Posts with mood sad (11)
just some grousing about North Carolina, and Obama endorses gay marriage!
Mood: sad
Posted on 2012-05-09 14:03:00
Tags: rant gay politics
Words: 95
North Carolina voted to ban same-sex civil unions and marriage last night...and it wasn't even close. Amendment 1 passed 61-39%, and the map gets redder. Le sigh.
Why exactly are civil rights up for a popular vote again?
As @thinkprogress points out, the last time NC amended their constitution about marriage it was to ban interracial marriage. Similarly gloomy reaction from Andrew Sullivan.
This cool gay rights visualization from the BBC is already out of date!
Wow - minutes ago President Obama says he supports same-sex marriage! While this has no practical effect it's certainly encouraging.
webOS woes
Mood: sad
Posted on 2011-08-18 17:03:00
Tags: palm essay palmpre
Words: 124
So! HP just announced they're not making any more webOS devices. Maybe webOS will be licensed, maybe not. Signs from inside indicate webOS isn't dead and might be licensed out to other hardware manufacturers, but clearly no such deal is in place yet.
I am: sad (and not sure what to get for my next phone - had my Sprint Pre for over two years and it's not gonna last too much longer), but hopeful that webOS isn't going away for good. I'll probably take a few days off, try not to read too much news, and come back and decide how much effort to spend developing apps. I still enjoy writing apps, and enjoy using them myself, so I'll keep doing that at least...
Salvaging the looks of LJ for WebOS
Mood: sad
Posted on 2011-03-13 15:01:00
Tags: lj for webos palmpre projects
Words: 147
An excerpt from the most recent review of LJ for WebOS: "...most recent update has made it so ugly that it is unusable." This makes me sad!
So - here's my plan:
- the most recent update added themes, some of which are not terrible (I think). So I added a dialog box on first launch that points this out and makes it easy to try them.
- I also created a "plain" theme (see the first screenshot on the LJ for WebOS page, so if you really hate every one of the other themes, at least you can fall back to that one. I also made it the default theme, which made me a little sad but people can always change it if they want.
Here's hoping this will make people happy! Of course, people rarely go back and change their reviews so I'm probably stuck with that one...
health care
Mood: sad
Posted on 2010-01-20 10:24:00
Tags: dreams politics
Words: 366
Scott Brown (the Republican candidate) won Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat last night. Although it doesn't seem like an upset now, it certainly was a few weeks ago - the last time Massachusetts had a Republican senator was 1978 (thanks Wikipedia!)
While it's fun to play the blame game (hint: Coakley was a terrible candidate, exit polls showed voters had a 58-38 approval of Obama), the real question is what does this mean for health care? It is possible for the House to simply pass the exact bill that the Senate has already passed without the need for another Senate vote, which seems to me the most likely way for it to happen. Or they could change the bill and send it back to the Senate and try to tempt Olympia Snowe or some other moderate Republican and waste more months and months while not doing more to deal with the economy and get absolutely slaughtered in November. It sounds like the White House wants to get it done (Axelrod, Plouffe), but it depends on the representatives in the House.
Last night we read in bed for a while, and I finished up The Science of Fear which had a passage about how we spend way too much money on counterterrorism (given the actual risk of terrorism) and how we could spend that money on, oh, covering the 40 or so million uninsured in America. It really hit home - to throw away a bill that helps cover 30 million people because of a special election (not to mention all the time that was wasted to get to this point) really doesn't make sense.
Then I had trouble getting to sleep because I was a bit despondent about health care reform's chances. Then I had a bad dream: I was on a train with my family and the Chinese army and something happened with a plane and I got orders to fight the Chinese army (destroyerj was a member), and we eventually defeated them in battle, killed destroyerj, but my two sisters had died in the fighting.
Sooo I think I'm going to disengage from politics for a week or so. Except the Prop 8 trial, of course.
gay marriage ban _ahead_ in CA
Mood: sad
Posted on 2008-10-14 14:39:00
Tags: gay politics
Words: 46
Bad news - Proposition 8 (banning gay marriage in California) is now apparently ahead. This would be a huge step backward if it passes in November. I just gave some money to fight it - I hadn't done so before because it was losing by a lot! Blah.
why yes, I am a little depressed
Mood: sad
Music: Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror" (IMH)
Posted on 2008-03-05 09:50:00
Tags: politics
Words: 1235
I've been trying to characterize this, and here's my best shot: I don't handle disappointment well for things I'm rooting for. I remember watching The Comeback as a kid and being in tears afterwards. I was crushed when Dean lost the primary in 2004, and again when Kerry lost to Bush. So, with that ominous forward:
We showed up at our polling place at 6:40, and there were already around 30 people waiting in the middle school cafeteria, so we found a seat and read and talked and whatnot. The number of people kept growing until the election judge announced that we would start at 7:15 (i.e. there were no people still waiting to vote). At that point, there were more like 100 people inside, and they were going to call us by table to sign in for Clinton, Obama, or Undeclared (or somebody else...), but then decided to have everyone just get in a line. There were maybe 80 people in front of us and a lot behind us, and we couldn't see all the way out the door.
The line was moving slowly at first, but finally they had someone checking voter registration cards for people in the line, and then splitting up the Clinton and Obama tables for signing in. The Obama table was about twice as long, and they started calling for Clinton people to skip ahead since there were so few in our part of the line.
