tfl: The Flatiron Life

We gave mom a Netflix account for Christmas. Giving her the gift of the world. Jos and i have been subscribers for several months and we love it. There is a friends feature that I have no experience with because I don’t have friends. If you have a Netflix or get a Netflix account click this link and become my friend.

Also, if you get a Netflix account, may I suggest Lost. Lost is our TV crack. We watched the first two seasons as fast as we could once we were hooked. Then we bought the first episodes of season 3 from iTunes. Now we are waiting for the show to start back up for the rest of the season. This summer is going to be tough.

“John, The Button.”

I know this is not the kind of thing any one wants to hear, especially around Christmas. However it is true. If I had gone to elementary school under the same rules as today, I might have been suspended for inappropriate sexual behavior twice. After reading this article and earlier reports about an incident in Texas, I have learned the rules have changed.

In either kindergarten or 1st grade I lifted a girl’s dress while we were lining up to return to the class room after recess. Since we were in line, she must have had a last name close to mine. Is it a sign of how criminal my brain is that I don’t even remember the name of this girl I exploited? I am thankful that Mr Bosk and either Mrs. Fritzen or Mrs. Dunham had the good sense to not suspend me and I was disciplined the same as if I had hit the girl. It is appropriate to equate this activity to hitting for children who know nothing of sexual activity. Sometimes hitting is OK and sometimes lifting a dress is OK, but they both require the other person to want it. Although most of the time it is not OK.

I did not learn enough from that incident. In third grade I stole a kiss from a girl named Melissa. I do not think it was concentual so stole is the right verb. I don’t think I was punished for this, other than jeering by my classmates. In third grade this was still jeering for touching a girl, not becuase she didn’t want me to touch her. We had no idea what sex was. We knew there was a thing called Safe Sex because we are children of the AIDS 80’s. We used to tell jokes like “Jake’s idea of Safe Sex is a board with a whole in it.” That is an actual line I remember Cory Bowman saying at lunch. I still don’t think I know what this means.

This is what is going on here for ballot access in the Windy City. We are renewing the mandate for the Machine’s big talkers in the City portion of our redundant government system. Turns out some people want to spoil this renewal and are trying to steal away the sweet gig of a six figure paycheck for 12 second Tuesdays of work. You might also be surprised to learn that some people are even trying to unseat His Honor Richard M. Daley, Mayor. This is crazy, just imagine how much repainting all the city vehicles and other various locations with the Mayors name would cost.

The Machine is having none of this. The lawyers for the establishment are poised and ready to challenge petition on myriad areas.

The rules for being on a ballot have always bothered me. Should there be a barrier to entry? If so, what is reasonable? I tend to think that everyone should have an equal shot to be on the ballot. If 100 people want to run for an office let them. Isn’t that better for the health of democracy than limiting to people who can afford the machine to find 10 times the number of people required to sign the petitions and then hire the lawyer to defend each of those names?

The party system is supposed to help here. The parties dictate how they choose the candidate to represent this large group of like minded peers. Then the party candidate face off in the general election. This system breaks down when there are only two parties and the barrier to entry for new parties is high. Also, in Chicago we have “non-partisan” elections.

I think a practical solution to ballot access might be flipping the system. Instead of people signing petitions and then having them delivered and certified. Candidates register their intention to run for an office and then ask the constitutes to register their intent to consider a candidate. The constitute has to validate who they are using the same procedures used on election day. There are no challenges, a reasonable barrier to entry, and more people running for office and invigorating the system.

Welcome to the new tfl:The Flatiron Life!

You might notice a new URL and the site is a little wider. I have changed hosts. I used to be a phpwebhosting.com, but I was starting to get a little annoyed at the slow response from the server itself and the support team. I am now on asmallorange.com. The staff there has done an amazing job responding the the couple of requests I have made. I should also be able to host any rails apps I might work on here.

I have also made a change from Blogger to WordPress. Blogger holds all of the content in their servers and then publishes it to my server when I make a new post or a comment is left. WordPress is an application running on my server so when I make a new post it is automatically posted. Also I can categorize posts and you can see all of the posts by category. Another nice feature is if a good discussion is started based on a post you can subscribe to a feed for the comments. It is all hosted on my server so I have greater control.

I am having a little trouble migratting the archives over here. I hope I can soon. If you have any experience migrating from Blogger to WordPress I could use the help.

Take a look around, tell me what you like, what you don’t like, and what I need to change.

Building the New East Side

I am warm just thinking about how warm it was the day I took this.

Orbitz is on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building where this happened. THe party was cancelled. I will give more info later.