A fascinating episode in the history of american foreign adventures of which I was entirely unaware: William Walker of Nashville; freebooter, evangelist of slavery, and President of Nicaragua. One day, I need to actually study the lead-up to the civil war.
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01:13:39 PM,
Wednesday 4 October 2006
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"Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can't do anything because they're tied up in knots." -Barney Frank. This applies quite tidily to my approach to political philosophy.
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05:42:48 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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The cat isn't as clever as he appears. My landlord just got home on his bicycle, and he ran to the back door and yowled, just as he does when I cycle home. But I'm sitting right here. This means he associates bicycle noise (which I can't hear, but he must be able to) with the door opening, not with me. I feel somewhat slighted.
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05:20:25 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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I've been thinking... the presidency should me more akin to a constitutional monarch than a prime minister. That's the way it's set up... the presidency seperate and distinct from the legislative parties. It was modeled on 18th century monarchs, only easier to get rid of. The Queen still has power, it's just that culture prevents her ever exercising them. A chief civil servant, whose personal opinions were besides the point. The oath of office invalidating party, class or any other loyalty. You occasionally here people talking that way, but it's rare indeed. Vetos would be for badly written or unclear laws, but vetoing something just because you disagreed with the intent was just not done. Then our constitution would make a bit of sense. We are now so far away from that we have presidential signing statements. This isn't a problem with our constitition so much as it's a problem with our political culture. Which I suppose is why "change the culture in washington" is a cliche.
If judges aren't allowed to declare party loyalty, why are governors or presidents? Our legislature has died, and the presidency has stepped in and filled the void.
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03:30:24 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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After keeping a spreadsheet with of all our financial transactions for 2 years, I finally decided to look into actual money management software. Microsoft Money has a free trial, and I've been playing with it all evening. I think I like my spreadsheet better. It does have some major advantages: it would eliminate the data entry errors I make when I type in the stuff by hand every week: it is able to read in account information itself from Chase and Fidelity, and it can take manual downloads from BoA and ING. This would be more accurate, and faster. Instead of typing in everything, I'd just have to review and sort it. The catagories are customizable, and you can do subcatagories, which is sort of neat. The trouble is that it's just smart enough to be dangerous. It pushes you around, everything is wizard-based. I've also been doing the budget annually, it wants to do it monthly. Transfering my 30 months of data over into it would be nightmarish. Of course, I don't actually need to do that. I think I'll try maintaining both systems for a while, and think about switching over in the new year.
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