| Television migration |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|12:45 am] |
After the big digital television conversion that happened Friday night, I played with the TV antenna I have. Eventually, I was able to get all the stations I could before. The biggest change was KGO (7), who went back to their original VHF frequency, leaving their perfectly good UHF frequency they had been temporarily using during the transition. I don't know why they would want to do this. In the new world of digital, UHF is far better than VHF, as it is much easier to receive. Entirely the opposite of what it was decades ago, when VHF dominated. Now, only KGO and KNTV (channel 11, frequency 12) remain on VHF.
For most of Saturday, though, I thought the situation was worse. Many of the channels I had, disappeared. Evidently, on Saturday they were doing conversion work up on Sutro Tower, so the signals from Sutro were at lower power for that day. I did full rescans on my converter boxes, and was able to eventually get them all again, later Saturday night.
The digital signals are beautiful, but in the end, it's still TV. I don't watch a lot of TV, preferring to use the computer instead.
The TV transition went smoothly. I'm glad they postponed the date to now, because it's summer, and much easier for people to get outside and do antenna work. The extra months gave many people, including me, time to go through the government program and get converter boxes. Most people have cable or satellite, and so don't care about the broadcast TV transition. Of the people that do care, plenty of converter boxes were made available.
Anyone want a useless analog-only pocket TV?
We all know the higher frequencies (channels 52 and above) were sold to the cellphone companies, but what about the lower frequencies? I'm looking forward to channels 5 and 6 being repurposed for extending FM radio. FM radio, unlike UHF, is currently maxed out, and some more room would be a good thing. Analog FM is obviously still popular, and radios are everywhere. The lower frequencies are difficult to use for digital, so the cellphone companies aren't as interested in them. The advantage of channels 5 and 6 is that they are right next door to the existing FM band, so extending the band becomes trivially easy (just change a few cheap components in an analog radio and you've done it). I hope the FCC authorizes this, once the migration is fully complete and things settle down. |
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| We lose |
[May. 26th, 2009|10:42 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  morose | ] |
We lose.
What now?
* Work to put a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 8 on the ballot for 2010. As the Court has ruled it to be a mere amendment and not a revision, it shouldn't need anything more than a majority vote to counter it with another amendment. This must be in November 2010. The problem with 2012 is that Obama will be up for re-election, thus the Obama demographic will slaughter us again. November 2010 is the closest non-Obama major election. A minor election won't do, for similar reasons, as turnout will be so small that the bad guys will be able to dominate the numbers.
* Work to defeat the re-election campaigns of the Supreme Court justices who voted against us. In California, they are not appointed for life, but rather, elected to 12-year terms. Some come up for re-election as early as 2010. There is an opportunity for success here as the "non-candidate issue" funding loophole will not apply. Organized religion will not be able to overtly fund these campaigns.
* Work with the Legislature to get the ball rolling on civil unions for all. The Supreme Court justices applied a narrow interpretation to Prop 8, and renaming marriage to something other than the word "marriage" should work around the text of Prop 8 nicely.
* Work to lock down the proposition system against future "Prop 8" measures. With the Supreme Court's ruling as precedent, the law now is that anybody can now strike down anybody else's civil rights at any time, all they need to do is gather a simple majority vote. Who's next? Will the Yes On 8 campaign work to press their advantage and get domestic partners repealed as well?
* Do NOT attempt to appeal to federal court. If Bush did one effective thing during his terms as President, it was to stack the US Supreme Court heavily against us. To appeal to the federal system guarantees certain defeat. It would jeopardize the progress made in the Eastern states as well. The bad guys know this. I would not be surprised at all if the Yes On 8 campaign had a federal appeal already prepared and ready to go as a contingency. |
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| Getting the state out of the marriage business entirely |
[Mar. 15th, 2009|08:10 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | DNA Lounge mixtapes | ] |
I attended the rallies outside the California Supreme Court, at Civic Center in San Francisco, on March 5, and watched the Proposition 8 hearings on a big screen TV they had set up outside.
Unfortunately, it was a disaster. Our arguments, which looked so good on paper, pretty much crumbled before the row of unsympathetic justices. Our lawyers stammered and stuttered, looking very unprofessional, whereas Ken Starr, the opponent's lawyer, was slick, polished, and smooth.
Justice Kennard made all the difference. Her opinion has obviously flipped. Throughout the hearing, in her creepy accent, she kept asking about what would happen to existing marriages if Prop 8 was upheld, a question that would be a moot point if we were going to get a winning vote. Near the end of the hearing, she outright shouted out her opinion, as if it wasn't obvious already. She was one of the 4 justices who voted pro-marriage last year, and with her flipped vote, we're guaranteed a 3-4 loss, at a minimum. Justice George, the chief justice, might also have flipped, according to some, although I couldn't detect this during the hearing.
Justices Moreno and Werdegar were the only ones sympathetic to our case. Both of them voted pro-marriage earlier, and they seem to be keeping their opinion. Unfortunately, I predict a 2-5 loss for our side. To me, it's unbelievable how the justices couldn't see the slippery slope that these kind of propositions will lead to, not to mention the anti-marriage side's lack of any good non-religious argument other than "the people have spoken". Evidently, "the people have spoken" was a very persuasive argument. That, and the fact that 6 out of the 7 justices (all except Moreno) were Republican. I guess Republicans are still infatuated by Ken Starr.
