Fin

February 4th, 2008

Nope, not of this blog, but of me blogging here. From now on, all future posts will be moving over to The Pharmakon at Google’s Blogger service. (RSS feed here.) Why the move? Simple, ease of use. I already use Google’s tools for everything else in my online life, so why not blogging? The integration will make keeping track of my blog and regular posting much easier. Yes, my own hosted Wordpress blog has more features, but I’m not really using them anyway, now am I?

Now this domain isn’t going away, and this site will stay up as an archive, which is why I’m not just pointing DNS over to Google. That means I have to keep paying for the domain, but that’s cheap, and who knows, I may eventually have need of a more sophisticated blogging platform again someday. This means I will have to keep paying for my webhosting account, but no big deal either, as I have some other web projects I want to get off the ground that will require more sophisticated tools. Future announcements will of course be at the new blog.

So, so long to Plato’s Pharmacy blogging, but hello to my new blog at The Pharmakon. Please change your bookmarks accordingly.


Friday Cat Blogging

January 18th, 2008

LOLSid:

LOLSid


Acquisition Day!

January 16th, 2008

Sun buys MySQL AB. Take it away, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

Oracle buys BEA. See GigaOM.

When I have time I’d like to write something substantive about this and what I think it means, but given my typical blogging behavior, I’d not count on it.


Democracy In Inaction - The first CCC meeting of 2008

January 7th, 2008

So here I am finally following up my promise to pay much more attention to the machinations of our local government. My laptop wasn’t connecting to the shitty city wifi at first so I was forced to take manual notes, but ah ha! Now technology has returned to me. Anyway, here’s my first thoughts:

  • The meeting opens with a long-winded and incredibly sectarian Christian prayer. This has got to be unconstituional. Where’s ACLU-Indiana?
  • Can someone explain to me the point of “recognizing” people at the beginning of the meeting? Yes, that’s wonderful that your neighbor showed up to see you today, but we the taxpayers of Marion County don’t really care.
  • Next the election of the new officers. Ok, we know that they have to make it official. We know the Democrats have to nominate their token opposition. But the results are preordained. Hell, Cockrum was already listed as the council president before the vote. Since the results are preordained, can we please spare the long-winded bio of our new president Councilor Lutz? Thanks.
  • Next up, the pointless acceptance speech. My inner libertarian (I normally keep him locked in a closet) is weeping.
  • A call for working together and mutual respect. Anyone want to bet me that this won’t last through the meeting?
  • The VP they handled with no bullshit. Much better.
  • President and VP has different vote totals. Weird. I missed who voted differently
  • A break for the meeting of “the committee on commitees”. Is this actual government or parody government? My inner libertarian is now slitting his wrists.

More to come after the break.

Update: Ok, not much more to come after all:

  • An update on committees. The committee to get Monroe Gray hasn’t met yet. Wasn’t this the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER? I guess not.
  • Public Policy committee. A bunch of necessary appointments. No bullshit, thankfully.
  • No special resolutions! Per Jason, this is a minor miracle.
  • Proposals. Mostly appointments. But there it is, the resolution to take control of the IMPD from the sheriff and give it to the mayor.
  • That’s it. Proposals need a comment/discussion period for obvious reasons, so we’re done for the night.
  • Crazy revolution guy got interviewed by the media. That’s bound to be high-larious.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s democracy!


No “Get Out of Jail Free” card for lawbreaking telcos… yet.

December 19th, 2007

Julian Sanchez has a good write-up on the best political news I’ve heard in some time, that the telco immunity bill has been tabled.

Like its predecessor, the bill would establish a framework for the monitoring of overseas telecommunications traffic—including communications between Americans and persons abroad. But it would also cut short class-action lawsuits against telecom firms, brought by civil liberties groups who say the companies violated federal law by allowing the National Security Agency to monitor conversations without a court order.

Since congress has continued to abdicate its responsibility to provide a check on executive power by investigating exactly what Bush’s illegal wiretapping program was doing, these lawsuits are our only hope of finding out exactly how our government has been abusing its power and violating the rights of US citizens. Giving the telcos a pass when they had an obligation not to hand over their infrastructure to the NSA without a proper warrant is a slap in the face to the Constitution and our entire legal system. The fact that this provision has gone so far is symptomatic of how little seriousness our Senators bring to their duties protecting the constitutional rights of their constituents.

And don’t let the amendments Sanchez mentions fool you. Specter’s amendment is the joke you’d expect from a a Senator with his long and storied membership in the Fraud Caucus. Making the government the defendant in the suit just insures that the government will invoke sovereign immunity and the state secrets privilege, as the ACLU explains. Feinstein’s amendment is weak as well, remanding this to the FISA court insures the American people remain in the dark about Bush and the telcos’ crimes, while almost insuring the outcome of the case given the FISA court’s notoriously obsequious behavior towards the government.

