North Shore inline skate marathon

Sorry for my absence.  I've been a little busy with family stuff - notably the North Shore inline skate marathon here.  The race is near Duluth MN, and it is the same course that is taken for the "Grandma's marathon."

No, I wasn't skating, but my wife and son both skated in the race and did great!  The scenery along the north shore of Minnesota on Lake Superior is beautiful.   The weather was perfect and I had a blast!  Who knows, maybe next year I might participate, although I feel pretty shaky on rollerblades.  The idea of falling on the pavement scares me a bit.  I love ice skating, but I'm usually pretty padded and don't get scraped up if I fall.

I do plan on getting back to my blog.  I finally received the book Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the book looks excellent.  Hopefully I can get to it soon.  Because the book is pretty difficult, I might blog along the way.  It might help me with understanding the book.

My little art project

Self Portrait1
Originally uploaded by trippd11

If this goes correctly, this is a photo of my little art project. I call it "Self Portrait." Because it is shiny it doesn't really photograph well. The actual image is about 14" by 21".  If you follow the link it shows a little better as a large image on flickr.  There is a story about this image, but I think it is best to let art speak for itself.

Frigging Pawlenty!!

I wanted this blog to mostly steer clear of politics, but doggone it what Pawlenty is doing is local for me and it really ticks me off!

A quick background - Pawlenty is the current governor of Minnesota, and he used to be a moderate Republican, which to me explains how he got to be the Governor of a moderate state, my state, Minnesota.  I know that the rabid wacko right would claim Minnesota is a radical left-wing state, but Chuck you Farley, because Minnesota is actually moderate, and Minnesota only looks radical to you because you are so extremely right-wing.

One of the things I really really like about my state is that, for the most part, we have been pretty sensible and pragmatic about politics, we usually tend to go with what works in the long run, and we usually avoid scum and scandal and political corruption.  For example, we used to have mandatory exhaust testing, but after a couple years we realized the vast majority of the cars were passing the test, so we stopped the testing.  We could restart it again if we needed it.  To me this showed that our government bureaucracy did not automatically grow out of control.

But Pawlenty is now a special case, because he has declared that he will NOT be seeking re-election here, and he has begun trying to woo the national Republican powers so he can run for the Presidency  as a Republican in 2012.  Ironically he has some pretty good national likeability stats because he has been pretty moderate to date but now he has to become radical to get the Republican nomination so now he is caught in a tough spot.  He has to try to play it both ways.

But that is his fault, and I give him no pity.  Indeed, this past week Pawlenty has pissed me off big time.

First he goes mouthing off about Governors using the 10th amendment to keep their states from adopting any new health plan the US government adopts, and then he flew to Virginia and stumped for the loony Bob McDonnel who is seeking the governorship of Virginia.

Bob McDonnell wrote his college thesis in 1989 stating that "working women and feminists were a detriment to traditional families."  The thesis also argued that "government has a right to discriminate against 'cohabitors, homosexuals and fornicators' to protect heterosexual, two-parent families. "

Of course now Bobby is trying to backpedal and soften his image to get elected, but like Pawlenty he is trying to play things both ways.

I've got two statements to make.  The first is to Bob McDonnell:

From an immoral but practical standpoint I suppose it seems okay to discriminate against homosexuals, because there really aren't that many of them, but if you discriminate against cohabitors and fornicators you'll be lucky if there are 10% of the people left over to vote for you. 

To Tim Pawlenty:

How dare you do this while collecting pay from Minnesota taxpayers?!  Either shut up or stop your freeloading and follow Palin's lead.  Resign from the Minnesota Governorship!

Speaking of Palin, can you imagine Palin as President, Pawlenty as Vice President, and Michelle Bachman as speaker of the house?!  Oh, baby, would that be something to see, and I don't mean in the good way.

Yikes!

My History

I have been told that I tend to be overly verbose, so I'll try to make this as concise as I can.

I am a left-handed male, first born ENTJ Virgo, born in the year of the Monkey.  I was born on a Saturday, which means I am a Saturday's child who will work hard for a living.  Chemistry.com says I am a director-explorer.  I come from mostly German/Polish peasant stock, which I suppose means one half of me wants to invade the other half.  Besides the German-Polish I am also part English and Irish and one-fourth who knows, so I am pretty much a Northern European mongrel.  National Geographic tells me my people emigrated from Africa up through the Middle East into central Asia, then over to Europe.  I used to think we came through the Middle East straight to Europe, but it turns out I was wrong. 

I think these words form a very good, concise description of me.  What do they mean?  Hey, I'm not going to do all your work for you!  You are on the net - the best research tool in the history of the world - go find out for yourself!  If you can't bother to do that then I suppose you'll have to read all my verbose words to come.

I have played (American tackle) football, which I loved dearly, and I currently put the shot and throw the discus and javelin.  This fits my broad shoulders, relatively short legs, and fast-twitch muscles.  No, I'm not a dwarf!  I'm a 6'1" mesomorph who struggles with keeping my body fat down to a healthy level.

If IQ measurements matter for you, mine is high, but I have found that intelligence is mostly a curse instead of a blessing.  I have passed this curse down to my children.  I'm sorry for that.  I am happily, faithfully married for over 26 years to a wonderful woman who shares few of my traits and yet is strong enough, and patient enough, to put up with my quirks.  Because of her I have a beautiful house and we have four great children, spanning the ages from twelve to twenty two.  We have done our best to help them get started in life, despite the curse of intelligence that we seem to have given them.

I was somewhat of a child prodigy, but not in the overt bad way, like being pushed into things before I was ready, but in the covert bad way, meaning I was seen to have had 'potential' and I have spent much of my life trying to reach my potential.  People expected great things from me, and I expected great things from me too.

So what have I done, actually?  I did the college thing, then I did the corporate thing, and I stuck with the corporate thing, and I stayed with the corporate thing to pay the bills , and I learned much about the corporate thing that I didn't like but stuck it out, and finally the corporate thing threw me out.  I suppose I am proud that I avoided my layoff as long as I did, and I stuck with an incredibly bad situation right through to the end.  Yeah, that wasn't easy to do, and I had bills to pay, a lot of bills, what with supporting five other people and four college educations, and I had promises to keep and miles to go before my sleep.

So much of the bills are paid, but many are not yet paid, and I have been cast out by corporate America, cast out by IBM, who said "you'll start slow, with low pay and few benefits, but if you stick with us, trust us, in the long run it will be worth it, with a pension and prestige and at the end you'll be able to do all those things you ever wanted us to do."  Yes, I traded my potential fortune for security, and in the end I am left with no fortune and no security.  IBM changed the rules in the middle of the game, and they are not even decent enough to admit they did it.

But I do not want to get into that here.  Maybe later, in the greater context of my views on the world at large and how things are.  Despite what has happened to me I am still better off than many many people, and I am blessed with many fortunate things, and bitterness and anger, while very real emotions, will not serve me well in the future.  I will simply say that corporations are, by design, immoral and non-sensible creations that can take on a life of their own, a life which has tremendous power but which lacks all the good attributes that humanity is capable of having.

And look at that, I was not concise at all.  Yeah, I can certainly ramble on about things.  If you have suffered this far then I give credit to you, my dear reader, and I am afraid all I can promise is more such suffering from my verbiage in the future.