However, Justice Chin, one of the anti-marriage votes earlier, had something that completely changed my perception of him. He has an idea I agree with! Get the state out of the marriage business entirely. Leave marriage as strictly a religious ceremony, like communion or bar mitzvah. In other words, the state should have no business regulating who can and who can not get married, and shouldn't intrude on the religious freedom of being able to have marriage ceremonies according to the rules of one's religion. I support this idea entirely. The state should grant civil unions, or something like that, which grants all the legal privileges currently obtained only from marriage. The state would no longer grant marriages, so in order to get a marriage, you would have to arrange this through your religion. Makes sense to me. With thinking like this, if the situation ever arised, I'd be happy to nominate Chin as the new chief justice!
I'm not the only one who likes this idea a lot. It would be a decent compromise between gay people and the anti-marriage religious forces. Here is a recent opinion in the New York Times suggesting this. Here's another writeup, suggesting that the justices might be interested in a compromise as well. And finally, here's a proposed model law, that could be enacted to put in place such a compromise.
I wonder how the religious forces would feel about such a compromise? I know there's Mormons lurking on this blog :) so let's hear what you think. |
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| Another stray cat sighting |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|10:41 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | sad | ] |
Tonight I heard a lonely, scared meow coming from the backyard.
I quickly took inventory and counted that all 3 of my cats were safe and inside the house.
Turned on the light, and saw a beautiful black cat. It had clearly wandered into our backyard, from the neighborhood park that is directly behind our house.
The cat came up to the window, and was obviously tame. It's yet another abandoned cat, heartlessly dumped at the park by its former owners. I hear the problem of abandoned pets is growing, as many people get foreclosed on and evicted from their houses, and forced to suddenly move into smaller apartments that don't often allow pets.
This is a real problem here. Oftentimes, abandoned cats aren't fixed. So, they have kittens. One time, one of the stray cats had a litter of kittens underneath some nearby debris. There isn't enough food to go around, and there's many wild critters (opossums, etc.) competing for it at the park, so after a few weeks the kittens are never seen again. It is sad.
I don't know what I can do, though. If I showed the black cat any sign of affection, it would become attached to me. I have plenty of cats already. |
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| Feeling the need for mead |
[Mar. 4th, 2009|03:53 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | content | ] |
| [ | music |
| | mostly silence | ] |
In our house, there was a disused shower in the downstairs bathroom (somewhat useless since it's far away from any bedrooms). Now, it has a much better purpose. It's now a brewery!
For the past few weeks, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lwood, dpaxson, teloric, and I have been brewing mead. We started with a beer, as practice. The beer turned out just fantastic. I wish I had more of it! Now we are brewing another beer, and most importantly, mead. We currently have three carboys full of mead, all sitting contentedly in the shower stall, occasionally burping.
lwood has created a very good Wiki website that documents our brewing, the Brewiki [link redacted].
Our second beer should be ready soon. I look forward to it. I look even more forward, to the mead! |
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| Throwing away the past |
[Jan. 18th, 2009|05:02 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Energy 92.7 | ] |
I need to clean up the back room in the house. Its messiness has gone on for far too long.
I'm throwing away two things that meant a lot to me in the past.
The first is the Apple ][ computer, and all of its accompanying materials (disk drives, disks, manuals, original boxes). I've thought about transferring the disks to modern media for years now, and just have never gotten around to it. It has been such a low priority that I have came to realize that it would just never get done, and honestly, the memories of what was done feel better to me than having the actual data. They are just taking up space. I'm still proud of the Tetris game I wrote in BASIC, with lo-res graphics, almost exactly 20 years ago.
There's another Apple computer that I've had my eye on recently, though....
The second thing I'm throwing away is an old hard disk that once held my entire music collection. It was in an external enclosure, upstairs, where it gets really hot during the summer, and the heat did it in. It started making a high-pitched whining noise. I foolishly turned it off one night, and when turning it back on, got nothing but a faint hum. The bearings had gone, and the drive could no longer physically spin. I'm hesitant to do the freezer trick, but might just try it. I still have the drive in the freezer! If anybody has experience with this, let me know. How would you avoid shorting it all out due to condensation, when removing the drive from the freezer and powering it up?
As for the music that was on the drive, most of it I still have originals on CD, stashed away in DJ binders. I will restore songs if they come to mind, "on demand", from these binders. That's a reason I still like buying music on CD instead of online: you get a physical artifact to stash away, in case of data loss. I'm kind of looking forward to re-ripping the music: I had done most of the ripping in the mid-1990's, and the MP3 encoding wasn't up to modern standards: the filenames and titles were a mess, the quality was low, and ReplayGain was merely a figment of someone's imagination at the time.
My music collection weighed in at 150GB or so. I loaded it all into iTunes and it was something like 30,000 songs, 60 solid days of music! With today's larger hard drives, I can rip it all at 320 kbps (maximum MP3 quality) and still have room to spare. I know there are much better encoding formats than MP3 these days, such as the outstanding AAC format (also known as MP4), but as somebody famous once said to me, "its ubiquitousness outweighs its disadvantages".
So, I'll start rebuilding my music collection onto a new drive. It will still be an external drive, as that's very convenient, but will have to watch the temperature this time.... |
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| Free HDTV with an antenna |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|01:55 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | DI.fm Future Synthpop | ] |
One of the things that has fascinated me for a while, is the possibility of getting free over-the-air HDTV with a television antenna. If I owned my own house, that would be one of the things I would want to do. I am a big fan of spending a little more money up front, to make things become free (or substantially reduced in price) over time. For the same reason, I would love to get solar panels, and a charger hookup in the garage for a hybrid car, eventually.
In addition to being free, there's unique things you can get on TV with an antenna. There's a number of small obscure TV stations that aren't carried by the cable or satellite companies. There's also the concept of subchannels: just like HD Radio, each HDTV channel is made up of multiple subchannels that can all have different programming. In my experience, cable companies only carry a few of the more popular subchannels (PBS television stations are especially good), while satellite companies don't carry any of them at all.
