and a half gallon of bottled water (no milk – watching the waistline) during the Meet & Greet, I took a seat. Following a brief preamble, the HOA board presented a recap of the past year, an agenda for the year to come, and opened the floor for Q&A, which given the ensuing discussion could have been aptly short for Quarrelsome and Asinine. Within minutes, I became convinced that I had plopped down smack-dab in the middle of what appeared to be my first student government forum in over 10 years. Here’s a quick rundown:

Several questions were posed to the board officers by residents regarding the HOA’s handling of rude pet owners who refused to scoop their dogs’ shit off the otherwise pristine sidewalks. The answer: If you catch someone leaving dog shit on the sidewalk, call Dawn, the community manager, to complain.

Several questions about dust in the air. Answer: You live in the Sonoran Desert, which is primarily composed of dry dirt. Dust in the air is inevitable given that the HOA has no control over the gusting winds which occasionally sweep through the Valley. Also, ongoing house construction in the area will result in turned soil, hence the possibility of additional dust-ups. Live with it, otherwise call Dawn, the community manager, to complain.

Several questions about litter and its possible origin. Answer: Again, you live in a construction zone. Bits and pieces of packing material and foam will eventually get caught by the wind and drift into the gated community. And again, the HOA has no control over wind gusts. If you believe the HOA does in fact have some role in determining weather patterns, call Dawn, the community manager, to complain.

Several questions about whether or not the Albertson’s/Osco drugstore around the corner might close given the recent merger activity. Answer: Nobody on the HOA board sits concurrently on the board of Albertson’s Corp., so who knows? If you are concerned, call Dawn, the community manager, to complain.

Several questions about the grizzly looking man who holds up a sales sign in front of the neighboring gated community on the weekends. Answer: The HOA board does not know who the grizzly looking man is since he is under the employ of one of the builders in the neighboring gated community. If the man is far too grizzly for your liking, or you are concerned that he may be an unregistered sex offender, or possibly a child molester, call Dawn, the community manager, to complain.

Being strangely compelled to add my two cents to the lunacy, I was tempted to harness my inner smart aleck and ask if I should call Dawn, the community manager, to complain about illegal immigration or to share my concerns about future terrorist attacks on US soil. I demurred, as the Q&A was suddenly sidetracked by an extended discussion of ladybugs (yes, ladybugs) that set the whole room abuzz.

At this point, I looked down at my watch and realized that I was missing out on something far more important than this “Annual Meeting”, namely another episode of American Idol, Season 5. In the midst of the ladybug frenzy, I stood up, walked casually to the refreshments table, pocketed two handfuls of Costco brownies and left.

Looking forward to next year’s meeting already…

2006-02-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

I've heard you can tell a lot about a man by perusing his mp3 playlist. I wonder what a peek at some of my song selections reveals about me:

2 Live Crew - Can a Nigga Get a Table Dance
AC DC - Back In Black
AC DC - Big Gun
AC DC - Hells Bells
AC DC - Highway To Hell
AC DC - Thunderstruck
Ashlee Simpson - La La
Beastie Boys - Hey Ladies
Beastie Boys - Sabotage
Bjork - Human Behavior
Britney Spears - Toxic
Chess Soundtrack - One Night in Bangkok
Daft Punk - Da Funk
Elvis Presley - A Little Less Conversation (JXL Remix)
Finley Quaye - Electrical Dice
Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Franz Ferdinand - This Fire
George Thorogood - 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer
Hotei Tomoyasu - Kill Bill Teaser
Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
Kid Rock - Bawitdaba
Lynard Skynard - Black Betty
Mooney Suzuki - Alive and Amplified
Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster
Pink - Get This Party Started
PJ Harvey - Down By The Water
Presidents of the USA - Peaches
Primus - Wynona's Big Brown Beaver
Propellerheads - History Repeating
Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name Of
Rage Against The Machine - Testify
Sarah McLachlan - Elsewhere
Sarah McLachlan - Into The Fire
Spice Girls - Who Do You Think You Are
Spirit of the West - Home For a Rest
Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers
The Cult - Fire Woman
The Tragically Hip - Blow At High Dough
The Tragically Hip - New Orleans Is Sinking
The Tragically Hip - Poets
The Von Bondies - C'Mon C'Mon
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid
Weezer - Hash Pipe
Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart

2006-02-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Color me happy today, folks. Life in the sticks just became a little more bearable.

