I know this comes a day late, but conservatives continue to amaze me. First of all, as I’m sure you’ve heard, they’re accusing Barack Obama of being unpatriotic because he stopped wearing his American flag pin.
I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism.
Well, it’s human nature to fear what you don’t understand, so it should come as no surprise that this outraged conservatives who don’t understand the concept of having your words and actions mean more than wearing a pin on your lapel while ordering U.S. Troops to their deaths. Scared shitless, they paint Obama as being unpatriotic.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the job Barack is applying for is not really a “good” job; I have a hard time imagining that anyone who runs for President is doing so because they think America is worse than, say, Kazblackistan.
But Obama isn’t the only one catching it from the conservatives. They’re also pissed at Google for commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Sputnik launch. Apparently, acknowledging actual events is also to be filed under “unpatriotic.” Never mind that Google is a technology company and that they are recognizing one of the most important scientific events of the twentieth century, one which heralded the Space Age and helped usher in an era of incredible technological advancement. No, Google is obviously run by a bunch of commies.
Conservatives argued that Google is unpatriotic because it honored the Sputnik launch, but not Memorial Day or Veterans Day:
It’s a kick to your belly. I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks…but why not celebrate the struggles that we’ve come through as a people?
To begin with, honoring the Sputnik launch celebrates what we’ve come through not just as Americans, but as a global society. Sputnik is a symbol of the Space Race and the Cold War, and Humankind as a group has grown tremendously due to it’s launch. And here’s another thing: Google is a company with an international presence and most of the rest of the world could give a shit about our military holidays, especially when we’re running around invading anyone who displeases us.
Ultimately, Stuart McKenzie summed it up best:
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This is a bit counter-intuitive, but water and electronics don’t play together very well. Thanks to having this bit of inside knowledge, I almost always put my cell phone in a plastic bag before I go cycling with it, just in case it rains.
I specifically say “almost always” because I forgot to do so when I went riding Sunday. It was actually already raining when I left the house, so I really can’t explain the oversight. And it didn’t just rain lightly, it poured. At one point, it was raining with such ferocity that it became hard to keep the front wheel moving in the proper direction (which is forward, by the way).
Not surprisingly, my phone was not thrilled about being poured full of water and decided it would deprive me of having a working screen as punishment. It’s times like these that you realize why phone designers decided to put a screen on phones becuase it’s a remarkably inconvenient device when rendered without screen. Another realization that you come to is that all the phone numbers are stored in the phone, not in your head. Also inconvenient when you can’t access them any more.
But, thanks to being both Dutch and Tall, I am extrasupersmartified, which gives me superior phone repair skills. This particular repair was very complicated and involved things like circuit boards, soldering, lithium-ion batteries, liquid crystal, light-emitting diodes and some blinky stuff. Thankfully, I did not need to interact with any of them. Here’s a high-level overview of what the process involved: powering the phone down, taking the battery out, wiggling stuff, putting the battery back, and powering the phone back on. A critical factor in a successful repair is not being surprised that the repair worked.
Beene had a rough week. Like a canine Goldilocks, she kept getting up on either the good couch, our bed, or the guest bed while we were out. Every day we would come home, check the furniture, find the tell-tale little black hairs all over and go yell at her. Each time, she assumed the process would end with her being killed, thus she responded with a fair and equal response: cowering, peeing, and howling like she was being forced to walk on the surface of the sun.
This happened every day for a week. The problem with Beene is that she goes to this place in her head where she doesn’t associate us pointing her nose at the couch and saying “No!” with her having been on the couch. She just figures we’ve lost it and that idea makes her piss herself. (That’s a lot of pee, by the way.)
I already mentioned that this was happening every day for a week, so it got to be routine for us to yell at her when we got home and, since she wasn’t associating our being upset with her with her actions, she got to thinking this was just how the world was going to be from then on. It was really kind of sad to see a change in her mood; although she was fine and seemed happy, she wasn’t her goofy self.
Miraculously, last Saturday was the last time she got up on anything. She stopped getting yelled at and the routine ended, but she still didn’t get back to her usual self. All that changed Wednesday when Michelle and I were hanging out and decided to crank some good ol’ Grunge. Cue “Alive” by Pearl Jam. Beene got really into it.
I don’t know if it’s because she’s a metal head or if it’s because she identified with the lyric, “I’m still alive” but she found herself and turned back into the 140 pound jumping Dane we have grown to love, despite the various injuries she’s inflicted on us.
So there you have it: Beene’s Anthem is “Alive”, by Pearl Jam.
The Dutch aren’t know for being a courageous people. In fact, it isn’t uncommon for Americans to refer to alcohol as “Dutch Courage” – implying that the only time the Dutch are courageous is when they’re hammered.
But the truth is that the Dutch are simply a practical people. The Dutch freely gave New Amsterdam to the English not because they didn’t dare fight, but because New Amsterdam was run by an evil corporation which treated the settlers on Manhattan Island very poorly. The English guaranteed the Dutch that they could continue to live as they had before, without loss of status or possessions. It was much more sensible to maintain the status quo than to die fighting for a company that had no respect for their lives in the first place. The English honored their commitment and the Dutch continue to have a strong presence in New York City today. (The term Yankee is based on the Dutch name, “Jan Kees.” Even the American word “boss” comes from the Dutch word “baas”.)
