Gary Johnson

The guy in the center of the picture is Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico whom I had a chance to hear speak a few weeks ago at Lola's Room, I'll get back to this place. He is running an exploratory campaign right now to decide whether to run as Libertarian, I'll get back to them. He's a really interesting guy, he was or is an entreprenuer; he started a handy-man business and grew it to over a thousand employees, he sold it before becoming governor.

He talked about his background and answered questions from the audience. This was one of the few times that I've been around a politician and it was really interesting when he answered questions from these people, straight off the cuff and honest.

I'm a poster boy for big government, my position was created through ARRA (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), it has a website where contractors and other employers enter how many people they've hired as a result of the stimulus every quarter. Anyways, Gary Johnson is the man when it comes to keeping government small, he cut 1,000 jobs during his two terms (which seems like as many would be reduced through natural attrition), while the guy after him increased their roles by 4,500. He also talked about how he is different from the present governor from A to Z, he told about 'H' which was for 'helicopter', he flew in it something like 6 times, his successor has flown in it 1,000 times and purchased one for his official use, seems wasteful to me...

Another thing I liked about him was his stance on legalization of drugs, he talked about a policy called harm reduction. Harm reduction is the reduction in harm that a drug user would cause themselves or others in order to get their fix. An real world example he had of this was from the chief of police in Zurich, Switzerland, if anyone had an addiction to heroin they could get an authorization to have as much heroin as they needed. They would no longer need to steal to pay for the heroin, dealers would have to move somewhere else, and the drug disputes would be handled in the courts. This police chief told him that crime had been reduced significantly in Zurich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_E._Johnson

I've been reading a lot about the Libertarian ideals lately and though I'm not a Republican nor one of the crazy Tea Party people, I feel more and more like our liberties have been taken away.

About Lola's Room: it's usually a dance club at night playing eighties music while people bounce up and down on the bouncy wood floor. That made it kind of an odd venue for this event.

Lazy Blog

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but my POS computer bit the dust and I didn't want to put a new video card, or motherboard for that matter, into the box. This opening paragraph inspired by Jim Anchower.

Jim Anchower's Hard Rockin' Home Page

I bought a shiny new laptop, it's totally awesome, it's really fast and has a really good video card. Windows 7 seems alright to me, but I'm having problems figuring out how to make audio come out of the HDMI jack, it says it should but it don't...

Lazy post: email converted to a blog post.
I just love bringing up the Za za za song. But, I have good reason to because last night there was a great interview on Fresh Air of Jake Adelstein who was a reporter in Japan who often covered the Yakuza. Really interesting about how a bunch of the crime bosses came to UCLA medical center (or other Cali medical university) for liver transplants with help from the FBI by rolling on some other Yakuza dudes.

http://www.npr.mobi/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120237244

Transcript:

http://www.npr.mobi/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=120237244

The book sounds really good, plus other book whose authors have been interviewed on Fresh Air have turned out to be great: Fahreed Zakaria's The Post-American World, Illicit, and that book about the ADM informant.

20 Bucks Richer!

I was bet $10 that I couldn't eat 40 ounces of chili while traveling for work. My coworker saw a can of chili, 2.5 pounder and bet me $10 that I couldn't eat it in an hour. Then the contractor saw us as we were walking back to our car from this grocery store, tried to get us to come up to his room because he had some bourbon, ice, and water - he asked us if we like bourbon and I, right off the bat, said 'no.' That guy was, I don't know... a little too much for me, but he heard the details of the bet and added his $10 if I could finish it in 30 minutes, I was still down. So next day lunch time comes around and I am also not allowed to heat the chili up, okay, that's fine. I found a big spoon and borrowed a guy's leatherman to open it up and went to town, I finished it in 10 minutes!

I was on the rowing team as a freshman in college, the coach for the freshman boat was this tall skinny guy and he said that when he was going to school he'd load up his plate with food and just start shoveling the food in, he was burning so many calories on the rowing team that he needed to do that, but he learned that about 20 minutes in the stomach finally realizes you're full and tells the brain, so I knew that I couldn't dilly dally.