The City of Phoenix finished a key piece of the North Valley Parkway that runs near my house. Now I can ride leisurely down to WalMart without adding 3 miles to my trip and contending with the worsening I-17 congestion. In fact, I'm thinking of christening the road on my lunch hour. Do I need any junk from WalMart to justify the trip? Hot dog buns or light bulbs or salad tongs, perhaps?

2006-02-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Though most of us will never find ourselves in the midst of a very bitter, very public feud, it's important to know exactly how to handle one's nemesis when they take a verbal shot at you while the cameras are rolling. Most people are naturally inclined to take the high road by ignoring the comment ("I won't dignify that with a response"), while others let anger get the best of them and go way over the top ("Fuck you, Prick!"). The former projects weakness, while the latter smacks of brute aggression. Either way, you're going to lose the debate in the public square.

There is, however, another option: the zinger. Perfectly timed one-liners are the staple of every smartass's repertoire. A great one-liner defines the moment, neutralizes your opponent, draws a huge laugh, and makes you look witty and fiesty without being "the asshole".

Chad Hedrick had the perfect opportunity to deliver a one-liner knockout blow to his skating teammate Shani Davis last night. With their percolating feud bubbling over at last night's press conference following the 1500m speed skating event, Shani took this potshot at Hedrick, who was sitting in front of a mic just a few feet away:

"It would have been nice if after the 1,000 meters, he could have been a good teammate and shook my hand, just like I shook his hand – or hugged him – after he won the 5,000 meters."

At this point, Hedrick had just a few seconds to size up his opponent, assess the tone of the attack, and formulate a cutting zinger to play for the cameras. Chad's inner smart-aleck could have replied:

"Could somebody get Shani a tissue?"

Six little words, cleverly delivered, and the feud would be as good as over. Instead, Hedrick did his best deer-in-the-headlights routine and rambled on about feeling betrayed, blah, blah, blah. The result: Advantage Shani.

2006-02-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’ve been watching the Olympics…

Let me just say upfront that I believe I’ve firmly established my reverence for all things American. That said, I think I have license to offer some criticism of the public’s expectations of the US team in Torino without sounding like a rabid America-bashing foreigner. So, let’s begin…

What the hell is your problem, America?! All I’ve been hearing about is how the US team isn’t doing so well, how they’ve had a tough week, how their stars aren’t rising to the challenge, etc, etc, etc. Do you need reminding that the Americans have led the pack from the outset with the most gold medals? That they're in the top 3 for most medals won overall? Is that not good enough?

So, who are you lagging that’s got you so upset you’re crying in your beer? Norway and Russia? Helloooo…it’s the Winter Olympics, ‘tards! Last I checked, Norway and Russia were very wintery countries. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that nations with land masses inside the Arctic Circle would produce world-class athletes in such wintery sports as ski jumping and the biathlon? Is it really inconceivable that Vladimir Vladimirkov from HellHole, Siberia is better at winter sports than Chad BeachBum from Southern Cal? Please...

What? You’re disappointed with your star athletes? Like who, Apolo Anton Ohno and Bode Miller? Ohno stumbled in the 500m Short Track semis. So fucking what? He won gold in Salt Lake after tripping a Korean skater. What goes around comes around. It’s called karma. Get over it. Bode straddled a gate on the combined slalom run and got disqualified? Big fucking deal. Here’s a little secret: Bode’s a pompous, loudmouth prick. If he spent less time boozing and more time skiing he might have won. Alas, he chose Jose Cuervo Gold over Olympic Gold instead. Suck it up, America. Aren’t you at least happy that underdog Ted Ligety mounted a huge comeback to win the event? Judging from all the whining in US press, I’d say not. Poor Bode didn’t get his medal. Boo-fucking-hoo!

Everyone is so down on the "lacklustre" American performance that the press has starting reporting on salacious back-stories to divert the public’s attention away from the sporting results. On Thursday morning the news resorted to uncovering the burning question of this Olympic season: Is US skater Johnny Weir a homosexual? Johnny Queer...I mean Weir, won’t say, but I think his effeminate lilt, his Chanel sunglasses, his Fendi scarf, and his Louis Vuitton “man purse” do the talking for him. Still, the press is enraptured by the mystery. To Johnny's credit, he says his sexual orientation is irrelevant. That's true, but hey, he’s a male figure skater! That means there’s a 97% chance he goes for Brokeback. Get a clue, people!

Ok, that’s off my chest. Now I can go back to watching women’s curling on CNBC. We’re cool, right America? Still friends?

2006-02-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Two things occurred to me this morning. One, I've barely written a thing in the past few weeks, and two, it's been nearly 3 years since my inaugural blog posting. To refresh our collective memories about what was going through my head at age 29, here are my vintage posts from February 2003.

