Timmerov's Blog
mahwidj
pretty sure i've said this before. but it's worth repeating. the fundamental problem before the supreme court this week is there's one word and two meanings. we need a defense of marriage act. but it should clearly differentiate between the two meanings. it should affirm a religion's right to define a marriage before their god any way they want. it should also define the rights and responsibilities of a legal marriage. like next of kin, power of attorney, fifth amendment protections, immigration, and taxes. if the federal government offers a contract package, called a marriage, to couples, it must make that contract package available to all couples. it cannot offer such benefits to some couples but not others. the supreme court's interpretation of the equal protections clause is pretty clear. basically the argument against marriages of a man and a man are exactly the same as the argument against marriages of a black person and a white person. of which society approves. though in some backwards places it didn't as little as 50 years ago. maybe in 50 years the whole argument will seem really silly. one can only hope. i really don't understand why this is even an issue.
trailer
so the other day i'm biking along the creek trail that's conveniently located between the boys' schools and work. i slowly catch up to this woman on a bike with a kid trailer. it's morning. and it's cold. so i'm going relatively slowly to avoid the wind chill factor. and to keep the sweat factor down. which exaggerates the wind chill factor. science is my bitch. anywho, this lady isn't going all that fast. but the trailer is just careening all over the place. sometimes up on one wheel. and i'm thinking, sheehs. that must be someone else's kid in that trailer. there's NO mom that would ever do that to their kid. well, there might be moms that would ride like that if they could ride like that. anywho. i pass her. the trailer's more/less empty. best guess is she was on her way home from dropping the kid off somewhere. very well. carry on.
onesie
so the other day i'm biking from g's school to work. i get passed by a guy pedaling like mad on a onesie made of bright orange unobtanium. his bike was pretty much just like my target special. except without the gears. and probably 10x more expensive. these things are kinda popular amongst the hipster crowd. anywho. we get to the freeway overpass to the trail. and he pretty much comes to a stop. i on the other hand, shifted down a few gears and powered up the hill. i was expecting to look back and see him carrying his bike. but no. he caught up to me later. again pedaling like a string puppet on speed. i passed him again on the next overpass. i guess it's cool to have a useless piece of equipment.
sorbet
i suppose everyone gets random telemarketers calling. so do we. i didn't recognize this one as a telemarketer at first. cause she was jabbering at me in spanish. so i jabbered at her in german. so she switched to english. broken english. i could follow it. but i didn't want to put forth the effort. note to telemarketers make sure your telesalespersons frikken speak english. i won't buy anything if i don't know what you're selling. sheehs. anywho, she wanted me to take a marketing sorbet. a what? sorbet. sorbet? huh. you want me to take a sorbet? yes. sorbet. hrm. sorbet is a type of ice cream. i patiently explained. pause. sorbet sorbet sorbet sor-bet! like *i* was the idiot. how do i get my sorbet? i don't want any sorbet. i'm allergic to corn syrup. does your sorbet have corn syrup? eventually she hung up on me. she called back the next night. no spanish this time. the broken english was easy to recognize. so i waited for her to say sorbet. and i interrupted her. uh... sorbet is a type of ice cream. silence. for a spectacularly long time for a telemarketer. i broke it. yes you did call here last night. please put us on your do not call list. she didn't call the next night. i was disappoint.
correlation
lotta people confuse correlation and causation. most without even realizing it. i did this and something good happened. so now i do that whenever i want something good to happen. poof. a brand new superstition is born. so anywho. autism rates are rising. bullying rates are dropping. they are inversely correlated. one must be a bit careful about assuming causation. especially when there's no obvious connection between events. like say, wishing on a star and winning the lottery. is there a connection between bullying and autism? some folks think so. though no scientific minded folks of which i'm aware. it might be kinda interesting if unethical to find out though. anywho, if there was a connection it'd go something like this. kids who are weird and different inevitably end up being the target of bullies. being weird and different suddenly becomes painful. which can be a pretty strong motivator to not be weird and different. especially at certain hypothetical stages of the human brain's development. that was then. this is now. bullying is not allowed. it's become acceptable to be weird and different. hypothetically, the developing brain never gets knocked out of that mode. and gets locked into it. until a later age. when it takes a monumental effort to overcome. course this is all assuming causation. and in this direction. i have just as much basis to argue that autism prevents bullying as i do the other way around. or maybe, there's no connection at all. and it's just a coincidence.
