From my reading of the court decision, we won!

"...we conclude that the purpose underlying differential treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples embodied in California’s current marriage statutes — the interest in retaining the traditional and well-established definition of marriage — cannot properly be viewed as a compelling state interest for purposes of the equal protection clause, or as necessary to serve such an interest."

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S147999.PDF

Woot!

JOhn.

I just was notified that the CA Supreme Court opinion regarding Same Sex Marriage will be posted tomorrow, May 15th, at 10AM.

Like I needed another impediment to getting sleep tonight...

JOhn.

I went with some of the South Bay Bears and my sweetie to see Speed Racer tonight.

I loved it. It was nearly perfect. (I say nearly because *anything* can be improved, but honestly I don't know what I would have changed.)

I'd so see it again. Maybe at an IMAX theater. That would be AWESOME.

JOhn.

Meh. ( Might be a tiny bit spoilery... )

I'd give it a solid B.

JOhn.

For some reason, after dinner tonight, I was craving a big ol' peanut butter sandwich.

So I had one.

It was yummers!

(Yes, I'll be fine. I've been 'sperimenting, and the issues I had with peanuts a few years ago have subsided with my dropping off the meds.)

*happy*

I even feel like writing. Watch out world!

JOhn.

Surprised to find the WSJ printing this, since as far as I knew they were 100% behind Senator Clinton, but someone there has done the math and realizes it will take a miracle of unheard of proportions for Senator Clinton to actually get the nomination.

Other than ensuring the Greatest Show on Earth will continue, does it matter that Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama Tuesday in Pennsylvania by nine-plus points? Barack Obama is the nominee.

No matter how many kicks the rest of us find in such famously fun primary states as Indiana and South Dakota, it's going to be McCain versus Obama in 2008.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120899521565139921.html?mod=todays_columnists

JOhn.

* The house situation has been... challenging. We were denied the loan we were assured we would get. We were approved for 70%, but the 10% second loan was turned down even after all the work to improve my credit score. That sucked. We could still buy the house with the 70% loan, because we can afford to put down 30%, but it would really stretch us, more than we'd like. Our mortgage person is trying to get an FHA loan for us, but that is a much slower process. So, we can clear the financial hurdle one way or the other. We'd prefer the FHA option since that will enable us to put down only 20%. We'll find out in a week or so.

* Work continues to go well. It's still challenging, but each day I feel more and more confident that what I say is actually true. :-) More seriously, I'm starting to feel comfortable with most of my knowledge for my areas of responsibility. There are still things that are beyond me, but that area grows smaller each day. I'm also getting more of a handle around estimating my work load and how much work it will be to test something new. Next to increase my efficiency so that I can spend less time testing manually and more time working on automated test scripts.

* Socialness continues to go okay for me. I found a local bear group, saw they were going to one of my favorite places for dinner today, and told Michael I'd like to go. He agreed. Now, in the past, I would have been a wreck anticipating meeting a new group of people, mentally canceling the trip many times before reluctantly walking in the door to look for the group. This time I pretty much forgot about it all day long and only remembered to be nervous as we were driving there. Of course it wound up going well. They weren't as tactilely friendly as the San Diego group at first meeting, but they seem very friendly and there's a high geek quotient (not a surprise given the area).

Well, back to work now. (Yep, it's 11:30 PM and I'm working. That's life in the internet biz.)

JOhn.

For all you kilt-loving readers, here is a gallery of pics from Tartan Day in Fremont, CA. I still need to edit and name them, but didn't feel like finishing that all tonight.

http://gallery.mac.com/jkusters#100008

JOhn.

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that he would fight an initiative to amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage if it qualifies for the November ballot."

More of the story here.

Fascinating... It's almost like he's a Republican who can actually sometimes perceive reality...

JOhn.

Hi, all,

It's 1:30 AM, and I can't sleep. So, why not lull myself into slumber by updating my journal? It's a sure-fire soporific!

So, first things first: Our offer on the house was accepted. The negotiation of the offer was a bit tense, since the sellers had some requirements that were tricky to work around. Eventually, though, we found a compromise and they signed the counter to the counter to the offer on Monday morning. Escrow closes in about a month. So, between then and now, it's time for home inspections, negotiating repairs, finding a loan, getting ready to move, and making decisions on any redecoration we want done before we move in. (And I can't help but be looking for a canine companion to live with us. It's probably too early, but I've been too long without one, and I miss it.)

Since one of the stated desires for a new place was the ability to have parties, we will be having a housewarming at some point. Probably in a month and a half or so. Invitation will likely be somewhat open, but no guarantees. Watch this space journal for details.

