"I. -- Barack Hussein Obama I solemnly swear Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear. That I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully -- execute. Get off faithfully the president the office of president and -- I just -- the United States -- wheels. -- the best of -- ability and will miss my children. Preserve protect and defend the constitution of the United States. Preserve protect and defend the constitution of the United States so help you got so homey."

-- The presidential oath of office, as rendered in the automatically generated transcript accompanying the Fox News video (bearing the understated disclaimer that it "may not be 100% accurate").

I wonder why?

I was talking to the DuPage County Election Commission today about my Election Judge assignment for the upcoming elections on November 4, and they asked that I encourage my friends and acquaintances to be Election Judges.

It is a long day, but very rewarding, and you get a chance to be a part of the Democratic Process.

Contact your local Election Board/Commission.

I saw this one in an article in the New York Times today (no, it's not a real word, at least not yet, but it appears that mental health professionals have adopted it as a part of their jargon):

“affluenza,” a social pathology that is rampant at a time when getting and spending — a lot — have become our nation’s most cherished activities, and when purchasing power has become, to an unprecedented extent, almost the sole source of many people’s status and identity.

Bristol Renaissance Faire opened for the season yesterday.

I finally got some garb. judygs got some new garb, also.

This one got me thinking:

"It is a dam that's cracking. We are trying to plug the holes with legislation and litigation but we need to think radically. We have to evolve and create a very different pay system, possibly by making the content available free to all and finding a way to get paid separately.

"It's hitting hardest the writers who write books that you dip in and out of: poetry, cookbooks, travel guides, short stories - books where you don't have to read the whole thing. Although people still buy [books by] Nigella and Jamie Oliver and Delia it is because of their celebrity. Cookbook authors are really struggling. I do it myself - if I want a recipe I go online and get it for free.

"For a while it will be great for readers because they will pay less and less but in the long run it's going to ruin the information. People will stop writing. There's a lot of 'wait and see what the technology brings' but the trouble is if you wait and see too long then it's gone. That's what happened to the music industry."

-- Tracy Chevalier, author of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and head of the U.K.'s Society of Authors, sees the rising tide of digital disruption racing toward the book publishing industry

It's also National Condom Week.

Q  U  O  T  E  D

"A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75.

The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second.

Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G."

-- University of Michigan researchers explain why aircraft engineers are still bird-watching

Tuesday, February 5 was Primary Election day in 24 states, including Illinois (and also Mardi Gras, in case anyone didn't notice).

I have been an Election Judge for the past four years.  judygs and emygination have been doing it for longer - I got started when judygs got sick for the 2004 election and I volunteered to fill in for her.

In DuPage county, each polling place has one Election Judge designated as the "Technical Judge", one who gets extra training on the equipment. This was my second election as Technical Judge.

One nice thing about being an Election Judge is that it makes me feel young - I'm younger than 75% of the judges. This election, we had seven judges at our polling place. emygination was there, along with Kasandra, another young lady about emygination's age, and four senior citizens (70s and 80s). We were at another polling place in Elmhurst (not our own, judygs was working there), the same on that I had been at for the last election about 10 months ago. Last time, it was me, one high school student, and five senior citizens. This time, emygination was a big help, and things ran a bit more smoothly (not that they were very bad last time, just more harassing for me). We had a large turnout, 508 voters. There were a bit more than 1200 pre-printed applications in the binder, but some of them, I'm sure, belonged to people who had died or moved but are still on the rolls, so we probably had close to a 50% turnout of real, live voters.

Being an Election Judge is hard work, but I enjoy it and would volunteer to do it even without getting paid. (They don't pay enough for me to want to do it for the money! I had to take a vacation day from work to do it. Maybe I'll use my EJ pay towards a new iPod.)

To start out, there was the 3 hour Technical Judge training (which ran closer to 4 hours), plus on-line training. Then, as Technical Judge, I got to drive out to Wheaton on Sunday to pick up supplies (small box, most of the stuff gets delivered). An hour on Monday evening to set up, then start at 5 am Tuesday morning to get the polling place ready to open by 6. Polls close at 7 pm, followed by closing procedures and packing up, which took until about 8:15. Then I and a judge from the opposite party had to drive back out to Wheaton to hand-deliver results (on computer memory cards, plus printouts and actual ballots). Sixteen hour day on Tuesday!

My biggest fear on Tuesday was that the rain which had been falling all day would turn to snow. The weather forecast called for it to get cold and start snowing around 7 or 8 pm - in actuality, it stayed warm and didn't turn to snow until about 8 am Wednesday morning, so there was no problem with the drive to turn the results in.

I'd like to encourage people reading this entry to consider being an Election Judge. Most Election Boards have a hard time recruiting people, especially able-bodied, capable, technically savvy individuals who are really needed as elections become more and more high tech. Contact your local Election Board!

I make it a habit to check the "Screened Mail" (spam) folder on my Comcast account.

Today, in there, I found a message from Comcast themselves, promoting a free software download to create photo show DVDs.

I guess that they're suspicious of their own software downloads.

