Sorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Le…

Dash - Jan 2, 2010

Sorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Lexington Herald–not State auditor, as was the Lexington Airport financial abuse and League of cities abuse.

C.J. State Salares:
Agency is U of Lou
2616 employees High of $912,288-to low of $351,487
agency is U of KY
4469 employees high of $804,726-Low of $412,500
Agency: Ky Community College
1498 employees from High of $212,484-to low of $145,714
Agency: KY JUDICIAL SYSTEM:
545 employees from high of $139,164-to low of $128,760
Agency: Legislative Research Comm
196 employees from high of $132,840-to low of $99,744
Agency: LOTTO
62 employees from high of $220,200to low of $99,100
Agency:KY HOUSING CORP
95 employees from high of $137,957 to low of $76,500
STATE 5269 $222,718-50,000
EXECUTIVE BRANCH ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANTS
86 EMPLOYEES from high of $100,000 to low of $55,650

Trying to journal a few things from the past weekend:

• My wife likes Ducatis and Triumphs. She thinks that a Nighthawk 250 and the Honda Rebel are ridiculously too small for me. In other news, I actually got Whitney to go to a motorcycle shop with me :-)
• I’m considering selling some of my Voigtlander R1 Rangefinder kit, particularly the 15mm Heliar f/4.5 and the 90mm f/3.5. I haven’t snapped any pictures with this camera in 2 years, and the 35mm and cannon 50mm f/1.2 are good enough. I keep waiting for the day when my kids go, “What’s that stuff you’re putting into that camera? ‘Film’…is that like a coating for light sensor? Where’s the 32GB memory card go in that thing? What do you mean it doesn’t use BATTERIES!?”
• I had chills and low-grade fever Saturday evening through Sunday morning, and still don’t feel 100%
• Currently reading Peter Egan’s excellent compillation Side Glances. It’s much the same old stuff–Peter buying old cars, stories of his childhood with his friend Pat Donnelly, long road trips hither and yon. It gets a bit repetitive, but so what? Part of me wants to be this guy when I grow-up, minus the Hepatitis C.
• Helped Whitney out with the 4 + 5-year old Sunday School class this week. Seven girls and one irrepressible boy, Noah.
• Saw an excellent free concert from the Central Kentucky Brass Trio at Christ the King Cathedral Sunday afternoon. Many thanks to Betsey Keating for watching Maria so Whitney and I could have some time together.

I paid $4.00 at a matinee to watch Avatar, now 3 weeks after its worldwide release. The 2.5 hour video game movie amazed me, and at the same time, its overarching vanity and irony haunts me. Let’s talk.

The movie itself tells the story of former marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington)’s journey the new world Pandora, where he’s embedded with a corporate mining operation of ‘Unobtainium’, a mineral essential to old Terra. Jake takes over for his Ph.D. identical twin, who’s killed months before he’s supposed to ship out to be an Avatar driver. In return, they’ll fix his paraplegic legs after his 6 year hitch on Pandora.

you post a link on ur fb. BTW, Joey and I just ha…

Whitney - Jan 1, 2010

you post a link on ur fb.

BTW, Joey and I just had the misfortune to watch this movie that was released in 2007, titled “Terra”. Same story, right down to brother being killed, humans looking for mineral to run their habitat, etc. comp gen’d animation of course. im actually surprised cameron and crew hasn’t been sued over this adult adaptation. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858486/

Yes, the blogging fad is over.

When it was invented, blogging was a giant leap beyond “creating your own website” by hand-coding HTML or using a program to ‘publish’ your site. Suddenly, you could type out your thoughts, embed images and let some other program handle all the layouts, storage, archiving, and hosting. Blogging exploded.

However, blogging is lonely, hierarchical. Comments made it better, allowing you to engage with other people. Still, it’s not a *conversation*. It’s like standing in a room with one person yelling statements and thoughts, then yelling ‘Whatta ya think of that?’

So, here we are, at the end of the Awful Aughts. The automobile in America has pretty much jumped the shark, maybe for good (Exact moment: The day the movie ‘Cars’ was released).

Still, I’m a gearhead. I’ll die a gearhead. The 2000’s coincided with my twenties; having no debt to speak of, a well-paying job, and no one to answer to besides myself, I wasted as much of my own money and my inheritance on cars as I could. Motorcycles are much cheaper and more fun…wish I’d figured that out 10 years ago. Anyway, onward. This list is pretty-much chronological:

In the beginning, man created paper, and it was good. It was permanent, stateful, and could be used for warmth if the auditor got too close. Man could transfer the paper to another man, certain his message would get across. Man could doodle and mark-up the paper. For a backup solution, there was carbon paper. And, there was much rejoicing.

And, lo, God saw Man enjoying paper, and said, ““If as one people they use the paper, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” And so, God invented e-mail and the Blackberry. And suddenly, man’s communication was much faster, yet intent and meaning was lost. Yet, there was much rejoicing. (?)

