How to buy an iPhone: Bart Style

Knowing that I'm a late adopter of new technology, I bet you're wondering what the Bart process is when it comes to buying an iPhone. Here's the breakdown:

1. Read about the first iPhone coming out. Wait.
2. Read about the second iPhone coming out. Decide you want to get it. Wait a year. Fret frequently about whether you will have to change your calling plan if you do get it.
3. Call AT&T to see what changes you'll need to make to your account. Find out you'll only have to add a data plan; no need to change the calling plan.
4. Buy an iPhone. Turns out this takes like 5 minutes start to finish.

And there you have it! Couldn't be simpler.

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A thoroughly decent proposal

We all know the perils of making plans or promises while drunk - will the plan pass the sobriety test the next morning?

I was propositioned recently while at a party where adult beverages were being served. Not an indecent proposal; in fact, it was a thoroughly decent proposal.

The young lady doing the proposing has had some success working on some local political issues lately (getting beer / wine sales approved in our town, and working on a winning school district campaign). So I was flattered when she told me, apropos of nothing, "If you wanted to run for city council again, I would be your campaign manager." She later assured me she wouldn't make that offer to just anyone.

I have no particular intention to run again, though, so I decided to have a little fun with her good nature. "Does it have to be city council? What about another local office?"

"I don't know. What were you thinking of?"

"Well, there's County Commissioner," I said. "That wouldn't be a much bigger race."

"Hmm, maybe."

"Or," I said, dredging up local political offices from the recesses of my brain, "there's Justice of the Peace. I wouldn't mind being a judge."

"Don't you have to be a lawyer?"

A lawyer standing nearby chimed in. "Actually, JP is the one judicial office in Texas for which no qualifications exist."

Ha! That's my kind of judicial office.

It's nice that someone thinks enough of me (while drinking, at least) to help out with my hypothetical campaign. It's dangerously close, though, to that old political saw of a group of people asking / drafting someone to run for office. So let me say that, for the moment, that I will not seek my party's nomination, if nominated I will not run, and if elected I will not serve.

Although being a judge would be pretty sweet.

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Best Christmas Card ever

The award for best Christmas card of the year, and possibly ever, goes to Jesse Thorn at the Sound of Young America. Who knew that I would get such value for my financial support?

You can see a picture of the card here. The artist also has a lot of interesting pictures (hint to future gift-givers: I wouldn't say no to a print of 'The Death of Jennifer Sisko.'

Merry Christmas, and check out the rest of my blog!

I knew!

I saw one of those godawful state tourism commercials last night. This one is for Nebraska. If I were in charge of the Nebraska advertising campaign, I'd say, "We know you think it's a vast, cultureless, flat wasteland, but you're only partially correct!" Or, "Lots of blonde and / or redheaded chicks who are sure to find you interesting!" Instead, they've gone with the "surprise" campaign, as in, "Aren't you surprised that we're this interesting?" Here's the commercial:



My favorite part of the commercial, without a doubt, is at the 30-second mark. "What do you have to say, unexplained Asian child in a Caucasian family?"

"I knew!"

Seriously, in a Nebraska tourism commercial, do you just want to throw in random multi-culturalism like that? It's not what Nebraska is known for, and you don't have sufficient time to explain in a 60-second commercial whether both their kids are adopted, just the one, or whether this is a friend of their daughter's that they brought on vacation.

Or, is Nebraska trying to go after the all-important Asia to Nebraska tourism market? Very clever. Step one: prove we don't kill all non-white people in Nebraska. Step two: take their money.

Who knew Nebraska tourism was so clever?

I knew!

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Vacay!

I'm taking tomorrow off, so I've got like 10 days of non-working time in front of me.

Of course, I left my cell phone number on my out-of-office reply... and I'll be checking my e-mail, and possibly doing some remote work... but still, I'm not commuting, so it'll be vacation regardless of how many random issues I have to confront.

Guess what the other two rules are?

Cute meets bizarre... just keep in mind that this is an actual shot of actual animals doing actual animal things. Like kicking each others' asses.

My beef with the Salvation Army

I kind of admire the Salvation Army. What's not to like about a coed, militaristic / semi-monastic protestant religious order that dresses up in uniforms, does charity work, and has their own marching bands?

I'll tell you what's not to like: the folks ringing the bell around Christmas-time.

See, if the person ringing the bell was in uniform (a Salvation Army Soldier or Officer), that would be one thing. And keep in mind that when you see commercials about giving to the Salvation Army, that's how the bell-ringers are depicted. Nice looking, young adult to middle aged people in immaculate uniforms, ringing that big-assed brass bell with gusto on a busy street corner. Giving to them is like giving to a priest or a nun. Or buying brandy off a monk. It gives you a nice warm feeling.

Here's the reality, at least in my neck of the woods: a person in a sweatsuit stands inside the foyer of a Wal-Mart and halfheartedly rings their annoyingly tinny bell. They're not members of the Salvation Army - for them, it's just a minimum wage job 6 weeks a year. I have no idea if the money in that bucket ever makes it back to the Salvation Army. Why should I risk it?

