At my new job, I was asked to meet with our VP. He’s the guy that runs the show at my place of employment, but he does what management he does by acting like a cheerleader. I really didn’t think he had a technical background because when I was asked to do some bare-bones IT work for him he asked me some basic questions about Microsoft XP that I was easily able to answer (and I haven’t used XP since five years ago at $BigFacelessCorp).
I’m always a bit nervous about talking to him though, because he’s very hard to read, he’s from a completely different culture. It turns out however, that he was blown away by my analysis of the log files from $SeekretDevice, and he asked me to explain exactly what I was doing. I explained that, having been given a herculean task of reading through endless log files, I had just whipped up some simple one-liners that increased my productivity twenty-fold. (You can do that at a start-up. If you need to do something, you just do it, documenting the procedure later for possible reuse. That’s why working for a start-up is made of awesome, that, and free sodas and snacks) He wants more detail, so I show him my code. He wants a step-by-step explanation, so I start in saying, “Well, do you know what grep does?”.
It’s then that I’m informed that he built the first prototype of $SeekretDevice in his basement before the founding of the company.
Yea, I was totally set up for that one.
Who won the debate?
I’d probably call it a near draw, with a slight advantage to Biden, assuming we saw a debate that was on a level playing field.
Since it was anything but a fair debate, with the media setting the tone in advance by using the Michael Moore school of creative editing to make Palin look like a moron, and with a totally unbiased moderator (that incidentally doesn’t have a book about one of the candidates set for release in the near future) , I’d have to say that Palin won on points. There wasn’t a knockout though.
I noticed, unless it happened during the 10 minutes or so I was out of earshot, that our totally unbiased moderator failed to ask any questions on border control, immigration or “gun control”
Also, I’m looking for, and will actively link to, obvious GOP supporting blogs that say Biden won, or clear Obama supporting blogs that favor Palin. So far I haven’t found any.
Are members of The House of Representatives still going to try to sell us that line about a looming fiscal crisis which needs strong action immediately, after they get back from their holiday break for Rosh Hashanah?
House bills are well into the 7000’s by this time of year. So why the low bill number on the failed bailout bill? Well, It’s nothing other than a little legislative standard mischief (insert Ben Franklin quote here).
Apparently, what we have here is a bill that had already been passed by the House and handed over to the Senate which also passed it with changes. Normally then the bills go into what’s called a conference committee, to become a unified bill that both houses must again vote on. It’s in here that the magic happens.
The bill was amended in committee with the bulk of the bailout language. Things are done this way because coming out of Conference committee makes a bill harder to amend.
*Poof*, the “Defenders of Freedom Tax Relief Act of 2007″ becomes the “Corporate Welfare for Irresponsible Lenders and Others That Cook Their Books - Anti-House of Cards Act of 2008″*
I should also note that the quick and dirty word count I did yesterday could be wildly off. I forgot that even though we have this “transparency in government” fad, the text of Bills before Congress does not make it into THOMAS until several days after the vote. Since the critters themselves could not possibly read the legislation before they vote on it, I suppose it’s an article of faith that the language of the Bills remain unchanged on their way from Congress to the President’s desk for signature.
* just kidding on the name
…and I can’t find a single bill number. Well at least without a bit of google-fu. I mean, take a look at Google News and see how many mainstream major media mavens miss mentioning HR 3997.
I’m not seeing ABC or FOX news ranking highly in the results, rather it’s SooToday.com and TransWorldNews.
I mean really, what’s up with this crap? It’s twenty fscking ought eight, and the tubes of Intarwebz has had the humble hyperlink since what, May 1996? When are y’all gonna get on the bandwagon? I’m not even demanding a hyperlink, I’d be just as happy as a simple bill number.
Don’t even get me started on the whole bloated mass of the “blogsphere”, 9 out of 10 of which are willing to regurgitate the swill that’s been spoon fed to them by the media, tossing in their two cents in without even dropping a dime’s worth of effort to grasp the breath of the whole story. Thanks for ruining the signal to noise ratio, folks.
Here’s my weak attempt at humor, a blog post from over two years ago.
Oh, and before I forget:
standardmischief $ curl ‘http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3997′|wc -w
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 366k 100 366k 0 0 441k 0 –:–:– –:–:– –:–:– 517k
31626
standardmischief $
Just in case anyone else is counting, that’s thirty one thousands, six hundred and twenty six words, roughly, all mashed together with in the last two weeks. How many congress-critters have read the whole bill? How many legalese land mines do you think are hidden within? Will we get another perpetual PATRIOT act or another DMCA? What are the odds?
