Point Loma, San Diego, CA

Today we had some free time, and I took a couple work friends up to Point Loma. Point Loma rises more than 400 ft above San Diego Bay, and provides excellent protection for the harbor. The view of San Diego is stunning. During whale migration season, there are often whales on the Pacific Ocean side.

A large two-masted schooner came into the Bay while we were up there:

Schooner Entering San Diego Bay

We also walked around the lighthouse that has been restored on top of the cliff there, and a building housing a large lighthouse lens. Very neat.

Papa Dios, The Village, OK

We used to frequent Papa Dios a few years ago, when it was just the two of us. The place is a little expensive, but it has always been very, very good.

We went there this evening, as my very cute but occasionally indecisive roommate had a desire for Chicken Parmesan. She and Ian got that, and it was really, really good. Ian scarfed his completely, and Raegan ate about half of hers (the rest is going to be my lunch tomorrow).

Erin got Fettuccine Alfredo. It was great.

I got Chicken Marsala. The Marsala is a thin sauce that has a really nice, subtle taste to it. It adds a tremendous flavor to the chicken. They cook it with a smattering of mushrooms and capers. I think that the capers could be eliminated in favor of more mushrooms. It’s an excellent meal regardless.

We shared some Balsamic Vinegar and Oil to dip the excellent, crusty bread in.

The salads were OK. The Italian dressing seemed to have less bite than in the past. I do not like a lot of extra stuff on my salad, and I took the olives, tomato, and peppers off mine (in the past, I have requested the salad plain, and it would come that way.

The iced tea had a faint aftertaste of coffee to it; a bit of sugar rectified that. Refills were good.

In the past, I usually got the #9-1/2, which is Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken; this is not for calorie counters, the Alfredo is extremely rich, and they do not skimp on the butter.

Papa Dios is in The Village, a suburb of OKC that has a reputation as a speed trap. I actually try to avoid doing business there as a result, but Dios is so good I don’t mind laying down cash there. Dios is still a bit expensive; our meal for four was $64. We got there at 1755, and were seated immediately. The place was only about 40% full. It was still that full when we left at 1900.

Kendall’s Restuarant, Noble, OK

I have had several recommendations for Kendall’s over the years. I ate at the Norman location probably five years ago, and was not terribly impressed. The Norman location closed at some point. I tried another location in Purcell a couple years ago when I was coming back from Dallas, but it was closed also. But a couple months ago, I was headed down to Dallas, and looking for restaurants when I was between Norman and Purcell, and Kendall’s was at the top of the list – in Noble. Turns out this was the original location.

Today I had the kids down at the National Weather Festival, and decided that Kendall’s would be a good thing to try, since it’s only about five minutes from the National Weather Service in Norman.

I got a Chicken Fried Steak – it was about a 8 out of 10. It was tender and had decent taste. It was clearly hand breaded. There were voids in the breading where there was no meat. The gravy was good, the green beans were really good. The mashed potatoes were OK, as was the corn. It thought it was good value at $8.95.

Ian got a cheeseburger. It was pretty darn good also. The fries were OK. Erin got dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and liked them.

The iced tea was really good.

Our check for the three of us about about $23.

One thing – Kendall’s is cash only, no credit cards.

The Vote in Maine on Same-Sex Marriage

I am very disappointed in my fellow citizens in Maine. The vote to overturn the Maine law allowing same-sex marriage is a spit on the US Constitution.

I saw a few of the ads run in opposition to same-sex marriage. There were a lot of out-and-out lies (the claim that the Maine law would “force the teaching of the homosexual agenda” in schools comes to mind). So assuming that the people running the ads are christians, I guess it’s OK with them to lie in support of advancing their agenda – a direct law (thou shalt not bear false witness) being overridden by fear of gays.

If supposed pro-marriage supporters want to protect marriage, why don’t they focus on the 50% of marriages that fail? Why don’t they make divorce illegal or really hard to get?

I guess it is easier to lie and promulgate anti-gay fear than it is to work to solve the big problems with marriages. Not to mention ignoring and spurning the Constitution.

InnoTech, Oklahoma City

A friend who works for Sprint got me a couple tickets to InnoTech 2009. I must confess, I had not heard of InnoTech before this. When I looked at the conference tracks on the website they looked interesting.

I signed up online and marked the date in my Blackberry.

I was not interested in the two keynote addresses, so I decided to show up about 0900 for the first thing I was interested in (moving websites up in the search engine rankings) at 0915.

I got there in good time. There were four computers, two for pre-registered people, one dedicated to exhibitors and speakers, and one for un-registered people. Neither of the pre-register computers recognized me, which I find highly annoying. That meant I had to go to the end of a line of about 20 people who were either un-registered or were in the same boat I was in, having their pre-registrations LOST. I didn’t get through that line and get my badge until 0945; the track I was interested in was winding up as I got there. So that was a huge waste of time, so far.

I went to another on deployment of alternate desktops at the OU Health Sciences Center. That was interesting and I learned a couple things about mobile desktops and virtual machines.

Unfortunately, that was the end of the stuff I was interested in. I went to the exhibits area. There were a number of interesting things to look at there.

I saw a number of people that I had not seen in a couple years, including a number of people that used to work for either my Large Defense Contractor employer or one of the Slightly Smaller And Eaten Defense Contractors that had been bought by their larger competitor.

I think that InnoTech needs a couple more computers to check people in. It would be nice if they would not lose pre-registration information.

I like the fact that they have some software developer tracks in the conference. I hope that this kind of practical knowledge will be expanded on in future conferences.

Mackie McNear’s Steakhouse, Midwest City, OK

I know I am going to catch a ration of it from my very cute and fiscally conservative roommate, but…

Yesterday I left InnoTech and headed towards work. I was getting quite hungry. I located the Midwest City location of Chuck House CFS restaurant, drove to it, but it is drive-in only. I decided to hit Taco Bueno, but on the way there, I saw Mackie’s, and said the heck with it, I wanted STEAK.

The family and I ate at a Mackie’s a couple years ago, in Edmond. We all got the buffet. It was… OK. I thought it was kind of limited. But when the Mackie’s were Western Sizzlin, they had pretty good steaks, so I hoped that they remembered that the same way I did.

I ordered the (#6, I think) Ribeye. I ordered it medium rare since I knew the steaks were kind of thin. It got there very quickly, and it was medium rare, just like I asked. I like my steaks medium rare to medium, I like the hot pink center. This steak was a little less cooked than straight medium, but it was really good. The steak was swimming in juice (not a bad thing). It was a little bit salty. But the bottom line was that it was tasty, had great beef flavor, and was tender. There was not too much fat on it, either. It was good-sized, and filled me up nicely.

The fries that came with it were OK. My server brought me a wheat roll (really nice, to have wheat rolls and not just white rolls); I usually don’t get those, but I was so hungry it was nice to have. The iced tea was excellent. The service (Brandon, I think his name was), was excellent – prompt without being obnoxious.

So the steak was well worth it. I didn’t look at the buffet to see if it was any better.

A Couple Random Political Observations

Rush Limbaugh was “interviewed” by Fox News yesterday. He seems to think he knows a lot of President Obama’s mind, making statements that the President was actively trying to destroy free markets, and similar stuff. Mr. Limbaugh is full of crap. If he has evidence of any of this, he ought to point to it. Making assertions without backup is called, in polite circles, lying.

The withdrawl of the the Republican candidate for the US House seat in New York is indicative, I think, of the problems the Republicans have gotten into, thinking that the country is more conservative than it is. If the true right-wingers form a national Conservative Party, it will guarantee that Democrats will be in charge nationally and regionally for years to come. I don’t think that is bad; I fear conservatives trying to control our lives, more than liberals trying to expand rights.

I think that the United States should mainly just pull out of Afghanistan. I hope that the President makes this happen. There is NO, repeat NO, national interest that I can see we have there. We sprayed the (supposed) Al Queda and Bin Laden with a major can of Whoop-A, and they are in a supposedly allied country, Pakistan. Let’s let the 100-year-old civil war play out without our interference. Enough Americans and Allied military and civilians have died there. Enough taxpayer money has been spent there. Let’s pull out, and take that withdrawl dividend, and put it into health insurance reform or something useful.

Parkhurst Ranch Pumpkin Patch

Daughter Erin’s Girl Scoup troop and family members met at Parkhurst Ranch this afternoon. The girls and their various siblings had fun, no one got hurt, no one got upset, and no one got mad. This to me is a highly successful outing!

Parkhurst Ranch is a couple miles southeast of the town of Arcadia, OK. It took us about 15 min to drive there from our house in NE OKC.

The kids had a bunch of mainly undirected activity:

Walking through a corn maze. There were a couple places that were kind of muddy, but it was a nice walk.

Getting swung on a big tire swing. The kids had fun being swung, and the adults (Bill in particular) had fund swinging them.

Riding a hay wagon around a big loop, towed by a tractor. Lesson learned: don’t ride on the front unless you have an affinity for diesel exhaust.

A really good petting zoo! Bunnies, ducks, a turkey, a couple ponies, a burro, a calf, some goats, and some sheep.

Riding a pony.

They also had some carriages for the kids to ride in.

We booked as a group. The normal entrance is $8 each, but with a group of 10, you can get in for $10, get one of the picnic shelters complete with a fire pit, and Parkhurst will provide hot dogs to grill, drinks, and stuff for s’mores. That’s what we did.

All of the kids (heck, maybe everyone that gets in) get to pick a pumpkin to take home. We got there around 1445 on Sunday afternoon, and left just after 1700.

It’s a low-key way for a bunch of kids to have a lot of fun.

Open Source and System Rescue CD: Really Cool

I have written before about how cool it is to use Open Source software to Get Stuff Done. This is somewhat related to a couple other things I have written about, namely my quest to replace my computer-based DVR function.

I have a 250GB disk that came out of a Dish Network DVR that had been used for recording (but not paying for) movies. I wiped it and used it in the school server for file serving, but I was the only one who ever used it, and the roughly 10GB of space I had on the main server disk was only 20% full. So I pulled the 250GB device.

The computer I want to use for my DVR has an 80GB primary disk with Windows on it. I have a 20GB disk that came out of a failed laptop a couple years ago; it has a GRUB boot partition and a Linux partition on it. I had recently upgraded the Linux partition from Fedora 5 to Fedora 10; all my personal files I have on DVD from the backup that I did before the installation.

My idea was to put the 250GB disk into the computer, and image the 20GB over to it, then stretch the Linux partition out to 40GB just for some extra room (the 20GB Linux partition is only about 25% full, but you can never have too much disk space, right?). Then I would take all the extra space on the 250GB, make a partition, and format it for NTFS (the theory here being that Fedora talks to NTFS, and Windows talks to NTFS, but Windows can’t talk to a Linux ext partition). This way, both Windows and Fedora can share the big space.

So I put the 250GB drive in, pop in System Rescue CD 1.4, do an fdisk -l to make sure it sees all the disks, and then use dd (Disk Duplicator) to copy everything on /dev/sdc to /dev/sdb. dd runs in about 20 min, and for the first time since I started using it, I had some errors reported during the copy process. Hmmm, thought I.

I shut down, pulled the System Rescue CD from the drive, pulled the 20GB drive, and moved the 250GB drive to that slot on the IDE bus. Booted both Windows and Linux, so good there. No problems from the reported errors.

A short detour: When I upgraded my Linux partition to Fedora 10 from Fedora 5, all of a sudden I could not boot ANYTHING. I used System Rescue CD to boot the system, mount the Linux partition, and change the boot drive from the default of (0,0) to (1,0). This allowed GRUB to find the operating system commands. But for some reason, the OS selector menu wouldn’t show. If I hit the up arrow key a number of times, then enter, then Linux would boot. Down arrow (or let it just set throught the default timeout), and XP would boot. I looked online a bit, but this evening I figured it out: the “splashimage” command was pointing to disk (0,0) also. I changed it to (1,0) and we were off again. Whatever was setting GRUB up in the Fedora 10 installation was figuring out where the various OS’s were, but didn’t put them back into the right place in grub.conf.

So now I have a 250GB disk with a 20GB Fedora 10 Linux installation. I go back to System Rescue CD, and fire it up. I go into the Linux GUI and start Gnu Partition Editor (GPartEd). It sees the two disks, but it does not recognize the OS on the 250GB drive. Hmmm. I check the version number. I then reboot to the Fedora, and load the latest version of GPartEd using Yum, and run it. It reports that the parition type is Linux LVM, which is correct, but it also informs me that LVM isn’t supported yet.

So I create a new partition in all that free space, and format it as FAT32, so both Windows and Linux can read and write it safely. I was planning to do this as NTFS, I seemed to remember that FAT32 would not support more than something like 120GB, but when I identified the space for formatting, FAT32 was an option, and the process was successful.

I booted into both the Windows and Linux partitions, and they worked, and could read and write to the FAT32 partition, so overall success.

So my basic requirement is accomplished: I imaged my existing Fedora 10 and boot partitions from a 20GB to a 250GB disk. I have a HUGE amount of space to store DVR data. I was not able to stretch my Fedora partition, but I will go and see if there is a schedule for GPartEd or some other Open Source tool to support LVM.

Open Source wins again: Linux/Fedora, GPartEd, Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB).

A Microsoft Outlook Oddity

I run MS Outlook since my employer and my job require it. I actually think that some of the functions provided are pretty cool (the Calendar, for example).

I keep most of my email in an Outlook data file (a file with a .pst extension). So today, I tried to drag some stuff from the Inbox to my primary data file (named, remarkably enough, Bill_Hensley.pst). Outlook put up a dialog box complaing that the pst file was full. This caused me to vaguely remember that older versions of Outlook had a maximum data file size of 2GB. I looked at the file on the disk, and sure enough it was right at 2GB.

So I created a new pst file called Things_To_Take_Care_Of.pst. I was going to dump a couple folders of information there to “take the pressure off” the Bill_Hensley.pst file. OK, the new file was created, and I selected a folder in Bill_Hensley that had some largish items, and dragged it to the new pst. Outlook complained that the data could not be accessed because the file was full. WTH? I tried another folder. Same result. I tried to open up a couple mail items in the two folders, got the same message.

After playing around, I figured out that any mail item that caused the expression ((pst_size+item_to_open_or_move) > 2GB) to become true was rejected by Outlook. Since the Bill_Hensley file was a couple MB less than 2GB, I could grab and move a couple MB worth of files to the new file. As I moved stuff tot he new PST file, I could move more and more stuff. Eventually I got it done, but with a couple detours to repair the Bill_Hensley.pst file (Outlook complained that the file was damaged).

So I do not understand why moving a mail item OUT of a PST, or opening the mail item up, would cause the PST file to grow to larger than the 2GB limit. But MS does some things in a super paranoid way (see the post on Word 2007). This paranoia cost me an hour of otherwise productive time today.

And one other thing. When I started this, my PST file was 1,950,368,768 bytes in size. After I moved a folder of pretty big mail items out to the new PST, the new PST file was 300MB in size. After the move, my PST file was 1,948,337,152 bytes, a difference of 2,031,616 Bytes. The removal of 300MB of mail items reduced the size of the PST file by… 2MB. So moving stuff out of a PST does not really move it out. Next, I will find a compression or packing utility somewhere.

It never ends.

A Very Minor Website Funny

My Very Large Defense Contractor employer uses a website from American Express for booking travel. They call it The Edge. The site overall does an OK job of getting travel booked. It has some very strange behaviors (for example, a predeliction for only wanting to display flights that depart at 0600 or after 1800). It also has a hard time finding hotels, and an even harder time finding open rooms at hotels, and an even harder time getting the Government per diem room rate. It also will rarely get a better price than the prices on the airline web sites (I know these last two, since I will fire up the aa.com or hilton.com sites and browse them at the same time).

But that’s not what this is about. This evening I needed to book travel, so I brought up the site. The front page has a bunch of travel advisory stuff and the usual screen clutter you might expect, and it has the user ID and password text boxes.

So as soon as the site comes up, my daughter informs me that she needs to bake a cake for the class party tomorrow, and we are out of eggs and milk. Grrr, says Dad, and off to Braums I go. I got back around a half hour later.

I sat back down at the computer, entered my login information on the website, and clicked the Log In button. The site immediately returned a page stating that my session had expired. Huh? I followed the link back to the main page, logged in, and then booked my trip. After all this was done, I logged off and navigated back to the home page, and then I went off to Facebook or something, and came back after about 15 minutes. I tried to log in again, and got the session expired page.

So for some reason, AX bases the session on the load time of the home page, not the load time of the itenerary build page that you get after you log in. Some developer made a dumb choice here. I sent a Feedback in, but I suspect that it will meet the fate of the other Feedback I have sent to The Edge (which is to say, relegation to Oblivion).

OETA Oklahoma News Report

In the past couple years, I have really come to appreciate the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) and it’s nightly Oklahoma News Report (ONR).

I discovered ONR a couple years ago after we bought a then-new HDTV. At the time, OETA was re-broadcasting ONR a couple times a night on Channel 13.2. Eventually, the rebroadcast time was changed to 2330. I try to watch the 1830 broadcast on 13.1, but I don’t get in from work that early a lot of times.

ONR is great for a couple reasons. They rarely waste time on BS stories, like who had their house catch fire, or when a 7-11 gets robbed. They don’t cover sports (which I consider to be a total waste of airtime unless you are ESPN). They never send out reporters to stand in front of an empty courthouse to report that there had been a trial there that concluded four hours ago. Most importantly, when a story needs additional time, it gets it. There is more state capitol coverage (especially during the Legislative sessions) each night on ONR than on CBS, NBC, and ABC in an entire week.

The anchors are businesslike and direct. There is little of the obnoxious banter that characterizes most local news.

I do wish that the nightly rebroadcast was a bit earlier than 2330 (like maybe at 2230 or even 2300), but I usually catch it each night.

So, OETA, keep up the good work with ONR!

I’m Kind Of Unhappy Today

I intend this blog to be a way for me to comment on issues of the day that interest me, and to be able to share some of the places I go with friends. I really do not want it to become a Twitter-like listing of my moods of the day (which in general is fairly sunny).

But today something happened that has not happened before. I got demoted. My boss describes it as a way for me to put all my energy into engineering and testing. But the fact is I got demoted. I have not screwed anything up. This is personality and politics.

I work for a large contractor, who is in this case a subcontractor to a small business. The prime has a lead program guy, and I was the technical lead for the team, and the supervisor of the employees of the sub. I note for the record that said program lead guy does not work any aircraft modification program. He “monitors” them. The rest of the team, both the prime and us subs, we all work multiple programs with our Air Force customers. The AF guys like all of us subs just fine. The prime guys and the sub guys work well together (those prime guys that have real (not “monitor”) jobs, that is).

