The Night Obama Won

This isn't something I don't get, I just don't ever want to forget what happened that night.

I had always said that on Nov. 4, 2008, I was going to get drunk, one way or another. The day before, the probability that Obama would win the election, according to fivethirtyeight.com, jumped from where it had been hovering between 92-96% over the past few weeks, to 98.1%. Tuesday morning, it was 98.9%. McCain had simply run out of time, and the polls were not indicating anything breaking his way. I was optimistic, but nervous because you know how these things can go. I remembered 2004, when the early exit polls looked good for Kerry, before everything went to hell. This was going to be different, but better not to get too excited, just in case. I had a drink before I left work, just to take the edge off my nerves, but I knew it hadn't even started yet.

I was trying not to constantly hit reload on my computer with fivethirtyeight, or my RSS feeds, so I didn't get a chance to check until around 4:30pm PST. The news outlets had already called Kentucky for McCain, and Vermont for Obama. No surprises there. Indiana was too close to call, and that was a good sign. I never really expected Obama to win Indiana, but the fact that they couldn't call it for McCain right off the bat was nice. I had to go to a meeting at 5pm, but I kept checking the results on my phone, and I saw that they called Pennsylvania for Obama right after the polls closed. This was excellent news. McCain had spent the month of October trying desperately to make something happen in PA, and it didn't work. At the end of my meeting, around 5:30, someone said "Tomorrow we'll know who the new President will be" and I said that I thought there was a good chance we'd know tonight. My Republican coworkers seemed depressed.

I decided to go home after the meeting, and I listened to NPR on the way. The anchors were trying to make things sound a little less bad for McCain, but they had to be honest that things weren't looking good. A few more states had been called, no surprises, and some of the states McCain really had to win, like Indiana and Virginia, continued to be too close to call. Around 6:30pm, they called Ohio for Obama, and that was really the nail in the coffin for McCain. One of the people on CNN made a What If map that had McCain winning every state he could conceivably win (Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Utah, etc), and it just didn't have enough electoral votes. Obama really only had to win the Kerry + Gore states, and then just one more, and Ohio was that state.

When they called Virginia for Obama around 7:45pm, it was just gravy. It was indicating that the electoral map was going to be a lot bluer than anyone thought possible even a few months earlier. The people wanted change, and McCain (and probably especially Palin) wasn't what they had in mind. The west coast polls closed at 8pm, the networks immediately called California, Oregon, and Washington for Obama, and then came the magic words, "We project Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States." I sobbed. I put my face in my hands and I cried. I wanted to hold that moment in my mind.

I woke up with a hangover on Wednesday. It was all worth it.

Going back in time to prevent X

Terminator. Heroes. There are probably other shows on TV right now where this is a plot point.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider is damaged due to the sabotage of a time-traveler from a future where it caused a black hole to begin eating the earth from the inside? And, in true TV show fashion, will this sabotage only make it worse??

Chicken sandwiches

I've always been a fan of Chick-Fil-A. When I was a kid, they were only in malls, but later on, when I was in college, they started popping up as regular fast food places with a drive-thru and all. Their chicken sandwich and chicken nuggets are the best you can get from a fast food joint, plus they've got other unique things like the waffle fries and lemonade. I think Chick-Fil-A is a chain that you can only find in the South (but I think they are expanding into other areas now). The part I don't get is why it's taken so long for another fast food chain to make a Chick-Fil-A style chicken sandwich. McDonalds has one now, their "Southern-style" sandwich. I tried one the other day, prepared to be disappointed, but I wasn't. It was the buttery bun, the crispy/juicy chicken breast, and 2 pickles, very similar to Chick-Fil-A, and certainly good enough considering I have no idea where the nearest one is. They've also got a chicken biscuit for breakfast, but I haven't tried that yet.

Now, if only a national chain would rip off Braum's....

Why Netflix doesn't have The Wire at my local distribution center

This is really annoying.

I've read in so many places how great a show The Wire is, and after watching Deadwood and thinking it's one of the best things ever on TV, I decided to give it a try. So I put the first DVD from the first season in my queue, and it showed "Long Wait" so it took a few tries to get it. That's fair enough. But, when it finally moved up into the "Shipping" part of my queue page, it said they expect to ship it tomorrow. Hmm. That's very unusual. And then I got an email that said it would be shipping tomorrow from a distribution center in another state. That never happened before. Well, I watched the DVD, and I thought it was interesting, so I put the 2nd DVD (which did not say "Long Wait") at the top of my queue. The exact same thing happened. It would ship tomorrow from another city. And would you believe that the third DVD is shipping tomorrow from a city halfway across the goddamn country?!? I do not live in Jericho, Kansas, people. I live in a major metropolitan area on the west coast. There must be at least two distribution centers within this major metropolitan area, and probably several more within the same state. Why do none of these centers have any of The Wire available?

