I went and let WordPress update not only itself but every plugin I have installed as well as my theme. So, now the layout here is buggered up and I lost my spiffy green color.

I’ll have to fix that someday.

I’m bored, so here goes. Some of this is money saving advice so it might be useful.

- I don’t “get” the lady that shipped her adopted son back to Russia. For one Russia sounds like a shitty place to grow up. Second, that flight had to have been expensive. Why didn’t she just tan the kid up and send him to Angelia Jolie?

- Sometimes I forget Amazon.com started out as a bookstore. I signed up for their ‘Prime’ service almost a year ago which, for $80/year, gets me free 2 day shipping on anything they sell. I buy almost everything from them now. Just the other day I got a pull-behind spreader for my lawn tractor from them. Hell, we get our laundry detergent from Amazon now.

- Speaking of which, because we’re doing the cloth diapering thing we switched the laundry soap to ‘Country Save.’ It’s cheap, I think. I never really priced laundry soap all that much. We get 40lbs of the stuff (in 10lb boxes) shipped to our door for about $52. Based on our current burn rate it’ll take a full year to work our way through that 40lbs. And that’s with doing a load of diapers every night.

- A couple of months ago I went to unplug the night-light in our bedroom used to keep us my wife from stubbing toes when getting up to tend to the baby in the dark of the night. Sucker was HOT. Duh, incandescent bulb, inefficient as heck, gives off heat. Ordered up an 8 pack of LED night lights from Amazon for something like $17. Now I have photo-sensitive night lights all over the house. No more dark hallways. Yay! And they all run on less power than that single old night-light probably drew. Double yay!

- I need to update my blogroll. There’s probably 8 sites on there that don’t exist or that I don’t read anymore. Plus I’m sure I added some new ones to my RSS reader since I last published it.

- I’m a big fan of NiMH batteries in frequently used or high-drain devices like video game controllers and digital cameras. Problem is they’re like $3 for a single stinking battery AA at the store. Recently ran across BatterySpace.com and you can buy them for $1 each. Haven’t ordered any from them yet but I will in the future.

- Speaking NiMH batteries I’m a huge fan of the Engergizer 15 minute charger that we got about a year ago. I can no recharge dead batteries faster than running to the local Meijer and buying new ones. Super cool.

- Another bit on NiMH batteries: The “D” cell NiMH batteries I see in stores are just an AA battery stuck in a D case. Seriously, they’re a rip-off. They’re only rated for 2500mAh which is what the AA batteries are. You can get 10,000mAh “D” cell batteries over at BatterySpace.com I’ll probably be buying some soon because so much of our baby gear (like the swing) requires a “D” cell.

Breda Wants Baby Pictures

Alrighty then.

Here’s me at about 3 months:

Truncated RSS feeds that strip HTML formatting. This landed in my RSS reader today:

W <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source

I really wish all bloggers would subscribe to their own RSS feed just to see how they look. It’s the only way I read blogs these days and it’s really frustrating to run across one in my reader that leaves me totally baffled as to what the author was trying to get at.

It’s not off to a good start.

In related news Sebastian is hip to their “New Media Asasult”:

Just to let you all in on what the Brady’s are likely hoping for here, is that we all link to these outrages, and that it boosts their Google mojo. That way when people search on certain things, their message gets out there, and maybe they get some followers. I wonder where they got that idea from?

But seriously folks, the Brady’s are a lot of things, but they aren’t stupid. They are clearly starting to understand new media, and we have to be ready. Be so baited as you might be, the best thing is to ignore them.

Just read them, laugh, and move on. There’s no point in trying to fisk any of their nonsense.

Yep, I’m now a card carrying member of the ACLU and the NRA.

Is that the proper contraction for “It aint’” up there? I hope so.

Anyway, Rachel Lucas has some thoughts on Obama v. McCain in ’08:

We’re done with Bush now and we’re getting a new president. And it’s probably going to be Obama because so many people who otherwise could prevent that outcome simply won’t do it because McCain doesn’t say what they want him to say about whatever their pet cause is. It doesn’t matter to these people that there is no “Reagan” waiting in the wings to take over after Obama pulls a Jimmy Carter on the country.

I generally avoid saying much on this blog that I think would piss off or otherwise displease the bulk of my readers, but this is one case where I truly don’t give a shit because I genuinely believe that anyone who disagrees with me on this is flat-out wrong. I believe it with all of my heart and soul and I believe that history backs me up on it, and that emotion should have no place in a decision like this. I don’t give a flying fuck that McCain is more liberal than we would like and that he’s basically an asshole, because I’m operating with the awareness that he’s still better than Obama by about a hundred orders of magnitude.

Reading the whole thing is a good idea, but this is what got my gears turning.

LawDog’s already pointed out what little the POTUS is actually responsible for. It isn’t all that much. They’re not a god. They’re not a dictator. They do not control our government.

Maybe Obama will drop the ‘War on Terror’ if he’s elected. Honestly, what’s going to happen if he does that? Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to remain unstable. Big whoop. Terrorists don’t frighten me all that much. I stand a better chance of dieing in a car accident than I do meeting my demise at the hands of a suicide bomber.

Of course, given that I support Ron Paul that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I think the ‘War on Terror’ is a pointless endeavor, and good ‘ole police work is what’s needed there.

There is the whole matter of Supreme Court appointments though. I’ve given that some thought and you know what? Of the 9 sitting Justices 7 (seven!) of them are Republican appointees. None of the staunch conservative Justices are due to retire any time soon so I don’t see how we’d actually lose anything there.

Here’s what I want out of this election cycle: Gridlock.

We’ve seen what single-party domination of the federal government gives us: rampant spending. I hold no illusion that a Republican controlled government is going to be measurably better than a Democrat controlled one.

If the Republican party obtains a majority in either the House or the Senate, but not both, I couldn’t care less who gets the position of POTUS. If they obtain both then I hope that POTUS goes to Obama. If the Republicans don’t obtain a majority in either level of Congress and we get McCain that’s fine by me, but I’d actually prefer Republican control of one house in the legislature than relying on McCain to “gridlock” the Democrat controlled legislature.

If the Democrats retain control of the legislature and capture POTUS, well, we’re fucked, but that’d only last for 2 years. I suspect the Republican party would snap-back to their “small government” mantra if that happened and the Democrats would be kicked out of the legislature like they were in ’94.

Thanks, JR, for leaving the link in comments.

Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out

SAN ANGELO, Texas — In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group’s compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

An anonymous phone call isn’t enough evidence to seize 400 odd children? No shit? Go figure.