But the lead program guy, the one who does not have a real job, wants to know everything the rest of us do (those who can, do, the rest, monitor). He does not understand it. He gets mad when he is “surprised”, it does not matter if he was included from the start and just forgot, or if something cropped up in the past day. He gripes straight to my boss directly (in almost two years, he has NEVER once come to me with an issue).

So prime lead guy (who does not have a real job) apparently griped enough directly to my boss that my boss decided to demote me. I asked for reconsideration and got none. No support at all. This is the part I really don’t like. The prime lead guy – well, sometimes people just act like that; they don’t produce anything useful, but get all bent out of shape when they are not treated like the King Of All Things. But I’ve known my boss for more than 25 years and I expected better.

Some might argue that I got what I deserved. If I had emailed the prime lead guy everything that I got then he would not have been able to gripe (maybe that’s true, but he also griped about plenty that he was kept up about). I should have gone by his desk every day or so and given him a personal briefing (maybe, but I don’t expect people I work with to spoon feed me, that’s not being professional).

Besides, the really important thing is that the ultimate customers – the Air Force guys we work directly with, the guys who fly the airplane, the other support organizations, THEY are all quite pleased. So it really comes down to one guy, who doesn’t run any programs, griping about me, a guy who routinely works most of the programs in the office and with most of the people in the office (why not ALL of the people in the office? Some work on stuff I have nothing to do with, like engines and spare parts).

So now, to my great surprise, I am going to start looking for another job. I had really hoped to be able to finish my career out with this tremendous Air Force asset, but I frankly just do not feel any support for doing this. It won’t happen in the next month, because someone has to remain professional in all this, and it will be me, and I will not walk out on things I started. But I am afraid my days in this most wonderful of jobs are numbered.

Wild Horse Creek Cafe, Marlow, OK

This morning daughter Erin and I drove down to Girl Scout Camp Ekowah near Marlow. My very cute and somewhat camp-overtrained roommate had completed a weekend of camp training, and we wanted to bring her back home.

Erin and I had a really nice walk around the camp. She had been there for summer camp and wanted to show the place to me, so we literally walked to all four corners of the camp, checked out the platform cabins, petted some of the horses (it’s a horse camp), went out on the dock, did the low ropes course, and generally had a good couple hours. We walked about five miles.

By this time, we were quite hungry, and we stopped by Wild Horse Creek Cafe, as Marlow is the first town you come to from Ekowah.

The server told me that their chili had beans in it, but she was wrong! It was 100% meat, and was outstanding. Taste and consistency was perfect. I loved that chili, great stuff.

I got a chicken fried steak, with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was kind of a strange meal.

There were a couple different kinds of green beans. They had some bacon and onion, and tasted OK, but there were what I would refer to as “good” green beans (like you would get out of a Del Monte can), and “not so good”, like you might get in a cheap cafeteria (these beans can be identified by being bright green like they are dyed, and they are tough, relative to “good” beans).

The mashed potatoes were good. The gravy was OK.

The CFS was another mystery. I am pretty sure it was not hand breaded there, and had been frozen, but it tasted pretty good. The taste was the taste of a pre-fab CFS. I’ve had some terrible pre-fab CFS, but this one is was better than most – call it a 5 out of 10.

Erin got a baked potato, and it was loaded and fairly standard. She thought it needed to be baked a little longer, and needed a lot more cheese on it. Erin got a pair of warm brownies ala mode for dessert.

Raegan got a fish sandwich, and at least part of the fish tasted bad (as in, spoiled) to her. She was not terribly hungry since they were well fed at camp, so we didn’t pursue it. She got a slice of pecan pie to get the taste out of her mouth, and it was good.

So the experience with the Wild Horse Cafe was a mixed bag. The chili was outstanding – I can’t believe that it was pre-fab. The next time we have a chance to eat here, I will try a steak and see what they do with it.

The place had people at four tables when we got there around 1400 on Sunday afternoon, and had about three when we left around 1450. Our check for three was $29.86.

There is a technology aspect to this – it’s something I have Never Seen Before. The servers use handheld HP iPAQs to take the orders. The handheld runs an app that has the complete menu for the restaurant. The server uses a stylus to click each time, including notes or variations (for example, if you order fried mushrooms and you want ranch dressing to dip them in, the server can either click a standard option, or use an on-screen keyboard with the stylus to add the note). The order is submitted over a dedicated wifi link to a (computer) server, where it is displayed in the kitchen for the cooks to start working up.

The restaurant had a couple of wifi links that I scanned with my Blackberry. One had an SSID of something like “serverlink”, and was WEP protected. I presume this was the destination for the iPAQs. There was another wifi link as well (don’t remember the SSID) that was about the same signal level, and was WEP protected as well. One of the servers said that they really liked using the iPAQs. Pretty cool stuff.

Chicken Express, Chickasha, OK

We had a road trip and dinner adventure this evening. My very cute and Girl Scout trainable roommate is spending the weekend at a training session for taking Girl Scout troops camping. Never mind that she has been camping since she was a GS, and has camped with me, with her high school science club, and as a GS leader back in the late 80s. So since she is not a fan of driving, I drove her down to the camp, roughly 95 miles south of OKC. It gave us some time alone, since I’ve been on travel for a couple weeks, and there is only a low risk that the kids will burn the house down in the meantime.

I targeted a well-known Oklahoma restaurant for dinner: Ken’s in Amber. Alas, they do NOT take credit cards! We do not typically carry much cash. We headed south to Chickasha for our alternates. The first one was GONE, apparently the building has been taken over by a law firm (I hope there were survivors from the restaurant). The second one was a BBQ place, and Raegan didn’t want to put her stomach at risk in the wilderness.

We settled for Chicken Express, as we drove by. Every once in a while Raegan wants some fried chicken, darn it.

The place was not crowded. It was a nice building. She got a two-piece with a biscuit and potatoes and gravy. I got a three-piece.

I ripped into the first piece, and it was wonderful. The crust was perfect, the chicken flavorful, tender, and juciy. I dug in a bit, and the fork came back…pinkish, not the expected white or ecru or whatever. I got a second fork and did the spreader routine, and the damn stuff was pretty much raw. Grrr… I tossed those utensils in the trash (they were plastic) and got another pair, and opened up the other two pieces. They were cooked all the way through.

Meanwhile, Reagan had some pink juice on her plate, but the meat looked liked it was cooked more or less all the way through. She ate, making a comment to the effect of “That which does not kill us…”.

I ate the second and third pieces very carefully. The chicken was really good, not too salty, not mushy. The first piece I boxed up, planning on cooking it in the oven a bit tomorrow, for lunch.

The biscuits were really pretty good, but the mashed potatoes and gravy were just OK, really bland. I suspect the potatoes of being from rehydrated flakes.

The tea I got had a slight coffee aftertaste. I cut the unsweetened tea with some of the sweet tea they had, and the sugar masked the aftertaste. After the first big glass, I switched to Coke, which was pretty good.

When I mentioned the undercooked chicken to the counter person, she offered to replace the piece, which I thought was nice.

People were eating outside when we got there (it was in the mid-50s), and there is apparently quite the pick-up business. Our check for two was $17.31. The meals we got were the chicken, a biscuit, and a side; a LARGE drink is included.

I would go back there (not often, as Chickasha is about 55 miles south of the house) and give them a second chance, because the chicken that wasn’t raw was really good. I would not get mashed potatoes.

Grandmothers, Ralston/Omaha, NE

I was really looking for some comfort food this evening. The hotel had some less-than-appetizing lasagna, so I decided to find someplace else to eat. I fired up Google Maps, centered it on Omaha, and started looking…

I chose Grandmothers. It’s in Ralston, a small town adjacent to Omaha, just east of 84th on L. I got there and was immediately seated.

The place was really, really good. My server said she liked the chicken fried steak best, so I got it. I was not terribly hungry, so the size of the CFS was a pleasant surprise. It was probably about 7″x3″. It was absolutely fork tender, and tasty. The gravy was clearly not out of a carton, you could taste the flour. It had a good consistency.

The meal came wth mashed potatoes and corn. The potatoes were covered in the same gravy, and were clearly mashed right there on site, since they had a couple lumps in them (this is not a bad thing!). The corn had been soaked in just a bit of melted butter, and were great!

I usually don’t get dessert, but I did this time. A warm brownie, with a scoop of ice cream, with some whipped cream and a drizzle of hot fudge. It was really good.

The iced tea was perfect. The service was also just what I wanted. I was left alone to work my USA Today puzzle section. My check was $15.16. A big part of that was the dessert, which probably could be eaten by two or three normal people (that’s people with a normal appetite, not MINE).

The place had large windows to the north side, which would have had a very nice view of part of Omaha if it hadn’t been dark and pouring rain.

I liked this place. It’s kind of out of the way from the parts of the Omaha metro area I usually hang out in, but it’s worth a drive.

A Random Gripe About MS Word 2007

One thing about Microsoft Word has always bugged me, and just now, I sat almost five minutes waiting for Word to just get started.

Down in the lower left, in a status bar, Word will display the message “Waiting to connect to a printer”. When I am remote from my office network, this happens. It’s infuriating. Word should JUST OPEN. If it wants to connect to a printer, it should start doing that when I ask it to print! Not before.

It does display an “ESC to continue”, and this works sometimes.

One related thing, when I use Internet Connection Sharing, Windows won’t let me turn on ICS unless there is something connected to the port I will be using. This is frustrating because I am usually getting ICS set up while the computer I am sharing for is still booting up. I know this is to help users know that the distant end isn’t there, but let me do the thinking, please.

Senators Coburn and Inhoff Should Explain This Vote

It was reported today that an amendment to a bill in the United States Senate added language that would allow any person who was raped while an employee of a contractor to sue in court for damages.

This amendment was introduced since an employee of contractor Halliburton was raped by other employees after she was sent to Iraq. An employment contract forced binding arbitration, and prohibited the woman from seeking relief and damages in court.

This is an example to me of the power of corporations in this world, and the United States in particular. I feel that the states and the Congress have provided the advantage to companies over ordinary citizens (one of my “favorites” – the law explicitly permits a lender to borrow money at simple interest, and lend it charging compound interest, and calculating the interest using the Rule of 78s, which allows even greater interest charges since it extends the payback of the note).

Regardless, 30 Republican Senators voted against this amendment. This included Oklahoma Senators Coburn and Inhoff. Are these two misogynists? How can they possibly be against women (who are by and large the largest number of rape victims), and for a company like Halliburton?

I am not opposed to employment contracts and agreements – I am subject to several. And the primary employment agreement I have with my company includes binding arbitration.

BUT, no employment contract should override the criminal laws, even if the offense occurs overseas.

If Halliburton’s managers and officers had any compassion or any honor, they would cooperate with getting the offenders into jail.

Quaker Steak and Lube, Council Bluffs, IA

These places are scattered over the eastern half of the United States. I have been to the location in Clearwater, FL a couple times, and I’ve seen the Council Bluffs location in the distance from I-29.

When I got to Omaha this evening, was was not terribly hungry, and didn’t want a huge meal. The Homewood Suites I was at had cajun-drenched chicken that I could smell all the way to the lobby. I’m not a huge cajun fan. I like BBQ chicken wings every once in a while, and so I thought about the Quaker Steak in the Bluffs.

So I drove all the way to Iowa for dinner. It was a grueling 2.8 miles from my hotel on the north side of downtown Omaha.

The Quaker Steak was playing the Classic Vinyl channel from Sirus/XM; it was loud but not overwhelming.

I ordered a bowl of chili (no cup sizes available) and ten BBQ wings. They use some numeric rating for the spiciness of the wings; my BBQ wings were a 30, with 3000 being the top heat “Atomic” level (they say on the menu that you have to sign a waiver for this level).

The chili arrived and I was prepared to be unhappy. There were a LOT of green peppers in the bowl. I think that chili (as in Texas chili) should be meat, onion, tomato sauce, and spice, mainly red chili power. The green stuff in there made me leery. There were also huge chunks of tomatoes (not so bad). In a happy suprise, the chili was pretty good. The green peppers were not overwhelming (which is the usual problem); I could barely taste them. The huge chunks of tomatoes were a little annoying but not bad. I ate most of the bowl.

The wings were decent. They were large and meaty, and most importantly, even though they were grilled, they were not burned! The BBQ sauce was a little sparse, but was good.

The iced tea was good, and the service was pretty good. The place was about half full when I got there around 1840, and just a little more full when I left at 1920. My check was $15.50.

I’ve had a chicken fried steak (rated about a 7/10) and a ribeye (about an 5/10) at the Quaker Steak in Florida as well.

[Fred's] Downtown Philly, Richardson, TX

Today I was visiting CSI, and a couple of us decided to head to Dickey’s on Plano Road near Collins for some BBQ for lunch. We got there around 1205, and the line was out the door about 20 ft, the longest line I’ve seen at that Dickey’s. I drove through the parking lot, and there in the strip shopping part was Fred’s.

I like cheesesteaks, so we decided to give it a try. At first glance, it’s a dump. There’s a lot of Philly sports team stuff on the walls, and the tables and chairs are a mixed lot.

The cheesesteak was wonderful. I have flown to Philidelphia several times, and each time have had cheesesteaks for lunch. Geno’s and Pat’s, both rate 10 of 10. Jim’s, maybe a 7 of 10. On that scale, Fred’s is a 9 of 10.

I got a 10″ extra steak and cheese (you would order this as “wit wiz big” if you were at Geno’s, maybe). The meat had a tremendous flavor, and was super tender without being mushy. There were just enough onions, and they were cooked perfectly. There could have been a bit more Cheez Whiz, and it should have been drizzled over the top (I think it was put on the bread). The bread was warm and had a perfect texture.

The fries were OK, not very crispy. The place had a soda fountain, but no iced tea (boo!).

The steak and drink were right at $10. When we got there we had about a 10-min wait; the place was about 3/4 full. There is a second section that got opened up as we were ordering, and by the time we left, the whole two-section restaurant was about 3/4 full. We got out right at 1305.

I did a little research just now, and there is apparently a second location in Plano. I will try that location the next time I am in that area.

Salt Lick BBQ – Will Rogers World Airport

The food choices at OKC have not been terribly good ever, but improved a bit when the terminal was rebuilt a couple years ago. They got better again over the past month, when a mediocre pizza place got replaced by a BBQ place.

The Salt Lick is decent. I have heard of the original down near Austin, but haven’t made it there. The OKC location is not bad at all.

The menu included brisket, hot links, chicken, and some other stuff. I got a brisket platter, which included slaw, fries, and beans.

The slaw was… odd. It was not made of cabbage (although I think it had some cabbage); it was made of very small bits of chopped up raw broccoli. Now, I like broccoli, but I like it cooked (preferably steamed). There was some other stuff in there also. The dressing was, I think, very good. I didn’t eat much of it since I did not like the slaw.

The fries were good; they were home fries that weren’t too greasy. The beans were pretty standard pinto beans.

The brisket was another thing altogether. There was a lot of it, for one thing. The carving chunk was clearly smoked somewhere – no boiling or grilling here. The meat was tender and moist. There was not a lot of beef taste to the meat, but there was enough. The sauce was a thin mustard-based sauce (this is only the second mustard-based that I have tasted; the other one is at a place in O’Fallon, IL). The meat was medium-rare.

Salt Lick had a fountain, but didn’t even have fake iced tea. I went next door to Schlotskys, which had not only iced tea, but a machine out to get free refills of Dr. Pepper.

My total bill was $16.66 and some change. This was from $14.41 for the dinner, and then $1.99 and tax for the drink next door.

One note: Apparently Pepsi raided Will Rogers and got the soft drink contract. I’m not against Pepsi, but I do not like it as well as I did back in college. They do have Dr. Pepper in the machines. The Sonic next door still has Coke.

I noticed this at DFW a couple years ago. Pepsi is everywhere, except McDonalds. I don’t drink nearly as much Coke/whatever as I used to, but I still notice.

A Cool Linux Thing, Actually, A Couple of Things

I got an AVI file from a camera today, it was 235MB in size. I tried VideoLAN, it would transcode from a file to a file, but it would not transcode both the video and audio (audio only). I couldn’t find a tool on Windows to convert the file to MPEG format, but there were a couple posts on a Linux board referring to a tool in Linux called Media Encoder, or mencoder. The posts both said that if you had Linux Media Player you had Encoder also.

I switched to my Fedora 10 instatllation, and found it did not have Media Player installed. A quick “yum install mplayer” fixed that. But the command line mencoder didn’t work. I did a locate on the disk, not there. So I went back to the command prompt and “yum install mencoder” and then I was converting the 236MB AVI to a 35MB MPEG that looked and sounded just as good.

Since Linux mounted my other XP partition just fine, i copied the file to that environment. At first, I wanted to send the converted file to my very cute and XP using roommate, but I realized that I really wanted to upload it to the HTTP server I run on the school computer.

While I was playing around with the Windows Network list on the “Connect to Server” function (off the Gnome “Places” menu item), I noticed it had options for connecting to an FTP server, in both anonymous and authenticated modes. “What the heck”, thought I, and specified the information for my server at St. John’s.

Now, FTP is pretty common, but in this case, instead of a command window, or a dedicated drag-and-drop GUI, a mount point appeared on my Gnome Desktop that was labelled “68.15.100.56″ (the St. John’s IP address). I double-clicked it, and it opened up a file window, just like I could see for my local filesystem! Cool, thought I.

I drilled down to the root of the webserver document directory, and there were the files I expected. I grabbed the converted MPEG file from the Gnome Desktop and dragged it to the opened webserver directory, and a couple minutes later, the file was on the St. John’s webserver!

The FTP icon had an Unmount item when it was right-clicked, and when I selected it the FTP session was logged off just fine. That was about the slickest FTP I’ve ever done.

So, between mencoder to convert the media file, and mplayer to verify the file was converted correctly, and finally the very cool FTP function, Linux rules!

JP Bardwell Down In Louisiana

So-called “Justice of the Peace” Keith Bardwell is an embarrassment to the State of Louisiana and the United States.

This throwback refuses to perform marriage ceremonies for interracial couples. Since he is too much of a coward to be interviewed, and the only indication of why he won’t perform the marriages is a vague “concern for the children” of such unions. This is laughable. The guy is clearly a racist.

He ought to be fired from being a JP. There is no place in this country for such racism, especially from a person who is sworn to uphold the law of the land.

One question I have. His office is apparently in his house, or at least on his property. A CNN crew tried to interview him, and his wife refused them entry to the property, and he refused to take questions. Why is an official county (well, parish) office, which is supposed to be a place of public business, on private property? Something does not seem right there.

Sweetwater Tavern, Falls Church, VA

I like keeping in touch with friends from high school and college, and people who I no longer work with. I ran across one such friend that I had not been in contact with since around 1986, and it turned out she and her family live in Falls Church. During my last trip to DC, we made arrangements for all of us to get together, and she suggested the Sweetwater Tavern.

