Advice wanted: U.S. politics

Okay. New York has a Democratic presidential primary tomorrow.

I will vote: this is given. But I haven't decided who to vote for. Kerry and Edwards have both said they're against gay marriage, so it's going to be a bit of holding my nose regardless. I'm tempted to vote for Kerry, but that's partly because I'm sick of the whole "only a southerner can win" which seems to come down to the assumption that southerners are too prejudiced to vote for northerners, whereas the reverse isn't true, so we have to cater to their [perceived] prejudices.

Policy reasons--that is, the candidates' stated position or records--for voting for any of the remaining Democratic candidates are hereby solicited. Post early; we generally vote in the morning.

Advice wanted: U.S. politics

Okay. New York has a Democratic presidential primary tomorrow.

I will vote: this is given. But I haven't decided who to vote for. Kerry and Edwards have both said they're against gay marriage, so it's going to be a bit of holding my nose regardless. I'm tempted to vote for Kerry, but that's partly because I'm sick of the whole "only a southerner can win" which seems to come down to the assumption that southerners are too prejudiced to vote for northerners, whereas the reverse isn't true, so we have to cater to their [perceived] prejudices.

Policy reasons--that is, the candidates' stated position or records--for voting for any of the remaining Democratic candidates are hereby solicited. Post early; we generally vote in the morning.

(no subject)

Happy birthday, filkerdave!

(no subject)

Happy birthday, filkerdave!

Half a workout, and a half-day's work

Half a workout because I needed to go do boring paid work. By the time I left the gym (10:15 or so) it was 61°F (16°C) according to the local TV news channel. That made walking down decidedly pleasant. The little Chinese takeout place on 38th Street was out of pork buns, so I got a scallion bun and a croissant. The croissant turned out to be better than most I've found in New York, and significantly cheaper (70 cents). Worth remembering.

When I got to Creative Good, Anne had me do some more data entry--database updates are endless--and then try to send out email to 90 or so people, basically "Hi, I met you at $conference. We have a free CD of the conference presentations, and need to confirm your address." This involved searching for a code I'd entered in the database entries earlier'; exporting the matching data from the database; importing it into a program called emerge, whose job is to do a mail-merge sort of thing but then send email instead of print letters; and sending said email. Emerge ran through ten items (of which it sent four and produced errors for six) and then stopped.

It transpired that (a) it likes to produce random errors, which you deal with by fiddling with the mailing preferences, but (b) the company only has one registered copy of the software, which is on a different machine, and the evaluation copy halts dead after sending ten emails. After a while, Anne asked me to go to the bank--this meant getting paid to go for a pleasant walk carrying about an ounce of paper, so I said sure--and fiddled with the machine some more. I ate lunch, we tried a little longer, and she decided that the only thing to do was to do this on her machine, meaning she had to do it. Eventually, there will be more work, assuming at least some people say they'd like the CD.

In the meantime, I went down to the Village for Assam tea (McNulty's) and good chocolate from Varsano's. Mark Varsano commented that he hadn't seen me in a while. I came home via 181st Street, for seeded rye bread, in time to talk to my proofreading client. There's a bit more to do there, but rather than have me rush through it late this afternoon, she said to have it back tomorrow morning. So I'll go and vote, do proofreading, mail the hawthorn, and then either go to the zoo or come home and do some more Tiptree reading (I have one more novel, and a few short stories to catch up on).

( gym numbers )

Half a workout, and a half-day's work

Half a workout because I needed to go do boring paid work. By the time I left the gym (10:15 or so) it was 61°F (16°C) according to the local TV news channel. That made walking down decidedly pleasant. The little Chinese takeout place on 38th Street was out of pork buns, so I got a scallion bun and a croissant. The croissant turned out to be better than most I've found in New York, and significantly cheaper (70 cents). Worth remembering.

When I got to Creative Good, Anne had me do some more data entry--database updates are endless--and then try to send out email to 90 or so people, basically "Hi, I met you at $conference. We have a free CD of the conference presentations, and need to confirm your address." This involved searching for a code I'd entered in the database entries earlier'; exporting the matching data from the database; importing it into a program called emerge, whose job is to do a mail-merge sort of thing but then send email instead of print letters; and sending said email. Emerge ran through ten items (of which it sent four and produced errors for six) and then stopped.

It transpired that (a) it likes to produce random errors, which you deal with by fiddling with the mailing preferences, but (b) the company only has one registered copy of the software, which is on a different machine, and the evaluation copy halts dead after sending ten emails. After a while, Anne asked me to go to the bank--this meant getting paid to go for a pleasant walk carrying about an ounce of paper, so I said sure--and fiddled with the machine some more. I ate lunch, we tried a little longer, and she decided that the only thing to do was to do this on her machine, meaning she had to do it. Eventually, there will be more work, assuming at least some people say they'd like the CD.

In the meantime, I went down to the Village for Assam tea (McNulty's) and good chocolate from Varsano's. Mark Varsano commented that he hadn't seen me in a while. I came home via 181st Street, for seeded rye bread, in time to talk to my proofreading client. There's a bit more to do there, but rather than have me rush through it late this afternoon, she said to have it back tomorrow morning. So I'll go and vote, do proofreading, mail the hawthorn, and then either go to the zoo or come home and do some more Tiptree reading (I have one more novel, and a few short stories to catch up on).

( gym numbers )