I live in Castro Valley, and I'm literally in a valley as well. So, this location isn't a good choice for an antenna. A good clear line-of-sight, preferably to the horizon, is needed in order to pick up a good signal. I'm blocked in all around. Even KCBS radio, a local station that's so strong that I once picked them up in Phoenix, drops out nearby here. However, if I lived on a hill, like some beautiful houses I've had the privilege of visiting recently, an antenna would work great.
What direction to point the antenna? There's a well-known website that will tell you: antennaweb.org. In the Bay Area, the decision is easy: a substantial number of stations broadcast from a single location, Sutro Tower in San Francisco. Point the antenna at Sutro and you're good to go.
Another, more obscure, website is TV Fool. This website has a wonderful feature, in that it will plot your elevation and show you the terrain between you and the TV transmitter. You can see visually how clear your line-of-sight would be, and predict your signal quality. You can put in an address and get a list of channels in your area. It's fascinating to put in different addresses and see how things are different in various neighborhoods.
There's a lot of good advice about TV antenna installation online. A lot of it seems anachronistic to read, as the last time people seriously thought about TV antennas was in the 1970's, before cable and satellite became popular. However, with the additional choices offered by HDTV, and the general desire to save money these days, I predict TV antennas will make a slight comeback. It's important to point out that you don't need a new antenna to receive HDTV, if you already have a working analog TV antenna. The physics of the radio frequencies haven't changed, so existing antenna hookups should continue to work just fine.
With HDTV, as with all digital transmissions, the signal level is hit-or-miss: it doesn't fade out like an analog signal does. It's a wall. You either have a perfect signal, or you have a black screen. This makes it easier to get a watchable HDTV picture, than with analog. The only difference is the number of channels that you are able to receive. The RabbitEars website has a listing of the most prominent channels in each geographic area, to use as a goal when trying to see how many channels you can get, and one of the more interesting things is that you can click through to see a listing of all the subchannels that are available on each channel.
HDTV is also more efficient, at fitting into its assigned channel, than analog TV. With just a few exceptions, each analog TV station have at least one unused channel of "dead air" between it and another station. So, they must be at least 2 numbers apart (the exceptions are 4/5, 6/7, 13/14). HDTV stations don't have this restriction, and can be packed in right next to each other. This is the real reason the government wants HDTV: so that it can pack stations in more efficiently, thus freeing up many higher UHF frequencies to be sold off to raise money. It makes sense for the government to sell off the upper part of the UHF band, as public interest has shifted: people aren't as interested in UHF stations these days, instead, people want more bandwidth for all the cool new features on digital cellphones, and more wireless Internet access.
UHF has been nibbled away at for decades: in the 1960's, the government hugely overestimated the public's demand for UHF stations, and created channels 14-83. The higher channels have always remained somewhat empty, I recall. When analog cellphones were created in the 1980's, channels 70-83 were carved off to make room for analog cellphones (I remember being able to eavesdrop on analog conversations in the 1990's by using an old black-and-white TV that could still go up to channel 83). These days, channels 52-69 are being similarly carved off, to create a new generation of useful services.
I'm also hoping that some lower channels will be carved off, channels 5-6 to be exact, as these channels have the unique property of being right next to the existing FM radio band! Imagine being able to turn your radio down to 76.1, not just 87.9, and all the new FM channels that would create in between. Unlike UHF television, the FM band is currently completely packed now, and has been for decades. There's a great demand for new FM stations for people to listen to, especially with all the great new Internet radio stations looking to expand to an offline audience. The good news is that the FCC is starting to pay attention to this idea. These "new" radio frequencies are already used in Japan, home of many companies that make radios, and in fact many good portable radios already have the capability to receive these frequencies (look for an "international" setting, on a very small switch somewhere). This would nearly double the size of the existing FM band, and if strict ownership limits are enforced once again (as they were before the 1990's corporate consolidations), many more different voices will be on the air and radio will once again be interesting to listen to.
There's a darker side to these HDTV plans, though. Making room for HDTV, and reorganizing the frequencies in this way, will require the shutdown of analog TV broadcasting. Right now, most of the HDTV stations coexist nicely with their corresponding analog stations. Unfortunately, this won't be the case for long. On February 17, the government will shut down all analog TV stations! Hard to believe, but it's true. I've predicted for months that this will turn into a public relations disaster. I would guess that one of the easiest ways to lose political power in the USA would be to take Joe Sixpack's TV away! Especially now, with so many people out of work, having trouble affording cable or satellite, and being stuck at home watching TV.
I've predicted for months now that the analog shutoff would get pushed back, or canceled altogether. I'm standing by my prediction of a public relations disaster come February 17, if this date isn't changed. Just today, I saw a news article that confirmed a guess that I had made: that Obama would ask for this date to be postponed.
I predict an executive order, if Congress fails to act, to defer this day of reckoning for analog TV. While HDTV is definitely the correct long-term solution, it should take place gradually. If it were up to me, it would happen over the course of at least 10 years, as existing analog TV sets wear out and are replaced over time. As HDTV promises a compelling reason for people to upgrade (the improved picture and additional choice of subchannels), people will naturally migrate to HDTV over time, as their economic situations allow. I believe that the government should not force people to go to HDTV against their will, by cutting off the analog stations cold turkey.
The government is trying a program to help people buy converter boxes for analog TV sets, but the government coupons don't fully cover the cost of buying the boxes, and they have ran out of coupons! It's also difficult to find converter boxes in stores, as they are somewhat of an obscure item.
