Middle Western

Does a major happy dance

middlewestern — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:17:00 +0000

Many moons ago, when I was in high school, I had the coolest email address on the planet. antieuclid at therantinggeek.com. I registered the domain name mostly because I wanted the email address, but once I had it I also starting experimenting with HTML. And with getting other people to do mySQL for me so I could set up forums. (Thanks, .) I had a website there for probably about a year before I switched to LJ because it was so much easier than doing everything myself in HTML. My LJ tagline has remained "It turns out that LiveJournal is easier than a real webpage" ever since.

This week, as I was working on closing up shop at SakinaNeedles, I found myself thinking about getting back into non-LJ blogging, and actually doing something with wileysherer.com. But because I’m still not good enough with mySQL and php to update the old installation of wordpress clogging it up, I decided to see what else was out there. And to my simultaneous surprise and lack of surprise, no one else had scooped up therantinggeek.com in the four years or so since I let it lapse. So I decided to splurge on the $7 to register it myself.

With the advances in web software since I was in high school, LJ is no longer easier than a real web page. WordPress has a lot of features that LJ doesn’t, and is rather less associated with fanfiction porn in the broader blogosphere. So after this post, I’m taking this journal friends-only. I still really like LJ for keeping in touch with friends and the many useful comms, but I’m taking my non-personal writing over to TheRantingGeek. There’s nothing there at the moment, but if you subscribe to the RSS feed you’ll be able to see when it’s up and running. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Taxes

middlewestern — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:42:00 +0000

I just finished my taxes for 2008. Some interesting numbers:
The total amount of money I received last year: about $12,000
My total actual income once you subtract materials costs to run my business: about $4300
My official adjusted income once I took the standard deduction: $0
My tax bill: $820.

With all the Republican talk about the need for corporate tax breaks to help “small businesses”, why does no one ever talk about doing something about the self-employment tax? There’s something wrong with the idea that I can’t calculate my tax rate because it involves dividing by zero.

And then we shall take over the world!

middlewestern — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:20:00 +0000

When Mom’s working or out of town and I’m on Grandsandy duty for days at a time, he tends to get a bit bored. In my defense, I’m quite good at coming up with old BBC documentaries he might like and similar, but I can’t drive and he can’t walk to the bus stop, which leaves us stuck in the house. Until now.

Because I was poking around on the bus system’s website, and suddenly realized that he qualifies for the local paratransit! I’m surprised that I didn’t think of it sooner. It’ll take a bit of paperwork to get him an Access-a-Ride ID card, but then we’ll be able to get curb-to-curb rides anywhere we need to go for $4. The inability to walk to the bus stop should qualify him for the curb-to-curb service, and I’m relatively sure that the Alzhiemer’s qualifies him to bring a Personal Care Attendent (me) with him at no additional charge. The website doesn’t go into details about what the requirements are to qualify for a PCA, but he would certainly have a lot of trouble getting anywhere or knowing why he was there if he was by himself.

Not only does this mean that we’ll be able to go for outings while Mom’s at work, but if I need to be somewhere while Mom’s at work I can bring him with me. For example, Mom was working from 11-7 today, and I needed to be at TACtile by 2pm because it turns out both our intern and our Friday volunteer are Catholic and wanted to go to Good Friday mass. To get there by 2, I needed to leave by noon, and that meant leaving him alone for seven whole hours. He was basically fine, but when Mom got home he hadn’t gotten his dinner out of the fridge (he remembered that it was in there and knew that he was hungry, he just couldn’t quite put 2 and 2 together) and Mom and I think he might have gone upstairs while he was alone, which frankly scares the hell out of us. He’s not great at stairs and if he’d fallen it would have been hours until anyone found him.

So I’m definitely glad that we’ve come up with a way around leaving him alone. I just hope it doesn’t take too long to get him an ID card. I teach weekly classes on Fridays, and after this afternoon I’m going to be a bit nervous about leaving him alone again.

Someone please restore my faith in the American people

middlewestern — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:57:00 +0000

I don’t need to be told the answer to this question. I already know the answer. What I would like to know is whether you know the answer to the following question:

What is the first amendment to the US Constitution?

I must have asked a dozen people today from a variety of ages and backgrounds, and only one of them knew the answer. It came up because my own mother called to ask me because she didn’t know. Interestingly, the one person who did know was just as shocked as I was that no one else knew. And not only could most of the others not name any other amendment by number, the closest of them could get to naming any amendments at all was "Well there’s the one where women can vote." I had to work to convince two separate people that "Thou shalt not murder" did not appear anywhere in the Constitution, and then explain why murder was still illegal. I mean, I know there are plenty of very depressing studies out there about the ignorance of the average American, but these are intelligent, college educated people who I work with on a regular basis.

I have half a mind to go around quartering troops in people’s houses until they take a civics class.

