Life is a State of Mind : ideas, thoughts, rants

Politics and Crime

When will voters in this country wake up to the tight relationship between the Republican party and criminals?The Republican National Committee is paying for the legal defense of James Tobin (more that $722,000 to date!!!). Tobin has been indicted for suppressing voter turnout and using auto-dialers to block get out the vote efforts. He is suspected of working with people here in Virginia to do the same thing. Of course the races in Virginia last November did not look that close, but in New Hampshire, Republican Rep. John Sununu narrowly won the race, possibibly in part because voters were prevented from getting to the polls. Waldo Jaquith is busy connecting the dots on a similar situation in Virginia, though as yet it is only an investigation.

Then there is the case of Jack Abramoff, indicted yesterday in a fraud scheme and under investigation for campaign finance scandals in the Delay and Bush and Ney campaigns. Abramoff has also drummed up donations for the “Capital Athletic Foundation” by saying donors would get access to Tom Delay and contribute to urban youth participation in sports, but the sports turned out to be arming Isreali militias to terrorist Palestinians. This list goes on, and on, and on… Google it yourself.

So even if you did vote for George W. Bush, why the heck aren’t you ashamed of that now? Carefully remove your “W04” sticker and replace it with these:

Affordable Macs

Apple has updated the Mac Mini and iBook model lines and further reduced prices on both lines. A really tricked out Mac Mini will only set you back $728 now:

iOptiJr Mouse

A really portable 12″ iBook is now only $999 – though I’d suggest adding AppleCare to any laptop you buy (laptops take a lot of abuse). The new model iBook sports 512MB minimum RAM now (finally) and both Sudden Motion Sensing and the scrolling trackpad (very good features).

2005 07 26 Scott Nolan Computers Comments (2) Permalink

Lawn Mower, Much Faster Mowing

Lawn & Leisure delivered my new Ariens Mini Zoom 1540 riding lawn mower on Friday the 8th, and I tried it out pretty much right away. Initial thoughts are that this thing is unbelievably noisy. Hearing protection is a must when operating the Mini Zoom for more than a few minutes. It is also more than a little scary because it is very fast.I was not really aware of how fast I was walking behind my old 22″ Sears Craftsman 4hp self-propelled mower, but it turns out to only be about 3 mph. That was the speed it rolled forward when the drive was engaged and I was not applying drag to slow it down for taller grasses and weeds. With that speed I typically mowed my entire yard in about 4-6 hours, more if I’d neglected mowing for a few weeks. The Ariens is startlingly fast. I estimate it can top out at about 6.5 mph – though I am not comfortable mowing at that speed (heck I can barely hold on at top speed with the mower engaged). The most amazing thing is that the purchase is a huge success on the time savings. I mowed the whole yard in less than one hour on my first attempt at mowing with this 500 pound monster I have barely learned how to control. I have to mow again in about two weeks and re-time the work, I can’t believe it (update: I’ve mowed three times now and I am averaging one hour per mowing). The other good news is because it mows so much faster, I think I actually burned a lot less gas (which is a surprise, it certainly burns more gas per hour than the little mower). It must be that mowing for ~1 hour is such a gas savings over mowing for ~6 hours, that burning fuel faster is more than mitigated by the time savings.

As a note of irony, the information brochures and videos came in for the Walker Mower just after I ordered the Ariens. The Walker Mower certainly looks impressive, and is clearly a better mower than my Ariens, but at nearly 3 times the price. I simply could not justify ~$8000 for my little 2.2 acres of yard. If you are a professional, or have 10+ acres of yard to mow with some complex borders or contours – you should give the Walker some serious consideration. As for me, this Ariens will do the trick.

2005 07 13 Scott Nolan Personal Comments (0) Permalink

Unusual Voter Issues

So I was helping out with the Bruce Roemmelt campaign again last night and the subject of what issues matter to the voters came up. It quickly became apparent that I am very unusual amongst voters in our district 13 (Northern Virginia) in that my three biggest issues for the Virginia State government are:

Ensuring fair, transparent, and honest elections (see VerifiedVoting.org).
Switching from pluralistic (pick 1 of the above) voting to instant runoff or borda (rank order your choices) voting.
Protecting the environment as best we can, immediately through improved public transportaion.
Strong education, both academic and vocational, for all school age children and young adults (they are the future).