The bill of course isn’t dead yet, it will no doubt return from the grave in 2008. But Reid and the Senate know that the American public isn’t going to roll over without a fight on this one. We’ve still got filibusters and amendments to fix the bill, as detailed in this excellent Daily Kos post. And even if the bill were to pass the Senate with telco immunity, we’ve still got the conference committee to fix it since the House didn’t pass such nonsense in their bill.

Finally no mention of the victory today is complete without a tribute to the man who made it possible, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). For displaying real leadership on this issue and standing up for the American people, he’s getting a contribution to his campaign from me. Special thanks are also deserved for the nine Democratic Senators who voted against cloture on this issue and were going to help Dodd with the filibuster:

Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Wyden (D-OR)

A big victory indeed, but the war ain’t over. We’ll pick it up again in ‘08. Oh, and see also Glenn Greenwald.


The more things change, the more they stay the same

December 5th, 2007


Most Addicting Thing Ever

November 20th, 2007

http://www.freerice.com/

That is all.


And now, the bad news…

November 7th, 2007

So it’s not the good stuff in the last post that made me finally write like I said I would again, it’s the bad stuff. First, the Colts lost to the hated Patriots on Sunday. I was at the game, which was certainly exciting, but the outcome sucked. However, this ain’t my sports outlet anymore, so I’ll save further thoughts on that topic for Charlie Weis Ate My Baby.

Nope, the worse bad news is what happened in Indy’s election yesterday. Bart Peterson, the best mayor this city has had in years, lost to the relative unknown, Greg Ballard.

Don’t get me wrong, the Peterson administration made some mistakes. They failed to get out in front of the property tax issue and explain to the voting public what was really going on. They didn’t get out the message on how the COIT increase was vital in order to properly fund public safety. It’s clear to me now that Peterson needed to better seperate himself from tainted CCC members like Monroe Gray. He won in his safe district, but people who couldn’t vote against him took it out on the mayor and other CCC Democrats. They most certainly didn’t take Ballard seriously as a threat until it was too late. Frankly, neither did I. I could have done things to help the campaign more than just evangelizing Peterson to friends and showing up to vote yesterday. In a chat thread earlier today Jason agreed that he could have done more as well. Like the Democrats on the CCC, who also suffered a big defeat, and like the Peterson administration/campaign, we all got complacent about an upstart campaign’s chances, and thus paid the price.

But ignorant and unrealistic voters deserve some blame too. They blamed Peterson for a property tax fiasco he had no control over. They complained about the crime rate, then bashed him when he raised taxes to hire more cops, apparently expecting him to somehow solve the crime problem with magic pixie dust. Then there was the typical political bullshit. The Ballard campaign and the GOP exploited public tax discontent, never mind that the root of these problems lie with decisions by state GOP officials. The peddled outright dishonesty like their 19 tax increases claim that even the Indy Star saw through.

Back around primary time the GOP was scared to death of Bart Peterson, thus all their top-tier candidates like Carl Brizzi wouldn’t run. So we got stuck with a guy with no real political experience intended to be a sacrificial lamb, but he got lucky. He wound up in the right place at the right time during a political perfect storm. But now the residents of Indianapolis have to deal with it.

Jason nails it with his caricature of Ballard here. See also the Star article I link above, which says:

He says he would have made more spending cuts before turning to the income tax.
While he hasn’t listed specific cuts that would total the $11.75 million generated by the income tax increase, Ballard often starts by pointing to line item 390 in the city budget, titled “other services and charges.”

Peterson countered that the line item includes crime-lab funding, nearly $9 million in emergency 911 costs and money for food at a children’s shelter.

“I stood next to him in many candidate debates, and when asked how he would fund public safety without an income tax, he always says, ‘Cut line item 390,’ ” Peterson said. “If you look at 390, there are all kinds of things that are essential government services.”

Ballard’s campaign responds by saying he hasn’t highlighted specific sections of the $60 million-plus line item that he would cut, but that he is committed to no reductions in public safety spending.

The GOP candidate also says savings could be derived by cutting some of the $2 million in funding for the arts, consulting fees and public relations fees, by eliminating hard checks in favor of electronic transfers and perhaps by privatizing some aspects of city government.

