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So, does this prove that God is a Democrat, given how the election turned out? God doesn’t like Lieberman either? Or maybe God just wanted to give Tina Fey’s career a boost. Who knows? It is more than a tad arrogant to claim that God was behind your candidacy, particularly when you didn’t win.

McCain strategist: Palin thought candidacy was mapped by God

Yahoo! Buzz

Sarah Palin believed that Sen. John McCain chose her to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential race because of "God's plan," according to a top political strategist in the Arizona Republican's campaign.

In an interview with the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Steve Schmidt described Palin as "very calm -- nonplussed" after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. McCain had planned to name Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) as his choice until word leaked, sparking what Schmidt called political blowback over selecting the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee.

McCain strategist: Palin thought candidacy was mapped by God - washingtonpost.com

I think that I have had variations of the actor’s nightmare before. Odd, as I haven’t done theater in 5 years, and I never did that much of it. I was in some form of musical comedy that was a period piece. (The real world antecedent might have been seeing the film version of The Producers musical a few weeks ago.) I was playing a stereotypically gay guy. At first, I only realized that I didn’t know what my lines were. I think that we all had small colored books with the lines and notes in them. At one point, I had to sing some kind of number while dancing with another guy. I couldn’t dance, sing and read at the same time, so I just sort of ended up making it up, figuring that that the lyrics would be so many verses of such a pattern of syllables. We could se the audience. It felt awkward being so unprepared.

It seemed like while I was frantically trying to read from the book with the lines that the text was changing, or I couldn’t find what other people were reading from.

Then the writer/official writer came in during the middle of thing and presented us with some kind of award and sarcastically labeled us as being the worst performers ever. Everyone left, feeling embarrassed and shamed.

We were then eating in what seemed like a basement of the theatre that felt like as cafeteria/restaurant. Everyone was sitting at tables with a few friends from the cast.  Maybe because I cognized that text changing on you was indicative of being in a dream, I asked the entire room if anyone remembered having gone to a rehearsal or reading. A young girl mentioned about having seen the national production. I said “Yeah, but how about this one? This is a dream. I am dreaming all of this right now.” I tried to say more, but my voice got all muddled, like I had peanut butter filling my mouth, and then they couldn’t hear me. I wanted to prove to them that this was a dream, so I turned everyone into an ear of corn, which here all husked. I think I turned them back. Then I woke up and the alarm to wake up went off.

Weird. I don’t recall my dreams very often, but I do occasionally get lucid ones.

When I came home from work today, I was sorting through the mail, and I noticed that I got a  pitch from the National Rifle Association to become a member. I guffawed out loud when I realized what it was.

Bear in mind, I have never used a real firearm in my life. I don’t even recall being particularly interested in toy guns when I was a kid. Not especially opposed or repelled by it, you understand, but it is something that I have no particular interest in, sort like football. I am sure that when I get excited about some of my interests, other peoples’ eyes undoubtedly glaze over in the same way.

In addition to never having used a gun, I also don’t drink or smoke, so from the perspective of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, I pretty much don’t exist.

I wondered if the NRA was just clueless or if someone was trying some kind of prank. (It wasn’t a “Dear Occupant” thing – it had my name on it.) If it was intended as a prank, it didn’t really work, since I find the whole thing a hoot.

I am quite curious as to how elections will go this coming year. I got an email that Rep Joe Sestak will be in Erie this Thursday for a meet and greet with the Erie County Democratic Party, so I will be checking that out, hopefully.

I also posted the event to the Erie Dems Facebook group.

For those who can’t make this, Ron DiNicola is having a reception just before the event at 5 PM at 4134 Commodore Drv.

One of the last major tasks I had set for myself while on vacation was to come up with an RSS feed partners page for Erie Gay News.

About a year ago, I noticed that one of the local bars had pasted in the calendar from our web site onto their site. However, the calendar was out of date. I figured that it would be kind of a pain for them to have to copy and paste new entries and take off old ones every time that I made a change, so I hunted for a script that would consume the RSS feeds that I already had. I found a rather nice one at Landmark Project. Apart from the webmaster initially pasting in the code, there is no further work – we maintain the content, and the other site stays updated.

It occurred to me that there were other relevant sites that could also carry the same code, which meant that the original research and development for the code paid off. I saw it as a mutually cooperative and beneficial arrangement: the more sites that carried the RSS feeds, the more likely that folks would be to find news and events. If I am looking at this correctly, everyone wins! And since it is an automatic thing, no one has to do any additional work past the one time pasting in of the JavaScript snippet.

I wanted to give the sites that carry our RSS feed some extra love, and I also wanted to get the code out there to make it easier for other sites to paste in. I did some database design and coding, and added it on to the existing resource section of the database and also created the new RSS feed partners page. I added a drop down to the page so that I folks could easily jump to the other feed. I have only pushed the calendar and news RSS feeds, but there are others as well.

Hmm, just realized that I should add some kind of indicator about RSS stuff to the resource page. Oh well, that should be pretty quick to do. I should also try to write some kind of article for the web site to let folks know about the new feature.

I have some social stuff for tomorrow, which is good since I should balance out. But I do feel pretty good about getting this done.

Around 11:20 PM last night, it occurred to me that I had pretty much spent that I had pretty much spent most of the day doing computer stuff, so I figured that it would be good to go out and actually socialize with other human beings. (Yeah, I know: “Thanks, Captain Obvious!”)

So, I headed off to the Zone and had a pretty good time. I bumped into a co-worker, who was out with her parents. Just after midnight, I mentioned that when folks were talking about this being the new decade, it was not exactly accurate. (Although, obviously any date/time could be used as the start of an arbitrary decade – October 7, 1982 was the end of a decade that began 10 years earlier.)