2006-02-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

I received my acceptance to the MSIM graduate program at Arizona State this week. Not that I’m surprised. No offense to my Sun Devil readers, but it is ASU after all. I’ve been so busy with work lately that I haven’t given this news a second thought. Therein lies the big question: will my work commitments keep me from enrolling in the program? Time for a frank conversation with my boss, I guess.

2006-01-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

OEX Option Model Returns for January '06:

Model: 20.00%
S&P500: 3.05%

2006-01-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

In 7 hours I will be embarking on my 14th trip to Las Vegas. Now that the dreaded 13th visit is behind me, should I expect better luck?

UPDATE...Vegas was not kind to us this time around. Though my unlucky 13th trip was already behind me, I didn't realize this was in fact my wife's 13th visit. Well, that's my excuse for our abysmal results this weekend. As expected, the wife sustained heavy losses at the poker tables (it was her first time playing live games, after all), but her usually good roulette luck came to an abrupt end, as did mine.

We left Sin City penniless, but not dejected; Trip #15 is already in the works for April.

2006-01-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

If only all liberals could be this honest every now and then...

2006-01-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

Well, Harper pulled it off...barely. After running a nearly flawless campaign, picking up over 36% of the popular vote, and securing a respectable foothold in Quebec, the Tories still only managed a 21 seat margin over the imploding Liberals. How is that possible? You'll have to ask that question of voters from, where else, Ontario. They flirted with Harper only long enough to skew the pre-election day polling numbers. In the end, Ontarians were spooked by the prospect of electing the "Scary Christians from Calgary", though they did begrudgingly throw 40 ridings Harper's way. Hey, it's a start, I guess. Mass hysterical lunacy is apparently a difficult affliction to overcome.

2006-01-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you're probably aware that I differ from many of my conservative friends on the issue of gay marriage. Most of the common arguments against redefining traditional notions of marriage make little sense to me, mainly because they are logically inconsistent and rely too heavily upon religious doctrine. That said, one of the few points that did resonate with me, which was roundly denounced by gay advocates as a narrow response by closed-minded homophobes, was the concern that allowing gays to marry would set off a domino effect. First come the queers, then the polygamists, then the pedophiles, etc, etc...until soon every closeted group will feel free to argue that an open society should permit marriage to whomever or whatever.

Suddenly, I hear a little less scoffing. Three law professors from my alma mater authored a study commissioned by the Canadian Dept. of Justice that calls for removing the polygamy ban from the criminal code. As the chief author of the study puts it, "In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society...why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?"

The traditional marriage defenders should have their "I told you so" faces on today.

2006-01-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> 345+ Killed in Hajj Stampede...

...Just like last August.

Can someone please explain this lunacy to me? I don't get it.

2005-12-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

OEX Option Model Returns for December '05:

Model: 4.48%
S&P500: -0.10%

2005-12-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

And I thought I had a hard time shopping for pants...

Check out this classic LBJ telephone recording. (RealPlayer required)

2005-12-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> Bill Clinton Says Bush Wrong on Kyoto

The article states that Clinton is "a champion of the Kyoto Protocol". Really? If he was such "champion" of Kyoto, would it have killed him to spare an ounce of political capital trying to convince Congress and the American people that the protocol wouldn't have dire economic consequences, as he now claims? Do any of his Democratic defenders in the Senate share his view? If so, why did every one of them vote against ratifying the treaty back in 1998 on the grounds that it would cripple the US economy?

2005-12-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

I offer up some sobering Doom & Gloom this Friday morning…

Below you’ll find a few excerpts from a research paper by The Heritage Foundation on the looming budget crisis. If the future turns out to be only half as bad as what’s predicted, then we’re in big, big trouble.

At some point within the next decade, the nation will be forced to temper its demand for more government-funded entitlement programs to bolster Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc., and will be confronted with stark choices over which programs to cut and which ones to save just to stay afloat. The sandbar we’ve stuck our collective heads into so long ago is eroding quickly.

...Because of the cost of fully funding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, leading long-term budget projections have calculated that federal spending will increase from the current 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to a peacetime high of nearly 33 percent of GDP by 2050.

Yet even that may be a severe underestimate. These projections assume slower entitlement growth than estimated by the Social Security and Medicare trustees as well as substantial reductions in defense and other spending. Most critically, they assume that the resulting unprecedented increase in the national debt will not affect interest rates. More realistic assumptions show that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs will leap from 8.4 percent of GDP to 18.9 percent of GDP by 2050.