The guy or gal in a uniform? They're living at the local Salvation Army barracks. I told you, they're semi-monastic. Where are they going to hide their bucket? They're not. That money has a pretty good shot of going directly to charity.

Maybe there are some places in the greater Dallas area where you can go and see actual members of the Salvation Army ringing a bell. I don't get out much. I know they have a local commandery, or constabulary, or whatever their local congregations are called.

Until I see one of those nice-looking uniformed men or women like I see on TV ringing the bell, screw it, I'm hanging on to my spare change. If I see the right person ringing the bell, I might donate paper money. Think about that, Salvation Army.

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The nonsensical world of real estate education

I'm in my 4th year of teaching real estate at a community college. I gave my finals & turned my grades in this week, in fact. To qualify as an instructor at a community college, you have to meet the requirements of the school's credentialing body - that is, for transfer courses, you have to have a Master's degree in your subject area (or any Master's degree and 18 graduate hours in your area). I have a Master's degree in Real Estate, so no problem there.

I should mention - the primary reason people are taking these classes is to meet the educational requirements to get a real estate license. Texas has very stringent requirements in terms of the number of classes required, at least compared to most other states. You can either take those classes from a credentialed post-secondary institution, or you can take them from a private (aka vocational training) school.

A private school has to be licensed by the state Real Estate Commission, and all instructors have to be appropriately credentialed by the Commission. The private schools tend to have very flexible classes, so they're popular, and they pay their instructors well. So, it's desirable to be credentialed as an instructor.

To be credentialed as an instructor by the State, you have to have been working in real estate for 5 years, which they generally define as having a real estate license, and you have to have 3 years' teaching experience. I think you have to have a college degree. I could look, but that would take time and effort, and I'm in "creative" mode right now.

There's plenty of problems with this scheme. First, to say that someone's experience working in real estate is solely defined by the length of time one has held a license is foolish at best. By the time I started teaching, I had plenty of experience, but only a few years with an active license. And no teaching experience... it's one of those Catch 22s, since you can't be certified to teach until you have teaching experience, but how can you get teaching experience without being certified?

Fortunately, I got my teaching experience in a setting where I didn't need to be credentialed by the State. And it occurred to me recently that I might be able to pick up a little extra scratch teaching at a private school. And that I finally met the requirements for being certified. So I filled out & sent in my application. Described my work and teaching experience. The whole nine yards.

Part of the application involves checking off the classes you want approval to teach. Turns out I got approved for almost all of them. Almost all. The one class I didn't get approved to teach? The one I've been teaching for almost 4 years. The one I'm arguably most qualified to teach, since I've done it so often. Apparently I can only teach that one for college credit. But not at trade schools.

Yes, welcome to the nonsensical world of real estate education. I guess I can send them a "WTF?" letter. Or I can just try to shop my enormously credentialed letter around to different private schools, and see if I get any bites.

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Technological lag

Peep today's Dilbert:



My first thought? Ugh... I have a landline with no caller I.D. I'm suffering from a technological lag.

But then again, I'm reminded of my technological shortcomings every day. Observe, if you will, my TV setup:

TV, TiVo, and now, sadly, digital converter box. Not pictured: wireless broadband internet connection device. Of course, you might wonder, what feeds into the digital converter box? Good question. Let's zoom out:

Yeah, that's attractive. I had to get a new antenna. Powered. To read the digital signals, I had to stick it in the window. Let's see that close up:

Mrs. Bart figured out that we can get certain signals better if a soda can is attached to one of the aerials... jeez, I'm rarely embarrassed writing these, but I am now. It's just plain sad. And I still can't bring myself to get cable.

I'm not much of a gradual adopter - I tend to make sudden leaps. And this digital TV has been a little buggy. Maybe I'll get off my ass shortly.

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A Gay Challenge

Head on over to Mormania, where I throw down the Gay Gauntlet!

There Will Be Blood redux

My first thought after watching 'There Will Be Blood' in the theater last year was, "I have to see this again." My second thought was, "I don't know if I want to see it again." It was obviously an excellent movie, but it was a hard watch. If you've seen it, you know what I mean, and if you haven't, well, add it to your damn Netflix queue.

I was at a friend's house last week, and he told me he had recently purchased several movies. One of them was 'There Will Be Blood'. I mentioned my quandary - to see it again or not - and the friend insisted that I take the movie home and re-watch it.

Friday night I sat down, only intending to watch 20 or 30 minutes of the movie, and ended up watching the entire thing. Mesmerizing. Spellbinding. So, so good. I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE.

It wasn't as hard to watch the second time; there aren't any unpleasant surprises. Just the unpleasantness of watching an unpleasant person. But seeing it done so well ... surprisingly enjoyable.