It was 6 miles away from where I was staying in Tysons Corner, VA. We were to meet at 1800, so I drove out of my hotel at 1740. I arrived at 1820 (that’s 40 minutes to drive six miles, about 9 miles an hour). You would end up sitting for five minutes, and then drive for a minute.

So I guess after not seeing her for 20+ years, being 20 minutes late isn’t earth-shattering, but it really annoyed me.

The restaurant was really nice. It was a little bit too loud. The service was OK. There were a couple times where we did not see a server for a bit, but the iced tea was kept full, at least.

I got a roast half chicken (apparently popular, it was labeled “until it runs out”). It was excellent. The chicken was tender and moist, and had a great flavor. The chicken came with mashed potatoes (very good) and some corn (not very much, maybe they were running out). All very tasty.

We shared a dessert of chocolate waffle and ice cream – yummy.

The meal was really good, but the best part was the conversation with my friend and her husband, who I had not met before. We had quite a number of mutual interests. They had a pair of cute and bouncy little girls also. They were kind enough to pick up the check, so I owe for the next time, but my chicken was about $10 IIRC. It thought the prices were pretty reasonable, and the portions were not huge, but just about right.

The restaurant was crowded when I got there at 1920, and there were about six people waiting for a table. It was just as full when we left around 2100.

Something I’ve Not Seen Before – American Airlines

This afternoon I glanced on to the flight deck of the American Airlines Super 80 I was boarding, and I saw something I’ve not seen before on a commercial bird.

The First Officer was following a pre-flight checklist, using what looked like a PDF file being displayed on a laptop. That’s the first time I’ve seen any commercial flight data being handled electronically like that.

We’ve had efforts going on in the Air Force for a number of years to make technical data, including flight and maintenance manuals, electronic. I think it’s a great idea, especially if you can put the data into a handheld computer (say, the size of a large calculator).

I will keep an eye out over the next couple months for more examples of this.

Phillips Seafood, Washington, DC

OK, I have to be up front. There is very little that swims or lives in water that I like to eat. Every once in a while, we’ll get Long John Silvers, or my very cute and fish-loving roommate will crisp up some breaded fillets, or I will have some clam chowder, but that’s about it. I like bird and mammal much better. I eat the stuff mentioned above without complaining, but with little relish.

But, one of my work buddies loves seafood, and Phillips in particular, so when we come to DC we always go here.

Phillips is like a triple-sized Golden Corral of stuff that swims. They have a menu, but it’s quite limited. The real reason to go here is the seafood buffet – huge amounts of shellfish, finned fish. Steamed, broiled, boiled, etc. Everyone I have been here with says it is all excellent. I’ll take their word for it. It’s all you can eat/stuff yourself silly with.

They have non-seafood. There is a pasta saute, and they usually have roast beef. Tonight they had a big pork roast, and broiled chicken. And roast turkey in gravy (I had two helpings of this). There is a decent variety of veggies (some excellent skin-on red mashed potatoes tonight). There is also a pretty good salad bar. There are a number of odd things (there was jambalaya, and two different kinds of curry this evening). I had some risotto that was very good, if not less creamy than I would expect.

They have about six flavors of ice cream for dessert, along with a number of cakes, pies, cobblers, and other stuff.

Service is usually very good, they have outstanding iced tea. The place occasionally has quite the wait (tonight not a bit, even though we got there at 1930). My check for buffet and iced tea was $30.

There is also a Phillips we have eaten at in the Inner Harbor at Baltimore. It’s a bit smaller in offerings than the “Flagship” in DC.

You can walk along the waterfront and look at the boats when you are done.

O’Malley’s Pub, Tysons Corner, VA

I did my usual thing for dinner tonight, I fired up Google Maps, and asked for “restaurants near Tysons Corner, VA”. One of the entries was for O’Malley’s. I drove over there (it was about 10 blocks from my hotel, and I didn’t feel like walking this time). It took a couple passes, and I couldn’t find the place. I finally called, and the call was answered as “Crowne Plaza, where may I direct your call?”. The place was in the hotel. Note to O’Malley’s webmaster: this would be a nice tidbit for your website.

I walked the place finally, and knew that I had been in there before. I gave it some thought, and finally remembered that I had eaten breakfast there, when I had stayed in the hotel, which was then a Holiday Inn, about 10 years ago.

I ordered a cup of beef vegetable soup and a Shepards Pie, along with iced tea.

The tea came. It was instant tea, or concentrate. Probably concentrate. It wasn’t totally horrible. But it wasn’t very good, either.

The vegetable beef soup was pretty good. It had more chunks of meat and stuff.

The Shepards Pie was really, really good. It had almost a chili consistency for the filling, and it was more red than most Shepards Pies I have had. It had peas and carrots mixed in. A traditional SP has a spreading of mashed potatoes over the entire top, but this one had scoops of mashed potatoes embedded in the filling. No matter, it was really, really good. I really like cassaroles and the like, and Shepards Pie is at heart a cassarole. The key is the filling, and in this case, the filling was excellent. It wasn’t huge, either, and that was good since I wasn’t terribly hungry.

I got there around 1845, the place was not even 15% full. When I left at 1927, it was about half full. My check was $14.44.

O’Malley’s has a website: http://www.omalleyssportspub.com/

The place had a lot of TVs with mostly sports on; a couple of them also had news on. It wasn’t too loud, but it was louder than most restaurants on. It was also well-lit, which was good since I took my USA Today in to read, and work the puzzles.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

I have heard about Five Guys burgers for a couple years now, and I have been trying to make it to one of their locations. On Tuesday I had a meeting in DC, and conveniently enough there was a Five Guys about 300 yards away from my meeting location.

I expected, I guess, a well-appointed place. Instead, the place was pretty basic. Not a dump, but certainly not a, say, Fuddruckers. The cheeseburger, however, was first class. The burger was cooked to order right in front of me.

The beef was really tasty, it had a lot of flavor. It was juicy, but the juice didn’t run all over the place. I got the burger with mayo and pickles. The burger was a 1/4 lb, I think, and thick. Not a scrap was left.

You can order fries. They come in two sizes, standard and large. If there are three of you, get one standard order of fries. There are a LOT of them. The large size looks like more than twice as many. I almost never leave food behind, but I left fries behind in this case. They were good fries, also.

They did not have iced tea. They had tea concentrate out of the soda machine, vile and horrible. I had Coke.

It was really good, and it was fast. My check was $10.76.

15 October 2009 update:

A work friend and I ate at the Five Guys location at 800 N H in DC. It was just as good. I got a bacon cheeseburger this time. One bonus: this location had real iced tea! Yea!

A Minor Linux Fail

I usually sing the praises of open source in general and Linux in particular.

My main gripe against Windows over the years is that it’s just an operating system. It’s been hard to install, and then you have to fool with drivers. Once it is installed, you have to get or buy more stuff – Word or OpenOffice if you want to do office stuff, something else for image editing, something else to read PDFs (or any of dozens of other files), etc.

OTOH, you can put a LiveCD of most any Linux version into your computer, fire it up, and you can do pretty much anything that you want to do for day-to-day work. If you get one of the full distros and load it, you can do anything you want to do day-to-day, and you can write software, or run a version control system, or stream video, or run a server. And to top it off, Linux is perfectly happy to co-exist with Windows; the opposite has never been so.

So today I had a disappointment. I was doing some work on our new school server (which is going to be implemented with Linux Fedora 10 on one of our donated Air Force Gateway computers). I was working on my laptop, which is dual booted between XP and Linux (Fedora 10 also). The Linux server needed a network connection, and it did not recognize the USB-based WiFi device I tried to use (it was an older Trendnet device) (it should be noted, that wifi in Linux is better than it was, but it is still not perfect, and there are lots of wifi devices for which the manufacturers do not provide Linux drivers).

My laptop was on the house network, and I remembered that internet connection sharing (ICS) was built into the last couple Fedora releases without the need to do an iptables configuration. I ran a crossover cable between the computers, and found the “Share This Connection” tab easily enough, but I could not get it to work. The wired port on the laptop was some odd address in the 10. Class C range, so I know something was happening. I messed around a bit and decided I didn’t have time to mess with it, so I rebooted the laptop and brought up Windows XP.

XP already had the ICS function configured, and the server picked up an IP address immediately, and it was off. I started the update task on the server, and now it is ready (in fact, it asked me if I wanted to take it from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11!).

So in this case, Windows did better than Linux. I probably will investigate in the next couple weeks to see if I can get it working. You can never have too much connectivity.

OKC Philharmonic Discovery Concert

This afternoon we took the kids to a Discovery Concert. The Oklahoma City Philharmonic puts on a couple of these each year to introduce kids to symphonic music. It’s a good idea – the tickets are inexpensive ($9 each), and the seating of open. The pieces that are player are usually shorter movements, and are themed; in this case, the theme was loosely Halloween.

Most of the orchestra members had some form of costume, and a lot of the audience did to. They played five pieces, and did a great job. The only thing missing, we thought they had advertised music from Phantom of the Opera, but nothing from that show was on the final bill.

The Philharmonic had a quartet of singers as well, they sang three numbers, including a pretty funny “The Twelve Days of Halloween”, set to “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. The singers had good voices, and seemed to be having a good time.

The concerts are pretty short; this one lasted about an hour and a half, and there are lots of worse ways to spend $36 on a Sunday afternoon.

Zero Tolerance At Schools Is Stupid

This article was posted to an email list I subscribe to:

http://www.wten.com/global/story.asp?s=11283345&ClientType=Printable?

The article is about a student who gets good grades, isn’t any trouble, is an Eagle Scout, and has completed Army Basic Training, so he is a soldier. He keeps a survival kit in his car to include a sleeping bag, food, and… a pocket knife. Lansingburgh is in upstate New York, I imagine they get a lot of snow there.

Somebody at his school ratted him out (I cannot describe this any other way) to the “administration”, and so the knife was found, and the young man was suspended from school for several weeks under a zero tolerance for “weapons” policy.

I just have to say, everyone up the chain in this episode is an idiot. They should have handled this in a measured manner. First of all, a perfectly legal item, in a locked car, should stay in the car. There was no reason for the pocket knife to be confiscated. Then, having a suspension hearing without having the victim (in this case, the student who had the knife in his car is the victim of the school system) present is unfair at best and illegal at worst. It’s cowardly, and easy to be abusive, when you don’t have to look the victim in the eyes.

Zero tolerance laws and regulations are stupid, one-size-fits-all, my-way-or-the-highway kinds of force that are too often used as an excuse for not using reasoned thought, and as a way to hide behind the zero tolerance policy to show that something IS BEING DONE.

School administrators are hired to use their brains to make decisions. Zero tolerance policies remove the capability to make the decision based on the situation. They remove the ability to differentiate between a pocket knife, a baseball bat with a nail in it, and an Uzi. They take away the judgment of intent. They remove the evaluation of past history.

The Lansingburgh Central School District Superintendent George J. Goodwin, in not working to eliminate the zero tolerance policy, and in not defending the student, in favor of the stupid policy, is not working to the good of the students in his District. In mouthing platitudes (“Our policies are clear that weapons are not permitted on school premises and subject to disciplinary consequences.”), he is retreating into the mindless role of “just following policy” without thought for the wrongness of the policy.

Bandwidth Is Our Friend

Today, as a result of a little bit of Facebook stalking, I ran across a site called nsis.net. It’s an ISP based here in Oklahoma City. NSIS has a bandwidth (speed) test on its homepage, so naturally I clicked it.

I got a measured speed of 5.8Mbps. I tried several other times and got speeds up to 8Mbps. That’s not bad. That is a measured time from my computer, through a 54Mbps wifi link, through a wifi router, through a 100Mbps wire to a cable modem, through the Cox network, to the Internet, and then to NSIS, and back.

I decided to see if my Blackberry would get a report. I fired up the browser, went to NSIS, and got a report back of… 85Mbps (not eight point five, eighty five). My first impression was, I think I’ll download an HD-quality movie to my handheld!

But the reality is, my Blackberry is actually pointed at a proxy server at Research In Motion (RIM), and so the actual test is between the RIM proxy server and the test server at NSIS. The typical link between ISPs is at least an OC-12 (600Mbps) and I’m sure that RIM uses an OC-48 (2Gbps), so 85Mbps for such a test is not unreasonable at all.

I’ve measured the download speed of my Blackberry, and usually get around 150Kbps when I’m on the EDGE network over the cell tower (which is about the same bandwidth as three dial-up modems), but it seems to work pretty fast, since on most web pages, the RIM proxy server reformats the pages for the small Blackberry screen, including resizing the images, which are the real bandwidth hogs. It’s a lot faster when the Blackberry is connected to a wifi access point.

So 85Mbps to a Blackberry is a dream, but it’s a good one.

President Obama and the Nobel Prize

When my Blackberry alarm went off at 0600, it downloaded the messages that had come in since I went to bed. There were three breaking news messages. The first one I opened was “President Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize”. My sleep-befuddled brain said… “What? Got to be a misprint”. Then the other two breaking news messages were the same. I told my very cute but very groggy roommate about the messages, and remarked that I thought that the right wing must be having a collective head explosion.

To me it’s simple: the Nobel Committee is responsible for giving out their prize, and so they did. So why heap abuse on the recipient?

This is a situation where the Presidents opponents should have done one of two things: either send or say a congratulations, or shut up. Instead, a lot of the right has gone nuts with critisism. It’s a symptom of the problem with the right wing – it’s an all-or-nothing proposition with them, and even worse, they can’t just disagree, they have to attack.

So I hope that the President can live up to the confidence of the Nobel Committee.

Checkerboard Cafe and Bakery, Midwest City, OK

This place has the potential to be one of my favorite restaurants. I found it via an indirect route – a guy who was at a meeting I was at heard me make a comment about Chicken Fried Steak, and he said that the CFS at Checkerboard was the best in OKC.

Such claims must be verified!

A couple work friends (let’s call them Dlorah and Kram). Checkerboards is in a shopping center on the NE corner of Reno and Air Depot, next to an Office Depot (I think). The place looks like crap from the outside, but when you walk in, you get a pleasant surprise. The restaurant is really well decorated on the inside, really nice. It’s quiet and open. It smells good!

The menu had one thing on it I’ve not seen before. It talks about how Checkerboards has free wifi, except from 1130 – 1300 (that time range might not be 100% accurate – I just know that it implies that wifi is turned off during lunch.

I had every intention of having a CFS here. But up on the chalkboard was the daily special – roast beef, and it smelled really good!

Two of us got CFS. I got the dinner size. It was really, really good. It was not fork tender, but the meat was easy to chew and had a lot of flavor. The breading was light and not terribly sweet like some places – it was good! I got whipped red potatoes and gravy (both very good) and some green beans – tasty but a bit mushy. I also got a cup of decent potato soup. It had a bit too much cheese (I’m sure Erin would disagree), but that was about the only thing I could find wrong.

The other guy (Kram) got Chicken Marsala. It looked really good also. It was on a bed of pasta (angel hair, I think).

I got iced tea, it was good and strong.

The dessert menu had a lot of potential, but all of us were pretty much stuffed and so did not partake. I’m thinking that Checkerboard might be a good place to take a work break…

That was a really good CFS. The Marsala looked excellent, and the other meals I saw looked good also.

This place has real potential, and that potential must be explored! We got there about 1145, and there were a total of four occupied tables, and a small group. When we left about 1245, it was about the same. I hope that it is a bit busier at other times. My check, for the dinner-sized CFS, soup, and iced tea, was $18.62.

Flu Shot – a Health Care Anecdote

I am listening to Keith Olbermann this evening, with an hour-long Special Comment on health insurance reform (I note that it’s not a comment on health care reform – it’s about how to pay for it). Olbermann has been intermingling anecdotes about health insurance issues with pure commentary.

I have an anecdote also. For the past couple weeks, I have noted numerous examples of easy-to-get flu shots (not H1N1, just the “seasonal flu”). The local news shows have shown people driving through parking lots, sticking their arms out the windows, and getting flu shots. There are pharmacies like Wal Mart that give out flu shots to people that walk in. My own company brought in nurses to give free flu shots to all employees. The Government provided free or cheap flu shots to all comers at Tinker AFB. Basically, just about anybody is able to get a flu shot.

So my very cute and health-conscious roommate decided to run to our doctors office to get a flu shot. She teaches, so she secured a sub for an hour and headed to the doctor. When she got there, she was handed a form to fill out, and was informed that she would be able to get the flu shot as soon as the doctor examined her. A discussion ensued about wait times and such, and basically, it was clear to Reagan that she was looking at an hour or two just to get a flu shot. She ended up returning to school, sans shot.

Why is this? The front desk at the doctors office had no answer. It can’t be that the flu shot is dangerous, or there would be no drive-through shot lines. We speculated, and we came to the conclusion that the doctor (or the doctor’s corporation?) was requiring the doctor visit, in order to run up the charges for the shot. Would insurance pay for the visit? I’m sure it would. But is that the right way to run health care? I do not think so.

Cheddar’s, Midwest City, OK

I was first introduced to Cheddar’s a number of years ago in Plano, TX. Since then I have eaten at several Cheddar’s: Richardson and Dallas, TX; Joplin, Missouri; and Clearwater, FL. I don’t know that I’ve ever had any bad food at a Cheddar’s. I’ve always liked their Chicken Fried Steaks, cheeseburgers, salad, steak, soup, etc.

I’ve referenced Cheddar’s as one of the restaurants that open in smaller markets before they open in Oklahoma in general, and Oklahoma City in particular. Cheddar’s opened a restaurant in Tulsa last year, and I just noticed that they opened one in Norman. Just in the past month, Cheddar’s opened in Midwest City.

Today a couple work friends and I checked it out. We got there around 1150, and had about a five minute wait to be seated. The restaurant is really nicely appointed on the inside. It reminded me of an Elephant Bar.

I got a Chicken Fried Steak. It was tender, and had good taste. There were a couple pockets in the breading that were meat-free. The gravy was good, and not too peppery. I got mashed potatoes (tasty) and green beans (very good). The server brought more gravy quickly. The iced tea was good and strong.

As an appetizer, I ordered chips and salsa and queso. This was not a good value. The chips were good, but the salsa was about eight tablespoons total. I didn’t try to ask for more. It was chunky and not spicy at all. The queso was not good. It was OK for the taste, but it was really thick, like concrete that was setting up. I would not get it again.

So overall, it was a good meal, except for the queso.

My check was $14.52, of which $3.99 was the chips and queso and salsa. We got out around 1300.

“Americans” for “Prosperity”?

I just saw a video of a meeting of a group that calls itself “Americans For Prosperity”. The group was being videoed when the announcement was made that the Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics had been rejected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

When the announcement was made, the crowd broke out in applause and high-fives. They were celebrating the LOSS. The speaker’s voice was quite jubilant in announcing that the Chicago bid was rejected on the first vote.