And, with the subdued economy these days, there isn't quite the rush to build out the new cellphone and Internet services that would replace the old UHF channels, so I predict the corporations that bought those old UHF frequencies will be amenable to the idea of not being able to make use of their frequencies for several years to come... especially if there's also a corresponding delay in the payment deadlines to the government for their purchase of those frequencies!
So, regarding HDTV, the next few months will literally be interesting to watch. |
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| Golfland supported Prop 8, now where to go? |
[Dec. 24th, 2008|03:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Capital FM, London, UK | ] |
I haven't been to Golfland in a while, and it looks like I'll now never be going back.
http://guydads.blogspot.com/2008/11/boycott-golfland-entertainment-centers.html
It appears Golfland was a large supporter of Prop 8. Golfland is a private business, family-owned by the Kenney family. Robert Kenney, vice president, gave a large donation.
http://www.electiontrack.com/transaction.html?transid=1355368-INC34038
There's many locations of these businesses in the Bay Area, and interestingly, they weren't mentioned during any of the earlier talk about boycotts or other activities that happened right after the election.
This is a disappointment for me because the Golfland locations are essentially the last good arcades in the Bay Area. They continue to get new games, especially the music/dancing games that I like. Now, where to go? |
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| Doing my part to help crash the economy |
[Dec. 14th, 2008|03:39 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | DI.fm Future Synthpop | ] |
I'm done with all my Christmas shopping this year. I also never started. So, what's going on?
My family has something wonderful, called a "Christmas truce". What this means is that we mutually agree in advance to not buy Christmas gifts for each other. We've had this for years now.
By doing this, we all give each other the best gift of all: the gift of more money and more free time!
There's no need to bundle up for cold weather, go out to the mall, circle the parking lots looking for space, fight over sale items, and stand in endless lines. And, of course, no need to spend money!
It's such a wonderful thing to do. We still love each other. We just simply don't buy gifts for each other. There's lots of other good things to do around Christmas time that don't involve gifts.
Of course, if everybody did this, the economy might crash, as the big expected spike in sales around Christmas time wouldn't be there. "Black Friday" might never happen, and retailers might not make it into the black at all for the year.
However, given the state of the economy this year, this idea seems to be catching on.... |
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| Laid off from ServerEngines |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|02:36 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | There's A Dream - artist unknown | ] |
I have recently been laid off from the company I used to work at, ServerEngines.
I had worked there for just over a year. If you're curious about what I did while working there, I have updated my resume with the relevant details (as much as I felt it was prudent to make public, so forgive me for being intentionally vague on some things).
It didn't surprise or anger me to be laid off, in the slightest. Honestly, I could see it coming. I won't go into specifics here, but will mention one fact: I was very pleased during the layoff meeting to hear emphatically, from both my boss and my boss's boss, that it was not related to my job performance or anything I did on the job at all.
Fortunately, I have some very good job leads in the pipeline. I went to several of the recent protests against Prop 8 during these last few weeks, and by sheer good luck, met some people that I'm becoming friends with and who represent companies that are still hiring.
So, I'll do the usual things: take time to finally get caught up on chores and cleaning up around the house, make progress on some back-burner projects I've been wanting to do but didn't have time for until now, apply for UI, get more exercise, and enjoy a break from work. |
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| XM and Sirius merge |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|01:14 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | DI.fm Eurodance | ] |
A few days ago, XM and Sirius finally consummated their merger. They had merged the corporations several months ago, but they had kept the XM and Sirius broadcast services mostly intact. That all changed a few days ago.
They did what I had earlier feared.
They just merged the XM and Sirius services together, so they are now a simulcast of each other. They fired half their DJ's, and kept the worst of both channels.
I'm a Sirius subscriber, but will shortly be calling to stop my auto-renewal so that my existing payment period runs down. They did something I feared: when they merged: instead of authorizing dual-mode radios to be sold, they simply took a cheaper route.
Many truckers, and other people who spend a lot of time in vehicles, subscribed to both services, for maximum choice of channels to hear. Expect cancellations of at least one of the services, as it is now redundant with the other.
A dual-mode radio would have been a no brainer. Since the FCC decision was stuck in red tape for so long, they have had years to work on this. Customers practically screamed at them to build a dual-mode radio. Now that the services are a simulcast, a dual-mode radio would be pointless.
Customers are understandably livid over this decision to cancel half of both services and fold the services together into a simulcast.
I'm not the only one who is rather disappointed by this. Satellite radio shouldn't simply be more channels that repeat AM/FM content.
Satellite radio has just a few short years before mobile Internet access becomes affordable to the mainstream consumer. Program diversity is probably the main selling point of satellite radio, and losing the most interesting/quirky half of the channels is exactly the wrong way to go. People will go to the Internet to find those unique channels. If you own any SIRI stock and haven't already sold it, please do. |
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| Apocalypse |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|07:42 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | more dead silence | ] |
Proposition 8 is an apocalypse.
I'm not being melodramatic. One of the definitions of the word "apocalypse" is a great revelation, a revealing. During and after the Prop 8 vote, people's true thoughts and feelings became known. If you were caught in a traffic jam during any of the rallies, you would have surely heard them. You wouldn't believe the things people are saying and writing. There are many examples, just check the list of comments on almost any Prop 8 news article or Youtube video. Political correctness is over! And rightfully so.
The true feelings for and against gay people are now revealed. Political correctness led us to a false belief that everything was OK, that gay people were tolerated. It is now made blindingly obvious that this was just lip service. People's true feelings just lied under the surface, quietly seething, until yesterday. We are a HATED people, and have been so, for some time. To pretend otherwise is to deceive yourself.
