Owen B. Mehegan's Journal

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

As of today I am 100% debt free. I paid off the last of my car loan and all my credit cards. With any luck I won't have another loan of any sort until I buy a house. Savings, ho!

Obama told reporters he will have to consistently fight rumors that he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance, among other falsehoods widely spread on the Internet. "This is something that's been systematically fed into the bloodstream," he said. He said he had no idea who is doing it.

I don't get this stuff. Why the hell would you run for President if you weren't patriotic? It's not like it pays all that well, or like it's some kind of cushy job. I guess these accusations target the stupid people who can't think critically or consider their sources.

I just saw an old guy walking down the street, with a beard, wearing a fez, ski goggles, and pants with dollar bills all over them, smoking a cigar.

TISF.

"I have always believed that it’s important to go after the good things in life, with some courage and energy, because the bad things will come all by themselves." --My Dad

I've had a productive week. I took my car in for an alignment, finally, and had them replace the worn-out transaxle seal and grease the squeaky passenger-side door hinge. I still need to get the suspension squeak fixed and, apparently, replace the clutch master and slave cylinders. I might do those myself, but the clutch itself is probably near death, so I might just want to let someone else take care of it all at once. Doing the hydraulics might be a fun job though.

I called up our 401k plan administrator to get started contributing to that, only 3 weeks after I became eligible. Amusingly, I had chosen a few funds myself, but I asked him for his take on an "aggressive" portfolio. Only one of my picks matched his :) I think I'll go with the professional opinion. I'm dumping a sizable amount of money into it, in part to offset my Danger stock windfall's tax hit, but also because if I count my pennies right I can drop down into a lower tax bracket and get a big break on that front. That'd be nice.

I emailed a friend from the rowing club, who works in the finance industry, to get some advice about Catherine's theoretical job prospects here. He wrote a nice reply with some useful tips.

I saw Atmosphere last night, great show. I was pretty tired by the end though.

I worked out at the rowing club three times (counting tonight's upcoming workout), and added weight to my lifting regimen on Monday. Ow.

I got my check from Microsoft for the Danger sale last night. Next stop, Bank of America. Then: Apple store.

I have absolutely no plans this weekend.

Change 37910 on 2008/05/08 11:56:01 by omehegan@omehegandev
Note to self: test changes before checking in code.

Change 37906 on 2008/05/08 11:52:32 by omehegan@omehegandev
Updated default db hostname to reflect new location of inventory DB.

I just saw a brand new Toyota Corolla, doesn't even have plates on it yet. Parked on my street. And it's already been keyed.

Bunch of savages in this town.

I had forgotten this brilliant joke of mine until this past weekend, and I wanted to blog it so you can all bask in my comic genius.

Meaghan: "My boyfriend baked me a pie and that's how I knew I should date him."
Muncus (who lives in the Castro): "I didn't know it was that easy! I should start baking pies and putting them on my windowsill."
Me: "Dude, in your neighborhood the only thing a pie on the windowsill will attract is Yogi Bear."

Apparently this made the rounds awhile back, but I missed it, so this may be old meme for some of you: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas.

Let me in on this.

How is it that 204,381 people have installed the Garfield Google app to their Google home page, and that it has a rating of 4/5 stars based on 212 people rating it? Garfield is retarded.

The band of the week is Stereophonics.

If you've ever listened to a band because I recommended them, and liked them, do yourself a favor and go out and pick up any Stereophonics album. They're all good. Pull The Pin is their latest, from last year. They also have a fantastic two-disc live record called Live From Dakota which I'm loving. They haven't played in the US since 2005, so I've never seen them live, yet they seem to tour a lot of Europe and other parts of the world every year. I don't get why they don't come here!

San Francisco is so very lacking in rock music. It makes me sad.

I've been learning a lot more about global politics during the last year or so, and I'm starting to realize that it's all a lot more complicated than I used to think. There's way more history involved, way more strategy, and way more "outside the box" thinking. This week's Stratfor Geopolitical report underscores this pretty nicely.
( Read more... )

George W. Bush to the Pope: "Thank you your holiness. Awesome speech."

See for yourself if you don't believe me.

Guy on the bus as he sits down next to me: "It's only because you're cute."
I laugh.
Guy: "And if you're not gay you should be, because pretty soon you'll be old, fat, and bald and only the men will want you."
Me: "I'm already bald."
Guy: "Well on you it works."

TISF.

Both of the current Democratic presidential candidates have basically the same plan for Iraq, assuming one of them wins the general election: begin steadily withdrawing troops within a couple of months of taking office, create a major humanitarian aid initiative for the country, and begin aggressive diplomatic overtures with other regional actors to get their help in stabilizing Iraq.

Given this week's congressional testimony by General Petraeus, one can only assume that these plans, if put into effect, would be directly contrary to his advice. Which is fine; Kennedy ignored the advice of Curtis LeMay after the Cuban Missile Crisis. LeMay thought we should invade Cuba _anyway,_ even though we had already reached a peaceful resolution with Russia. The generals aren't always right.

