Un Cachito

My Politics

2008-11-20T03:45:31Z

I have a few articles I want to write that touch on politics, so I thought I'd state some of my views as a prelude.

Those of you who have followed my blogs long enough to have read my last blog, Current Events, will know that I was generally a good, conservative right-wing Republican. Well, in the last several years I have moved decidedly left and now consider myself a center-right moderate.

There are some areas in which I am still decidedly conservative such as small government, fiscal responsibility and social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. However there are other areas in which I strongly disagree with my fellow Republicans and which I feel push me farther away from the GOP (though not necessarily to the Democrats). This list of disagreements includes my positions on illegal immigration, the planet Earth and general intellectuality. Let me expound.

I've become somewhat passionate about the illegal immigration issue in a large part because I have several acquaintances or friends who are legal and illegal immigrants, and have come to understand the issue perhaps a little more than the general populace (which doesn't say much). The general argument of the Right is that the illegals committed a crime coming here and thus have no rights. They opine that we should round up all the illegal immigrants, send them home unconditionally and punish those who employee them. Some even wanted to criminalize the providing of general assistance to illegal immigrants. Now, I can see logic in the general argument - that they are criminals, so treat them as such - but I strongly feel the premise is faulty. It's overly simplistic. If you break the speed limit or jaywalk, does that mean you are a criminal and should be locked up? (Of course not; there are different degrees of breaking the law.) The main problem, per my understanding, is that it is nearly impossible to immigrate legally (I've seen it take years for someone's foreign spouse to get residency). If the situation back home (for instance, in Mexico) is terrible, you are going to want to find a way to better your situation. If the country up north won't let you come legally, you take a lot of risks and come illegally, trying to eke out a living. And let me be clear; it's not at all something I condone, but I do understand the rationale. I also realize there are a lot of problems that come with illegal immigration, but I know many who work very hard, pay taxes without receiving tax-payer benefits, and are an asset to the country. Plus, a lot of those problems (like identity theft) would would largely be solved by legalizing in some fashion the immigrants. My desire on the immigration issue is to find a way to bring those who are assets into the legal citizenry and deal humanely with all. I believe in a 3-prong approach of making it much easier to come legally (even as a guest worker), make it harder to come illegally (I'm OK with the border fence) and deal reasonably with those who are here. Those who can pass English proficiency tests, don't have criminal records (ignoring of course their immigration status), and in general are a boon to the economy should be put on the path to citizenship, paying any relevant fees. This is similar to what Bush and McCain tried to do and I was in favor of that (although, for skilled laborers I wouldn't require them to go back to their home country first). If you want to call that amnesty, then so be it - I call it an approach that could do a lot to solve the problem.

Wow! That was longer than I had planned, but let's move on to Earth. I don't share Al Gore's conclusion that the planet is on the precipice of doom. I'll agree that it is getting warmer, but my priorities are more on taking care of the planet more than aggressively preventing further global warming. There's definitely overlap between those two ideas, but good stewardship of nature is my focus. Two of my personal hobbies are cycling and scuba diving and I can tell bad air from good and polluted seas from pristine coral reefs. Basically, I want clean air and clean seas. The GOP doesn't have a good environmental record and while there has been some progress, I don't see the Right doing much. On a positive note, Bush did set up an enormous marine preserve northwest of Hawaii which is commendable.

On the intellectuality issue, I feel like the politicians are dismissing any intellectuals as "elitists" and basically trying to pander to the less educated - saying they are the "real America." Well guess what, if you want to progress, you need to learn. Intellectuality, science and higher education should be prized, not scorned. There was a great Op-Ed in the NY Times that talked about this issue.

MT-4.21 Upgrade

2008-11-07T15:19:52Z

After rescuing my blog a little while back, following a lot of meticulous labor and custom scripts, I thought I was finally good to go. However, I've had the nagging problem of RSS feeds having wrong dates. I've looked at the problem for a while and couldn't figure out where the wrong dates were coming from. So, I went for a band-aid and upgraded my archaic Movable Type 2.66 to version 4.21. It has a significantly different interface and method of publishing.

So far my test comments to past entries after upgrading weren't showing up on the web pages (but were registered in MT), so I'll have some playing around to do.

Update:
I still have the RSS feed problem with wrong dates. I'm fairly sure now the problem is with the back-end database and since I don't know any good way to rebuild it, I will most likely need to blow all entries away and then re-import them, which is a fair amount of work. If anyone knows any way to help me or is a wiz with mysql and the MT db format, please advise :).

Update 2:
I was just notified that comments have not been working. I can't quite figure out MT's new method of doing things yet so for now, I'm allowing anonymous comments. Chances are that I'll have to disable those as the spammers find me, but for now. Feel free to post, and please let me know if you encounter problems. Thanks!

