razmaspaz

In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose - Mit Romney

Yeah, thats what Romney said as he announced he was “suspending” his campaign. I’m not a political crazy. I don’t want this blog to become about politics, politicians, or anything remotely in that vein. But I do want it to point out asinine crap when it occurs.

First of all, you don’t suspend a presidential campaign. You drop out of the race. The idea of suspending it and maybe jumping back in after skipping 15 states is just plain silly. If Romney kept plowing money into the race, he might remain somewhat competitive, but with no campaigning going on, there is no way he stays competitive enough to get back in it. Why is it so hard to just say “I’m dropping out”? What is more face saving about the term suspended?

The suspended thing could be dropped, I don’t get it, but whatever. What is a big deal is his cheap parting shot. The idea that if he doesn’t drop out of the race the terrorists are going to win is silly. The very thought that voluntarily reducing the number of choices for president makes us safer from terrorism is ludicrous. Choice is American, Presidential Elections are American, screaming and yelling ’till we turn blue in the face is American. Romney’s participation in the Race was patriotic and embodies everything about this country that is so great. His dropping out was not a blow to terrorism, nor was it a windfall. It was just the passing of another candidate in this year’s running of our most American Tradition.

I read a few photography focused blogs, and of late many of them ahve been mentioning hte “You Suck at Photoshop” series. Its crude humor to be sure, but there is some good stuff to be learned in there, and its VERY funny. I’m not going to link to it, frankly because I can’t figure out the backwards video sharing site its on, but a quick google search will give up the goods. It appears that its on youtube (which was not where I watched it), so thats good.

I’m excited. I’ve got lots of plans in the coming weeks to get outdoors and do stuff. Despite the foot of snow about to be dumped on the north burbs I’ve got plans to go skiing, fishing, backpacking, and all sorts of other outdoor adventures.

This weekend I’m off to Devils Head for the second time this year. 2 days of skiing is just what I need to warm me up. Devils Head isn’t great skiing. After visiting several mountains out west, I don’t even think I’d call it good skiing, but its skiing. 3 hours from Chicago, and its just the ticket. A chance to hone my skills, and scratch the skiing itch.

After that it looks like a good bet for some steelhead fishing in the lake Michigan Tribs. Steelheading heats up in the Spring as the monster fish make their ways into the streams and rivers that feed the big lake. Good fishing can be had within half an hour of my house. I plan to take advantage often.

The steelhead season will kick off the start to what is promising to be a really good year for Wisconsin Trout Fishing. Reports from the northland say that the water tables look good for consistent flows throughout the spring and summer. That means consistent fishing, and you can believe that come opening day I’ll be out there fly rod and pheasant tail in hand looking to land a lunker (though more likely I’ll land a 6″ brookie). I’m also planning a long weekend in May to tempt brookies and browns with my best caddis imitation.

My planning dinner this weekend was a success. I’ve got a trip to Garden of the Gods planned for April, and a big one coming up in September to Colorado. Garden of the Gods is great. Its not going to offer the bang that a trip to California, Alaska, of Colorado would, but its a pretty area, and its fairly easy to find some space down there. If nothing else its a good warm up to the rest of the season. I’m checking water sources beforehand this time though, because a previous trip came with a near water disaster.

How are you kicking the winter blues this spring?

Today is the date of the primary in roughly 2 dozen states. If you’re in one of them, go vote. If you aren’t registered to vote, use today as the day to get registered. Then when November rolls around, you’ll be ready to go.

Tim Bray, as he usually does, has a very insightful point about the MS/Yahoo deal. Lets just say for a second that Yahoo has 1billion users. That number is probably high, but lest just say. Microsoft just payed $44.50/user for yahoo. In all likelihood the number is probably closer to 500 million making the cost/user closer to $100. Thats a lot of money. Here’s why.

For this to be profitable for Microsoft, you, me, and every other user of Yahoo has to generate yearly incremental profit of roughly $5-7. That means that you have to click on ads, buy software, or otherwise do something that makes MS $20-50, and you have to do it every year until you die. That doesn’t seem so hard, except…

I’m what I would consider an avid internet user. I spend more time than most on the internet, doing work, borwsing, shopping, whatever. Thing is, I don’t use Yahoo for much. In fact that only thing my Yahoo ID ever does is log me into Flickr ( a service that is now almost certain to be ruined). I don’t buy photos on Flickr, so I generate no revenue for Yahoo or MS. There might be some possibility of a synergy between MS and Yahoo that would propel me to buy Vista (read auto export of images to Flickr from MS Photo Viewer) or something, but the truth is, I’m trying to get as far away from the windows world as possible, so the likelihood of me buying any new MS products because of something Yahoo does is near zilch.

