A death in the family

Posted By on May 18, 2003 at 9:48 am

Thursday, my laptop computer died a horrendous death. The hard drive self-destructed. Absolute total loss. Not even slightly recoverable (without spending oodles of cash.)
I say “my“, but it really belongs to my employer, and was issued to me for work use.
That’s not to say I can’t use it for non-work things in my copious free time (there are restrictions – no file sharing software permitted, for instance), but it is mainly what I spend all my salaried time staring at. It’s also my principle blogging platform, since it’s rather difficult to relax in my recliner in the evenings with a desktop computer in my lap.
I only had a few files I hadn’t backed up recently – a few pictures, my bookmarks file, a spreadsheet I was working on. The latter sucks – I’ve been trying to recreate three days worth of lost work. No fun.
Sigh.

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So soon?

Posted By on May 15, 2003 at 1:59 am

I swear, just when I thought I’d made my case, more evidence appears.
In my last two posts, I explained some of the reasons I left California, despite being that rarity, a native Californian descended from a generation or two of native Californians.
Yes, the state has gone to eternal perdition in some sort of woven container. Yes, the gun laws are unreasonably severe for law-abiding folks like me – and the proposed ones are even worse.
But just when I thought I wouldn’t need to explain further, this little tidbit popped up in the Washington Post on Wednesday:

California Gov. Gray Davis unveiled an overhauled $96-billion budget on Wednesday that relies heavily on more borrowing paired with tax increases and spending cuts aimed at closing a record shortfall projected at $38 billion.

Un… bloody… believeable.

A $96-billion budget.

Say it again – a 96 billion dollar budget. $96,000,000,000.00 – just look at all those zeros. By comparison, Russia’s 2002 budget was a paltry $43-billion – with a $2-billion surplus (numbers courtesy of the CIA 2002 World Factbook.)

$38 billion “shortfall”.

None dare call it “deficit.” None, at least, at the WaPo… not while a Socialist Democrat is governor of California.

More borrowing.

Way to go, guys – mortgage the future to pay for the excesses of today. I’ll bet Grey “Red” Davis never expected the business cycle to kick in quite so hard when he was jacking up the social spending (read, “vote buying”). Kiss the White House goodbye, you poltroon.

Tax increases.

Ah, yes – the Democrat solution to every problem. What Red fails to understand is that higher taxes are an incentive for the people paying the most to leave the state. He must have skipped the Economics courses at college….
Hey, Red, get this: I left and took my moderately well-paid job out of the state with me. Tax this, you idiot.

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