I didn’t pay much attention to Cindy Sheehan back when she was a big news story. I understood the gist of what was going on, that she was protesting Pres. Bush because her soldierboy son died in Iraq. I do remember hearing the cable news talking heads blathering on about what a force she was and how she was getting red state America to re-evaluate the Iraq War. Then she disappeared from the news cycle.

I did agree with those talking heads. No I didn’t credit her with supernatural powers to lower Bush’s approval ratings like they did, but Sheehan was certainly a negative for the president. She could have an effect because she seemed so average. She could stand in for any American mother. That was why she had such wide appeal and many people were sympathetic.

Now that I read this article on MSNBC I see Sheehan has decided to flush her universal appeal down the toilet. Your average American mother does not hang out with Hugo Chavez and does not visit the World Social Forum.

Now to be fair I vaguely recall that Sheehan has already been hanging around with some of America’s loud leftist lobby. That gave talk radio plenty to whine about, but I don’t feel it did too much damage to her reputation. Any damage was repairable. Well, until this. I mean really, the World Social Forum? No one accidentally goes to that. I am now going to declare her irrelevant.

I saw pictures of the people there this weekend. God that place must reek. All those angry protesters were all scruffy and dirty looking. Why can’t you be on the left and have clean clothes and neat hair? Does soap oppress the masses? Are indigenous people thrown off their lands by our hair clippings? What’s really great is the hypocrisy this event creates. These thousands of protesters gather to criticize the flaws of capitalism but the locals are right there setting up little stands to sell junk to them. There is a Hugo Chavez doll that is very popular. It’s dressed in a military uniform with a red beret and it talks! It goes without saying Che Guevara t-shirts are on sale. “T-shirts! Get your t-shirts, Che Guevara t-shirts! Can’t stick it to the imperialists without a t-shirt!”

Oh and Hugo Chavez… What to say about him? That guy really didn’t have to be such a problem. A long time ago Slashdot had an article mentioning him. Someone on there wrote (this is not a quote, just a summary of what that guy said) that relations with Chavez could have been smoothed over easily if Bush had sat down with him and talked. Chavez has a persecution complex and unless you stroke his ego, he thinks you’re out to get him. All Bush had to do is have a few one on one meetings with him and he could have been placated. I couldn’t agree more with that, but no that would be too difficult for our president.

I am worried about the Venezuelans though. They’re stuck with Chavez and I’m sure he is not the type to give up power. I’m pretty sure Venezuela has term limits but that won’t keep Chavez from controlling things. I guess he might opt for being in charge behind the scenes, but I feel that is very unlikely. Chavez is a front row kinda guy. He wants the crowds cheering him, not a figurehead. No, I think when election time comes, those term limits will be gone. His party does control the legislature after all. I’m sure he’ll offer us all a nice helping of bull. “Although I would love nothing more than to return to my simple homelife, I have heard the call of the people and I cannot let them down. I must run for office again to safeguard the revolution…” and so on and so on. Barring an illness or an assassination, I’m sure Chavez will be in office 10, 15 and 20 years from now.

I love and hate weekends. Every day at work I keep an eye towards Friday, anxiously waiting for the day I don’t have to work. Yet almost every weekend I manage to give myself an incurable headache. This weekend was a doozy. Usually when I get my weekly headache, it strikes for one day – Friday or Saturday – leaving me at least one good day to live. However this past weekend I had one continuous headache. I finally felt good when I woke up this morning, naturally on a day I have to work.

I really don’t understand this. How can it be that I get a headache whenever I don’t have to work? Can I really love work so much, in spite of all my bitching about it? It seems impossible, but I cannot deny that nearly every single weekend, for years now, I get a headache.

But oh yes, it gets worse. At least before, even though I did get a headache, I could take something for it. Now though, my aspirin is getting less effective. As with everything, I set up a routine for my headache medicine. Take one pill, wait a half hour, take a second pill. My headache should go away in about five minutes. That’s just becoming less effective now. I tried it again last night and at best the aspirin dulled my headache.

I suspect my headaches come from feeling guilty about doing nothing. That’s my only reasonable guess. Even that isn’t 100% though. On weekends when I actually have something planned I may not get a headache, but more likely, I will get a very weak one that goes away quickly. I guess I need to give myself more work. Not fake work though. Reading doesn’t count. Next weekend I’ll need to weed the patio.

