The Hanover Collaboration

I kind of like the idea of “show of hands” questions in the debates. All it takes to make it effective are some really good yes or no questions. It’s got to be better than most of the bland, aimless blather that’s out there these days. Maybe the next question can be, “raise your hand if you don’t believe in the Theory of Gravity.”

I don’t know if we’ve actually had a voting debate on the blog yet, so maybe now is the time. I just registered to vote in Oregon. The process was very simple. I downloaded the application from the state web page, filled it out and sent it in. Since I don’t have an Oregon Driver’s License I had to give them the last four digits of my SSN. If I didn’t have one of those there were a lot of other things I could have submitted, some of which, presumably, can be obtained without a SSN. Does this make voter fraud too easy?

On a different note, I just received confirmation of my registration in the mail. I’ve been informed that all voting in Oregon is done by mail, and I’ll receive my ballot sometime 14-18 days before election day. I think this is a great idea. Not only does it eliminate the need to wait in line at a polling place, but I think it makes the ambivalent much more likely to vote. So much less effort required, though since I know nothing about Oregon politics I plan on doing some research after the ballot arrives. Of course, I’ll be curious to see if there’s any mechanism built in to ensure that it’s me who is voting, while at the same time protecting my anonymity.

My first impression is that the ref is intent on leaving his mark on this game. There is no “letting them play” going on at all out there, and we’re up to two straight red cards. One deserved, one certainly not.

The US looks a lot better than they did against Czech. They’re actually playing, and even though Donavan’s not getting involved enough, he’s had a few good touches. They’re doing a much better job going wide. Eddie Lewis’s replacement doesn’t seem to know what to do on the offensive end of the field, but okay…

My only complaint with the US is the defense. Offsides trap on a free kick, WTF? Actually, Eddie Pope, WTF? I think that’s how you spell “liability” for the defense right now. Isn’t there anyone faster we can put back there? I mean, wasn’t Pope the future of US Soccer back around 1992?

10 v 10 for the second half, should be some space out there.

AAA costs about $200/year for our family. It comes with 100 miles free towing for each tow. Given my experiences in March and last Friday I’d say it’s a steal.

As Jimmy and Danny excuse themselves for another dangerous evening meeting new friends online, their parents Bob and Mary turn their conversation to the day’s news.

B: Honey, did you see that we might be getting a refund check from the government?

M: But we already got our tax money back.

B: I know, this is because gas prices are so high.

M: What do you mean?

B: Some Senators feel our pain, and they want to give us some money to help for the next year.

M: Well that’s nice, it costs me $30 a week just to commute to work, how much are they giving us?

B: $100, and they might suspend the gas tax too.

M: That’s amazing! If I’m really frugal with my driving I might get a month of free fill-ups from this. I love it when the government is looking out for me.

Does everyone else already know about this? It actually seems like a pretty logical step, as long as you have enough “restaurants” hooked up so that your call handler is always taking someone’s order. I don’t think I’d want that job though.

I feel like I just joined the 21st century or something. I filed my taxes online through H&R Block and they didn’t charge me because my adjusted gross income was less than $50K. (It was way less than $50K.) I don’t know if it was a whole lot easier than it would have been to sit down and fill out all the forms, but having them wade through the IRS code and not having to go to the Post Office to get the forms was worth something. It took me about an hour of actually sitting in front of the computer, and a lot of that time was waiting for the dial-up connection to do it’s thing. The only bummer was that Firefox froze when I was “scratching” my “double your refund” card that they gave me at the end. I don’t think I was going to win.

Why does it feel less fun to do a scratch ticket online than holding it your hand? In the same vein, I’ve always thought that real slots would be better than video slots, but having played neither, I’m in no position to offer a real opinion.

I think some of you may have spent a lot more time with Textile than I have. I’m trying to use permanent links for the titles of articles on my blog. Right now I can’t do that because the file .htaccess isn’t properly installed on my server. I’m pretty sure it is there, at least in some form, but I’m not entirely sure. Now, I can’t see this file (because it begins with a ”.” and so according to OS X and Cyberduck it belongs to the system), but everytime I try to rename the file “1.htaccess” by removing the 1, it tells me I can’t do that because the file already exists. I also can’t overwrite the existing file, at least not with Cyberduck. Is there a way I can make Cyberduck (or some other sftp utility, I might even be tough enough to try using Terminal, but I’d need some hand holding) let me see .htaccess and view its contents so I can see if it’s correct?

There is not very much snow in Heber City. The thought of a 12 lap mass start 30K skate (while a little far-fetched) is a bit scary.

I’m in the process of going live with my blog for the winter. Since I know you are all itching to read more tales from the roads and race reports, I’m going to start posting, even though site design isn’t really complete. The look should continue to evolve, but at least you can pretend you’re playing ski racer instead of being a grad student. And Jon, thanks for letting me read through all your CSS sheets. Some of mine is just inspired by yours, while other parts would make Cosmo proud.

Actually, where I am it’s well below freezing. Today was only the second time in my life that a I’ve been at a ski race that was cancelled because it was too cold. Last year City of Lakes was cancelled because the race course melted in to the lake, which made it the only race I’ve ever had cancelled because it was too warm.

The highest reported temp today was -24°C, which was about an hour after the race was initially supposed to start and an hour before it was supposed to start after it was delayed the second time. The FIS limit is -20, so we were never even close. No sticking the thermometer in your armpit until it reads legal today. Interestingly, a lot of the USST guys were talking about sittting the race out even if got just barely warm enough. They were afraid of damaging their lungs somewhat permanently. Makes me wondered, should I be worried?

We’re going to try again tomorrow. Today was a skate sprint which would have been a nice low pressure way to start the season, tomorrow is a 10/10 pursuit, which will be a little tougher. If these races are both cancelled though, it sure throws a wrench in the works for World Cup Qualifying.