Barry’s Daily Web News

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I’m amazed a the uproar in France over the second place vote going to someone from the far right of the political spectrum. Here is just one article of many on the topic. What I find interesting is that the only difference I can see in the platform of the far right from that of the far left (currently in power) is that the far right wants to quit the EU.

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It looks like today is Earth day. I think this is a silly designation to give to a single day. I think people should appreciate nature and do what they can to preserve the environment every day. Of course, some people get carried away. Just check out Al Gore’s editorial. It looks like Al has dropped his moderate postion of the last decade to become a full fledged socialist. If more people took him seriously I might actually be concerned about his talk about global warming as it was a proven fact. The last time a democratic president was in the white house before Clinton/Gore, the “experts” were talking about the impending ice age. Gore’s talk about Enron buying Bush’s energy policy is even more laughable. Even if it were true, It was the Clinton administration that taught Enron on how to buy influence by deregulating the energy trading business with a relatively smaller donation than was given to the Republicans.

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Sean is 26 months old today. We celebrated by going to the park after dinner. It was still hot out, but it was a dry heat. Really dry. The relative humidity was 4%. Sean met his friends Hannah and Chloe at the park. There was also another pair of young girls who brought their dog. Between the dog and the girls, Sean didn’t spend much time on the playground equipment.

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I still don’t know how I lost my work on Sunday. I noticed that my posts weren’t getting out to the web site. I shut down the radio application and re-booted the computer. When I brought radio back up, the entire day’s worth of posts were gone. At least things are working now.

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I recreated all of the posts that I had lost yesterday evening. I had done enough work that I thought I should change the date back to yesterday so that the posts would fall under the correct day. If you visited yesterday, I would recommend reading all of the entries for Sunday.

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Today was spent performing yard and house work. Almost everything in the yard is nice and green, and the bermuda grass is starting to grow out from the winter rye grass. I discovered that the few plants that weren’t looking so good had clogged drip-irrigation fittings, so I replaced them. The house work involved vacuuming and mopping the floor. I’m going to try to get this done every two weeks. At least I won’t have as much to do next weekend.

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We started to let Sean use a normal water cup for his meals. He managed to use it well enough, but he still hasn’t learned that if he plays with it like his sippy-cup, the water will go everywhere.

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Sean has learned a new word. Just after I got Sean up out of the crib and changed him, I started to lead Sean down the stairs. He hesitated to go down, so I thought I would go down on my own to start preparing his breakfast, and so I said to him “bye-bye”. To my surprise, he immediately smiled back, clearly said “bye-bye” and topped it off with a wave.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

The second movie we watched this weekend was The Man Who Wasn’t There. This movie was made by the Coen brothers, and was more like Fargo than Something about Mary, except the story was much darker, and accentuated by black and white film. Billy Bob Thornton turned in a good acting performance, and this movie could have been excellent, but I thought the story was just a little too dark and depressing. I rate this movie a B.

Buy it.

Domestic Disturbance

The first movie of the weekend was Domestic Disturbance. This movie was more like the typical fare on the lifetime channel, where a given woman always gets involved with a man she shouldn’t. Despite top stars, such as John Travolta and Vince Vaughn, there isn’t any reason to recommend this movie. I rate it a C.

Buy it.

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Sean did have a good time at the pink (but mostly green) playground. Unlike the last few trips to the park, including this morning, Sean spent quite a bit of time going down all of the slides.

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We were thinking about taking a day trip today, but Sean woke up not feeling well, so we decided to go to the outlet mall and to the fancy playground nearby. We didn’t spend too much time shopping, and Sean had fun playing in the fountains and running up and down the ramp at the playground. Sean woke again after his nap in a terrible mood, but he calmed down after dinner. We think Sean might be getting his last set of molars.

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It was another nice day today, so we went to the park this evening. It won’t be too much longer before it becomes to hot to go to the park in the evening. Of course, then we will be retreating to our swimming pool. I don’t think Sean will mind the switch from the playground to the pool. Sean had fun on the swingset. For some reason, he avoided the slides today, which he usually loves.

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Congratulations to my good friend John Karnitz and his wife Stefanie on their new baby boy!

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I’m still on a tirade over my higher broadband costs. This article has more news on the bungling Michael Powell. I claim he is neither an ideologically driven deregulator nor a good middle-of-the-road -road moderate. I claim he is either incompetent in that he does not understand that effect of government granted monopolies, or he has outright been paid off of the cable and phone companies. Oh, and he is also wrong about the internet. Why the internet might not transform society as we know it, it will transform business as we know it. The movie, music, publishing, and wired phone companies will no longer have a viable role in the very near future.