A curious thing happened the week I got it back. I got a letter from my insurance company, State Farm, telling me that I was more than 51% responsible. They had already paid for the repairs, so it didn’t make a lot of sense. I complained and the next Monday they got back to me and apologized for the mistake. My agent, Mark Woodard, called me to let me know and he followed up with the adjusters. A few days later, I got an apology in the mail. Also, this weekend I got another letter telling me they’d checked in to make sure I got the check from the other insurance company to cover my deductible.

So, all’s well that ends well. I just wanted to note publicly that while it was annoying to get the mistake letter, everything else about the service I got was great. The repairs were done by Haw’s Auto Body in Concord. They weren’t fast, but they were clearly working hard to get the best parts.

Vicky’s new(ish) laptop has bluetooth. I hit the function key and the little applet fired up. I told my phone to make itself visible for 3 minutes and paired it with the laptop. This is all painless and mostly automatic through the applet. I played around and could move files between the two, but contacts wouldn’t send. Then I discovered that you have to tell the applet that it’s OK for the phone to send it contacts. It’s a button under the list of known devices. The Lotus has a menu item for sending all contacts, and they came over quickly. Vicky’s lame Samsung SPH-M220 requires clicking on a contact, going through the whole process of connecting via bluetooth and then sending…for each contact. She’s going through her list right now.

Once again, it just works on Ubuntu.

“The truth hits everyone like a million atom bombs, and I can’t understand how everybody can be so calm. Time is running out and we all just sit around. So leave your message at the beep, ’cause I am leaving town.” –Leave a Message, Get Dead

Yesterday was Tax Freedom Day, although here in California it’s April 14th if you consider our higher-than-average income taxes. Divide up the days you work: the first hundred days are for the government. The balance are for you to spend on yourself, if you ignore all the other extortion you pay as sales tax or other fees.

It’s impossible to “get by” in the US now. The average family is left with $100/month after mortgage, food and health insurance, a scenario assuming no vacations and one car! So many people are out of work and leaning on government to take care of them, that 33 states are out of money to fund jobless benefits. California is at the top of the list. When income can be variable, a rational approach is to save during times of plenty to cover the lean times. Government does not work this way. Government moves by political pull and the expedient solution of the moment.

As all odds mount against any rational, moral person being able to make his way through life here, the Galt Meter tilts into the red zone. Can you imagine a meter that shows how close we are to the nightmare world described at the end of Atlas Shrugged, a doomsday clock that shows how close we are to destruction by weapons of immorality? It seems we’re now at a 53/47 split. Nearly half of us work so the other half can loaf and tell us what to do. Furthermore, the top 10% of producers pay 73% of taxes.

Mark Steyn calls tax-payers suckers, the rubes filling PT Barnum’s pockets. In fact, we are livestock. Within the system, we have little choice but to pay. You can choose self-destruction in the form of unbending resistance, or you can choose self-destruction by exchanging your soul for a whip in your hand. Disobey or obey. This dichotomy is false. The alternative is to stop participating.

The way forward is out. An incredible opportunity approaches. Statism is dead!  What was a theoretical conclusion will soon be demonstrated empirically. Because of its imminent failure, statism’s captains will lose sanction, and no longer be recognized as authority. That inspires fear and excitement, similar to jumping off a high cliff into deep water. Are you ready to swim?

References

• http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/
• http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529854
• http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/08/news/economy/state_funds_jobless_benefits/index.htm
• http://www.gainspainscapital.com/index.php?view=article&id=80
• http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/04/galt-meter-hits-red-zone-as-half-of-all.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGIgOIFdnMQ&fmt=18
• http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876?tag=leonatkinson-20
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6YbkG5-W4

I would like to respectfully take issue with one word in that conclusion: only. Certainly, a rollback of entitlements would slow the inevitable decline of the state, but it’s not the only way, nor the most likely. Imagine the federal government coming to a consensus such as, “we just can’t afford it right now, so we’re halting subsidies for agriculture.” That’s an unlikely fantasy. What seems more plausible is a sudden disappearance of multiple programs, and the ones who’s beneficiaries have the least pull. Realistically, you can already see this. Big corporations get giant bailouts but schools want for funding.

It seems more likely that we will find decisions to cutback left unmade but made for us thanks to the hard facts of reality. These government programs will meet their just ends, and there will certainly be strong emotional reactions, tantrums even. I’m speaking euphemistically–I won’t be surprised when there are riots.

