David Ernst Chats with the World

A couple posts ago I talked about shopping for a new couch with my parents. I had narrowed it down to two while they were here, but ended up leaning towards one. My fashion consultant Sue agreed with with my reasoning, and so it was ordered! Among the implications of my distaste for shopping is that once I’ve got something that seems ok, I just like to buy it and be done with it.

In any event, on Wednesday, I picked it up. I enlisted my neighbor Miki to help me move it inside. It was more difficult than we had expected, but, still not a super big deal (it was nice to chat with Miki, too… you’d think we’d see each other more often since she lives right around the corner). I did have an issue that this couch is substantially larger than the previous one was, so I had to do some rearranging of other things. But it ended up to be a good reason to move the end table that is the nicest piece of furntiture I inherited from my grandmother (and quite possibly the nicest piece that I own) into my main room instead of in the sunny front porch where it’d been hiding under a tablecloth for years (the sun was very noticeably making it fade, which scared me).

And, last night, it survived an after-dance party in style. Fellow contradancer Anna took to it strongly and immediately, and gave it rave reviews as she lay on it chatting with others and listening to the music we were playing.. and what music it was! Besides the typical old-time and “New England” dance music, Igor (from Russia) led us in a rousing rendition of “Oh, Suzanna!”, Priscilla (from Brazil, presently an IU School of Music student studying voice/early music) sang a few Samba’s for us (backed up by Igor on guitar and me on piano), and Anna (who is also from Russia) led a big group sing-along of “Let it Be”. Quite a party experience!

Whatever the case, the couch was enjoyed by many at its first party. So, good.

I love voting. I like the whole idea of it, I like doing it, it gives me warm fuzzy feelings. Mmhmm.. This coming Tuesday, May 2, is a primary election day. It is not that easy to find information about our local elections in general, but certainly not for the primaries. So, here’s a quick and dirty voter guide.

The State of Indiana’s contribution to the information pool is [this repository of official filings and stuff](http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/), the most useful part of which is [this list of registered candidates](http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/2006Primary_Website_Candidate_List.pdf).

Since Indiana has closed primaries (which a lot of people gripe about, but makes sense to me) the best information resource for the May 2 election is probably the local party websites. The [Monroe County Democrats](http://www.monroedems.org/) maintain a nice [index of their candidates](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php). Sadly, the [Monroe County Republicans website](http://www.mocogop.com/index.cfm) has no such list. So, local Republicans probably have to go from the State’s list, and manually search for each candidate. I would do that if I were planning on voting Republican in the primary, but I’m not, so I won’t.

By the way, from what I can tell, neither the Green Party nor the Libertarian Party runs a primary.

##Contested Races in the Monroe County Democratic Primary

There are only a few contested elections in the Monroe County Democratic Primary Ballot. Here they are, with whatever candidate web sites I could find:

###Monroe County Sheriff
Everyone in Monroe County will be voting for this.

* [William Brown](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=54) [Home Page](http://www.billbrownforsheriffmonroecounty.com/)
* [Jim Kennedy](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=40) [Home Page](http://www.jimkennedyforsheriff.com/pages/1/index.htm)
* [Larry Smith](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=37) [Home Page](http://www.larrysmithforsheriff.com/index.html)

###Monroe County Circuit Court Judge, Division V
I’m pretty sure everyone in Monroe County will be voting for this too.

* [Valeri Haughton](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=33) [Home Page](http://valerihaughton.com/)
* [Alphonso Manns](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=38) [Home Page](http://www.mannslaw.com/index.html)
* [Robert “Bob” Miller](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=34)

###Monroe County Council, District 4
The only contested County Council district in the Democratic Primary is this one, which is roughly the City of Bloomington ([this map gives more detail](http://www.jilllesh.com/images/district4map.gif)).

* [Bill Hayden](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=51)
* [Jill Lesh](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=43) [Home Page](http://www.jilllesh.com/)

###United States Representative, District 9
Most everyone in Monroe County is in this district. It’s one of the very few contested House Seats in the nation, presently held by Republican [Mike Sodrel](http://sodrel.house.gov/), who beat out Baron Hill in 2004 by fewer that 2000 votes (out of almost 300,000 votes cast).

* [Gretchen Clearwater](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=31) [Home Page](http://www.clearwaterforcongress.com/)
* [Baron Hill](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=11) [Home Page](http://www.bringbackbaron.com/)

###United States Representative, District 4
But, a few people in Monroe County (on the far west edge) are in this district (presently held by Republican [Steve Buyer](http://stevebuyer.house.gov/)).