It may be hard to believe, but go read a few comments and you will come to know. Any news article dealing with Proposition 8 seems to attract thousands of comments these days. Read as many of them as you can stand, including the ones that have been thumbed down. The haters are, unfortunately, now crawling out of their churches and coming online. Notice how many hateful comments have received huge numbers of thumbs-up. This is direct evidence that there are haters present.
I usually delete comments from haters on my blog articles, but for anything related to Proposition 8, I will let all comments stand. This will serve to illustrate my point, that we are a HATED people and should react as such.
I fear for our safety. Unless you live in an obviously gay-friendly neighborhood, notable gay things such as rainbow flags will have to go. I'm surprised the anti-gay movement doesn't have a symbol of their own yet. I will keep an eye out for such a symbol to appear, perhaps with a yellow background? The old anti-black folks used to use a Confederate flag. That's all the comparison I'll make between gay and black people. I've learned that the quickest way to make an enemy for life is to try to compare the gay rights struggle with a racial struggle, when communicating with somebody of that race.
Here are some suggestions for reducing the number of Yes votes we'll get in the future:
1) Never compare the gay struggle for equality with a racial struggle, as mentioned above. We must forge our own path. It will also be a difficult struggle, perhaps to be historically talked about some day as well.
It would be nice to get some empathy from the racial minorities, and the best way to do this would be to honor their own struggles by leaving them alone and not digging up any ANGRY cultural memories that will then be PROJECTED ONTO YOU.
2) Stop the gay "in your face" stuff. I never agreed with doing that. It's needlessly antagonistic. Look at the yellow stripe of the next rainbow flag you see, and visualize a "Yes On 8" sign in that yellow space. That is what the haters see, when they look at that flag. Think very carefully about the placement of any rainbow flags you might fly in the future, unless you're lucky enough to live in a gay-majority area. I'm not trying to hurt our cause, I'm being brutally honest! I love the small discreet rainbow stripes that can be placed on cars, where you only see them if you are actively looking for them. They serve to communicate the fact that you're gay, to those who want to know, without flaunting it, to those who don't want to know.
Think of the Jewish culture, as an example of a minority that was formerly hated in the past. Like the gay culture, you often can't tell if somebody is Jewish just by looking at them, barring obvious stereotypes. Nevertheless, Jewish people still found each other. By continually being present, without flaunting it, Jewish people gained acceptance over time. A noble example to follow.
I'd love to see the annual SF gay pride parade simply called the "pride parade". A straight pride float or two would be fun to see. I'd take my straight friends to see the parade, and they would want to watch. Turn it into a fun celebration of debauchery, that all adults can enjoy. When the haters start tuning in to see the pretty women, and see the pretty men as well, all getting along nicely, we win some votes.
3) Individual freedoms are important. I have many opinions about all sorts of political issues, many liberal, some surprisingly and shockingly conservative. If I were to share these opinions within the "mainstream" gay community, I'd be shunned. I'm not your average gay liberal. As an example, I may be a Democrat, but I will fight any gun control measure that crosses my ballot. Don't put other unrelated political prerequisites on gay acceptance.
Allow churches the freedom to refuse to do "holy matrimony" to gay couples. Want to get married? Find a gay-friendly venue, there are many. Allow parents to homeschool. Allow parents to opt-out of gay instruction given in public schools, and give parents fair warning before they are taken by surprise. Think of how you'd feel if gaybashing techniques were to suddenly be taught in school. You'd want the chance to opt out as well. A child coming home one day, asking parents suddenly about Adam and Steve, guarantees two brand-new Yes votes.
Forcing people to do gay-friendly things against their will, only guarantees that they are done begrudgingly and with seething hatred under the surface. Give the haters some room to breathe. Which is more dangerous, an animal with free room to move about, or an animal that has been backed into a corner?
If we continue to go down the same in-your-face route that has alienated many of our straight neighbors and coworkers, we will be colonizing planets on other star systems during the year that Proposition 8 finally gets repealed. I can't wait that long. |
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| The day after |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|12:20 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | depressed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | dead silence | ] |
The courthouses have been open all day, but no legal appeal has been filed. The silence from the No campaign is deafening. It's over. I've calmed down after yesterday's results, and have came to realize that we are now second-class citizens. My marriage to Eric was annulled when Prop 8 took effect at midnight last night. Despite what some have said, there is no language in Prop 8 that preserves existing marriages. It's only 14 words, and they are ironclad.
It's not just marriage. This rolls back pretty much everything, if you think about all that having this in the constitution enables. It can be the prerequisite for essentially anything you can think of that might be anti-gay. Reports of gaybashing are already on the rise, especially in inland areas with heavy Yes votes. People in the No campaign estimate it has just set the gay resistance back 10 to 25 years. I now refer to it as the gay resistance, as it can no longer be called a gay rights movement.
I did learn something interesting, though. Black people are NOT the cause of our failure. Many want to point the finger at the black vote, but this is not the case. I've never met so many gay-friendly black people in my life than during the No campaign.
During rallies, I observed many people driving by, in their cars. I could tell, by facial expressions, exactly who would be a No voter and who would be a Yes voter. By far, the anti-gay (Yes) voters were, in order:
1) White rednecks, driving pickup trucks or SUV's. These guys usually yelled out the window. Yelling "faggot" was the most common, followed by "queer", "yes on 8", and interestingly, "straight power". That last one is scary. The backlash is coming. I'm seriously considering packing, for my safety, and should probably do so before the next administration takes power (I like the Democratic party but not their anti-gun stance).
2) White old fogies, miserable, wrinkled, driving 20-year-old beater cars that looked ready to fall apart. Sometimes they were a couple, sometimes just an old man driving alone. They failed to save for their retirement, and as a result, are living a poor miserable life, desperately looking for a scapegoat. Gay people provide that convenient scapegoat. These guys just hide in their cars and give the bird. Some even sped up, or took a sharp corner, in a futile effort to intimidate.
