Author: Paul Tomblin

What do you mean “may”?

The headline says Kerry suggests Bush may have set Iraq deadline for political reasons.

Where did the “may” come from? I mean, it’s pretty damn obvious from Bush’s obscene haste to get the goverment turned over exactly on time, even when it looks like the situation is getting worse and worse, that it’s all politically motivated.

I’m sure that Bush, or rather the Bush advisors who can count to 11 without taking off their socks, sat down last year and did a complex calculus of how much time they could possible make political hay out of the new Iraqi government, based on how long it would be before the inevitable civil war breaks out or at least until it becomes patently obvious the new goverment isn’t working, and worked backwards from election day to figure out when to set the deadline.

A real leader, somebody who actually cared about making things better for Iraq and the rest of the world, would have said “We’ll restore the infastructure first, THEN we’ll get a provisional goverment set up, THEN get the oil flowing again”. Instead, they did the oil first, the government second, and they still haven’t gotten the infastructure going, and Iraq is looking more and more like Somalia but with US private security companies playing the role of some of the warlords.

Bad Job Experiences, Number 5 in a Series

With no pay for the last couple of months because “Horrible” screwed me, I was desperate for work. I went back to GeoVision to use one of the documentation writer’s fancy Macintosh computers and fancy high res (600dpi) laser printers to update my resume.
Continue reading “Bad Job Experiences, Number 5 in a Series”

I got it from Jen, who got it from Andrea, who got it from…

Stolen from Jen’s Journal

1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:
“Because layout managers have generally been poorly documented and a proper…” – Core Java Foundation Classes. Yeah, I’m at work.

2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
The admission wrist bands from my trip to Oshkosh last year.

3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?:
The first three hours of “Gulliver’s Travels”.

4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is:
2:30

5: Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
3:06

6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Great Big Sea: Yarmouth Town. If that doesn’t count because it’s coming from my computer, then I’ll answer “a succession of annoying thumps”.

7: When did you last step outside? what were you doing?
This morning when I drove to work.

8: Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
Vicki’s friends page. Since I haven’t found a RSS aggregator that works through the company web proxy, I use her friends page while I’m at work, and NetNewsWireLite when I’m at home.

9: What are you wearing?
Checked flannel shirt and jeans. Lumberjack clothes, you might say.

10: Did you dream last night?
Not that I can remember.

11: When did you last laugh?
While eating lunch with my cow orkers.

12: What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Two Rick Thistle posters (one showing a Spitfire, the other showing a float plane), last year’s Despair Inc calendar, a white board, a modern aeronautical chart, a 1945 aeronautical chart, and two diagrams that attempt to explain our hideously complex problem report and resolution system.

13: Seen anything weird lately?
Well, it snowed over the weekend. That’s pretty damn weird.

14: What do you think of this quiz?
Well, I wasted all this time doing it, so I must have liked it.

15: What is the last film you saw?
On TV? I tried to watch Bulworth. In a real theatre? Don’t remember. Possibly Starsky and Hutch.

16: If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
An airplane. Probably a Murphy Moose.

17: Tell me something about you that I don’t know:
Even though I’m mostly contemptuous of the whole “art scene” thing, I’m feeling more and more like I wish I had some creative outlet other than computer programming.

18: If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
I’d like people to think about the long term and global consequences of their actions.

19: Do you like to dance?
Even before I got bad knees, I didn’t like formal dancing. I did that “jump up and down like an idiot” stuff, though. I was good at it, too.

20: George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?
I think he’s evil and has no conscience and is doing everything he does for monetary or religious reasons.

21: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Her name is Liane.

21: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
Not sure. I know we had some names picked out back then, but I’ve forgotten them.

22: Would you ever consider living abroad?
I am living abroad.

Beech Starship

A while ago I wrote about the sad demise of the Beech Starship. Raytheon decided that it was too expensive to support them, so gave all the existing owners a King Air in trade, and parked them in the desert, probably never to fly again.

But this week’s AvWeb NewsWire has a short article about how some people are keeping their Starships alive. One of the people using his Starship works for Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, and uses it as a chase plane there. Since Burt Rutan built the prototype Starship, I suppose he’s got the best chance of anybody of keeping it running.