Unless lawmakers reform these programs, they will have to fund their costs by:

1. Raising taxes every year until federal taxes are 57 percent ($11,000 per household, adjusted into today’s economy) above the current levels;

2. Eventually eliminating every other federal program, including spending on defense, education, anti-poverty programs, and veterans benefits, by 2045; or

3. Running massive budget deficits (the status quo option). This is the most expensive option because it would cause the federal debt to increase from the current level of 40 percent of GDP to 500 percent of GDP. Beginning in 2025, just a small interest rate response would push federal spending to 44 percent of GDP by 2040 and 73 percent by 2050—levels twice as high as previous projections.

Those who consider these scenarios overly pessimistic should examine the Western European economies that are already sinking under the weight of their enormous social insurance systems. With birth rates that are not even sufficient to replace their current population, many “old Europe” nations have been forced to impose steep tax increases on their remaining workers to fund these bloated benefit systems...

...Compared to the United States, per capita income is 30 percent lower in the EU-15, economic growth rates are 34 percent lower, unemployment is substantially higher, and living standards match only America’s poorest states...As their populations continue to age, the economies of countries such as Germany and France risk collapsing under the weight of their unrealistically generous retirement and welfare systems. These European crises provide a glimpse into America’s future if government spending continues to increase steeply.

2005-12-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

You knew it was coming...

NEWS FLASH>> Canada's Liberals Promise Handgun Ban

The Liberals introduced a federal gun registry in 1995, ostensibly to keep violent crime involving guns to a minimum. 10 years and $2 billion later, the rate of gun crime in Canada has risen, particularly in heavily urban areas like Toronto. Faced with questions about the registry's efficacy in light of such embarrassing statistics, federal officials were quick to defend the registry by serving up a large helping of red herring. They said the registry was worth every dime, but that concerted efforts to eliminate gun violence was being thwarted by a spike in illegal weapons imports from trigger-happy America (Surprised?).

In drafting it's latest gun control proposal, the Liberal Party policy wonks apparently tried their best to cover all the bases, even if it meant back-tracking on the America-bashing a bit. To answer the obvious question, "Why would you need to ban domestically owned handguns if they are coming in illegally from the US in the first place?", the Libs said that though the US was a major gun source, so are the private collections of law-abiding Canadian handgun owners. Hence, the proposed ban, along with a plan to bolster the police presence at the border.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the litany of regulations imposed on handgun owners in Canada, but they are quite lengthy and onerous, and the penalties for not reporting a stolen registered handgun that was later used in the commission of a crime are very severe. If it truly is the case that stolen Canadian guns are flooding the streets, why are the owners not being rounded up and charged with serious felonies, as prescribed by the federal gun control statutes? Simple. Because stolen guns aren't the problem. If they were, the Liberals would make sure the statutes were being enforced just to blunt the Conservative Party's "tough on crime" image. Trust me, the Liberal Party of Canada would not miss an opportunity like that.

Of course, I'm a pro-gun advocate. I can write until my fingers bleed in defence of gun ownership to no avail. Instead, how about we mull over the educated opinion of someone with some clout, namely Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino:

"We have an ongoing gun crisis including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered, although we believe that more than half of them were smuggled into Canada from the United States. The firearms registry is long on philosophy and short on practical results considering the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives."

So, why the handgun ban again?

2005-12-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

OEX Option Model Returns for November '05:

Model: 16.10%
S&P500: 3.52%

2005-11-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

With the successful passage of an unprecedented non-confidence motion on Parliament Hill, Canadians take to the polls yet again, faced with a rare winter election campaign likely to be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. All indications are that when the votes are counted on January 23rd, things will be pretty much where they are now: the Liberal Party forming a minority government in a precarious alliance with the socialist New Democrats, and the Conservative Party left leading the opposition with the separatist Bloc Quebecois in tow. Thus continues the regionalized political morass that formed in the wake of the ’93 election.

From nearly every observer’s vantage point, the prospect of a return to the ol’ days when political giants like Mackenzie King, St. Laurent, Diefenbaker, Trudeau, and Mulroney presided over the Dominion atop broad national parties and large parliamentary majorities is slim to none. The regional blocs of the West, Quebec, Ontario, and the Atlantic Provinces, seem to be almost permanently stuck in place, with party allegiances firmly entrenched, as evidenced by the electorate’s reaction to the infamous Gomery scandal. Despite charges of corruption, bribery, kickbacks, and gross fiscal mismanagement levelled at the Liberal Party by an independent inquiry, voters still appear willing to support them, particularly in the vote-rich party stronghold of Ontario. Such curious behavior by the electorate is a scathing indictment of the Conservative Party’s inability to capitalize on gaping Liberal vulnerabilities, and may be further proof of my "Mass Hysterical Lunacy" explanation for Canadian voting patterns of late.

