X-Tra Rant

So last I wrote, I had officially decided to wait on Conan Lea’s waiting list for my tattoo. Well today was my first session. And let me just say, Conan kicks ass. If you are in the Indy area and want a kick ass, fine art tattoo, he is your man.

For those who don’t remember, my tattoo idea is the constellation Orion on a sort of nebula background.

Got there about 1pm and the first 4 hours were spent getting to know him, looking at my reference art, getting coffee, looking at composition ideas, etc. What’s awesome about Conan is he will take the time to get to know you and work with you even if it means time that isn’t officially design or consult time and therefore not charged. You can really tare he cares about his customers and wants to take the time to build a relationship with them, not just throw some ink on them and get paid.

Anyway, we wrapped up with him using markers to generally lay out the tattoo and the idea.

So then about 5 or so we started the actuall tattooing. the first step was to lay down the blacks as shadows as well as “blood line” (?I think that’s the phrase he used) the locations and sizes of the stars.

Then came putting on the first colors: pink, lavendar, margenta, white and orange. these colors were all in the same line of color “values” and were the beginning of the color as well as an outline for future work on the nebula. Also, teh stars had their first pass of white done and some of thelight purple outline was done that will lead to more of the blues and other colors in the next session.

It’s only about 1/3 finished but you can see where some of the flares, pockets and and bubbles in the nebula will be as well as how it will draw the eye in towards the middle and have a sense of motion. You can also see the bits of un-inked skin sort of spiraling through the nebula that will be the highlights.

I’m REALLLLY excited to see the finished product. It’s already blowing away my expectations. I can’t wait to see the additional details he throws into the nebula and how he highlights the stars and colors them to match the stars in the actual constellation.

Stay tuned. Hopefully two, maybe three, weeks from now I’ll have the finished product.

I’m not going to pull any goddamn punches on this shit.

Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, gave a minute-long prayer, that he ended by saying:

“We pray this in the name and beloved power of our Lord Jesus Christ and for his sake, Amen.”

You know what, fucker? Not everyone you represent is a fucking Christian. Not everyone in your district prays to Jesus Christ. Fuck not everyone you represent prays to anyone. By opening the Senate with this prayer you are pretty much saying a big hearty “fuck you”  to anyone who isn’t a christian or anyone who isn’t a believer of anything.

So Senator Kruse, fuck you too.

ArsTechnica has an excellent article about the recent Firefox 3 “blocking bugs” hubub, and the resulting response from the Firefox community. I will say that this article and this issue really sums up some of the difficulties of the software QA process - especially at the end of a cycle near release. Everyone (testers and developers) views their bugs, their issues, their code as the most important. This is difficult to overcome at times in a corporate software environment, so I can’t imagine how hard it is in an open source software environment. It’s one of the key challenges to QA: prioritizing bugs near release and determining which ones truly are blocking issues, which ones are incorrectly defined as blocking and which ones can be shipped and put off until an early service pack or hotfix.

The inflated number of blockers doesn’t reflect problems with the Firefox development process or the program itself. Rather, it indicates that Firefox community members who actively participate in bug reporting and triaging are having trouble prioritizing the bugs properly. This is a very common problem that often emerges in large open source development projects towards the end of the release cycle.

Exactly. Hell, even corporate software development faces the same issue at times.

Asking maintainers to reevaluate bug priority is a way for Mozilla to refocus development on the most important issues so that the software is as robust and usable as possible by the release date. Reclassifying less-significant blockers is a necessary QA strategy that will actually lead to a better Firefox 3 release. No software will ever be released completely bug-free, and problems that can be fixed in updates after the Firefox 3 release can and should be reclassified at this stage so that they don’t hold up more important development efforts.

This is very, very important for QA no matter who you are working for - an open source community or a corporation. End-of-cycle bug prioritizing can make or break a release. Leave too many as deferred can make users hate you. Try and fix too many and you’ll be indefinitely postponing your release (and users will hate you). You need skilled QA and Development managers to be able to identify the stuff that absolutely MUST be fixed, the stuff that sucks but we can live with for a few weeks before a hotfix, and the stuff that just doesn’t truly matter.

Speaking of hotfixes, this is something that the Ars article doesn’t really go into but I’m sure (I hope) that the Forefox development community is already working in this fashion: branch your code even before release into a hotfix project. This project will be your first round of bug fixes for your product post-release. Even before the product is shipped start deferring the “sucks but we can live with it for a few weeks” bugs to that code branch. Put developers who are not needed for the release and bug cleanup process onto the hotfix. This way you have a head start on the hotfix that will make the (hopefully few) users who are unhappy about the shipped bugs happy.

In summary, “these are not the bugs you are looking for” and I think Firefox 3 is going to be just fine. Someone at the NYT should have done more research into software QA before writing that article or at least interviewed someone involved in QA management. By the looks of it they just reworked some press releases and added a dash of OMG!!WTFXORZ!!!700BUGZ!

