Fraize Dotcom

Sunday was my birthday, and it was a great day.

It started at midnight, when Heather couldn’t stand to let me go one more minute without giving me my gifts. I love her. :-) She does a great job of disguising gifts so they don’t look like their wrapping. One gift, a lovely copy of Fable II for XBox360, was inserted into a fedex-envelope, and then wrapped in several layers of tissue paper. It ended up looking like a t-shirt when all the wrapping was done! The second gift was inserted into a tiny box. I was totally in the dark about the second gift.

Back in the late summer, when we went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, we came across a new merchant selling some unusual leatherworks. Tiny scrunched up faces rendered into leather items like bags and wallets. She bought me this:

Isn’t he cool? He’s a tr-fold wallet, and I’ve named him: “Leatherface Herbertchrist.”

The rest of the day was split between Panera writing sessions, and hitting that Fable II like a mother.

All-in-all, a fine way to turn 39.

Christ, I’m 39?

Heather and I sat on the couch, watching the returns, and frantically alt-tabbing and F5’ing between a dozen web-sites. We read blog posts from the left and right, watched as the numbers in Loudoun County and the state of Virginia wavered between Red and Blue, and bit our nails to absolute nubs.

At the end of the day, though, not only did I get a Blue county - I got a Blue state, and a Blue country. At 11:00pm tonight, all the major networks called the election for Senator Barack Hussein Obama, our 44th President.

There are lots of people that suggest that this vote represents a sea-change, but I respectfully disagree. Even though I’m almost 39, I’ve seen enough elections, and have read enough history, to know that this is just one side of a cycle. I’ll likely see the pendulum swing back to conservative in eight to twelve years, and then back to liberal again some time after that.

The great wheel turns.

So, to my friends and family that supported the Republican ticket, I hope you don’t feel the same despair I felt in 2000 and 2004. I learned some time after those elections that the fundamentals of the country don’t change much for those of us firmly entrenched in the middle class. Those on the margins feel the biggest changes, and none of you are there.

You’ll be fine. Really. For all the doom and gloom I thought I would endure in 2000 and 2004, I was fine.

Tonight is the final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. With only 19 days left until the election, this is their final chance to have a face-to-face discussion of their very different views.

Please make sure and watch the debate. Before you do, however, watch this video. Watch it all the way through. See the impact this war and this economy has had on us all. Watch and learn about the struggles of people who have done their best, worked hard, asked for nothing, and were still victimized.

DotMac is great, if you like ease of use, but it’s not a cross-platform system. I can’t update my blog on Windows or Linux. So, I’ll try and see if I can use some of the templates from the DotMac version of the blog, and apply those styles to my Movable Type blog.

Yeah, like I have time for that.

Weekends are for recharging, and rebuilding. The work-week takes a lot out of me. Spreadsheets, emails, writing copy, recording and editing videos, finding and buying new stuff, calling vendors to coordinate shipments, planning overseas deliveries… Such a varied collection of things that happen at work makes it so I have a hard time letting go when the whistle blows.

I end up sitting at home, thinking about what had gone on during the day - what I missed, what still needed attention, what I would have to do tomorrow, and what I could do so that tomorrow will be easier. I work 8 hours, then come home and work a few more. There aren’t a lot of hours in the day left for me to do anything new.

That’s what weekends do for me. They let me dedicate several hours to my projects. Yesterday, I dedicated several hours to some .NET code I’ve been thinking about. Today, I pulled out a few cookbooks and baked me some buttermilk biscuits.

Nick Malgieri’s Buttermilk Biscuit recipe is pretty simple. 2.5 C Flour, 6 Tbsp. butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 C buttermilk, 2.5 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp. baking soda. Cut the butter into the flour. Mix the rest, roll, cut, bake at 500 for 10 minutes. I made a bit of a mess, like I usually do when I try a new recipe for the first time. I couldn’t find the round biscuit cutter, but I did find a heart-shaped cookie-cutter. That did fine. I cut them, put them on parchment in a baking pan, and threw them in. It was when I was cleaning all the bowls and spoons that I realized I forgot the salt. Such a stupid rookie mistake!

