Author: cdwan

Attention citizens.

In the coming years, there may be some doubts as to your rights and obligations as a citizen of the United States. I have consulted the source documents. They are brief, and they are clearly written. Should anyone attempt to tell you different, they are wrong.

Also included are some brief thoughts on how these rights might best be exercised in the coming months and years.

These source documents are still available from the Federal Government. I like the National Archives Site myself.

Your rights as a US Citizen

I’ve been traveling the past couple of days, and I haven’t felt up to a full-bore rant about the election results and the broken direction our country is careening. Below is my somewhat scattered set of thoughts. It contains profanity and makes no attempt at being polite. Consider yourself warned.

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Dulles was even less impressive than I mentioned last time. When you get checked in at terminal “G”, you go through one of a series of doors, and there are a bunch of planes out there. After that, near as I could tell, you wander around with the other passengers asking each other “is this the plane to Indianapolis?” It made me feel really secure. Plus, they had enough fatbodies on my flight that they had to remove the drink cart. Plus, the stewardess actually used the “if there’s a doctor, nurse, or paramedic on the plane, please press your call button.” I spotted the real doctor immediately. He casually looked around and finished his peanuts, hoping that someone else would take charge. It was only when a lame pretender got up and said something lame like “I watch a lot of ER, can I help” that the first guy pushed the call button.

So yeah, paramedics met our plane at the landing strip in Indianapolis. I have no idea what was wrong with the girl.

Specifically, the “G” concourse of Dulles sucks. It’s a damn train terminal. Most United “Express” flights seem to depart from here. It’s just a mighty barn filled with rows of chairs, fed by neverending busses from the other terminals, and sloughing off passengers through a series of doors to their jets.

Hey look, an insect just started buzzing around me while I sit here. Great.

All of my fellow travelers are affected by the spirit of the place. They glare at each other and sweat. Thank goodness my connection is quick. I’m due to board in 10 minutes. Off to Indianapolis.

Tested and passed for my Orange Belt today. Woo Hoo. This included three new combinations, one form, three defensive knife techniques, five grab responses, and a pile of new attacks and blocks. Also a random review of the White Belt material. As previously mentioned, I’m not really in it for the belts, but it does make a nice way of keeping track of progress.

Soon, ah soon, I will be allowed to wear the black pajamas instead of the white ones.

Drawing diagrams of clusters today. Fun, but slow going.

Given the amount of energy we’ve seen around this election, I wonder what plans y’all have for election night. Personally, I plan to be on a plane headed for Indianapolis, and then be driving to Indiana State University. This limits my options to impotent shaking of my fist at the car radio.

However, I can imagine some really good party games with activities associated with each time a state is called, a network reverses their call, and so forth.

Ideas?

Party was good. Blimp was a hit. Much beer was given away. Stocks down to reasonable levels.

Today, slow start. Got to play more with Aleyna (Peter and Rosa’s baby). Very cute. Pictures possible.

Went to the corn maze (maize maze?) today. I like corn mazes.

32 trick or treaters. We gave out popcorn and pretzels. That should keep the buggers away next year.

Notes on the beer tasting this evening.

Once upon a time, my dad got me a remote control blimp kit for a birthday or something. It languished all this time for lack of the energy to (heh, heh) get it off the ground. But now, tonight, the blimp has taken flight.

This thing is basically two components: (1) a four foot long oval mylar balloon. (2) A twin-prop, reversible fan doo-hickey which can be controlled with a fairly standard el-cheapo handheld remote.

I got the balloon inflated at a local party store today, and learned something unexpected. If you want attention, get a really big shiny balloon. People were talking to me in the store, in the parking lot, everywhere. Sad but true. If you want to be the center of attention, get a big shiny thing and walk around with it. Then I attached the fan doo-hickey. I ended up using double sided tape instead of the “adhesive” putty that came with it. The first few times that the motors fell off as the blimp rocketed towards the ceiling were fun…but the game got old. Finally, I weighted the beast to just barely positive buoyancy with double stick tape and batteries. I now have a blimp that can motor around the ceiling, and a cool trailing ribbon for the cats to play with.

All just in time for the party. Woo-hoo.

In other news, we’ve got pictures from previous Halloweens on a slideshow loop on the TV, playing off the video out of my laptop. Some days, I love being a geek.

Brilliant cover on the National Geographic this month.

To quote the link above:

Yes, it can be measured in the laboratory. Shut up.

Good. Shut up.