Maybe I'll watch it one more time before I return it :)

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Bart tries to burn down his house

Hey, this is post # 600! Yaaaay.

Fall is in the air. The air is crisp, the leaves are turning, and Bart tries to burn down his house.

When Mrs. Bart and I got back from Thanksgiving, we figured out that something was off with the heating. Specifically, the motor that powers the fan that pushes the hot air out of the furnace wasn't working. We got someone out to replace the motor on Friday, but the replacement didn't have sufficient awesomeness, so we were told we'd have to wait until Monday to get it fixed.

It was a moderate pain, but not a huge one. After all, we have a gas fireplace in the living room. And we were able to borrow a space heater from a friend to keep the bedroom warm at night. Between those two devices, we got the house up to a decent temperature in pretty short order.

(So there's your two burning-down-the-house suspects; where are you going to place your wager?)

Fast forward to Saturday evening. It was getting dark, and time to warm the house up again. Fireplace is going, space heater is going... then I heard the upstairs smoke detector go off. It can be a little fidgety, so I waved a towel under it to make it stop beeping. It promptly resumed beeping.

I smelled smoke.

I smelled in the other upstairs room to see if something was on fire there; no smell. I ran downstairs to check on the space heater... no, that's not burning down anything. Crap, that just leaves the fireplace. But I wasn't doing anything that I hadn't done earlier that day or the previous night. What the hell?

Mrs. Bart suggested it was time to call the fire department - what if something in the chimney had caught fire? We didn't want it getting all... burny... or at least any more burny than it currently was. So we turned off the fireplace, and Mrs. Bart called the fire department. She asked me what the non-emergency number was; I couldn't find it, so she called 911 but explained that this wasn't an emergency per se. We just wanted to make sure our house wasn't on fire.

Not long afterwards, I heard sirens. Great.

Despite realizing the necessity of bringing in the fire fighters, I was reluctant to do so for a couple of reasons. The first was having all the neighbors know the fire department came over. Not that we're particularly close to our neighbors, but still. And the sirens weren't helping me keep my trademark low profile.

Second, as far as I know, fire fighters have two weapons in their arsenal: axes and water. If they do find something on fire, they're going to axe open the wall and pour water on it until it's out. That's not the kind of mess you clean up in five minutes - more like five months. So I figured that, whatever the outcome of this visit, it wasn't going to be good.

Our neighborhood is quiet enough that when an enormous diesel-powered truck pulls onto your street, you can hear it. At least they had turned off the sirens. The flashers were on, though. Remembering that our house number isn't the easiest to see from the road, I stepped outside and waved the truck down. Two fire fighters in full gear, but thankfully sans axes, hopped out, along with a paramedic. In case we had smoke inhalation, I guess.

One fire fighter had an instrument with a screen in his hand. A-ha! Just what I wanted to see - the magic infrared find-fire-in-a-wall scanner. Mrs. Bart was explaining the problem, but I was looking over the guy's shoulder looking for heat signatures. Nothing looked particularly heated, so I thought that was a good sign.

The lead fire fighter said it was time to check out the fire place. He knelt down and took a look.

"So, did you open the flue?"

"Yeah, we flipped that little lever over on the side."

"This one?" He indicated the little lever over on the side.

"Yep. Made sure to flip it to open."

"Yeah... that's not the flue. This," and he reached into the chimney and released the flue and its very obvious long sliding handle, "is the flue."

Oh no. We had been running the fireplace with the flue closed. It's a good thing we didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning, much less burn down the house. The little lever thing was the outside air control (but with a name like that, can you really blame me for thinking that was the flue?). We hadn't used the fireplace in several years, and it appears that we forgot how to use it.

We aren't people who call 911 to figure out where to vote! We don't try to drown the devil out of autistic children! We both have advanced degrees from accredited universities! And yet we don't know how to identify when a fireplace flue is open.

The fire fighters did a few flue-drawing-the-smoke-out tests with matches, told us to play safe and keep our noses clean and try not to burn down our neighborhood, and took off.

Shockingly, when you run the fireplace properly (flue open and all), it's much less efficient at heating up the house. You don't get those 8-degree swings in temperature within an hour. Instead there's a little warm halo around the fire. I guess that's a decent alternative to burning the house down.

Fortunately the central heat is out up and running, so we're safe for now.

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My Christmas wish

Dear Santa,

I know all the statisticians and census-takers are telling us that, along with baby boy names like Aiden, and Cayden, and Chance, and Chase, we can look forward to seeing a new batch of Baracks being born over the next few years.

I'm a simple guy, Santa. And I really care about our society. Do we want a guy named "Chance" or "Chase" elected to the highest office in the land? What kind of message would that send to America's enemies? Let's get back to basics.

My Christmas wish this year is that the name Aloysius makes a comeback. I think this would be an especially good choice for future NFL Hall of Fame Running Backs, or Rhodes Scholars. The name has a lot of range.

Thank you for your consideration.

-Bart