To break the regional stalemate and usher in a new era of majority government rule, one of two things has to happen. Either the Liberals or Conservatives must choose a charismatic leader who can appeal to a wide swath of voters across all of English Canada, or the separatist sentiments in Quebec must somehow subside, thereby weakening the Bloc Quebecois’s appeal to French voters. Of course, I would put odds on the former rather than the latter, though I’m hard-pressed to find anyone on the provincial or national political stage at the moment who a majority Canadians would find eminently palatable.

Then again, I could be wrong. Who knew Kim Campbell would be all the rage for a few months in ’93?

2005-11-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

In economic news...

US 3rd Quarter GDP growth revised upward to 4.3% despite the devastating hurricane season.

In a word, Wow.

2005-11-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

More Fiddy on W:

50 thinks the president is "incredible ... a gangsta." "I wanna meet George Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him," 50 told GQ. If the rapper's felony conviction didn't prevent him from voting, 50 said he would have voted for Bush.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government is considering banning Fiddy from the country on the grounds that he glorifies gun violence.

Oddly, Viggo Mortensen’s visa application was granted without objection. Hmm…

2005-11-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm at a loss for words with this one. Really, what is there to say?

It begs the question, though: What's more disturbing? That the former Defense Minister of a G7 nation warned of an impending "Intergalatic War" with extraterrestrials, or the fact that his words were greeted with a standing ovation by an otherwise "intelligent" audience?

2005-11-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Asinine Media Quote of the Day:

"If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

Not only did Chris Matthews try to make a case for moral equivalence with blood thirsty Islamo-fascists, his did so while standing on foreign soil, specifically the uber-liberal main campus of the University of Toronto. Is it any wonder why MSNBC's Hardball continues to lag so badly in the cable ratings when its host makes statements about the War on Terror like this one?

2005-11-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are wondering how my options trading model prototype is doing, you can track my progress at OpenPortfolios.com.

2005-11-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

Some of you may recall a blog entry from January of this year, where I made the following resolution:

I firmly resolve that this year I will come up with a concrete plan to put my career on a new and exciting course.

With all the bustle from my real estate moves and my office closure I haven’t had much time to dedicate to fulfilling my resolution. Until now, that is.

After taking stock of my career and doing some much needed introspection, I have decided to submit an application to graduate school, specifically the Master of Science in Information Management program at Arizona State University. It’s a 12 month evening-only program designed for working IT professionals who wish to further their careers in the area of information technology management. Overall, it seems to be a good fit for me, as the admissions committee is looking for candidates with several years of tech experience and some business background, either from an academic or professional environment. For someone like me who’s looking to move away from the day to day minutiae of systems coding, this sort of program is ideal.

The more I think about the prospect of going back to school, the more I’m convinced that there may be no other time like the present: I have relatively few responsibilities (i.e. no brats to feed and clothe), I have plenty of free time on my hands, I just bought a new house that is essentially worry-free for the next few years, and now that I’m a permanent resident of the US I don’t have to get a separate student visa to study while I work. I’m seeing very little downside in this option, which is more than I can say for the many other things I’ve thought of venturing into the past few years.

2005-11-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

Where do European “progressives” get the nerve to lecture America on the preservation of civil liberties when stuff like this, and this, goes on in their own backyards?

Repugnant as Nazi and Communist sympathizers are, do they really deserve to be locked up for simply harboring such abhorrent sentiments?

2005-11-15T11:24:00.001-07:00

By the way, here's the lazy bastard I have to share my office with everyday.

2005-11-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Now that I’m mostly settled into my new house, I’m finally able to reflect on what it’s like to work from home full-time, as I’ve been doing so for roughly the past two months.

For most people the idea of working from home is a dream come true, and to a great extent I would have to agree. A typical day for me starts around 7am, when I roll out of bed and walk to my office, still in my sleep clothes and sporting a nasty case of bed-head. I check my email and field a few calls from my clients and colleagues and generally go about my work day as I would in my old office downtown, except for my slovenly appearance. I don’t remember the last time I shaved, though based on length of my patchy whiskers I’d say it was probably last Tuesday morning. I take sporadic breaks throughout the day to make lunch, or have a snack, or do a couple of quick chores. Then I wrap up around 4-ish, walk the dog, drive to the grocery store, watch some TV, etc. You know, whatever strikes my fancy.