Now, it amazes me that these so-called “Americans” would celebrate the loss of prestige for one of the largest cities in… America.

It also amazes me that these people who are supposedly for “prosperity” would celebrate the loss of jobs, sales, construction, tourism, and the like, which would hurt America.

Why do some people apparently hate President Obama so much that they celebrate a loss for America?

Lupe’s Mexican Restaurant, Midwest City, OK

I’ve eaten at Lupe’s a couple times over the years. It’s on Douglas, between Reno and 15th.

I went there for lunch last Thursday with a couple work fiends.

I had a pair of enchiladas, one chicken and one ground beef, with rice and beans. They were pretty good enchiladas, along with the sides. The iced tea was good.

The service was attentive and the iced tea was kept full. The food got there fairly quickly also. The meal was served with queso (very good) and a medium-hot salsa (decent).

My check was $8.50. Not a bad lunch.

Margaritas Mexican Restaurant, OKC

Seems I have had a lot of Tex-Mex recently. Something like four places in the past couple days. One of these was Margaritas. This place was suggested to me by high school classmate and all around good egg Leslie a couple months ago. It was a good recommendation.

We eat at Ted’s a lot, and this particular evening Ted’s looked like they had a line halfway down the block, so I remembered Leslie’s recommendation, and Margaritas was just up the road at Wilshire and May, so off we went.

The place (as I was told) looks like a dump/dive on the outside, it’s in an old hamburger drive in (if it’s raining hard and you want Tex-Mex, this is a good feature since you can park and walk under the awning). The people inside were super, super friendly.

We got the usual setup before dinner. The queso was a little thin and didn’t have a lot of cheese taste, but it was OK. The salsa had a HUGE fresh tomato taste; I really liked it even though I am not a fan of raw tomatoes, it was that fresh tasting. We got flour tortillas to keep the kids occupied while my very cute and restaurant-loving roommate and I talked.

My standard first-time Tex-Mex meal is either fajitas (mixed) or a pair of enchiladas, one beef (ground beef preferred) and one pollo. I got the fajitas this time. They were pretty much perfect. A lot of places tend to burn the onions, but not here. The meat was tender and not charred, and it all tasted really good. I piled up a bunch with salsa, beans, and rice, and went to town.

Raegan got a chicken chimichanga, and liked it. Ian got chicken quesadillas and wolfed them down. Erin got a cheese enchilada and liked it.

The iced tea was great. Our server was very attentive without being annoying. We finished the meal off with sopaipillas and honey (all except the obstinate Ian).

The place only had three tables occupied (out of about 12) when we arrived at 1820, and was only about half full when we left at 1920.

It was good stuff, and I’d happily go back. I need to try the enchiladas anyway.

Qboda Mexican Grill

I walked into the Qboda in Midwest City yesterday for lunch, thinking that it was a Chipotle location. For once, I was just not terribly focused. I walked in and ordered a Burrito Bol, getting a funny look from the guy behind the counter, and a snicker from the two flight suits behind me.

They did not have a Burrito Bol, but they did have a Taco Salad that was pretty close. I got it with grilled chicken and the hot variety of salsa. It was OK, not spectacular. The “hot” sauce was, to my taste, just barely spicy (and I do not like really spicy hot stuff); the salsa did not even raise a bead of sweat on my forehead. The iced tea was good.

Next time I go back (hopefully on purpose), I will get it with the steak instead of the chicken.

Chuck House restaurant, Edmond, OK

OK, we ended up here in a most pathetic way. After school, we were all hungry and wanted to eat NOW. Since three of us were in NW OKC, and Ian was at home in NE OKC, it was either pick something up and take it home or drive home and get Ian and head to an eatery. We had no agreement except that Dad’s three suggestions were all shot down by the female wing of the family, so we pointed the car towards home and picked up Ian. We headed towards Edmond and drove down 2nd street, while nothing appealed to us (which is to say, Dad made suggestions and the rest of the family shot them down; notice a trend here?). We turned down Broadway and eventually drove past Chuck House, which I’ve noticed several times in the past. So I said, how about that place, and out of general apathy we turned into the parking lot.

Now, I must say that any place with the slogan “Best Chicken Fried Steak In The Universe” has some proving to do. Chuck House is in a former KFC location, but the parking lot was pretty full, even at 1745.

A side note, the menu said that the Edmond location is the second Chuck House location. I checked Google Maps, and the original location is at 10th and Meridian. I remembered seeing that location over the years, as I used to do a lot of driving around that part of Oklahoma City, but not so much recently.

Anyway, we ordered. I got (what else?) a Chicken Fried Steak dinner. I also got a bowl of chili. That chili was really good, no beans, and decent flavor, not too spicy. The CFS came with mashed potatoes and gravy. The mashed potatoes were, well, bland. I really like potatoes, the taste and texture can be wonderful. These were just bland. The gravy was good, a bit thick, but had a good flavor and wasn’t peppered out. The chicken fried steak was pretty darn good. It was tender and had a good beef flavor. It didn’t have too much breading. The real test was that I could cut it with a fork without any effort.

Raegan got a steak sandwich. I nipped off a bite of the CFS and it was just as good as my dinner. She ate most of the sandwich and took the rest home for lunch tomorrow.

Ian got chicken fingers, mashed potatoes, and corn. He ate about half the chicken and the corn, and none of the mashed potatoes. His appetite has not come back since his encounter with H1N1, and we are not really encouraging him to go into power-eating mode.

Erin got a grilled cheese and ate all of it.

We also got a chocolate cake dessert that was very good.

I got iced tea, and it was OK, but there was a bit of aftertaste. Just a bit. A touch of the sweet tea added to the glass erased that aftertaste.

So is it the best CFS in the universe? No. I still find the CFS at Ozona in Dallas to be better, along with the CFS at Cheddar’s, and at The Embers in Nebraska City, and a couple other places. But it was pretty darned good! I’ve had plenty of CFS that was way, way worse than the Chuck House CFS. I now have a personal action item to hit the Chuck House original location soon.

Chuck House was also pretty reasonable price-wise. Our check for four was $35, and that included my bowl of chili and the dessert.

Using My Computer As A DVR

OK, very few people might be interested, but I am going to document my computer-as-Digital Video Recorder (DVR) saga from Saturday.

We don’t have a working VCR, but I have no less than two video capture cards in my main development computer. There was show on the “Ovation” TV channel that I wanted to record. So I thought that using a piece of DVR software would work.

Now, I’ve got a lot of computer and digital video experience. I have a two-channel video stream that I run quite often; I use it to send video over the house network to my laptop so I can watch Dish or over-the-air TV wherever I happen to be working.

First I fired up the WinTV2000 application. It has a VCR function. I ran it for two minutes; it only saves in AVI format, and the two minutes consumed 180MB of space. For the two-hour program I was wanting to record, it would require about 200GB of disk, and I just didn’t have that kind of space available.

I started working the upgrade process around 1300 Saturday. I had stuff I was doing around the house and outside, so I was sharing my time between the computer DVR project and the house.

So I knew about an application called MythTV. First I downloaded a live CD called MythDora, which is MythTV based on the Linux Fedora distribution. Since my development machine is a dual-boot XP/Fedora 5, I thought this would be a good test. I got the CD booted and MythTV started. After going through configuration, it started running. MythTV seemed to be running, but when I got to looking at the logs, it was not able to open either of my video devices. I played with it a while without success.

I booted back into my Fedora 5 installation and downloaded a KDE-based TV app. It started showing me the output of the TV tuners right away. So those were working OK under Linux, there was a problem with MythDora.

I decided to upgrade my Fedora 5 installation to Fedora 10. I downloaded the DVD, burned it, and started the install. That went well. It did take an hour and some change, but at the end of it I had a new Fedora 10. I immediately downloaded two TV apps and ran them, got TV! I downloaded MythTV in source form, since I could not get it via Yum or in an RPM. I started the compile. It crashed after 10 minutes complaining about a missing library.

Next, I thought about using VLC, which is a good player and can stream. I tried to get it via Yum, but it was missing some library, and I couldn’t find the library.

So I rebooted back into Windows XP, which has a copy of VLC for windows already installed. For some reason, it couldn’t find either TV card. I played with the inputs but the darn thing wouldn’t start streaming.

Finally, I hit upon a solution. I would use Microsoft Media Encoder to stream the TV to another computer, which would capture and store the video stream. When I started the WME wizard, there was an option I hadn’t noticed to encode to DISK. In MPEG formats! I tried it on a short segment, and it saved the stream just fine. Then it opened up with Windows Media Player.

I started the capture of the program. Thie program ran from 0030 to 0230 Sunday. I got to stay up and listen to the program (“Phantom of the Opera: Behind the Mask”) with one ear while I did some Internet searching that I had put off doing, so it wasn’t like I was sleeping or anything like that. The two hours of MPEG-1 recording ended up taking up 2.3GB.

In the end, I got the program recorded, but I did it manually. I was not able to set a DVR-type timer to start and stop the recording. I also wasted a bit of time trying to get various software working, downloading and burning stuff to CD and DVD, doing installs, and the like. I got a Fedora 10 update (which I needed to do anyway, since my new school Linux server is also Fedora 10) on my development and test machine. But this was the first Linux-based Charlie-Fox that I have had. It’s kind of ironic that a freebie from Microsoft (Windows Media Encoder) got the job sort of done in place of Linux, when a lot of Microsoft stuff is barely functional.

I’ll work on it some more later this week.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? Not So Much

First off, I do not think that a right-wing conspiracy exists, in spite of what President Clinton said yesterday, and Secretary Clinton said 10 or so years ago.

I say this mainly because the definitions of conspiracy that I looked up in various online dictionaries correlated “conspiracy” with “illegal”. I do not think that the activities of the conservative right are illegal. Unethical, sure. But what they say is allowed by the 1st Amendment as free speech. Just as a free society suffers the ills of criminals and terrorists, so free speech suffers the ills of lies and misrepresentation.

To compare, Will Rogers said it best: “I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat”. Yes, I may not have the exact quote, but it’s probably pretty close.

I do not know how the conservative right does it, but they clearly are able to close ranks and put out a consistent message. On a given day, you can listen to Limbaugh, the Republican Congressional Committee, local radio, Fox, etc, and you will hear a core set of accusations and rhetoric. This trickles down to the public in at least some capacity. I’ve wondered how they do this. Is there a daily conference call where the issue of the day is involved? Or do the heaviest hitters send email suggestions to each other. Or do the right-wing leaders have a weekly staff meeting (hmmm, maybe instead of church Sunday morning…)?

Regardless (and back to serious), I’ve written before about the problem I have with the vast right-wing machine. It’s not that they speak out with (more or less) a single voice, the problem is that “they” have no compunction about lying, prevarication, smearing, and BSing. I still believe that the right wing does not have any ideas (call it “intellectual bankruptcy”) other than keep-it-the-way-it-is, and so have to fight progressive ideas with innuendo and BS.

H1N1 Comes To Visit

Overall, our family is pretty healthy. All four of us have some allergies, but that’s really about it.

So when Ian came home from school on Friday complaining of a headache, and with a 101F fever, we were a bit worried. We gave him ibuprofen, he crashed, and slept for about 12 hours. The next morning he woke up with a 103F fever, so we gave him more ibuprofen and took him to the doctor.

The doctor checked Ian over, and had a throat swab done to check for strep throat and a nose swab done to check for flu. The office took about 20 minutes to come back and say positively that Ian had managed to acquire H1N1. The doctor asked if anyone in the house had asthma or another other chronic health problems, because if they did he would prescribe Tamiflu for them (none of us do). He then told us what to do: essentially nothing. We had to keep Ian out of school for five days from the onset of the symptoms on Friday. The worst of it would be the first 24-36 hours or so. He then presented Ian with a mask and told him to wear it on the way out so that Ian would not infect any kids in the waiting room; the mask could be removed in the elevator. He also said don’t take him anywhere that he could be in close contact with large groups of people. I had him wear the mask until we were outside in the parking lot.

Ian felt pretty crappy Saturday. We kept him on ibuprofen. When he woke up Sunday he felt much better, and by Sunday evening he wasn’t feeling any effects at all, except that he was not hungry (most unusual for Ian). He stayed home from school through the next Wednesday. Late on Tuesday he still had a “wet” cough and we thought he might be contagious so we waited the cough out, and it was gone late the next morning.

As we watched TV over the next couple days we heard a number of reports about kids that were in the hospital due to H1N1, some in critical condition. We are very grateful that Ian never got that sick from the bug, and also that none of the rest of us came down with H1N1 (which I think is kind of surprising). We gave Ian a slightly hard time about getting sick (we called him “Flu Ian” a couple times; he grimaced), and also about getting sick just to take it easy around the house a couple days.

I am impressed that the test for H1N1 was so quick and definitive. The description I found online about how the test worked talked in multisyllable words about residual nucleotides and such. I’m glad that we didn’t have him spreading it around school, also.

Someplace Else, Oklahoma City

A work friend and I ate at this restaurant a couple years ago for lunch. It was pretty good.

Yesterday a couple work friends and I went to Someplace Else again. It was pretty good again.

I got a meatball sandwich on wheat bread with Sun Chips. It was messy and had a lot of meatballs, and a lot of marinara. They didn’t have any Parmesan cheese, unfortunately. The meatballs were mostly meat with some bread, instead of the other way around. The marinara was really good. Someplace Else is also a bakery. I got five (small) peanut butter cookies and a snicker-doodle. The snicker-doodle was good, but the PB cookies were crumbly and not all that tasty. I think they lacked the PB part. They have iced tea and it’s good also. My check was $7.50. The cookies were $1.50.

The last time I went to Someplace Else I got a brisket sandwich. It was pretty good also, and so I had wanted to come back and try other stuff.

Someplace Else is on Western just about 100ft south of 23rd Street. We got there about 1130 and the place was already filling up. It’s not large.

Free Museum Day – Oklahoma

September 26th this year is Free Museum Day. It’s coordinated by The Smithsonian. A large number of museums grant free admission all day. You have to print out a card, at this URL:

http://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/admission.html

Here is the list of participating museums in Oklahoma:

You Searched for: Oklahoma

Chisholm Trail Heritage Center, Duncan

Confederate Memorial Museum & Cemetery, Atoka

Gaylord-Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City

Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa

Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Shawnee

Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City

Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa

Sam Noble Museum, Norman

Science Museum Oklahoma, Oklahoma City

Tulsa Historical Society & History Museum, Tulsa

Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch, Oologah

Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/museum-search/?state=Oklahoma#ixzz0Rn4fnpFW

Encyclomedia 2009

Encyclomedia is essentially a conference of teachers that is oriented to library staff. It’s run by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. It’s fairly oriented towards use of new technology in libraries and classrooms. Since I am the IT department for St. John’s, and I’m always looking for ways to make better use of our school technology infrastructure (especially if they are free or cheap), I like to go to Encyclomedia looking for cool stuff.

This year was pretty interesting. I went to sections talking about some free research databases that are available to Oklahoma schools (EBSCO and another one). I also went to a section that talked about how to use Smart Boards in classrooms. That was pretty cool

I talked to a couple of the reps at the trade show. The two most interesting were the OPUBCO booth, where I found out that St. John’s was already on the authorized list for using the archives of The Daily Oklahoman, which was a full-text search going back to 1913, and a Smart Board booth.

I got about 30 minutes of quality time with a Smart Board, and learned how the Smart Boards are set up and used. We might be able to get one or two Smart Boards via a grant, so that’s good info.

A lot of Encyclomedia is geared towards classroom teachers, who have a skill set I do not have, so I didn’t attend those sections. I ran into a college friend, which was really nice, but I didn’t see anyone else I knew.

My only real complaint is that the rooms were limited in attendance (due to fire code, we were told), so I rearranged my schedule to hit one of the sections I could not get into due to the limits. It seems kind of silly to only let a room be half full.

The last Encyclomedia I went to was a couple years ago. I missed the notification about the 2007 event, and the 2008 event was held while I was on a business trip so I missed it. I hope I’ll be back next year.

Oklahoma City Philharmonic Concert

I took the family to see the first Classics concert of the year last night. The Oklahoma City Philharmonic put on a fantastic concert.

The evening started out with the Philharmonic playing “The Star Spangled Banner” with the crowd singing along. It was great to be able to do that.

The first half was a suite from Stravinsky’s “The Firebird”. I have heard only a part of this piece that I can remember, but the performance by the Philharmonic was flawless to these ears. A lot of symphony is fairly subtle and slow, but this piece seemed to be mostly uptempo, and was fun to listen to.

After intermission, a cellist by the name of Steven Isserlis came out. The Philharmonic played a Dvorak piece called Concerto for Cello in B minor. It had plenty of places where the rest of the orchestra receded into the background so Mr. Isserlis could have his solo parts stand out. He was darn good on that instrument. As fast as he was sawing away, I was amazed that the “presumably” horsehair bow didn’t erode away completely. I’m not a fan of solo cello, but the performance was very, very good.

The audience gave them a standing ovation, but they did not return for an encore, which I thought was rather rude.

When I bought our tickets for this event, we only had three of us going, and the only place that there were three seats together was in Box 5 on the “Grand Tier”. I LIKE box seats! It was a real chair, not a stadium seat, and there was legroom.

A couple days ago, we realized we would have Ian joining us, so I went down and bought another ticket for him. I got a fourth ticket in Box 3. The box office folks were adamant that the single seat in Box 3 was the only one available.

When we got there, of the six seats in Box 5, we were the only three occupants. Of the six seats in Box 3, there were three open seats. So, either the open seats were no-shows (maybe season ticket holders?), or the box office people were clueless. I hope that the open seats were no-shows. There were a LOT of open seats down on the Orchestra level also. I counted one group of seven open seats, another of six, several of five, and any number of twos and threes. The balconies seemed pretty full.

So I guess what I am thinking is that it would make sense for the Philharmonic to try to fill those higher-dollar seats by letting people upgrade their tickets by letting them trade in for the no-show seats. This would be a win-win, I think. The Philharmonic would not lose money by letting a $40 ticket be upgraded to a $60 ticket, since there are probably more people willing to buy a $40 ticket to back-fill the upgraded seat. On top of that, the no-show ticket holder might get some money back.

At this point, I will make my standard statement about “convenience fees”. Any group that charges them are thieves. I make it a point to buy my tickets for the Civic Center Music Hall at the box office, since the Ticketmaster fees are out and out extortion (the last time I bought that way, the “fee”/extortion was $6 for a $7 ticket). Even the Philharmonic charges $1.25 for the “convenience” of driving downtown, paying for parking, and then walking to the box office and paying for a ticket. If anyone from the City or the Philharmonic reads this, I tell you now that I like your shows, but you are screwing your customers, especially the ones going to the Discovery Concerts, who are hopefully the next generation of your customers.