Really not in a sleeping mood, so decided to watch Domino with Keira Knightly.  Rotten Tomatoes hates it but I actually quite enjoyed it.  It’s an over the top, exploitation, crazy movie. Think Natural Born Killers with a bit less crazy and some interesting plot twists to go with the crazy violence. And with alot more Keira Knightly, which is a win all on its own.

Oh yeah, and Tom Waits makes an appearance. And Christopher Walken plays a wacked out reality TV producer. How can you go wrong with that?

I really should be sleeping, but eh. whatever. I can sleep it off tomorrow.

Dear NBC,

I would really like to start watching your show Life but I’ve missed all the episodes so far and apparently you only go back to the fourth episode on NBC.com. It seems you really don’t want people to be able to watch your shows online in any sort of useful way. Guess I won’t be watching Life after all.

Oh, and pay your writers, jackasses. I don’t want to get stuck watching crappy reality TV just because you want to screw over the people that actually create the content that you then turn around and sue people for putting on sites like YouTube because they like it so much.

Alright time to dig into another Tully article. Always fun. This time it’s about the the 16 Republicans who will be on the Council’s majority naming their leadership team.

GOP united in filling top council posts

 It was just after 5 p.m. when the Republicans gathered in the offices of Obsidian Enterprises, owned by top GOP contributor Tim Durham. As the group arrived, the sun was shining into the conference room; cookies decorated with GOP elephants sat on the oval table that the members sat around.

First off, way to reinforce stereotypes there guys. Meeting in the 48th floor office of one of your biggest, wealthiest contributors in the tallest skyscraper in the city. And what’s with “the sun was shining in into the conference room”? Is Tully trying to get into the saccharine prose business? I half expected that to be followed up by “The well oiled, barechested strongmen of the GOP stood around a shining table made of granite, comparing stories of safaris to Africa fighting tigers bare-handed and hunting trips at Berkely to get the prized heads of the Wooly Hippie.”

 After deciding to have four leadership posts, members turned to their most crucial decision: whether to elect as president longtime Councilman Bob Cockrum, a 74-year-old retiree, or Mike Speedy, a 39-year-old real estate consultant completing his first term. Cockrum talked about his experience, noting he was the sole Republican who had once served in the majority. Speedy talked about a plan to take the council in a new direction.
…
Vaughn was key, as he had been seen as a potential president. Unable to secure enough votes, he’d dropped out of the race and endorsed Cockrum, who won by secret ballot.

Nice. We get the 74-year old retiree. Way to really go for a new direction there guys. Fresh ideas! Change! Fix the city with a breath of fresh air! Oh wait. Never mind. That’s musty, moth-ball smelling air.

Lincoln Plowman, a police officer entering his second term, was then elected majority leader, also beating Speedy.

I will personally give $50 to the first Democratic council member who asks Councilman Plowman if there are conflicts of interest in serving as a majority leader and a public safety officer at the same time. The hypocrisy is so thick that the golden sunlight streaming into the room was slowed to a shimmering, hazy hue the color of wheat on a crisp summer day…

Sorry, slipped into Tully-Mode there for a second.

Those seeking a fresh face got one when Kent Smith, a mortgage broker elected to the council last week, was chosen as vice president. After an initial tie, Smith defeated Speedy, whose backers kept nominating him. (The possibility of a woman in leadership had died when Cain declined a nomination.)

I do enjoy that the Marion County Republican Party apparently can’t find any, or can’t bring themselves to support, any women as leaders.

The next day, Cockrum and his team stood before the media, promising “a new vision.”

You know, I really could make a joke here. I really really could. But I’m going to pass and save that one for later. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

So now we know who the GOP leadership team will be. We’ll know who to write letters to. Who to continuously ask questions of. Who to ask “what, exactly, are you going to cut from the budget?” because lord knows no one would answer that question before the election.

Interesting article in the star today about the report from a “bipartisan legislative commission” about taxes, specifically what to do about property taxes. it basically hinges on mandating or incentivising counties to raise the county option income tax to make up for a 1/2 cut in property taxes.

This makes me chuckle because people were mad about property taxes an, in Marion County, the raising of the COIT by 0.65% to pay for public safety - now this panel wants to fix property taxes by raising the other. On the surface, to me, a good plan except for one thing - I do not believe that the COIT is a progressive tax. I think it’s a “flat” percentage on all income. I’d rather see any elimination or cutting of property taxes offset by a progressive income tax increase or even just another top bracket of the state income tax.

The commission’s plan does just seem to pass the buck back to counties and the inclusion of “Under the plan, counties would be either mandated or given incentives to increase their local option income taxes” makesit possible for a state cut in property tax but nothing making up for the shortfall at the county level.

