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Sunny and 65 in mid-February… I love Colorado!

What a great day to get out and play some ultimate. Too bad I haven’t played for three weeks, so I’m woefully out of shape…

Last night we bought a new rat for Kyra, to replace the late Bella, who died a few weeks ago.

Her name is Roxy (don’t ask; I don’t know). She’s a skittish little girl, but the joy she’s already brought Kyra makes it worthwhile.

It’s fascinating to watch our Congressmen in action as they debate the crippling $1.5 trillion dollar budget deficit this year, and how to effectively deal with it. Their plan? Harsh cuts across all government programs* which will slash a grand total of– wait for it– $61 billion from the budget.

* Except defense spending, of course. And Social Security, of course. No one cuts those budgets.

Don’t get me wrong: $61 billion is a lot of cash, and certainly a good start. But doing the math, it’s a hair over four percent of the total annual deficit. They’re going to haggle and wrangle and give long speeches and tell the voters they’re working hard to “reign in” government spending, and after a month of theatrics, even if they get the absolute maximum they’re asking for– which they almost certainly won’t– they’re going to shave off a measly four percent.

There’s something very very wrong with our budget and our government in general, and this kind of stupid “budget cutting” isn’t helping a bit.

Argh.

“There’s enough pork in the defense budget to make a bacon replica of the Hoover Dam.”

— Slashdot discussion about the budget deficit

How’s this for a creative idea: someone came up with an iPhone app that allows Catholics to confess their sins. Why trudge all the way down to church to sit in the booth and tell all to your priest, when you can do it right on your phone?

The Vatican promptly came out with their position on the whole thing. A spokesman said:

So much for that million-dollar idea…

Today’s annoying new buzzword is “ask”. For some reason, several agencies I work with have started using that in place of “question” or perhaps “task”. For example, here’s part of an email:

At first I thought it was a typo and they really did mean “task” but a couple of different people in different companies have done it. Hmm.

Uhh, miss? You can scrape that windshield all you want… you ain’t drivin’ anywhere.

“That’s no moon; it’s a space station!”

At the end of last year I wrote a check to the state of Colorado for $1.93. This was a payment for unemployment insurance which I’m required to carry as an employer. A few weeks after that, I received my check back with a note saying if I owe less than $5 for any of my unemployment payments, there’s no need to pay them. Okay, no big deal– I just saved two bucks.

Today I received a letter from the state demanding payment for that $1.93 plus 3 cents in interest which had accumulated since the due date. The letter included lots of scary language about collections and legal action. Hoo boy!

I called the unemployment office and spoke with a nice guy with Jack, who laughed along with me and told me the problem was the computer sends the collection letters, but it’s humans who send back checks which are too small. Apparently the computers and the humans are locked in some kind of eternal struggle down at the office or something. He promised he’d take care of it, so all’s well that ends well.

Two questions come to mind:

1) Perhaps this is a clever way for the state to make some additional revenue. Refuse to accept checks from businesses, and then bill them for the amount they’d already paid, plus interest. Three cents may not seem like much, but multiplied by a hundred thousand businesses across the state and you’re talking some real money.

2) What if I’d paid this $1.96 bill? Wouldn’t a human see my check and bounce it back to me because it was less than $5? Then in a few weeks a computer would notice the discrepancy and send another notice– this time for perhaps $2.00. And just because the computer was miffed, it would probably also contact a lawyer and start proceedings against me.

I was almost tempted to send in the check just to find out. Almost.

Woo hoo, I finally got Mac OS X running as a virtual machine on my Linux desktop!

I hardly ever use my ancient Mini anyway, and it’s so much more convenient to be able to boot this puppy from any computer in the house and use it right inside Linux. Now I can truly be cool like Thom and Craig, those Mac fanboys.