Ticketmaster and the like are just remoras or lampreys. They suck off money and return no useful service in return.

An OERB Ad Just Now

I just saw an ad that was put on by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board (OERB). The ad stated that even if wind energy was increased by some multiple (even quadrupled), then it still would only produce only 5% of America’s energy needs.

This ad is indicative of the the subtle application of BS to otherwise valid public discourse. The ad uses a false argument to denigrate energy sources other then fossil fuel. Oil and such as been around since the 1800s, and so there are lots of power plants around that burn stuff that used to be underground.

While it is technically true to state that there is not much wind power (or solar, for that matter), that’s because the implementation of those technologies is in the very early stages. And just because there isn’t much, doesn’t mean that we don’t need a LOT more of it.

OERB isn’t a neutral player here. It is a lobbying or trade group for the oil and natural gas industry. They were originally formed because irresponsible oil and gas well owners left a lot of dangerous open wells and piles of trash around old drilling sites. The state got annoyed enough that they were about to pass legislation forcing the industry to clean up, so the OERB was formed to take a bit of the profits from royalty owners to clean up these messes.

What I don’t understand is why some group like OERB would be opposed to alternative energy. As a practical matter, we are going to need fossil fuel for the future. We are a long ways out from having all cars electric, and even then we will need trucks, trains, and ships to move the big stuff around, not to mention natural gas and oil burners are the most efficient way to heat houses and other buildings. Going electric for things like cars will only extend the available fossil fuel supply farther into the future. I guess that they are only interested in their profits, as long as they can stop or slow any progress towards more alternative energy sources.

Republicans and Nasty Political Rhetoric

I believe two sometimes-conflicting principles:

1. Free speech is a right.

2. Courtesy should rule our interactions.

Unfortunately, many conservatives are ignoring #2, and abusing #1.

I have been concerned for some time about the level of venom in our political discourse. I have said in other posts that the vast majority of the venom comes from the right. Little comes from the left, and even what comes from the left is much milder.

This was brought to my attention again today. Democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi made a statement in which she basically thought that the tone of political debate needs to be toned down. A notable response came from the Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He said that it wasn’t the Republican right, but the words of Speaker Pelosi that was the cause of the problem.

If I could ask the guy one thing, I would ask him to quote back where Pelosi called President Bush Hitler, or the antichrist, or anything even remotely similar.

I listen to voices on both sides of the political spectrum: O’Reilly, Maddow. Limbaugh and Beck, Young Turks and Ed Schultz. Oklahoman and Oklahoma Gazette.

The result is consistent: the right-wing constantly spews what I can only call hate-filled rhetoric; the left, discussion of the issues.

Frankly, those on the left sound more intelligent than those on the right.

Sure, the left calls out problems that they observe. But they point out inconsistencies and hypocrisy. The right likes to, in short, lie. The left is guilty of hyperbole and sarcasm, but out-and-out BS is very rare.

During the McCain/Palin campaign, there were numerous incidents of people yelling stuff like “kill him” about Obama. When asked about it, McCain lamely offered “the same and worse has been yelled during Obama rallies”. Was any evidence provided? No. There was video and audio evidence of the shouts during McCain rallies. If anything similar had happened during Obama rallies, it would have been on someone’s camera. So there were two problems here: McCain and Palin accepted this hate speech by not forcefully rejecting it, and then they compounded the problem by trying to get the Obama campaign down on to their level.

Bush, who I didn’t support at all before his first “election”, had the countries support for several years following 9/11. He lost it by lying us into a war, lying about the threat, and lying about what his Administration was doing. Those, it should be noted, are actual lies. He destroyed the surplus, caused thousands of Americans to die, and ramped up the surveillance society. He hid his activities from the American public. His Administration was arrogant to the public. No Democrat that I know of wished Bush dead (as opposed to the Arizona Baptist preacher who has publicly wished the same of Obama, within the past week).

It’s clear that the vast, overwhelming majority of what can only be called “political hate speech” are right-wing.

The Republican leadership can, and should, lead the way in getting their followers to settle down. They are not. I think that they know that if they tone down the hatred, they have NOTHING left in the debates of the day, including health insurance reform.

Under the eye-for-an-eye concept, I can see the right fighting this dirty, IF the left did the same. But the left is not. So the right is still fighting dirty, and it only shows the lack of their ideas and the lack of their integrity.

Bedlam Bar-B-Que

Oh, this place was good. Really good. As an aside, I really enjoyed the Western and Native American themed paintings in the place. It was a very welcoming restaurant.

I ordered the Combo Dinner, which is two meats. I got smoked chicken and chopped brisket. The chicken was a bit (just a bit) dry, but really good. The brisket was really good. I got green beans (EXCELLENT) and mac and cheese for the sides. The mac and cheese could have used a little more cheese, but that’s trivial. The chicken, BTW, was breast meat that had been cut off the chicken, which made it a lot less messy (I try to reduce any BBQ to a pile of bones; preferably, the bones should look like they had been bleaching in the desert for a couple months).

I also had part of one of Ian’s four ribs. This was a Good Thing. On a scale of 1 to JT’s, that taste was a 9. Yes, 9 out of 10. It was GOOD. That good.

Erin got a kids meal with smoked turkey. It was tender and good.

Raegan got a Combo Dinner as well, with pulled pork and turkey. Both excellent, she said that the turkey was the best part.

They had two sauces. The “mild” was very sweet, and very, very mild. The “hot” was not all that hot, but was very tasty. I ended up mixing the two, about half and half, and it was a perfect mix.

Raegan got carrot cake for dessert, and she reported it was OK. A philosophical comment: do not go to a BBQ restaurant for carrot cake. A brownie, maybe. Cobbler, sure.

A note about the iced tea: The unsweetened tea was just what I would expect. Strong. The sweet tea? My very cute and tea-loving roommate said that the sweet tea was “exactly the way sweet tea is supposed to be made”, or words to that effect. It was good also (I don’t mind sweet tea, after all I drink Coke and Dr. Pepper), but it was really sweet.

This place was good. I look forward to my next visit.

Bedlam BBQ is just east of Lincoln on NE 50th. Our check was $47. The place had one family there when we got there around 1745, and we were the only ones there at 1845.

Dan’s Ole Time Diner, Oklahoma City

I had eaten at Dan’s a couple years ago. It was good.

Today I had lunch there with a group of current and former work friends. I was pretty late due to meetings running late.

Dan’s specializes in onion burgers. I got a Double Dan with cheese, which is a half-pound of meat. It was pretty much perfect. The burger was medium well, juicy enough that I needed to wipe my fingers every bite or so, but it wasn’t super greasy. It was tasty. The onions were not burned (as many onion burger places tend to do), and there were not an obnoxious amount on the burger. They didn’t put mayo or mustard or anything else on the burger, and that didn’t matter at all. The meat was very tasty.

I got a side of tater tots, and a big, strong iced tea. All great.

When I got there about 1215, the place was pretty much full. When I left around 1300, the place was still about 80% full. My check was $10.39.

Dan’s is at 8433 S. Western, about four blocks south of I-240.

Lido, Oklahoma City, OK

I do not eat at many Chinese restaurants. There is one in Midwest City that makes my otherwise cast-iron stomach do flip-flops. Lido is not like that.

I last ate at Lido back around January 2008, with a group of work friends. It was good then.

I had lunch at Lido the day before yesterday with a friend. She got something with noodles and chicken. I got my usual for a Chinese restaurant, Sweet and Sour Chicken. It was really tasty, the sauce was good, and the chicken was perfect. I got fried rice with it. The presentation of the meal was really attractive, and I don’t usually notice stuff like that. I also got Egg Drop Soup. It was good, but different. Most Egg Drop Soup is yellowish; this was white, to the point I thought that it might be Egg Whites Drop Soup. It had peas and carrots (small amounts) in it.

The service was good. We got there for lunch about 1145, and were seated immediately, but the place was pretty full. When we left at 1300, it was still half full. Our check for two meals was $16; pretty reasonable.

NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) and VB6-NSIS Converter

I just love Open Source software. I have a number of Visual Basic 6 projects that I use quite often for work and school. I move them to different computers.

I usually use the VB6 Package and Deployment Wizard to build an install package for these. However, at least three of these VB6 packages have cratered while trying to get them to install on the target system. One time, the target system was a computer on the E-4B, and I was trying to help a guy get it to install, with little luck. The errors being reported were (1) random and not consistent, and (2) cryptic, to say the least.

I can hand-install most any Windoze program with a little patience, but in that case I was 1400 miles away, and it needed to be installed that day!

I searched around on the web and found NSIS. Just a bit more searching and I found a companion to NSIS that acted as a VB6-NSIS Converter. The way it works, you run the VB6 Package and Deployment Wizard. If the installer fails, then run the VB6-NSIS converter, point it at the VB6 “SETUP.LST”, and it creates a script for NSIS. Then run NSIS, point it at the converted script, and it builds a nice setup.exe file. Burn it to CD or email it to it’s destination, or copy it to a flash drive, and you are on your way.

In every case where the built-in VB6 tool at trouble, NSIS/VB6 converter got the job done. Great stuff.

Almost forgot:

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/VB_Converter

Jason’s Deli

We had dinner at Jason’s Deli on Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City this evening. We do not go to Jason’s enough, I think sometimes.

Jason’s is just as good, and has different things, than City Bites (just for example). I have had their brisket sandwich, and it is good, really nice and tender. The brisket is good on a sandwich, and it’s good piled in a big baked potato also.

Tonight I had a baked potato, but filled with chili. The Texas chili con carne kind, instead of New Mexico red or green. It’s good and meaty and thick and tasty, but not so spicy that it scorches your taste buds. I usually get it in a bowl, and occasionally I get Fritos on the side (I don’t’ get the on-the-menu Frito Chili Pie, if you order the bowl of chili it’s a $2 less than the FCP, then you can get a side of Fritos for another $0.50.

I also like a couple of the soups, in particular the broccoli cheese.

The sandwiches are uniformly good. I like the turkey club a lot.

They have a good salad bar as well.

Jason’s Delis are all over the place. I’ve seen them in Largo, FL.

TGI Friday’s

Tonight we gave Ian the opportunity to choose where to eat dinner, since we like to eat out on Friday, and he did a very good job on a test in school. He chose TGI Fridays, and we went to the one on Memorial Road in north OKC.

The meal was good and the service excellent. That’s not the point.

We got there around 1715. The music was really loud! We asked the hostess to turn it down; she reported that they could not, since the high level was set by TGI Fridays corporate.

We went up the chain to a manager. The volume came down a bit, but was still too loud. The manager explained that it had something to do with TGI Friday corporate wanting loud music to help the image of the place as a bar be enhanced.

If this is true (and I cannot see why it might be), it’s stupid.

The Coast Guard Really Boots It on 11 September

Whatever yutz ordered an exercise on the Potomac, today of all days, ought to be fired. It only makes sense that every September 11, people will be a bit more on edge. Having an exercise that simulates firing shots in the national capital can not do any good at all.

Congressman Wilson Just Does Not Get It

This guy is stupid, or willfully ignorant, or he is more conservative Republican than American. I really do not use those words lightly. I do not like using them. But after his supposed apology for his outburst during President Obama’s speech, he continues to essentially call the President a liar, and perpetuating his (Wilson’s) deranged ideas.

I just listened to a video of him, stating again that he would continue to fight to remove access to health care subsidies for people in the country illegally.

As I stated in a previous post, it is 100% black-letter bill (with apologies to Law and Order for the term “black letter law”) that anyone in the country illegally is completely ineligible for any subsidies under the bill.

Given that the bill already clearly states that, and the President confirmed it during his speech, but Wilson denies it, he is stupid. This crass, rude, and apparently non-reading “representative” should not be in office.

Just a question for the “representative”. Did he object to President Bush lying, repeatedly and with deliberate repeats? Was Wilson outraged at that, in addition to being outraged by a false belief that is proven to be untrue?

Edmond Memorial High School and Technology

This evening there was an open house at son Ian’s school, Edmond Memorial High School (EMHS), so we went up there to check it out.

We had made several visits and walked through of the building during the enrollment process, and we admired the computer labs with their flat panels, and the Smart Boards and projectors in the classrooms. However, the Open House was our first chance to talk to Ian’s teachers.

Now, a bit of a baseline. I think that the technology infrastructure as St. John’s is pretty good, especially given that we have zero budget for technology. We have the following capabilities:

Every teacher and staff member for both school and church has a workstation, email, and web access.

Every classroom from Kindergarten on up has at least two computers with age-appropriate software. Two of the classrooms have FOUR workstations.

School management software and parish management software.

A redundant server with our own email, world-class Internet filter (DansGuardian), the school “internal” web server, a total of 10 network shared directories. a killer firewall, real-time virus scanning, and remote access. This includes an on-line grade reporting system that is fed from the teachers electronic gradebook (Fedora Linux kicks serious tail).

We stream two video feeds through the building; one is from Cox Cable for TV, the other is for the building security camera system.

So we come back to EMHS. Two of the six teachers had PowerPoint presentations, which was cool. There are seven or eight computer labs in the building, and the library has about 20 machines just there. The aforementioned Smart Boards. Most of the classrooms had overhead projectors with remote, driven by a dedicated computer. It looked like most of the rooms had TV access, and of course each had a teacher workstation. The teachers talked about what they do in the classroom. Two of them use online course management software where all the notes for the class are stored, along with all the assignments (one uses the Smart Board to capture the notes and directly upload them to the course management software). Half of the teachers use online versions of the book(s) for the kids, so they don’t have to haul paper copies of the books around. The math classrooms has networked wireless-enabled calculators (!). In fact, the math classroom has a virtual calculator that runs on the Smart Board. The cafeteria and snack bar run on what are essentially debit cards tied to a virtual account for each student. One of the teachers blogs about the daily classroom activity and assignments.

This is all a much higher level of technology enabling than I thought I would see. I was impressed. Of course, EMHS is awash in money in a way St. John’s isn’t. They have an IT department. It’s more than one highly skilled (if I do say so) geek who volunteers as a labor of love and service.

I am trying to put some similar capability in. Blogs from the classroom are easy – Open Source! I am modifying our Online Grades (OLG) software to track classroom assignments in a more granular way of initial assignment to final grade. If I had time this could be done in a matter of days, but I do have to earn a living, so it stretches out in the time domain.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education hosts a yearly conference called EncycloMedia. I am going to it next week to scope out some more ideas and resources for St. John’s. We might take a while to get to the level of EMHS (in terms of capability if not population), but hopefully we will get there.

President Obama’s Health Insurance Speech Tonight

I missed the first half of the speech this evening, as we were having dinner in Edmond. I just saw a replay on CNN, including the Republican response.

I liked the general tone of the speech, it reminded me of Senator McCain’s “Straight Talk” of eight+ years ago. Taking on the bogus lies about death panels, being direct about how different groups of people will see their insurance change or not, and a statement of principles of government, were all good parts of the speech. A couple places had me want to shout “Hallelujah, brother!”, as the President got into his delivery. I do hope that the President follows through with incorporating those good ideas from the right, while not giving away the store in the process.

As to the Republican response, it had little in the way of specific ideas. I think that their idea of “bipartisan” is “do it our way”. One thing I did not appreciate was a listing of things that the Republicans want to maintain:

These are common-sense reforms we can achieve right away – without destroying jobs, exploding the deficit, rationing care, or taking away the freedom American families cherish.

The implication being that the plan of the President and the Democrats will destroy jobs, explode the deficit, cause care to be rationed, and take away freedom. So in their response, the Republicans trot out the same stupid claims that have already been proven false. They do not have much credibility. BTW, they worry about President Obama maybe exploding the deficit, while I guess they were OK with Bush doing it.

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson Should Resign

Republican “Representative” Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at President Obama during the President’s speech tonight before the full Congress. He later apologized. However…

It was not just a mark of disrespect. It is the mark of a low intellect, an ignorance of plain fact, and rudeness. It is putting party above country (I wonder if the guy supported McCain and his slogan “Country First”?).

Just for context, President Obama was speaking to his conviction that health insurance under his plan would not be usable by people in the country illegally. Also just for a fact, here is the part of HR 3200:

“Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

So either the Congressman can’t read, or hear, or he willfully disregards facts. He shows no honor here, and should resign or be forced from office by his constituents.

You can see a full debunk on claims about HR 3200 at FactCheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/twenty-six-lies-about-hr-3200/

“Controversy” and President Obama’s Speech to Schoolkids

Almost every media outlet this afternoon has reported on the Presidents speech to schools today. Most of the reporting (I think the vast majority, like “all”) has focused on the “controversy”.

I would dispute that there was even any controversy.

One of the local stations (KFOR) has a segment they call “The Rant”, where a topic is identified and people call and email opinions about it. Here is what I sent in:

There never was any “controversy” about the Presidents speech to schoolkids, just a lot of paranoid, mindless whining by people before they ever read the speech. It’s terrible when people fear a man so much that they heap abuse on him constantly no matter how he tries to do what he said he would try to do.

I fully believe that controversy arises from differences of opinion on a subject. In this case, there was a lot of paranoid fear, from one side, the “right” (and just some of those on the “right”), but none from the “left”. These people never looked at the speech (I spread it around some after it was published, and I know others did as well), and were all freaked out by a line in a draft of the teaching materials that spoke about kids thinking something to the effect of how they could help the President (which in general is not a bad idea, service to the country).

In a more general sense, why are people so afraid of Obama? Last year, a kid I know was so freaked out by the results of the election that he was literally hysterical at school the next day. What was found out by talking to him was that his very highly conservative Republican parents were telling him constantly about all the bad things Obama was going to do the country, and the kid was scared spitless. It’s borderline abuse, in my opinion.

It’s not just the speech to kids. The constant references to Hitler/socialism, the accelerated purchases of guns and ammo, and many other things are all results of people being afraid of the President, with no basis for being so.

We talk to our kids about politics, but we talk about all sides of the issue, in an age-appropriate way. When Bush did something right (not a frequent occurrence), we talked about that also.

I’ve written before about how the true hatred being sprayed in the country is almost exclusively from the right. This episode is another example. It is far worse now than when Kerry was running (the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were completely without honor). Gore in 2000 wasn’t too bad, but I was even surprised at how badly vitriol was directed against Clinton in 1992. I firmly believe that conservatism is increasingly non-relevant today, and all that the political arm of conservatism has left is lies, smears, distortion, and innuendo.

Conservative Americans need to take a close look at their reasons for being conservative, and how the far right wing of their group acts, and maybe pull out their holy books and read the parts about loving their neighbors.