Over the past few months, we've gone through more DVDs that usual, around 10-12 each month. It is possible that this is a form of throttling, but why with these DVDs, which do not show "Long Wait"? Why is it that most new releases which I put at the top of my queue ship right away, even if they do say there is a wait? I've never had any problems with Netflix before, so I'm not thinking about ending our business relationship over this, but it's annoying and I don't get it at all.

Why people don't clean up after themselves

This is one of my pet peeves. People can be so entitled, can be so unaware of what's going on around them and how other people manage to take care of their own business, plus that of slobs, that they never even realize it. Earlier today, there was birthday cake for a coworker, and the leftovers were put in the break room. Just now, walking through the break room, I noticed that the cake was all gone, but the platters were left out, full of crumbs and icing-covered plastic knives. Is it too much to ask that the person who takes the last piece of cake throw away the paper platter it was setting on? I asked this, rhetorically, of another coworker who was getting some coffee, and he sighed, and pointed to the half-full single serving container of creamer someone left on the counter. Are they trying to conserve resources in the hope that someone else who only wants half a cream will take it? Cause that will never happen. Or, more likely, they're just too much of a slob to bother to throw it away.

My SO said to me last night, "Hey, tomorrow's trash day, you better take the trash out." I gave him a dirty look, and he laughed, cause he knew I knew he was just playing asshole. It got me to thinking though, which would be worse, an SO who tells you it's trash day, and you better take the trash out, or an SO who has no idea when trash day is?

Buca di Beppo

I just went there for dinner for the first time. I got a $10 promotional gift card in the mail, and we figured we should give it a shot. It was pretty good. The gift card basically let us get a free dessert, and the bellini was very strong. There's nothing I don't get about the menu, it's your basic Italian-American favorites served family style. However, if you are not dining with your family, there is a small selection of single-serving dishes. They generally cost about $2 less than the "small" family portion (serves 2-3 people). I totally get why they put it on the menu, but why would anyone order it? For $2 more, you get to take half of your entree home for lunch tomorrow. Sounds like a bargain to me.

We had the baked pasta sampler (the small portion), a caesar salad (with real anchovies on top), and the chocolate vesuvio for dessert. All of it was fine. I'm not sure we'd go back if it's just the two of us, but I think it would be a nice place to go with a group, so that way everyone could try a lot of different things.

Million dollar bonuses for sucking

Dear Board of Directors of Large Investment Bank,

I do not have any experience in the finance industry, and my education had nothing whatsoever to do with business. However, I am confident that if you gave me the opportunity, I could run your company into the ground and reduce the share price by a significant amount. I believe it would be in your best interest to let me do this for a period of one year, for which I will be paid a total of one million dollars. If, after this one year period, you decide that you want me to stay on leading your company into a financial crisis, we will need to renegotiate to a higher salary. Since I am offering to do this for only a million dollars, I don't see how you can afford to refuse.

Thanks for your consideration,
Apsalar

Morning Radio Shows

Why do morning radio shows only come in 2 flavors: boring and awful? Sometimes I listen to the boring shows, and they start to annoy me really fast because the hosts have the most stupid banter with each other, and with callers, and they never say anything interesting or funny. They trip over each other with their sucking-up laughter, and their pointing out the obvious. So dumb. So I get bored and switch to one of the other types of shows. They never use the word "woman" when "bitch" or "slut" or "chick" will do. I live in the Bay Area, which is overwhelmingly liberal, so of course the morning talk show people have to say antagonizing things so that people will call in to either be indignant (and entertaining) or even worse (and entertaining). I don't find this entertaining. I find it trollish. So then I switch back to the other show, the boring one, and remember why I don't listen to it anymore. The whole thing is terrible. I like Morning Edition on NPR, but it goes off usually while I'm in the car on the way to work, followed by Fresh Air, which I don't really like. There are no good solutions.

About the Oscars

Every year they have the montage of dead people, and every year there is a popularity contest judged by who gets the most and loudest claps. Why don't they say to please hold your applause to the end, out of respect? Of course Heath Ledger gets more claps than the sound editor who hasn't worked in movies since 1975, but that doesn't mean he deserves more, I don't even know what to call it, more acknowledgment from Oscar-goers of his contributions to movie making.

