Driftless part 3

The more perfect you try to appear on social media, the bigger the loser you probably are.

You know when you open the oven door and the heat waves flow past your head? That's roughly equivalent to the sensations provided courtesy of Arizona summer heat.

If I'm checking out a artist and I see that they consistently write songs over 2 minutes, I get very skeptical. Very skeptical indeed.

You probably hate my music, I probably hate your music. Mind if I play some tunes?

What's with this new chip reader thing? Can't I just swipe my debit card like normal?

If you get offended easily, you're an idiot.

I want to make a pilgrimage to all the In-N-Outs in history.

My favorite way to code is with the lights off and my shoes off.

I'm pretty sure I was trolling on the internet before that term existed.

I prefer the Michael Graves era Misfits over Glen Danzig era Misfits and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Either there's a ton of Misfits and Ramones fans out there in the wild, or a lot of people think the Misfits and the Ramones are a merely a hip clothing brand. I honestly I have no idea which one it is.

I believe 98% of people who "had someone give them a dirty look" are imagining things.

April 2016

We started off this month looking for a place to move to. We wanted something with two bedrooms but our apartment complex's two bedrooms were cringe-worthy expensive. We went and looked at several different places and we whittled it down to two options. One is a condo in Tempe which is right down the street from my work and in a central location in the event I want to change jobs. The other place is on the outskirts of Mesa which would mean I would have a much longer commute in horrific traffic, but look at this place, oh my gosh:

It was a difficult decision, but we chose the Tempe location. We're hoping to start up a business in the near future, and the fact that I will be so close to work will hopefully give me more time and allow me more of an opportunity to help out. 

Have I ever told you how much I love cats? I just love them.

This cat can hardly contain its excitement. 

We won a twitter contest with a board game cafe in Toronto called Snakes and Lattes. They didn't specify what game they would be sending, only that they were sending one. We opened the package to find Escape From Sunset Island. We haven't played it yet so there's nothing to report there.

It doesn't rain often, but when it rains, it frickin' rains (and destroys things).




We like animals





There's a guy that lives near us that has a bunch of Corgis. A BUNCH OF CORGIS!!!!



For some reason I've had this for many years. I finally threw it away. The joke has grown stale.



Attention: it's time for your board game report
(beep beep boop boop beep boop)

.We started playing Pandemic: Legacy, which is a game that changes depending on the decisions you make and the events that happen in each game will effect all the future games. Sometimes you have to rip up cards that are no longer relevant, sometimes you add stickers to the board, or add stickers to the rulebook to indicate new rules. It's been a blast so far.

We were enthused to hear that Laura Stevenson and Chris Farren were going to be playing at a venue right down the street from us. Emily and I both have their songs on our spotify playlists and listen to them regularly. 

It so happened that there was a networking event at a data center that night, and I got to tour a data center which was highly interesting (Emily forgot her ID and wasn't able to make it past security), but we were able to make it out in time and hurried back to attend the show. We showed up right in the middle of Chris Farren's set. There was only about 20 or 30 people there. I've been to some small shows in my day but I've never seen a crowd this small. These are some good song writers too. 

After his set, Chris was just hanging around at his merch table and we went over and talked to him for a second, bought a CD and then felt awkward and walked away. Then I surreptitiously snapped a photo like a creeper! 

Listen to this song by Chris Farren's band Fake Problems and tell me he's not a fantastic song writer. 

Up next was a band called Crying, who I had never heard of. They were punk-ish with some crazy super nintendo-esque synthesizer noise in all their songs. It's actually pretty fun music. The singer cracked me up. Before every song she would kind of mumble what the song was about and then spent most of the duration of the song with her back to the audience.

And then finally, Laura Stevenson (formerly known as Laura Stevenson and the Cans). Laura Stevenson has some fantastic pop songs, and again it blew me away how few people were at this show. Her band members are excellent musicans, and I recognized one of the guys who plays in Andrew Jackson Jihad. He was holding down the keyboard/accordian/tamborine duties like a boss. One of the other guys played in a now defunct punk band called Latterman. Laura sounds just like she does on her records; she's got the pipes. The music was good, the band was tight, the banter between band and crowd was amusing, and it made for a special evening. After the last song, the 20 or 30 people started yelling for an encore and they promptly obliged. She made a joke about how she always comes out for an encore quickly because she's worried that the crowd will die down). 

