Lively Debate

I'm sick. I had an ear infection / strep throat last month, but I misread the instructions on the antibiotics and took 1 twice a day instead of 2 twice a day (half dose). The antibiotics worked ok for the first few days. I felt well enough to wrap up some client work, and was planning on pushing out the next WACT release last week and the first three days of this week.

Unfortunately, about the time I started wondering why my anti-biotics weren't gone, my strep came back and with a vengeance. I went to the doctor and got a new antibiotic, but this one seems to be very slow acting, or I have some sort of nasty super bug.

I think I must look pretty bad, because no-one seems to want to get near me. Which is a shame. Yesterday was our annual family reunion. I understand that this one went well, adding some live music on friday night in addition to some of the other traditional activities over the weekend. I heard them announce 93 attendees at the sunday dinner. Unfortunately, none of them wanted much to do with me. My cousins did take some pity on me, especially my cousin Sara.

Anybody got a PHP job in Atlanta? Sara lives in Atlanta and I think she would really like it if I moved out there. I'm very tempted. I miss visiting her when she was in Ann Arbor.

So, I am completely and utterly sick of watching TV. My brother finally brought me the John Stossel book and I read it this weekend. I had no idea how much of a libertarian he was. I did enjoy the book and I'll probably post a more complete review. Reading stossel's book has prompted me to finally pick up Atlas Shrugged. I've read the Fountainhead, but have been putting Atlas off for some time.

I've lost almost 10 pounds since I've picked up this nasty infection. I'm Down to 168. Four more pounds would put me below a BMI of 25 and make me skinnier than 60% of the men my age. (Nice BMI Calculator) I was almost shocked to see my face in the mirror today. Gaunt was the first word to come to mind, but actually, I look more like did before hypothyroidism and McDonalds made my cheeks puffy.

I'll end this whining diary entry with that and return you to the normal professional / political content.

The horse race political story of the day seems to be why the DNC last week had such a small effect on the presidential race poll numbers this week.

The democratic spin is that no bounce was expected because the race is close and people have made up their minds.

I have my own theory. I tried to watch Kerry's speech last week, but I fell asleep sometime after his daughters hamster CPR story and woke up to a bunch of talking heads after the speech was over. I tried to find out what Kerry said, but the CNN analysis crew seemed to be more interested in complimenting each other than re-capping Kerry's speech. As I recall, only one sound bit clip was replayed. I tuned in to Lou Dobbs the next day, and the speech was hardly covered. My theory is that the speech wasn't memorable or newsworthy enough to fuel a bounce. I say this without having seen the speech, which I'd still like to watch.

It hardly matters if there is a bounce or not except to the the horserace watchers who will have to wait to see if Bush gets a bounce to evaluate the reality of the idea that everyone has made up their minds. Those attempting the "minds made up" spin might be setting themselves up for some uncomfortable questions should Bush eek out a bounce after the RNC.

Hopefully, I will be able to stay awake for Bush's RNC speech. At least he usually manages to avoid mangling the language in the highly rehearsed speeches such as this.