More reminiscing

I wrote a pretty detailed post in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 caucus. It discussed the insanity of "caucus math" and I was surprised that it brought back my worries about this years organizers.

Things to watch out for:

• No matter what the campaign tells you, you may need to politick the room. If your candidate has gone negative in the most recent weeks of the campaign, that will make this more difficult.
• Sadly, getting shnookered into volunteering with the caucus dirty work (sign-in, chairpersonship, registration) leaves you unable to work the room on behalf of your candidate. Ideally, these jobs should be divvied up between campaigns.
• No matter how large a group is, it should not get its own room, thus isolating themselves from politicking (and protecting their caucusers). Any attempt on the part of a precinct captain to garner such a privilege should be met with hooting and outrage at this undemocratic display of insecurity of their candidate's appeal.
• Take a calculator so that you can figure out just how many caucusers you need in order to pick up that last delegate. Read the caucus math rules carefully so that you know how this is calculated, as it is not especially intuitive.

And, uh, lets take this moment to name the names that I didn't four years ago. The Kerry captain for our precinct was Mary Mascher, our easy-seat-holding state representative. After she got away with the "special room" treatment for the Kerry squad, the sole pleasure in the evening for me was watching her fume when she realized she had lost a delegate in her attempt to screw the Dean folks. This time she is, predictably, backing Hilary. I'd love to see her get that pissed off again.

Caucusing. Older.

This time, four years ago, about the time I started the blog, the caucuses were around the corner, and we were caught up in all things Dean! Dean! Dean!

Four years doesn't seem that long ago. The blog posts are more scattered, and this year, I am one of those most loathed of attention whores, the undecided caucus voter. But, I did get to meet a couple more local characters. Fortunately for me, I guess, the University has purchased up almost all the empty space in the downtown mall, so the presence of campaign offices have been less of a distraction for me. If they had all set up in one place, so I could window shop the candidates, I wonder if I would have fallen in love with one of them like I did last time.

Candidates seen:
* Obama, Edwards, Clinton
Candidate met:
* Dodd

Currently Reading (or avoiding)

or How to Create the Impression of a Well-Read Book:

Quicksilver is my current nemesis. When I have reached new heights of procrastination, I pick up Quicksilver and try to knock down a few pages. I have realized that if I have finished Quicksilver before I have finished my dissertation, it is entirely possible that I have erred significantly in my priorities.

Cryptonomicon took me 16 months to read, so I am optimistic about my chances. I started the current book in August and I am on page 32. I may need to pace myself.

I do carry the book with me nearly everywhere, in case the urge hits me. Given its, as one of the Wikilensers put it, "low enjoyment/page ratio," the urge doesn't hit that often. Not very much at all. But there it is in my backpack, straining my shoulders, and accumulating wear and tear on the cover. When I am done, it will look like a well-loved and much read book. But we'll know better, won't we.

FrustrationBlogging

Progress today was close to nil: I've been trying to set up version control for my work because I'm finding that I definitely want the ability to revert to previous versions of my code.

So, I already have Tortoise CVS, and WinCVS installed on my system, and I may eventually revert to those, but my development environment of choice is jEdit - partially because my computer could barely handle Eclipse when it was doing well. But those clients, as far as I can tell, don't actually play with jEdit, and I don't know if my access to old repositories would work.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to set up a repository, which may be difficult without a Linux box that I have appropriate permissions on, and get GruntSpud to work with it. And I'm pretty sure I can actually hear my poor laptop grunting as I struggle with it.

I think I've found a bike that I'll be getting.

Oh, and I kind of like the new Coca-Cola Vanilla Zero. It's scary, as if they've finally done vanilla correctly in its current soda incarnation. Either that, or I've been inured after tasting Vanilla Coke, Vanilla Diet Coke, and Vanilla Diet Pepsi.

Rearranging the Furniture

This summer is supposed to be a summer of high productivity. And it is an improvement over summers where I have literally done nothing in the first couple of weeks as I recover from the end of the semester. But, besides my advisor, who really can't act as my conscience, I need to enforce that I get things done, and that I do more of them than I am currently doing.

I also really need to get in the groove of writing, even if it is for a few minutes each day. One option is to write these postings on the bus and then post them when I get home. Okay, that is too depressingly geeky.

So, this will be sort of a progress blog, and, yes, I will be doing this here, on unfashionable blogspot, because, if it is good enough for Atrios, it is good enough for me.

My fun reading is Hy Bender's Sandman Companion, which is very compulsive reading, despite the fact that it has been years since I've read a Sandman book. It inspired me to pull out Dream Country, though.

edited to play with new (to me) Blogger features