3) Bible thumpers, with children in tow. Interestingly, the younger the child, the more anti-gay the parents were. In their minds, they think that making gay life as miserable as possible will somehow osmotically rub off on their child, and make them grow up not to be gay. Interestingly, families with older children were friendly! I'm thinking that once a child is old enough that you know if they will be gay or not, then you're either "safe" and no longer care about the issue (if child is straight), or you become very supportive of gay rights or decide to go rabidly the other way and kick the child out of your family (if child is gay).
4) Latino machismo. I earlier heard that the Latino culture of machismo is virulently anti-gay, and this is what I have observed. Combined with Catholic influence, this sank our chances in San Diego and other counties near the Mexican border.
5) Wiggers. I didn't see too many of these here in the Bay Area, but heard they were common in more hostile inland areas. These are white teenagers who adopt the worst of black culture, including ghetto rap music with messages of hate. Interestingly, real black ghetto culture tends not to vote at all, so any hostile intentions of real black ghetto culture wouldn't show up in the election results.
Notice that in 4 of these 5 observations, the most hateful race was White! Look at the Yes campaign photos, and that is what you see. Almost all of the hatred comes from white people, with a splash of Latino hatred. Black people, as evidenced by Alameda County's 66% No result, proved more friendly than I could ever possibly hope for. (Alameda County is heavily black, as the largest city is Oakland.) I noticed the Yes campaign's tour bus didn't stay especially long in Oakland.
The Asian vote, by the way, was neutral. Many Asians are also here on work visas, and as such, can't vote. I only remember one Asian voter, male, mid-twenties, successful appearance, driving a nice car, sadly voting Yes and giving us a hostile gesture. Other than that, most Asians didn't seem to care.
The turnout was miserable. San Francisco got a pathetic 49% turnout! If the most gay-friendly large city in the state couldn't motivate enough people to get off the couch and come out and vote, nothing can. I could put a proposition saying "Gays will be shot on sight" on the ballot, and half of SF would stay home instead of vote it down!
The turnout wasn't helped by Obama's victory. Obama clinched the key Eastern swing states by 7pm our time, and our polls were still open until 8pm. It made a HUGE difference. Before 7pm, the polling place I observed got moderate traffic, and the cars I estimated were about 4 No votes to every 1 Yes vote. After 7pm, traffic lightened up noticeably, but the cars I estimated were 4 YES votes to every 1 No vote! It got hostile out there. Democrat voters were too busy celebrating to remember to vote. Only the disgruntled Republican voters remained, and they crawled out of the woodwork to cast a spiteful vote for Yes on Prop 8.
Obama could have changed our election with a few words. When asked about Prop 8, all he gave were weasel words, which were falsely claimed by both the Yes AND No campaigns, as indicating endorsement! After Obama clinched at 7pm, he could have made an announcement, something like "California is in trouble, please get out and vote No on Prop 8". It would have been instantly blasted around the media, and could have changed the outcome. If he lost a few percentage points in a few throwaway states, it wouldn't have made a difference. His silence is deafening. I'm not keeping my hopes up for any favorable Obama rulings on gay rights. I hope I'm not wrong on my positive observations of the black vote, as the most powerful black man in the country did nothing for us.
The resistance did what it could to help the No vote. Much has already been said about the absolutely miserable failure of the No campaign management. I won't repeat what has already been said, as their will be postmortem finger-pointing for months to come. I will say, however, that the very lowest level of the No campaign, individual groups of people, was fantastic! There was real enthusiasm there, that was genuine, unlike the Yes people, which were mostly there because their pastor said so.
The Yes campaign was more persuasive simply on sheer numbers, of both people and signs. During evenly matched street-corner contests, the No people almost always won! The Yes people usually responded to our No presence by calling up the nearest church for another busload of Yes campaigners.
There was little or no coordination for street rallies, get-out-the-vote efforts in known friendly neighborhoods, or any other visibility efforts. All of my "marching orders" came from the grassroots, other than going to one campaign office and getting assigned to visibility at a known friendly precinct (the purpose of this was unclear to me). There was no formal campaign office in Alameda County, one of our friendliest counties! I had to go to San Jose to find something to do. By comparison, the Yes organization was present everywhere, even in San Francisco (their most hostile city). As anyone driving by a freeway overpass or busy intersection would attest, there was no shortage of Yes campaign signs and materials at all. As for No, I saw many people with hand-painted signs, such was their enthusiasm! The official No material was hard to get a hold of, and changing the campaign slogan halfway through the season didn't help at all. I wonder how many people meant to vote pro-gay, but because the "Unfair & Wrong" slogan could be interpreted either way, ended up voting anti-gay?
I met a small group of people online, using Twitter, a small Yahoo group, and Facebook. We were on street corners with signs. This was all done without coordination from the No campaign, which gave us nothing, except for a friendly person running the Twitter "NoOnProp8" feed that kept us somewhat aware of goings-on in nearby neighborhoods. Thank you, resistance leader, whoever you are.
As an addition to the online grassroots effort, Youtube had the best commercials on it, created by volunteers, again without direction or funding from the No campaign. Eventually, by the time things started getting desperate, the No campaign started plucking these commercials directly from Youtube and putting them on the air. They should have done this from the first day. The "Hi, I'm the California Constitution" commercial was brilliant, but two weeks too late to make a difference. We actually had momentum during the final week of the campaign, but early voting and absentee voting helped make the final week irrelevant. The Yes campaign knew this, as they deployed their sign blitz a week earlier than I had expected: not the Sunday before the election (Yes signs handed out by the boxload at church), but instead, two Sundays before the election. About the only Youtube commercial that did make an immediate impact was the final commercial, an inflammatory, hostile, Mormon-baiting commercial, and this commercial helped the Yes side more than anything else. You can still see the Yes side gloating about this commercial, and what they baited us into, on their webpage.