I just heard a guy being interviewed on CNN who claimed that the President’s speech was changed after “the word got out” about it. After being pressed, he admitted that he had no evidence that the speech was changed, but he had no proof. I would not even have interviewed a guy like that. If he had some evidence that the speech was changed, that would probably be newsworthy. For some nut to say he was sure it was changed, but had no proof, he should not have been interviewed – there was no controversy since there was no evidence.

Oklahoma State wins in Boone Pickens Stadium

Well, OSU just scored a win over Georgia in football today. Good job for the Pokes.

Maybe I don’t watch enough football, but one thing horrified me. The ABC sideline reporter reported that several of the Georgia players had had IVs during and after halftime; they had bandages wrapped around their forearms right under the elbow. I presume that they received hydration fluids. Why could the players not stay hydrated enough by drinking water or juice or Gatorade or whatever? It seems a bit extreme to me that players (or coaches?) feel they are not playing to their capability unless they get a vein punctured during the game. That just seems to be too much.

Mr. Pickens donated $165M of his money, and OSU is spending $260M on sports. I have been to OSU numerous times since I graduated, and I have not seen any upgrade in the Engineering or Math or Biology buildings. In fact, the university destroyed many of the dorms, and replaced them with apartments (that every single student we talked to said some variation on “they suck”).

I got, I think, a good education at OSU. I enjoyed my experience greatly, and I have given a bit of money to the university and to a couple of the clubs specifically. But I have been concerned that the students and education have become a second priority. The Kamm Center and all the new new buildings on the north side of the campus, I don’t think are directly for educating students. About 10 years ago, the university spent some money for a consulting group to see what could be improved. The group returned a large number of recommendations, and I seem to recall that the OSU administration decided to implement none. I specifically remember that OSU had 21 (that’s twenty-one) vice presidents, and that about 2/3rds of those should be eliminated.

The only buildings where there is much evidence of change is Whitehurst (which admittedly was not really very user friendly), and as R points out, the Student Union. The Union was a place where I had a lot of really good memories. I spent almost every lunch there, and spent a lot of between-class time there. They used to make a hell of a good cheesesteak there! You could also get cheeseburgers or a hot lunch. I have it on good authority that the Cowboy Burrito was simply outstanding. However, as long ago as 1995, the “OSU unique” eateries were replaced with chain stuff. I remember asking a guy that worked there why this was done, and he said that it was because the university made more money with the chains, even though they made money with the original eateries. They pulled out the bowling alley (which was always packed), the barber shop, etc. I read this as a de-emphasis on the Union being a hub of socialization. Somewhere in the past couple years, they also enclosed the former outdoor patio were we had lunch concerts, and put a lot of the university business offices there.

Stillwater was home to me for the better part of six years. I met my very cute and OSU-loving roommate there also, and spent a LOT of time there between those two events. It was a perfect place to live (to the point that we seriously considered building a house there), but it seems the university is trying to become another institution, and that’s sad for me.

So I’m glad the Cowboys won today, but I also recognize that not a single football game is relevant to the educational mission of the university, and I wish they would try to put money towards the sciences or the library or the arts.

President Obama Addressing School Kids

07 September 2009 Update:

The link to the text of the speech is:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

I read it, there is nothing untoward or “cult of personality” or anything like that in it at all.

Original post:

There is a lot of conservative outrage about this address that is to take place next week. The Florida Republican Party has thundered about possible socialist indoctrination and similar fears (all debunked by Fact Check); other individuals have as well.

The question that should be asked is where these conservatives stood when President George H. W. Bush or President Raegan directly addressed school kids? If it’s OK for them to address kids directly, it should be OK for President Obama to.

And don’t forget that President George W. Bush made many visits to schools as well (such as on 11 Sep 2001).

04 Sep update:

There is a lot of really ugly things being alleged by this speech. The only problem is that I have not been able to find a copy of the text of the speech anywhere. There is a screed going around that points to a YouTube video called “I Pledge”. I heard from work friends today that celebrities in the video “pledge allegence to President Obama”. I watched the video, and two times Obama is mentioned: one guy I do not recognize pledges “to be of service to” President Obama, and Demi Moore pledges to “be a servant to the President” (followed by Ashton Kutcher saying “and the country”. Claims are made that this video is being shown in schools (but not specific schools are mentioned).

The screed also shows a Photoshopped image of Obama with a photo of Hitler and a Hitler Youth. I have to say, despicable.

There is a lesson plan in the screed also. I read it and it seems innocuous. My wife the teacher read it, and found it weak.

The NBC Nightly News had a piece on this speech, and had a guy on from the “Teaparty Union” or something like that. He said that Obama was creating a “cult of personality”. I think that the Teaparty guy is a paranoid idiot.

My Letter To The Editor of the Muskogee Phoenix

I like to post any of my letters that get published so that they are somewhere stable in case the publication changes the link or something like that.

In this case, I had to respond to another letter to the editor that was just based on misconceptions. The original letter is here:

http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/archivesearch/local_story_225200826.html

Here is my letter in response. First of all, for the record, I did not come up with the title. I do not like to call people “ignorant”, at least in a public forum.

THE PEOPLE SPEAK: Earlier letter shows ignorance of issue

The Aug. 13 letter by Timothy Allison shows a number of misconceptions about the health insurance reform legislation currently in Congress.

His anecdote about the British style of health care is not comparable to the health insurance reform under consideration here. The British system employs doctors directly, while the legislation under consideration here does nothing to change the existing system of private doctors, pharmacies, physical therapists, etc.

The U.S. legislation forces the insurance companies to provide coverage equally. Also, I can provide a counter-anecdote: My wife was denied access last month to a common medicine for her arthritis because our insurance company right here in the United States decided it was too expensive (i.e., cut into profits).

He fears the government will do something that private insurers do right now. Is tyranny by private business OK? Where is conservative outrage?

As to “ungodly and unconstitutional,” I would point out that the government uses tax dollars every single day to perform actions that some people find objectionable, including funding the military, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, various research, bailing out the auto and financial systems, and similar activities.

The health care system will break down soon due to spiraling costs. Reforming insurance to cover everyone possible will spread, and therefore, lower costs for all.

Taking waste out (for example, huge salary costs for insurance companies), and standardizing coverage so you don’t have to worry about losing coverage if you switch jobs will help keep our standard of living up. We also need to tie health insurance reform to tort reform to keep huge malpractice awards down since those are also passed on to policyholders.

But doing nothing has been a bad option for a long time, and soon will be no option at all.

Bill Hensley
Oklahoma City

I couple items I would like to point out here that I would not point out in a newspaper.

His story about “Emma”, whether it is true or not, is just BS with respect to the health insurance debate here. Note he says that “Emma’s” doctors recommended she not take the treatment. There was nothing about the big bad evil government or death panels or anything like that involved. Doctors are supposed to recommend treatments, either in the UK or here. Note that his letter says nothing about cost or rationing being involved either.

He claims that the new bill provides funds for abortions. Well, that bill has been examined repeatedly and not in one place is that topic even addressed. So he’s either imagining that or is doing the Republican Robot repeating of made-up talking points.

The insurance industry rations care right now, and their overhead (which is anything that does not result in payment of claims, such as the salaries of people like adjusters that deny claims, and the money paid to the CEOs and the shareholders) has been reported to be about 30%. Medicare is about 3%. So, government is, in this case, far more efficient than private companies. No wonder the private companies are so afraid of regulation and true competition.

Taking Apart a LaserJet 4000

We have St. John’s signed up for the Computers For Learning (CFL) program. CFL is run by the Department of Defense, and is a program to get technology that is obsolete or older into the hands of schools and other groups. St. John’s has received a number of decent computers. A couple weeks ago, a number of laser printers became available. After the paperwork was completed, I took our Rendezvous over and picked them up.

While taking the printers into the building at school, I had one of them balanced a little less than optimally, and it fell off the cart, and hit the ground hard enough that most of the plastic cover was shattered into a lot of pieces. It would not even power up. I salvaged what I could (the legal-sized paper tray), and decided to take it apart and see what was inside.

I was kind of surprised that most of the interior of the printer was kind of simple. There was a lot of shock damage and smaller parts broken from the fall, and other parts cracked, and gears not even touching. The entire bottom of the unit was a circuit board about 14in square that was a power converter.

The processor board was kind of surprising – there was no general purpose processor! I had expected to see at least a embedded process controller. There was a medium sized Programmable Array Logic (PAL) chip; I imagine that’s where the processor code runs.

The absolute coolest part was the laser assembly. It’s worth remembering that the laser in the laser printer doesn’t “burn” text or pictures on to the page. The laser leaves a slight electrical charge on the paper where it hits it, and that charge attracts the powered toner to the page. A thermal fuser then melts the toner, making ink that bonds to the paper.

The laser diode sends light through some sort of lens at the six-side mirror. I speculate that the lens is a beam detector. The six-sided mirrors sides are really thin, they look like they are 1/8″ or so. The mirror is direct mounted to a motor.

The six-sided mirror reflects the laser light through a pair of acrylic lenses. I think that the two acrylic lenses (which look like paired convex negative meniscus lenses) essentially straighten the laser beam with respect to the plane of the paper feed; as a side of the mirror sweeps the laser beam in an arc, the two convex lenses bend the beam towards the center. I don’t think that the beam is necessarily bent to hit the paper at a 90 degree angle since the two acrylic lenses are shorter than the paper width, in fact, the second one is wider than the first one, and the differing lengths, if you lay a line across them, end up about the same width as 8.5″ paper.

The last thing the laser beam hits is a 45 degree mirror. This mirror turns the beam “down” and onto the paper passing below.

So as paper passes through the printer, one side of the six-sided mirror is used to sweep the laser beam across the width of the two acrylic lenses. The laser is turned on and off depending on whether or not a bit of toner needs to be deposited on the paper. The paper is then advanced, and the process repeats for the next line.

I’m going to try and get the six-sided mirror motor to spin to see how fast it goes, I suspect it is pretty darn fast. I am also going to try and power the laser up. They don’t use that much power. Of course, the motor or laser could also have been damaged in the fall.

Very cool.

Steak and Catfish Barn, Edmond/OKC

I have driven past this restaurant about 10,000 times over the years, but had never stopped. It really doesn’t look like much. It is on the NE corner of I-35 and Waterloo Road, so technically it’s not even in Oklahoma County. The building looks kind of like a bait shop.

Earlier this summer, I took my very cute and culinarily observant roommate and our kids on a trip to Omaha. As we drove past right at noon, Raegan noted that the parking lot was full, and said we needed to go eat at the place. We made a mental note and pressed on.

Yesterday, we were able to leave school early, and Raegan suggested that we head to the Barn to eat. We picked up Ian at home and off we went.

I was amazed at the amount of traffic that was exiting Waterloo and turning west towards the Edmond/Guthrie Miniplex (just made that up, pretty good!).

We got to the Barn around 1730. The place was only about 10% full. The inside looks like a combination of a fishing shack and an Elvis shrine. Raegan remarked that it smelled kind of like the Galveston beach, and it did (not in a bad or strong way, there were a couple tanks of tropical fish). We had complementary hush puppies, they were good. The iced tea was not strong but it was tasty.

I got a chicken fried steak. At first, I was not impressed. There was a lot of breading (which was actually fairly tasty) and little meat. As I got farther into the CFS, the situation improved. The breading was thinner and there was good meat. In fact, it was a decent CFS. I would rate it as an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. The gravy was good. The mashed potatoes and green beans were also good. I got a peach cobbler ala mode for dessert (the server noted without my asking that it was not home made, but it was still good).

Raegan and Erin got the house specialty, deep fried catfish. Both said it was very good. Ian ordered a ribeye steak. When it came I cut a big chunk off for sampling (hey, I paid for it!). It came in a perfect medium. The steak was good but not outstanding; it looked good on the outside, and had good marbling, but the taste was less then I might have expected. I was kind of surprised.

So the verdict on the Barn is that if I were cruising north or headed south on I-35 around a meal time, I would not mind stopping in at the Steak and Catfish Barn for a meal. Our check for four was $61, which in retrospect seems a little high. Ian’s steak was about $20 of that, and given how it tasted I am not sure that it was good value for the money. My CFS was only $10. We did get two desserts, but they must have been kind of expensive. The service had slowed down significantly toward the end (in fact, I had empty iced tea for the entire dessert).

When we left around 1745, the place was pretty much full. For it to be that popular, either it’s the only restaurant around, or they are serving something that brings people back. Maybe it’s the catfish, a lot of people were getting it. I’m not much into fish, but I will have to try a bite next time.

We drove back home by heading east on Waterloo until we found a likely road south. We ended up a mile west of Pops in Arcadia, were we stopped and bought some… pop. They have Dublin Dr Pepper and Coke from Mexico with cane sugar, and lots of Jones Soda. We continued home east of Lake Arcadia.

A Bad Policy From Bush Kept By Obama

The Washington Post reported today that the Bush policy of allowing unconstitutional searches of laptops and other electronic devices entering the United States (even those held by US citizens) will be continued by the Obama Administration.

The Constitution specifically forbids searches without probably cause (check the 4th Amendment). The Bush policy, while in line with his apparent commitment to a tyrannical government that watches its own citizens obsessively, was completely wrong. President Obama should reverse or repeal this odious policy completely. Instead, he wants to strengthen oversight:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday framed the new policy as an enhancement of oversight. “Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States,” she said in a statement. “The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”

Secretary Napolitano sounds reasonable, but first off, blatantly violating the Constitution of the United States is not a good way to keep Americans “safe”. I also fail to see how screening materials entering the US keeps us safe. Anything on a laptop or PDA can be sent in via the internet, even superencrypted to ensure no one can even tell what it is.

The President should start repealing or canceling these terrible, un-American laws and policies, not just adding “oversight”.

Reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704065.html?hpid=topnews

Ian’s First Week of High School

Ian started at Edmond Memorial a week ago. The first day, he reported that school was “ok”. My very cute but worried about her son roommate and I decided that “ok” was better than “it sucked”.

Over the course of the week, we have only had one issue – Ian didn’t do a small task we left for him, choosing to play games on the computer instead. But I think he learned his lesson from that, which was a complete ban from the computer except for homework, and he has done the other things we require of him.

We are starting to hear references to classmates. One in particular, “The Depressed One”, talks in third person a lot, and tries to be “Emo”. We think he is probably just being stupid for the attention. There are a lot of references to other kids that he has in classes. He likes the food in the cafeteria (but he’s really burning through the food credits!). He enjoys the classes as well.

Ian likes the new clothes Raegan got him for school, and is keeping up with his homework. It’s quite the change from Middle School. We like it so far.

Driving to Omaha via US-75

I go to Omaha pretty often, and have taken most of the possible routes between OKC and Omaha. The shortest route also has some of the most interesting stuff on it. This is the route straight up I-35 from OKC, connecting to the Kansas Turnpike to Topeka, then hitting US-75 to Omaha.

In northern Oklahoma, there are a couple good radio stations to listen to. I really like KLOR (99.3 FM) in Ponca City. They play a great mix. There is a also a good rock station out of Enid.

In Oklahoma and Kansas, there is not a lot of town once you get past Wichita. You get middle-of-the-turnpike islands for gas and snacks every 40 miles or so. The drive north of El Dorado through the Flint Hills can be really, really pretty, if you like scenery. The rolling hills go for miles in all directions. There aren’t any towns until you get to Emporia (which is the location of the Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Store that is farthest away from the HQ in Tuttle, OK).

When you get to Topeka, there is a wealth of good places to eat. There are a lot of restaurants along Wanamaker Road on the west side of town. I have only been to the downtown part of Topeka a few times. South of town on US-75 there is a nice air museum. The Kansas Museum of History next to the zoo is really cool!

Headed north out of town, you hit a series of small towns in KS and NE that are really nice. Holton has a really nice family restaurant called The Trails. Sabetha, in Nebraska, has a nice restaurant (I can’t remember the name off hand), but it also suffers from the reputation of being a speed trap. Since US-75 was bypassed around Sabetha about a year ago, I think that situation has improved. Just north of Sabetha is Pony Lake. It’s a nice place to take a Sonic or DQ cheeseburger from Sabetha, and scarf that down watching a beautiful blue lake with a rock wall across on the east shore.

Once you get into NE, watch out for overly interested state troopers for the first 20 miles or so. You pass through the town of Dawson, then into Auburn, which has a number of restaurants and a very nice park just north of downtown.

Holton, Sabetha and Auburn all have really nice parks. The park in Holton is especially nice, it’s east of US-75 at the intersection of The Trails, about a half mile. It’s down in a hollow, has lots of trees, and a nice lake.

The next town is Nebraska City. I’ve reviewed several restaurants from there (but not The Embers yet, which is a really good steakhouse). There is a nice park and trail along the Missouri River.

The drive from Nebraska City into Omaha is uneventful until you get to Plattsmouth. That small town has a couple nice restaurants in the downtown area. After that, you pass Offutt AFB.

It’s about 440 miles from OKC to Omaha, depending on whether you stop in Bellevue or head to downtown or La Vista. My record from my house to Offutt is 6.5 hours (no stops except for a fill-up in Topeka), but 7.5 to 9 hours is more like it if you drive around the small towns you drive through.

Mark Shannon, The Conservative

I listen to a lot of different voices on the radio and TV, both liberal and conservative. I want to try to keep up with all sides of the various issues of the day.

Today I tuned into KTOK here in Oklahoma City. Mark Shannon was doing his show. I have got to say that I have not been impressed with the very conservative Shannon. His show is a stream of of random “liberal/Democrat” diatribe.

Today, he asked a caller repeatedly when it would be time to essentially rebel against the Obama Administration, or more generally, the US Government. He seems to think that we are suddenly so severely oppressed that it’s nearly time to start an uprising. I am guessing it did not bother him to be constantly under surveillance by the Bush Administration.

Another caller led to the following exchange. Shannon made the comment that he was not going to judge Obama’s status as a christian, but then he and the caller did just that. The fact that Obama attended the church in Chicago was called into question, Shannon remarked that the Chicago church was a black liberation theology church, and the “fact” that Obama has not been to church more than once since his inauguration, was all used to question whether the man is christian. I am guessing that Shannon and the caller (I’m assuming here that they are christian) didn’t read the part in the Bible about not casting judgment.

Another caller made the point that wind generators were not green since they used petroleum based lubricants! A “study” was cited, but never identified, as the source of this. Shannon then noted with great authority that when electric cars are charged, the electricity comes from… gas- or coal-fired plants (gasp), and that the entire electric vehicle efforts were a scam. Now, I guess he figures his superior intellect uncovered this scandalous fact, but of course, a robust set of wind generators could actually charge electric vehicles directly, and significantly reduce the use of existing, and avoid the construction of new oil and gas fired plants, and so reserve fossil fuels for especially high demand applications.

I don’t understand why conservatives don’t seem to like wind energy. Is it that they like gas or oil companies more than they like the people in the country? Would they rather the people in this country pay money to oil companies? Are they against renewable energy? Or do they just like to control people? Or is it that they LIKE pollution (since conservatives seem to oppose clean air)?

