What backlash?

I heard on CNN that there's a backlash against homosexuals in America. This was based on a scientific poll conducted by someone, I believe they said it was in USA Today.

If you're living under a rock, you might be interested to hear that "Dubya" is interested in an amendment to the Constitution codifying marraige as a relationship between members of the opposite sex.

Conservatives (and I use that term loosely) believe that we are heading down a path that will eventually lead to the downfall of this great nation. If we let people do whatever they want with whoever they want, then we're doomed.

But we're not talking about letting any one do any thing. We're talking about adults who love each other and are committed to each other just as I and my wife love each other and are committed to each other. We're talking about allowing individuals of the same sex to commit to each other in a legally binding way that will be recognized by the state and federal governments.

Why is this important? Here's an analogy, my father has worked for the same company for most of his life. While working for that company, my mother has been covered by his health insurance by virtue of the fact that they are married. My father has accrued a modest sum of money for retirement, via his work. If my father passes before that money is spent, my mother will receive the balance by virtue of the fact that they are married.

My parents have been married for 37 years. There are homosexual couples that have been together just as long. Yet, they are not legally married and therefore do not enjoy the same benefits as my parents and married couples who have been married for a single day.

What it really comes down to, in my opinion, is that some folks would cling to some scribblings in a text written approximately 2000 years ago in a completely different language and cultural setting because those texts indicate that homosexuality is immoral, against God and will lead to a nation's demise.

If strong family units are the core of a stable society, then we should be fostering stable, long term relationships between hetero and homosexuals alike.

The same folks who are seeking a Constitutional amendment on this issue, are the same types of folks who believe(d) that the races should not inter-marry.

And as for these so called "conservatives", why is it that they claim to be for smaller government, yet they are constantly interfering in the private matters of people's lives? This doesn't seem like smaller government to me.

I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative and social liberal. I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican. In the last general election, I was a registered Libertarian, but I don't necessarily agree with the party line there either. I believe some matters are too important to leave to the hidden hand of the market, public health issues for example.

And I happen to agree with Bill Mahr, given their track record, the Catholic Church is the last group that should be telling the world anything about sexual matters.

Jim Ryun on the Public Domain Enhancement Act

A few weeks ago, I wrote to my Congressional Representative, Jim Ryun, urging him to support the Pulic Domain Enhancement Act. It's clear that he (or his staff) didn't have a copy of my original message handy while composing his response, as several points in his response are simply regurgitated notes from my original message.

I had written Ryun earlier this year on the subject of supporting the Public Domain, prior to the introduction of this reasonable legislation. His response at that time was not as well informed, nor as amicable to the Public Domain. I suppose now that he's seen the legislation, he's found it reasonable and decided to support it.

Here is his response:

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:40:18 -0400
From: Congressman Jim Ryun
To: dphull@insipid.com
Subject: Message from Rep. Jim Ryun

July 23, 2003

David Hull
1613 Kasold Drive
Lawrence, Kansas 66047

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting me with your views. I appreciate hearing from you.

Copyright protection is crucial to the survival of a competitive
marketplace. However, it is paramount that there exists an effective balance between copyright protection and the availability of obsolete works to the public domain. Currently, only 2 percent of copyrighted works still retain retail value after 55-75 years. This long term protection prevents commercial and noncommercial entities from building upon, cultivating, and preserving abandoned works.

H.R. 2601, the Public Domain Enhancement Act, was introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) on June 25, 2003. It was then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary where it is being considered. The purpose of this legislation is to amend Title 17 of the U.S. Code, allowing abandoned copyrighted works to enter public domain after 50 years.

I support legislation that enhances the availability of abandoned works to the public domain. It is an efficient means to restore, cultivate, and build upon older works. I will be sure to keep your views in mind should H.R. 2601 come to the House floor for a vote.

It is important that I hear from you. Please feel free to contact me
again with comments or concerns on matters that are important to you.

God Bless You,
?