wha? where?
sometimes we treat the kids to dinner and a movie. they set the table in the living room. and we watch a movie on the tv. last night we watched one of the many shaun the sheep. it's pronounced shorn if you've never seen the show. you should. anywho, grandpa was in town. so the table was kinda crowded. he went to costco earlier for supplies. and brought home a big box of haagen daas ice cream bars. he didn't tell anyone they were there. nor did he try to hide the fact. he just didn't mention it. the boys had their noses in front of their computers. i suppose i did too. so we didn't notice. until... my contribution to dinner was to thaw and peel the shrimp. and pour the milk. the beautiful and talented alisa did everything else. my reaction to discovering my favorite treat was, oh my! what? nothing. so at dinner i ate my fish taco. just one this time. i wasn't very hungry. and i wanted to save room. the movie was still holding the boys attention in its laser guided photon grip. so i wandered off to the freezer. opened the box. got myself a yummy. and walked back into the living room. no one noticed. so i sorta wandered in front of the tv. munching happily. got yelled at. move! we can't see. oh sorry. stood there for a bit looking at them not looking at me. shrugged mouthfully. and sat down on the couch. looked at alisa and grinned. she rolled her eyes at me. i don't know how she does that without pulling a muscle. anywho. i finished before the movie. so i poked g with the stick. handed it to him. and gestured for him to put it on the table. he took it, annoyed. then realized what it was. suddenly, movie is forgotten. where did you get this? at which point alisa spilled the beans. and grandpa had a chuckle fit. g jumps up. races off to the kitchen. gets himself a treat. and returns to his seat to finish watching the silly antics of shaun et al.
eyes 2
so the other evening the beautiful and talented alisa wanted to do a puzzle before turning in for the evening. so she's doing all those things that women have to do before they can come to bed. and i have the world of puzzles book open to the battleships page. i wasn't wearing my glasses. so a lot of squinting was going on. i get my glasses. and discover i was working the puzzles upside down. i hadn't made any errors. but it's kinda funny that i got so far without noticing. probably wasn't going to take much longer. i had started with the most difficult admiral level puzzle instead of the easiest ensign level one. heh.
eyes
my vision is getting progressively worse. the other day i walked past a newspaper (a newspaper is something like dumping the fark web page to a printer) sitting on a table. i misread the headline: minstrel in molestation case. like duh. aren't they like infamous for that? sheehs. it really said mistrial. sigh. my way's funnier.
smaller government
so my latest thinking boiled down to a sound bite is this: if you want smaller government, make the wealthy pay for it. consider the status quo. the bottom 49.5% grumble about not getting enough entitlements. and by grumble sometimes i mean express huge amounts of gratitude. the next 49.5% grumble about paying too much taxes to support said entitlements. meanwhile individuals in the 1% do one or more of the following: a) educate the 99%. b) give up trying to teach calculus to pigs. c) stoke both sides so they're too busy with each other to notice anything the 1% does. so basically, there's the bottom looking for a helping hand (ie handouts), the middle paying for it, and the top spectating all the way to the bank. err... spectating *from* the bank. ;-> okay, now suppose the constitution gave congress the power to levy progressive wealth taxes. without that stupid apportionment clause. suppose further that the vast majority of tax revenues had to be raised this way. you'd still have the bottom looking for handouts. the middle however is looking for jobs and opportunities to get rich. and the top is all fuck you. the status quo balance is between the poor class and the working class. the proposal would change the balance to be between those who have the votes, and those who have the money. which is a win all the way around. by the method of blatant assertion.