Could this be extended for security frameworks too…

Shubhashish - Nov 0, 2009

Could this be extended for security frameworks too.

Randomness:

* This month marks 2 years since Mom’s cancer was diagnosed. She’s still kickin'.

* I’m going to try and blog much more. Facebook’s great. Twitter’s great. Sometimes, though, I just can’t hear myself think in there. Blogging’s much more composition and reflection.

* I’ve learned to say ‘No’. I’ve de-committed some things at church. Whitney and I have worked out some ways to get time for ourselves: Every other Saturday morning, we get ‘Off’. The opposite parent takes the kids, no questions asked. It’s still a work in progress, but I like where it’s going.

I was staring at myself in the mirror a moment ago, washing my hands, thinking of a time years past, when I sat across from a Hazel Eyed woman:

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked.

“What?”

“You keep doing sign language when you’re talking. Why?”

It was the Fall of 1999. That summer, I thought I’d lost my soul mate, the woman who’d taught me a little bit of sign language. Her name was Whitney. I loved her so much I couldn’t see straight. Even this sparkling gal from Menifee County couldn’t cheer me up.

User story:

As a developer, I want to tag my code every so often, so that other people can get code that’s stable, not bleeding edge.

This is the classic CVS usecase: Commit your code, and then tag it as ‘Production’ or ‘Released’ or whatever. In CVS, that entails touching every file. In Subversion, that’s a constant-time operation you can do wholly on the server.

Let’s say you want to copy your current /trunk to /tags/release-1.0 tag. Issue this sort of command

[Insert obligatory apology/observation about not updating my blog here]

It’s a brand new me, folks. Less introspective. Focused on “What” and “How”, not “Why.” ‘Why’ is an empty question where one can spend one’s whole life.

I’m 30 now. I’m married. I have two kids I love very much. I also have no idea who I really am. Most of this blog from these many years is complete B.S., I’m afraid–at least the stuff about me.

Someone gunned-down George Tiller in cold blood in his church Sunday. That he happened to be an abortion clinic doctor is immaterial. Vigilante justice, retribution, and demagoguery are not roads we need go down in this country–it’s been done before.

i don’t get ur reference to Marat….esp since tha…

Whitney - Jun 2, 2009

i don’t get ur reference to Marat….esp since that wasn’t “in this country” (see entry)……..

???

It’s a stretch, I admit. We haven’t been there in this country, but France has, and it’s a bitter lesson. That’s the parallel I was trying to draw.

I enjoyed Memorial Day quite a bit. Our trip to Kings Island (formerly Paramount’s Kings Island) was great. I would actually call it an achievement–we didn’t overtire ourselves, and we never had a desire to strangle one another.

For the Combs clan, that’s an achievement.

We got there at 6pm Friday, having checked-in to our excellent Courtyard Inn in Blue Ash and settled our stuff. A 20 minute wait for our Gold passes later, we were in the park and headed towards Nickelodeon, standing in awe of the new ride, Diamondback. As I’ve tweeted and Facebooked—WOW, what a ride. Beautiful, graceful curves–it’s a transcendent beauty that’s really themed the wrong way. The ride’s not a snake at all, it’s a tour de force of elegance and grace. A shark theme would have been better.

Linky

Simply put, this regulation will be the end of the automobile industry (and possibly the automobile itself). They want 42mpg fleet AVERAGE? Given current regulations, the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid gets 42mpg average. Nearly EVERY OTHER CAR on the road will underperform.

They want these regulations by 2016…understand, that’s ONE GENERATION in automotive terms, given the 5-year product lifecycles the carmakers deal with. The 2011 and 2012 cars are already done and in the pipeline at this point.

We have a socialist gov’t now. whatdya expect?

Whitney - May 2, 2009

We have a socialist gov’t now. whatdya expect?

I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car:
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time.
We fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar.
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime.

So, as anyone who’s followed my blog for a year or more knows, I got motorcycle fever last spring and summer.

It all started innocently enough. I got a ride on my father in law’s scooter (hey, I had the helmet already thanks to autocross, right?) It was something of a disaster–maneuvering the 600cc scooter at low speed wasn’t *quite* as easy as I thought.

Long boring story later, I had full-blown fever. I took the MSF course and REALLY learned how to ride, FINE-C, the whole deal.

So, Sunday, I decided to do something completely out of character–I took a nap.

My wife took one look at my cranky-pants self after church and said, “You need a Nap for Jesus.”

Which is a polite way of saying, “Jesus, Harold…take a nap!”

Anyway, my bizarro dream went like this:

[Interior. Lab environment. Soft lighting, muted hum of machinery]

Serge: Hello, Harold. I’m Sergey Brin. This is Larry Page. You might know us…we founded Google.

Naptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springt…

Whitney - May 1, 2009

Naptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springtime for Hitler and does not encapsulate taking the Lord’s name in vain but rather means,“It is not humanly possibly for you to be able to approach being civil at this point much less Jesus’s standards for us thus I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you napped”. :D