I do have to say I'm a bit nervous about the loan situation. If we get the loan package we want, we'll be sitting pretty on a good portion of the proceeds from the sale of the San Diego house, money we can use to add our touches to the house, perhaps splurge on a bit of travel, and then store away into some kind of income generating investment. It's long past time for us to be doing something like that. If we don't get the desired package, we'll be putting all that dough into the house, and probably a bit more from other accounts. That would be unfortunate, but if it's necessary, we'll not hesitate.

Speaking of money, we finally got our completed tax returns from our tax preparer. Looks like we'll be getting a good chunk of change back. Once we have the new house, we'll have to adjust our withholdings to try and come out closer to a zero balance. Unfortunately we noticed that the preparer made a huge blunder on the returns. He filed us each as "Single" on the CA returns. That's not allowed under CA law right now. We're required to file as "Married, Filing Singly" or however that's worded. (This requirement means we should be filling out a "dummy" 1040 Fed return as if we were married, then use that dummy return as the basis for the individual state returns. Fun, eh? "Equal" my fat, saggy, hairy ass.) I don't know what we can do about it at this late date. Michael's going to call tomorrow and hope he can get through, but I assume we'll send in the returns and then sometime in the next month or so, file an amended one. Hopefully that won't get us into too much trouble.

Work's going well. We got a bunch of releases in my group this week, so I have a wacky schedule. I'm supposed to be there at 7:30 AM tomorrow today to support one of those releases, and I didn't get out of work until 11:30 or so Monday night. Whee! The joy of working in the Internet biz! But I'm still pretty happy there. I think I have a reputation there now as a pretty solid tester, but I know I'm still getting into the swing of things. By the time we go through the next round of releases I should be even more able to do the job in a way consistent with the way I *want* to do the job.

And... well, that's all the big things. There are lots of little things going on--when aren't there?--but nothing really of note. Of course, by posting this in the middle of the night, no-one's gonna see it, so when I mention these big things in the future, everyone's going to exclaim, "WTF?OMG!BBQ!!!1!"

:-)

JOhn.

A site making a point, humorously, of how much is expected to be spent on the military occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq:

http://3trillion.org/

JOhn.

Japanese village carries on long-standing tradition of yearly dolphin slaughter, while the government intentionally gives a blind eye. This year, however, the proceedings were caught on High Def video...

Warning: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!

http://www.cdnn.info/news/eco/e080403a.html

JOhn.

When you discover that the tooth fairy is a made up story told to you by your parents, do you stop believing in the tooth fairy, or do you believe that the tooth fairy does not exist? Do you see a difference between those two statements?

( My answers behind the cut. If you're inclined, answer first then peek at my answers... )

First, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm totally strange, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to tell someone else what they think or how they reached their conclusions. I would think that anyone who I told such things to would have a right to be insulted and maybe even upset. Yeah, I'm probably the odd duck out here...

Second, I really expected my last entry to elicit much the same response most of my entries do, namely complete silence. The fact that it did elicit responses is a surprise to me. Unfortunately, as I had not expected responses I didn't anticipate needing the time to formulate cogent replies. So, if you're hoping to get a reply, you'll have to wait until I have more time. Maybe tomorrow evening.

(And no, I'm not in a good mood. Not entirely due to what's going on here, but I can't say it's doing me much good either.)

JOhn.

I saw this phrase in a comment responding to Monique Wilson's unfortunate anti-atheist outburst (see here for more details.)

Atheism is a belief in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Yes. Exactly.

JOhn.

Was an okay episode until right near the end.

If you heard a loud thump, that was my jaw hitting the floor.

WHAT THE FRACK?!?!?!??!?! And WHERE DID SHE GO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

OMGWTF?!?

JOhn.

So much going on right now, and so much of it leaving me in precarious emotional states.

Work is going well, and I feel like I'm fitting in with the dev team I support. I'm not sure about the QA team that is my primary team, though. The women on the team are very cliquish. I try, and will keep on trying, to be friendly. Anything more? I'm not sure it's in me. I just don't know how. Regardless, no-one is unhappy with my work, and every day I feel more and more capable to do my job duties. I am busy there, frequently very busy, but all in all it is good.