God Bless You,
Jim Ryun

IBM To Ship White Collar Jobs Overseas

As I was heading to the park tonight, I heard a story on the radio about some leaked minutes from a meeting of IBM executives. In the meeting they reportedly talked about the need to speed up the move of white-collar jobs to India.

This is not new, many companies have sent work overseas where they can pay a pittance of what they have to pay here in the U.S. and they don't have to offer benefits.

Have you called tech support lately?

What I want to know is, how the economics of these moves off shore are going to work? If white-collar jobs go away and people can't find work that allows them to buy durable goods (cars, appliances, etc.) that are products of big manufacturing companies that in turn need to buy lots of computing power to run their enterprises, where will the cash come from to drive these purchases from IBM?

OK, that's probably about as poorly put as I could make it, but if you read it a few times it may start to make sense. If companies like IBM start sending the good paying jobs overseas, who is going to have the money to buy their products?

Oh, maybe they are going to lower their prices in keeping with the lower costs of production. That popping sound you just heard, was my tongue being forcibly removed from my cheek.

I've heard analysts say that only the programming jobs are going to go overseas. Companies will still need local network and systems support. I guess it's difficult to build networks and systems when you're half a world away.

I used to do desktop support for a living. I've been programming and doing DBA work for the last three years. It would take a lot for me to go back to doing desktop support. I'd consider moving my family to India first. I hear they have programming jobs.

Howard Lovy's NanoBot

I was reading Declan McCullagh's Politech this morning while going through my inbox. Therein was a message linking to Howard Lovy's NanoBot.

If you have any interest in nano technology, I think you'll enjoy reading this blog. The articles are interesting and entertaining.

Awk Rocks

If you find yourself needing to convert an Excel spreadsheet into a MySQL database table or something similar, you'd do well to learn the basics of awk.

Much like sed, awk is extremely powerful and fairly easy to use. If you've got a comma delimited text file containing rows like this:

Hull,Dave,Senior IT Analyst,Information Services

You can use awk to quickly convert such lines into SQL statements thusly:

awk 'BEGIN {FS=","} { print "insert into emp (LName, FName, Title, Dept) values (\x027"$1"\x027,\x027"$2"\x027,\x027"$3"\x027,\x027"$4"\x027);" } ' text_file_name > insert_file_name

The \x027 is hex for single-quote. If you include single-quotes in your text file like so:

'Hull', 'Dave', 'Senior IT Analyst', 'Information Services'

then your awk statement is much cleaner:

awk 'BEGIN {FS=","} {print "insert into emp (LName, FName, Title, Dept) values ("$1","$2","$3","$4");" } ' text_file_name > insert_file_name

Enjoy.

Pour Some Out for Joseba Beloki

What a day for the Tour. Nearing the end of the 9th stage, Joseba Beloki, one of Lance Armstrong's principal rivals crashed hard on the "melting tarmac" due to a blown "tyre".

Beloki is a phenomenal rider, having placed in the Tour's top three for as many years. Some commentators criticized Beloki following today's crash, saying he should not have been descending so quickly. He was not in yellow and should not have been taking so many risks. According to these experts Beloki should have let Lance lead the way to catch Vinokourov.

On the other hand it seems Beloki can't win for losing.

One thing is clear, a large part of the drama of the Tour was carried away in an ambulance today and that is a shame.

Raise a glass for Beloki. I hope we see him again next year.

Le Tour

Can't get enough Tour coverage in your area? Stay up to date with Cycling News' coverage.

I've been watching the Tour since Greg Lemond made it famous in the U.S. It is a truly remarkable sporting event. Here's to hoping Lance can tie the record this year. I'd love to see him get a sixth or seventh victory, but I won't hold my breath.

When I was a a teenager, before I had my driver's license, I used to ride my bike all of the time. I rode on Biking Across Kansas five times. I remember going to OZ Bicycle Club meetings in Wichita and seeing race results with Lance's name listed. Back then he was a rising star from the Lone Star State.

Good luck Lance, and may you find as much success in your marraige as you've found in the saddle.

Python Not So Constricting

I'd guess it's been three years or so since the first time I came across a reference to Python online. At that time, I must have been working mostly in PHP or perhaps Perl.