What I realized last night was how differently I felt than most of the people we talked to. Most people stated their big issue was traffic, by an overwhelming majority. Traffic is a problem that is mostly outside the scope of any one politician, yet it remains the big issue for most people.

You can find out what issues your delegate cares about by checking the state’s legislation information web site: http://legis.state.va.us/ and searching for your delegate. It is pretty clear that my current delegate, Bob Marshall, only cares about two issues: he is anti-abortion and anti-gay. He’s done nothing about traffic. Nothing for education. Nothing about health care. Nothing to protect the environment. Nothing to protect our voting process from tampering or errors. All my delegate cares about is hating gay men and preventing people from planning their own families proactively. Don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself using the state’s list of all legislation he’s sponsored. If you want to check up on another delegate, you can pick from the list of them here.

2005 07 13 Scott Nolan Virginia Politics Comments (0) Permalink

More Palm WiFi Testing

Testing Plogit again, had to reset my Tungsten C to get WiFi working again.

2005 06 30 Scott Nolan Computers
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PZEV Vehicles and the Environment

So I’ll admit that this is not current news at all, but I only recently learned about PZEV rated automobiles. This is a California certification for extraordinarily clean cars. I have been saying for months that my next car will be a CVT Hybrid (after experiencing the sheer joy of driving my wife’s Honda Civic Hybrid CVT). The CVT transmission is the first “automatic” transmission I have ever liked, and it is the only way I’ll give up a manual shifter. She is getting between 37 and 45 mpg depending on traffic and hills and it is very clean (I believe SULEV). I am just now learning that both the Civic and the Toyota Prius come in PZEV versions that are even cleaner, for only a few hundred dollars more, and this sounds fantastic. I am likely to drive my current car into the ground, then replace with a CVT Hybrid with a PZEV rating, but if a manufacturer makes at CVT Hybrid PZEV with cooled seats and a wagon/hatchback with fold-down seats so I can carry my longbows, I’d trade in my Saab 9-5 today.This is more current news: there is a company called TerraPass that is allowing ordinary drivers to purchase greenhouse gas credits for their driving habits and car. They claim that only 10% of their revenue will be used for profit and the rest is used to run the company and to fund environmentally positive projects that take greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere! If that is true it could go a long way into helping offset the impact of driving. I am looking for ways to find out how legit the company is, and how much overhead they have, but I am very interested in some TerraPass like credits for my car, my house, my computers, and even my bicycle (it has plastic parts).

2005 06 30 Scott Nolan Cars
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PowerMac G5 at Work

My employer’s internal computing arm finally upgraded my desktop machine at work from a February 2000 issued PowerMac G4 (500Mhz, 256MB, 25GB, Zip100, DVD-RAM, ATI RagePro) to a brand new PowerMac G5 (dual 1.8GHz, 512MB, 160GB, SuperDrive, GeForce 5200). So far the largest noticeable difference has been that the firewire ports work (the old machine’s firewire controller burned out years ago) and backup/restore to an external firewire/usb drive is much easier and faster. I have a Terminal.app saved session with about a dozen Terminal windows (one for each of the UNIX and Tandem hosts I routinely log into), and they all come up much faster than on the old machine.At the moment I am simply running the cloned copy of Mac OS X 10.3.9 I had on the old G4, but eventually I’ll re-install from scratch to see if there are any benefits from optimization for dual G5 processors. I have no plans to upgrade to 10.4.x (Tiger) because I use a few applications that are not “Tiger-ready” yet, and because the new OS offers me no compelling reasons to upgrade. I’ll need to get more memory because of a bit of crapware they make us use at work called “Argus” which likes to have a few gigabytes of free memory to run properly (groan).

The G5 is really quiet. I can’t hear it at all (but so was the G4/500 except for it’s disk drive). The loudest thing in my office is still my trusty old SGI O2 workstation. The G5 is taller than the G4 was, which is an issue as it does not fit under my desk the way I’d like it to. I don’t think I will miss the Zip drive that much – I have not used it in over a year anyway. I am using the built-in secure erase function in OS X 10.3’s “Disk Utility” application to completely erase my old drive before I re-image it with internal computing’s scratch install.

