smccrory

I need to re-read the constitution. I must have glossed over the section about government responsibility for wealth redistribution and guaranteeing everyone owning their own home.

It's right beside the word "musket."

Dems in Congress don't cooperate with Rep presidents.  Reps in Congress don't cooperate with Dem presidents.

 

What are the odds of either cooperating with a 3rd party president?

Fair point, but at least a Libertarian can exercise veto powers to limit federal expansion.

After I got out of the army there was a group of 10 that hung out and rode everywhere together now there are only 2 of us left the harsh reality is I now live by this saying.

Never look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes you will know you are dead. And I'm good with it.

Since suffering is a given with our aging bodies, I love your philosophy.

I voted him for him back in '12.  Got into a huge argument with a friend because he thought I was throwing away my vote in a swing state.  He didn't like the candidate he was voting for but was doing it for party reasons.  I look at it thusly, you only get so many votes in a life why waste them on a candidate you don't like or believe in.  And as others have pointed out both big parties are in bed with 90% of the same people so how are the outcomes going to be vastly different. 

At one time I thought it was wasting a vote, but then again, when you're so disgusted with the alternatives, why not?  Viable parties and candidates don't suddenly appear - they need time to build support.

So it looks like the plan is the majority is going to go sometime during the afternoon on Sat? I'd almost want to go in the morning so I don't have to fight with people to sit on some of the machines I've had my eye one.

This is mostly what a few of us from Columbus are planning on - we're planning to arrive somewhat soon after opening to sit on bikes and talk with vendors without massive drunken crowds.  As such, we might not be able to connect with other Ohio Riders unless it's at a landmark in the IX at a certain time or for a late lunch.

Did I mention encryption? Sorry......can't help it due to my piss poor choice in career.

Fair point. Here are Dropbox's defaults:

https://www.dropbox.com/security

You can also encrypt individual files and directories on the client side using WinRAR and many other tools but it'll often reduce accessibility to those assets on mobile clients. The perennial trade between convenience and security.

Okay so a cloud solution is the way to go now? Are they reliable enough to the point where a particular reputable service like Carbonite is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future and pricing comparable long term to a physical hdd?

I think so.  I started with Carbonite 5 years ago and loved it, but found that Dropbox not only fulfilled my off-site backup needs but also solved my problem of needing to share documents across multiple computers, tablets and phones, across multiple family members and friends.  Dropbox is SO integrated into SO many other partner products and plugins, I would be shocked if they went under without us seeing a year or more of writing on the wall.  I get 1 Terabyte of online storage for about $100/yr which is roughly what I'd spend on a networked storage device of similar capacity, and it wouldn't benefit from being hosted off-site.

It takes several days to upload/sync your files at first, but once done, it stays pretty caught up if you have a remotely decent internet pipe.  You can also throttle how much it uses to avoid killing your spouse's Netflix experience. :-)

Those orgs still buy votes.  My point is unless you buy a politician they are not representing you.  Votes should count more than money but that isn't our system. 

Agreed, and maybe back in the early days of our republic, coarsely-grained representation worked well enough on its own.  You could sort of trust a representative to act in your interests without consulting you for every detail.  But today, I think that's an unrealistically simplistic expectation because there are SO many details to weigh in on.  We went from less than a million citizens to 323 million and added a whole industrial age, an information age and globalization that couldn't have been envisioned at the time (or if it was, it just wouldn't have been time to pre-scale).

Today, we elect people with pre-disposed biased representing, in VERY coarsely-grained ways, what probably are our interests.  Then we are responsible for investing in special interest groups to apply specific pressure on specific political opportunities.  Yes, it biases the game towards those who have money, but at the same time, it can be argues that those with money are the ones with the greatest engagement in national interests and thus an interest in lawmaking.

These days, if you like to knit, you'd better join a knitting lobby, because someone somewhere is thinking about regulating knitting needles.

Because of this logic, I'm seriously thinking about re-upping my American Motorcycle Association membership.  An eponomous Aeronautic Modelling Association fought hard against the FAA's requirements to register flying things over 1/2 pound, and although they lost on many points, they did win on a few.  Similarly, I anticipate potential blowback from the Oregon ranger's actions which may further remove trails available for ADV/enduro motorcycle rides.

Well the middle class doesn't bank roll those politicians so why in the heck should their interests be represented by their representative they elect? 

Mechanically, that's what special interest groups are for - to collectively organize coherent representation of particular interests.  They're like unions in that they collectively "bargain" for those setting the agenda and writing the checks.

And they're evil if they lobby for things each of us is individually against.  Do you like guns?  TThen the NRA is an awesome flexion of gun owner's interests.  Hate guns?  NRA is an evil stranglehold on the political process.  Like credit liquidity?  Then financial lobbies are wonderful because they stabilize operating room.  Hate the abuse of financial markets?  Then they're and insidious influence that colludes government with capitalism.  It's how it all works.  It's all situational bias.  It's messy and expensive.

