Redistricting in Washington

January 5, 2012

The Washington State Redistricting Commission completed its work at 9:55 p.m. on December 31, a full 125 minutes before the process would be taken on by the Washington Supreme Court.

I have been worried.  All of the early proposals (save one, a very rare shoutout from me to Slade Gorton!) would have created a very bizarre, conservative district connecting my rural Snohomish home with all the like-minded people of Wenatchee and Yakima and the long imagined Freedom County.  In the end rural King County was awarded this cross-mountain, cross-divide district.  Instead I will move from the 2nd Congressional District (incumbent Rick Larsen, who keeps “urban” Snohomish, Skagit and Whatcom county) into the 1st Congressional District (incumbent Jay Inslee running for Governor instead).  Basically upper east side and everything up to the Canadian border this side of the Cascade crest.  Will be interesting to see the mix of candidates that emerge.  Both the Republicans and Democrats on the commission call this arguably the most “balanced” district in the U.S.  Good for them…

All of this saved me with respect to my state legislative district.  I remain in the somewhat rational 44th instead of being popped out to the 39th with loonies like Val Stevens.

Be forewarned if you visit the commission’s web: the pdf maps are horrible.  You will only figure out where you are by downloading the Google Earth layers and zooming in…

Leave a Comment » | Politics, Technology and Me | Permalink
Posted by russmcduff

Computing Updates: IV; Pac 12; Eat Your Peas: II (Really!)

January 2, 2012

Today’s computing update is more about Tobae and less about me.  Other than without son and technogeek Mark at home, I am now her technogeek.

Tobae is an avid backcountry skier and for many years part of the team that teaches the Everett Chapter of the Mountaineers’s avalanche awareness course.  And to keep doing that she needs to take an instructors course from AIARE which she will be doing Wednesday through Friday this week.  And she has assignments, the difficult one being to deliver a five minute lesson using “instructor mediated video clips” with the thought these would be imbedded in PowerPoint and run on “somebody else’s computer”.   I’d never plan on doing such a thing myself!  PC vs Mac and different software versions, what are they thinking?   (Tobae “reassures” me that these are ski guides, not technogeeks, but she is the one doing this, not me…)

So instead of skiing today we spent the day in (okay there were many football games on so that was okay, more on this later).  She studied the huge decks of PowerPoint slides in the instructor resources trying to find some slides to illustrate her topic, the “wind slab” avalanche type, and finding appropriate video.  And around 2 p.m. I help her piece together five slides and an imbedded video in OpenOffice Impress.  For we have never had Microsoft Office on her computer, for her entire use of such functionality is that she keeps a spreadsheet of vertical climb (several 100k feet last year).  Then we saved the presentation on a flash drive in old style PowerPoint (ppt) along with the media file and I tried to look at it on my computer.  Mac PowerPoint 2008 would not read it.  LibreOffice would (I’ve abandoned OpenOffice as have many), but couldn’t save it in a form yet PowerPoint compatible.  Keynote read it and let me save it such that Mac PowerPoint 2008 would read it.  Of course it didn’t behave the same as her slide show, but the video did work.  (That this would be difficult I already knew, see above).  But is was workable and I saved it in many forms (some of which didn’t work at all back on her computer, also see above).  And I took advantage of the Microsoft at Home program afforded by the UW contract to buy Microsoft Office for the Mac 2011 on the cheap and install it on one of our personal computers, hers.  So she has it in the most modern format possible which actually imbeds the video right in the file.  But of course who knows what she will have in the conference room at Stevens Pass!

There is a simple rule here.  Never ever use any advanced feature of any presentation program and expect portability.  Ever!

Now to football.  Today was the “January 1 is Sunday” version of New Year Day.  TSN (Canadian cable channel “The Sports Network”) shows some content from ESPN.  We enjoyed the Georgia-Michigan State game.  Tobae is from Georgia, enough said.  But did the Rose Bowl follow?  No.  Or the Fiesta Bowl?  No.  I was reduced to our desperation system.  Finally finding my notes on how to create a proxy through Mark’s hacked router in Menlo Park, using the Firefox “Advanced > Network” to connect to it, and using the ESPN privilege of his cable provider we were able to watch both games.  Tobae had a year of trail-breaking with her friend Tim riding on Oregon-Wisconsin.  Sorry Badgers and sorry Tim, I was pulling for you.  I had to go with Stanford to honor Mark’s girl friend Christie, but I’m sure Miles Logsdon is quite happy with the outcome and that will have to do.  Why neither of these Pac 12 teams could put up points like the Huskies remains a mystery!

So how does this all connect with Eat Your Peas?  I believe I have come on the solution to the lack of a functional US Congress!  While Canada may not have ESPN, they have mastered the art of votes of no confidence and rapid fire elections.  Thus the simplest solution to my need for ESPN while in Whistler and my desire for a functional Congress is to have Canada invade and annex the US.  No longer would Rick Perry have to worry about his gaffes about Canadian oil being domestic, no more “rights” and “sovereign content” issues around material on Canadian cable, and no need to wait more than 90 days to replace Congress when it doesn’t do it job.

2 Comments | Eat Your Peas, Football, Skiing, Technology and Me | Permalink
Posted by russmcduff

Eat Your Peas I

December 15, 2011

I actually liked peas, not an especially picky eater as a kid.  But you get the point.  So did President Obama when he chided Congress in mid-July that there were budgetary issues to deal with (that one was the debt ceiling) and that he wouldn’t let them off the hook (which in the end he did).  And sure enough the resulting super committee failed in its work.  At that time he said no point putting it off six months, “pull off the Band-Aid…eat your peas”.  Eat your peas.  Supper isn’t over yet.  Will it ever be?

Case in point is not the large issue this week.  Rather, my anger yesterday over a press release from my U.S. Representative Rick Larsen (D-WA 2) taking credit for delaying the closure of the Everett, WA mail sorting center for six months.  Many others in Congress were doing the same and this is uniformly how the Postmaster General chose to deal with the pile of letters.  At the same time, USPO is taking in about 93 cents for every dollar it spends.  No sensible business would do this, at least for very long.  Certainly not put it off six months (see above, getting the thread?).  The USPO fix ought to be simple:  their revenue is a user fee.  A one cent increase for a first class stamp in early January?  Make it five cents.

(This is just what I wrote to Rick on the super-duper e-mail system Congress has put in place that checks my address again my nine digit zip code as authentication to communicate with my elected representative.  At least give me a cookie so I just do that once?)

Arguably, this Congress is the worse ever.   Both sides (even though one is right, whoops, correct!).  So is there room in the center for the “Eat Your Peas” party?   With enough strength to let both edges continue to hold breath, turn blue in the face, and pass out?

1 Comment | Eat Your Peas, Politics, Technology and Me | Permalink
Posted by russmcduff