::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

An insult masquerading as an offer

News ·Wednesday July 1, 2009 @ 17:58 EDT (link)

(Note: prices have been removed from public view—but of course you can find actual sale prices in the public record.) We got an insultingly low offer for our house today; I'm surprised our agent bothered us with it (we're listing at $5k less than we paid, and closing will cost us about $40k in taxes and agent fees). Despite what Chip (Dusseau, of Caldwell Banker Bain), our agent, said, I wouldn't consider them serious buyers: they only had a letter of credit for $356k. I am not willing or able to give away the difference at this point: our listing price is lower than I like, but our agent suggested it and I'm willing to sell at that point to get out of here. I'd like to introduce the offering party to my "leetle friend"…. Given their credit limit we did not bother to counter-offer, as even their maximum is below what I'd accept at this point. I almost feel like instructing Chip not to bother us with offers this low, but it's just a phone call/email.

Libertarianism and initial conditions

Political ·Wednesday July 1, 2009 @ 01:04 EDT (link)

Libertarianism claims to want equality of opportunity (and not necessarily equality of outcomes, which socialism promotes), but frequently libertarians dismiss offhand the advantage or disadvantage of initial conditions: it's a lot easier to succeed with a rich family that pays for private education (including college), expensive hobbies, even buys one vehicles, and maintains a stable household than a poor family without stability (e.g. single parent). (This is not to say that rich households are necessarily stable and happy, nor the opposite.)

I think some rational libertarians would support a tax on initial conditions, if it was handled properly. A person's advantages at age of majority (let's say 18) can be examined and compared to the average, and a percentage of the difference taxed or refunded. To prevent huge bequests at age 18½, this could be increased by gifts too (or just tax such gifts at the same rate as if they'd been received at 18). This tax could be deferred for some reasons (in school, or un- or under-employment), and offset by negative circumstances (e.g. failed investments, natural disasters, injuries, although not by dissipation). Since there will be some people unable to pay but few if any that won't accept a handout, the tax rate would need to be slightly higher than the donation rate.

If payment can be deferred, perhaps receipt can be advanced: if it's fairly clear that a child is going to be disadvantaged, is going to fall far below the average when they'd be 18, they could receive some part of their charitable stipend in advance (re-payable, of course, if circumstances change).

This tax is somewhat justified, if any tax ever is, by taxing fortune, rather than hard work: by taxing luck, not what one makes of oneself. A "rags to riches" type will pay little, or even receive money.

How certain advantages are valued is non-trivial. To start, one can calculate a person's net worth: and then add the value of training over and above what is provided by the government (if we're not in Libertopia and all training is private). For example, if one's private school tuition is $8000 per annum but the local public schools spend $10,000 per student per year, that's not taxed: in fact we might even determine a loss. Stability of a family isn't a taxable asset, nor are family friends, but perhaps a parent's ability to purchase sporting equipment is.

Books finished: The Shack.

Open carry picnic, Bellevue downtown park

News, Guns ·Saturday June 27, 2009 @ 21:25 EDT (link)

One of the msgun members was harassed by a cop jogging and open carrying in Bellevue Downtown Park a few weeks back, and eventually "frog-marched" out of the park. Although Bellevue forbids carrying firearms in parks, they are not in fact allowed to do that and state law "fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation": "[l]ocal laws and ordinances that are inconsistent with, more restrictive than, or exceed the requirements of state law shall not be enacted and are preempted and repealed." As a show of solidarity, we decided to have an open carry picnic in that park. There was also communication with the police department and city lawyers and they "did remember their faults this day" and formally repented of the evil which they had done, and I believe a memo was sent around the department making officers aware of the law. The picnic was 1300-1700; I arrived a bit late but didn't miss anything: a small group was walking the park looking for open carriers, and a place to set up. We mostly brought cold lunches, augmented by some hot dogs cooked on a camp stove.

Two policemen on bicycles came up toward the end of our picnic—well into post-lunch shooting-the-breeze time—and chatted for a while. As you can see above, they were in good spirits. Above you can also see how many open carriers it takes to fold up a camp table….

Afterwards—after we'd sat and talked about guns, politics, and whatever else came to mind, some of us headed over to All Purpose Pizza (2901 S Jackson St.); I drove to TH's to wait for the others to walk back from the park and I (with Katt) followed TH's car over. I'm still not a huge fan of goat cheese, but it went well with the pizza.

I took the long way back... I asked for directions to I-405, which wasn't the best way (I took a left off S. Jackson St. onto Ranier Ave. S, followed it across the I-90, took Martin Luther King Jr. Way S (those ingrates! don't they know it should be "Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, Peace Be Upon Him"?!), and then followed I-5N up to WA-520E. Looking at the map, I could have taken a right on Jackson and then 23rd Ave. E straight up to WA-520 and saved a lot of driving. As you may guess, I don't know Bellevue that well; I shall know it better hereafter.

Books finished: The Universe In a Nutshell.

Sailing Lake Washington

News, Bad Drivers, Technical ·Thursday June 25, 2009 @ 22:16 EDT (link)

When taking Honey to the airport Tuesday, a white VW Jetta, license CA 4YDL 701, cut us off at entering WA-520 from Avondale at 0939. Complete failure to merge, idiot. (If he moved here he'll have a Washington plate soon, of course; hopefully he's just visiting.)

