Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

House: First Look at the Inside

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house2house1bughouse3Today was pretty cool. We had our ‘pre-drywall walkthrough’ of the house, which was our first opportunity to walk through the place and make sure all the wiring and piping looks right. All the outlets and phone jacks and so on were in the right places and everything looked correct to our [admittedly un-trained] eyes. Apparently the drywall will be going up as soon as the end of this week.

I generally like the way our builder handles things. There are three walkthroughs before closing, they go way beyond the ‘bare minimum’ of the building codes, and so on. You’ll see in the pictures that the place is pretty solidly put together, compared to many modern cardboard houses, with pretty close studs and full corners and metal reinforcements to reduce sway. The guy who walked us through seemed to be a real straight-shooter and said that these buildings don’t move at all, even in strong wind storms. He also invited us to come by the house (and even walk around inside) any time we want.

The first picture is from our living room looking back into the kitchen, the second is all our county approval stickers, the third is my office, and the last is a giant horse fly that landed on my rear-view mirror as we arrived for the walkthrough. (Is that a good or bad omen?)

Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’

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Apple released the latest version of their flagship operating system on Friday. Mac OS X (the X means 10, and the name is properly pronounced Mac OS Ten) was released in 2001 as the successor to the ‘classic’ Mac OS that had run Apple computers since 1984. OS X was a groundbreaking, modern system when it came out and was a breath of fresh air compared to the somewhat unreliable Mac OS 9 and its predecessors. OS X is a Unix-based platform which shares the strengths of BSD Unix, the NeXTstep operating system, and the ‘classic’ Mac OS. The just-released Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ is the seventh major release of the operating system since its introduction.

With the exception of Mac OS 10.1, which was a free upgrade for early adopters (like me) who had been running 10.0, these upgrades have usually retailed for about $130 (and shipped free on all new Macs). 10.6, however, is being sold for a surprisingly inexpensive $30. The version number is really a misnomer (which I’ve ranted about before), since these are ‘major’ updates akin to going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.

I’ve been through them all. I switched in 2001, and my first Mac (a Power Mac G4) ran Mac OS X 10.0.4. I’ve been through 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 ‘Jaguar’, 10.3 ‘Panther’, 10.4 ‘Tiger’, 10.5 ‘Leopard’, and now 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’. The operating system has continued to progress nicely through each iteration, with a few snags here and there, and I still think Mac OS X is the best put-together operating system available.

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Cats Getting Ready for Shipment

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package-catsMelissa opened a package she got the other day and left the box and packing material out (presumably to be cleaned up later). The cats, for some reason, thought this would all make a wonderful place to lay down for an afternoon rest. Mei Mei took some of the packing paper, flattened it out, and parked there. Vincent just hopped into the box and rearranged it into a comfy bed.

Go figure. They seem to like the box and packaging paper better than the nice cat bed(s) we’ve bought for them over the years.

Anyway, I asked Vincent what address he wanted to be shipped to and he didn’t answer. He did cute himself up for the picture though.

Best Buy In-Store Pickup: 0 for 2

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Way back in January 2007, I wrote about a poor experience I had with Best Buy’s in-store pickup. I really like the idea of in-store pickup. In theory (and as-advertised) it works like this: you go to Best Buy’s web site, put the stuff you want in your electronic cart, say you want in-store pickup, place the order and pay for it online, then go pick up the merchandise at the store.

This is a ‘best of both worlds’ kind of thing. You get the convenience of online shopping, but you don’t have to wait days for stuff to ship to you.

After my sour experience in 2007, I figured it was time to give Best Buy in-store pickup another shot. At lunch time, I ordered the Alien quadrilogy, some earbuds (the ones that came with my iPod are giving out on me), and the just-released Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ upgrade. I’ve ordered from BestBuy.com before so this all went very smoothly, and I selected in-store pickup at the Bailey’s Crossroads (Falls Church, VA) store.

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The Media Honeymoon Ends

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The Washington Post is probably best editorially characterized as center-left. More often than not, the Post backs Democratic Party candidates and Democratic Party causes. It is telling, then, that the Post’s editorial board today called for President Barack Obama (D) and the Democratic leadership in Congress to drop its universal health care plans and focus instead on fixing the federal budget.

Why? The newly revised deficit estimates from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), coming in-line with independent estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other analysts, have skyrocketed to an estimated 9 trillion dollars over the next decade. Like many Americans, the Post editorial board has tired of Obama’s continued claims that he ‘inherited’ massive deficits from President George W. Bush (R). While the statement is true on its face, the fact is that the Obama administration has continued and accelerated Bush’s reckless end-of-term spending. It is time for Obama to stop pointing fingers and start proposing solutions.

As the Post aptly puts it:

Still, the Bush administration’s irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is time to stop crying “we inherited it.” The Obama administration needs its own clear, credible plan for restoring fiscal sustainability once the worst of the recession has run its course. Unless it can at least limit the growth in debt to the growth of the economy, investors will gradually lose faith in Treasury obligations, increasing the government’s borrowing costs—and turning a deficit crunch into a deficit spiral. In the worst case, unchecked debt could trigger a return to the double-digit inflation and interest rates of the late 1970s, only this time with massive U.S. obligations to foreign lenders such as China and Japan.

It’s nice to see even ‘liberal’ media outlets starting to awaken to the realities around us. The reckless bailout insanity initiated in the waning days of the Bush administration, then continued under Obama, is lining us up for economic collapse, not recovery. The last thing we need to be talking about now is huge new federal spending programs (which are a questionable idea even in the best of times).

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.