The End is Upon Us

My daughter's school has a dress code that bans shorts between October 1st through April 30th, so my daughter had to wear her new jeans today. Her new and pretty jeans with cute dasigns on the pockets. Or as she put it her "hot, sweaty, stupid jeans that I will have to turn the cuffs up on to keep from dying from heat in the classroom in the afternoon that everyone will laugh at me stupid smelly jeans." The ones Patty and I thought looked nice. The ones she said "Are really stupid and I'm the only one who follows the dress code stupid smelly hot ugly jeans." Those jeans.

The 'Rents Came to Visit

My parents have been visiting us for the past few days. The extra sets of hands were a blessing as my dad and I built a gate in the front part of our fence, and realigned the bumper on our truck. It had suffered an adjustment in a Wal-Mart parking lot when someone backed into it. Mom and Dad bought a new set of vertical blinds for our house since the old set was acting and looking its age. While I was at work, dad installed them. COOL! The extended family also did a bit of yard work and planted a bunch of bulbs. Many of these things could have been done without them here, but again, the extra sets of hands made it much cooler. Mom also spent some time in the kitchen and we have at least two nights of leftovers.

I Thought It Was A Slot Machine

Gambling: It's not just for casinos (and airports, and grocery stores) anymore!

The first wheel stopped at "7" as did the second and third. This would have been fantastic if it had been a slot machine, and was missing the negative sign in front. Before panic sets in, we need to realize that this wasn't even a 7% drop in the DJIA. Folks, this doesn't even make the top 10 list for big percentage drops in "the market." So lets all have a drink, get a geed night's sleep and tackle tomorrow with a level head.
Frankly, I think congress is acting appropriately by not rushing into some quick fix loan, and instead creating a bill that addresses the needs of most of the players. This does not cover the wants of us all, nor should it. I think the Paulson-Bush Bailout bill reeks of socialized banking. If we had been paying attention we would have realized that we have had socialized banking anytime the feds loan banks money. This bill, however takes it to a whole new level. If we loan financial institutions the funds they say they need at what I expect to be no or low interest, they will gladly use it to loan funds to regular folks at a MUCH HIGHER interest rate. At some time in the future when these institutions are profitable, we will be paid back, probably without interest nor adjustments for inflation. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Mix it up

One of the things I like most about Flag is the philosophical balance. There is a mix of liberal and conservative views that I have not found other places I have lived. Growing up in Boulder, I was easily (over)exposed to the liberal end of the spectrum, although some of my friends were staunch conservative republicans. When I lived in the Black Hills in a SMALL (650) logging town the cattle ranching, tree sawing, land is here to make a profit from philosophy reigned. Flagstaff takes the leftish ideals a college town and mixes it with the town's history of ranching, logging and the railroad. The university itself maintains this mix. The department I work in has close to a 50/50 mix of liberal to conservative. Or maybe the conservatives are just more vocal? A fellow blogger and NAU staff member frequently seems surprised to find other conservatives on campus, but I would expect if she were to hang out in engineering or business she would find many like minded souls. I am still searching for the jaded cynic department where my brethren might gather.

Nothing of substance here.

Looking over my past few blogs, I conclude that I have been rant prone lately. I will try to avoid senseless ranting tonight and supplant it with senseless rambling. As I write this a rerun of Two and a Half Men is on the idiot box. Since I have seen this one only four times, I will watch it again. Besides my wife has the remote. I conclude that the writers of the program have kids of their own and use the opportunity to vent through writing with the sole purpose of avoiding murdering their kids. It seems much funnier when it is a T.V. kid and not a real one belonging to my wife and I.
Things got a little interesting at work today. Most days, I can push pencils without interruption, but today I had no less than 6 phone calls, 4 deliveries of chemistry supplies, and 3 appointments - all between 8:30-11:30. I was hoping that the afternoon would slow down, and was just thinking that that was the case when one of the instructional lab teaching assistants came into my office and asked if I knew where the laboratory manager/safety officer was. I did not, but was overjoyed to be told that there was an accident in one of the labs and the student involved was already in the shower room. It was a VERY small volume (~10 ml) but it involved the face and heated DMSO BAPNA concoction. YUM! Things turned out okay, mostly due to the small volume and low hazard of the chemicals involved. Kudos to the T.A. and the other students. At least I don't have to do the paperwork for the incident reports. I just changed channels to arrive at Good Eats to hear Mr. Brown exclaim "Know your fish monger!"

700 billion points of light

Things to/not to do with 700 billion dollars.

1) Give $100 plus some change to every person on earth. Not
2) Reward global corporations for poor bets - no questions asked. Not
3) Reward global corporations for poor bets - some questions asked. Probably
4) Reward individual families for poor housing decisions. Not
5) Push for a new regulatory bureaucracy while campaigning as an anti-bureaucracy,
anti regulation maverick. Yep
6) Give it to me. Not
7) Use it for leverage to get votes away from the party of a former beauty queen.
Yep.
8) Use it to explain why the opposite political party is to blame for everything
instead of working to solve the problem. Yep
9) Empower international banking and investing executives - give them whatever they
ask for whenever they ask for it. Absolutely!
10) Piss off the American taxpayers. DUH!!!

I am part owner of several global corporations!

Well, the last half of the week has been much less hostile to the stock market than the first half, and my portfolio seems to have grown, at least in number of things owned. It seems I am now part owner of AIG and a whole bunch of mortgages of a whole bunch of banks. I will keep telling myself this, and ignore that what I own is a sack of manure wrapped in pretty foil paper. Some economists believe that is things go well, this may be good for the taxpayer/investors. I will continue to tell myself that I own things I didn't before. It also seems that the maverick that is for small government and deregulation is also for another bureaucracy to regulate the private sector. Ain't election years great.