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Superdelegate Tuesday

A flood of super delegate endorsements for Barack Obama have come in today. According to both CBS and CNN, Obama’s total count is now 2106 (Update: now all the sources I track delegates with agree that Obama has over 2100 delegates, he will definitely cross the 2117 line tonight) which puts him close enough that it is very likely he will win the nomination with today’s closed South Dakota primary and today’s open Montana primary (he expected to pull in 17-18 pledged delegates between the two states; and there are a few Montana supers who will declare for the winner of their state). Keep in mind that CNN and CBS are at odds with RCP and DCW and the NYT. Even AP who has called the nomination for Obama (prematurely I suspect) has him only at 2093; which is not quite enough to win tonight. It will be a long and interesting night for poll watchers. Update: now that they all agree, CNN and CBS are out in front again and they report that Clinton can no longer win as there are fewer delegates left than she needs to win.

If that happens, Barack Obama will have won the number of delegates necessary. It also means that there will be too few delegates left for Hillary Clinton to secure the nomination. Both thresh holds will be crossed at the same time.

I updated my spreadsheet at 12:20 (new) Eastern:
http://web.mac.com/scottdavidnolan

2008 06 03 snolan Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Teaching myself some spreadsheet foo

I am a spreadsheet neophyte. Many years of extreme proficiency with sed, awk, perl, and korn shell scripting have made spreadsheets not very interesting to me. I am finding myself doing a few repeat tasks over and over and I thought it was time to teach myself a little something new. So I have been collecting data from the various primary delegate tracking sites and putting it into a simple spreadsheet that does the math for me:

http://web.mac.com/scottdavidnolan/Site/Blog

I am using iWork’s Numbers programs to generate these tables, and it has been fun. Numbers is easy to use, and limited, but a great first stab at the spreadsheet genre. I wish I could have a keyboard shortcut to export my work though.

I gotta say that for simple work like this the awk, sed, and korn shell scripts stomp all over spreadsheets though…

In other news, I just started playing with Colloquy (Mac OSX Internet Chat client) for IRC connectivity and it looks nice.

Oh, and both Solaris zones and Xen virtualization (on OpenSuSE) are quite handy at work.

2008 06 02 snolan Personal Comments (0) Permalink

Why is the next President so critical?

The current members of the United States Supreme Court are:

“Liberals”

“Conservatives”

“Swing/Conservative”

It is possible that the next president could be appointing as many as four replacement justices they get re-elected in 2012. Even more interesting, based on age alone, it is likely that the justices being replaced will be from the more liberal side of the court.

Think on that long and carefully, please. Only two justices appointed by Democrats are left. Do you really want a Supreme Court even more unbalanced than the one we have now?

Hat tip to RaisingKaine’s aznew for starting me thinking along this track.

Now get yourself registered to vote, get active, contribute, get involved, do something.

2008 06 02 snolan Politics Comments (3) Permalink

When does compromise become appeasement?

It has been a long and contentious primary campaign season for the Democratic party in the United States. Bringing the nomination to a close, with some semblance of a unified party is perhaps a bit overdue; but I am very glad that traditionally late primary states have finally gotten a say in the process, and it will be nice to see the votes counted in Puerto Rico today and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday.

Part of me is very happy the RBC decided to compromise and seat the Florida and Michigan delegations with a small penalty for not following the rules. I do see the value of including those delegations, despite their rules violations, in the process.

Part of me is very concerned, however, that the RBC has appeased Hillary Clinton and her supporters rather than simply compromised. Frankly she clearly got a better deal than she deserves out of this process, and a better deal than her supporters expected (they were asking for pretty much exactly the compromise we ended up with as recently as late April). It is also clear that Obama could have pressed for a 50/50 split in Michigan, yet he did not. Part of me is concerned that the Obama campaign has inadvertently appeased the Clinton campaign.

Continue reading ›

2008 06 01 snolan Politics Comments (1) Permalink

Wet Wine Festival

Erci and Kate went to the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival with me today. We had some spectacular tastings of James River and Horton and Valhalla wines, then we got drenched in rain. I mean soaked through to our nickers and such that everything in our bags and purses was soaked right through. At one point the event coordinators were attempting to evacuate the site due to lightning and a tornado watch, but most attendees simple refused to understand the announcements. We got out before the mud got too high, though it took a while for the wines we’d bought to show up at the “will call” booth. Erci lost enough core body temperature that it took a long soak in the hot tub at home to get her back to normal. Of course, as soon as we left the site, the weather cleared up some.

Many thanks to Johnny for inviting us out to the event. He reports he found a Meteor wine called Firefly that tasted quite good, though we left before we found it to try ourselves. John, you rock!