Analyzing the final statistics, we come to an interesting conclusion. The national Obama campaign had a Bradley effect of zero! The final result closely matched the polls. Voters no longer hide an inner prejudice against black people. (The Bradley effect is also called "social desirability bias", where a voter intentionally lies to a poll-taker, to avoid possible repercussions. Polls, unlike elections, are not anonymous, you never know who could be on the other end of the phone, perhaps it's your union boss). The Obama numbers had no visible Bradley effect. The Prop 8 numbers, however, were huge!
I earlier read that the poll numbers for Prop 8 were 42% Yes, 47% No, and 11% Undecided. That was in the final week of campaigning, with Yes and No advertisements and signs absolutely everywhere in California. Was anybody truly undecided at that point? The answer, of course, was no. ALL of the "undecided" votes, all 11 percent of them, every one, voted Yes. The final election result numbers seem to be 53% Yes at this point. The polled 47% No vote remained unchanged.
About the only thing good for our side that can be read from this is that many voters felt it has became more socially acceptable to be gay, as the anti-gay voters felt they had to hide their anti-gay feelings by claiming to be "undecided". Fully 11% of the voters felt this way.
This is, unfortunately, worse than Prop 22 back in the year 2000. Back then, the poll numbers were roughly 54% Yes (I lack the Prop 22 poll numbers for undecided voters). That election went 62% Yes, revealing an 8% Bradley effect. 8% of the voters felt they had to hide their anti-gay feelings by claiming to be either a No or "undecided" vote.
Interestingly, the black vote was polled as being the most hostile. This ended up being not true, during the campaign, as evidenced by the good Alameda numbers. This is a REVERSE Bradley effect in play! I think that the traditional black hiphop culture stereotype caused black voters to give an answer to the polltakers (presumably also black) that was MORE anti-gay, than how they actually ended up voting! That was interesting, and inspiring, to see.
I learned something from observing the mistakes of others. Never, ever, try to reach out to a black voter by equating your gay rights struggle to their black rights struggle. They will HATE you for doing this. It's seen as stealing their thunder and belittling their entire black history. You will make an immediate enemy for life, if you try to invoke the black civil rights movement when talking about gay rights. This can be applied to Latino culture as well.
The women's rights movement is different. As both women's rights and gay rights are matters of sex and gender, they seem to get along much better. In the No On 8 campaign, I met many politically active straight women, who were helping out with the campaign just because it seemed the right thing to do. They, being straight, were not threatened at all by Prop 8, but they chose to give their time to help out anyway. This touched me, and made me optimistic. However, the ERA failed in the 1970's and it never really recovered. After 30 years, there is still no ERA, and nothing on the horizon. I feel that the No On 8 effort might have just been our "ERA". It will most likely take a minimum of another 30 years to get another chance.
It's true that our standings in the polls have improved over the years. Only 53% of voters hate us, instead of 62%. That's a 9% improvement. I guess when you're lying in the sewer, the only way to look is up. However, even if we cross below the 50% threshold in a decade or two, we need to get all the way down to 33% hatred, in order to have a chance at removing Prop 8. (Due to a loophole in California law, it requires only 50% victory to write new text into the Constitution, but it requires a massive 67% victory in order to edit or delete existing text.)
The additional 3% of Bradley effect is worrisome. People felt they had to hide their true feelings more, and give a false "politically correct" answer, while masking their true feelings. This means that a lot of progress we have made might have just been an illusion after all, and we didn't actually succeed in convincing people not to hate us. However, now that Prop 8 has won, expect anti-gay people to be empowered and emboldened. They have every right to be, seeing as they have completely wiped the floor with us during the election.
I'm deeply disappointed, and more than a little bit scared. |
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| Disappointed |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|09:17 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | I Got You - Split Enz | ] |
As you come back from campaigning all evening, once the polls have all closed, and when you enter the campaign office the row of televisions are all TURNED OFF, that one glance tells you all you need to know. |
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| Got married |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|02:07 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | apprehensive | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kakumei - DDR | ] |
On October 11, Eric and I got married. It was a wonderful wedding ceremony. Eric's aunt Patricia planned and coordinated it all, and it came off exactly as I would have hoped. It was festive without being campy or overdone, and it was formal enough to have meaning, without being stuffy or religious. Patricia planned and set up all of the decorations. It was a small ceremony, held in our backyard. Many of our close friends and family members were there, about 20-30 people. My Dad officiated it! I thank everybody who came.
However, it might not last. The evil Proposition 8 is gaining in the polls. The mighty religious machine is smoothly running at full throttle. They're doing everything they can to make 8 pass, and if it passes, marriage won't be allowed. It will no doubt be used as a wedge to take away other rights as well. It's a shame we have no organizational structure to match their machine.
I'm trying to support the No On 8 campaign. Unfortunately, they are outmatched. I haven't seen a single No sign at all in our neighborhood, but have seen many Yes signs. I'm trying to get a hold of some No signs to put up, wouldn't it be nice if they were given out for free by churches, like the Yes signs are?
The No On 8 campaign has some new commercials, but they aren't enough. They aren't being translated into Spanish, as the Yes commercials are. Even though the Latino vote is probably a lost cause (almost all are Catholic), running a Spanish commercial or two might help. The commercials also are preaching to the choir: they're appearing on shows that are already watched by a gay-friendly audience. They need to make a greater effort to reach a wider audience. A commercial during an evening news broadcast or two, on a traditional network channel (not cable), wouldn't hurt.
