Dessert first?

There is an old saying that parents tell their children: no dessert unless you finish your dinner first. The People's Republic of Arlington should be reminded of this. According to this Washington Post article, the County Board is proposing a budget that increases taxes on energy, and throws money at solar-powered homes, an "aggressive outreach and marketing effort" on energy-saving (read: more useless junk mail coming to my mailbox), social services, and elementary foreign language classes. Interestingly enough, what's not in the budget proposal is a $3 million dollar storm water management project. The storm water project is necessary to repair a decaying infrastructure and meet federally required mandates. The County will figure out how to raise taxes to pay for that later.

The last time I checked, implementing government requirements and providing critical infrastructure is part of the basic operation of local government Useless junk mail, paying for other people to install solar powers on their roofs, and providing social services are extras. Arlington needs to pay for its dinner first, and then get dessert if there is any money left over.

Winter isn't over yet

The DC area had some fifty degree temperatures earlier in the week, so it looked like winter was on its way out. However, we got another four inches of snow today, as a reminder that winter isn't quite finished with us yet. I decided to take a break from working on some administrative stuff for work, and went out to play tourist in a snow-covered DC. I took the Metro downtown, walked around a bit, and took some pictures. I have posted some of them on a photo page.

Happy President's Day!

I spent a significant amount of time this weekend taking care of errands and paperwork. I didn't get everything done that I had planned to, but I managed to make a pretty sizeable dent in my task list. This afternoon, I took a break from the paperwork, and went out hiking for a couple of hours at Great Falls National Park in Virginia. The weather was sunny and beautiful, and I was sufficiently bundled up against the cold. The snow and ice made the trail a bit more challenging, but it was still very fun. I've put my pictures online here.


Great Falls

End of another week

Today ended another week, and I wasn't unhappy to see it go. The best word to describe the week was "annoying". Things were annoying me, people were annoying me, and I know that I annoyed at least a couple of people this week. But I suppose that there were some good things about the week. Comcast came out and replaced some connectors in the outside wiring, and my cable internet is working again. I managed to start catching up on my backlog of errands and stuff to do. And I managed to survive Valentine's Day without getting too annoyed at it.

Another bright spot in my week is that I stayed way under my new food budget. In January, when I did my year-end analysis of my 2006 spending, I realized that I spend way too much on food. Eating out every day for lunch really adds up - usually to the tune of $7 to $8. Plus, there are dinners out with friends, meals out on dates (the hazard of being a guy), and those dinners when you just don't feel like cooking. So one of my resolutions for 2006 was to trim my "non-social" food budget. This has required quite the adjustment, mostly in remembering to pack my lunch every day. But I'm slowly improving, and this week I was really dilligent about it. It's amazing how much money you can save when you don't eat out.

I had originally planned on going to Raleigh this weekend to visit my parents, but it didn't work out, mainly due to a lack of good planning on my part. That means that I'm stuck in DC for the long weekend, and I would rather be anywhere but DC. But it may end up being a blessing in disguise. Hopefully, I can catch up on sleep, get some work done in the mornings (I'm way behind on hours), and get myself out of the house in the afternoon. I've been spending way too much time in my apartment lately, and I can't imagine that is healthy for me.

As a side note, it has been interesting watching Virginia try to deal with the little snowstorm that it got on Tuesday. They don't know how to clear the snow, so it's basically turned into ice everywhere. I was amused by the use of front loaders to try to move snow. In Michigan, they just mount snow plows onto a basic pickup truck, and push the snow out of the way. But down here, they do it the hard way. Several schools in the area had four consecutive snow days because they couldn't get the snow cleared.

Does Granholm Hate Michigan?

The Michigan economy has not been running on all four cylinders lately, and if Gov. Granholm gets her way, Michigan will be sent to the economic scrapyard. Gov. Granholm has proposed a 2% service tax for Michigan businesses, and yesterday, the Department of Treasury released more details about the proposal. Unfortunately, the service tax is bad news on many levels. One problem is that services are intangible, and as a result, geographical boundaries are irrelevant. For example, software development can be performed almost anywhere, and it doesn't matter whether it is performed in Michigan or in Alaska. If a company is looking to purchase software development services, and they face a choice of paying $10,000 to someone in Alaska, or $10,200 to someone in Michigan, then it is likely that they will go with the cheaper bid.

Another problem is that a service tax is inherently different from a sales tax, because a work product can be taxed multiple times. For example, in a large contract, you might have multiple levels of subcontractors, from the lawyer managing the contract agreement, to the technical writer writing the documentation. A service tax will affect each layer in the procurement chain. Whereas for sales taxes, businesses are exempt from paying sales taxes on items that they use as material to sell to someone else.

If the service tax is implemented, Michigan will be crippled in its attempt to rid itself of the scourge of the auto industry and move to a diversified service and technology economy. Are you looking for an accountant? The one in Ohio will be cheaper. Are you looking for someone to write custom software? Perhaps you should go with the developer in Virginia.