Check out some Laura Stevenson people:

I have a feeling I will be leaving my job soon (and no, I don't care that I'm publishing on the interwebs for all to see). I had two interviews with a company who built the first 3D printed car, and I just did a "code challenge" where they gave me some code, I was supposed to "do something cool". No instructions other than just add features. I kinda hope I get this job, I'm going to be honest.

We're also going to be starting to look for people who we can build websites for in the near future, so if you know anyone, let us know!










BYE BYE HOMIES!!!11

Driftless: Part 2

I quite enjoy dill pickle sunflower seeds

Beyonce is actually pretty talented

"Hello" is the only Adele song I like

I have an iPod which I use every day, but I don't have a single song on it. (I love podcasts)

Writing for National Review is kind of a pipe dream of mine - I still have a lot of practicing to do.

I only watch about 3 movies a year.

Punk Rock: if you're in by 25 you're in for life

Lettuce heads are really into lettuce heads

I have over 800 reputation points on Board & Card Games Stack Exchange

I have under 400 in Stack Overflow

Maybe that's and indication that I'm bad at programming

Or maybe I'm just better at board gaming.

I've never had the chicken pox

I had blonde curly hair as a baby

What do prisons, certain progressive mid-20th century psychiatric hospitals, and the social web all have in common? The answer is token economies. Token economies are systems in which select behaviors are rewards with an institutional currency negotiable for benefits. Cigarettes, privileges, and Facebook friends are all forms of currency awarded to the obedient. - Christopher McKinlay (Optimal Cupid)

March 2016

Emily thinks that we watched some movie called The Tourist when we were dating, but I don't believe I have ever seen such a movie in my entire life! I think I would have remembered Johnny Depp's ridiculous hair.

Emily has been doing some web design work for a couple people which is helping her gain experience. In order to further augment her portfolio she's also working on some personal projects including Michelangelo's blog (Yes I know Michelangelo is dead). I'm excited about all this, if nothing else than if I die or something than Emily will be able to make sweet money at a sweet job (aside from a million dollars from life insurance)

One day after church we decided to just drive for a while and see where we ended up. Somehow we ended up on top of a mountain. This happens ALL THE TIME, it's uncanny.

We've been using a pressure cooker. I attempted Cincinnati style chili. That's right, chili on top of noodles. As soon as I heard it I said "that's weird I want to try". Cincinatti, I applaud you.



We're taking advantage of the weather before summer hits by hanging out on our patio.



Guess what? We're sadly announcing that we're moving. We really like our ward and our apartment but we're moving to a condo that is really close my work. I mean REALLY close. It's about two doors down and my commute is going to be awesome!!! Eventually we're going to get the heck out of the city but we're going to sacrifice for at least another year and live in the concrete jungle. In the words of Jesse Michael from Operation Ivy (he liked one of my tweets one time so we're officially best friends):

It's like a giant mechanical brain
And the people are cells and the streets are veins
It thinks only of itself
A thousand limbs crawling as it expands and grows
And still the concrete sits there
Sits there stark grey and cold




Things we watched - Moneyball, 1 episode of Fixer Upper
Things we're reading - Basic Economics, Heaven on Earth: the Rise and Fall of Socialism, Bowie (about David Bowie)
Places we ate - Ted's Hot Dogs (decent for a hot dog place), Venezia's Pizza (delicious), In-N-Out (probably the 50th time I've eaten there and it was delicious), Raising Cane's (best chicken place I know of).

February 2016 - Blind Date

Emily:

In February I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a while, I went on a blind date. The person setting me up didn’t know me that well but luckily gave me some information about my options. There was one Gothic Horror option (no thanks) and one memoir about a girl from Afghanistan (I was worried about a Kite Runner repeat), and some other options I can’t remember (perhaps there’s a reason I didn’t choose them). Ultimately, I went with a mystery because a good mystery novel is like my homemade apple pie, I can’t say no.

“A Blind Date with a Book” was a cute display at our favorite store Bookman’s and I was totally sold. I spent forever looking at all of the options, wondering excitingly what each held. I know everyone says don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but I do. I also judge them heavily by the synopsis on the back. All of the books eager to on a blind date were beautifully wrapped and only had their genre, setting, and year published and a short tagline listed on the front. I think I would give a lot more books a chance if I had less information to make a decision on.