MTV Music

2008-10-30T13:43:51Z

Not many people associate MTV with any actual music. It's kind of a shame - I remember way back in the day when they played music video after music video. Well, whether you like A-ha, the Metallica Black Album or Britney Spears, you can see many of those long-lost videos again thanks MTV's new MTV Music web site.

Warning: this could be a serious time waster as you catch up on the 80's.

Jack's Mannequin

2008-10-14T21:56:02Z

Strangely enough, I was one of the first five callers on a little contest on a local radio show and ended up winning a new CD: The Glass Passenger by Jack's Mannequin. One review classified it as "piano rock."

I first heard a couple songs on my way from the studio back to my work and immediately liked some of the songs, which is a little strange because it usually takes a few repetitions. When I got back to work, I loaded the CD into my iTunes and have now listened to it a few times.

Basically, I like it. I'm going to keep listening to it to get more familiarized with the songs, but some of the songs I'm liking are:

Crashin
Spinning
Swim
The Resolution
Suicide Blonde (Not an INXS cover)

As an added bonus, there aren't that I don't like yet.

Frustrated at House GOP

2008-09-30T14:15:12Z

I've always voted Republican, but it seems like more and more the GOP is pushing me away from their party. I'm not keen on the Demos either, but currently, I'm steaming over the GOP's rejection of the $700B bailout bill yesterday.

I'm not at all a fan of big government or a huge national debt (or making it $0.7 trillion more), but this is a time of crisis where we're on the brink of a deep recession and potentially a depression. Was this bill a sure-fire fix to the nation's problems? No. But it was desperately needed in my mind (and lots of others) to restore confidence in the financial industry and loosen up credit world-wide so that business is not straight-jacketed. This plan is about rescuing the national (and to some extent, global) economy. Did you see what happened because of the rejection? The DOW dropped 777 points - biggest drop since the 1987 crash.

Many who are glad the bill was defeated think the money is just going to pad the bank accounts of rich executives. That is not the case at all. Sure there may be some wealthy people who benefit from not losing everything they own, but so will Joe Blow. This plan imposes stricter limits on executive pay (I'm staunchly opposed to the golden parachutes given to departing execs of failing companies), and gives some ownership of the companies to the federal government - returning dividends and profit to the treasury. In fact, this could actually be profitable to the US. I'm not saying it will, but where everything is linked together, we need to get the first step going and put confidence back in the economy and let it grow again.

Pelosi's partisan and political speech before the vote yesterday was plain stupid and uncalled for, but the House GOP needs to look past politics, re-vote on this bill and pass it.

Recovery

2008-09-25T22:46:18Z

Well, I'm mostly back.

A month or so ago, a co-administrator of the web server my blog is on decided to rebuild it (wipe all the software off and re-install). There was a valid need to update the OS, and he asked what I wanted backed up, and we backed those things up. What I didn't think about was the SQL database running on the box that held all my pictures and their data from my picture gallery, held all the info for a web-based gift registry my family uses extensively, and held all the info for my blogs.

It was a tough blow to have all that blown away. Fortunately, I was left with a bunch of static web pages and such for my blog, but a lot was lost.

However, in the past while, I wrote some python scripts to go through each static html file from my old blogs and assemble a file that can then be imported into a new Moveable Type Blog. It's taken a fair bit of effort, but it's mostly back. You'll see a few quirks here and there that need to get straightened out, and pics on the blog that link to my gallery are all messed up, but I'm a lot closer than where I was :).

More on Customs searching

2008-06-26T14:16:00Z

Back in the beginning of May, I posted an article on some scary Customs practices of searching and/or seizing electronic devices of people coming into the U.S., especially people of a certain ethnic look.Fortunately, there are a lot of people (like me) who think this is an unacceptable invasion of privacy and have taken up the fight. Yesterday there was a Congressional hearing about it, and while it doesn't appear anything concrete came from it, there are some notable opponents to the practice. You can read more about it here.

Gas prices and income

2008-06-09T15:07:00Z

I realize this is a little random, but everyone is aware the gas prices are somewhat painful right now (although much worse in most of the rest of the world). I saw this chart on the NY Times today that I found very interesting. There are 3 tabs showing 1) how hard gas prices hit people, per county income; 2) gas prices around the country per county; and 3) median incomes around the country, per county. One interesting thing I realized too is that while Utah has a reputation for fairly low salaries relative to other places, it's still not doing too shabby.

