Misterimpatient

Last weekend of July is the annual Father Folk festival, an un-advertised, completely word of mouth event somewhere in the state of Pennsylvania. Though it is held at an un-disclosed location, I can assure all readers that Dick Cheney does not attend this event. not that he would be unwelcome. One performer, who was well received generally, performed an anti-administration number he’d composed and the applause was not what it had been. This is a very Christian, very conservative part of the country. My president, right or wrong sorts. Scary, except that they are also very warm and welcoming. Nice folks but politically, lemmings.

I arrived late Friday evening with the family and, as soon as I grabbed my camera and started taking some video I realized I left my xD picture card at home. I ran out to the 24 hour Walmart for a new card. All they had was a 2Gbyte card, and not on sale. 44 bucks was a bit of a rip-off from the worlds largest retailer but still, I was glad to have it. I filmed a fair number of performances and took a modest number of pictures. Late, Saturday evening, I tried to free up some space to record some more video and ended up erasing everything. Ugh. I turned off the camera and pulled the card in hope that once I get home I’ll be able to un-delete the content. With nothing recorded over the existing data, I just hope the erasing a picture card is the same as erasing a disk: only the directory entries are erased. Fingers crossed.

Of course, I found a small xD card when I got back to my baggage so that I could at least take some pictures. 256Mbyte isn’t too bad. It holds about 80 6M-pixel shots.

The music Friday and Saturday was mostly good but a remarkably small portion of it was folk and bluegrass. I think there was a fair amount of blues, gospel and country. I would have liked more folk and bluegrass but I’m not in charge. I did read a book: The Andromeda Strain. I’d seen the movie a number of times but never read the book. I seem to recall the movie has at least one babe in the story while there are, I learned, none in the book. I’ve not read a lot of Michael Crichton yet. Just this and State of Fear. I liked both of these. I have avoided his work only because I didn’t like the movie Jurassic Park. Silly me judging an author by his movie adaptation. I’ll try to remember not to do that again. He’s back on my reading list.

Sunday is a slow day so far. Taking it easy. Getting ready for the long drive home tomorrow. 7-8 hours of family time in the car. Mad Libs will be fun.

Later…

Filed by misterimpatient at 2:34 pm under Patter
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It was announced by the Army that at least one of their bases has decided that rather than honoring, individually, the sacrifice of the fallen, they’ll wrap these ceremonies in a neat little bow and hold them once a month. The article from the NY Times goes on to explain the rational for this. In short, these ceremonies on Army bases are a new thing with this war. Because we have an all volunteer Army, soldiers have real relationships with their Army base and the community around. In the past, drafted soldiers only spent enough time on an Army base to get trained and shipped out. The commander’s logic here is that these ceremonies are new, require a lot of resources and distract from other tasks. There are other ceremonies in the unit and the soldier’s home time.

The family is what matters here. As long as another soldier’s life isn’t put in harm’s way, these individual ceremonies must continue.

Later…

Filed by misterimpatient at 3:30 pm under Patter, Un-categorized Outrages
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No spoilers here.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this afternoon at 5:10. I enjoyed the book and can recommend it to anyone who has invested all the time and money in the other 6. Bad idea: Start with book 7. If I was in the mood to be sarcastic, mean and untruthful (I’m not in said mood) I’d say the best thing was the absence of quidditch. While that was a good thing, it hardly mattered. It really only underscored the somewhat more adult tone and content of this volume. More than some of the other HP books, I felt this one moved along quickly for most of it’s 759 pages.

Is the book 759 pages in the UK as well? I wondered because the line space in the US edition is pretty wide so that we get only 30 lines per page. I guess this is “young reader” spacing.

Anyway, I bought the book for full list price at 8 minutes past midnight on Saturday, July 21, 2007 at a local CVS(pharmacy). I had checked earlier in the day and the day staff said they had the book out back and it would be out for sale by 12:15. When I got there at midnight, the overnight crew knew nothing about it (infidels!), but they were good enough to go check. They found their one box of books and, after a few minutes I had my copy. They went on sale today for 24.99, down from 34.99 so I’ll bring my receipt back and they’ll give me a credit for the 10 bucks. If I wanted to wait over night, my local grocery store had a big pile of books for 19.99 but had I done that, by the time they opened I would have been 100 page behind.