Why do Americans ruin everything

middlewestern — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:13:00 +0000

I hereby officially take back anything nice I ever said about the American version of Life on Mars. I would say more about the series finale I just saw, but I suspect that the swearing to content ratio would be too high to be useful. So let me sum up: That ending was even worse than the one for Angel. And that’s saying a hell of a lot.

I will be available for autograph signing on the veranda at 2.

middlewestern — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:38:00 +0000

http://www.westword.com/events/diyfri-1044116/

In the paper edition, the picture was a full 1/2 page. Westword is probably the biggest of the alternative weeklies here in Denver, so it’s some good publicity for TACtile. And somewhat unintentionally, good publicity for Asperger’s Syndrome. Oh well, I suppose we Aspies could use some positive publicity too.

ETA: I just figured out why the writer thought that the "Sherer Genius" pun would work. It took me a while to even figure out that it was supposed to be a pun, because Sherer (at least the way my family pronounces it) rhymes with bearer. But I figured it was just a really forced pun. But if she thought it was pronounced "shear" or "shearer", which is the way some people pronounce it, that makes quite a lot more sense. Anyway, it was weird enough seeing my last name referenced, let alone being referred to by it. I’m going to go watch The Big Lebowski now.

AIG

middlewestern — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:10:00 +0000

I’m listening to NPR about the outrage over the AIG bonuses, and I have to say I’m a little annoyed at it all:
1. Yes, it’s logical to be angry that taxpayer money is going to bonuses for the same people who caused this problem, but shouldn’t we be more annoyed at the fact that the financial industry as a whole has been getting massive salaries and bonuses for decades to do very little? Shouldn’t we be angry at a system that says that daytraders and oil speculators should be rewarded at a hundred times the salary of elementary school teachers? Focusing on $165 million dollars in bonuses just isn’t looking at the big picture.
2. I hear a lot of people, including legislators, saying that executive pay needs to be linked more closely to performance. This might sound like a good idea on the surface, but how do you look at performance? Are pay structures going to be set up in a way where you figure out the impact of someone’s decisions ten years later and then pay them? Or are you looking at annual or god forbid quarterly returns to determine pay, causing an even greater focus on short term returns than we have now and making future crashes like this even more likely?
3. While I’ve heard an occasional nod in the direction of item 1, I haven’t heard anyone say anything even vaguely similar to item 2. I saw the real estate crash coming in ’06, and how it would cause a domino effect into the economy as a whole. I was called naive and told I didn’t understand how markets worked by everyone I talked to about it. While there’s always a certain weird pride in having been right against large odds, I’m really tired of being proved right retroactively. There are a lot of people out there making a living as financial pudits. I’m a 24 year old fiber artist. I should not be better at making these calls than they are.

That having been said, when there’s a collapse in the value of the dollar in the next 10-20 years, I call dibs on my own TV show. Or possible a psychic hotline.

Priorities and to-do lists

middlewestern — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:39:00 +0000

I only have three more days to level a set of characters in World of Warcraft before my Recruit-a-Friend bonus runs out and it takes much much longer. They’re currently at level 44, and I need to get them to 60. I can do it as long as I’m diligent about it.

But, in typical aspie fashion, I have gotten distracted by a shiny new project making hats. I’ve figured out how to make my own buckram, which is a possible new material for stiffening the brims.

So in other words, I want to do something productive, but I have to stop myself until I finish playing a computer game.

Protected: The ironies of PR

middlewestern — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:34:00 +0000

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

Ethics

middlewestern — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:32:00 +0000

My sister is a senior at a “leadership academy” high school for kids who have had behavioral problems. Seniors have to write a senior thesis on ethics, which my sister is working on while she’s home for break. This has led to two entertaining ironies:
1. She doesn’t see a problem with leaving ethics books all over the living room floor where people could trip over them, and
2. She’s coming to me for help in structuring her paper, and I’m starting to get a sense of how hit and miss her curriculum is. On the one hand, she’s relatively well versed on Kant vs. Consequentialism, but on the other hand she just asked me what capitalism was. She’s nearly 19. She also didn’t know what feudalism was. She’s been taking ethics classes for two years and they seem to be treating it in a philosophical vacuum. I wasn’t a fan of most of the core classes I took at the University of Chicago, but I did like the way Sosc in particular treated anthropology, philosophy, religion, psychology, and ethics as interrelated ideas. How the hell does anyone think you can look at ethics in modern society without learning how modern society works?

edit: My mom points out that it’s always possible that they are teaching it, and she’s just not paying attention, which is certainly a possibility, but she’s getting good grades in everything but math and it should not be possible to do that at a decent school while being that under-informed. Also, she has no idea how to structure a paper. She’d actually written four pages of a 19 page paper without coming up with a thesis statement. She was just going to write one page on each of 19 ethical theories. Even at a second-tier state school, she is going to get creamed in college.