babbling blue

At work we have these giant Xerox Workcenter Pro scanner/copier/printer/etc beasts that do pretty much everything short of making you lunch (unless you’re on the Japanese porn star diet, in which case they do that too). The problem is, they never work worth a damn. They’re always jamming and getting stuck. The one on this part of the floor has had to be “reset” by the Xerox guy at least twice already this week. I know this because I sit about 12 feet away from it and I’ve heard him telling people that it was “. . . resetting, it’ll be about 5 minutes” twice. I can often hear the thing cranking away–”attempting to recover”, according to the display. It’s not clear what it’s attempting to recover from. My guess is a hangover. If these machines are secretly alcoholics, that could go a long way to explaining why they’re so dysfunctional. And loud.
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In a frenzy of updating, I decided to update the photo gallery software I use as well. The new software is more powerful and the results are more modern-looking. However, the configuration is much more complex, and I’m still figuring it out. This blog software integrates with the gallery software rather nicely, but I’m still figuring that out as well. I can’t imagine someone who’s not computer savvy getting this stuff to work. I guess that’s why it’s good sites like blogger and flickr are in existence.

I did not yet upload my European vacation pictures, but I’m getting there. I did upload the pictures from my trip to Mexico for Thanksgiving. Clicking the image to the left will take you there.

Note: The gallery/blog integration keeps breaking the gallery links, so if you find one that doesn’t work it’s not a dead link, just a dormant one. It’s easy to fix the links once I discover they’re broken. The real challenge will be finding out how not to break them in the first place!

You may also notice the “Random Photo” to the left (unless I’ve moved it since this posting). It is just what the name implies. . . a random photo from my gallery. You can click on it to see the full image.

Disclaimer: Some images may be rated “PG” but I don’t believe there is anything blatantly NSFW.

You can visit the gallery by clicking here.

It’s been awhile, but I decided it’s time to make a return to political blogging. That is to say, blogging at least a little about real politics, not CTA foolishness and the bumbling idiots in Springfield.

I don’t normally watch many debates, but for some reason I felt compelled to watch both the Democratic and Republican debates this past week. They could not have been more different. The Democratic debate was first, on Monday. It aired on CNN and was moderated (if you can call it that) by Wolf Blitzer. The only participants were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. It was clear that the two front-runners are Hillary and Obama. They didn’t really view Edwards as much of a threat. For much of the debate, Hillary and Obama were at each others’ throats, flinging accusations back and forth like they were playing catch. At one point Edwards commented that there were three people in the debate, not two. The debate was in two parts. The first hour was supposed to be a traditional format with the moderator asking questions and the candidates having a certain amount of time to answer and rebut, if applicable. It turned out to be more of a barely controlled near-free-for-all. Edwards mostly stayed out of it at first, then ganged up with Hillary against Obama. Could he be looking for a ride on her ticket as VP? Maybe, but then later in the debate he turned on Hillary for a bit too. The second half of the debate the candidates were allowed to sit down and were supposed to basically just discuss issues amongst themselves, prodded along by Wolf. The main difference between the first and second halves were that the candidates were standing up in the first and seated in the second. The bickering was pretty unbecoming. The main issues discussed seemed to be health care and Iraq. And how the other candidates eat babies.
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For some reason the server hosting my account seems to be running super slowly and unreliably, often timing out before a page loads. I am not sure what’s going on, but I hope it’s fixed soon. It’s messin’ with my ch-ch-changes.

I decided it was time to spruce things up a bit around my tired, old blog. So I changed the theme, and even renamed it to something a little less unoriginal but equally alliterative. Now I just installed the new theme last night before bed, so I haven’t had a chance to tweak it at all. Please be patient as I make the changes I want to get it lookin’ good.

Also, you may notice that RSS feeds will no longer contain the entire post. I have my reasons for doing that, and I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. It’s not necessarily permanent; right now it’s a trial run. We shall see.

In the header I call this version 3.0 of my blog. While that may be a bit misleading, since this version entails mostly cosmetic changes, I figure that software companies do it, so why can’t I?