When co-worker and I were talking, I mentioned about another co-worker who referred to January 1, 2000 as the start of the new century/millennium. I pointed out that since the years would have been denoted with Roman numerals, and since there is no Roman numeral for zero, therefore, the first year would have been the equivalent of a 1, not a 0, so 2000 was therefore the last year of the 20th century. (Assuming that when folks switched from Roman numerals to Arabic, they didn’t take into account that they were also changing what the lowest possible starting integer could be.)

The co-worker I was talking with went from talking about I (the Roman numeral) to i (as in the imaginary number representing the square root of –1.) I instantly knew what she was referring to.

Who says we geeks don’t know how to cut loose and be all wild and crazy?? I had a fairly good time chatting and dancing, so it was pretty good.

It may be a silly tradition, but it’s mine, darn it! Every year, I tape the holiday cards that I get to the fireplace and then take a photo. I was bad this year – money was kind of tight, so I skipped sending cards out this time. Hopefully, next year things will be better.

It really makes me feel warm and fuzzy to have so many good people in my life. I have a lot to be grateful for.

My dog Heracles decided to pull a Crasher Squirrel and got in the photo.

Who says that I am not an irrepressible madcap? The next big geek project that I wanted to get done over vacation was a secure contest tracking web site for Erie Gay News. We have been averaging about a contest or 2 every week, and I wanted to have a way for the contest sponsors to be able to login and see some elementary statistics for the contests that we run for them (contest article page views, total number of entrants, summary totals for state and zip code, etc.) I also wanted to be sure to preserve privacy for entrants, and so I figured that out as well. (Duh, just figure out what recordsets to show.)

The contest administration has grown and changed a lot over the years. I used to just manually create a form on a page, and copy/paste the resulting emails into a database. It is much more automated now, so I can set stuff up fairly quickly and painlessly, and notification is pretty much a breeze.

It makes me feel good that we can help artists and others spread the word about their work, and reward people who visit the Erie Gay News site with an occasional freebie now and then. This also helps us to make connections with more people, which helps us mobilize the community when we need to.

Hopefully, I will be able to get the next project done as well.

10 years go:: I ended up spending a quiet night at home for New Year’s Eve. It might very well be close to the same this year, although I might also go out. Actually, 10 years ago wasn’t so bad in comparison to the 2 succeeding New Years.

9 years ago, on New Year’s Eve, December 2000, my partner at the time and I went out to the old Zone. I think that we wore M&M boxer shorts. Well, our initials were both MM and it was the year 2000 or MM in Roman numerals, so why the heck not. My leather jacket was stolen from the bar (not fun since it was very cold) and there was some post bar stuff that became a landslides of mishaps. It was annoying at the time, but it made for a good story later.

8 years ago, we went to a neighbors’ post bar party. I am fine with walking, but the partner (soon to be an ex within slightly less than a year) insisted on driving the 2-4 blocks. We found a parking space directly across the street. Unfortunately, some drunken ditz at the after bar party backed out to the driveway and smacked into my car. It left a dent and the car ended up dying anyway later that year, right around the time of the break up.

7 years ago was just after the break up. However, I had already grieved before he moved out and was actually over it by then. (A sure sign that it needed to be over.) Even though I was single, I was just thankful that year that there was no property casualty for New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want to think what would come after a leather jacket, then a car.

So, here’s to a bright and happy New Year for all of us!

I had resolved that I would try to get a few things done whilst I am off on vacation. Yesterday, I did a fair amount of cleaning (the refrigerator – which badly needed it), and I even vacuumed the corners of the rooms, which I couldn’t help but think of as “domestic detailing”, like auto detailing.)

I wasn’t sure how much of a difference that putting the plastic film over the windows helps, but went ahead. My inner sarcastic voice said “Oh yeah. Put up something like Saran Wrap, and you’ll be toasty warm. Whatever.”

Every year, work gives us a gift certificate for a local butcher shop, so I generally stock up and try to freeze in single serving sizes. I got that out of the way, and then used the vacuum food sealer, so I ended up with oodles of bags of stuff. Apparently the domestic theme is “shrink wrapping for the holidays!”

One of the projects that I wanted to work on for the Erie Gay News web site for the calendar page was adding a field for events to tie in the venue resource, as opposed to the resource for contact. In the sort of home grown content management system that I wrote for the newsletter, I had previously added a selection when adding a new event to pick a resource and then fill in the location and contact info. I also had it link back to the resource entry from the calendar page and the calendar RSS feed.

The problem occurs when when a resource has an event at another resource. I typically had chosen the venue resource and then rekeyed other stuff, but that was a small amount of work.

As an example, the LBT Women meet at Presque Isle Gallery Coffeehouse every month. I previously had keyed these in. So, when I added the field for venue resource, I was then able to link to the venue’s phone and web site, as well as for the group. Less keying for me! I thought that might also be useful in that someone might want to call before the event for info, but might also need to know the venue phone if they got lost or there was another crisis.

I also added a field for meeting text, since some of the groups that meet regularly tend to have fairly standard text for their meetings, or at least have something. Copy and paste may be our friend, but having something fill in automatically is better yet.

Yeah, I am a big geeky nerd, but getting this accomplished made me feel pretty good. And since I upgraded the code for the calendar RSS feed, that means that the extra info for venue stuff now appears not only on our site, but the 10 or so sites that carry our calendar RSS feed. (I also fixed the annoying display format for when an event spans more than 1 day.)