Shannon, I think, just likes throwing accusations around without much in the way of thought to back them up.

Senator Coburn Boots an Answer

I’ve seen Senator Coburn at a town hall here in Oklahoma today. A crying woman asks for help with getting her husband able to eat.

I am glad that the Senator is getting his staff to help the couple. But the Senator really booted it by going into Republican Robot mode. He first offered to get his staff to help (good), then he started talking about how neighbors should be helping out, and also that Government was not the answer.

Two comments. First, the couple should not have to rely on neighbors to help keep a guy fed through a tube. I’m all for people helping their neighbors or their family, but that is NOT good health care.

Second, the Senator started talking about how government is not the answer. Well, Senator, that’s not even relevant to the discussion. The problem is that the husband has a long-term medical problem, and the idea is that insurance pays for that care. That’s why this insurance reform effort is so important. This is another case of an insurance company getting between the patient and the health care that patient needs. It’s not the government that is at fault here, although the Senator is trying to tie the government to this problem. It’s the insurance industry putting profits before policyholders.

A public option would help force the very fat insurance companies to compete and lower costs.

The Senator should be representing his constituents, and not being a shill for the insurance companies that prey on the citizens.

Longhorn Steakhouse, Topeka, KS

I was headed up to Omaha from OKC yesterday, and I passed a Montana Mike’s sign on the interstate. I had always intended to try one of those restaurants, a friend had recommended it, and I thought there was one in Topeka. Unfortunately, I was not correct. I decided to go to Longhorn Steakhouse instead.

This Longhorn was the first one I ever ate at, maybe a couple years ago. I liked it, and then realized when I was at another one (in O’Fallon, IL) that they were a chainlet. I griped in another blog entry that Longhorn was another in the list of restaurants that smaller cities had, but OKC did not (that’s not true now, there is a Longhorn in OKC along Memorial Road).

I have had a chicken fried steak and a ribeye steak in previous visits, and have been impressed.

In this case, I had another ribeye. It was perfect. When the steak arrived it was medium rare (I almost always order medium), and since it got there very quickly I just let it rest, and by the time I finished my salad it had finished cooking to what I might call the low end of medium.

The start was a salad, with a lot of stuff I don’t usually eat and end up dumping. I dumped out diced tomatoes and cucumbers. I left the cheese and egg and carrots. The ranch dressing was outstanding! I got extra and scarfed every bit of it.

Once the steak had cooked a bit, it was simply perfect. It had a bit of black pepper rub on the outside, but not so much that it destroyed the flavor. That was one tasty steak.

It also came with a good baked potato.

My server was extremely friendly (he shook my hand coming and going), and hung around just enough to keep the tea filled (and it was excellent iced tea) and to make sure I had what I needed.

All in all, it was a really good meal. I got there around 1730, and the place wasn’t 15% full. By the time I left around 1845, it was about 90% full. It wasn’t too loud, either. A great eating experience. My check was $21.58 before an $8 tip.

Bill’s Requests for President Obama

Bring our troops home from both Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, it’s their country, let them have it and quit letting our people die there and our treasure be wasted there.

Get an insurance reform bill that has a public option (this in spite of the fact that I think we need a single payer system). Invite the Republicans to work on it until the end of September, then pass the bill and press with pride. In general, invite the Republicans to participate, consider their input and include where it doesn’t violate your principles, but don’t let them drive the boat.

Drop the national threat level to Normal, or do away with the darn color chart.

Drop the Pentagon CONUS threatcon to Normal. The Infocon condition is probably accurate.

Do not be afraid to call something stupid when it is.

Drop the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, and revoke the Defense Of Marriage Act.

For the prisoners in Gitmo and the secret prisons, either charge and try them for crimes in US courts, without the supposedly secret evidence (which reminds me of descriptions of the Soviet court system), or release them, even if it means flying them to their home countries and dropping them off on the ramp.

A few random requests from a concerned citizen.

Boss Hawg’s, Topeka, KS

I picked this restaurant more or less at random using the Google Maps app on my Blackberry. I was headed home from Omaha after a short trip there.

Boss Hawg’s is in a strip shopping center across from a nice park in Topeka. I got there around 1245, and was immediately seated. The place was about 50% occupied. There is wifi from the coffee shop next door!

The iced tea was good. One funny thing: one of the servers refilled my tea on the way by, and I took a big hit of it, and almost spit it across the room! Turns out it was raspberry tea. The server came back and asked if something was wrong, saying she had seen me make a horrible face. Then she looked at the pitcher she was carrying and went “Oh, I gave you the wrong stuff…”.

I started off with a cup of chili. It was OK. The chili was mostly beans (I think kidney, pintos, and some other kind). Very little meat flavor. The chili was served with a plate of tortilla chips, which was a nice change.

Since it was my first time, I got a three meat special (called The Hawg Heaven). It had a quarter chicken, a quarter rack of ribs, and a quarter pound of one of the other meats. I chose spareribs (baby back was the other choice) and brisket.

The ribs had potential. They had the same kind of dark crust that JTs ribs have. They had OK flavor, but almost no meat on them. I left a small pile of denuded bones behind. The brisket was decent. It was shaved very thin, was tender, and had a decent smoke flavor. The chicken was really, really good. It was juicy and smoky and just damn good. The next time I eat here, I will include chicken in the meal.

The lunch also came with cole slaw. It wasn’t that good, but it wasn’t bad. I really liked the french fries. Cornbread rounded out the meal, and it was a sweet cornbread that I brought home and had for a late snack.

There were two kinds of BBQ sauce on the table, one labeled sweet and the other labeled hot. The sweet was OK, but the hot was perfect. I wouldn’t even call it hot, it did not raise a sweat on my forehead. As usual, I disdained the ketchup and even dipped the fries in the BBQ sauce.

I would eat here again. My check was $25. The service was good. I think I would get chicken the next time, and maybe something else. I would not get the spareribs, since I do not think they provided good meat value for the money.

Getting My Dish Network Upgraded

When my very cute but upwardly mobile roommate and I moved to our house in 1997, it was far enough “out in the country” that we didn’t have much traditional infrastructure beyond electricity and phone. We were (and still are) on a water well and have a septic system. In particular, no cable TV. We had dial-up internet also.

After just a bit of research, I decided that a new outfit called Dish Network was the best choice for our TV. I got a dish and receiver for free with a one-year contract. For something like $26 a month, we got the same basic channels as cable. I mounted the dish on a south-side gable on a pressure-treated 2×10, ran cable through the roof and walls, got it aligned pretty easily, and the setup provided excellent service since.

Over the past year or so, the receiver has been acting up, and needed to be tweaked periodically. I started looking for a replacement. Cox Cable was by now out to our neighborhood, but Dish was still less expensive, and Dish had also added a bunch of channels that I was paying for, but I couldn’t get without having a second satellite dish. I started looking for replacement equipment.

I got a Dish 500 satellite dish after I posted to Freecycle – a guy in SW OKC was having his house reroofed, and was going to have the dish on top ripped off and tossed, so he gave it to me for taking off the roof. Ian and I drove down the next morning, and had the dish and about 150 ft of RG-6 coax in about a half hour. The dish had a Quad LNBF (Low Noise Block Converter Feedhorn), and could hit two satellites at the same time. Cool, thought I. I also haunted eBay, and after a bit bought two used Dish receivers for $25 (including shipping).

I had one detour. Before trying eBay, I asked on Freecycle for a Dish receiver, and got an offer a day later. It was a Dish DVR! The DVR could handle two antennas! Perfect. Except that when I hooked it up, Dish informed me that the thing had $350 worth of PPV charges. Grrr. If I wanted to use it, I had to pay the charges. If I didn’t, the receiver could be junked. I took it apart to see what was inside, and the electronics were interesting, but the best thing – it had a 250GB Western Digital hard drive in it. That drive is now gracing the school server as a backup device, so the effort was not a total waste.

A couple weeks ago, we had a pretty good series of thunderstorms, and the next morning, my Dish setup was completely out to lunch. I did some troubleshooting. If I had the receiver up on the roof right next to the dish, it got channels intermittently only. In the den, nothing. I decided to put my new stuff up.

I did a little research in my attic and found a good place to mount the new dish right to the roof. I then mounted it using lag screws embedded in roofing cement. I got the dish aligned (first on the ground, on a table in the yard) and then moved it to the mount on the roof. After a bit of tweaking, I had signal on the same satellite I had before, at the 119 degrees location. But I couldn’t get the 110 degrees at the same time. I did some research, and found that I needed a “switch” to combine the two satellites (the switch isn’t really a switch, its an RF (radio frequency) signal combiner and amplifier). I saw one reference online that said that the dual LNBF had a built-in switch, but the documentation for the LNBF didn’t mention that at all, and all the diagrams I found online showed an external switch.

So I went off to eBay, and after a couple tries bought a DP34 switch for $22 including shipping. This switch lets you combine three satellite dishes into one feed, and send that feed to up to four receivers.

The switch arrived, so back to the roof. I spent about an hour tweaking the dish alignment while Raegan watched the signal strength meters in the house while we talked on our cell phones. I still couldn’t get the two satellites up at the same time. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to knock off for the evening, and got the peak signal for the 119 satellite. Finally, I asked her to run the “check switch” test function. It came back with a connection to… both 119 and 110! WTH? I had the receiver go through it’s bootup and signal acquisition, and suddenly we had about twice as many channels! Success.

So the primary lesson learned was that the switch was built into the LNBF, and that alignment works best when the check switch function is used often.

There is one new channel (to me, anyway) on the 110 satellite called Dish Earth – it’s a real time feed of a camera on the satellite that is pointed at Earth. Pretty cool. They play some random music on the audio feed, but watching the Earth change “phases” over the course of the day is neat.

One postscript – I really looked forward to getting the Classic Arts Showcase (CAS) channel on Dish, on the second satellite. Well, I found that in late July, Dish did a satellite channel reorg, and CAS got moved to a third satellite. So now I need to get my original dish moved to point to that third satellite, and then I will be able to use the switch I bought on eBay to get that signal into my receiver, so that effort won’t be wasted either.

So the TV situation in H&R House is in good shape now.

BTW, Freecycle is very cool. It’s a nationwide group that is organized locally. Basically, it’s a way for people who have stuff that’s useful but they don’t want to trash to get it to people who want or need it. The only caveat is that you give the stuff away freely, and people come meet you to pick it up. Here in Oklahoma City, the Freecycle group is run via a Yahoo mailing list. Click here for the OKC Freecycle group on Yahoo.

TXCN

The hotel I am at (Homewood Suites Park Central) has full cable – that’s a good thing! One of the channels is TXCN – Texas Cable News. It’s all Texas related news stories. For a news junkie like me (even though I’m not even Texan!), it’s pretty cool.

Of course, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve been known to watch local city council meetings with great interest.

Saltgrass Steakhouse

I ate at a Saltgrass Steakhouse for dinner this evening. I stopped at the location on US-75 just south of Midpark Road in Dallas, TX. I’ve previously eaten at Saltgrass locations in west and east Plano, TX, McKinney, TX, Lewisville, TX, and maybe a couple others I can’t think of right now.

Saltgrass has always been a fairly high quality place. I’ve had some excellent food there, and I think the worst was a burned steak (I don’t mean just overcooked from Medium to Medium Well, I’m talking black char 3/4s of the way through) that got replaced and was complementary. I like their CFS pretty well, and I’ve had NY Strips, Ribeyes, and T-Bones.

I had a T-Bone this evening. The tenderloin side was PERFECT. It was literally fork tender, and very tasty. The strip side was a bit undercooked (I had asked for medium), and near the bone the steak was between rare and medium rare. It wasn’t underdone enough that I sent it back for more cooking, though.

I got a decent baked potato; it did not have the cheese I asked for, but that’s of little matter. I also got a bowl of really, really good baked potato soup; it had plenty of cheese to make up for the baked potato. I don’t know what they do to to BP soup; it has kind of a pinkish color, and is a bit peppery, but thick and tasty. Great stuff.

A small pet peeve

I try to be courteous enough to say “thanks” to people that do stuff. I think it drives my kids crazy, I’m constantly reminding them to do this. I also make it a point to say “you are welcome” in some form when someone thanks me.

So it makes me just a tiny bit irritated to hear “no problem” in response to a “thanks”. I guess it just sounds like “yes, I did something, but you are not welcome” or “I did it in spite of myself”.

I’m sure people (mainly, servers in restaurants) don’t mean it that way. I just don’t like it very much.

The Great Outdoors, Richardson, TX

A group of work friends and I ate here for lunch today. I got a BBQ chicken sandwich and a large iced tea. The iced tea was great. The sandwich was so-so. The chicken had little flavor to it, and the BBQ was bland at best. If I eat here again, I would try something else. The sandwiches and soup and stuff that the other guys got looked good.

Java and Software Maintenance

I am a decently talented software developer. I have read a LOT of Java, and written a fair amount.

This evening I pulled out some Java code I had written for school a year ago to add a feature to it. I’ll be damned if I can figure out what I did.

On the other hand, last weekend I pulled out a fairly complex Visual Basic 6 (VB6) program that I wrote in 2004 to perform audit trail analysis. I needed to add the capability to point to an input file (as opposed to having the file name and location hardwired in). I was able to figure out what I needed to do, and made the change, in about five minutes.

I clearly need to write more Java.

Ruby’s Restaurant, Purcell, OK

Ruby’s Restaurant is attached to Ruby’s Inn in Purcell. I came crusing through Purcell after helping a coworker get his new laptop on his house wifi network, while in transit from OKC to the Dallas area. It was near lunch and I was hungry!

So I decided to check out Ruby’s. It’s about a mile off the south I-35 exit for Purcell.

It’s family type comfort food. The prices are really reasonable. I saw a couple breakfasts that looked really good as I walked in, and a couple good-looking cheeseburgers.

I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak off the menu. There is a regular order and a half order. I sneered at the half order. The meal includes a veg (I got mashed potatoes) and a trip to a small but decent salad bar.

When the meal arrived, it was… TWO meals, essentially. Two full-sized CFS, and two scoops of mashed potatoes. Really. Holy smoke, thought I.

The meal was pretty darn good. On a scale of 1 to 10, the CFS (or rather, CFS’s) were an 8.0. These were clearly hand breaded. The flavor was really good, and went well with the copious amount of cream gravy. The potatoes were also very good. The CFS was a little too brown on the outside; I think the cooking oil was kind of old (there was not any hint of burned oil, though). The meat could have been cooked just a bit longer (it was cooked all the way through, but it had not fully firmed up), and there were places in the meat that was a little tough, so I had to use the sharp knife to cut it there. But again, the meal was very good.

The tea was excellent, and the service was also. I got in there around 1235, and was out at 1309, and didn’t rush at all. The place was about 80% full when I got there, and about 60% full when I left.

I’d go back again.

China Olive, Oklahoma City

This small restaurant (it has four tables total) is in a strip shopping center in SE OKC. It’s just south of the intersection of SE 89th and Sooner. I ate there with a couple work friends on 29 July.

I don’t eat a lot of Chinese/Asian food, but there are some things I really like (curry comes to mind). My typical meal at a Chinese restaurant is Sweet and Sour Chicken or Port and fried rice. I also really like Egg Drop Soup. China Olive has all of these, and it is all very good. The menu is extensive, I’ll bet there are 30 items on it.

They do not make iced tea here. If you want a drink, you can grab a soft drink or water out of the cooler.

Once or twice we’ve gone in there and all the tables were full. In one case, we just took the food to the office we were visiting in the same building, and in the other case we toted it back to the Northrop building.

This is a basic order it and they cook it place. It’s fast and inexpensive and good.

KFOR’s Flashpoint, and National Politics

KFOR (Channel 4) in Oklahoma City has a political show called “Flashpoint” on Sunday mornings at 0900. The format is a moderator, and a commentator from the right and a commentator from the left. Occasionally, a guest or two will show up. The current commentators are Mike Turpen (Democrat) and Kirk Humphreys (Republican). I’ve been watching Flashpoint for about five years.

The more I watch, the more representative I find Flashpoint to be of the national political “debate”. Turpen is clearly left of center in his views, but also makes note of things that the right-of-center does that he finds approval of. He even said today that he has voted for Republicans on occasion.

Contrast that with Humphreys. He reflects the national Republicans perfectly. He cannot find anything that a Democrat has done to be acceptable at all, he will make a snide comment or drag out innuendo about the President (for example today “[Obama] has turned over his Administration to Nancy Pelosi”, factually and in concept just flat wrong), he parrots the same talking points that the rest of the Republican robots mindlessly repeat, and in general, he does not add any intelligence to the debate. He loves to talk about Bill Clinton (who was a much better President than either of the Bushes), and anything that Bush II did is right and good.

I used to be a Republican, but I voted for Democrats and independents, Libertarians, and even a Green once. The Republican Party is way too far to the right, supports torture and surveillance of Americans, and a police state. Republicans are expected to follow The Party, and frankly, they are getting as bad as the stories told about the Communist Party during Cold War (total obedience, or be attacked and purged). The Republicans have way to much interest in peoples private life, and acts like a a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business and some parts of christianity. There is no debate, no discussion, no “big tent” of divergent opinions.

Flashpoint is a microcosm of this. One side is open to debate, reflection, and discussion. The other isn’t.

Super Subs, Midwest City, OK

Super Sub is a little restaurant on Douglas, just south of 15th in MWC. They specialize in cheesesteaks (or as they say in Philly, “steaks”). They make a damn fine steak, except they they don’t have Cheese Whiz for the full Philadelphia experience.

I usually get beef with onions and mushrooms, and Provolone; it’s always good.

Yesterday I ate lunch there with work friends. I got a full-size chicken with extra meat, onions and mushrooms, and Provolone cheese. It was a huge amount of meat. The cook offered to deliver it with a to-go box, but that was not necessary! Aside from being hotter than heck (from the grill), it was wonderful. The bread was great and had nice texture, and wasn’t tough. I got an iced tea to go with it, and you just can’t beat it for lunch. My check was $11.50.

The place is small, and has about 10 tables. I’ve never failed to find a seat, although sometimes you sit with other people.

CNN Enhanced, Pretty Cool

We’ve had Dish Network at our house since we moved here in 1997. There was no cable, so we had to get Internet and “cable” over the air.

My Dish installation has been slowly degrading over the past couple years. I got a new dual-satellite/quad LNB dish through Freecycle, and then got two modern receivers for $20 on eBay. Last week the whole setup failed, so I put the new dish on the roof after doing an initial alignment on the ground. I got everything put where it’s supposed to be, and now we have all the channels back, and a batch of additional ones available once I get a 3×4 switch (which isn’t really a switch, but a signal combiner and amplifier).