For anyone who cares, version 1.0 started on May 5, 2004 on easyblog. Version 2.0 made its appearance in this very spot on June 15, 2005.

Well the transit funding measure passed yesterday, so Doomsday III has been averted.

“All’s well that ends well,” Blagojevich said. “I think the wait was well worth it because the result is very, I think, significant for the people in the Chicagoland area as well as for our senior citizens all across Illinois who are going to see an improvement in their quality of life.”

Oh, shut the fuck up, you horse’s ass! You are truly a first class shit head. It was not worth the wait. This should have been settled months ago.

Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) compared Blagojevich to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other “dictators.”

“Today democracy is dead in Illinois,” said Sandoval, who voted for the plan. “There is no give and take. There is no compromise.”

Ha! And this is a fellow Democrat. While I personally wouldn’t go so far as to call Blago a dictator, he is clearly an impediment to progress rather than a driver behind it. And the state legislators are far from being blameless in this whole fiasco.

So does this mean everything is now wonderful, and transit is going to improve drastically for us? Hardly.

Transit officials warned the job is only half done. RTA Chairman Jim Reilly said lawmakers now must turn their attention to finding money to repair the system’s crumbling tracks, aging buses and rusting equipment, needs that could tally as much as $10 billion.

The funding measure passed this week will simply keep the CTA, Metra and Pace systems up and running as they are now–poorly. But at least they will be running.

(Chicago Tribune article)

I have been a little busier than anticipated so I haven’t blogged about my vacation, or anything else that I intended to. I hope that stuff will be coming up once I get a chance to download my pictures from my camera. In the meantime, I think it’s time for another little CTA rant. But this one isn’t directed at the CTA.

So we in the Chicagoland area are staring down our third “Doomsday” in the past six months. This means that the CTA is threatening to massively slash bus services (eliminating 81 of 154 bus routes) and raise fares (train fares would go up by as much as $1.25, more than a 50% increase). In the previous two Doomsdays, the Governor has offered temporary solutions to bail out the local transit agencies (CTA, Metra, Pace). The first was a pay day loan (resulting in this Doomsday being worse than the last two) and the second was a grant of money that he apparently “appropriated” from Federal highway funds. At the time of the 2nd, in early November, the Governor said he and the legislature just needed a couple more weeks to come up with a permanent solution. They haven’t.

The Governor and the Legislature have continued their petty bickering, acting like children on a playground rather than grown-up, elected officials. The Governor has been the worst offender of all. He has continuously vowed to veto any tax increases, instead preferring some half-baked plan to increase gambling (’cause that’s healthy) in Illinois.

That’s what has come before. What’s happening now? Well the Legislature finally managed to pass a measure to increase sales tax in Chicago and the collar counties by 0.25% (that’s an extra penny on a $5 purchase) and to allow Chicago to increase their real estate transfer tax (I think that’s a bit of a scam, but what can you do?). It passed by the exact number of votes required. So what does the Governor do? In a blatantly transparent move of political theatrics, he refuses to sign the measure unless all senior citizens are given free rides on all buses and train operated by the three transit agencies. Huh? This came out of nowhere! For one thing, seniors already pay reduced fares. For another, the Chicago Tribune reports that seniors as a group are no more or less poor than those in other age brackets, but they do vote in higher percentages. The transit agencies now say they will need to raise fares to compensate for the lack of money coming from seniors. And there is no guarantee that the measure will pass the Legislature.

House Speaker Michael Madigan said Monday he expects lawmakers to go along with Blagojevich but warned of “weakness” among some who voted for it last week.

“The governor would be well-advised to get to work, stop causing conflict, stop causing confrontation, get on the phone, talk to people who are a little weak on their support for his position,” Madigan said on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight.”

Madigan should probably take his own advice a little more, but he’s right on this one. (quote link)

This whole situation is simply infuriating. Illinois is a national embarrassment. There are probably tens of thousands of people wondering if they’ll be able to get to work next week. And Blagojevich plays games. He should really stick to Candy Land, as that seems to be about all he can handle.

RedEye Blog Doomsday News