There was a storm yesterday. When we came home, the power had been out in the morning, and three (not one, not two, but three!) circuit breakers were tripped. I reset the breakers, but our home network wasn't working. Checking out - no power to the router, hub, cable modem or wireless access point. All of these were plugged into the same power strip (the SurgeMaster), and the SurgeMaster's pilot light was on, but no power to the outlets. I guess that it gave its life protecting the equipment plugged into it.

Also a high-pitched beep-beep coming from Emily's room. Another old surge protector in there had bitten the dust.

However, no damage to any of our electronic equipment, other than the surge protectors, so I guess that we did ok.

I went to the Doctor's office for a flu shot the other day. When I got there, the office manager handed me an envelope. It was a bill that they had recently mailed to me, which was returned with a yellow Post Office sticker on it which said, "Return to Sender, Deceased, Unable to Forward".

Fortunately, this appears to be a one-time occurrence, as I have been receiving mail. I called the Post Office the next day, and the guy who answered was pretty jovial about it ("So when did you die?") and connected me to the carrier's supervisor, who said that he would have the carrier check on it to see what the problem was.

Anyway, as far as I can tell I'm still very much alive!

Today, jharter41 and emygination took the kids to the zoo, and got back to our house around 5:00 PM, so when judygs and I got home, we took everyone over to Mitoodle Noodle for dinner.

Surprise, they drop off a card on our table addressed to the "Great Newcastle Family." That's us, I usually have the Great Newcastle beer when we go there (which they were out of today, so I had some Honey Amber). Inside was a card good for a free dinner. I guess they like having us as regulars - we're usually there a couple of Fridays each month, and usually a bunch of us (doomsey and nekosensei, or jharter41 and the Kids, or sometimes all of the above). A very nice surprise.

We brought along "Happy Birthday" cupcakes, with candles for Rayna to blow out. The boys really made a mess of themselves with the icing (even Noah).

Looked at my Treo today. The carrier ID no longer says "Cingular". Now it says "AT&T".

(I guess that they were bound to change it some time.)

It was nice having a three-day weekend, and the weather even cooperated.

On Saturday, emygination's friend Liz and her husband Brian had a birthday party for their 3-year-old daughter, Skylar, at their house in Wheaton. We hadn't seen them since November, so we showed up with the kids' Christmas presents as well as the birthday gifts. Liz makes a great Mojito (says she worked for a while as a bartender), and Brian was grillmaster (burgers and hot dogs). Topped of with a non-chocolate birthday cake (judygs appreciated that). After the party, we stopped at Trader Joe's for a few things* for Sunday (jharter41's graduation), and also picked up a bottle of Champagne at Binny's .

(* Whenever emyginationand judygsgo shopping, a few things means an overflowing shopping cart!)

Sunday was jharter41's graduation from Elmhurst College - Magna Cum Laude! Weather was (very) nice, so they held the ceremony outdoors, which meant that everyone could come (had it been indoors, she would have only gotten four guest tickets), so I was there with judygs, emygination, Uncle David, and Uncle Marty. Jobe brought their three kids, and Rich and Rox (Jobe's parents) brought Phoenix (Jobe's brother's son). jharter41advised us to bring chairs, which was a good idea, as the college didn't provide enough for all of the guests, but there was lots of lawn. After the ceremony, everyone went back to our house. While waiting for me to drive the car around to pick them up, emygination, Uncle David, and Phoenix observed cicadas on a tree. Fortunately, not enough of them have emerged yet to have made it terribly noisy for the graduation ceremony. At our house, some quick snacks (cheese, salami, and crackers), and a Champagne toast (sparkling cider for the kids). Then off to Jonathan's for dinner.

Monday, Memorial Day, emygination and judygswanted to go shopping at the Lane Bryant Outlet at the Chicago Premium Outlet mall in Aurora. Lots of people, parking lot pretty much full (but did find a space after cruising around for 5 minutes). Of course, you can't go to just one store at an outlet mall! I even got stuff for myself - a pair of gym shoes from Nike, a belt and shirt from Brooks Brothers, and a couple of new baseball caps from Lids. Overall impression was that most of the stuff wasn't that inexpensive - a lot of what I saw at the outlet mall was only slightly discounted (like $75 shoes for $60) - I think you could do better waiting for a sale at Kohl's. After the shopping, we went to Plainfield to drop off the stuff that jharter41 and Jobe and the kids had forgotten at our house on Sunday. Jobe had made way to many ribs and mashed potatoes for his friends, so we had some for dinner there before we headed home (after getting hugs from all of the kids, including Kim and Jarrid's twins who are getting big and had big smiles!).

American Express billboard that I saw today at Ogilvie Transportation Center:

ARE YOU HEADING
TO LAKE MICHIGAN
INSTEAD OF LAKE GENEVA

or

ARE YOU A CARDMEMBER?

Sorry, but it took me a few minutes to figure out that they were referring to Lake Geneva in Switzerland and not the one in Wisconsin. I guess that the ad copywriters aren't from Chicago.

Driving down the Eisenhower Expressway this morning, fortunately not directly behind (but over in the next lane from) a tall semi trailer with at least one foot of snow piled on top.  Through and underpass with only about 6" of clearance for semi (sans snow).  Result - a big explosion of snow behind the semi as the overpass neatly removes the snow accumulation from the roof.