The point is that we’re not likely to get into a fight when it doesn’t make sense. But we can fight like Bruce Lee on eight shots of espresso if we have to, and that is exactly what we did when Spanish invaded the lowlands in 1568.
I’m sure some of my history is a bit off here, but I’m not about to do any real research and get this 100% right when going from memory will get me about 80% of the way there.
The Spanish were a major world power during the 1500′s and routinely invaded other countries. Compare Sixteenth Century Spain to a modern-day United States, if you will. The Dutch rose up and fought them for 80 years. And I’m pretty sure they weren’t drinking.
During the occupation, the Spanish Duke of Alva was Governor General in the Netherlands. The areas he controlled were densely populated lowlands, protected from flooding by dikes and windmills. (Few people realize that the reason the Netherlands have so many windmills is because they ran the pumps that kept the lowlands dry, as much of the Netherlands lie 10 meters below sea level.) He controlled by force and laid siege on any city which resisted his rule.
One of the major cities in this region is Leiden, which happens to be my parent’s home town. Leiden resisted Alva’s rule, and Alva besieged it in October 1573. It was a difficult city to besiege as the city defense works were very strong (and still stand today) and the soil around the city was very poor and difficult encamp. The leader of the Dutch rebels, William the Silent, tried to help Leiden by sending an army to help. Alva halted the siege in April 1574 to defeat the army of Orange in nearby Mookerheyde before returning in June to continue the siege. The city thought of surrendering because the defeat of their army meant there was nearly no chance of relief, but held on because they knew that the Spanish would kill them all to set an example, as had happened during earlier sieges of Naarden and Haarlem. Thousands of inhabitants died of starvation as a result.
But in September 1574, the Dutch decided to cut the dikes in the south to let the seawater in and flood out the Spanish. As it happened, due to a paucity of storms, it took months before the water rose high enough to lift the siege. On 2 and 3 October, the storms finally came and flooded the lowlands. The floods caught the Spanish by surprise and they lifted the siege and retreated.
The city was on the verge of collapse due to starvation. According to legend, an orphan boy named Cornelis Joppenszoon crept out into the flood plains in search of food after the Spanish left. He found a pot of Hutspot which had been left behind.
October 3 is celebrated every year in Leiden by eating Hutspot. It isn’t known exactly what ingredients were in the Hutspot found by Cornelis, but the typical recipe is to boil equal parts potato, carrots, and onions and mash them up with butter and serve it with sausage. This year, we celebrated a few days early and had our friends over to, as Michelle put it, “all be Dutch for an evening.” Keep dreaming. We had a great time and all pitched in to put a bit of a modern twist on the traditional recipe. Jess graciously made the recipe available on Hogwash.
I’ve been working on one particular product, DM FileManager™, for about three years. Although the product is super rich and stable, things that would make a product ready for the public haven’t really been done yet, such improving error handling and building an install script to make it easy to install on any server. I’ve been pushing hard the last few weeks to get this part of the product built out so that it can be considered a public beta and ready to be installed for some clients who have shown interest in having the product loaded.
This is a very detailed process, and requires carefully going through the entire product and tying down all loose ends. Every software product undergoes this process, and some companies are better at it than others. Apple seems pretty good at it and Microsoft seems to consider this process “a waste of time”. This made me think about how differently Apple and Microsoft are perceived by the community.
Lets call a spade a spade and recognize that all software has flaws and could be easier to use or be a little more flexible. I know this is true because I have no piece of software on my computer which reads my mind and is 100% reliable. I’m a bigger fan of Apple’s products than Microsoft’s, but I’d be fooling myself if I were to pretend that Apple products don’t have flaws and aren’t sometimes as frustrating to use as Microsoft’s products can be. Conversely, despite all their problems Microsoft has some great products that make my professional life much easier, such as the .NET Framework and C#. But there is a huge disparity between how the developers at each company are perceived by their users.
Users of Apple products generally perceive the developers in Cupertino to be working their honest little butts off, selflessly devoting their lives to building the best software possible to serve our lives better. Each developer at Apple has a halo over their smiling heads and have pictures of every Apple user pinned up in their cubicle.
On the other hand, users of Microsoft products generally perceive Redmond to be a balmy 5000°F, and the developers there have spiked tails and carry Voodoo dolls of their users around with them, just in case they need to let off some steam. I know the guy who built the Visual Studio’s debugger has mine and hates my guts.
I remember when Safari was released for Windows, I had a discussion about it with a friend who happens to be a loyal Apple user. I complained that Safari is nothing more than a pain in my ass because all it does is give me one more browser to develop against without providing key functionality that can’t be found in Firefox. His reply? “Yes, they do their best to be standards-compliant, but I agree they aren’t quite there yet.” If we had that conversation about a Microsoft product, it would have ended with us forming a mob and carrying torches over to Redmond.
unpatriotic because he stopped wearing his American flag pin.
I almost always put my cell phone in a plastic bag before I go cycling with it, just in case it rains.
come home, check the furniture, find the tell-tale little black hairs all over and go yell at her. Each time, she assumed the process would end with her being killed, thus she responded with a fair and equal response: cowering, peeing, and howling like she was being forced to walk on the surface of the sun.
implying that the only time the Dutch are courageous is when they’re hammered.
things that would make a product ready for the public haven’t really been done yet, such improving error handling and building an install script to make it easy to install on any server. I’ve been pushing hard the last few weeks to get this part of the product built out so that it can be considered a public beta and ready to be installed for some clients who have shown interest in having the product loaded.