driveway
the city has been threatening to deal with the uneven sidewalks and gutters in our neighborhood for quite some time. there've been announcements in the city paper. mysterious pink lines have mysteriously appeared. only to just as mysteriously disappear again. only to be replace by white lines. then one day a man shows up with a concrete saw. and cuts up the whole street. okay. that's different. the next day he shows up with a bobcat and carts away a dump truck load of concrete. which is pretty cool. except they removed all of the gutter in front of my driveway. and replaced it with... nothing. blink blink. so my car's sitting in the driveway. not quite stuck. i can negotiate the car onto the neighbor's driveway and to freedom. good thing. otherwise it'd have been trapped for the whole weekend. sheehs. a little actual honest to goodness warning would have been appropriate. and appreciated. hopefully they'll patch the road part today. and be done. hopefully.
minch
so the other day i awoke pondering the pincer and pincher. a pincher is one who pinches. a pincer is a body part. with which one would do the pinching. so a pincher pinches with a pincer. on the other side of the pillow, a mincer is one who minces. so if a mincer had specialized body part with which to do the mincing, it would be called a mincher. right? hrm. i think the next d&d game i run there will be a four "armed" opponent creature with a pair of pincers and a pair of minchers. it pinches you with its pincers. holding you still. and minces you with its minchers. adventurers beware.
tyop
why is unitialized so difficult to type correctly? i've taken to listing the misspellings in enums that equal the correct spelling. now it doesn't matter. course the enum is kinda long.
jesus
someone found an old egyptian document that adds to jesus' list of super powers. we previously knew he could walk on water. he could fly. he could transmute substances. he could heal others and resurrect himself. precognition. and to that list, add shape change. apparently, judas had to betray him with a kiss. cause really, what good would it do to simply provide a description of a person who can change their appearance? like duh. he was short and tall. skinny and fat. old and young. tan and pale. yeah. okay. i'll just plant one on him. he'll be the one with lipstick on his cheek.
pope
so we have a new pope. the last pope pulled a palin. this job is no fun. i quit. course we should have seen this one coming. he named himself benedict after all. yeah, okay. as far as i'm concerned, the new pope is the same as the old pope. still anti-birth control. ah well. at least he's old. and they'll have another chance in a decade or so. course there won't be a shortage of byzantine old white guys well, ever. but there's always hope.
biking
i bike to school with b on thursdays cause the beautiful and talented alisa volunteers time at the middle school. he was in a big gawdawful hurry this morning. no reason given. fortunately for me he wasn't in a smart hurry. he'd race ahead to the next red light. and wait. i'd pass him at speed. then he'd race past me again. i let him go when he caught up to some cute girls in shorts on bikes. i of course was wearing a winter coat. some people have the strangest metabolisms.
comet
i took my wife for a walk last night. we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the comet. but there were too many clouds on the horizon. ah well. maybe next time. course that was just an excuse to hang out watching the sunset holding me sweetie's hand.
sxsw
sxsw is an acronym like thing for south by southwest. maybe it's just me, but i can't help but read it as sexy sow.
french toast
my youngest made us french toast for breakfast the other day. it was good. cooked a bit uneven. he built a fire from sticks and paper on the back patio. he mixed up the eggs and milk and cinnamon. and cooked the toast. mostly himself. he's practicing for the cooking requirement for second class scout rank. go kid go.
sequester
one of the business deals we were actively pursuing has been put on hold. because of the sequester. sigh.
sneeze
windows 7 is way way better than any other version of windows every. still though. there are things to complain about. like the windows menu icon thing at the left of the dock. it's all pretty blue marble normally. but mouse over it. blech! what is that thing? it looks like someone sneezed. so here's the prep to something funny to timmer. position the cursor just at the bottom of the screen just to the right of the windows icon. then ah ah Ah AH AAAHHH AHT-CHOOOOO! and quickly knock the mouse to the left. so the still mostly invisible cursor is "over" the windows icon. making it look like a big green booger mess. ewww. and pretend to wipe the mess off the screen with a napkin or hanky or something. simultaneously move the mouse back to the right so it's no longer over the windows icon. all better. then look at the hanky. make any icky face. blech. and drop the "dirty" hanky in the trash. and carry on like nothing strange just happened.
cursing
one of my louder co-located co-workers, asserted that he curses his macintosh every day. now mac vs pc is on old meme. but a good one. so i started announcing when i curse my pc. needless to say, they told me i could shut up now pretty quickly.
