Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

House: Less Than One Month!

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We are less than one month away from the closing/settlement date on our house. Today we spent a big chunk of the day getting things lined up for the big move day[s] . . . we got the window treatments ordered, the alarm system ordered, the movers arranged, and so on. Since we had to be at the house to get quotes on window treatments and the security system, we also got to see how things were progressing.

We had been out there last weekend so not much had changed since then. They accidentally installed carpet on the third floor (which was supposed to be hard wood), which is a funny (and likely expensive) mistake for the builder to have made. They’ll fix it. Today we also discovered that one of our railings was broke (see the picture). Another mistake they will have to fix.

The construction manager (who we happened to run into) said the workers are sometimes like bulls in china stores, but that everything will be fixed up before closing. We have a pre-settlement walk-through a week before closing where we get to see its ‘final’ status and point out any lingering problems, then we get to go through once more the morning of settlement to make sure they actually fixed everything.

All-in-all though, things are shaping up nicely (pictures below).

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Post Office: Trouble! Sensor!

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random2random1Melissa and I dropped by the Post Office for a few minutes this evening so she could send a package from the automated doo-hicky. As usual, I walked around aimlessly out of sheer boredom. Post Offices aren’t very interesting at the best of times. After hours, well, they’re super boring.

I discovered two interesting things on the wall of the local Post Office. First, what appeared to be a fire alarm panel helpfully declaring that there was ‘trouble’. As far as I could tell, the building was not on fire so I didn’t worry too much about it. Second, a wall wart of some sort with a helpful sign identifying it as a ‘sensor’, featuring a button labeled ‘override’ and a rubber band.

Your tax money at work, I’m sure.

How’s the ‘National Emergency’ Going?

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So now that we’re three or four days into a national emergency, I can’t help but wonder how it’s going. So far, I’m not noticing anything different. I’ve been going to work, watching television, surfing the web, and generally behaving normally. How about you?

The way people—including those in the government, media, and medical professions—have gone on about this H1N1 flu, you would think we were facing a calamity of epic proportions. So far I’m not seeing any actual evidence of society breaking down. From my perspective it’s a pretty inconsequential ‘pandemic’ and a pretty silly ‘national emergency,’ especially considering we deal with the seasonal flu—which is deadlier and more virulent than ‘swine flu’—every single year.

Whatever happened to SARS? Or West Nile Virus? Are they still around? They got this much media attention when they were new, but I don’t remember them being national emergencies. At least those were novel and different diseases. This one is just the flu.

Seriously . . . chill out.

Goodbye, GeoCities

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It’s a big year for technology farewells. In March I said goodbye to Microsoft Encarta, then in July I said goodbye to CompuServe. Today, I say goodbye to GeoCities.

GeoCities was among the first batch of free web site hosting sites, and lots of people got their web start there before they all moved on to LiveJournal, Blogger, MySpace, and FaceBook. I started on a site called Trailerpark, then moved to a couple other sites, then to Angelfire, then HyperMart before moving on to a paid HyperMart hosting plan. Angelfire is the only one of all those that is both 1) still around and 2) still free. HyperMart still exists, but is paid hosting only now.

Though I never used GeoCities personally, I was on the web in that era and lots of people I knew were on GeoCities. It was the most popular of the free hosting providers. It very quickly turned into a terrible wasteland of animated GIFs and horrendously clashing colors and backgrounds. Turns out that letting just anybody make a web site without any controls on what they do doesn’t really work out that well. (MySpace has started to learn this more recently.)

Another piece of web history disappears to the great Bit Bucket in the Sky.

Swine Flu a ‘National Emergency’

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So, President Barack Obama (D) has declared that the ‘H1N1’ virus, known colloquially as ‘swine flu’, is a national health emergency (in addition to already being a pandemic). I kid you not.

More than 1,000 people have died in the United States from the flu so far, which is about 1/36th the number of people who die from the regular flu in a regular year. Some early indications are that this flu season is a bit worse than usual, but I have seen no evidence whatsoever that this flu warrants half the attention it’s gotten. In fact, I have yet to see any facts presented by anybody that might indicate this flu is any worse than the regular old flu.

And guess what, regular flu ain’t that bad. It’s a virus, and it’s unpleasant, but unless you have a weakened immune system or are very young or old it’s pretty harmless.

I said it before: the government owes us an explanation. Why all the hysteria over a virus that, by all accounts, is just a minor variant of the regular flu and poses no serious risk to most people?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.