Randy Peterman Dot Com

That One Site About That One Thing

You Don’t Know Percentages

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Randy Peterman

When what you read is:

Debt increase by presidents: Reagan 186%, Bush 54% Clinton 41% Bush II 72% Obama 23%. /source CBO [from Twitter].

Does your brain translate it to this:

It turns out those percentages don’t add up to the actual national debt value, so the numbers seem wrong. But when someone shows you percentages get out your spread sheet or calculator to make sure that you’re not being had. If you say that Obama has had less spent during his presidency or that Clinton was a spendthrift or any number of other things based on percentages you’re probably doing it wrong. And yes, this is showing billions and trillions [the formatting isn’t quite right in the copy/paste].

Due to the compounding values of those debt numbers this massive expenditure of “only” 23% is rather ‘off’. Additionally Obama’s presidency is not over, so calling this one is a bit premature.

I say we call them all out for being fools with the financial resources. Additionally: congress(es) is (are) also responsible for this.

Bread Alone

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Randy Peterman

I asked Jessica, “What is this bread doing soaking in the blue bowl?”

She replied, “It’s benadryl, for the dog, so that she can stay calm after her surgery.”

“OK,” I said, satisfied by that answer.

“Don’t eat it,” she added to help me grasp the seriousness of the situation. She knows I have a special place in my heart for benadryl soaked bread. 😉

Too-ness and More-ness

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Randy Peterman

There are things I don’t tell my children. I tell them to other people’s children, but not my own. At first you’re probably thinking of either something slightly evil or disciplinary. You’d be mistaken. What I don’t tell my own kids about are stunts I did as a kid. The reason? They’ll want to do it, too. If your child does it, I’m not responsible for their actions, you are. If I tell my children they will do it, possibly injure themselves and then I’ll be responsible for fixing my children.

It gets worse.

The problem with too-ness is that once they master the stunt then there’s something more impressive that needs to be figured out. If jumping your bike over or off of a large item is cool, why not jump on or over a car? If climbing in a door jamb is fun, why not also climb up a very dangerous elevator shaft? Children are creative, often more than adults, when it comes to doing more dangerous things. I take precaution in what I tell my children so that they will be safe, too, and probably more safe.

Foregone Contusions

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Randy Peterman

Take it from me: when your wife/husband/significant other/insignificant other asks, “Am I too fat for this outfit?” The incorrect answer is always, “No, you’re just the right amount of fat for that outfit.”

Taxes – They’re What’s for Dinner

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Randy Peterman

I just want to let you know that you don’t have to trust the government. My browser told me I shouldn’t trust the IRS. They’re hosting their secure site on Akamai, but their SSL certificates are not properly setup so the browser (Firefox) told me to leave the IRS website because it wasn’t necessarily trustworthy.

I don’t trust the IRS anyway 😉

This nerdy bit brought to you by the letters J, Q and the number -1.

Communication Is Hard

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Randy Peterman

At least that’s what they tell me. If you tell someone something enough times your job as a communicator will either get infinitely easier because they’ll finally get it. Or it’ll get much, much harder because the repetition causes the pith helmets and ear plugs to be put into place. I tell my daughters, “Think before you act,” about a bazillion times a month. I’m pretty sure they think it’s some mantra that my parents told me. It isn’t. My dad told me, “it is your mother and I’s responsibility to raise you to be an adult when you’re 18.” That worked out pretty well because I was a kid who was just looking for a place, a time, and a thing to be scared about. At 17 and 365 days I was scared of 18 because it meat adulthood.

I hope that my children one day learn to think before they act. I suspect it’ll be a lesson they learn throughout their lives. I also hope that when they turn 17 and 365 days they don’t panic like I did – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that I have more than one thing to learn.

Strange Day in Marriage Land

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Randy Peterman

So Harry Reid has decided that prostitution is bad for Nevada (I think it’s terrible for marriages). And Obama thinks that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. If consenting adults… wait, you don’t suspect that these senators (one former, of course) are being inconsistent, do you? Nah, that’s impossible.

Hiybbprqag

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Randy Peterman

I am flabbergasted that Google has its knickers in a twist over the Bing ‘copying’ strategy. The truth is that Google spiders MSDN, Microsoft’s internal nerdvana site, and provides excellent results. To the point that I go to Google to search Microsoft. Just because Microsoft goes to Google to search Microsoft doesn’t mean they’re copying results, they’re just doing the equivalent to doping before a major competition.

Some folks have suggested that Google is upset because Microsoft copied their results because the algorithm Google has is better. This could not be further from the truth. Google’s algorithm is simply a bunch of code running on super-cheap hardware. Microsoft’s code is simply a bunch of code running on Windows hardware and software churning out the best results Microsoft knows how to dish out: results from Google. That’s just smart business. Bing!

Oh, and Hybbprqag is one of the words Google says Microsoft copied results for.

Oh, and Oh, I should point out that I use Bing because I prefer their user agreement and privacy policy ever so slightly more than Google’s.

Insulation

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Randy Peterman

This weekend I spent about 8 hours working on adding insulation to the garage roof (inside not outside).

I got the insulation because it was part of a rebate package.

I got the rebated insulation to complement the insulation I had gotten for the walls.

I got the insulation for the walls because I was going to drywall the garage.

I was going to drywall the garage because I got some new shelves and cabinets.

I got the shelves and cabinets because a guy I know kindly had some extras that were going to be thrown away at a job site.

No complaints, but these could be some of the most expensive free cabinets ever.

Good-Bye, Herb

Posted on November 27, 2010 by Randy Peterman

This last weekend (the weekend before Thanksgiving) my bride’s step-grandfather passed away. While I could share a few funny stories about Herb, I’ll share two: the silliest and most valuable interchanges I had with Herb.

Story 1:

Jessica and I often visited Indiana for holidays and important events like Jessica’s sister’s graduations. One such event brought me face to face with Herb, who loved computers and electronic communication, where he insisted on showing me this new search engine. I was not interested because I believe at that point in time I was using Alta Vista or Yahoo! or some such thing. Herb insisted that I check out this new engine Google. He loaded up what was probably IE4 or 5.5 and typed in Google.com. Up popped this primary colored logo with the simplest of layouts: a search field, and a button to search. Good golly this thing was stupid looking and didn’t give me a homepage with news and other garbage. I was pretty sure that this Google site was going to be gone before too long. I was wrong, Herb was right 🙂

Story 2:

Herb was an outspoken Democrat from Southern Illinois. He and his wife, Jessica’s grandmother, Babe, were very active at the time in the Democratic party in their hometown and the Southern Illinois region. I was registered independent in Texas and have generally found myself what would be labeled conservative. I am, however, not a Republican (or a tea partier). I found myself somewhat frustrated on one such trip to Indiana where we met and Herb and I had a really good talk. What we talked about was how parties got rather involved in sides, party lines, and ‘winning’ rather than taking care of people and the problems that the people were facing. We concluded together that it didn’t matter much which party was on your voter registration, but instead more importantly that the people be enabled to exercise their rights, the problems be resolved in a fruitful way, and that the political system not get bogged down in fighting of various sorts. It was the first time (out of multiple discussions with various folks) I had had such a great discussion with someone who on the surface didn’t see eye-to-eye with me politically. It was encouraging.

We’ll miss Herb at family gatherings. And I won’t forget one of the most important things he ever said to me, “Take care of Jessica, she’s a good girl.” I’ll be taking care of Jessica, and not just because he told me to. Good-bye, Herb.