Unwrapping my mystery choice felt like a mildly exciting roller coaster ride--nothing too crazy, but still enough to make you want to ride it again. I do have to give my blind date book props though. The cover was interesting and the synopsis wasn’t bad, but I still don’t think I would have bought it on my own.

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly balked mystery traditions by making it obvious from the beginning ‘who dunnit’. The problem is we don’t know what he did. That’s the mystery that Kelly craftly unfolds throughout the book--why our protagonist's husband is being let out of prison and why that makes the protagonist even more paranoid and neurotic. The suspense of the past and the present day kept me wholly engaged in the book. But, ultimately Kelly’s main character---whose perspective you see it all through was a major let down that ruin an interesting story.

I guess the downfall of this book is the main character. In the end, the book is about a girl who having never rebelled in her life decides to throw away her talents to hang with a crowd that fascinates her (that’s it, they have no other redeeming qualities--they’re just “interesting”). Maybe if there had been more substance behind her fascination, her decisions would have been more understandable. Instead, you painfully watch her throw her life away.

But despite the book being less than stellar, I would totally go on another blind date with a book. Maybe it’s the thrill of not knowing what kind of gem I’ll find or maybe that I’m expanding my horizons or maybe I just trust my local Bookman’s employees enough to trust they’ll put an amazing book in my hands one day.  

So, thank you mysterious date-setter for providing me with a wonderful experience despite my mediocre date. No many people can say that for a blind date.

Dallin:

Pictures from the month:

We played a game called Konexi which is basically a mix between scrabble and jenga.

We received an Oreganos gift card from my brother and sister in law. We got the stuffed crust pizza or something. It was a hefty pizza. We made it through about one and a half slices before we said uncle and then had leftovers for the rest of the week! Worried that we would exercise moderation, we proceeded to eat a pizookie, which is the glorious symbiosis of cookies and ice cream. 

I fell asleep on the patio

This felt like the longest February in years! 

I liked it.

Republicans and Democrats: What are your principles?

During the Bush administration, I am ashamed to admit that yes, I was sympathetic to the Patriot Act. I was accepting of the fact that the government was given the authority to gather foreign intelligence information from both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens.

Under Obama, however, I changed my mind completely and realized this was a terrible (and unconstitutional) idea. What changed? Simply put - the party. Consider this my official confession of my impervious, unprincipled partisan politics. Please don't be like me.

Those who have principles act in accordance with a predetermined set of rules even when doing so goes against your immediate self interest. They will just as readily admit to wrongdoing of their own side as well as their opponents because their bedrock isn't in the person or party.

When George Washington stepped down from office he shocked the world by voluntarily relinquishing power when absolute power was his for the taking. This world changing abdication set in place a historically anomalous precedent that was rooted in principle.

German Philosopher Immanuel Kant introduced the idea of universal law. "Morality must be a moral law conceived so abstractly that it is capable of guiding us to the right action in application to every possible set of circumstances." In other words, we should ask ourselves whether we can make our decisions universal law. If I lie, can I then say it's ok for everyone to lie?

The political climate in the United States has turned into one big game of "the ends justify the means". Obama has not only shown, but boasted, that he is willing and ready to go around Congress, and the principles of American governance, because his noble cause justifies the means.

Should the President be able to modify an existing law, such as Obamacare, for his political convenience? Should the IRS and EPA be used to attack political opponents. Those who support the President should ask themselves, should Donald Trump be allowed to justify his means this way?
We shouldn't care how worthy a politician's cause is, if they don't go about seeking change the correct way then they show an ambivalence, even antipathy, for democracy when democracy proves inconvenient.

Recent analysis at Pew Research Center indicates that 40 percent of millennials believe that the government should be able to stop citizens from making public statements that are offensive to minorities. The problem is this can't be turned into a principle because that requires that we define every little thing that is or isn't offensive. Who determines what is or isn't offensive? Should we just institute an authoritarian who will decree these things for us, or should we all just agree that the Founders of our nation were on to something when they added the First Amendment to the Constitution, thereby allowing everyone the right to say offensive things?

Today's political climate is increasingly turning into an exhibition of "what's in it for me?". Politicians have learned that by promising the moon, they can buy votes with the possibility of being in charge of deciding who are the beneficiaries because ss Thomas Sowell states "from a political standpoint, it makes perfect sense to gain the support of two different sets of voters, especially since most of them do not understand the full economic implications of the policies."