The Word team went sailing on the Mallory Todd out on Lake Washington today (1300-1700) for a team morale event. It was a beautiful day—a bit cloudy, but we got a decent share of sunshine (for this area) and it only rained a little toward the end.

Honey called at 2100; she's having a good time at her parents'.

And argh, I hate Flash-only websites, especially when they have "loading..." bars that remind me of loading games off cassette tapes back, um, a long time ago. It's even better when they kill my CPU and haven't been updated in months. I won't give out any names. Let me say the music is nice, but time adding it could be better spent checking the side for typos and keeping it updated.

DVDs finished: Groundhog Day.

DVD database hackery

News, Technical ·Sunday June 21, 2009 @ 00:39 EDT (link)

I spent some time tonight updating my DVD scan system. We keep a list of the DVDs we have (and have watched), with the help of my local web server, barcode scanner, and some perl code. It had stopped working for a while; it turned out that it needed to follow another meta refresh (<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" …>) and one of the referrers needed fixing, by simple expedient of calling WWW::Mechanize::back after fetching the cover image (so that the next fetch didn't look like it came from the image URL). And now I can again scan a DVD barcode and have it added to the system.

I also, in installing and updating modules, found out about the Moose object system (manual), which looks interesting, as well as a few other modules (e.g., I used CHI, the latest caching system, to cache pages to avoid hitting sites too frequently while tuning my DVD lookup module). I still would like to find out some way to speed up (mod_)perl under Apache, but I guess I'll have to wait for a stable Perl 6 for that (it's been a while since I took a look, but I know progress is slow; it may be worth taking another look soon). With the Parrot VM, Perl should be able to compete well with the .NET languages, and run even more languages. I look forward to being able to use a good, fast, stable functional language—with access to the perl module tree—standalone and under Apache.

DVDs finished: Species Trilogy.

Steak: it's what's for dinner

News ·Friday June 19, 2009 @ 21:11 EDT (link)

We went out for steak tonight (Outback). Had a good time, too full for dessert.

The MS Gun group at work is planning another Second Amendment Day at the Sultan pit on July 19th (some people will be there on the 18th too), with an optional stop to eat (and drink) at Redhook in Woodinville after all the ammunition is expended (and after cleanup).

And it looks like the mole(s) are gone! Either something got them, or they got to the gum and they really can't digest it, or they moved: whatever the case, we're just glad they're gone and I'm glad I can try to replant grass where they piled up dirt on my lawn (some of the patches already have grass coming in from stray seeds).

Books finished: When In the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession.

Props to Goodreads

News, Political, Theology, School ·Saturday June 13, 2009 @ 12:00 EDT (link)

I noticed the last few times I added books to Goodreads that the synchronized Facebook now includes my review (cut for length, of course, with a link). It's good to see this implemented.

I finished my Databases course with a 3.9 final grade (which means I still have a 4.0 average with normal rounding).

Stuff Christians Like is a cool blog (the linked post has the index of the first 500 entries, although a few links are bad). It borrows a bit from the Stuff White People Like blog (which is really "Stuff Liberals Like"). Both have books out. I like the worship eagle post—it's better than butterflies; heck if i had an eagle of my own it would have eaten the damn butterflies (yay victory).

The Bill of Federalism (via LJ Libertarians) is a great idea for 10 amendments to restore state and individual rights against a growing collectivist Federal government.

Ladder ball morale event

News, Work ·Wednesday June 10, 2009 @ 19:42 EDT (link)

This first picture wasn't from the morale event, but it helped my morale (taken in the Microsoft parking garage, on the ramp going down from level 1). (It's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference—"Don't Panic!"—for those unfamiliar.)

The rest are from an event on the soccer fields, playing a game (new to most if not all of us) called ladder ball (or ladder golf), where the object is to throw a bolo (two balls joined by a rope) so that it wraps around and stays on one of the rungs of a frame set about 20' away from the the thrower; rungs are 1-3 points (higher rung, higher score).

It was pretty entertaining, and nice to get a chance to unwind.

Books finished: Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People, Predictably Irrational, The End of Prosperity, The Younger Gods.

DVDs finished: M*A*S*H: Season Seven, Lost season 5, Dune.

Chicken run

News ·Saturday June 6, 2009 @ 15:50 EDT (link)

We drove up to Western Washington University in Bellingham today because their student union (Viking Union) has the only Chick-Fil-A restaurant in the state (details). It's 85 miles (1h 40, mostly on I-5) each way. Next time, we'll combine it with going up to Canada to visit someone up there. It's an "express" which means they put out the food and you pick up your order and take it to the cashier. Regardless, everything is made on the premises and doesn't sit out long. Shout outs to all the idiots who thought that driving five miles under the speed limit in the left lane is a good idea.

Databases final exam complete

News, School ·Friday June 5, 2009 @ 19:16 EDT (link)

I have checked over my Database Management Systems (CSE P 544) take-home final for the last time, made a few minor corrections, and ensured everything has been uploaded into the "Catalyst" system. It wasn't a very interesting exam, and I'm a little worried about a few ambiguities, but I think it went well.

DVDs finished: The Fugitive, Lost season 3, Lost season 4.