Checksum Arcanius

A question about this picture led me to these Haikus in Perl. I was laughing out loud. Yes, I’m a nerd.

Today, I caught on the tube a debate between Dave Reichert, the Republican running for Washington’s 8th District seat in the United States House of Representitives, and his Democrat opponent, Dave Ross. The seat was formerly held by Republican Jennifer Dunn, a fiscally conservative, socially laisez-faire congresswoman who suited this district and myself fairly well.

Neither candidate had particularly distinguished himself until I actually talked to Dave Ross about a week ago. About the same time, I had heard (albeit briefly) Ross dominating John Carlson of KVI 570 (a conservative talk radio station) on John’s own show. So Ross had gained some points in my book, which he needed because in an information vacuum (which I would have alieviated by election day, regardless) I would have voted for the Republican in this race. But Reichert hadn’t earned any points with me, and so really it was a toss up with the information I had.

Until tonight.

In the debate, Reichert came across as by far the superior candidate. He responded sensibly and instilled confidence in me that he would be a better representitive me and my views than the other Dave. Ross seemed to want to pick a fight while Reichert wanted to have a civil discourse. Reichert won that face off. And while Ross’ comments got the only chuckles during the debate, that may have ended up hurting him in the end.

The main points that I got out of the debate were the following:

• The Republican attack ads against Dave Ross were basically true: he supports federalized universal healthcare, which is perhaps the worst idea in contemporaryAmerican politics
• Reichert is pretty much party line on the half-arse solutions that seem mostly designed to throw wrenches in the efforts to impose universal health care: HSAs, MSAs, etc, and the constant “we must lower the cost of healthcare” line which gets old pretty quickly, considering that it comes from both sides of the aisle
• Dave Ross really does seem to be more about talk, and Reichert more about actually doing things, as the latter asserted in his closing statement
• Ross is pretty much Party-line semi-anti-Iraq-war: It was the right war for the wrong reasons, we shouldn’t have done it but now that we did oh boy they need armor…

So they are both pretty straightforward representitives of their parties tweaked for the district slightly. And for a district where all we want is another Jennifer Dunn, Reichert is the closer match, and seems to be better suited for the job too.

Theo (4:22:48 PM): hey…
Ryan (4:23:14 PM): yo
Ryan (4:23:17 PM): what’s new?
Theo (4:23:54 PM): just finished my last guard shift in Iraq

w00t!

The upside to being overloaded at work is, I suppose, job security through at least March, in my case. Which is pretty good, considering its double to quadruple the initial 3-6 months I was hired on for initialy. So that gets me at least most of the way towards the bike trip of 2005. And although I don’t think they’d release me at that point for any particular reason, and they might even keep me if I were to take a month or more off. But if they don’t, hey, there’s always Blockbuster. Or something even better.

For the second week in a row, I got to hang out with my good friend Maneesh. This time, we went to Ruby’s at the Redmon Town Center, a 50’s diner rumored to abound with hot women. Well, we were duly impressed upon arriving. The hostess, Molly, was very nice to look at, especially as she seated us. But, our waitress, alas, not so much. The food wasn’t particularly redeeming either. My burger was somewhat undercooked, though juicy, and the milk shake was pretty blah. There’s always the hope of something a little better in both categories next time – that is, if I ever go again. But… well, Maneesh and I be pretty forgiving, under the right circumstances. If you know what I mean.

In an amazing turn of events, the Boston Red Sox forced a game seven after falling behind the New York Yankees 3-0, a feat never before accomplished in 100 seasons of baseball playoffs. Then to top it off, they won that game, a feat hardly imaginable four games ago.

That lifted my spirits enough to almost erase the bottom-of-the-class score I got in my most recent math test. Sure, most of the class got high 90’s, and I wasn’t exacly failing, in terms of raw score… but suffice it to say that I was considerably lower than the mean, the mode, and the median. I guess that rushing so I could go see Primer ended up being more expensive than the free that I had previously supposed it to be. I figured there might be some damage, but I sure felt good about the test when I left. Oh well, its only 25% of the grade.

The phone rang. The caller ID said “Friends of Dave.” I figured it meant Dave Reichart or Dave Ross, but I didn’t know which, and I don’t care much for either, so I was just a bit combative when I picked up the phone.

“Which Dave are you a friend of?” I implored.
“Excuse me?” came the slow response.
“The caller ID said ‘Friends of Dave’ – I’m wondering which Dave you’re a friend of.”
“Oh… I’m calling on behalf of Friends of Dave Ross.”
I pressed on – “Are you really his friend, or are you just calling on behalf of his friends?”
But then the caller had his own surprise for me: “Actually he’s sitting just two cahirs to my right.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that, “Cool.”
The caller (I’ll call him Pete, although I don’t remember for sure) continued with his script. We talked about a few issues and ended up on Transportation before I started pressing again. Then Pete had another surprise:
Pete: “In fact, here’s Dave.” He handed over the Phone.
Dave Ross: “I heard Pete here trying to explain some things to you. I thought I could help out.”
Well, I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for this. So we ended up only talking about transportation, and Dave had reasonable responses (bass the $318 billion bill stuck in the congress, mainly). I wish I had more foresight and talked about more general (ie, is government primarily a solution provider or a problem causer?)

Oh well, I guess I have to do my own research on this one. It does make me think that I need more objective measure for candidates. Like a web-based application that quantifies distance between my views (or anyone’s for that matter) and the views of candidates.
Kind of goes along with Theo’s local politics Groklaw idea. Its a good worthwhile project at least.