Wednesday, February 08, 2006

ned lamont for senator

It’s been a while since I wrote anything—have been even busier than usual. But last night, my friend Helene mentioned that there was a Greenwich businessman thinking about throwing his hat into the ring to run against our alleged Democratic senator, Joe Lieberman, or Liebermouth, as Stanley and I call him.

I thought, “Great, a Greenwich businessman—a Republican no doubt ... ” and all those other negative thoughts I have about denizens of Greenwich. (Yes, it’s a kneejerk reaction. Sometimes I’m wrong, sometimes not ... but there is history to my reaction.)

Then, this morning, Stanley sent me a bunch of links about Ned Lamont, the same Greenwich businessman. I read the story in the Hartford Courant, then promptly went to Lamont’s website. It took me about two minutes to volunteer for his campaign and pledge a contribution:

Ned is considering running because, like most Connecticut Democrats, he is tired of being represented by a senator who is not willing to stand up to the President on the war—and on the rest of his extreme right wing agenda which is so harmful to our country.

Ned Lamont is a successful businessman who understands the importance of health care and education to our economy. He will fight for universal health care and to bring all of America’s schools into the 21st Century. He believes the federal government should stay out of people’s private lives and stop spying on its own citizens. He would push for energy conservation and bio fuels as better alternatives than the liquefied natural gas plant in Long Island Sound. And he would demand that corrupt public officials be held accountable for their actions.

Lamont says he will not formally run until he has 1,000 volunteers signed up because of the herculean effort it will take to launch and sustain a campaign against Liebermouth, who has been essentially unopposed since 1988. So, you Nutmeggers who want to participate in saving our country from the damages inflicted by the Bushies and their collaborators, head to http://www.nedlamont.com and sign up. Pronto.

posted by lee on 02/08/06 at 10:51 AM
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Saturday, February 11, 2006

happy happy joy joy

Yes, we have snow. Maybe three inches now by now, as I write this after 1:00 am. Latest forecast said 12 to 15 inches by Sunday afternoon, with official blizzard conditions down by the seashore (where we are).

Can’t complain, really—it’s New England, and we’ve been relatively unscathed this winter except for a couple of really nasty windstorms (which didn’t affect us too much—Norwalk got lucky for a change.)

Ginger, of course, is overjoyed. She loves playing in the snow (click to enlarge):

snowstorm and happy ginger february 11, 2006

Tomorrow, while we dig out, she’ll run around like she’s lost her little doggie mind and it will be like watching pure joy.

blizzardy february 11, 2005 11:30 pm

posted by lee on 02/11/06 at 10:15 PM
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Sunday, February 12, 2006

same dog, same porch, +14 hours

It’s still snowing. Though I really do think the worst of it is over, it won’t be “officially” over until about 5 or 6 pm.

This picture was taken about 1:00 pm, and boy what a difference, eh? (click the picture, and the others, to enlarge)

ginger, 1:00 pm, february 12, 2006, at 13 inches of snow

Of course, nothing is official until it’s measured. Here, at Squirrel Half-acre, there’s only one place to get an accurate measurement without having to slog through drifts up to my butt, and that’s on the patio. Nor’easters always whip weird around our house, I think because of the angle of the opening in the front hedge and all the trees, so our drifts are really interesting. But the patio doesn’t get drift during this type of storm. Our total, as of 1:30 pm on February 12, 2006, is 13 inches.

13 inches on 2/12/06

You’d think with all this snow it would be brighter out, but it’s not. I’d be really surprised if we got another 11 inches of snow like they’re predicting on the Weather Channel, no way. I know there’s some flooding going on in Westport and probably here in Norwalk and other areas along the coast. And there are some power outages, but not very many (especially as compared with the outages during the windstorms last month). But, as blizzards go, this one is not that big of a deal. I was living in Boston during the Blizzard of ‘78—now THAT was a blizzard!

Here is a picture looking toward the backyard from the front door, and one of the stack ‘o snow on the birdbath.

image

image

At least it’s not that wet and heavy stuff, so shoveling won’t be nearly as horrendous as it could’ve been. It’s supposed to get close to 50 degrees on Wednesday—not looking forward to that slop!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

posted by lee on 02/12/06 at 11:21 AM
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Monday, February 13, 2006

now it’s definite: i support ned lamont for senator

Stanley and I went to Stamford this afternoon, to the home of Aldon and Kim Hynes (a fantastic, rambling log hunting lodge in North Stamford), where we got to meet Ned Lamont, who, as I mentioned earlier, is planning a run against Joe Lieberman. Aldon arranged the meeting for bloggers, and invited us along with several other bloggers.

I liked Lamont before, just based on what I read of his position on his website (http://www.nedlamont.com)—but now that I’ve had a chance to meet him and to hear what he has to say in person, I can honestly say I am very glad to be actively working to support a candidate for a change rather than just voting against someone.

Besides his support for universal health care and his opposition to the wombat war in Iraq and to pork, I agree with Lamont when he says, in essence, that serving in Congress should not be a career, and that the Founding Fathers had never intended it to be a career. The FF intended that citizens serve for a term or two, doing the best job that they could, bringing their experience and perspectives to bear, representing their constituents, and then go home. That it’s when politics becomes a career is when things start to go wrong and corruption can set in.

It was an interesting meeting. Aside from the Hynes, there were other bloggers, a campaigner from Massachusetts, and Tom Swan, who is on a leave of absence as the executive director of Connecticut Citizen Action Group to work on Lamont’s exploratory committee, and a blogger named Matt Stoller out of DC (http://matt_stoller.mydd.com) who interviewed Lamont (film at 11 ... er, he had the interview videotaped and said he will make it available via mydd.com and announce it on http://www.myleftnutmeg.com).