If the idea of taxing the rich was only a matter of giving to the poor, why not simply institute a flat tax at, let's just say, 80 percent? That's highly unlikely given that politicians benefit from a complicated tax code because it allows them to grant arbitrary favors and buy off constituencies. Adding layers of government inevitably leads to adding layers of corruption.

Those who sing the praises of socialism and centrally planned economies are merely advocating the shifting present corruption to a central entity which has no recourse or accountability. Do you think the government is going to put themselves in jail?

I'm about as anti-Trump as it gets, but I understand the rise of Donald Trump is a reaction to people feeling like they have their backs up against the wall. They see that those in power aren't willing to play by the rules anymore. If people no longer willing to abide, then compliance to our predetermined set of rules and founding principles becomes a losing strategy. This is why it feels like we're living in Bizarro Opposite Day World where "conservatives" who claim to support limited government are throwing their support behind a strongman whose solution to every problem is more government.

Personally, I would rather lose elections and retain my principles than become a political whore in the name of winning. The outcome does not excuse any wrong committed to attain it. Dystopias are a popular fiction, but I have to wonder if we were to see what the transition from now to Dystopia if it didn't look a little like what we're seeing now.

Our Founders pledged their lives to one another, vowing to fight and die to protect each other’s rights against a government that sought to control them. As Glenn Beck recently affirmed in his closing remarks at CPAC:

"Loyalty oaths should never be made to parties. This is far beyond Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, Tea Party, Evangelical or atheist. You don’t owe loyalty or an oath to any party that fails to defend these principles. And it definitely isn’t an oath to the Government. No, our loyalty and our dedication are owed to the Original Principals, to our God, and to each other.

Let me reiterate some of our Founding principles:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

No matter what comes our way we have nobody to blame (or commend), but ourselves.

Why I want Sanders vs. Cruz in the General Election

What do the three most popular candidates so far in this election cycle have in common? They’re all Progressives.

The Progressive movement started in the early 1900’s with well known historical figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt as part of the fold.

In short the Progressivism movement’s goal is to transform America’s principles of government, from a government dedicated to securing of individual liberty to one which takes on any form of economic and social ills,

Progressives have argued that the founders wanted limited government based on their experience with King George III, but that people of their own time want a much more activist government. Because the constitution exists to limit government, constitutional and Progressive ideals are at odds with each other.

President Woodrow Wilson believed the separation of powers and checks and balances made the government inefficient and was an obstacle in the way of Progressives to accomplish all that they had in mind. He wanted the presidency to be more than just chief of one of the branches of government, but instead sought to be “the popular leader of the whole of national politics”.

The early Progressive movement started a pattern that would continue for the next century, which is a pattern of disregarding the constitutional limits government in favor of government solutions for every conceivable problem.

The early Progressives envisioned a vast number of bureaucratic agencies and broad laws passed by congress for supervising the American economy and society.

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York is a Progressive. He pushed for a law that was passed in order to ban all restaurants, fast-food establishments, delis, movie theaters, sports stadiums and food carts from selling sugar-sweetened drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces. This may seem relatively benign, but it’s a great example. Progressives believe in using government for the good of the people, even if the people don’t always know what’s good for them.

The Democrat party has typically seen the most Progressives, but Progressivism is alive and well in the Republican party as well. Donald Trump supports eminent domain and has leveraged the government to take property from private citizens. He also recently reaffirmed his support for “universal health coverage”. In the mind of the progressive, the government giveth and the government taketh away.

Although Obamacare barely survived the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision because the administration argued that the penalty that people would have to pay was a tax, not a fine. The fact that the Obama administration had to make this argument in order to circumvent the limits that the constitution imposes shows once again that the constitution Provides a constraint that Progressives want to break free of.

Our current political landscape should not be viewed through the lens of “Republican vs. Democrat”. Instead, the real battle is constitutionalism vs. Progressivism.

The movement that was started in the early 1900’s is starting to accelerate at a faster and faster rate. Once the majority puts a greater value in what the government should provide instead of individual liberty, then the constitution will then be viewed as an burden and inconvenience.

In the upcoming election, I want to see Bernie Sanders against Ted Cruz. Both of these candidates will be honest about who they are, and will allow America to make a clear choice: socialism and government control, or the constitutional and individual liberty.