I’ve been trying to create a subway map with my grand plan. Unfortunately Adobe Illustrator is not making it easy. Every time I try to save a PDF I get “An unknown error has occurred.” There are a few other tricks I am going to try but if they don’t work I’ll be very disappointed.

If worse comes to worse, I may just do my alterations using a graphic program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. That sucks considerably, but ah well. Better than nothing I suppose.

GM continues to astound me. I just heard they lost $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter. $4.8 billion in a single quarter!!! I could never have imagined a company could lose so much, so fast and still be in business. Okay, most of the loss came from one time charges. If you take those out though, they still lost $1.2 billion. That’s $2.09 a share. That figure alone sounds bad, even if you don’t watch the markets much. Compare it to last year though. In last year’s fourth quarter, GM lost $99 million, or 18 cents a share. Eighteen cents a share would still require an explanation.

I guess it’s a testament to GM’s hopelessness that $2.09 hardly even needs an explanation. We’ve all heard the reasons before. Overly generous union contracts and lousy product. There’s only so much GM can do about the unions. Unfortunately they will have a stranglehold on GM for years to come. It’s sad really. Why should these factory workers be making $60k or $70k a year? When I was reading about the Delphi collapse, I was shocked to learn they make so much money. These guys should probably be earning half of what they get now.

Lousy product however, is entirely GM’s fault. It’s frequently said it’s a problem of letting engineers be designers. I know the Pontiac Aztek is a prime example of that. The funniest design description of that vehicle I’ve heard is that GM gave the project to two engineering teams. One started work in the front, the other in the back and when the teams met in the middle, GM sent that vehicle into production.

The Aztek is really just the worst of the worst. In general GM’s vehicles are bland. This is what plagues both GM and Ford. If they could start building cars that excited people, then they could turn around their slump. Even if, by some miracle, the auto unions agreed to cut wages and benefits, a few years from now we would be right back where we started because less and less Americans would buy domestic cars. Sure the average Honda or Toyota is hardly cutting-edge or thrilling but they are superbly reliable. American cars still have the reputation, albeit now undeserved, of being junk.

What really irritates me are those people who like to wave the flag when it comes to their car. Telling people to “Buy American” oversimplifies the auto industry and let Detroit survive while producing poor products. I remember a few months ago I received an email from a guy who was angry that my company’s website offered people foreign car choices. He wasn’t a bright man. There were tons of spelling and grammar errors in his email. For some reason his letter gave me the sense that he was an old timer too, although I can’t remember why. Anyway, it’s this blind adoration of things American that let companies get away with poor quality.

It doesn’t even make sense anymore. Maybe back in 1980 you could feel good that when you bought an American car you were keeping Americans employed. That logic no longer holds. The auto industry is too diverse now to divide up companies between foreign and domestic. GM and Ford are supposed to be domestic but the Chevy Aveo is a rebadged Daewoo made in Korea. How is that domestic? How much does it help the American workingman when Ford buys engines for its new Mercury Milan from Mazda? Why does Mazda count as foreign when Ford owns a third of it and makes all its business decisions?

Someone tell me how the so-called foreign car makers hurt America when Honda and Toyota are building their vehicles here? Hyundai and Kia are opening up new facilities that will employ thousands more workers. Next summer Acura is going to produce cars in America for export to China! Can anyone name a company that does that?

I’m so buried at work. Oh, did I say buried because I meant fucked. Why did I ever say I could write SQL queries?!?! So here I am, my regular work is piled high around me, but I also have to write these three queries that so far elude me.

Okay, really I’ve only tried writing one of them. I just don’t know what I am doing wrong. I’m only searching records from the 21st but the query takes so long to run. I let it go for up to three minutes but that just seems like way too much time for it to take. I’m going for broke right now. I’ll just let it run and I hope that it will actually give me the right data eventually.

I don’t know how this happened. It has been many months since my boss has asked me to write a query. Now out of the blue has asks me again. I also think I’m getting stupider because I was way more successful at writing them when I started. It seems like I’ve forgotten what fragments of knowledge I had. It’s also pretty frustrating that I’m the only person I know who’s in over their head at work.

To think, my biggest worry used to be what will I cook when I go home. Now I have no idea when I’m going home. 7 min, 52 seconds… still running. What the hell is my query searching for that it’s taking so much time?!