* [Rick Cornstuble](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=58)
* [David Sanders](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=44) [Home Page](http://www.sandersforcongress.org/)

I’m always telling myself that I shouldn’t wait until something monumental to be writing in my blog. I mean, the main point is to just talk about what’s going on with me, what I’m thinking about, etc, right?

So, in that spirit, I’ll write simply to say that my parents just headed home from a visit with me. We didn’t do nearly as much work on this visit as we sometimes do (for reasons I don’t fully understand, they are extremely generous with helping me with house projects, I’ve learned a lot from them and they’ve just plain done a lot to make my house look nice and function well, and to keep it that way. Thanks be to them!). We mostly had fun. Friday night we had ice cream (my mom loves butter pecan sundaes from the Chocolate Moose) and talked for a couple of hours before going to bed. Saturday we played disc golf (my dad is really in to playing these days, but rarely goes by himself) and then went shopping. I bought a new weed wacker, that was easy. whew, the story of the old one is probably deserving of its own blog post. But, that’s not this one.

Then we shopped for a new couch. Funny story, the couch I’m sitting on as I type this belonged to my grandmother, and it was the couch that my great aunt Esther was always sitting on when we went to visit. I find the couch comfortable and I also appreciate the familial connection, but it is undeniably old and worn, and I can understand why I get a bit of pressure from some people close to me (mostly my mom and Sue (who I gather have done a bit of conspiring on the matter)) to get a new one. Shopping for furniture, though, is not an activity I’m prone to enjoy. So, it was very helpful to have my parents along for moral support. I didn’t buy one, but I think we narrowed it down to two possibilities, both at the same store. Cool.

Saturday night we went to the wonderful Esan Thai for dinner. We ordered three dishes, with ratings of 3, 4, and 5 on their spiciness scale. The “3” was not very spicy, the “4” was about as spicy as I can handle, and the “5”… well, my dad certainly ate it and enjoyed it, but it was the first time I can ever remember him saying “I would enjoy this more if it were less spicy”. Wow. In any event, we all sat there with noses running and really feeling a little high on [Capsaicin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin) (Hey, look! Here I was kind of joking about that, but that wikipedia article even talks about a capsaicin “high”. All I know is, I felt pretty loopy, and they don’t even serve alcohol at this restaurant.)

We got another Chocolate Moose on the way home, and then played our standard game of three handed pinnochle. Definitely not the best games of pinnochle we’ve played… my dad won everything handly. After a while, we switched to the card game we call “golf”, and that was fun, as usual.

The weather was nice this morning, so after our Easter donuts (from Cresent Donut) my dad convinced us to go out for another round of disc golf. Sure! For some reason, I was playing a little less seriously today, as evidenced by my many bogeys and my frequent practice “rolling drives”, which frequently made us all giggle. Still, considering how much less often I play than I used to, my skill level remains about the same, I think. That’s nice.

We came back home, ate lunch, and my mom and I played Perquackey. We also played with some of my perl-coded Perquackey tools, the first time that I’ve run them on this laptop (I think), and that was fun but also distracting to my game. That being said, my mom was totally on her game, and I think she would have beaten me even if I hadn’t been distracted.

And now, they’re driving home. It’s fun to have them visit. They are good people, thoughtful people, and as I say, very generous with their help. But most of all, they are fun to be around. I’m lucky to be able to say that about my parents.

So, today I was looking for some video capture software stuff for Linux, and I ended up searching
[Dag’s site](http://dag.wieers.com/) for the thing I was looking for. Didn’t find it, but the point is that when I ran
this Google search from Dag’s site I was greeted by a link called “Linux” paid for by Microsoft. “Independent Windows vs Linux data. Download free white papers.” Setting aside the question of whether or not it’s in any sense valid to use the word “independent” in such a case, I just thought it was interesting that MS was paying Google for *anything*, particularly the word “Linux”, especially in the light of [Steve Balmer’s recent statement to CNN that his kids aren’t allowed to use Google (or iPods)](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/04/03/8373041/index.htm). (That they aren’t allowed to use Linux, I’m sure, goes without saying). Of course, it’s obviously trying to contrast its server products to those of Linux, I don’t see this as at all scandalous. Just interesting.

By the way, [a much simpler search](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux&btnG=Google+Search) shows the same thing.

Who knows how true it is, but I certainly enjoyed [this episode of the K-Chronicles](http://www.buzzle.com/showImage.asp?image=11041). And it sure seems believable. You’d think that anyone against, say, increased government spending would not appreciate the current administration.

Ever since getting a laptop, I’ve pretty much stopped sitting at my desktop. It acts more like a home server these days, and not a very busy one at that. One thing that it has been doing for me, though, is music. It’s right next to my stereo, so I can play music on my computer through my stereo just by short cables running between them.

