October, 2005


27
Oct 05

supreme court problem

At the gym this morning in total darkness, I listened a bunch to NPR and watched the various news shows — and the story coming out today is going to clearly be something along the lines of “Bush’s Base Controls Supreme Court Pick” or something like that — being about how these right-wingers didn’t think Miers was pro-life enough to be nominated. This seems laughable to me, as W did everything but say, “hey, she’s one of us. she’ll vote our way” and do a big wink to the cameras. Seems to me that the right wing interest groups wanted her to say what she’d do, and that’s a pretty horrible way to choose a justice, for any number of reasons.

The way that she pulled out this morning, by saying that she didn’t want to divulge the work she did with the President, since it’s covered by executive privilege, is pretext, clearly — she just wasn’t going to have the votes. But it creates another problem…most people think W’s short list is something like Janice Brown, Edith Clement, Edith Jones and Al Gonzales. (Not to mention some conservative white guys like Michael Luttig.) Torture memo notwithstanding, Gonzales is the most moderate of the bunch, but seems to me that he’s impossible, and will have the exact same set of issues that Miers is stating for her withdrawal (executive privilege) because of his time in the White House.

So it feels to me like we’ll get someone from the far right — Janice or one of the Ediths. And Harry Reid’s words today as Minority Leader in the Senate smell to me like fighting words.

Maybe the administration figures a nasty Supreme Court fight will be better news cycles than Rove’s or Libby’s indictments.


26
Oct 05

Motivation

not very motivated today for some reason. don’t know why. most days, time flies by and i barely have time to catch my breath. today, very slow. i’ve got a ton of stuff i should catch up on — maybe i’ll just close my office door, turn on a bit of music and get caught up. some days it’s harder to get moving than others. maybe it’s the weather change — today it’s rainy & very autumn-seeming.


24
Oct 05

One more question

One other thing this morning — I just got an external monitor to use with my Powerbook (it’s a Dell 20″), and it’s really, really great. I’m still learning to use it most effectively.

One thing that I’d sort of like is the ability to have the menu bar on both monitors — I’d also like my machine to remember where things were in each configuration (that is, laptop alone or with the external monitor as well.

Any pointers?


24
Oct 05

Something wrong with Gmail?

Anyone else having trouble using pop3 with Gmail for the last week or so? My mail client (apple mail) just never seems to be able to connect. I’m wondering if it’s a problem with Gmail, some character in my mail folder, or my client. Any ideas?


24
Oct 05

New, confusing mixed feelings about Daylight Saving Time

I wrote a while back about how the first day of DST is my favorite day of the year, because it seems so optimistic (and it happens to fall on the night of the NCAA championship game more often than not). I just really like the extra light at night.

Since Sam was born, I’ve been trying hard to balance a bunch of things that don’t seem to be balance-able (work, kathy, sam, eating right, exercising), at least with Sam as a very little guy, although I’m not sure it’ll ever change, really. But one of my strategies has been to get to the gym very early — about 2-3 times during the week I’ll go at 6a. That’s tough timing for me, but it’s been working out well enough. This morning, though, I woke up a little before 6, and it was just pitch black. Sort of demoralizing.

So I guess this year I’ll look forward to falling back, although I’m not too sure it’s worth the trade…

Anyway, no gym for today, but there’s always tomorrow. Trying to figure out now how to go to the gym on days that I have breakfast meetings….