As always, there were some really pretty dresses this year. Helen Mirren, Anne Hathaway, and Jennifer Garner, I thought, made great choices. And you know who didn't make good choices? Diablo Cody (probably on purpose because she's afraid she would lose cred if she wore something flattering and shimmery, but if you have to walk in a particular way because of the way your dress is cut, you need to choose differently). Also, I saw other people saying nice things about Cate Blanchett's dress, but I think it just made her look like she had a bowling ball on her belly. Cate knows how to pick gorgeous dresses though, so maybe everything she tried on looked like that.

Why it's so hard to find a job I like

I've been doing the same computer-type job even before I graduated from college. I used to really enjoy it, and sometimes I still get a kick from solving a problem or learning something new, or figuring out a way to do something better. But these don't happen as often as they used to, and now I spend a lot of my time doing the same things over and over again. I'm also so good at managing my time that I often don't have anything to do for parts of the day. So I've been thinking that maybe I just need to find something new. It would preferably be something that lets me use my extensive background in the work I've been doing all this time, but it would be different enough that it wouldn't just feel like the same old stuff. I'm not sure these jobs exist. I saw one at a company that seemed promising, but they pulled the job from their careers page (and I never even got an official "No thank you" from the company). I just saw something for another company, a start up this time, which I'm sure I could do, but my resume wouldn't necessarily indicate I'm qualified for. I'm leery of working for a start up though, since I'm pretty concerned about work-life balance, and I like to be able to do my own things on my own time, without having to worry about work interrupting at any time.

I actually have a phone screen later today with another company, but it's not the company I work for now that's the problem. I think this job will be basically the same as the one I have now, so while I'm open to interviewing and looking around, I wouldn't leave for just another job that's exactly the same as this one. No, what I want is something that probably doesn't really exist (people who have my job are just supposed to keep doing it forever, I guess, or go find something related enough that it's still not really what I want to end up doing). Oh well, there's always a barista job at Starbucks.

People who can't separate ideology from reality

I bet we all know people like this, people who seem to be very normal, competent people who live unremarkable lives, who say crazy things from time to time. There's my friend Matt, who once told me that he doesn't believe in progressive taxation. This is right up there with all the people who think the Fair Tax is a great idea. I guess in their minds, poor people either don't exist, or they are poor on purpose (and if only they had to start paying a lot more in taxes, they'd straighten up right away), or they deserve any problems they have that are related to being poor. I don't know.

Then there's my friend Michael. He's a friend on Facebook, and he is always answering the political debate questions. The other day, the question was which one of the Democratic candidates do you not want to win. He said John Edwards, because he is very up front about his socialist policies. I think he's referring to things like universal health care and better college payment programs for working and middle class students. Alright.. but these aren't really socialist. The people (like myself) who are in favor of things like this aren't opposed to insurance companies or loan companies making money, we're just opposed to them gouging their customers, and making money too much at the expense of the people they are supposed to be helping.

When I was much younger, I thought libertarianism had some merit. Then I became more involved in the real world, and I realized that it just can't work that way. Places where there is less government interference in people's lives aren't paradises, they are places like Somalia and Afghanistan, where he who has the most and the biggest guns wins, and gets to tell everyone else what to do. There's no such thing as the rational actor. I think people who are opposed to government involvement on the basis that government screws everything up are wrong (or cherry-picking their examples so they ignore all the cases where government does a good job), but at least they can give some reasons for what they think. People who are too much in favor of regressive taxation and anti-socialism just don't match the real world with the world they think would exist if they got their way.

Hillary Clinton Hate

I don't get why so many people hate Hillary Clinton, but my best guess is that it comes down to sexism. They hate her for being frigid, but when she has an emotional moment, they hate her for being either too calculating _or_ too emotional. Some idiot in the press corps said, "Is this how she'll deal with Kim Jong Il?" Yeah, of course, just like George W. Bush read "My Pet Goat" to him. The moron on the morning talk show here can't resist referring to her as a bitch, and he said when women wear a pants suit to a wedding, they look like Hillary Clinton. WTF? Is this all just about powerful women making men feel uncomfortable? I saw the theory somewhere that aside from the most odious racists, it doesn't bother your garden variety racist if a few non-whites manage to make good, and most people in the mainstream are more put off than not by racist statements against Barack Obama. However, sexism by its nature has to be more insidious. Men and women live and work together, and if one powerful woman who actually has a shot at the presidency makes men nervous, how must they feel about women who are their bosses, or their coworkers who do the same work they do?

I don't get any of this. The stuff I'm describing is foreign to me. I'm an Obama supporter, but I do understand women voting for Clinton just to see this finally happen. Mostly, I think the idea of having a woman and a minority be serious contenders in the race, and still a middle-aged or old white man winning is very depressing.