happy thanksgiving and our best wishes to those in mumbai or with family there…

this insert showed up in my aig statement yesterday – what balls.

its my life insurance policy with aig that elicits a reaction from me like the one shown below, well, except for the hair standing on end part…

i pride myself on being terse and to the point and judging from this recent comment, visitors to this site have developed expectations:

…the latest feldt’s are heavy in paragraph count.

remember this?

well the apple support team did it for me again last week when i brought in a battery that overheated and while it didn’t exactly explode it certainly wasn’t in its original shape any more.

i had my kids with me and was leaving town for the weekend and instead of having me make an appointment with the genius bar as is the appropriate protocol, they took my details and were going to meet with the geniuses on their own time and sent me packing with a brand new replacement battery – no waiting.

as always, i leave the apple store smiling.

after more than three years, four realtors, a tenant who didn’t bother to pay rent, more repairs and renovations than i have the strength to type (and barely had the funds to pay), i no longer own a home in cleveland ohio.

i’d say it was a miracle but the truth is, the miracle came in the way of finding the fourth and final realtor who managed a complete home repair and renovation, and then aggressively marketed our house all while we were living in new zealand.

that’s right, i said it, we had a realtor who actually did more than take our listing and post it in the mls. crazy, eh?

seriously, if i told you everything they did for us, you wouldn’t believe it. so lets leave it at this, in under three months in a city with countless homes for sale, at a slow time of the year, in the midst of a progressively worsening economic collapse we got not one, but two offers on our house.

i feel very thankful this thanksgiving.

thanks chris and julie.

“what exposes us to failure now is not our product lineup, or our business plan, or our long-term strategy.”

- rick wagoner
chairman and chief executive officer of general motors
in testimony to the u.s. congress on 18 november 2008

its this disconnect from reality that makes me oppose bailing out the auto industry, unless of course we throw out mr. wagoner and legions of lobbyists who have campaigned against all the previously proposed legislation targeted at improving the auto industry.

over the past few weeks i’ve been lucky enough to be in a car in the evening and have caught bits and pieces of the terry gross show. i say lucky, because the few programs of hers i have caught have been the most insightful, informative news i have heard through this entire election season.

her guest tonight, bill ayers responded to a question i had been asking with an answer i think exemplifies a big part of the problem with the media these days. terry asked why he hadn’t responded to the questions about his relationship with barack obama. ayers said he had been responding, in his classes and other public forums, but he had made a choice not to respond to the networks jamming microphones in his face.

assuming its true, why couldn’t one of those guys wearing the bright yellow rain coats on hurricane detail sit in one of these classes or other public speeches and then report back to us? it does seem to me that rumor mongering and pundit musing have replaced any real investigative journalism.

its a shame with all these fancy toys we have for sharing information so little of quality seems to bubble to the surface.

and in case its not clear, i’m not now palling around with a terrorist, i’m merely lamenting the suckiness of broadcast and cable news.

i had anticipated that there would be some challenging lessons of life that i would have to exert great patience in teaching my children.

i didn’t expect rock, paper, scissors to be on that list…

john hinderaker is a self described best lawyer in america. john claims george w. bush is an eloquent speaker:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.

this certainly isn’t the most grievous thing being said by folks on the right, but its being said by someone who at least bought a law degree, and claims to be one of the best attorneys in america.

i don’t mind an opposing position or viewpoint but its impossible to even begin a debate with someone this far removed from reality. when are folks on the far right going to realize its this separation from reality that has made a mess of the united states and is the cause of their recent political defeats?

if anyone happens across here from that side of the aisle – please help me understand.

after two plus years of releasing software in to production with no issues that record came to an end yesterday.

a fiery, no survivors kind of end…

i was reading a dzone article yesterday and was struck by these two comments:

“i always looked enviously at mac users in the queue at airports who’d calmly whip out their mac, press a single key, and immediately have their system available to them. that had never been the case for me.”

“if you want to try the xfce desktop, you may want at dreamlinux instead…I tested out 3.5rc and it was *very* nice…a level of polish that would make mac proud…”

is there a reason to keep fidgeting with other systems to make them mac like? or doesn’t it just make more sense to get a mac of your own?

“i do not love broccoli.”

“i do not love these shoes.”

the pleasant manner in which our daughter expresses dissatisfaction with something. and though she may not realize it yet, these cute expressions encourage us to find the shoes she does love, and to let her off the hook for eating all the broccoli on her plate…