OutdoorType

63.3% Turnout, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

November 2008 Unofficial Results for my Fairfax County Precinct as found on the Virginia State Board of Elections.

Pretty sure I did the math right on this. (Haven’t done the research to see how that compares to previous elections. Perhaps some other night).

Here are some stats from my 11th Congressional District:

Precincts Reporting:
165 of 166 (99.39%)

Voter Turnout:
344,803 of 474,971 active voters (72.59%)
344,803 of 487,078 total voters (70.79%)

We also voted 64.43% to 36.61% for Warner of Gilmore. Whew.

Thanks for the heads up @samerfarha…

My Twitter feed is locked (mostly – you can always see the latest in blog’s sidebar), so here’s a recap of this morning’s micro-live blogging of my early morning voting experience (in chronological order – times as of 5:15pm or so):

• Going to bed now (so I can get up at 5am, head to my polling place, and vote for Obama)   about 19 hours ago from MoodBlast  
• In line to vote, Burke, Va. First people arrived 4:55am. Guessing ~250+ ahead of me. Bailout time = 7:15, then I have to hit the road.   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator 
• http://piurl.com/iec : current location   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator
• http://twitpic.com/juyv – Guessing at least 100 people behind me in line.   about 11 hours ago from TwitPic  
• Polls are open! W00t!   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator 
• Temp=56deg (not too bad really). Parking lot & backup lot full, though 1st voters starting to leave.   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator  
• Still too dark to read out here, grabbed my headlamp but forgot it in the car. Three cheers for iPhone!   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator 
• New blog post: Part of the line to vote. http://tinyurl.com/5b3kcg    about 11 hours ago from Twitter Tools 
• In the building!   about 11 hours ago from Twittelator 
• New blog post: I voted http://tinyurl.com/69c9al    about 11 hours ago from Twitter Tools 
• Done! I was #147 E-K.   about 10 hours ago from Twittelator 
• New blog post: I voted http://tinyurl.com/5bno7t    about 10 hours ago from Twitter Tools 
• Bunch of McCain supporters in crystal city directly across from PNT. Shocker.   about 9 hours ago from Twittelator 
• Watching @BarackObama vote (for himself) on @CNN    about 9 hours ago from web  
• Got to pause the election fun and do work stuff at work now.   about 7 hours ago from web  

Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings can’t. Do you see?
- President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, The West Wing

If you’ve ever read this blog you know I’ve got a thing for Sorkin. I’m a sucker for his writing, I’m a sucker for his stories, I just can’t get enough. And, as I watched Obama’s speech tonight, as I listened to his words, it was hard not to hear the voice of Sorkin’s greatest characters echoing around the back of my head.

At one point tonight my iChat status read: “It really does sound like Sorkin came in and punched up the speech a bit,” so you can imagine my happy surprise when I flipped from PBS’s excellent convention coverage to MSNBC in time to hear Brian Williams say that listening to the speech reminded him of two things… He mentioned quickly how he was left wistfully thinking of Tim Russert and then went on to say that the other thing he was thinking of was Aaron Sorkin.

Williams then went on to quote the parts of the speech that sounded like they’d been pulled almost directly from the movie The American President. The American President, a movie about a dashingly youngish President fighting an uphill re-election battle against a gnarled old Senator. Sound a bit familiar?

The speech sounded familiar too, but not in the “I think he blatantly ripped of Sorkin” kind of way. No, it was more that he did what good writers do, he developed a rhythm, he developed a cadence, and it worked for him. I mean, at one point tonight Olbermann had to cut off Pat Buchanan because Buchanan could not stop gushing over how great the speech was! Srsly.

Now, I’ve found an early copy of the speech and a script of The American President and pulled out a couple of the passages Brian Williams mentioned…

The American President:

I’ve known Bob Rumson for years. I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it.
- President Andrew Shepherd

Tonight’s Speech:

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care, it’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.
- Sen. Barak Obama

And then, more from The American President:

A.J.
Would we have won?

SHEPHERD
If we’d had to go through a character debate three years ago, would we have won?

A.J.
I don’t know. But I would’ve liked that campaign. If my friend Andy Shepherd had shown up, I would have liked that campaign.

Tonight’s Speech:

And just as we keep our keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America’s promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next Commander-in-Chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.
- Sen. Barak Obama

Later on in the coverage NBC News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell reiterated the Sorkin connection. I definitely got a big kick out of that.

And now, I’ll finish with one last snippet from The West Wing where Sam explains how the great writers do it…

 MALLORY

One good moment is good.

SAM
Oh, I’m not complaining. I’m saying one good moment is great. It’s a golf shot. I’ve got to get back in there. That’s where it’s happening. (beat) You came by just to tell me you liked the speech?