As we got up to the front, I saw a woman wearing an "Obama Precinct Captain" button, so I asked her if they had enough delegates already. She said that our precinct (238 in da house!) was allotted 53 delegates, and with 53 alternates that was a lot of people, so if I wanted to stick around I could probably be one. We both signed in and voted (being sure to mark the GLBT box - neat!) and hemmed and hawed about whether to stay or not. It was probably 8:10 or so by this point, and we were both tired (waiting in line was fairly boring) but I decided that I'd stick around for a little while and see how long it would take. (djedi graciously stayed with me although he wasn't as interested)
Luckily, the improved system meant that the line moved much faster even though it was a lot longer than we had seen. 15-20 minutes later, it was done and they began counting. I saw and heard from people around me that Obama had won Vermont and Clinton had won Rhode Island (no surprises there) and that Clinton was ahead in Ohio, but Texas was 50-48 Obama with many, many votes left to be counted.
Soon after that, the precinct convention began. The first order of business was to select a temporary chairman(chairperson?) for the meeting - the permanent precinct chairman was a oldish woman who was losing her voice, presumably from being at the polling place all day. A younger guy with a loud voice was nominated and he looked like an Obama plant - we were mostly grouped by who we supported and someone went around telling us to vote for him. I (and apparently djedi) thought this was a little chintzy and so we voted for the woman, and she won 34-31, but the guy wanted to "divide the house" (i.e. go to one side to vote for that person), so we lugged our stuff over to the Clinton-ish side and they counted again and lo and behold the guy won by one vote, 35-34. That was...interesting.
Anyway, then they chose a secretary and the oldish woman ran again but lost more convincingly this time to someone who was already taking notes (I was a little confused at this point). Then the guy said that they were still counting the sign-ins, and there was a mistake in counting so they had to start over, but in the meantime people talked about how things worked. The 53 delegates would be divided proportionally between the candidates, and then those groups would decide who the delegates and alternates were. After that, they would vote on the 38(!) resolutions that were before them.
A woman sitting next to us seemed very concerned that a delegate wasn't bound to vote for their candidate. She made some comment about how this felt like democracy in Iraq. I didn't feel like pointing out that even the electors in the Electoral College aren't bound to vote for anyone, and there are soo many delegates that it would have to be a fairly large conspiracy or something to change the results.
Finally they finished counting. There were 441 total voters in the caucus (that seems like a lot!) and 292 were for Obama, 149 for Clinton, which worked out to 36 delegates for Obama and 17 for Clinton. Then we split up to decide delegates. They had a list of people who could be delegates from Obama headquarters, but first they asked for a show of hands of those present who wanted to do it, and there were 31 of us. So, we all get to be delegates, and I waited in line to sign up. (they were short on people even with the list, so they started calling people who had indicated interest when they signed in) djedi looked through the resolutions and there were some interesting ones (55 mph speed limit, bringing troops home from Iraq, medicinal marijuana), but it was already 9:00 and it looked like this would take a while, so we left after I signed up. Hopefully I'm still a delegate; I assume I'll get an email or something :-)
When they called for volunteers they said multiple times that the county convention was all day on a Saturday and started at 7:30 AM, but looking at the information sign up starts at 7:30, the actual convention starts at 10:30. So yay for that!
Anyway, we got home and I saw Clinton was winning Ohio (and they called it for her shortly thereafter) and she started leading in Texas, and was up 50-48 when we went to bed with 55% or so reporting. I kept thinking Obama was going to come back since so few votes were counted in Harris County (Houston), but it turns out he only won there 56-43 which wasn't enough to make up the gap. The good news is that as of now, Clinton gained only 1 delegate, and that doesn't include some of the TX caucuses which seem to be going for Obama. Updated: Clinton wins more like 13 delegates.
I don't dislike Hillary, although I do have a few complaints with how she's run her campaign. But I decided in 2004 that, unless the techniques were pretty underhanded (voter suppression, etc.) that's not a good thing to consider when voting. Politics is nasty and ugly by design, that's just the way it is. I do have concerns about her electability in November, but that's so hard to judge anyway. The point is, I was still depressed last night and didn't sleep well, but that's way overreacting. (also, I think the rest of my immediate family is for Hillary...hi immediate family!)
So, to sum up: I think I'm a delegate, Hillary stays alive to fight another day, whoever wins on the D side will have a good plan for health care and good things will happen. Sunshine, lollipops, etc.
moving on
Mood: sad
Posted on 2007-09-15 23:30:00
Words: 7
I hate saying goodbye. I'll miss people.
stuff ending
Mood: sad
Posted on 2007-03-05 10:10:00
Words: 26
The FoxTrot comic strip has been reduced to Sundays only, and the show with zefrank will be ending on March 17. Watch it while you can!
leaving on a jet plane...
Mood: sad
Posted on 2006-08-21 09:53:00
Tags: moving
Words: 76
Well, actually a car. And not until Thursday. But since people come to box up our stuff tomorrow, we have to decide what we're taking in the car with us today (and make sure it fits), so it feels like the move is really imminent (which it is).
Thanks a lot to all who came to the party last night - I had a lot of fun, and then was sad afterwards. But I'm mostly better now.
last NI post
Mood: sad
Location: NI for the last time
Posted on 2006-08-16 13:20:00
Tags: moving
Words: 51
I'm about to clear my cache and uninstall Firefox. Whee!
This whole day has been a bit surreal. Had a nice lunch at Rudy's, though.
I posted about the show with zefrank a few days ago - here's a good episode with a catchy song ("where the fuck do ideas come from?").
sadness
Mood: sad
Posted on 2005-02-17 10:35:00
Words: 9
Please keep Doug & Teresa in your thoughts and prayers.
This backup was done by LJBackup.