My coworker was trying to freak me out by saying "Ya know, I've always wanted to tour a Western Family food plant. I'll bet it's the kind of place you walk through and see some nasty stuff and never want to eat again!"

Crazy Dream - Mad Men

I think all dreams are a bit crazy, this one was wild! I wasn't sure when I'd get a chance to write it out, but this evening I didn't get anything done and forgot to do the run I was supposed to do (speedwork: 5 miles including 1600m (1 mi) @ 8:15 min/mi with 800m (0.5 mile) jogs). So, I'll describe the dream.

I don't know if anyone's been watching Mad Men lately, there's been a merger and a bunch of the other stuff going on... Anyways the scene starts there.

I don't remember much before the part where I'm given a weird little quiz book and I sit down to fill it out. Then this woman comes and sits down next to me and starts taunting me, I tell her to shut up! She won't, she keeps saying that now that there's been a merger that her dad will be my dad's boss. I don't like that so I knocker her backwards in her chair and tell her to shut up, she gets up and leaves.

I go back to the test, one question I remember is that somebody's wife hosted a themed dinner around A) a letter from the EPA or B) a bill from the EPA. I think the wife in question is Don Draper's.

Next scene is the British guy with the red hair walking the office about to tell everyone about the merger, there's a blown up W-2 form with the new name and address of the new company projected onto a screen he walks past. He says "But, first let's show you this movie to show you how this all happened."

The movie starts in a bright, shiny lobby with a black and white tile floor, the camera starts out above Don Draper as he walks over to two other men that I got the impression were reclusive owners of the other company. Then, Roger Sterling walks over and the British guy walks over, all three are wearing London Fog rain coats. Then they have like a group hug (maybe a manwich) and smile really big. Then Don Draper and Roger Sterling walk to the right of the group and open up umbrellas. But, the umbrellas turn out to be organic like flower shapes that suck them up.

End

Cupcake Party

I went to the Hoot's condo with Hanna for a cupcake party. I used some 'no pudge fudge' brownie mix, but with the cake option. Then put some of our homemade peanut butter on the top, healthiest cupcakes there. But, I ate like 6 cupcakes and a few glasses of wine, definite sugar crash happening now.

I need to develop a savory cup cake! Tortilla chips and cheese and beans?

Street Breakdancing

Audio Book Run Down (1)

I got a new job, woot! But, when I was searching for work I was also doing stuff around the house (see the tags marked home project and while I did them I often listened to OPB, music I've got, or audio books. I'm sorta new to audio books and devoting a little bit of the focus to the story while doing something else can be tough.

Here's the list:

Homer's The Illiad then The Odyssey -

Both were great tales of mythological conquest and adventure, I liked the Odyssey more because there was more travel involved while the Illiad is staged in and around Troy, when names are mentioned it's harder to keep track of what they are doing if they aren't moving somewhere. Made me want to reread Route 66 A.D., a great book about the beginning of travel and tourism in times of Ancient Rome.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers then The Tipping Point then started Blink - Outliers is about individuals and other groups of people who have bucked the trends and been successful or limited their success by the culture, period of time in which they lived, and social interactions. Once example I found interesting was about some airline pilots in Korea, because of their social structure the co-pilot often speaks in a differential tone to the captain even when there are serious problems the plane may soon encounter, this made Korean Airlines an outlier because accidents were happening more frequently not because of inexperienced pilots or planes needing repair but because there was an ingrained culture of hierarchy.

I liked The Tipping Point to learn how some new fashion trends had gotten started.

Blink, seemed like stuff I already knew so I didn't finish that one.

Elmore Leonard's Tishomingo Blues, Freaky Deaky, City Primeval, Bandits - These were all great bubble gum novels about detectives bending the law, con men setting up a grift, organized crime, but what made them all great was that they were read by Frank Muller. I just found his personal website and learned that he's dead! He's the best!! Luckily I've got more Frank Muller narrated books for the bus rides.

Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes The Sign of Four - Good story, I couldn't really get into it, but I've got just about the whole Sherlock Holmes collection so I may do them all.