We brought home:
Vino Curioso Chardontage 2007 (crisp white blend)
Vino Curioso 954 2006 (full bodied red blend)
James River Cellars 2006 Montpelier (surprisingly good blush with dry after notes)
James River Cellars 2006 Hanover White (yummy dry white)
James River Cellars 2006 Chambourcin (fantastic port-like blend, wow)
Wish we’d had time to snag Valhalla’s Cabernet Sauvignon, and Row Ten (white), and Horton’s wines (where we got soaked the first time).

We chased that with a wonderful house warming party in Centreville with friends. Pleasantly tired and mellow.

2008 05 31 snolan Local
Personal
Wine Comments (1) Permalink

1984 + 41 = 2025

According to the following trackers of Democratic nomination delegates, Barack Obama has reached 1984, which means that if he gets the expected 41 pledged from Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana; he’ll be at 2025. Of course, there is a strong possibility that the goalpost will have been moved by the rules committee meeting tomorrow, but this is getting close to being over, and we can start the next race without a break.

Trackers:
DailyKos
DemConWatch
Wikipedia

I am fairly certain that the source for those three trackers is the same or that one or two are using the other – because they have pretty consistently reported the same numbers. So take this with a grain of salt.

I have been using RCP for my count, because they report in the middle of the pack… but for weeks they have reported the same numbers as DemConWatch and Wikipedia; but about 12-24 hours later (after more thorough confirmations I assume). Perhaps that will happen today, but for now they report Obama having 1980 delegates.

Another bit of positive news, Michelle Obama outdraws Bush and McCain in Arizona! Know hope.

2008 05 30 snolan Politics Comments (1) Permalink

Damned Nuisance Callers

So I am getting 3-5 calls a day on my cell phone that are caller-id blocked. I have a strict policy that I let such calls go to voicemail. If you need to hide your identity from me when you call, you can talk to my voicemail and not me in person. Problem is, the call rate has gotten annoying and I cannot figure out how to set my phone/service to ignore caller-id blocked calls and let them go straight to voicemail.

I am using Nextel and an i580 phone.

If getting such a feature requires that I switch, I am willing to do it. Can anyone report that they have this feature now? If so – please let me know the service and the phone model so I can duplicate.

I am hoping such a feature is built into the iPhone, since I want one of those anyway – and this would be the tipping point… but I’ll consider any phone that works and ignores incoming calls where caller-id is blocked.

2008 05 29 snolan Personal Comments (1) Permalink

McCain gets a pair of golden flip-flops award

It is baffling and amazing to me that this candidate is the best that the Republican party can offer us in 2008!

While I have virtually no respect for Senator John McCain, I also realize that he was the best of the bunch of losers that the Republicans tried to foist off on us. Only Governor Mitt Romney really has anywhere near the same level of experience, and I trusted him no more than I trusted Bill Clinton in 1992. How about some real conservative candidates?

2008 05 27 snolan Politics Comments (1) Permalink

Hard Times Chilli in Herndon is closing

Sunday is the last day it will be open to the public. They are having a party on Memorial Day, and then you must find another nearby Hard Times for your chilli-fix. Rumors are that the company/person who owns all the property where Hard Times is located is doubling the rents and squeezing businesses out. I do not know if that is true, but it has certainly happened before (my favorite Afghan place, Bamyan, was forced out a few years ago when their rent was doubled suddenly).

My arteries will probably be healthier, but I’ll miss regular bowls of Texas Dry, and half-priced Burger Mondays.
You do all know that the perfect seven course meal is a bowl of chilli and a six-pack, right?

2008 05 22 snolan Local
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About Florida and Michigan Primary Delegations

No compromise that allows the FL and MI super delegates full votes is acceptable to me.

The voters of each state are responsible for their governors and state legislatures. Even if Republican controlled legislatures foisted this off on the Democratic parties in those states, the Democrats 1) had it coming for letting Republicans win and 2) they had an opportunity to stop that in both states and failed to do so. I have some sympathy for them, but you learn from the small pains of life. They can freely vote their will in November and try to fix this crazy nomination process next time.

The super delegates from these two states get even less sympathy from me. They were the leadership entrusted with preventing this from happening. They failed to do so, they should not get seated even if a compromise is reached for voted on and pledged delegates.

Clinton’s gambit of slyly leaving herself on the ballot in Michigan and subversively campaigning in Florida even after lying to the other candidates and the DNC should not go unpunished. She tried to pull a fast one, if she’d gotten away with it – more power to her, but she did not. Rewarding her dishonesty and tricky behavior now is unacceptable to the millions of us who played by the rules, wether we like them or not. In fact, if she does not like the rules she agreed to, let her run as an independent candidate in November, I am sure she will get more votes than McCain even without Democratic Party support.

The process clearly needs to be fixed, and BEFORE the next election cycle starts. To do nothing after this fiasco would be…

Oh wait, it would be the American Way. For we still have done nothing about the theft of the 2000 election nor the 2004 election.

2008 05 21 snolan Politics Comments (3) Permalink