I'm thinking we should do the legal equivalent of falling back to the keep, and start thinking about a legal challenge to 8, if it passes. Isn't this what was done earlier, to knock down Proposition 22 a few months ago? Will the same court justices still be in place after the election? I hope following the same legal road will lead to a similar result, as the victory over 22 should provide a precedent to follow. |
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| Post office box |
[Sep. 27th, 2008|01:50 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Global Economic Meltdown - YouTube | ] |
I'm thinking of opening a post office box.
I was at the post office the other day, buying stamps, and noticed the rate card on the wall. It's a lot cheaper than I thought it was. It's only around $21.00 for 6 months. I had looked into private mailbox places like UPS stores and such, but they wanted at least that much for just a single month!
I want a PO box primarily because it might be useful in various situations, and for reasons of privacy. It would be a handy thing to have, especially if I ever did anything entrepreneurial in the future.
I have some Internet domains. It's actually a requirement that each domain have a valid mailing address as part of the contact information associated with it, in the public WHOIS records. Anybody can look up information in WHOIS about a desired domain name. If the information you provided isn't right, then somebody could file and have your domain revoked. This is a really stupid regulation, dating from the very early days of the Internet when there was essentially no spam and everybody knew each other, but the rule is still in force. Perhaps an appropriate name for this regulation would be "No Spammer Left Behind".
Interestingly, PO box prices vary wildly. One town will have them cheap, but in the next town over, they're more costly. Strange. My PO box would be in Sunnyvale, as they have the smallest size available (the size that everybody wants, as it's the most affordable) at the $21.00 price, and they're close to my work. I'm guessing that the post office prices PO boxes based on how urban the post office is: the more urban, the more expensive. All of the post offices near where I live in Castro Valley were expensive, all completely sold out, or both. Since Sunnyvale was orchards 60 years ago, it's probably listed in some obscure federal table somewhere as being rural, thus its post offices have the cheaper prices.
A pricing anomaly is the Mendocino post office, they're only $13.00/month, by far the cheapest price I found! Even other rural areas don't have prices that low. That would be quite a drive away, though, but it's a beautiful place to go as it's in a field nearby the ocean.
There are some services that will provide anonymity in the WHOIS records, but they seemed expensive or untrustworthy to me. They work by replacing your information in the WHOIS record with their own. This also means that they could take over ownership of your domain name at will, if they really wanted to, since you're basically listing them as the rightful contacts of your domain name.
I'll see how it goes. I might not have a use for the PO box, other than gathering dust, but I've never had one before and it might end up being useful. |
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| Got gas grill |
[Sep. 21st, 2008|03:23 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | BBC Radio 1 | ] |
For the house, we did something we should have done years ago. We got a gas grill. Now we can BBQ outside.
We used it for the first time this weekend and it worked. It made yummy pork cutlets. Tonight I'll try it with chicken that's been marinating in the fridge all day. I love cooking meat on it, because all the fat drips away, and better yet, the fat burns off and flavors the meat, so you get the flavor, without the calories.
I'm looking forward to burgers and sausages next.... |
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| Found old dollar bill that's a web press note |
[Sep. 18th, 2008|02:21 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | di.fm Future Synthpop | ] |
I like to enter dollar bills into the Where's George website. This site tracks where dollar bills have gone, as they travel the country, and it's kind of fun to see where they end up.
Anyway, a few months ago, I had a $1 bill that was fairly old, from 1988, and still in good condition. Since almost all dollar bills are around 2003 these days (they don't last long), this was unusual. I saved it.
I'm glad I saved it. I was doing some random website reading, following interesting connections, and I stumbled across a site that described web press notes.
Interesting. I didn't know there was an experimental printing press technology used only during a few years, and that there's a market for dollar bills that were printed with it. Very few dollar bills were printed in this way, and by sheer luck, my old 1998 bill was one of them!
Checked the price guide on that site, and used their search feature to find the serial number range my bill falls in. Here it is. I estimate my bill is in "Extra Fine" condition, as it's slightly creased, but not bent or ripped in any way. The price guide says it's worth $19. Not bad, and an interesting find!
It pays to pay attention to unusual bills you might come across, especially if they're old, and still in good condition. Even though I didn't get as lucky as this person who stumbled upon a web press note worth over $20,000.00, I'm still happy. |
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| Getting married |
[Sep. 11th, 2008|01:11 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Energy 92.7 | ] |
I'm going to marry Eric soon!
The date is tentatively set for October 11. Should be easy to remember.
We're taking advantage of the window of opportunity before the election. If the ballot measure passes, then the ability to get married will be taken away, but existing marriages should still stand.
Eric and I have been domestic partners for just about 8 years now. It will be good to upgrade to a real marriage, to make it official and get more legal rights.
Eric's planning the wedding. He's much better at that sort of thing than I am. I'd prefer a small ceremony, but the details are still being worked out as of now. |
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| Skype |
[Aug. 27th, 2008|10:06 pm] |
I got Skype up and running.
This is super easy on Windows, but not so on Linux. I was impressed that the newest versions of Fedora, with the latest kernel update, now have webcam drivers built in. It is no longer necessary to compile and install the drivers yourself. And, Fedora automatically recognized the USB webcam when I put it in! That's amazing, and represents a lot of progress. My headset microphone was also recognized. So, I could just point Skype at the appropriate devices, in Skype's menus, and I was then good to go.
I'm "krellan" on Skype. Now, I just need somebody to actually call me, so I can see if the service works :) |
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