My question to you is, if the president ignored Petraeus's advice, and radically changed the US mission in Iraq, removing all (or nearly all) of our troops within a few months of taking office... and if that led to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy, civil war, and lawlessness (seriously: on balance, if it were a lot worse than it is today)... do you think that president would be crucified by the American people? Or do you think everyone who currently holds some form of anti-war stance would say, "Well, the Iraqis had all the time they needed to get ready for this. We gave them all the tools they needed. It's their own fault. Sorry guys."

The rigid sameness of the hipster cyclist look blows my mind. I've never seen a group of people try so hard to look like each other.

1. Unkempt beard that resembles a dead privet hedge in a disused yard
2. Trucker hat
3. Tattoo
4. Chrome brand messenger bag
5. Gigantic chain bike lock worn as belt OR standard U-lock jammed in back pocket
6. Fixie

Optional mods - any hipster cyclist you see will have one or more of the following accessories:

1. Aerospoke or similar wheels ("Due to the very high sales volume of the last year, we cannot keep up with demand for product.")
2. Chopped/inverted/reversed handlebars
3. Handlebars with no tape (what happens when your hands sweat? or when the bars have seen sitting in the sun all day?)
4. Foam bike pad (on the top tube)

And finally, hipster cyclists are united in their LACK of one particular accessory:

1. Helmet

Lamest militant group name EVER
Members of a splinter group of the Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade called the Knights of the Night have recently escaped from a prison in Nablus and are threatening attacks, a source in Ramallah told Stratfor April 8. In January, Fatah claimed the Knights of the Night were the last of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to surrender in Nablus and that the group was defunct.

I haven't written anything of substance in a couple of weeks. I don't have a whole lot going on, but here's some news.

I've been rowing a lot more lately, trying to get out on the bay at least once a week, in addition to my Tuesday and Friday night indoor workouts. I went out this morning in our prized wooden single, which I've never rowed before. It was almost perfect, except that the last person who rowed it must have been a few inches shorter than me, because the foot stretchers were rigged all the way forward. It took me awhile to figure out why my calves were rubbing against the thwart in front of my seat, and by then I was out in the bay and didn't want to kneel down in the boat and fiddle with thumbscrews to adjust it. Also the straps that hold your feet down were confusingly short. There was no way in hell they could wrap around my feed with sneakers on, so I had them loosely hooked over my toes. I wonder if you're meant to row this one barefoot? Weird. Anyway, I rowed to Crissy Field (near the Golden Gate for you east-coasters) and back. On the last leg the wind came up pretty strongly, and when I got back in the cove there wasn't anyone around to help me out with landing the boat. My friend Laurie had gone out with me, but in a shell. She was able to land on her own and then give me a hand dragging my boat out, so it worked out well. Otherwise I was going to have to thread the needle trying to get back on our floating dock without smashing anything, and this in a newly-varnished boat. Nerve-wracking.

Last Sunday we had our first regatta of the season. We rowed the same course we did last fall in our "bridge to bridge" regatta; from our cove out to the Bay Bridge, around the south tower and back. This year I rowed with a friend who is an absolute animal on the rowing machine, but hasn't been in the boats much at all. I think I underestimated her level of inexperience, so I ended up trying to teach/coach her through a lot of the race. I didn't mind and I was not at all out to win, but I think she found it a lot more frustrating than she thought it would be, which is too bad. I know how that can suck the fun right out of it.

I had jury duty last Tuesday, for the first time since I moved to California. For the third time in my life I managed to avoid actually getting put on a trial. Not that I was TRYING to avoid it; I believe in the civic importance of the jury system. The last two times I was called, I simply went, sat around, in one case got put into the pool for a trial but they filled the jury before reaching me... and that's in. This time I showed up and right away got put into the pool for a monthlong trial, I don't know what the charges were for but it was criminal. The judge said to everyone up front, "If you think you have cause for a hardship excuse, come downstairs with me. The rest of you can go home for the day, and come back tomorrow morning at 9:15." I did some quick calculations, then got in the very long line of people heading downstairs. We were all given forms to fill out explaining what our hardship was, and then sent out to lunch while the judge reviewed them. I simply said that I'm in the middle of paying off a bunch of debt, so I have no savings. My company doesn't pay me while I'm on jury duty (they aren't required to in CA), so missing two paychecks would prevent me from even paying rent next month, let alone my other bills. That was enough to get me off that trial, but I was put into the pool for another one that was going to be around four days long; the charges were prostitution and some related stuff. I'm pretty sure I would have had to serve on that one, although I was prepared to tell the Defense attorney that I definitely considered prostitution to be a nuisance crime that blights neighborhoods and should definitely be prosecuted. It's not "victimless." As it happened, they managed to fill the jury before reaching me, so once again I avoided serving.

Other than that, not much daily news to report. My parents will be here sometime around the end of May, and Catherine will be here the last week in May and first week in June (possibly longer), so that should be fun. OK, to say I'm "really excited" would be understating it. I'm on a self-imposed "eight week plan" of trying to eat less crap and work out more. I'm going to skip the erg tonight and get a little "personal training" from my friend Jonathan on a weight lifting regime. I know, it amuses me as much as it does you, but I figured it was time I expanded my repertoire beyond just cardio. My lower body strength is great due to all the walking, biking, and rowing (sliding seat - it's more leg-oriented than you would think), but I'm pretty weak in the upper body department. You burn more calories to sustain muscle, so if I can add a bit more up top it should help out in other areas as well. We'll see how that goes.