The last observation I’ll make is that I’ve read on the net that it should take about 9.5 hours to read this book. I know I’m a slow reader but I bet I spent 18 hours, over two days, reading this. Some 10 year old is probably reading two pages for every one I finish AND I’ll bet with better comprehension.

Bring in the clowns….

Filed by misterimpatient at 10:02 pm under Patter
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The family went, as a unit, to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Perhaps the most suspensful part of the event was getting to the theater. Taking our normal back road, a route which never, once, in the past has had traffic, was, last night, backed-up for what might have been miles. We certainly couldn’t see the cause from our position in the queue. After sitting for a few minutes, we turned around and decided to take the much longer, highway route.

We’d left home in more than plenty of time to get to the theater to get good seats. With the tickets purchased on-line, there would be no wait once we’d arrived.

I did what I always do before getting on the highway: I called for a traffic report. As luck would have it there was a lane closure reported just after our exit. It did look like clear sailing until about 2 miles before our exit when traffic slowed to about 10-15mph, with occasional full stops. Remaining calm is not my best trait in these circumstances but I did stay cool-ish. I encouraged my daughter, who was in the back seat listening to “music”, to not sing along as it was growing very annoying, or rather, the vast majority of my acceptance receptors were engaged with the traffic and none were left for her noises.

Parking was easy. Walked right into the theater and got decent (not perfect) seats. Actually arrived almost 10 minutes before lights out. There were a solid 20 minutes of trailers and other assorted pitches before the movie started. I do like the trailers, the rest….

The opening really set the down: very dark. This movie had moments of plodding along. The few scenes with Hagrid didn’t seem to have much energy. I’m not sure Luna Lovegood was done justice, as a character. The DA scenes were fun.

I just re-read book 6 in anticipation of next weekend’s release of the final volume. The movie didn’t really get me going like a b ook does. Is this another case of a huge book needing to fit in 2hours 10minutes? Damned if I know. I do know that the climatic scene in the Hall of Prophecy was outstanding and probably worth the rest of the movie.

Of course, my only modest enjoyment could really be masking some other general malaise, rather how I’m feeling at the moment. Actually, this is how I’ve been feeling since I started the new food plan. If stopping enjoying Harry Potter movies is a price of this new plan, I will need to reconsider.

Later…

Filed by misterimpatient at 2:49 pm under Patter
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The president of the free world(tm), struck again today when he commuted the sentence of Dick Cheney’s fall guy, “Scooter” Libby. This was the act of a president who has pardoned, commuted or reduced the sentence of fewer federal prisoners then any president before him. His reason for letting Libby off the jail time hook?

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison.”

Excessive? I actually invested some time in learning about our Federal Sentencing Guidelines. They are pretty extensive and a little anal if you ask me, but, never mind. Here is the relevant page, I think:

§2J1.2. Obstruction of Justice

(a) Base Offense Level: 14

(b) Specific Offense Characteristics

(1) If the offense involved causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person, or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice, increase by 8 levels.

(2) If the offense resulted in substantial interference with the administration of justice, increase by 3 levels.

(3) If the offense (A) involved the destruction, alteration, or fabrication of a substantial number of records, documents, or tangible objects; (B) involved the selection of any essential or especially probative record, document, or tangible object, to destroy or alter; or (C) was otherwise extensive in scope, planning, or preparation, increase by 2 levels.

So looking at this, I figure Scooter (can I call him that?) was guilty of the basic charge of obstructing justice. In addition I thought (2) above came into play as well. This brought his offense level up to 14+3=17. Alright then. Now, we apply the 2003 Federal Sentencing Guidelines. As this is a first offense, we stick to the first column and find the recommended sentence is….24-30 months. What a surprise! I wonder why our president didn’t just reduce the sentence to 24 months?

Our president is an evil man surrounded by a range of people, not all of whom are evil(though some certainly are), but all of whom cannot be trusted in government. I know some people think he’s just stupid. Others feel he’s just an ideologue. I don’t think he’s stupid. Not anymore. An ideologue? I’m not convinced. I am convinced he is not motivated by what’s best for the majority of the people of the United States.

The sooner we see the backside of this man the better off the whole world will be.

How much you want to bet we don’t find him building decent housing for the poor when he moves on?

Later…

Filed by misterimpatient at 9:56 pm under Justice, sometimes
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