Sure, there’s some downside. The lack of direct human interaction on a daily basis can be difficult, particularly when a simple problem that would normally be solved by hauling a few co-workers into a quick meeting now requires a carefully coordinated conference call. There’s a loss of camaraderie, too. We had a pretty tight team in the Phoenix office. Though most of my colleagues were at least 20 years older than me, we all got along very well. After a while, communicating with them solely via email and the occasional phone call gets annoying, especially after I discovered that some of those people who explain themselves so well verbally can barely write a coherent sentence.

As you can see, my work from home experience thus far has been very leisurely, though that may not be typical. In my case, my employer rushed headlong into the decision to close the office and send everyone home without adequately planning for tracking work hours or project completion, or coaching people on appropriate time management. We all seem to be following a very loose honor system that is just ripe for abuse. Not that I’m complaining, of course. I will confess to padding a few hours here and there. (I am writing this blog entry on “company time”, after all.) Knowing that some of colleagues are swamped with work, there’s definitely a sense of niggling guilt in doing that so readily. I’m trying my best of ignore it and enjoy my down time.

Adding to my lax schedule of late, my primary client, to whom I’ve been almost exclusively dedicated for the past 3 years, recently underwent a major shake-up. All of my primary contacts in the senior management ranks have either quit or have been forced out of the company, leaving several projects I’d been working on up in the air until the new replacements get a handle on things. As a result, I have spent most of the past couple of weeks answering simple questions about system functionality, rather than concentrating on time-intensive systems design and development. Like I said, not that I’m complaining. I’m just wondering when the deluge is finally going to hit me.

There is word that my company is on the verge of signing a massive deal with a firm that is about 10 times the size of my current client, and I’m supposed to be the point man on the systems integration. If and when that deal closes, I’ll probably be so busy that it will be a year or more before I have another lull like the one I’m in now.

2005-11-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

...and it's the Republicans who are racists?!

In a related item...

Fiddy Cent has W's back. Peace out.

2005-10-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

Lost amid all the swirling Rove/Libby indictment drama was this news from the Commerce Department this morning, showing the US economy expanded 3.8% in the 3rd Quarter, despite the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina! In the words of one economist:

"Holy Katrina! The economy weathered two major hurricanes and in spite of that showed accelerated growth. I think what this shows is that fundamentally the economy was and is in really good shape."

This is blockbuster news, folks. Sadly, a Democrat does not sit in the Oval Office, so don't expect any raving about these positive economic developments in the conventional media. The best we can hope for are stories with mixed headlines and plenty of cavaets, like "The economy expanded 3.8% in the 3rd Quarter, but..." You can take your pick on what you'll see after the "but". Sometimes it's handwringing over the budget deficit, sometimes the trade deficit, sometimes the weakening US dollar, sometimes the rising price of gas and heating oil, sometimes the widening gap between rich and poor, sometimes the plight of the homeless, sometimes the outsourcing of jobs overseas, and sometimes it's all of the above. To committed liberals, and those who dominate the ranks of the media are no exception, when a Republican President presides over robust economic growth it means those shifty capitalists are making money, and when that happens poor people at home and abroad are getting screwed.

That reminds me, did Karl Marx ever get his posthumous Pulitzer?

2005-10-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight...

2005-10-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not dead...

I moved into my new house last weekend, but the utility company botched my telephone, cable, and high-speed internet installation, leaving me without net access until late last night. Other than that the move was uneventful.

Small world...one of my movers was once married to a woman from Bathurst, New Brunswick. Proving that back home the name of the game is really Two Degrees of Separation rather than the standard six, my mother confirmed that she knew the mover's ex-wife's cousin. Back in the early '80s, the cousin was having an affair with my Uncle Ralph. She was in her 30's and Ralph was in high school. I remember her distinctly because I recall wondering at the time why Ralph's prom date was so much older than him.

Like I said, small world.

2005-10-09T22:45:00.000-07:00

I joined NetWorthIQ today. It’s a neat little site, sort of like Quicken meets BlogSpot. Members use the site to catalogue and track the progress of their net worth, and share that precious information with the whole world, if they so choose.

I haven’t decided if I’m going open my profile to the public. I’m not bashful; frankly, I’m proud of what I’ve accumulated after arriving penniless in the Land of the Free just seven short years ago. Unfortunately, I know there are a few regular visitors to this blog who would think differently of me if they knew how much I make and how much I’ve squirreled away. Not that I’m some sort of gazillionaire or anything (I’m not, though if I follow my current track I will be a millionaire before turning grey, at least on paper). The point is some people I deal with on a regular basis are conditioned to use money as the ruler in a perennial dick measuring contest. It doesn’t matter if the relative size of my portfolio makes me a big, swinging success or a tiny, flaccid failure. Either way, someone is going to regard me differently, as petty and immature as that may be.