 In Marion County, the county’s income tax — currently 1.65 percent — likely would need to be raised by 0.8 to 0.9 percentage points in order to provide the 50-percent cut in property taxes.

And to raise the $771 million needed to pay for the state assuming the cost of child welfare and schools’ general funds, the commission recommended raising the state sales tax by less than a penny and/or expanding it to services not covered by the tax.

Oh there’s a good idea. Pay for child welfare and school funds (very very important to the poor) with an increase in the sales tax  (a regressive tax that hits the poor harder, by percentage of income) and/or applying sales taxes to services not currently taxed by a sales tax (again, hitting the poor harder than the rich). Really. Awesome idea there. /sarcasm

The commission’s proposal goes further than a plan unveiled by Gov. Mitch Daniels in October. He called for cutting homeowners’ property taxes by a third, paid for by a 1-percentage point increase in Indiana’s 6 percent sales tax.

But at least it’s better than the Governor’s plan to just cut property taxes by 1/3 and make up for it ALL with a sales tax.

Other key differences: Daniels’ plan called for the elimination of all township and county assessors and for voters to approve of major building projects in a referendum; the commission called for retaining one elected county assessor who must meet minimum educational standards, and for no referendums.

Ohh referendums. Just ask California how well those work out. Any major building project that is necessary to the growth of a city but not popular because of short term tax effects (think mass transit) could just be voted down again and again by short-sighted voters. We elect people to our government to think long term (theoretically). By passing the buck onto the short-sighted voters we end up nothing actually getting done and politicians being able to skirt responsibility for not getting necessary big projects done.

 Daniels was specific, calling for homeowners’ bills to be no more than 1 percent of their homes’ assessed valuation, with rental property at 2 percent and businesses at 3 percent. The commission was deliberately vague, saying that will need to be hammered out by the legislature.

Fuck renters. THey don’t vote or contribute to Republicans enough to worry about.  Although the higher cap on businesses is something I can CERTAINLY live with. But why the higher cap on rental property? Any reason beyond renters not being catered to as much as homeowners?

The commission started meeting on a tax plan after a state-ordered reassessment led to higher property tax bills across the state.

Did you read that, Ballard voters? STATE-ORDERED REASSESSMENT. Way to shoot the messenger.

Well I’ve got the site up and running I mentioned before. IndyCouncilWatch.org. The idea is that when the new Indianapolis/Marion County City/County Council starts up, that we (at least CJ and I, others if you are interested) go to every open council meeting possible. At these meetings, take notes, ask questions and post about them.

The cool thing about it is that anyone with a blog who can give a feed for a specific category can assist with that website. IndyCouncilWatch is essentially a RSS feed aggregator. You can post on your own blog. As long as you can give it a specific category, and an RSS feed on that category, you can participate.

So it’s still in the early stages and there may not be much there yet, but if you are interested in helping out - going to meetings, keeping up on the news out of the council and writing about it - leave a comment here or anywhere on ICW. be glad to have you.

And if you are interested in this, you may also enjoy a new blog that isn’t by me: The Accidental Mayor. Good stuff.

First off, my own accountability

* I didn’t do nearly enough for this election. I could have done more and I just plain didn’t.
* I didn’t take Ballard seriously enough. More specifically, (and less credit to Ballard) I didn’t take the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the state seriously enough
* I’ve been too focused on national politics when, as the saying goes, all politics are local.

CJ has an excellent post wrapping up the election and closes with “So come next year and the new session, expect more local politics coverage around here. I can’t speak for the Marion County Democratic Party, but I’ve certainly learned my lesson.” I couldn’t agree more and plan to take this lesson to heart. How?

Holding the MCRCC and the new CCC/Mayor accountable

CJ and I, along with a few others from Drinking Liberally: Indianapolis, talked about this last night. How can we hold the new GOP CCC and Mayor accountable? Our plan, as it stands now, is to go to every single pupblic CCC meeting possible. Take notes. Tell people what they are doing. Ask questions. Write them. Basically make it so they come to recognize we are there.
And by “tell people what they are doing” we are going to work on setting up a blog that is basically an aggregation of any posts we (or others who want to help) make on the happenings at CCC meetings and from emailing questions and comments to councilors.

Is this enough to make up for not taking this election seriously enough? No. Probably not. But it’s the best thing we can think of to keep tabs on and hold accountable a new CCC and Mayor who are long on promises and blame, but short on actual ideas.

I just had a sudden flashback to the old Forum2000.org. Does anyone remember that? It doesn’t exist anymore and the only thing I could really find was this Slashdot post from 2000 about it being shut down. Damn that site was funny. Thankfully there is always the Internet Archive. How cool would it be for someone to resurrect Forum2000 for the Web 2.0 age?