http://www.fenris.org this, too, shall pass Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:47:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Okay, commenting on global finance is really not my usual shtick, but I've got to agree with Barry Ritholtz that there's something odd in this NY Times article on China's role in the U.S. housing bubble.  The article describes Ben Bernanke's 2005 theory that a savings "glut" is driving up ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/12/27/blaming-the-pushers I wonder if the N&O would print this? Dear Editors, I have read with some alarm your recent stories describing a dramatic change to our way of life.  Specifically, I refer to those stories of our poor benighted multi-millionaires and billionaires who are having to downgrade their lifestyle in response to the ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/12/25/a-simple-suggestion I'm not certain if I've joked about it here or not, but recently I've taken to commenting that if academic politics are so petty because the stakes are so small, then what does that say about non-profit politics.  The implication is that non-profit politics are even more petty because the ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/12/19/so-the-stakes-arent-always-that-small This is neat.  Typealyzer claims to examine a blog (or presumably any webpage) in order to identify the Myers-Briggs type of the author.  It correctly identifies me as an INTP, but doesn't seem to get etselec. http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/21/blog-your-type Dear Amazon.com: After buying the collected works of Robert Johnson, blues guitarist from the 1930s, the man who was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil to become the greatest blues guitarist ever, I really don't think I want albums by Robert Johnson the 70s power pop musician.  I ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/20/robert-johnson Some recent (somewhat) technical notes: A while back, I swapped the dead harddrive from my ipod with a compact flash card.  Unfortunately, at the time, the biggest (affordable) compact flash was 16 GB, so I lost about half the capacity from my ipod.  Not a huge problem, but it became more ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/20/at-home-in-the-technical-universe Two weeks ago as Obama won a resounding victory both in the country as a whole and even more decisively in California, Californians also passed Proposition 8.  Prop 8 was an amendment to the California constitution that defined marriage as an institution between one man and one woman.  With the ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/19/a-real-threat-to-marriage I started taking photography more seriously about ten years ago.  I put down my cheap point and shoot film camera and bought an SLR body, a few lenses and some slide film.  The great thing about shooting film (slide or print) is that you aren't constrained by the quality of ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/14/thinking-about-camera-equipment Over the past few months, I've been thinking about getting a new guitar.  I've been heading up to High Strung in Durham and have played with maybe a dozen different models, but the one I kept coming back to was a Blueridge BR-243.  It's got a beautiful sound and it's ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/11/new-guitar Still not official from the Election Board, but the AP has canvased all of the counties and found that there aren't enough provisional ballots for McCain to overcome Obama's 13000+ vote lead. Amazing http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/06/blue-nc My mother tells a story about my first day in first grade (and sadly, I'm more likely to remember stories of my childhood than the actual childhood).  I go off to school, probably all 70s style - plaid pants, mop haircut, etc., and when I come home she asks me ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/05/president-obama-and-race Polls just closed on the West coast.  With that, everyone calls Washington, Oregon and California for Obama - Obama wins!  And I'm heading to bed.  I would still like to see who wins NC.  It looks like it'll be close, but we should know in the morning.  If I'm doing ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/04/president-obama I headed over to the polling place to vote this morning.  As of 8:30am or so, there were no lines at our precinct.  But then, that's not too surprising for a small precinct in a non-populous county.  Chronological observations: It's raining, but the fall colors are wonderful. There were a fair number ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/04/go-vote I haven't been in much of a writing mood recently.  I blame it on a high state of anxiety: the economy, the stock market (and therefore my retirement accounts), the health of the small business I work for, and of course the election.  As a good Democrat (actually, an independent ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/11/03/anxiety A few years ago, K was taking some GIS (geographic information systems) classes.  That was a lot of fun for me since GIS is something I've poked at on and off for quite some time.  Back when I was first playing with GIS, GRASS was probably the best (and may ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/30/computer-maps As I mentioned earlier, we were having problems with the water softener and when your well water is as hard as ours is ("how hard is it?" "that's a rather personal question sir" "no you git, how hard is the water?") the water softener is pretty important. So the venturi gasket ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/22/another-successful-repair So Hunter is planning on being at GB tonight too. But as of last week, we thought this was his last GB and so of course, everyone brought cameras. Sample pictures: 151815471553156215651580 More in the gallery Requests to remove pictures will be honored. http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/17/pictures-from-geek-beer It's okay to look, I promise that there are no shots of me doing naked cage construction. *shudder* A couple of months ago, K got a call about a squirrel.  When the folks brought it over, it turned out to be rather small, but pretty far along in its development.  Well, ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/16/wildlife-rehab-porn It's been a while since we've had plumbing issues.  Okay, sure, we replaced the RO faucet in the kitchen six months ago, but other than that... So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that yet another water oriented appliance has broken down.  This time it's the water softener, again.  When we ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/15/too-good-to-last Like a lot of other people, I've been pretty stressed out recently.  Nothing too terrible is going on for me personally, but I'm concerned about the U.S. financial situation, I'm concerned about how that will affect me and my company (if at all) and I'm concerned about the current political ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/14/brief-political-interlude A while back, Luis Villa asked about a script to add creative commons licensing information to an image.  I just wrapped up a first cut at a GreaseMonkey script to do exactly that.  Hopefully someone will find it useful. http://www.fenris.org/2008/10/04/annotate-flickr Okay, this is probably the last of the foreseeable posts on the Wallstreet bailout - and probably the most serious. I spend the last week extremely pissed off about the bailout. Here were a bunch of idiots absurdly inflating the price of housing, with other idiots actually loaning them money ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/09/29/idle-bailout-thoughts Welcome to the new socialist state... comrade. From Propublica, an inflation adjusted comparison of bailouts. http://www.fenris.org/2008/09/23/we-are-all-socialists-now As a public service announcement, I am hereby warning the people I know that in light of the bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and the entire freaking banking system, all of which will cost tax payers about $1 trillion, the next person that tells me that deregulating markets ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/09/20/public-service-announcement Oh, on an entirely unrelated note, the U.S. Constitution was signed 221 years ago today - happy birthday!  Okay, it wasn't ratified for a couple of years after that, but still... If you've got some time, take a read.  It's still the most impressive government document I've ever read. A few years ... http://www.fenris.org/2008/09/17/happy-birthday-to-the-us-constitution