So this morning, I fire the system up to get a news fix from CNN, and there is a new message on the screen, “Press Select to enter Enhanced Mode”. Hmmm, I think, and so I press Select. Really cool! You get an overlay on the screen that has most of the categories from the CNN website. Using the same remote, you can scroll through the categories, and a bunch of stories appear. In the meantime, the current CNN picture is in an inset at the upper right of the screen. You can select a story and get the text, and if there is a video clip it is downloaded and played in the inset box. I really like this, for a serious multitasker like me it’s just really filling.

I’m looking forward to finding other enhanced services on the box. I already like the fact that the Sirius and CD music channels display title and artist information while listening. I’m am really looking forward to the new switch so I can get Classic Arts Showcase as well.

Red Robin, OKC

The family ate at the Red Robin in north OKC. I am not a huge fan of Red Robin. The cheeseburgers are kind of mushy, I guess is the best word. I think that a well-cooked burger has a good dark brown on the outside, and while it won’t crunch when bitten into, it will have texture to it. I don’t find that at Red Robin; the meat seems to fall apart. I also don’t find a lot of beef flavor, which makes me wonder if the meat is “stretched” with filler.

Ian likes the cheeseburgers. Raegan got a club sandwich, and liked it. Erin got the mac and cheese, and ate all of it – it was very cheesy.

I got a Caesar Salad with grilled chicken. It didn’t have much chicken. It also came dry – I had asked for extra dressing on the side, and ALL the dressing came on the side (it’s very difficult to toss a salad that’s on a plate). Once I got it tossed, it was decent tasting.

The tea was good, although not as strong as it could be. Service was a bit slow but not too bad.

One thing we really liked was the onion rings. We got a small order. We really like the dual-dips there, ranch and a mix of BBQ and mayo (really good). The rings didn’t have too much breading, and the onion was well cooked and sweet, really good.

We think that the prices at Red Robin have gone up significantly. The check for the four of us was $50. Given that two of us got sandwiches, one got a bowl of M&C, one got a dinner salad, and a small appetizer, that really seems pretty high.

Ultra Conservatives Sink To New Lows

Today, from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

I must ask, is she so stupid that she does not realize the truth, or is she just parroting the other deranged crap that other extreme conservatives are making up?

I guess, the America she knows and loves is one where it is wholly acceptable to lie.

Today, another group of health care protesters listened to a guy talking about how many people Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler killed. There are lots of shots of people with signs and shirts that link President Obama to Hitler or the Nazis.

Yet another Republican claimed to be independent, when her Facebook page showed she was the past vice chair of her local Republican Party organization. I guess it’s OK to lie when you disagree with something?

There were more reports of conservatives disrupting legitimate debates by shouting down the speakers. I guess they think free speech is only for them. I also think it shows they these people do not have any solutions to bring to the table, only hatred and vitriol.

Why do so many conservatives object to trying to provide health insurance to all Americans?

By the way, the “death panel”, as previously discussed, is a provision that allows doctors to be paid if they perform end-of-life counseling to patients (which really isn’t government getting between doctors and patients!) and to help patients get living wills and such set up. A couple Republicans, including Olympia Snowe, are the ones that inserted that provision. So I guess that any conservatives that object should blame the members of their own party.

Jeff’s Country Cafe, OKC

I saw a short review of Jeff’s in a recent Oklahoma Gazette (http://www.okgazette.com/). It talked about family food and good prices. Today we went and checked it out.

I got a Chicken Fried Steak. It was not the best I’ve had, but it was also far from the worst. It was fork tender and fairly tasty. It came with two veggies; the green beans were OK, and the mashed potatoes were real. The potatoes were not reconstituted; they were formerly baked potatoes that had been mashed up, but not very much (this isn’t a bad thing). The gravy was decent, and not too peppery.

My very cute and mushroom loving roommate got a mushroom and swiss burger, and Ian got a cheeseburger. The hamburger meat was OK, if bland. Erin just got fried cheese, and pronounced them good; We got some decent onion rings.

The tea was good.

We got in there around 1200, and were out around 1300, and our check was $28. I will have no issue going back. My summary of the experience was that Jeff’s is a good, average-quality family restaurant.

What’s Up With Extreme Conservatives?

I really do not understand the strong conservatives.

I have seen and read of a lot of conservative vitriol over the past couple weeks. A lot of it just does not make logical sense.

There are a lot of people who go on about how the Obama health insurance reform effort will take the country to socialism, that it will destroy “their” America.

The Bush Administration performed actual destruction of OUR America, by increasing the surveillance of everyday Americans, closing access to government, launching one barely justifiable and one illegal war, lying constantly, and trying to cover up their actions. Not to mention deciding for some reason that it was OK to torture people.

Contrast that to trying to get health insurance coverage available for all or most Americans. It might cost the jobs of some private insurance people that are true overhead, and hopefully will reduce the cost of sending the uninsured to ERs for the sniffles.

Is it just something as simple as the fact that the President is not Caucasian? Bush was, but he was also the worst President in history.

What is it with conservatives that think it’s OK to disrupt rallies or meetings? If you note recently, there are a lot of instances of anti-Obama people shouting down discussions of health-/insurance-care reform. Remember that in the last couple elections, conservatives would invade and shout abuse at the Democrat candidates. Remember that in both Bush II elections, all rallies were closed, and tickets were only available to the Party Faithful, no protests or questions allowed. Two-faced, of course.

Why are the conservatives suddenly talking (like the programmed robots they are) about Nazi themes? Glen Beck going on about people in the White House (current advisers to the President) talking favorably about eugenics (of course, he didn’t report who said what; remember Joseph Mcarthy and his fake list of Communists?) Rush Limbaugh going on about how various symbols supposedly look like Nazi symbols.

I continue to think that conservatism only stands for the power of big business and government suppressing the rights of individuals. It also looks more like a crusade – agree with us totally and be assimilated, or be destroyed.

Don’s Alley, Del City, OK

Don’s has been around as far back as I can remember. It’s on SE 29th street, between Sooner and Sunnylane in Del City.

Don’s has family comfort food. I’ve had burgers, steaks, beef stew, CFS, and a lot of other stuff there, and I can’t think of a single thing I did not like. The CFS and beef stew is especially good.

Today I went to lunch at Dons with work friends. I had a double cheeseburger and a bowl of chili. The cheeseburger was perfect, good beef, seared and firm and with good beef flavor. The bun was even nicely grilled. The chili (no beans!) was beefy and not greasy, great taste, and just spicy enough to add some extra flavor without burning a hole through the roof of you mouth. I had iced tea, and as always, it was fresh brewed and really good.

Don’s was pretty busy today and the servers seemed a bit overworked. The dining room was pretty much filled, and it took just under 1.5 hours to get from Tinker to Don’s and back.

My check was $11.00.

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and tolls

Turnpike tolls in Oklahoma are rising today. The stated reason was to bring another $21M in to the state due to reduced truck traffic. The question I have to ask is – if we have to cut back when our family income drops, why can’t the OTA?

Maybe, just maybe, they could have build the roads right the first time so that the roads are not constantly under repair?

Maybe the OTA should not have spent millions on a camera-based toll violation system. I still wonder how may toll scofflaws that system actually catches.

We have a PikePass. It seems that everything associated with PikePass is $30 – it has to be an arbitrary number, just ginned up to extort more money out of people. An example: If you change the credit card that they have to recharge your PikePass, and don’t tell them, they charge you $30. Why? They don’t get charged anything for that, they just want to stick it to customers.

Maybe the OTA should have to live within it’s means. Or, how about no more turnpikes?

The Olive Garden, in zillions of places

I first ate at an Olive Garden around 1985 at a location in Garland, TX, that had been found by my great friends Jamie and David. It was pretty darn good, and very popular. Since then I have eaten at them in many, many locations. When I was living in Waco, TX for a year, I was very happy when an OG opened up around November of 1992.

Tonight my very cute and OG-loving roommate announced she would like to hit the OG here in OKC on Memorial. We had not been to eat at OG since late May, so it seemed like the thing to do.

I got Chicken Marsala. It was really good; there was a lot of marsala sauce, and it was strong in places, I could feel the wine evaporating during some of the bites. Raegan got a pair of Manicotti, Ian got Chicken Parmigiana, and Erin got lasagne (I think). Everybody liked their meals. Some people I have talked to just hate OG; it’s “not real Italian”. I like it because it’s consistently good, the price is reasonable, and there are a wide variety of offerings.

A couple comments about this visit: Raegan asked for her manicotti to have Alfredo on one instead of both having marinara. “Upcharge” said the server. I asked that the roasted potatoes and vile and inappropriate peppers be replaced with pasta alfredo on mine, another upcharge. Raegan and I have both had those exact meals dozens of times, but this was the first time that an upcharge was stuck on the meal. I didn’t gripe about it until now.

The OG usually has good tea, and the service is usually very good.

Some Republican Outrages Yesterday

Yesterday, a number of Republicans made the insinuation that older folks will be targeted for death by the Democrats health care/insurance reform policies. I’m not kidding.

If you are a conservative, and opposed to health insurance reform because the Democrats are in charge, then you need to know some of the things that various Republican representatives and robots said:

Rep Virgina Fox (NC), says the Democrat insurance reform bill will “require seniors to be put to death by their government”. This was on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Rep Paul Brown (GA), says the reform bill “will kill people”. This was on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Rush Limbaugh, says that certain people “will be deemed not worth living, be given pain pills to loop out, and die, and not know what’s happened”.

Fred Thompson, says that “the elderly are going to be especially, especially hit on this thing”.

Rep Thaddeus McCotter (MI), claims it’s attempt to advance the assisted suicide agenda. This was in an interview.

Rep Gohmert (TX), says of the insurance reform proposal, that it is socialist, and that “The nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early…”. He also claims, “Once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what to eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live”. He then goes on to talk about how bad Hitler and Mao are; this was in a radio interview. Hitler and Mao, now what the frack THAT has to do with anything I do not know.

There are apparently rumors flying that bill will require all people to decide how they want to die. This was even addressed by the President yesterday, who speculated that some whacked people were probably misinterpreting (my comment: at best, or just flat out lying to try to kill the bill) part of the bill that encourages people to have living wills.

The people quoted above are, in my opinion, either nuts or deluded. I don’t mind if people oppose legislation, since that’s a fundamental precept of this country, but you should have a reason to oppose it, and you should not just make some crap up.

So to the various people quoted above, why don’t you SHOW us exactly where the bill says the thing(s) you claim? Just because you stand up there and mouth stuff, doesn’t make it true. Do you have the integrity to back up your claim(s). Remember, if you say something that’s not true, and it’s because you don’t understand something, that’s OK. But if the truth is presented to you, and you keep on saying the same stuff, then you are a liar at best.

Debate is great, and out-and-out BS isn’t.

The Honey Baked Ham Company, Omaha

While finishing up our visit to Omaha last week, we went by The Tea Smith so my very cute and tea-snarfing roommate could check out some odious brew she read about somewhere. I read the newspaper.

I like tea, both iced and various blacks and such hot, in the English style with milk and a bit of sugar. I’m just not into some of the greens, or the rotted (I mean fermented) teas.

Anyway, it was after noon and we were hungry, so we went across the street to The Honeybaked Ham Company. Ham is good.

I got a Roast Turkey sandwich (ham is good, but so is turkey) and a cup of Ham and Bean soup. Raegan for a Cobb Salad, Erin got a ham and cheese, and Ian got a Prime Roast Beef Sandwich.

All of this was pretty good. The soup I got was really good. Ian frowned mightily at his, but ate most of it (they did not have cheeseburgers). The iced tea was good also.

Our check for the four of us was $30.

Maybe not the whole story…

As a bit of background, a couple weeks ago a couple people went into a pharmacy here to rob it. The pharmacist shot one robber in the head, but didn’t kill him. The pharmacist ran out pursuing the other robber, then came back in, got a second gun, and emptied it into the wounded and unconscious robber on the floor, killing him.

The pharmacist is rightly charged with murder, but that’s not what this post is about.

I watched the KFOR news at 1800 this evening. KFOR reported that the station had hired an attorney to request that TV cameras be allowed to show the pharmacists trial. OK, I thought, pretty good.

Tonight at 2200 I watched the KWTV news. They ran a similar story, and the name of the attorney seemed to be the same as the KFOR attorney.

I checked both stations websites and saw no mention of this news item on the websites. Then I checked the KOCO website; there was a story there, and it reported that all three OKC stations (and one in Tulsa) had agreed to go in together request that the judge allow them to use cameras in the trail.

This smells a bit to me. Although I am all for cameras in the trial (and others), I think that KFOR and KWTV should have the integrity to mention that it is a coordinated effort.

Late news: Kelly Ogle of KWTV just did a “My Two Cents” about the issue of cameras in the trial. He said at least twice “our lawyers”, and he also said something like “we filed a motion,,,”.

It’s not a sign of integrity that the two stations are not being up front about this.

For the record, I think all trials should be televised or recorded. That helps maintain the integrity of the proceedings.

A General Question

We shopped at a Wal-Mart and a Target and a grocery store while in Nebraska last week. One thing we have noticed before, and noticed again, is that you can buy booze and beer and wine at those places. In Oklahoma, you can only buy booze and wine in liquor stores (and of course, they close early, open late, and are not open Sunday, I presume to not offend those that are easily offended).

It annoys me that I can’t go into a grocery store in Oklahoma and buy a bottle of wine. We probably buy two or three bottles of wine a year, and I think that in every case, we buy them from stores out of Oklahoma, mainly because it is convenient. So Oklahoma, for whatever the reason (the overly pious, I would guess), misses the benefit of the taxes on the bottles of wine we buy out of state.

There is no reason that stores should not be able to sell wine or liquor at any time in the state of Oklahoma.

Backyard Grill, Del City, OK

Today I met a couple work buddies at Backyard Grill for lunch. Backyard Grill is at 29th and Vickie in Del City. It’s been there for years. I have had many, many cheeseburgers there, and I have never had a bad one. I usually get a chili cheese burger there, and they are also really, really good.

But that’s not what I got today. The Backyard Grill has a number of other entrees, and today, I got Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo. You might be thinking, what the heck was he thinking? But it’s really, really good. You get a largish bowl of angel hair pasta, some chopped up grilled chicken (I prefer sauteed, but I dislike grilled-to-the-point-of-burned chicken, and it has never been at Backyard Grill), and a copious amount of alfredo. This is not canned or bottled, they make it right there. It has something in it that gives the usual cream-colored alfredo an orange-pink tint. It’s good!

I’ve had Chicken Parmesan there also, same result. Really, really good.

And then there are the cheeseburgers. Always well cooked, and never greasy. If you get chili on it, they do go overboard; that’s too bad! Yum.

The tea is always good also.

Another Observation on Health Insurance

There is a lot of talk about “government run health care”. There is no such thing being proposed right now (although there is clearly government run health care for our military, for Congress, and Medicare). There is an attempt going on now to reform health insurance practices. I’ve a lot of friends IRL, on Facebook, etc., that like to rail against “government run health care”; they are completely missing the point.

My very cute roommate has a chronic medical condition which has not been well controlled by various meds. Her doctor has tried several over the past couple years, with little good effect. The doctor made the decision a couple months ago that another drug needed to be tried; the drug is rather expensive.

Did the government do anything? NO! The INSURANCE COMPANY decided that the drug was too expensive for her condition. Why? So they do not have to pay, and cut into their profits.

The company? United Health Care. The same company that owns a lobbying firm, The Lewin Group, that provides the “information” that formulates the GOP talking points for the GOP robots to vomit out. Like…

GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner, who said this: “The Democrats’ government takeover is also going diminish quality, and I think, reduce access to care. It puts government bureaucrats – not patients and doctors – in charge of personal medical decisions.” (this is quoted from gop.com).

Added 30 July:—

I felt the need to comment on Boehner’s load of BS.

“government takeover” – of what? There will likely be no public option, which means that all insurance is still the province of the private sector. That’s not a takeover. So it looks like he is making up bogeymen to scare people.

“diminish quality” – of what? The quality of health care? No bill in Congress does ANYTHING about health care providers, hospitals, etc. The quality of insurance companies? Again, sounds like he is just trying to sow fear.

“reduce access to care” – by including more people in insurance coverage? I think he’s just trying to make crap up here.

“government bureaucrats – not patients and doctors – in charge of personal medical decisions” – really, come on, Boehner. Insurance companies do that RIGHT NOW. Again, the bills under consideration do not even have a public option, so the whole government bureaucrats thing is to just try and scare people.
—————–

What bullshit. If Boehner truly believes this, he is deluded. If he doesn’t, he’s a liar. And he is a Republican leader. He’s OK with insurance companies doing what he claims the government would do.

Flint Hills Scenic Byway, Kansas

I like driving out in the country. I can watch rolling plains, mountains, lakes, or other scenery rolling by for hours without getting bored.

I’ve driven from OKC to Omaha about 100 times. Literally. I’ve been all-the-way on the Interstate (I-35 to KC to I-29 to Omaha), straight up through central KS to York, NE, on US-75 all the way from Okmulgee, OK, on US-169, etc. I’ve seen the signs for the Flint Hills Scenic Byway many times, and last week decided to come down that way.

I had the family with me for a business trip to Omaha, which is one of my favorite cities. After finishing work on Friday morning, I got the rest of the crew from the Embassy Suites La Vista (recommended, BTW), got everyone fed, and headed out.

We drove down to Lincoln, and picked up US 177 for the trip south. At this point, it’s new road for all of us. We went through a number of nice small towns on the way south, like Beatrice.

A note: when we drive through a small town like that, we tend to find the downtown area, or any other interesting area, and cruise by it. You can never tell what diners, museums, and the like you might find. We have returned numerous times to a place we found in a small town to eat or enjoy a park. We enjoy it, YMMV.

South into KS, we hit Marysville. This was a nice town on the Blue River. We stopped for drinks, walked in a park, and checked out a small historical museum and a sod house on display. They also had a pretty cool Union Pacific locomotive, and a huge train yard.

South of Manhattan, KS we finally picked up the Flint Hills Scenic Byway. If you like looking at rolling hills stretching away into the distance (and I do), you will like the drive. It’s a fairly narrow two-lane road just south of I-70. There’s not much traffic, and few towns or gas or restaurants.

We followed the Byway south to Cassoday, the southern terminus of the Byway, and where we hoped to eat. No luck, the only meal would have been had if we went and knocked on a door and asked to be invited to supper.

So instead, we hit the nearby KS Turnpike and flew south to El Dorado.

We drove the Byway in the late afternoon, with a west sun casting a really nice, soft light on the hills. It was also really green, both the hills and the fields, and really pretty. I was really surprised at how green it was for late July.

The northern end of the Byway is at the intersection with I-70 south of Manhatten (between Topeka and Salina, KS).

It was a nice drive.