I've been reading a book by James P. Hogan called "Echoes of an Alien Sky." Well, trying to read it. It has an interesting premise, that of a human culture that believes it originated on Venus finding out that humans once lived on Earth. As they try to put the pieces together about what really happened, the characters frequently talk about the differences they perceive between their own society and what they've been able to learn about ancient Earth's. Unfortunately, Mr. Hogan, once my favorite author of all time, seems to have found a high horse to crawl up on. Not so long ago, Hogan published a non-fiction book about all of the "sacred cows" of science and how stupid we all were to "blindly accept" them. Things like HIV being the cause of AIDS, evolution as the mechanism for biodiversity, stuff like that. Apparently people didn't take him seriously enough so he decided to try and bash people over the head with it via fiction. Seriously, in just about EVERY chapter so far, he brings up the same arguments over and over again. It's very tiring. I want to continue reading it to find out how he resolves the overall story, but I may put it down if he doesn't keep getting up on that f'ing soap box.

The new game is going well. We've played the last two weeks back to back and will be playing again tomorrow. I'm enjoying the challenge, and I think my players are enjoying the game. It's also inspired me to get back into programming. I want to write a program that helps me keep track of initiative, turn order, and the wound status of the NPCs. Running into lots of difficulty there, though. I'm trying new (to me) technologies, and am running into bugs I don't know how to track down.

We have completely sold the old house and got the check. It's in the bank, waiting for various dates for it all to clear. I've never held a check made out for so large an amount, much less one written out to me (and Michael). It was kind of strange. Regardless, I think we're done with the old house. Sad but also somewhat liberating.

Michael and I have been spending quite a bit of time looking around at new places, touring open houses and the like. redfin.com is our friend. It's tiring, and also quite disheartening to see what's available at a price we *think* we can afford. We hadn't gotten pre-approved yet, since in theory I'm still working on getting a better credit score. More on that in a bit.

While out looking last weekend, we found a place that we both really fell in love with. It has just the amount of space we want, laid out in a pleasing arrangement, a small yard but just the right size for entertaining, and a newish looking condo. We see all sorts of possibilities in it, including making a large upstairs bedroom into a rec room/office. It would fit a good sized table with room for book cases and other stuff. Even a large closet to store all of Michael's games. We visited it for a half hour on Saturday and then returned on Sunday with my Mom who wanted to see it after we talked about it so much. So, we called our agent to see what it would take to start the buying process.

The first step? Getting pre-approved. And here's where we are running into a significant roadblock. Our mortgage broker (referred to us by our agent) thinks it's going to be tough to get us into any kind of a loan, much less one with an attractive interest rate. She wants me to raise my credit score by two points in the next day or so. Um, how? She indicates that I need to call all my creditors and dispute the late charges. I'd be willing to call the ones with a small number (like one or two) late payments and ask if they could do us a favor as we're trying to buy a house, but I'm not going to lie to a creditor, try to bully them into giving me something I don't deserve. While she won't come out and directly say so, the implication she's giving us is that unless I do that we won't get a loan. She's all nice and sweet about it, but the threat hangs in the air nonetheless.

Because of the anxiety with the house search and finding a place we love and worrying about whether we will be able to get a loan, I'm not sleeping. I got four hours Saturday night, three hours last night, and tonight's not looking much better. This is having a seriously deleterious affect on my mood and my ability to withstand frustration and complexity. Michael and I are having difficulty having a conversation that doesn't end with one of us (if not both of us) feeling rotten.

Well, now I'm just bringing myself down again, so I'm going to stop before I get completely morose. (As always, if you have suggestions about anything here, I'm open to hearing them...)

JOhn.

From the always thought-provoking blog, "Republic of T" comes more poignant reminders of how "equality in all but name" is never equality.

http://www.republicoft.com/2008/04/07/inequality-is-inconvenient/

How many married couples have to get re-married as the move from state to state? If you're a fan of "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" know that except in rare individual cases, such arrangements are NOT transportable across state lines.

And if you move from a state that has such arrangements to a state that does not, expect all company spousal benefits to suddenly disappear.

Also, don't bother applying for a passport if you've changed your name to indicate your newly "married" status. The State Department has decided that the Defense of Marriage act means you're not allowed to change your name.

You'd better never be accused of a crime in which your legally recognized same-sex partner could be considered any kind of witness, character or otherwise. If you were opposite-sexed members of a federally recognized marriage, you could not be called to testify against each other. If you *just* have a domestic partnership or a civil union, you can be compelled to give testimony *AGAINST* your spouse (well, that or face contempt charges, such a choice).

Finally, if you're a high-ranking government employee, say a member of the House of Representatives, and you just happen to have a legally recognized same-sex partner, you can pretty much forget about getting them aboard a military plane along with your fellow congressmembers and their spouses.

Yep, I'm *SOOOO* F'ING happy to have the privilege to be "equal" in this way...

JOhn.

According to my iTunes database, these are the top 40 songs in my library (all five stars, sorted by playcount). I'm not sure what it says about me... :-)

( big ol' table of music )

Whee!

JOhn.