Ken Martin's Blog

He started with one red paperclip, and traded up to a house. Great story.

I drove by a local fitness chain and they had a sign out front: "$59.99 - Lose 10 pounds in 30 days!" Sure, if you pay in nickels.

My friend Amy brought up the fracas concerning the DeLaSalle school athletic fields at Nicollet Island. I found a summary of the issue from StarTribune.com in Google's cache:

DeLaSalle, a highly regarded Catholic high school, has been a mainstay on this magical island for 106 years. In tougher times it could have fled to the suburbs, but instead has stuck to its noble mission of educating inner-city kids, rich and poor.

In 1983, as the island's turnabout began, the school negotiated a joint agreement with the Park Board to construct an athletic field for the school's use, partly on park land. Now, 22 years later and still longing for a field of its own, the school wants to resume the project and the Park Board seems poised to go along. But affluent neighbors who have arrived in the interim are furious.

Actually, both sides are right on this issue.

DeLaSalle can't be faulted for wanting its own field and bleachers on campus. And the Park Board is obligated to pursue some sort of "athletic facility," as the 1983 agreement stipulates. There's nothing sinister about such a partnership -- the Sculpture Garden and the Nicollet Island Inn are examples of others. And, in this case, the Park Board is right to seek concessions that shift financial burdens to the school and broader use of DeLaSalle's field and gym for the public.

But the neighbors are right, too. Although the Park Board owns the land on which their homes rest, they've invested heavily in their properties, and they and the wider public deserve extra consideration because of the island's unique character.

Well, if DeLaSalle has a deal, shouldn't the city honor it? It's about kids, it's about education, it's about a school that stuck with the inner city... and oddly, all of these normally DFL foundational issues pale in apparent value to the personal desires of a few wealthy folks. Interesting.

And sure, their investment should definitely be honored. But are they the only ones who've invested? Are they the only ones who get to invest? And their investment means the "wider public deserve extra consideration?" I'm missing the math on that one.

Also from the Strib (via Google's cache), quotes from interested parties:

"We have an obligation to honor our 1983 commitment to DeLaSalle. We also need public input to get the best project possible." - Jon Olson, Park Board president.

"What hasn't happened is the discovery of a compromise that everyone can live with." - John Erwin, Park Board vice president

"The Park Board should follow its own ordinances, which call for a citizen advisory council when a project is proposed, not after it's passed."- Barry Clegg, Nicollet Island resident

These may be old quotes, but to Mr. Clegg's point, citizen's have indeed been part of the process and concessions and adjustments have been made in light of their feedback; see DeLaSalle's Site Plan, approved by the Park Board last March.

But my favorite quote...

"It's pretty hard to deny DeLaSalle two acres when private houses are taking 30 of the 45 acres of Park Board land." - Walt Dziedzic, Park Board commissioner

These "residents" are living on Park Board land, too. Ungrateful.

Well, a "resident" of 106 years called DeLaSalle High School - the most diverse private school in the state of Minnesota - simply wants the city to live up to a 23 year old agreement (see page two of the 1983 agreement PDF). They want to use space. Just like the other residents do. And they have an agreement which allows them to.

And they have resident politicians [ed: error removed, see below] with multi-million dollar homes (according to my searching MLS listings for the area) fighting them? Can anyone say conflict of interest?

By the way, I'm pro-wealthy people. I hope to be one some day. I'm also pro-contract. And pro-property-rights. I just don't think wealth and political savvy should win the day over existing agreements and property rights.

[Ed: I removed the link to the politician I incorrectly linked to originally. I simply remembered it wrong, and there's no reason her name should live on in Google associated with something that has nothing to do with her just because I remembered something wrong.]

UPDATE: Good heavens. I can't believe Coleman wrote something I agree with.

"There's nothing on [television] worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet."

Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, to his children. In the 1930s.

Oooo.

Independence Day sends me looking for flashlights. When I went to the various drawers this year, they were gone. Blasted kids. So plainly I need a new one. And one that can generate 65 lumens - enough to stop an attacker - must certainly be the ticket. And with this addition it can generate 120 lumens. Oh my. Apparently this brand is popular with police and military. Yeah, while you're there, get me some batteries, too, please.

According to this it's worth $1,693.62. Isn't that funny. I remember checking about three months ago and it was worth $0.00. So at this rate, I'll be worth millions soon.

It must be the rapier wit, piercing political insights, deep philosophical challenges, and world-moving technology assessments. Or a broken algorithm.

You didn't even know I had one, did you?

Permalinks are (in part) simply web page links that make a little more sense when you read them than index.php?p=123 does. I'm running my site on a Mac running system 10.4 (Tiger) and Apache, PHP, and MySQL (a combination sometimes referred to as MAMP). Anyway, WordPress 2 wouldn't operate when I turned Permalinks on. "Access to / is forbidden or not allowed."

It turns out that I needed to get Options FollowSymLinks in the .htaccess file. WordPress doesn't add it when turning on Permalinks, but it seems to be required. They must assume it's a pretty standard default, but it is not default on a Mac, apparently. Indeed, you'll need to update /etc/httpd/users/(your-user).conf to AllowOverride All (or more secure would be AllowOverride to just the specific things you need) to have Permalinks work, too.

Why were so many people searching for "novovirus", sometimes called the cruise ship sickness, and finding my blog? I posted about it once, barely mentioning it. Recently, I even posted my wonderment about the phenomenon.

Well, I figured it out. It's not novovirus, it's norovirus. I misspelled it. And so were all those searchers.

So all of you hapless wanderers in search of hope concerning your stomach woes and un-swallowing, start looking here, and good luck.

My Lovely Bride's post about me peaked a smidgen of curiosity, so I've decided to tell a wonderfully embarrassing story about myself.

I hate a dirty windshield. My nice little gumball of a Nissan Sentra had an ever-dirty windshield. It drove me nuts. Seriously. As you will see.

I decided it was all the drive-through, no-touch car washes I'd been putting it through. That it had built up a bunch of cheap wax where wax shouldn't be. No matter how well I Windex-ed the windshield or how new the wiper blades were, the blades hopped along noisily when activated, and left streaks and smears in their wake. Not so bad that anyone else would care much. But it drove me nuts.

To prove my insanity, I hatched a plan. I was going to scrub the windshield free of any waxy residue. With what? Well, I heard somewhere that glass is harder than brass, so I though a "non-stick safe" 3M scrubbie pad would certainly be softer yet. And I may have been right. But my missing fact was that windshields are not just glass. They are coated with plastic. That's what actually makes them "safety glass" and keeps the glass from flying around in an accident.

Well, armed with my disillusion, I attacked the windshield. I soaped it up and very gently swirled and swirled with my scrubbie pad. Bubbles grew. It smelled good. I grabbed the hose and rinsed... off... the...

I still think it was the waxy build up. The wipers didn't hop or leave streaks after that. And what I did could actually have been considered artistic in some sense. Very lightly scratched into the whole windshield were swirls and swirls which interacted with nighttime lights in the most psychedelic ways. Haunting me - mocking me - every night thereafter; whispering "idiot".

Well, I think I do. Oh, I don't know. Sigh. Politics.

I decided to look more carefully through Alan Fine's website. Wow. He's running as a Republican, but really I can't see why. He appears to be quite solidly a fiscally conservative Democrat. Which may be the only shot a "Republican" has to get into office in the Minnesota's 5th District. But... wow.

He's running against Keith Ellison (DFL). What would I do if I lived in Minneapolis? Boy, sometimes this representative republic thing doesn't give you much for choices.

What do you do? Do you hold your nose and vote for the person closest to your views, no matter how far that is? Do you stay home?