Duffbert's Random Musings

1 - Nice idea, no can do... Ian works at the ice arena in the evenings, sometimes until 1 am or so. With his diabetes, we have to be able to be contacted if something is amiss (and it *does* happen on occasion).

Come on... be a sport and just give me your phone number!

2 - We have a solution for that. No phone in the bedroom, and electronic phones elsewhere with ringers that aren't loud enough to be heard from the bedroom.

-rich

3 - Solution for that is keeping your cell phone in the bedroom

-rich

P.S. You can find my business phone on my company web site

4 - Here here! Couldn't agree with you more.

5 - Unfortunately Tom, at least here in Florida, we ARE "like some third world country" when it comes to voting. Shirley is going to be a poll watcher on Tuesday, and both of the major parties have hundreds of poll watchers in our county alone. WHY? Because 4 years ago there were tens of thousands of legitimate voters who were not allowed to vote. The software company that pulled the list of 'felons' notified Catherine Harris' office (Florida Secretary of State) that the parameters by which they were instructed to pull a list of felons would yeild false positives. They were instructed to put someone on the list if their name was CLOSE to the name of a felon, if the birthdate was CLOSE, etc. After this concern was raised, Catherine Harris' office instructed the company to stick with the original parameters. The results are history, and a disgrace to a nation that is supposed to assume that one is innocent until proven guilty. This year we also have to contend with electronic voting machines WITH NO AUDIT TRAIL!! Sheesh, we're geeks. We KNOW our programs have the periodic bug (to put it kindly). Anyway, there is a lot more I could write, but I am also tired of the garbage. Last night Shirley removed her many political bumper stickers (I'll be doing that with my car on Tuesday eve) and she washed her car today. It was a ritual she'd been planning for weeks.

6 - Right on!

7 - While I am tired of many of the same things you are, particularly the negativity, I am welcoming the calls from pollsters and advocates. I don't like the level of most of the discourse, but I can't agree with a call for a stop. It is very clear that this election is going to be one of the most important of most Americans' lives so far, and potentially the most important of our lives for a very long time to come. The discourse we are having, though not even close to ideal, is far, far better than having no discourse at all. We can't wave our hands and eliminate the sound-bite mentality of the wonks -- no more so than we can wave our hands and change the mentality of the people that the wonks are targeting. There's only one way to improve the level of the discours, and that's by participating in it. So, please, don't stop. Go, go, go! Go and make a difference in the debate, and go and vote!

-rich

8 - Not a problem, Rich... Can you email me your phone number so I can forward my phone there when I get ready for bed? You can talk to the machine about why I should/shouldn't vote to cap non-economic malpractice damage awards or allow the state to start dispensing medical marijuana instead of just allowing people with certain illnesses to grow their own for their own use.

Oh, and the endless calls from the Republican party reminding me to vote. If they only knew...