This is classic conservative governance. Claim you can let people have their cake and eat it too by cutting taxes and then saying you’ll balance the budget with some vague spending cuts. Ballad has said he wants to put even more cops on the streets than Peterson added with the COIT increase, and yet he wants to cut COIT. So he’s got to find 11.75 million dollars just to pay for the COIT cut, and god knows how much more to pay for additional cops. He claims the money’s there, but we can’t check his claims ’cause he won’t tell us where, as that would mean taking an actual position people can criticize rather than just bashing the mayor for not being able to pay cops with magic beans. He seems to think line item 390 is some sort of rainy day fund that he can plunder as he sees fit, rather than spending on vital city services. I guess in the new Ballard era we can somehow have public safety without a crime lab or a 911 system. Then there’s that other GOP classic, vague savings from process improvements and privatization, which always manages to turn into a contracting boondoggle nearly every time it’s tried. It’s of course even more likely to fail when being coordinated by someone who has no political experience at all, let alone any clue how to run a city of nearly 800,000 people.

What else? Ahh, arts funding! There’s a free 2 million, right? Who needs art? Well, Indy does. While I don’t have the article anymore, there was a piece in the Star some time back about how the arts have brought in more money to the city than we’ve spent on them, which means any Ballard arts cuts will have a deleterious effect on the city’s economy. In the interview above he sounds suspiciously like he will cut money spent on sidewalks, never mind that I happen to know that better sidewalks was the most desired neighborhood improvement in at least one Indy neighborhood thanks to a survey my girlfriend helped conduct as part of a grad school project. Then of course there’s all the things that were coming which certainly won’t get done when the government is run by a GOP administration, people who live under the fantasy that the benifits of modern society don’t have a cost, people who think you can run the government of America’s 13th largest city like that of a small town, or worse, a “business” (”government should be run like a business” is one of the biggest lines of nonsense in politics of the last 30 years, but that’s a rant for another day). Public transit improvements? Heck no. Get used to Indy having a joke of a mass transit system for a city it’s size. Get used to increasing traffic problems, longer commutes, larger amounts of income being spent on fuel, and more air pollution. Expect community development to take a backseat to save wealthy people in their Meridian-Kessler palaces a few bucks. Expect all the progress this city has been making over the last 10 years to be delayed for at least four, if not set backwards.

That’s the bad news. That’s what’s got me upset enough to write this long rant and get it out of my system. I strongly suspect the time of reckoning will come. Ballard’s supporters will soon realize how little control he has over property taxes. They’ll soon discover that making actual cuts is harder than just talking about it, and when it’s your favorite city service on the chopping block, somehow paying an additional 0.65% of your income in taxes doesn’t seem so bad. In the meantime, the lesson I’ve learned is that while this city has come a long way politically since the 70s, it’s not come far enough if things like this can still happen. So the best I can do is stop being so complacent about local politics and watch our new mayor and CCC like a hawk these next four years. So come next year and the new session, expect more local politics coverage around here. I can’t speak for the Marion County Democratic Party, but I’ve certainly learned my lesson.


First, the good news…

November 7th, 2007

Well, at long last it’s time to end this blogging hiatus. Ok, not a true hiatus, I’ve given you plenty of pictures of my kitten, after all.

So what’s been going on? My girlfriend and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary recently, which is certainly the development I’m most happy about. Things with her are going great, and I’m sure they’ll continue this way. The other big development is that I have a new job. Part of the reason my posting slowed down was job-related stress… See, the reason why I had to look for a new position is that my old one was eliminated. Part of me saw it coming, it made sense to me that they’d eventually conclude it made more economic sense to just run all of IT out of Boston, but I think I didn’t want to believe it at some level. Ahh well, these things happen, and they gave me a good deal of notice and gave me plenty of time to interview. Not one week after my old position ended, I started a new one.

I’m now working for an IT consulting company, but specifically with one client, a software startup here in Indy. I think I’ve decided this is the kind of work I like best, working for these small companies. I understand the needs of startups, I like the culture better than that of larger companies, and one of my great talents is doing a lot with little resources. So far things are going great as I begin to develop what will be their future IT infrastructure. I’m planning for scale so they’ll be able to deal with the growth they expect. The current plan is to consult for six months, at which time I’ll have the opportunity to become a direct employee of the startup.

Oh, and I did mention that the pay and health insurance are better than at my last job? :-)

In short, my personal life is great and I’m excited about my professional life again. A perfect combination. I’m even considering a new project, a new website which would act as a clearinghouse for news on Indy’s burgeoning software industry. Over my career here I’ve made a good deal of contacts at other software companies, and I think a site which can act as one-stop-shopping for news and information about them (as opposed to trolling various blogs, Indy Star, IBJ, etc.) would be a useful resource. Nothing like this exists yet, so why not make it happen?

So that’s the life update, but it’s not the end of the story. Why now? What’s finally got me writing again? For that you’ll have to wait for the next post, which I promise will not be long to come…


A different kind of Friday Cat Blogging

October 19th, 2007

No Sid pic today. Instead I give you this video my girlfriend sent me.

We think it’s inspired by Sid at the very least. :-)