One of my favorite songs is Willin’ by Little Feat. I like their live version as well as Steve Earls version. Linda Rondstat made the song famous. It’s a truck driver song and has these lyrics:
I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonopah
So what does that trip look like? Google maps let’s you mark up a map and save it. You can optionally share it publicly. Willin’ Map.
Since the Texas primary last week, the media has been referring to Texas as a Clinton win and moved on to Mississippi and Pennsylvania. That was much of what was discussed on Fox News and CNN tonight.
I was trying to understand what the effective “win” number is for Obama. I figured it is the total number of Democratic delegates *minus* the super delegates divided by 2 plus 1. If Obama goes into the convention with one more delegate than Hillary, how can the super delegates override this? No matter… as I was looking at the CNN tally site I saw *TWO* entries for Texas. One for the primaries and one for the caucuses… which are only 41% counted. (They’ll be counting until March 24…. very manual.)
So while Clinton beat Obama in the primaries 77 to 71 (or a net 6 delegate gain), projections are showing Obama beating Clinton in the Texas caucus 38 to 29 (a net 9 delegate gain.) This puts Obama winning Texas with a 9 – 6 = 3 delegate lead… a state that was supposed to be a “Clinton firewall.”
This was not mentioned on any of the news shows I watched tonight, but some bloggers are noticing. The media have no patience for slow countin’ Texans.
A song used in a Kia commercial caught my ear last night. “Guess I can’t get it right today…. guess I’m going to give up.” It was a simple folksy song with a high, rough voice I had not heard before. After a Google or two, I quickly discovered Joe Purdy. Looking up his name in iTunes I found his many songs and albums, but three of the songs were very popular with a high number of downloads. It turns out those three songs have something in common:
“Can’t Get It Right Today” – KIA Commercial
“San Jose” – TV Show: Gray’s Anatomy
“Wash Away (Reprise)” – TV Show: Lost
Amazing what a little exposure on television can do for you.
Meanwhile, I discovered I could listen to all of his albums on his website (at least for now) so I put on the headphones and have already listened to three of the albums as I work on Fiveforks Wiki. I’ll likely buy two or three of these mellow and relaxing albums.
Oh… and I finally watched the Kia commercial to understand why they chose this song. You go so long between fill-ups you might forget what side the gas tank is on. Pretty funny idea.
Note: There is no broadcast radio in any of this story.
See the Google Ad that appears on the right across from my Obama posting.
While Stonegate’s End is unable to offer a unified endorsement, this blog is able to endorse the Obamas, and casted one vote in that direction today. That’s Barak and Michelle. There are several reasons behind this endorsement, but one conclusion kept repeating itself: “The Obamas may just be who the Clinton’s pretended to be four terms ago.”
Other thoughts:
* Barack was taken outside the U.S. for many years of his youth. One reason he sees America united is because that is how he thought about it for so long– home.
* Barack, like Tiger, embodies our diversity and makes the most of it.
* Barack’s mother was an intellectual and an atheist, teaching him to think about everything. She may not have made all the right decisions, but her decision to send him home to be raised by his grandmother put him on track for today.
* Michelle is an accomplished professional Harvard graduate who proudly says she is a mother first. You could tell the way she said it you better never suggest otherwise. (I’ve never heard Hillary sound that convincing.) She says work-life balance would be one of her major causes as First Lady.
* It’s good to cast this vote in Georgia.
Polls close here in 10 minutes.
You have to like a gag that results in spontaneous applause. No harm done… even the cleaning guy seemed ok with it.
Inspired by Ted’s experience, I ordered two MintyBoost kits. The girls will often bring their iPods on trips, running out of power because they had not planned ahead. Now they don’t have to plan ahead, because we can slip some of our rechargeable batteries into our MintyBoost kits and they are set. (We always keep 4 double-A batteries charged for use with our digital cameras.)
This project was just as fun as Ted describes, and thanks to Ted’s post, there were no frustrating moments. And of course it helped that Ted loaned me the tools. His “robot” third hand is shown in the attached photo displaying the two finished MintyBoosts.
Claire enjoyed helping. She put the tiny capacitors, resistors, etc. into the circuit board. Better eyes and smaller fingers than mine. The only “improvement” I can suggest is the step I took putting a rounded-corner piece of duct tape in the bottom to help the circuit board from touching metal. The padded tape would likely suffice, but the duct tape felt like a good precaution.
Thanks Ted!
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I can tell you one thing… he’s not building a playhouse for the children…
Or maybe he is…
Several things “broke” when I migrated from our old iMac 17″ Flat Panel (Tiger) to our new iMac 20″ Aluminum (Leopard). Bound to happen with a double jump in technology: PowerPC to Intel and Tiger to Leopard.
One thing that broke was sharing an HP DeskJet 6500 USB printer attached to the Mac with a Windows 2000 laptop on the network. I had accomplished this in the past using CUPS and creating a secondary printer. This did not migrate across, and I had forgotten about setting up a secondary printer and, besides that, CUPS has changed.
And I had the same problem with my new Parallels setup (a migration of the Windows 2000 laptop.)