2005-10-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Twisted Nature of Identity Politics…

Back where I grew up, the crux of the region’s divisive identity politics is neither race nor ethnicity, but language. In this day and age, in the so-called modern progressive utopia of Canada, the paragon of North American multiculturalism, deep-seeded prejudice is actively abetted by the government. Here’s a story my mother just emailed me to prove my point:

I have a French client who lives a half hour drive outside of town in a predominantly English community. This gentleman doesn’t want his son attending the local school because it is English, though it does have a full French language immersion program. The only French school in the area is all the way back downtown. The only buses that run from this man’s house to the French school are provided by the English school distinct, so naturally they have English speaking students on them.

My client is adamant that his child should not be exposed to English speakers either in school or in transit to and from school, and he has cited his constitutional right to be served in the official language of his choice. Since no French-only bus service is available to him, the government has compensated my client at the rate of $700.00 per month so that he can drive his child to the French school everyday.

There’s your tax dollars at work, Folks!!!

To further illustrate the absurdity of it all, substitute the word “English” with “Black” and the word “French” with “White”. Now ask yourself how an enlightened socialist “utopia” like Canada could offer tax dollars to compensate someone for their abject bigotry in the name of constitutional rights?

2005-10-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> David Frost joins al-Jazeera TV

Frost’s defection to the pro-Jihad network doesn’t faze me. What caught my eye was this line near the bottom of the article:

Last month al-Jazeera launched a children's channel as part of its expansion plans.

2005-10-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a story that caught my eye this evening.

To regain political power Democrats must abandon favorite election myths, adopt a strong position on national defense and pick candidates who connect with average voters, two political analysts from the party said Thursday.

Political scientists Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, both Democrats, warned that the most important first step is to abandon beliefs they describe as "election myths."

The report, done for the moderate Democratic strategy group Third Way, compared the current situation to 1989, when they wrote a report that mapped a centrist strategy for Democrats.

The said the current "myths" are:

- The belief Democrats can win if they just do a great job of mobilizing their base. Republicans have improved at mobilizing their own base, so Democrats need to do more than that.

- The theory demographic changes over time will make Democrats a majority, a questionable concept with the Hispanic vote increasingly up for grabs.

- The belief Democrats can succeed politically if they simply learn to talk more effectively about their positions.

- The strategy of avoiding cultural issues, playing down national security and changing the subject to domestic issues. National security is too dominant a concern now.

The report noted Republican gains among married people, Catholics, Hispanics and women during the last presidential election.

Democrats must choose to appeal to a broader majority that includes many moderates, said Galston, a political scientist at the University of Maryland.

The Democrats also must develop a coherent foreign policy because "we just don't have one," said Kamarck, a political scientist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

I think a simple "Duh!" should suffice.

The Dems would do well to follow this advice. Will the surging far left MoveOn.org wing of the party stand aside and let their comrades re-brand the party as a moderate "progressive" alternative to ensure greater electability? Doubtful.

Update: James Carville offers up yet more advice, telling Dems to stop being such knee-jerk bleeding hearts. As he says, "Sometimes the problem with being a Democrat is being a Democrat."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

2005-10-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

Zeke turns 3 this month. Do you think that's too old to change his name? I was thinking of something more whimsical, like Noodles.

2005-10-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> ARIZONA HURRICANE!

2005-09-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

US Gun Control advocates have come up with a novel way to pressure lawmakers to scale back the 2nd Amendment: attempt to cripple the tourism industry by running ads in European newspapers warning people that they may get shot if they visit America.

I figure it’s only a matter of time before the nascent British “Knife Control” movement catches on to this latest innovation in fanatical fear-mongering. I can just picture the full page USA Today ads now:

Visit Jolly Ole England for a Jolly Good Stabbing!

2005-09-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> 27 Year Old Man Poses as High School Student to Learn English

Am I wrong to conclude that this guy should have been caught the first day of class given his obvious English illiteracy?

Am I wrong to assume that a strong command of the English language is a prerequisite for enrollment in high school?

Someone please tell me, am I wrong to think such things?

2005-09-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

According to the Tuesday night Nielsen ratings, my political junkie friends and I were among the millions of curious TV viewers who made ABC’s new White House drama Commander-In-Chief the top show of the night. After soaking in the much hyped show about the trials and tribulations of America’s first female President, the question now is “Will I tune in again?” The answer: most definitely not.