MALLORY
“This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.”? I’m weak.

SAM
Yeah. I think I stole that from Camelot.

MALLORY
Let me get you home. I don’t think you’re going to make it.

SAM
Yeah. I don’t think I’m going to make it, either.

MALLORY
Camelot?

SAM
Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

THE WEST WING
“20 HOURS IN AMERICA PART II”

UPDATE: Apparently 11PM is past my bedtime now… I was just watching the March 3 edition of The Daily Show (thanks Verizon FIOS DVR!) and Jon Stewart just totally made my joke (as seen below)!

I just hope whoever is elected in November can answer the damn phone before the 6th freakin’ ring!

It’s somehow reassuring to me that our law makers have always been preoccupied with minutia. In a story about a penny auction that raised $10.7 million dollars we learn this about the US Congress…

The collection of 301 cents featured some of the rarest and earliest examples of the American penny, including a cent that was minted for two weeks in 1793 but was abandoned because Congress thought Lady Liberty looked frightened.

Of course, according to Wikipedia, not a whole lot else happened in US politics back in 1793… other than the following:

• February 25 – George Washington holds the first Cabinet meeting as President of the United States. (which must have been where he set the precedent of making every member of his cabinet resign before starting his second term)

• February 27 – The Giles resolutions are introduced to the United States House of Representatives asking the House to condemn Alexander Hamilton’s handling of loans.

• March 4 – George Washington is sworn in as President of the United States in Philadelphia, for his second term.

Looks like a deal has been reached (tentatively) and eventually I might have as much as $600 in my pocket to do with as I please. Instead of stimulating the economy though, I’ll probably end up like Charlie…

From Season 3, Episode 17 “Stirred”
Original Air Date: 27 March 2002
(Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin & Eli Attie)

LEO
Yeah, it sounds like you’re getting tripped up by 1783.

CHARLIE
Which is?

LEO
HR 1783; it’s a tax rebate from last year.

CHARLIE
Why would that affect my return for this year?

LEO
Did you get a tax rebate last year?

CHARLIE
Yeah.

LEO
There’s the answer.

CHARLIE
Where’s the answer?

LEO
Your rebate came off of this year’s taxes. That’s how we paid for it.

CHARLIE
Hang on. The money I got back last year has to be paid for?

Read the rest of this entry →

I don’t often watch the local news, so I am maybe a little slow coming to this story, but it’s really quite funny I think, especially as the student goes to my old high school.

I’m not sure if back in the day I would have ever called up a school administrator, but I did get all “radical” when I put together my zine senior year. This was back in the day when the series of tubes were relatively narrow and the graphical web browser was just about to be invented. Pages photocopied in the school library and held together by scotch tape were as high tech as a kid could get back then (but we still complained about going to school in three inches of snow! Sure kids in the midwest and northeast walk uphill both ways through snow drifts as tall as two story buildings, but have you seen the drivers in DC attempt to maneuver on slushy streets? It’s not safe in the least bit and school officials should do a reality check a little more often). In any case, I should scan the pages of my zine and post them someday. Enough of the editorializing, on with the Controversy of the Student and the School Administrator’s Wife!

Summary from the Post:

But a phone call to a Fairfax County public school administrator’s home last week about a snow day — or lack of one — has taken on a life of its own. Through the ubiquity of Facebook and YouTube, the call has become a rallying cry for students’ First Amendment rights, and it shows that the generation gap has become a technological chasm.

It started with Thursday’s snowfall, estimated at about three inches near Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke. On his lunch break, Lake Braddock senior Devraj “Dave” S. Kori, 17, used a listed home phone number to call Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer for the county system, to ask why he had not closed the schools. Kori left his name and phone number and got a message later in the day from Tistadt’s wife.

And a recording of the message as seen on YouTube:

The video transcribed (which does nothing to show the anger and contempt heard in Mrs. Tistadt’s voice):

This is Candy Tistadt, Dean Tistadt’s wife. This message is for Dave Kori. How dare you call us at home?! If you’ve got a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it. My husband was up at 4 o’clock this morning, trying to decide the best thing to do, to send you to school, on a day when the weather man is calling for one thing and another thing happens. You don’t begin to know what you are talking about, and don’t you ever call here again! My husband has been at the office since 6:30 this morning, so don’t you even suggest that he purposely didn’t answer his phone. He is out almost every single night of the week at meetings for snotty-nosed little brats, and he may not have called you but it is not because he’s home because it snowed. Get over it kid, and go to school. Get an education, that’s what you’re there for.

laundromat, originally uploaded by catbagan. used under a Creative Commons license.

This started off as a simple comment to this post. I was about to write something like “ha ha, that does sound like an excessive amount of laundry. ” But then I got to thinking about the subject a little more and it turns out I’ve got some thoughts about laundry (and I’ve been doing my own laundry since the 7th grade, and that was a long time ago so I have a little bit of experience with the subject matter).