2005 06 23 Scott Nolan Computers Comments (0) Permalink

New Lawn Mower on Order

Last Friday morning, after several days of research into my choices, I ordered a new Ariens Mini Zoom 1540 riding lawn mower from Lawn & Leisure of Sterling, VA. Joel at Lawn & Leisure was very helpful and applied no high pressure sales tactics. Buying any riding, rotary mower was hard for me to do. I wanted to do something more environmentally friendly, but I have about 2 acres of yard to mow regularly, and though I can mow it all with a manual reel push mower (did it last weekend, took 9 hours over three days), I want to get it done much faster. I’ve been using the ancient Sears Craftsman 4hp 22″ self propelled walk behind we bought used in 1996, but it is literally falling to pieces (one of the drive wheels has been broken for years, but now a second wheel is falling off and it leaks gas). That mower was taking me around 5 hours to do the whole 2 acres, again not exactly timely.

I looked at and almost ordered a Quick 36 Fox (36″ self-propelled walk behind), but Erci pointed out that at roughly $2000 she’d be happier if whatever mower we bought could do a few other things, such as tow a cart or spreader. She is of course, correct – but that Quick 36 does look like an excellent choice for people who need to mow 1-3 acres of hilly ground with lots of obstructions and no need to tow a cart around.

We considered a John Deere L 100 series lawn tractor, which also looks like a pretty good deal. The theory is that we’ll be able to mow the lawn in half the time with the zero turn from Ariens though, and time is precious.

I plan to further cut the time down by buying a small Pro Mow gang of reels to tow behind the rider. The reels do a better job of cutting grass than any rotary mower would, and the wide swath will allow us to cut in just a few sweeps and with less gas than the normal deck, which will still be available just in case the weeds take over (weeds are tough on reel mowers).

I wish someone made a small gang of perhaps 3 reels I could push around by hand, that would have made the rider unessential. I really like the little 18″ Brill Lexus 38 I have (and intend to still use it inside our fence (about 1/10th of an acre). It is quiet, clean, easy, and cuts beautifully… it is just too small to tackle the big field with.

Looking forward to playing with the Ariens when it arrives.

2005 06 22 Scott Nolan House
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Roemmelt for Delegate

Last night Erci and I went over to Virginia Assembly candidate Bruce Roemmelt‘s house to help with his campaign. Last night this meant stuffing envelopes, and sorting bulk mail. Reminded us of newsletter production back in our Society for Creative Anachronism days. The crew at Bruce and Beth and Sam’s house are really nice; a good mix of concerned citizens (several who are veterans), irate voters, and people insitgating for change.

Last Saturday morning I walked around Sterling going door to door with Christian, Nicole, and Vince from the Bruce Roemmelt campaign trying to make people aware of their choices in November and get a feel for the issues that are important to voters in that area. I guess this is called ‘canvassing’, and it was my first experience with it. It was fun, and I got to meet a lot of people.

2005 06 22 Scott Nolan Local
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Voting and Meeting Bruce Roemmelt

This morning Erci and I went to vote in Virginia’s primary elections and we ran into Bruce Roemmelt, who is running for State Assembly district 13 this November. I have been very excited to meet Bruce since I first discovered he was running against our current delegate (a completely useless man), and that for the first time in years we’d actually have a choice in the general elections for this one office.

If you live anywhere near the 13th district (South-central Loudon County and the Northern half of Prince William County excluding Manassas itself) you should sit up and take notice. Spend a little time to figure out what your current delegate has been spending his time and energy doing in the state legislature, and ask yourself if it is worthwhile. His voting record and the bills he introduced are all a matter of public record.
I think it would be hard to find a more embarassing resume anywhere than the record of what the state assembly has done in the past two years. Compare that record, specifically the laws sponsored by your delegate, to the issues that Bruce Roemmelt claims to have taken to heart; then vote your conscience.

Bruce’s campaign website is http://www.bruce2005.org/ and Bruce and his campaign workers maintain an informative and entertaining blog of their efforts at http://www.electroemmelt.org/. Check it out and see why I am so excited about the possibility for change.

2005 06 14 Scott Nolan Local
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Life is a State of Mind