I would’ve like to have been able to ask Lamont some more questions, or Tom Swan some more questions, but felt steamrollered by Matt Stoll and his questioning and and his interview taping (for a blog I’d never heard of until today!) ... wish that could have been scheduled some other time as it immediately made me feel like an outsider in my own state, shoved aside by some beltway blogger. I’m not saying that was the intention—that was just my reaction, reasonable or not. It’s not a reflection on Lamont—he gracefully went along with it all. Note to Lamont’s event organizers: don’t invite actual voters to these meetups and have them shut up while some out-of-stater hogs all the meetup time—that ain’t grassroots organizing! UPDATE: Aldon wrote in a comment that the meeting was actually for beltway bloggers. I didn’t know this—I thought it was for local bloggers. So my complaint is not relative—other than to say next, PLEASE be clear about the purpose of the meetup (my feeble brain needs it!)

That said, I did like Lamont’s answers to the questions that were asked. Or else I wouldn’t be writing this. Lamont has a grasp of what our national priorities should be, I think.

As soon as I got home, I went to Ned Lamont’s contribute page on ActBlue (https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/entity/9354) and made a donation. And I will work at his campaign office when it opens up here in Norwalk, and do whatever else I can do to get out the vote for Ned Lamont on August 8th (the CT primary). I’ll even change my voter registration from independent to Democrat—something I’ve NEVER felt compelled to do until today.

posted by lee on 02/13/06 at 02:44 PM
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Thursday, February 16, 2006

computerized calligraphy

Caligraft is an online exhibition of computerized calligraphy. Or something like that—the explanation is denser than I can cope with when I’m sleepy. I just like the results. This site is by Ricard Marxer Piñón. He says:

Calligraphy is the art of decorative handwriting. From a formal point of view we are talking about decorative ways of representing the ideas of glyphs that we have in our mind. This same idea can be translated to the domain of computation, the result is what I call computational calligraphies.

This shouldn’t be understood as trying to imitate human calligraphies using a computer. It means to use computation to create new representations of fonts, which can be considered as the digital representations of the ideas of glyphs.

I’m looking forward to exploring this more. Meanwhile, here is one of his creations, sketching 02 (click to enlarge).

sketch 02 by Ricard Marxer Piñón

posted by lee on 02/16/06 at 10:26 PM
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ramblings

A bit crabby right now, one of those days where I worked and worked at a lot of different things and still have a to-do list longer than I’d like.

One project is almost ready to launch—hope we can tomorrow. It a site devoted to kids who are the target of bullies and will supplement the Surviving Bullies Workbook, which was just published this week (via LuLu.com—an ebook/print on demand online bookstore). We are putting together resources and other information about bullying, in this phase, aimed at primarily middle schoolers and older teens. But I’ll link to it as soon as it has launched. I like the way the interface has shaped up, a very clean looking but not dull look. We have a lot of plans for the site once launched, but are hoping that the site’s users will guide us by telling us what we should include and what would be most useful to them.

Another project we’re beginning is redesigning the website for an eco-resort in Mexico. Hey, we’re now an international firm, well, we have clients in another country, anyway. We’re putting together the information architecture and site plan right now. There are a lot of photos—it’s kind of soothing to look at photos of palm trees and one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen and turtles and Mexican tile. It ameliorates the site of four-feet-tall mounds of dirty, slushy snow.

Another project is working on a multi-storefront ecommerce database—a really geeky project that I’m anxious to dive in to.

And a lot of other projects, mainly website enhancements, or evolutions if you will. It’s interesting that very few of our clients put up a website and let it be—most add and change and enhance, which keeps everything interesting.

Which brings me to Time & Timing—Stu revised his futures history (is that an oxymoron?) databases to run as a web-based application instead of a downloadable software application. Based on PHP and MySQL. There’s a 30-day free trial, so if you’re into options trading, or just curious, take a look at it.

Valentine’s Day was nice this year. Stanley and I were both too tired to deal with it—exhausted from shoveling, and decided to just forget about it. This year, anyway. But, we really didn’t. We finally bought a new mattress on Monday—we’d been planning to for oh, about five years. We picked it up on Tuesday. Our bedstead is an antique that Stanley has turned into a thing of beauty, and the mattress was about an inch too big for it (it’s a four-poster bed, so not much give there). Stanley figured out how to make the bedframe larger without damaging the bed—but it took him hours to do it.

So that (and strawberries dipped in chocolate for dessert) was my Valentine. I paid for (and insisted upon getting) the mattress, so a non-backache-inducing night’s sleep was mine to him. It’s been so wonderful not waking with a back sore from a lumpy mattress. (It was at least 25 years old!)

Our next home improvement project is replacing the floor in the office. It is pine, as it’s a converted porch and the floor was not intended for heavy use. We got laminate (Cherry) at Costco on Monday, and that’s what we (rather, Stanley, as I doubt I’ll be any help) are going to replace it with. I’m looking forward to it because the floor under my chair has a crater.

My sentence structure is deteriorating so I think it’s time to stop rambling and go to bed.

posted by lee on 02/16/06 at 10:45 PM
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Friday, February 24, 2006

surviving bullies is launched

At long last, we’ve launched The Surviving Bullies Project (http://www.survivingbullies.com)—a new anti-bullying resource site. It’s just the beginning of what’s planned for the site, which is the brainchild of Dickon Pownall-Gray. Dickon and other Project staff are working on developing a comprehensive anti-bullying school program and, as mentioned in an earlier post, have published the Surviving Bullies Workbook.

We have more stuff to include in the site now, and fairly soon, we’ll include multimedia content. It’s extremely interesting, and I really hope it helps in the battle against bullying.

posted by lee on 02/24/06 at 03:20 PM
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