I've been using Perl since the early '90s. PHP since the late '90s. For the last couple of weeks, I've been working through How to Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning With Python. The text is available as a pdf.

One of the first things I learned about Python, likely on slashdot.org, is that it has code formatting requirements. Yes, indentation matters.

This seemed oddly constricting to me at first. However, it's such a minor issue once you start coding in the language, that's it is hardly notable. It's no more constricting than languages which require braces ('{', '}') to be placed around functions, loops, conditionals, etc. Python accomplishes the same thing via formatting.

In many languages a function definition might look like this:
function put_msg($msg) {
print "Here's your message: ", $msg;
}

In Python, the equivalent code looks like this:
def put_msg(msg):
print "Here's your message: ", msg

That's it.

I've just started working through the class structure in Python. It's pretty simple. To create a class, the code can be as simple as this:
class Time:
pass

The "pass" is an empty placeholder in Python. A new Time object is instantiated this way:
now = Time()

and attributes for the Time object may be added seemingly arbitrarily:
now.hours = 4
now.minutes = 52
now.seconds = 37

and the next line prints the values in the object:
print "%2d:%2d:%2d" % (now.hours, now.minutes, now.seconds)

I like the book thus far, if you're interested in learning Python at all, push over to the pdf above and check it out.

I've also been reading Programming Interviews Exposed. Most examples in the book are coded in either C, Perl or Java.

I'm not far into the text, but the first programming question they deal with is linked lists. That's about what I expected, though in three years of programming professionally full-time, I've never once needed a linked list. Unless you consider the "Next" and "Previously" buttons below to be a form of linked list.

Not being very far into this text, I won't give it a thumbs up or down, but I will say it has one of the clearest explanations of "Big O" notation that I've ever read.

Accidental Gardening

Five years ago or so, a friend handed me a copy of Square Foot Gardening. The book is a wonderful resource for someone interested in gardening, but without a lot of space and time to dedicate to the task.

I've also been composting grass clippings, vegetable and fruit scraps, leaf rakings and the like for the last few years. Composting can be as much fun as gardening, especially if you have young children with any interest in worms and slugs.

Last fall, after our Jack-O-Lanterns started to go bad, I threw them on the compost pile. This spring as I was turning it over, I noticed what looked like a couple of pumpkin plants sprouting up from the compost pile.

I decided that I would nurse one of the plants along. It would be something fun for my daughter to look at a couple of times a week and if we get any pumpkins out of it so much the better.

I've never had any experience growing pumpkins. But my neighbor called it a month and a half ago, when she asked me what was growing in the corner of the yard. I told her it was a pumpkin and she said, "Oh dear. You know it's going to take over your backyard?"

I've kept it trimmed up pretty well, but it is explosive and I'm sure if I wasn't trimming it back once a week, it probably would have taken over much of the yard.

A couple of days ago, I was looking the plant over for pumpkins. So far there have been a few small ones that have fallen off the vine. I noticed a baseball sized one a couple of days ago that looked like it might stay on and continue to grow. This morning I took my daughter out back to show her the progress.

The baseball sized pumpkin is now just a bit smaller than a softball and I thought she might be impressed by it. However, she's obviously got better eyes than I do and pointed out a pumpkin hiding in the leaves of the plant that was the size of a bowling ball.

With luck, and some water, we'll be carving some of our own this fall.

More on the Outhouse...

Speaking of the Outhouse. I was at the pool today with the family and overheard a couple of people talking about old times.

One of them mentioned a new book someone had written about that beloved institution. As near as I could tell, the book, titled "Salad Days", is not really about the Outhouse as much as it is about a small town boy going punk.

Though one of the reviews online does specifically mention characters from the Outhouse, though by different names. I might have to watch the local bookstores for this one.

CSS Support in Mozilla?

Since Randy pointed out that this page didn't look quite right in Mozilla, I've been sure to double check my "layout" in Mozilla and IE.

What I want to know is, which of these two browsers is handling CSS correctly, or more correctly? Is there a good resource for designing for multiple browsers and for standards compliance?