mike lawson

They say those two days are the day he buys the boat, and the day he sells the boat. Well, I love my boat. Its been pretty good to me and not given me a lot of trouble, especially given how much trouble it could give me. After picking it up from Shasta Inboards today, where it had just received a carb rebuild, water-separating fuel filter and some gas additive, my two sons and I took it on Shasta Lake around 6PM. Great night for being on the water. Unfortunatley, I don't think the folks at Shasta Inboards tested their work too well. The boat could never get up to speed, and was constantly sounding like it was about to run out of gas if you went full speed and would stall if you idled. Bummer. Guess who I get to call back? Ugh.

Bad things always seem to come clustered together. It’s amazing, really. I don't ever seem to have one thing go wrong at one time, they always seem to clump together and roll into the scene so I can be sure and not focus on one singular issue, but multi-task across many. I'm not one of those "Mercury is in retrograde, dude" folks, but something must be up with that stuff. Seriously. First, my beloved 1994 19' Bayliner CL1952 boat has to go to the shop for a carb rebuild, a new fuel filter and more. The bill will be 500.00! ZING! The same week the 13' awning on my aging but functionally charming 1991 Calista Cove RV is damaged. Insurance is supposed to cover this, fortunately, but my carrier, Liberty Mutual, seemed to think I was dumb enough to have a $500 deductible on non-collision comprehensive damage, even though I have two policy declarations in a row showing I have a $100 deductible. Today I get a check in the mail from them for $487 toward the repair, which is $950, the difference? Yep, another $500. ZING! Now, supposedly they are "working on it" and will send me the difference. And who pays the other $500 in the meanwhile? Uh huh, that's right.

But wait, there's more. I woke up to find my wife telling me the 1994-built Phoenix Spa that came with the house we bought last year is mysteriously empty. Seems the impellor in the water pump imploded. How much to fix this you ask. $500, ZING! Ok, so all of those toys are aging past a decade and this is to be expected I suppose, but they of course all break down at the same time, and of course, all them cost $500. In another $500 irony to top it off, while in Boston last April I was given the wrong credit card back at a restaurant. My Amex got switched and the person who got mine felt OK with charging up about, you guessed it, $500 worth of things before I caught it. Amex didn't send me my replacement card for five weeks, and then hounded me to pay them in full, which I did, only last night saying, "Gosh, you're right, we're so sorry. You'll see a $500 credit on your next statement." What the hell is it about $500? I remember when it took a week to earn that much money. Now I'm getting zing'd for it left and right like it was a five-bob note or something.

Shocking, isn't it? I mean, did anyone out there suspect Karl Rove was the one who leaked the name of a covert CIA official, blowing her cover and ruining her 20-year-career as a spy, ruining their front-business in Boston, all to punish her husband for daring to say Emperor Bush was bare-naked in his Coat of Yellow Cake Plutonium which he claimed Sadaam was trying to buy from Nigeria. Yep, it was a lie, Sorry, call's them as I see's them. With that said, this particular bleeding heart liberal would think nothing of putting a bullet through the head of any Muslim hell-bent on destroying this country, attacking it or trying to anhililate the "Infidels."

I've no use for extremist of any religion, but especially have no use for those who would strap explosives on their own children and send them into shopping malls and bus stops to blow themselves and innocents around them to kingdom come. I'm all for eradicating radical Islamic militants by whatever means are required, even if that means we have to nuke some of them to get their attention.

However, none of this has anything to do with the treasonous act of Karl Rove.

Most disgusting is the rallying around him by the right wing nuts of the Bush party. Make no mistake, if this were something that were done by a Clinton official, there would be an investigation, a special prosecutor, a tie to the president being the one who really did it alleged by the right, talking head whackos like Rush Pillbaugh and Sicophant-Sean Hannity pushing for resignations, impeachments and everything else imaginable. I mean, they went that far over lying about a blowjob, surely they'd all but start a civil war over this one.

Where is their outrage? Where is their righteous indignation? Where are their morals? What a bunch of hypocrites.

Another storm is heading toward the place of my upbringing, the Gulf Coast of Florida. Having done enough damage last year, this year looks like it could well be another nasty hurricane season. My brother called from the road, evacuating, and I think my ailing father and his wife are actually going to exercise the good sense to leave this time, too. Category 4 hurricanes are nothing to ride out. When I was in Florida this past January for the first time in a decade, I was amazed at the thousands of rooftops covered in blue tarps provided by FEMA. Looks like tarp manufacturers are in a safe business.

The new osxrecording.com site is finally finished, for the most part. New header graphic, press releases from OS X-related manufacturers in place, forums set up (though empty and likely to be for a while), and everything is fully functional.

I've been involved in building communities online since CompuServe in the early 90's, to the Gibson sites, to the sites for Merl Saunders, Vince Welnick, ArtistPro, this site and others. One thing I know is that it takes a lot of time to populate them, and that they are an evolving entity. I can whip a site out pretty quickly and these days do one with a ton of features in record time compared to the days of learning 14 lines of code and scratching my head at the concept of nested tables. This is of course thanks to the open source community developing tools like Post Nuke. So, even though I can spit one out over a holiday weekend, I still have to wait and watch to see if the seed grows. I guess we'll see. I'm putting a side block on my already bloated blog site here to run headlines from osxrecording.com. Enjoy!