I wanna quit. I really should apply for that Customer Relations Manager job. I can ass-kiss customers. I wonder what they pay though. I’m really afraid though my application might trickle back to my boss. I really don’t want to explain that…10 minutes, 37 seconds…

It’s almost 5 in the morning and I just can’t sleep. Not because of it, but I’m left thinking about the future plans of the subway. After a discussion with my brother, I decided to go to the MTA’s website and see if they had any information about the 2nd Avenue subway line.

Well they did, but while I was looking I also saw plans for an extension of the 7 train line into 10th Avenue. The MTA posted a whole PowerPoint presentation on it. It’s only a 2 station expansion but I’m not convinced of the wisdom of this plan. The MTA wants to use the 7 train to serve the development of a new piece of Manhattan real estate. The plans I saw were from 2004 so they still mentioned the expansion of the Javits Center and building that stadium over the west side rail yard. Even with those projects killed (the Javits expansion was canceled right?) the 7 train extension seems to still be going ahead.

I’m normally thrilled about an expansion of the subway system, but my grievance with this project is the use of the 7 train. The 7 is probably the most crowded train in the system. There seems to be no time of day when 7 trains aren’t packed with people, and I don’t mean just in Manhattan. The 7 train is stuffed throughout its entire run from Manhattan through Queens. Yet the MTA wants to use this train as the only conduit to the far west end?

It’s hard to think of an alternative though. You could extend the L train north, but then you would have to drill tunnels twice as long as this proposal. A new route branching off the 1 train line would probably be longer than an L train extension. No, a practical solution would have to alleviate the crowding on the 7 line itself. Now how could you go about doing that… Another crosstown line wouldn’t help. That S shuttle is already there and isn’t that hardly used? I think the key problem is in Queens. The 7 is packed with people because the 7, for much of its area, is the only train that serves it. So to take the pressure off the 7 train, you need another route in Queens to give these neighborhoods an alternative to the 7. Now that sounds like a massive undertaking. Extending the 1 train along 10th Avenue might be easier.

I’m also a little disappointed with the latest 2nd Avenue subway proposal from a few years ago. These proposals have been resurfacing every few years since the 1920s, so who knows if anything will be built. This latest plan has the line terminating at existing 4-5-6 train 125th Street station. I’m not thrilled with that. I would much prefer this line continue into the Bronx. What I would like to see is the 5 train taking over 2nd Avenue. The 5 should turn directly south at 3rd Ave-149th Street and run down 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. If people on the 4 need to get to the central Bronx, they can transfer to the 2 at 149-Grand Concourse.

Rerouting the 5 train wouldn’t even make much difference to its service in Brooklyn. Its existing line is shared with the 2 or 4 train. If the MTA wanted, they would always have the option of extending this new 5 train into Brooklyn with a tunnel at a later date. Given how long the 2nd Avenue plan has already taken, I think we can expect the first discussions of a Brooklyn extension in the 2100s.

Okay I should be learning how to use this or at least do something more productive, but one thing that I’ve had on my mind for hours is this woman’s voice. At work, around 7 pm I had to call this woman in Colorado. There was nothing unusual about that until I heard this woman speak. Her voice was just so amazing. In my job I talk to people all day long, and I’ve heard plenty of gruff voices, cute voices, nasal voices and so on and so on. This woman though had such a great voice. It was actually a pleasure to hear. It was sexy and cute and pleasant all at the same time. It’s a shame I don’t have an excuse to call her up again.

After years of resisting it, I finally started a blog. I probably should have done this six or seven years ago. I could have. I was a lousy student so I had the time. No, the reason I refused was because this seems like the sort of project that is fun to start but gets old really quick. I didn’t want my blog to become one of the many lonely, abandoned outposts on the Web. C’mon, you know what I mean. How many times have you seen a blog that hasn’t been updated in months or even years? It’s so easy to picture this site having a flurry of activity for the first few weeks. Then seeing it trail off. Instead of posting every day, I start updating it maybe three or four times a week. Then it becomes a few times a month. Finally, I just disappear. How sad.

I can’t promise that won’t happen, but I feel pretty confident about this project. After all, I opposed starting a blog for years. I don’t think I would have given in to the urge if I wasn’t confident I would keep this going. It just seems like now more than ever I need a place to spout off about things that I see, and the Web is the perfect place for know-it-all loudmouths.

I’m not sure how much I’ll write this first week though. There’s a bunch of stuff to configure in WordPress, so I’ll need a few days to get used to this. The first thing I need to decide is, do I need to bother with “categories”? Crap.