Billed as the answer to NBC’s fading West Wing, Commander-In-Chief falls well short of that standard. Whereas no one could deny West Wing’s consistently superior writing in spite of its extremely narrow and preachy liberal slant, the same could not be said of the Commander-In-Chief’s trite and almost laughable pilot script.

Gina Davis, playing an Independent Vice President (Huh?), ascends to the highest office in the land after her Republican boss succumbs to stroke complications. (Excuse me? A Republican President chose an Independent running mate? Whose twisted fantasy is this?) Amid all the confusion and hand-wringing over her decision to assume the Oval Office, we see the Vice President playing what appears to be a high tech version of Battleship™ with a US naval carrier fleet, putting US military forces in harms way in a unilateral action to save a single Nigerian adulteress from a death sentence (What? What??), and trading barbs with a sexist, racist, wild-haired, cartoonish arch-villain (Who? Osama bin Laden? No, no. It’s Donald Sutherland, playing the Speaker of the House, who is, surprise, surprise, a Republican), all while sporting the world’s most obnoxious shade of glossy red lipstick (just in case we forgot that Gina Davis does in fact have a vagina).

Frankly, based on last night’s pilot I don’t believe West Wing viewers will find much in Commander-In-Chief to quench their appetite for compelling political drama. The novelty of a woman President wears very thin, especially so when the writing that defines her character is so abysmally poor.

2005-09-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>>Terror on the High Seas!

2005-09-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

More House Sale Drama…

Ok, so we accepted an offer of $305,900 on the 6th, contingent upon the sale of the buyer’s house, which was supposed to be confirmed a couple of days later. The buyer of the buyer’s house dropped out of the deal at the last minute, leaving him to scrounge up a backup offer. He secured one within 24 hours. The silver lining of that episode was that my closing was pushed back two weeks, leaving us overjoyed at the prospect of avoiding bunking up with the in-laws in the interim until our new house is ready.

While the buyer was nailing down his back-up offer, two things happened almost simultaneously. First, my homebuilder called to say to say the new house will be ready on October 10th. Then, we received a second on my current house, a full price offer at $310,000 without contingencies. We instructed our agent to contact the buyer who placed the first offer and give him 48 to drop the contingencies clause from his offer, otherwise we would take the new deal. 47 hours passed, all the while we’re hoping he drops his offer altogether, leaving us free to accept the higher bid. At the last minute, he agrees to drop the contingencies. Disappointed, we ask the second buyer if we can retain her offer as a backup. She agrees.

Fast forward to last Thursday. Our buyer called our agent to tell him his backup buyer backed out of his deal, so he can’t guarantee his house will sell before we close. He rescinds his offer. Now we’re pissed. He drops the contingencies, then tells us he can’t buy the house after all?! What if our backup offer is no longer valid? What if she bought another property in the 5 days since she first put an offer on our place? This guy could have screwed us, bad! Thankfully, the backup offer is still good. We formally accept on Saturday afternoon: $310,000, no contingencies, close of escrow October 24th.

Later that day, another couple came through the house. They wanted to make an offer on the spot, but they were disappointed to find that it was already under contract. We told them we are still taking backup offers. They said they will submit one to our agent, but they end up passing on the deal instead.

That’s the latest. I have inspectors coming through the house on Wednesday afternoon. I have my fingers crossed that the sorry state of the roof will not be a deal breaker.

2005-09-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Finding myself lacking anything productive to do yesterday, I tuned into both the Emmy Awards and the E! Channel Red Carpet Pre-Show. How do I keep getting roped into sitting through several hours of sycophantic tripe, followed by several hours of self-congratulatory inanity?

Anyway, here were the few items of note from last night’s telecasts:

- Alan Alda (of all people) reminding E!’s red carpet gas-bag Star Jones that someone can be both “nice” and “conservative”

- The Ali G Show’s male porn star “O” face montage

- Shatner winning an Emmy?!?

- Shatner co-star James Spader apologizing to his mother for all the "sex and weirdness" throughout his career

- Conan O’Brien’s impromptu Charles in Charge theme song rendition

- Desperate Housewives winning fewer Emmys than expected (Yes!)

- F/X Channel programs Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me getting snubbed (No!)

2005-09-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

As predicted, Katrina relief debit cards are being put to good use: food, clothing...luxury handbags?...beer??...strippers???

2005-09-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

NEWS FLASH>> Chinese Create "Cadaver Chic" Cosmetics.

The Goths must be in heaven.