Daniel J. Summers » Charter Member of the VRWC

From our house to yours - Merry Christmas!

(And, if you think that’s funny, you ought to see the blooper reel.  Our two-year-old was in rare form while we were trying to record this!)

Morgan Freeberg over at House of Eratosthenes has tagged me. I guess I’ve now arrived as a blogger! Anyway, here are my answers. In keeping with his tradition, the questions will be colored red and green.

1. Wrapping or gift bags?

Mix and match. Oddly-shaped gifts are pretty well suited for gift bags. When wrapping for kids, though, paper is definitely the way to go. It’s a lot more fun to rip paper than just pull a few pieces out of a bag.

2. Real or artificial tree?

I grew up with real trees, and really prefer the look and scent. However, the cost and trouble have won out, and we have an artificial tree. Pulling a pre-lit tree out of the box, putting three pieces together, and plugging it in is a lot easier than getting a real tree. Plus, we know that all our ornaments will fit!

3. When do you put up the tree?

Thanksgiving weekend, usually Friday.

4. When do you take the tree down?

The weekend after New Year’s Day.

5. Do you like egg nog?

I used to, but the older I get, the more I think it’s way too sweet.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?

One year, as an “early”Christmas gift, I got a boom box (think mid-80s). It was a high-quality one - AM/FM radio, dual cassette decks, large speakers. It was stolen out of our car at church one Wednesday night.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?

We have a couple of versions, none an actual “scene” that you would put out on a table. We do have one in a snow globe, that you can wind up and hear a song.

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?

Undergarments. Now, that’s fine, but as a kid, you’re thinking “What?!?!?”

9. Mail or e-mail Christmas cards?

Mail, on December 1st. (However, this year we were traveling, so we got them mailed late. If you’re reading this and haven’t gotten yours yet, hang on - they’re coming!)

10. Favorite Christmas movie?

It’s a Wonderful Life

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

December 26th! Of course, it’s not a constant thing, but we usually wrap up the major shopping by the first week in December. Again, this year has been a little different, as we were on vacation.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

My wife makes the best hashbrown and chicken casseroles - they’re my favorite! And, since they’re not a specific holiday food, we can have them year-round. (I put up her recipe for her cheesy sausage hashbrown casserole earlier this year.)

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree?

Clear.

14. Favorite Christmas song?

I’d like to gripe about Christmas songs I can’t stand, but this is a positive question, not a negative one. My favorite would probably be “O Holy Night.”

Following the tradition, I’m tagging…

Any author at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Rachel Lucas
Lord Spatula I, King and Tyrant at Spatula City BBS!
sig94 at Signal94

Rules are…:

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share Christmas facts about yourself.
3. Tag random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Merry Christmas!

There has been a ton of news and evidence about glow-bull warming that has come out in the last few weeks. But, alas, other pulls on my time are keeping me from chronicling them here. I did want to share this comic, though, that I found today in an e-mail.

The artist is Lisa Benson, whose work can be found on TownHall.com.

You may notice something new in the header of each post on this blog. Native tagging support is new to WordPress 2.3, but most themes didn’t support it. I have added it to the “NightLight Idea” theme, and 2.3 added it to the “WordPress Default” theme. Clicking on a tag will show you all posts that have been tagged with the same tag. Of course, since it’s new, most of my old posts aren’t tagged. I’ve tagged the ones back about six months, and I’ll get to the others as I have time. Enjoy!

If you don’t care about the difference between tags and categories, you can stop reading now…

One reason it’s taken me so long to add tags to this theme is that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of a tag versus a category. It may not be scientific, and there was no one moment where a light bulb went on above my head and I said “wow - that’s it!” But the way I understand it (and the way they’ll be used in this blog) is this; categories are broad and should be few, while tags are narrow and may be many. Basically, a category is where you would file the post, were you to print it out and put it in a filing cabinet, or make a card for it in the card catalog of a library - for this post, the category is “Site Info”. A tag is more a collection of keywords or topics that may appear or be referenced in a post. Look at the tag list for this post, and you’ll see what I mean.

And, by the way - I know I have some readers who are WordPress bloggers. Here’s how I did it - it was a piece of cake!

Once the turkey has settled, the Christmas season swings into motion. (Yes, I know the Christmas trees are usually up before Labor Day - but that doesn’t mean I have to go along with it!) Let’s start this one by trotting out a “new classic” of Christmas. The house in the video is real - it isn’t a computer-generated animation. The guy would broadcast the sound on a low-frequency FM transmitter, so if a car were parked in front of the house, they could listen on their radios. The music is “Wizards in Winter” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, from their album The Lost Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas!

This is for all you IT folks out there…

(Hat Tip - Morgan Freeberg of House of Eratosthenes)

Today’s Albuquerque Journal (website) had a couple of front-page stories that caught my eye. First, the one full of good news was titled “Others’ Message to Illegal Immigrants: Leave!” The Journal doesn’t put their stories online to link to, so I’ll quote enough of it to give you the idea…

States surrounding New Mexico have recently passed laws aimed at cutting off illegal immigrants from social services and jobs.

The goal? To drive them away.

In Oklahoma, where a set of laws known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act took effect Nov. 1, Latino churches have reported losing up to 20 percent of their members and Tulsa County alone estimates a population exodus of 25,000 people, mostly foreign born.

Sounds like that’s a law that has actually done what it set out to do! And kudos to the Journal reporter, Leslie Linthicum, for including that oft-excluded qualifier illegal when describing the people being targeted by the legislation. (That wasn’t the case through the entire article, but it was refreshing to see it.)

The instructive article was the one beside it entitled “Fast Track: Critics Say Rising Rail Runner Tab Slows Road Work.” The Rail Runner is pretty cool - I’ve ridden it with our Cub Scout pack. It’s a light rail passenger train that goes from about 20 miles south of Albuquerque to about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, but will eventually extend to Santa Fe. It’s been in operation just over a year.

The article had a lot of information about how it (and lots of highway improvements) came about, through legislation passed in 2003 called Governor Richardson’s Investment Partnership (GRIP). The initial estimates for the Rail Runner was $90.2 million, but the current expected total cost is $420 million (plus $50 million in escrow, to address “issues” that may arise). This in and of itself has some folks upset. However, the way the GRIP legislation was written, funding can be shifted amongst the several projects - and, because the Rail Runner has such high visibility, money has been diverted from highway improvements to the Rail Runner.

The instructive part, to me, is the cost balloon. Whether the Richardson administration willfully underestimated the cost, or whether it has simply grown due to unanticipated costs, I don’t know. It’s probably some of both, and it’s not really important to the lesson I think we can learn. As an example - New Mexico did not even apply for federal funding of the Santa Fe leg of the Rail Runner. Why?

Rail Runner officials last summer cited problems with grant program rules and the limited federal funds available as reasons for not applying for the money.

And the state was working on a fast track.

A legislative analysis from 2005 stated that the process of applying for federal funds could have delayed the second phase for up to several years - beyond the December 2008 deadline the Richardson administration had set.

“The project needs to be proposed and there are a lot of requirements necessary,” [Federal Transit Administration spokesman Paul] Grasso said. “There’s an environmental review that has to be done; there’s a cost effectiveness standard that has to be met. There are all kinds of things that have to be worked out in advance.”

Any government entitlement program costs more than originally estimated - every single one. It will take longer and cost more than the original estimate every time. So, when you hear politicians (especially now during campaign season) pitching their programs, remember that. $400 million today is probably $3 billion once implemented.