Now, it’s not like I sit around all day thinking about laundry and average loads of laundry per household, but, if I had ever given it much thought I would have come up with the notion that I probably do an average amount of laundry for my household.

Average household size, by the way, as defined by the 2000 US Census is 2.59 persons.

After a very liberal estimate of laundry usage at my house (a hold of two persons), in which I fired up Excel and made a quick spreadsheet, I came to the conclusion that my household does the following amount of laundry (where “loads of laundry” = number of loads run through the washing machine):

• 156 loads of laundry/year
• 1.5 loads of laundry/week

Factors to consider…

My place of work is pretty casual and I could get away with jeans and a t-shirt everyday of my life if I wanted. This means that I never go to the dry cleaners. Ever. Actually, that’s not true, I might go to the dry cleaners once, maybe twice a year in order to make my suit look nice if I’m shooting a wedding, but otherwise, no dry cleaning for me.

No dry cleaning means I wash everything at home. Luckily, things here are pretty easy… Every two weeks or so I have about two loads of darks to wash… Two cycles of cold water and I’m done. None of this warm wash/cold rinse stuff for me. So I’m saving energy there by not having to heat water with the electric water heater. Then, I hang dry all of my shirts, so that’s at least one cycle of the dyrer that is spared.

Now, the energy savings stop when it comes time to wash large, bulky items (like towels and sheets). My washer is at least 20 years old and is a top loading model of probably medium capacity. The agitator is a little wonky at times, so you have to be strategic when it comes to washing larger loads (like towels and sheets). Instead of dumping everything into one load you have to split stuff up into at least two loads (sometimes three) or else this terrible KA-CHUNK sound occurs during the rinse cycle and a buzzer goes off that you can hear all the way upstairs. The sound is really auwful and when it goes off a slight amount of panic ensues and you end up running down to the basement in order to push in the dial and make it stop. And so every couple of weeks, in order to avoid that horrible “the washer is ajar” alarm, I split larger loads into smaller loads and thus screw up my average number of washes. And I assume waste energy.

If I had my dream washer, a giant front loading model, I could save on water and energy and reduce the number of loads (also I could wash my sleeping bags at home and not have to take them to the coin laundry in Annandale next to the 7-11 where all the day labourers hang out – not that there’s anything wrong with day labourers… it’s really the coin laundry bit I don’t like). Unfortuneately a large front loading washer is not in this year’s budget and so I will have to made do with what I’ve got (unless someone can point out the savings that might be obtained by reducing the number of laundry loads performed at my house).

Thanks to John Catbagan for letting me use his photo. Check out his work on Flickr. 

The dream…

It was mid day, summer, and I stood in front of a familiar looking two car garage. It was quite possibly the old Reston AR commune house from a few year’s back, but you’re never really sure in dreams. In the garage was a mid-sized truck, green and with a longer bed (maybe 8 foot) and the bed of the truck was covered with one of those caps that is higher in the back than in the front. On top of the cap was a Yakima roof rack outfitted for kayaks. The truck had been backed into the garage.

I was outside the garage and acting as spotter for a driver who remained unseen. From my vantage point the truck had a clearance problem. There was just no way it could pull out of the garage without shearing off roof rack parts. But what did I know? The driver slowly pulled the truck out of the garage, and there was the roof rack, fully intact and without a scratch. The driver stepped out of the cab smiling. It was a miracle.

With the truck in the driveway I had another job to do… I had to instruct the driver on the proper way to secure sea kayaks to his new roof rack system. But who was this mystery truck driver anyways? Why it was none other than the former governor of Arkansas, and recent winner of the Iowa Republican Caucus, Mr. Mike Huckabee!

WTF?

Why am I dreaming of Huckabee? Obviously he’s been in the news a bit lately, but there’s been lots of news in the news lately and I haven’t dreamt of any of the other political candidates, or attacking tigers, or violence in Africa, or anything related to photography or Primal Quest (though I suppose you could make an argument about kayaking and PQ, but it would be a weak one). And I so rarely remember my dreams too, so why this time?

Actually, I have a thought on the why I remembered it part. It was Saturday morning and most Saturday mornings are spent slumbering soundly in bed only this particular Saturday morning I was rousted early by the many alarms reminding me that I should be getting out of bed, and into the shower, and onto the road for a morning day of manual labour and plumbing. So I think the fact that my normal sleep cycle was interrupted might explain the remembering part. And maybe (before my friends call me out on it) I should note that I actually woke up earlier on Saturday than I normally wake for work, so that’s the real sleep cycle that was interrupted.

The Huckabee thing though, that’s still a worry. Feel free to leave your own dream analysis in the comments.