Bob Hayes Online

Really.

Empty desktop. Right click on background, select “New Word document”. Rename it, but forget to type “.doc” at the end of your filename. Bam, operating system forgets that it’s a Word document. Come on, guys. Make the leap of faith that if the user has asked for something to be done, that’s probably what they wanted to have done. I don’t want a generic file of unknown type, I want a G-D Word document. You know how you could have figured out that I wanted a Word document? By the fact that I just asked for one!

If I don’t type in “.doc”, it’s not because I’ve come to this wildly devious method of creating a generic file of unknown type. It’s because I’ve typed the name of my file and I’m ready to go on. You’re the operating system. You’re the one that needs to know that Word document = “.doc file” and you’re the one who needs to make that happen.  (Yes, I am yelling at an OS. I’ve yelled at stranger things. Go away.)

ASSUME THE “.DOC”.

Please, my former cow orkers at the house Bill built, please – put some thought into these things.

My adorable six-year old was concerned about burglars and/or robbers. She said “I need something to use against them if they come.”

I said “you mean like a weapon or something?”

“No. I don’t want to do it myself. Something would do it for me. I would have like a metal detector all around the house, because robbers usually have metal. Yes. They have either guns or swords. Mostly swords. I would have a TV in my room and it would show what was in the detectors. And I would know if they were up to no good.”

I agreed that this was a sound concept.

“And then when I saw them, lasers would shoot out and kill them.”

As a geek, and as a heartless Republican, I am so doubly proud of my little robber-killing engineer.

The pro-health care reform folks are holding a rally in Denver this Friday.

Hey, fellow forces of good, we should get on this and show up. Whaddya say?

I am part-owner of a little website called The Daily Novel, where we serialize novels and make them available for free online. (We also plan to sell PDFs in the near future.)

It’s one of those Internet deals where there’s no real money in it at first (maybe a few nickels, literally) but you can get a) exposure for your work and b) have the potential for sales as the site develops. We’ve run about seventeen novels so far, in a variety of genres.

We’re looking for more, however. You keep the rights to your work, giving us only the right to put it on our site (and later, by arrangement, the PDF thing.) If you have a novel and you want to get some exposure for it, drop my partner-in-crime Cynthia an e-mail and she’ll get you set up.

I went up to a teaparty event outside the offices of Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-01) in Denver yesterday. There was an event scheduled for my own representative, but it would be rather anticlimactic in staunchly red Colorado Springs. (“I’m Congressman Lamborn. What are you protesting for?” “We demand that you vote against this health care bill!” “OK, will do!” “Oh…uh…well…”) The event at the Democratic office promised more exciting blog action.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and I really regretted that fact that the air conditioning in the Black Mamba isn’t working. (Should have turned it in as a clunker and gotten a shiny new Hyundai, I guess!)

I have a secret parking spot in Denver that I often use for events – it’s a shady street with long-term meters and it’s very close to the downtown core. Less hassles and a healthy walk, what could be better? Unfortunately, this time I must have failed my Navigation skill check, because I thought the rally was going to be at the capitol building. Instead, it was a good ten blocks south, and while my parking spot was in fact only seven blocks or so from the event, my chosen route would end up taking me about twenty blocks all told.

I (mistakenly) walked and walked to get to Capitol Hill, expecting at any moment to come across my crowd of protesters. Instead, just mostly-empty parks:

And historic Denver landmarks:

When I finally got to Grant Street I realized that the rally was the aforementioned ten blocks south. It was too far to go back to the car, so I just trudged it.

And trudged it.

And trudged it.

Finally…up in the distance…could it be? A glimpse of placards waving in the air? Yes:

Here’s our team in various poses. There were between 25 and 35 of us there at any particular time. We had a main group on the north end of the intersection and a smaller group on the south side. The Obamanauts were also on the south side.

Our main team:

Our emergency backup team:

Jed and his fellow members of the Tyranny Response Team: ever vigilant.

Want to see those signs better?

(T-shirt text: There are 10 kinds of people in this world, people who get binary and people who don’t.)

Here’s the Obama group. There were usually about 10 of them. Periodically they sidled up and tried to integrate with our satellite group to try and look bigger, or perhaps they were trying out an anschluss. Note the preprinted signs. That’s the sign of grass-roots activism, you know – having your own union print shop with a standing order of “Hope” posters.

Some of our better signs:

During the rally, cars and pedestrians passed by. We got the bulk of the love, but there were some catcalls too. One driver literally leaned out of his car to shout “Are you giving up your Medicare? Are you giving up your Medicare?” loudly. Alas, the obvious riposte (“No, we’re trying to save it from YOU!”) came too late. Catcallers really should go around the block and come around again so that the slower-witted of us have time to prepare our responses.

There wasn’t a great deal of excitement, but it was good to see the people letting their representatives know their opinions. It was nice to see Jed and the boys again, but the summer afternoon was dwindling and the wife was expecting me home…here’s a last parting shot from this tiny outpost of participatory democracy.

And then a long trudge back to the Black Mamba for the return voyage (and date night with the wife) – I’d post a picture of the car but its sheer awesomeness would make you realize the futility of your own crappy life and you’d have no choice but to end it all, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

At least according to these lawyer-type guys, Congress lacks the power to mandate insurance purchases.

Good! I had already resolved that I would disobey the law, and that I would further not pay the penalties and fines, etc. A law repugnant to the Constitution is void and I am not obliged to obey it.

This is one funny-lookin’ dinosaur.

Reading this wiki article on Amtrak, it strikes me that we are likely to see the same type of deterioration in the health sector as we saw in the rail transportation sector over the course of the twentieth century. Rail transport was once the most vital and important American industry – its sad decline is a story of government error and mismanagement of economic decisions. If the Democrats succeed in passing their inchoate health care plans, we can look forward to a creaking, half-functional system that prevents private market actors from doing the job, while doing a poor job itself.

So funny and so true.