I think the oven ran a little hot because the biscuits browned before they were completely done. I took them out, and they smelled and looked great! The flake was what I was expecting, though they were slightly too moist in the center. A little cherry preserves, and a sprinkle of kosher salt on top, and they were serviceable. Heather liked them, enough.

I spent a good part of the day Saturday and Sunday editing the newest ThinkGeek epic video. It’ll be released on Tuesday, so you’ll just have to wait until then to see it. Sunday’s video editing marathon was mostly done at Panera, where there is free wifi and yummy soup. Heather spent the day reading her journalism textbook, and buying a new computer.

She’s ordered herself a new lappy from Dell. The one she has is a venerable Inspiron that’s about 6 years old. It’s a seriously reliable workhorse - one I helped to upgrade and maintain so it would last 2 years longer than it probably should have. She’s been eyeing a new lappy for a while, and decided not to get a new one until her old Inspiron finally died. Well, last week, the DVD-ROM drive started to fail, so it’s time to take Old Yeller out behind the shed.

She’s sad to say goodbye to the old girl, but she’s excited to have a new machine for NaNoWriMo this year.

Yes, I’m doing NaNo again this year, too!

Like many Americans, I watched the Vice Presidential debates last night. And, again - like many Americans - was expecting a train-wreck. I didn’t get one, but that doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind on Sarah Palin. It means she was extremely well rehearsed, decently coached, and naturally comes across as warm, genial, and charming.

The after-debate analysis from Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow was great. Pat Buchanan described Biden as boring, while Palin was constrastingly exciting. Maddow then quipped that America’s choice has become “Boring and right, or Exciting and wrong.” I was hoping to hear about more of the instant polling like CNN did during the last Presidential debate, but it was noticeably absent.

So, this debate was full of a whole lot of nothing, and that’s fine. The debate was Palin’s to win or lose. All Biden had to do was show up and be courteous. Give nothing to the wingnuts to latch onto and claim Joe was being unkind or unctuous. He did a great job, with a few mistakes - sure.

As a side note, any time I hear so-and-so voted for a bill, or raised taxes, I always take that info with a giant grain of salt. On the one hand, Biden claimed that McCain voted to raise taxes in the same way that Obama did (though, that analysis is, itself, incorrect) when in truth, McCain voted for an amendment to that bill, but ultimately voted the bill itself down. Palin claimed that Obama voted to raise taxes on families making just $42k a year. Actually, the vote was to repeal the Bush tax-cuts,which had individual $42k earners paying more. Voting for a removal of a tax-cut isn’t the same as voting for a tax increase.

Both candidates made those kind of errors (or should we call them exaggerations?), and even each-other out, in my opinion. Style points to Palin for being warm and cheerful, but big minus points for not answering the questions that Gwen Ifill asked. Biden looked steady and showed his absolute command of the issues, showing nuance of thought and analysis.

If I weighed those points evenly, I’d call it a tie, but I don’t think style should count as much as intelligence, so I’d give the debate to Biden. Don’t get me wrong - Palin did well, but she’s just not presidential. After this election, I’d say she has a great career ahead of her as a Fox news pundit.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with my wonderful old hosting service, Dreamhost, I’ve found that I really do like some of the new services that Apple provides in their MobileMe offering. The tight integration with iPhoto, iMovie, and iWeb are especially nice.

So, I’ve moved my domain again, and updated the look and feel of my blog to reflect the new templates and doodads available to me.

Expect to see more photos, videos, and podcasts as I get my more creative side freed up from the drudgery of maintaining the technical side of things.

I am absolutely disgusted with people right now. Seriously. The whole “lipstick on a pig” so-called controversy is driving me crazy.

The republican smear machine is claiming that Barack O’Bama called Sarah Palin a “pig” when he used the following quote:

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

But the outrage from the right is hysterical! “OMG HE JUST CALLED PALIN A PIG! BLATANT SEXISM!!” they scream as they wring their hands and rend their clothing.

No, he didn’t, and if you think so, you’re stupid.

I know I’m not going to win any friends by saying that, but seriously! How dumb can you be? Don’t you understand what that phrase means? He was referring to the “change” mantra adopted by the “new” Republican party. The lipstick in this metaphor is the mantra. The pig is the Republican party.

If you still can’t get past Obama’s comment, then maybe you had better have a look at this: