Okay so there was a special session of the NH legislature this week to decide how make the ballots for this November elects fair. In case you didn’t know the NH supreme court found putting the majorities candidate on the top of the ballot biased. (I’m not really sure why, but apparently people go into the polls not knowing who to vote for and then select the first person they see. Weird.) So the legislature met and decided on nothing. If you are going to do something like this at least get something accomplished. Fucking jerks. While they are at getting nothing done Gubenatorial candidate Jim Coburn decides to try and introduce a constitutional amendment that would keep the NH courts from forcing a sales or income tax to fund our education system.
In case you didn’t know the NH Supreme court was busy this year. They also decided that way NH funds (or does not funds) its education system is bad, and that they have 1 year to come up with a plan or the courts will do it for them. Now it could be that there is enough money in the system and that it just needs to be clearly defined who gets it and how towns can be held accountable. Or it could be that we need to spend more money on education (especially since the federal education funding is not enough to cover federally mandated programs). I personally like (progressive) income taxes better than property taxes, so if we do have to raise taxes we should do that. Who knows, NH been trying to deal with this problem since at least 1993 and no real solution has arisen. I personally think this is because of people like Coburn who think limiting government is more important than education, (our future economy).
[This sort of came out of reading the Scientist’s post on the Manchester education thing and sort of from all the news the special session is generating]
…but I think their new Reader is an interesting product. The thing lasts 7500 page turns and the E-Ink technology allows the thing to keep the page up with using any more power. But in typical Sony style they are charging $350 for the thing. What?! You still need to buy the books, which are priced about the same as a book you can buy in the store so you end up saving no money. This could only be useful if you travelled a lot when you don’t want to have to carry a ton of books on a flight or pay the premium for buy a book in an airport. Who would need to use this at home? On a side note, I am kind of surprised that the books at Sony’s ebook store are not outrageouosly expensive. The cost would probably make me read lots of classics while I was travelling.
I would like to play with one for a bit, though I bet there will be significantly cheaper ones coming out in the near future. I bet it doesn’t even come with a built in reading lamp.
I was working with someone here at work (shocking!) who told me that by doing the following you can make text much easier to read on LCD screens.
- Right click on the desktop and select ‘Properties’
- Click on the ‘Appearance’ Tab
- Click on the ‘Effects…’ button
- Change the second dropdown menu from ‘Standard’ to ‘ClearType’.
I think this really makes a difference, but maybe I’m weird.
I may have said something about Jefe and I going over to the university proper to do some Labview coding. This is intented to be something we can do on the side to make a little bit of beer/video game money. Anyway, there is a person on campus, whose job it is to make sure that labs there have the equipment and knowledge to do the shit people do in labs (experiments and stuff). He is the person we are working for and he is kind of difficult to work with. When he is in the room, he hovers over your shoulder touching things, poking the screen and taking the keyboard away from you. He even sat on my foot! He questions everything you do and wants to do everything his way. Basically he is a typical micromanager.
Have any of you had to work with these kind of people? How do you get through it? We find that if we just wait til he leaves the room we can usually hammer out any problems, but nothing can really get done while he’s hovering there.
So last night was goofy. Our DM never showed up (the loser wanted food) but he did give us reading to do. So we were not able to make characters last night but it’s been loosely decided what we will be:
- Maletas - Monk
- Jefe - Something (I wasn’t listening to him)
- JustATest - Theif/Mage
- Me - Cleric (Medic!)
Hmm… Now I have to learn a bit about the political landscape of our pseudo-world.
P.S. Dan, I have no idea why you can never post. I’ll look more into it but I really don’t know
Wow. How did I get talked into this? what did I get talked into? and did Jefe actually get to finish the sentence before you said ‘yes’? does you wife know? can you talk your wife into it? The idea of putting together a group of nerds to do some dungeon crawling has been bandied around quite a while. The main problem is, of course, trying to get enough people in the same room (especial when our potential DM doesn’t own a car). Jefe has initiative, though, and went out and got some licenses to a thing called Fantasy Grounds (click on the thumbnail); with its powers combined with Skype distance becomes no obstacle. Can anyone guess what my skype account could be? Nevermind.
I think the plan is to get together on Wednesday nights (7 or 8pm). This week may well be impossible. The scientists, Jefe and I are probably going to go out with one of our vendors/friends from Alabama (whose in town for a few days). Then I have a paper ‘thing’ due on Thursday for the Brit Lit class I talked myself into taking. Plus I have reading to do for work and class, and some (minimal) homework. I’ll have to access the situation later this evening.
I’m thinking of making a mace wielding fighter(barbarian?)/cleric. Probably not a healer though.
Incoherence!
Do you wonder if we all should have read this before starting to blog? One of the things this article tells you to do (so that you don’t start a blog) is read 5 random blogs for a month. I think this misses the point of the blog. You are supposed to read about stuff or people you are interested in! If I pick 5 random books to read I’d probably end up with some Romance, an Anne Rice book (boo…), and some crap targeted at toward young adults. Of course I’d be disappointed but that doesn’t mean the book medium is crap.
I need to comment on the DPL’s new book download program. The program is run by Overdrive and uses DRM handicapped WMA files. Now, I personally think that DRM is bad for business… and the Overdrive is a good example of why. Apple and Microsoft have competing DRM specification (both are proprietary) and neither is universially excepted. I doubt that Microsoft’s new portable media player will be able to play Apple DRMed media and I know that Apple iPod’s do not play DRM WMA files. Which basically means that we cannot use this new and potentially cool serve (unless we burn the audio files onto a CD then use those CD, or ripe the audio from those CDs and put them onto the iPod). It’s just annoying, especially when those things aren’t that cheap. (btw, the new iPod shuffle is very cool) On a funny aside, the DPL gave away a free iPod Nano this summer to some kid… I hope he doesn’t try to download any books! Maybe I get steal D14’s old non-apple MP3 player.
I’m tired.
I randomly came across a thing called WikiMapia this morning. It allows users to put add tags to maps (using the Google Maps API). It is a pretty neat thing and I thought I might point it out to everyone.
If you click on the box to the left of the University of New Hampshire you will find a funny comment… er, at least if you went to UNH. “Nobody knows what it does, just that a bus runs there from campus.” Also, if you scroll down and to the right towards Portsmouth you can find the NH Liquor store. Now here is a place where you can find some real useful information.
The Scientist should look at Portland.
My appointment with the Comcast installation guy was to be between 9 and 11. I have just got the internet setup (at a quarter to two). I wasn’t planning on taking today off but what can you do. Sigh. As I’ve never actually had a cable appointment that happened when it was supposed is a sign that Comcast should hire more install techs. They just seem over worked.
On a side note, I read the Communist Manefesto last yesterday (being Labor day and all). Perhaps, I write something about it. Perhaps not.
Anyway, I, and most likely the Scientist, will be posting more often now.
I’m confused