It's en-vogue to spit "community organizer" as one of the worst pejoratives a conservative can say, but community organization works just like any other special interest group - by identifying, tapping and mobilizing shared perceptions of interest.  Sometimes I think conservatives spit the term because they know deep down that conservatives haven't been that great at it as of late, yet the Tea Party was starting to catch onto the mechanics a couple presidential elections ago, then somehow lost steam, or leadership, or just corroded to rust like every collective does if not continually fed.

If I'm not careful, I'm going to run out of "Vote Post Up" quota points for the day. 

^^^^^ Love it!

Sorry for you loss.

 

Lost my sister 18 years ago the 16th of January.  She died from heart failure do to Anorexia.

Ditto, I'm sorry sprocket and to the others who have lost friends and family.

Brian, I'm particularly sorry for your loss, even if it was 18 years ago.  One of my deepest fears while my daughter grew up was Anorexia because it is such a hard disease to treat.  Thankfully we didn't go through that.

Voters need just as much blame though.  Especially the jackasses that believe "My party has the answers, your party will be the death of America."  There are plenty of these jackasses.  Too many to count.  These are the people that are propping up the broken system.

My uncle won't speak to me because I didn't vote for Romney. I'm not kidding. I'm blacklisted by family because of politics.

Politics can of course be very personal to people, and it's effortless to generalize and misappropriate cause and effect out of emotion or insufficient time to fact-check and think about things rationally.  At some level, your uncle probably attributes the downfall of America through Obama to you, because if you're not with his opponent, you're with him, and he's the reason why Sara McGlaughlin's cats are mangy or some such loose logic.

41 and had a friend commit suicide this past summer. He had been on strong pain killers for way longer than he should have been for a back injury.

Having gone through a dark period myself with multiple level neck issues, I can sympathize with your friend's back injury.  Spinal issues are very serious, no matter how much we'd like to think we're invincible or have all the medicine we could ever want in the US.  The fact is, the best procedures with the best outcomes are NOT what most insurance plans cover, even "platinum-level" ones).  What they do cover is a cascading slide of one fusion or discectomy into another into another until you're a broomstick, and that still doesn't reliably rid you of the pain.  While some do great, fusion success rates are appallingly low overall, and many patients end up on life-long pain management regimens which results in a drugged-out existence of restricted mobility and pain, pain, pain.  Your world narrows and shrinks.  You think dark things.  You wish not to lash out at everyone around you seen through filters of pain and inevitable decline.  You wish to remove your "problem" from the burden of others.

If anyone reading this knows friends or family going through chronic spinal issues, please keep an extra eye on them and help them get MULTIPLE opinions from orthopaedic and neurologic specialists with track records of positive experience.  I personally chose to go to Germany to have 4 discs in my neck REPLACED, OUT OF POCKET to break the cycle I describe above.

It's a serious thing.  Our bodies (mine at 48) are past their original expiration date and we're no longer mating fodder, so lots of things are changing.  Many of our children are becoming adults and our relationships are changing.  We're having to compete with younger, more physically able men and women.

It's time to retool, to rediscover who we are and what we want to get and give out of the rest of our lives.

And that's a GREAT thing as long as we recognize it and do a bit of letting go of what we expected.

I think continuing dependency is eventually more painful and dangerous than ending it.

A libertarian president would not be popular while in office, but I suspect history would smile on him.

To your point, I hate getting shots, but I hate fatal diseases worse.  The problem is, people don't want to realize there are fatal "diseases" on the horizon if we just keep cooking along as-is.

What's worse is that mutual trust has broken down between business and government, liberal and conservative, scientist and believer, rich and poor, race and different race, etc.  What we need is a big trust-building event, like a corporate rock climbing off-site, for something more resembling 8 years of collaborative problem-solving in areas everyone pretty much already agrees with instead of trying desperately to sneakily capture one another's entire base.

Cooler heads make better decisions that desperate ones.  Unfortunately desperation, outrage and butthurt are too valuable in politics, ad revenue and voter turnouts.

I'm a believer in off-site backups like Carbonite, Dropbox, etc. and I've had to test it a few times. External hard drives can and do fail, homes burn and flood, and it's easy to forget to perform backups if you don't have a sophisticated setup that powers itself on regularly.

Majority of Americans could not handle the freedom of the libertarian party. No one to cry to when you get butt hurt.

Probably right. Dependency is hard to break once it's expected.

How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

None, talk to the server team, it's a hardware problem.

DB problem this morning?

My sisters hubby is going to the show. I might send him your way for the after party. He's a harley guy, so you'll have to take it easy on him

You're alive!  Haven't seen you since '14 Pelotonia escort duties, but then again I don't get on OR as much.  Hope you're well!

In my pants.

Is there hate in there too? 

A few of us might drive up that Saturday morning from Columbus. I think the key is to leave before 2 or 3 pm. I I've been there the last 2 years and it was good for sitting on bikes and talking with reps before belligerent pirates start drinking.

Excellent American Rifleman article on the subject: http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2013/12/17/why-weve-had-an-ammunition-shortage/

Buy cheap oil stocks then go instigate a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Please let me know just before you get to step two so I can join in the profiteering. 

Anyone here work for Halliburton?