If the Michigan tax base is really in that bad of shape, and there is nothing else to cut spending on, then there is a simple solution. Raise income taxes. I would suggest also increasing the Michigan exemption so that this action wouldn't be as negative to the poor. Michigan citizens are very reasonable people. If we know that we don't have enough money to pay for roads, police, and firefighters, then we'll dig deep and pay more taxes. But if the state is looking to give a handout to Detroit, spending money on "Promise Zones", or giving $100 million to the alternative energy sector (mentioned in Granholm's state of the state address), then go back to Lansing and come up with some better ideas, since they are non-starters.

On a side note, has anyone noticed how Michigan citizens voted to repeal the Single Business Tax, and now the state wants to implement the Michigan Business Tax?

Ice, ice, baby

So DC got a bit of a taste of winter today. A little bit of snow fell this morning, and then freezing drizzle started this evening. It isn't significant by midwest standards, but it was enough to shut DC down in a hurry. Most government offices and some companies closed early this afternoon. I stayed late to avoid the rush hour mess. Unfortunately, that also meant that there was no parking anywhere near my apartment. I ended up having to walk about a kilometer through the freezing drizzle. It will be interesting to see if things are closed down tomorrow.

The Weekend in Photos

I flew out of Reagan-National back to Michigan for the weekend. I thought the colors in the sky looked beautiful, so I took this photo:


Twilight falls on DCA

I had a little time to kill on Friday afternoon, so I went for a long walk in the Arb. I was glad that I was nicely bundled up. Even though it was warmer than it had been earlier in the week, it was still pretty cold. The Arb was a bit of a mess. The Arb staff are in the process of reducing the population of some of the "invasive species", so there were many black locust trees that had been cut down, and were awaiting removal. It will be nice when the new plantings grow and fill up the gaps where the stumps are.


The late afternoon sun in the Arb


Tall, majestic pine trees

I had dinner with a friend on Friday night at Grizzly Peak, and enjoyed a bowl of their Cheddar Ale soup. Afterwards, we rented "Flags of our Fathers", which was a very good movie. It was different than the typical World War II movie, but I think it's one that the World War II generation would have really appreciated.

On Sunday, I had lunch with some friends at the Arbor Brewing Company. In front of the restaurant was an ice sculpture of a mug of beer, which I thought was very well done.


Now that's a frosty mug!

Should I be Comcastic?

Once again, I'm having problems with my unreliable Comcast Internet service. I'm now experiencing frequent intervals of high packet loss. The problem has gotten bad enough that I wrote a cron script to monitor packet loss at five minute intervals. The script calculates the packet loss to the local cable modem hub. As you can see from the graph (which shows the last day), there are periods of complete network failure. I have a suspicion that there is a loose connector somewhere in the local cable plant, because the problems started to occur when the weather got really cold. Unfortunately, since it's an intermittent problem, I'm going to have to call Comcast technical support when it's completely down. Needless to say, I'm not thrilled about having to deal with the technical support staff yet again.

So much for feeding the hungry

My church in Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor Vineyard, has a ministry to the homeless in Ann Arbor, and provides warm meals, blankets, and other necessities to them. It's a great ministry, and rather than requiring the homeless to come to the church, the church goes to them.

It's a good thing my church isn't in Orlando. The city of Orlando depises homeless people enough that not only does it try to criminalize being homeless, it is now criminalizing attempts to help feed the homeless. According to this article, the city of Orlando requires individuals wishing to feed more than 25 homeless people in a city park to obtain a "Large Group Feeding Permit", and the city will only grant two permits per year per applicant. The city is obviously hoping that without a meal source, the homeless will move somewhere else. Church ministries that bring food to the homeless are being harrassed by Orlando police.

I'm just waiting for Orlando to reprint the Bible, to say, "Feed the hungry, except in Orlando".

A Trip to the C&O Canal

I decided to head out for another hike today, and got really bundled up. The temperature was in the upper 20's, but when the wind kicked up, you really felt it. After a brief stop by Carderock, I parked near Old Angler's Inn, and took the C&O Canal Towpath to the Billy Goat Trail. The Billy Goat Trail (Section A) is only 1.7 miles long, but it is a very challenging trail (the National Park Service calls it "strenuous"). The trail consists of vertical ascents and descents across large rock formations. However, it's extremely fun and the scenery is beautiful.


Billy Goat Trail is a fitting name

At the end of the trail, I took the C&O Canal Towpath back to my car. The setting sun lit up the Canal in a blaze of glory that looked like the Fall.



I created a web page with a whole series of pictures from my hike today.

Another Saturday Hike

Today was a nice sunny day, and if you could ignore the chilling cold when the wind was blowing, the weather was very nice. I spent the afternoon hiking on the Potomac Heritage Trail. I started at the north end of the trail at Live Oak Road, which is right next to the American Legion Bridge. After about half a mile, the sounds of the Beltway fade away, and you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. I left the trail at Dead Run and headed upstream. Dead Run has numerous small waterfalls, and the ice formations generated from the spray were interesting.


Waterfalls at Dead Run

Beneath one of the sets of waterfalls was a small pool, where the intricate wave patterns caught the light and sparkled. I enjoyed sitting on a boulder in the stream, watching the light dance on the water.



I took a lot of photographs, mostly experimenting with the best ways to capture waterfalls and light reflecting off icicles. I put some of the better photos on this web page.