But, this is now inconvenient. Since I use my laptop much more frequently — including right now! — it’d be nicer to play music from here than climbing up to my desktop. I thought “someone should make a sound transmission system that works like WiFi or cordless telephones.” I could plug a little transmitter into my laptop, and then send the sound signal to a receiver connected to my stereo.

Well, not surprisingly, such things do exist. In fact, they can do audio and video! I don’t have need for the video, but I couldn’t find an audio only version, so I ended up ordering [this one that does audio and video](http://www.x10.com/products4/google/wireless_video_sender.html). Only $50, and that includes free shipping!

So, I was pretty excited when it came last week. I hooked it all up and…. it sounded terrible. :( I was able to deal with many of the sound quality issues, but the one that I couldn’t get past was a fast clicking sound. Naturally, I was disappointed. As I frequently do in such situations, I decided to set it aside, and call the company about it another day.

So, a couple of days later, I called X10. I was on hold for a long time (about 30 minutes, after their phone queue had predicted 10 minutes…). It was long enough to do some more troubleshooting. I found that if I turned off both my computer and my wireless access point (WAP) then the clicking would stop. I actually think the clicking might have been caused by the wireless “beacon”, because that was set on my WAP to go every 100ms = 1/10th of a second, and that seemd to be about the frequency that the clicking was happening. It also makes sense that that would have been sending out a signal on lots of frequencies (changing “channels” on either the WAP or the VideoSender(TM) did not solve the problem).

Whatever the case, I eventually talked with a very nice support provider, and he said that some people had problems with this. He suggested moving the receiver further away from the WAP. My house isn’t that big, and basically, I just didn’t want to do this. He thought that switching to 802.11g might help, but couldn’t answer whether I would have to get both an 802.11g WAP AND a card for my laptop. Whatever the case, I was considering the experiment a failure, and was ready to give up. I scheduled an RMA for the product.

But! It was easy to be willing to give up, because while I was on hold, I had had another idea! Couldn’t I somehow rig something up where I could send the sound over my IP network? I figured I could probably at least set up an X Windows session such that the laptop was running a sound player on the server. I started running google searches for advice, and ended up learning that the [Enlightened Sound Daemon](http://freshmeat.net/projects/esound/) (which I was already running) can be set up to accept sound streams over an TCP/IP port! (16001 is the default port number, for anyone who cares). It turned out to be very easy to do, too. I’m not sure how far I got, but by the time I was done being on hold, I was pretty sure I was going to be able to get it working.

Well, it’s working. Not all sound players support it, unfortunately, but on XMMS it was very easy. So, I’m sitting here now, typing this post on my laptop, watching the activity light on my WiFi card glow warmly as it sends Dvořák (played by The Cleveland Orchestra (conducted by Dohnányi)) to my stereo via my desktop upstairs. Although the technology of it makes perfect sense to me, it still feels pretty much like magic. If I opened a hole in my firewall, I guess I could send music through my stereo from any correctly configured computer on the Internet! Not sure what the use of that would be, although I guess it could be used as a ramshackle VoIP phone. :)

But, yeah, sure am happy that I went this route. I’ll get my $50 back, and the sound quality is better than that other thing ever would have been. Plus I can just marvel at how cool it is! The one down side is that it won’t be as easy to have friends play music from their laptops through my sound system. But if they care enough, I think there’s esound support for windows. :)

Today is the first day that Indiana has been on Daylight Saving Time since 1970. And, as such, it’s the first time I’ve experienced the “setting of clocks” tradition since I moved here in 1992. That’s a long time, long enough for me to forget much about how it felt to “lose an hour”. My memory being a kid was just that TV shows and the like started at different times. But I remember feeling like the fact that the weekend was actually shorter was more about theory than practice. When you sleep through the time change like I did when I was little, I think it’s relatively easy to take.

Well, if that’s the case, then I’ve sure decided to take an abusive approach to this DST day. I went last night to an April Fools Day/Daylight Saving Time party. I stayed out well past the magic hour, and when I first woke up after not-very-much sleep, the time changes were confusing enough to my groggy brain that I couldn’t even figure out how much sleep I’d gotten. I knew it wasn’t very much though. So, after waking up and doing some things for a few hours, I decided that a nap was definitely in order. I slept from about 2-5pm. Wow!

So, now, here it is 11:45, only 24 hours after what was 10:45 last night, and I’m sure not feeling very tired. It sounds like a great deal of fun to be awake and do things right now, but I also know that I need to go to bed pretty soon to try to keep myself from getting thrown into a wicked sleep schedule. We’ll see what happens. I’m already looking forward to the longer weekend in October, though. :)