Scary Customs practices

2008-05-06T13:57:00Z

I was stunned when I read this report in the Washington Post about how some customs agents are occasionally searching or completely seizing international travelers' laptops and cellphones. The government claims your laptop is like a briefcase and they have a right to search it. There are some lawsuits pending now against the govt. for this and I really hope the feds lose on this one. Not cool.

Back to life

2008-04-28T18:12:00Z

I keep realizing I haven't posted in a really long time and then I immediately do nothing about it. Yeah, I've been busy with work and wedding stuff, but figured I should post something. The marriage went great. Alice was beautiful and said yes (accidentally said it twice during the ceremony :) ), and the weather stayed dry (albeit cold and windy) for the pictures. We had a great honeymoon in Kauai, and - I know this is a shocker - really didn't want to come back to work, though we did a week ago. Kauai happens to have the wettest spot on earth, but relative to that, the weather was great; we took the top off the convertible every day. Before going to Kauai, I was told that if you ever do a helicopter ride, this was the place to do it. So, despite my normally frugal self, we did the ride and even got front seats. It was spectacular. The scenery is both diverse and incredible. For instance, did you know that the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" is there in its arid red-rock glory, right next to the rainiest spot on earth? It starts about two valleys over from the lush tropical scenery you saw in Jurassic Park. On a boat, we saw humpback whales and dolphins jumping, turtles and more. Our room was incredible as well and about the only dim spot was that the ocean took my brand new wedding band off my finger. Unfortunately as well, it was gold and thus expensive. Oh well. We still had a great time and would definitely go back to Kauai some day.Other than that, we had our reception this past Saturday, which went better than anticipated, with lots of people. Overall, both "the marriage" and "marriage" were/are great.

Hell Freezes!

2008-03-04T03:37:00Z

I'm not sure if that's the right title. I mean, its not like I said I'd never do it or that it'd never happen, but it's taken so long, people start to wonder if it will in fact come to pass.Yes, I'm getting married. I'm pretty excited about it too. April 10, 2008 is the date and will be a couple weeks shy of a year from when I started dating my fiancé Alice. It's funny to hear culture differences about this: In Utah, I'm ancient and people wonder why I waited so long (it's fairly common to be engaged after less than 2 months of dating), while outside, I'm young and it's a "quick" relationship. But I've always considered marriage as a pretty darn big deal and want to make sure it's with the right person at the right time. It is with Alice and I really look forward to starting an eternal family with her.Here are a couple pictures of us.

LNXI is dead

2008-02-15T15:59:00Z

It has been a long journey for them and I put a quarter of my life into the company, but Linux Networx (LNXI) is dead. They were basically shut down and had their assets purchased by SGI at the same time. I'm kinda sad for the company but more so for some of my friends there who are now out of jobs or whose visa applications this threatens. I'm really hoping things work out.

Blizzard

2008-02-14T18:27:00Z

It just keeps coming. Northern Utah got pounded last night, but some places were certainly worse than others. In fact, north of a point called "The Point of the Mountain" which separates Salt Lake and Utah counties, things weren't too bad. I went and picked up a friend and then headed down to Provo (in Utah County). I didn't get too far. In about 10 minutes the freeway had turned into a parking lot due to two jackknifed semis. So I took some side roads, which again, I didn't think were all that bad, until I got to SR92, a highway just on the other side of the Point. There I encountered winds blowing snow at 60-70 mph. Not realizing the highway had been closed, I started driving along with near-zero visibility, just trying to watch the lights in front of me. I had no idea where on the road I was and when I finally turned around due to an impass, I found myself on the left side of the road instead of the right with my front end off the road in deep snow. With the help of another good samaritan, I was able to push the car out and go back home (very slowly), dodging cars (including some very expensive ones) that had just been abandoned. It was seriously crazy. KSL has some coverage of it here, mentioning the busses full of kids that were stranded on the same highway where I was.

More snow!

2008-02-04T15:02:00Z

I wrote a few days ago about how I've gotten a lot of snow at my place this winter. Well, it just keeps coming. I now have snow banks over 6' tall by my driveway and walkway to my house. The flat base of my front yard is around 3.5'-4'. I know this would be normal for some places in the states, and I've seen it at ski resorts, but I've never seen this much snow at once at any place I've lived. Here a couple other pics from yesterday, though we got a few more inches last night. As a reference, I'm about 6' 4" in these shoes. It's crazy!

Geography game

2008-02-03T17:17:00Z

I like getting outside of the US and experiencing other cultures. And since I was quite young, I've been into geography. I've always enjoyed maps and knowing where things are. Fortunately, I've been able to take many opportunities to see and experience many other cultures, both with work and pleasure. In that spirit, I present you with a geography game I found. It gets hard toward the end, but I found it enjoyable. See what you get. On my first try after Level 10 I got 396,476.

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