soap
so why is them men's room at work the source of so many recent blogs? hrm. anywho. i caught myself sticking my hands under the soap dispenser expecting the ir detector to detect the ir from my hands and squirt some soap into them. why not? it's how the water faucet works. and the water faucet and the soap faucet are co-located. and not that dissimilar in shape and function. i *should* be able to stick one hand under the water faucet to get it wet and simultaneously stick the other hand under the soap faucet to get some soap. then scrub scrub scrub and rinse. towel dry. done. apparently my brain has convinced itself that this is the way the world should work that i've done the hand under soap faucet thing twice. my brain is ahead of the times.
deteriment
if i hack into your bank and nose around, it seems perfectly reasonable to most americans to put on an outrage face and throw my ass in jail for life. if i walk into your bank with guns literally blazing, it simultaneously seems perfectly reasonable to most americans to nod in agreement when my lawyer points out i deliberately aimed my shots at the ceiling specifically to not harm anyone. i was there after all for the cash in the registers. not even the good stuff in the vault. and i end up with a light sentence and am out in a few years on probation. hrm. i find this situation very strange. not so much that the penalties are so out of whack. compare crack vs powdered cocaine. but because we seem to think such huge penalties actually keep the bank safe. and since we believe that, no one secures the bank. do you lock your doors when you leave? why? the criminals will stay out because, well, the law will get them. i'm sure you've seen in the news that pretty much every major corporation in the united states comes under hacker attack. deterrent is useless when the attack is coming from outside the jurisdiction of our law. the emperor has no clothes. we need to improve our domestic cyber security. and to do that we have to recruit people with knowledge of such systems, ie hackers. we can't afford to let people with interest in security slip through the cracks of society. cause they're smart folks. and if one or two examples end up dead or rotting in prison, none will follow. and then we won't be able to fortify our virtual walls. even if we wanted to.
tp
yes, this is going to be another poop story. you've been warned. the flushers on the toilets at work are run by ir sensors. which is kinda cool. cause you never find a brown trout swimmin in the pot. however. here's the problem. the paper dispenser is far enough away that you have to lean forward to reach it. far enough that the ir sensor triggers. but it's got a delay. so you're reaching back when the toilet flushes. and it's kinda of a splashy toilet. so now you have a handful of wet paper. yick. and you hope it's only wet. so now you gotta dry yourself. then clean yourself. sure maybe it saves water. but not really. it sure uses a lot more paper. maybe i learn to stand. or to grab sufficient paper before settling on the throne. hrm. probably not practical. cause quantity is so highly variable. i could take max quantity. and leave the rest for the next person. which might satisfy my inner waste not want not hippie. but probably nobody would use it. and it'd go to waste anyways. ah well. i hate being trained by machines. they're supposed to learn from me. the world is really bass ackwards someways.
log cabin
recently a number of prominent republicans came out in favor of gay marriage. none of them currently hold an elected office. which i find very interesting. where were these people when they did hold office? they toed the line. it's a world where toeing the line is more important than holding to your own personal ideals. which is the republican party's greatest strength and simultaneously it's greatest weakness. united, stuff can get done. which is powerful. however, the stuff that gets done isn't necessarily what's best. or even what's morally right. which makes that power terrifyingly horrific. or horrifically terrifying. not sure which dominates.
biker brown
so i've noticed something kinda icky about biking. i imagine it curses all bikers. but i've never heard of it before. so maybe it's just me. or more likely everyone thinks it's just them. and no one says anything. which perpetuates the silence. it's not a big deal. i mean, i take a shower as soon as i get to work. and put on clean clothes. which is how i noticed the phenomenon. perfectly reasonable explanation. i mean, it's not like i'm a kid in too much hurry to clean his backside before running off to play. cause i generally do quite a thorough job. regardless of how much paper it takes. i blame the seat. the standard biking seat is a long narrow thing. and the natural piston motion of the legs effectively makes it wedge itself between the buttocks. and one's drawers get slid side to side across one's poo launcher. resulting in biker brown. aka skid marks. surely i can't be the only one subject to this indignity. so fess up. what do ya'll do about it? wider seat? special panties? some sort of prosthesis? depends? what? tell tell.