We’ll have to wait and see if this pans out, but I can tell you for sure that I wasn’t worth the $44.50, were you?

Its the dead of winter, so to stave off the cold I turn to summer trip planning.

For me, backpacking is the hub that all of my other hobbies shoot out from. It offers an excuse for sightseeing, fishing, cooking, photography, and even reading. I suppose if I was so inclined I could do some writing too.

Saturday I’m getting together with friends to plan a trip out west. We aren’t really sure yet where the trip will be, but the Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain National Park come to mind as good choices. A rim to rim hike is on my life list of things to do, as is summiting a 14er.

All this indoors stuff is killing me. Trip planning is like my therapy. Well that and buying gear. Something I haven’t been doing much of this year. Once I get the location nailed down, I’m sure I’ll have a list of stuff I need.

Right now though I’ve got a couple things on the list:

Big Agnes Seedhouse 2 Superlight tent: I have a tent, and its a good tent. It weighs less than 6 pounds, is pretty much bombproof, and I don’t get much condensation in it. Problem is, last time out I used a smaller, lighter pack, and it was just too full. I’ve caught the lightweight bug. I’m hoping ot lower my core pack weight by a couple more pounds this year, and this tent, at 2lbs. 14oz. could be just the ticket.

MontBell America, Inc. Ultralight Down Jacket - Men’s: Either the Rockies or the Grand Canyon can get cold. I think its time I picked up some insurance against cold weather. This piece was pretty highly rated by backpaker, and at 7oz, its like its not even in the pack.

Primus EtaPower Express Fuel Efficient Stove: I’ve also got one of these on the list. I went on a trip last fall with a guy who had its big borther (Primus EtaPower EF Fuel Efficient Stove). The EtaPower rocks. The EtaPower is a little heavy, but the Express, well if it can boil water as fast as the EtaPower, and simmer anywhere close to as well as Big Bro, I’m all over it.

Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras: I don’t know that its really backpacking gear, but the new object of my affection is a wide angle lens. I’ve read mixed reviews about lens problems, but it sounds like Sigma has been quick to take care of them, and this sounds like a great lens for an adventure to the Grand Canyon or the top of Longs Peak. This is another big reason to lighten the pack load, more weight can be allocated to carrying camera equipment.

If you’re wondering about all the links to Amazon, here’s the deal.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/LAW03630012008-1.htm

That’s really all that needs to be said.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not quick to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to upgrading to new technology. I didn’t immediately upgrade to Leopard when it came out, and I’m glad I waited. HDTV is another one of those areas where I’ve been slow to come around.

Basically I haven’t felt comfortable upgrading. This is still one of those fast moving streams where the technology changes faster than the manufacturers can put out products. To me that says “stay away”. I could do early adopter if things cost $50-$100, but we’re talking thousands of dollars here. Three or four years ago, I thought I had it all figured out. Component was the cable of choice, optical and coaxial were carrying sound, and DVI was the computer architecture of choice. Then along came this HDMI thing. About 5 years ago I bought a decently expensive receiver that I thought would carry me into the HD age just fine. I don’t even think it would get me in the game today. I can’t imagine if I had bought a TV then. I’d be crying in my melted plasma puddle right now.

Despite my wariness, I’m encouraged. That’s right, me, encouraged. It seems like the industry is starting to standardize. HDMI looks like the official cable of the future, and surprisingly, it looks like Blu-Ray came out on top in the format war in spite of its ridiculously stupid name. On top of that prices are starting to stabilize and drop a bit, even if the dollar won’t buy what it used to. So, I’m back to asking that question, “is it time to take the plunge?”

I’ve been fooling with PicLens today. My recent foray into photography has caused me to up my consumption of photographs. I’ve been toying with a way efficiently subscribe to photostreams in flickr, picasa and the like. PicLens will most certainly be the method of choice for viewing these photos.

Now if I can just find a way to get this to work with a feed aggregator it would be most excellent.

My biggest gripe to date about Leopard has been that Command+Tab cycles through every running application, not just the ones active in the current “Space”.

I just stumbled on a little gem totally by accident this morning. It turns out that Ctrl+F4 will cycle through the applications in the active space. It doesn’t give that pretty GUI look that Command+Tab does, but it performs the function.

This may very well make my day, and its only 8:30. Here’s to a good day after yesterday’s “worst day of the year”.