Some of these basic services our parents and grandparents handed over to the government are necessary and desired. (Being able to drive around on pavement is nice!) When the government fails to provide them, an opportunity might be seized. Without the a gun-powered monopoly chasing entrepreneurs away, what kind of wonderful solutions can we expect? I’m not sure, but I have been considering how I might help. Is anyone else thinking about how a collapse will provide an unprecedented chance to be productive?

How Long Must You Cry

How long must you cry before you wonder why your life’s filled with pain? How long must you cry?

How long must you weep, crying yourself to sleep? Tear-stained memory. How long must you weep?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

How deep must you age before you turn the page? Gone is yesterday. How deep must you age?

How wise must you grow before you will know. I’m beyond your reach. How wise must you grow?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

When I first wrote this, this was kind of a bitter warning to someone who foolishly spurned my offer of friendship. I didn’t take the song very seriously and thought of it as “you don’t know what you’re missing”. The language is kind of extreme for the actual situation, but it’s stylized.

Years later, I discovered that instead of it being me speaking to someone else, it was someone I’d lost speaking to me. I imagined my father asking me how long I was going to feel sad about him dying. I took it as a statement to myself to suck it up, to repress the bad feelings.

Today, I started thinking of this song as an ideal version of myself, a version of myself who I dreamed I’d be as a child, speaking to myself as I really am. And I’m curious: when will I give up comparing myself to that unattainable ideal? When will I cease entertaining the idea of having a chance to replay the past?

So in this sense, I’m not attacking myself for feeling sad. There’s a version of me that could have been. There were decisions I made that got me where I am, and there were circumstances beyond my control that probably had a greater influence. It’s legitimate to mourn the loss of what could have been. The mourning is a doorway back into daylight. So, I’m pleased to find the song is not a bitter rant, nor a vigorous self-attack. It’s simply a question about when the truth will be accepted.

FreeTime is a Web application written in PHP for MySQL that allows you to keep track of projects. It tracks comments, files and timesheet entries for projects divided up by clients and their divisions. Recently added features, not appearing in previous versions, include tasks, estimates and more reports. There’s also code that allows clients to log in to review work as if it’s a mini-site, but it hasn’t been tested in production. The most well-developed aspects of the application are related to timesheets, both gathering them from staff and then reporting on them.

I’m curious whether anyone will find the code useful, whether for educational or practical purposes. Its purpose was as a highly customized solution for Clear Ink, and it may have no utility outside the same type of consultancy. On the other hand, it could prove useful after some hacking. I would use it for myself if I do more consulting again.

You can download the source code from the FreeTime project page on SourceForge.

Anyway, I installed Karmic from scratch and found that I couldn’t install the Canon drivers because they want libcupsys2. Ubuntu renamed this package. I tried a few tricks to work around this, but the one works is to install the libcupsys2 dummy package from Jaunty. You can get it here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/all/libcupsys2/download.

So, the new procedure is get the libcupsys2 .deb file and install it first. Then follow the instructions for Januty, such as Luca Gibelli’s Canon PIXMA MP620 Linux printing and scanning via wireless network on Ubuntu post from last April.

Today, I noticed a new take on this upsidedown theme. This time, Patrick Corrigan shows Obama as pleading for help from the U.N. as the weight of the world bears down on him.

Truthfully, the weight of the nihilistic policies of the people who imagined the U.N. are crushing the wealth-producers of the world. Portraying Obama as Atlas is doublethink. Because it’s the same image Rand used for her famous novel, the misuse of this metaphor is particularly galling.

The following item description seems to disagree.

Tender Vittles® contains no added artificial colors or flavors, additives your cat doesn’t need. Plus, it has the great taste your cat loves. So you’ll love knowing that your cat is getting only the essential nutrients he needs, and he’ll love every delicious bite.

When it comes to convenience, you can’t beat our easy-serve pouch. It’s a cinch to open and pour and it keeps those delicious, soft morsels moist and tasty so your cat will enjoy every yummy bite from the first to the last.

With Tender Vittles, you simply tear open our easy-serve pouch and pour the tender morsels right in the bowl. It’s fast and easy for you and moist and delicious for your cat.

With regret we must announce that Tender Vittles have been discontinued by Nestle-Purina. Once our stock is gone we will no longer have them available for sale.

Even when I was a kid, I was suspicious of the Purina brand because it made both pet food and breakfast cereal.

I’ve learned so much about myself since becoming a father nearly six years ago. Constantly striving to serve these two little guys has helped me understand my own childhood. I am honored to be helping them through theirs. It just gives me so much pleasure to be around their joyful creativity. So, with Father’s Day around the corner, I hope all my fellow dads are having as much fun as I am.