Pat and I went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It’s been on our must-see list every since we saw the trailer many months ago. It’s about a group of elderly British retirees from many different walks of  life who get sold on the idea of moving to India to live in a hotel that caters to the elderly.  Turns out the hotel is a dump run by a young, idealistic, dreamer of a guy who is good at seeing a vision of how things ought to be. He calls the operations “outsourcing the elderly” to make it sound like a high tech business like his brothers have. Of course the retirees feel cheated but they don’t really have any options so the movie is a series of making the best of a bad situation.  Various hijinks ensue as they make their way.

I think what’s striking is that none of the situations we see are completely over the top. Maybe just a little exaggerated. But you could really see how real people could end up in these situations and the way they cope is equally not a over the top. They get through the day with some dignity and some good spirits, mostly.

This ain’t Cocoon, folks.

So why would you watch this if the movie has no flash, big surprises? No keystone cops? No rabbits being pulled out of a hat? Because it’s a movie about people late in life who’ve got baggage. They are crotchety, rude, helpless, and not at all inspiring. But by the end of the movie, they’ve all pretty much taken a step in the right direction. Not turned into superheroes, but turned a leaf. I like that.

Oh did I mention the scenery and photography is gorgeous? Did I mention the cast is spectacular? Judi Dench. Bill Nighy and many others? Did I mention there’s a love story?

“You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.” — John Coltrane

Seen on a sign at a coffee shop today.

At first we thought it was art…..

But I was shocked at the numbers from the State Board Of Elections and did some amateur election analysis check it out:

One thing you have to keep in mind, is that Unaffiliated voters can request a Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, or non-partisan ballot. So their votes on the “ballots cast for president” would show up (mostly) in the D,R, and L columns.

The first shocking thing I see is the difference between voter registration and partisan ballots cast.  One way to look at it is that the democrats got a 6.35% boost from the unaffiliated voters and the Republicans got a 18.82% boost from the unaffiliated.  But that’s the best case scenario, assuming Democrats and Republicans had turned out in numbers proportionate to their registration.  On the one hand, the republicans had a contested primary and the democrats didn’t. So that might indicate that Democrats turned out in fewer numbers than their registration percentage. On the other hand, Romney has been “the presumptive nominee” for several weeks now. So the fact that the Republican primary was technically contested doesn’t in my opinion give the Republicans a turnout advantage all by itself.  On the third hand, the Republicans in general are probably more motivated since they are looking to oust the incumbent.  I would love to see a break down that showed of the Democrat ballots cast, how many were cast by registered Democrats and how many were cast by Unaffiliated and likewise for the Republicans. But I don’t think those numbers are available.

The one thing I’d say about apparent turn out is that party registration is not a predictor of turn out. I don’t think polls that are taken of registered voters and then weighted by voter registration percentages are reliable indicators of the election. Polls that simply sample “likely voters,” people who say they are going to show up at the polls is probably a better indicator.  Possibly a poll of likely voters that was weighted by party registration would be the best predictor of all, _if_ it also figured in Unaffiliated voters.

About amendment 1. I have lined up the “against” vote in the Democrat column and the “for” vote in the Republican column. Now I’ll grant that on the whole more Democrats voted Against than For and more Republicans voted For rather than Against. However, I’d add that the alignment might not be nearly as close as you many assume it is.

Note that even _if_ every single Democrat ballot that was cast was Against Amendment 1 and every Republican ballot cast was For Amendmen 1, the Amendment would have passed.

But the number of votes Against the amendment is significantly less than the number Democrat ballots cast, by about 126,000. Likewise the number of Republican ballots cast is way lower than the number of votes For, by about 337,161. That’s about 26%. So 26% of the vote For the Amendment came from either Unaffiliated voters casting non-partisan ballots or from people casting Democrat ballots.

I don’t think there’s a way to puzzle out from the election report numbers how much of each (Democrats and Unaffiliated) contributed to the 26%. But you can conduct some interesting thought experiments. Assuming Democrats and Republicans turned out in numbers proportionate to their party registration, and assuming all unaffiliated voters cast either Democrat or Republican ballots, and assuming the unaffiliated ballots are split up according to the apparent percentage increase they boosted the ballot cast percentages, it means that 60, 928 unaffiliated voters cast Democrat ballots. That means 898,021 Democrats cast Democrat ballots. Given that only 833,283 votes were cast against the Amendment. It means that at a bare minimum 65,738 registered Democrats, or 7.3% of the Democrat voters that showed up cast their vote For the amendment instead of Against. And that’s the best case scenario.  Again, I don’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom that all Republicans voted For the amendment and all Democrats voted Against. But even if you took that assumption to the most extreme possible, you’d still have to conclude that 7.3 % of registered Democrats voted for the Amendment.

It’s always interesting to me how the actual act of voting always seems anti-climatic to me. During all the hype and fuss of the campaign, there reaches a point where you either know how you’re going to vote or you know you’re not going to vote.

Bohnanza w/ j&t

Podcast work.

Show prep

Mobile TV Studio from kdn digital on Vimeo.

Show prep.

I had no idea my CD reviews were so hot. If I’d only known this in college…….

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 7:45 PM, Calvin Powers wrote:

> Podcast work
>

Show prep.

Podcast and blog work.

Nice day for baseball.

Litsvof new players on the Bulls this year.

Show prep.

Seen on our walk tonight.

Show prep

Taking pics with Pat.

Pod casting production on three episodes.

Has begun!

IBM working and pod casting work.

At CarolinacAle house

I wish them all the best and many happy decades.

Love the new cd. Looking forward to seeing him live.

I *heart* Bette Midler

Here for Chris and Amanda’sWedding!

Wcom show prep. They’re playing Lucinda Williams. Surreal but nice.

Number if USB drives found in my backpack: 5
Total storage capacity: 45 GB

Podcast work

IBM work this afternoon. Working on Whitepaper

A little early this year but I’m not complaining.

Getting one to go.

Radio prep

Show prep

Radio show prep

Ibm work stuff

St. Patrick’s Ale!

But a few years back, a friend told me that while she does not do “resolutions,” she does “themes” for the year. I think this is a powerful idea and I immediately adopted it. What’s the difference between a “resolution” and a “theme.” Resolutions are commitments to specific actions, which you may or may not have time and energy to deal with. On the other hand, themes represent an approach, a set of values, a overriding concept that guides your actions as the inevitable Stuff Happens.

My theme for 2010 was “Calvin: The Reboot.” It was a play on “rebooting” movie franchises like Star Trek. The idea was to get rid of a bunch of cruft activities that had built up over time and focusing on some core topics, notably my relationship with Pat and my interest in media production. 2011′s theme was ”All In The Family,” Kinda obvious because that’s the year Pat and I got married and two families were coming together. But it was more than just getting married. It was about recognizing extended family and starting to build bonds between the multiple families that exist in our lives. To borrow a concept from Google, it was about multiple overlapping circles of people and highlighting the important overlaps and making them important.  Looking back, I can see all kinds of thins I did (or made a conscious choice NOT to do) that were consistent with the theme of the year and I can look back on these years and be satisfied with the theme.

So what about 2012?  My theme for 2012 is “Taking Care of Business,” Credit to Pat for coming up with the actual name based on my ramblings. But I like it. It’s perfect. Basically, it means focusing on the Stuff That Must Be Done Even If You Don’t Particularly Like It.

This is hugely applicable to my day job. Somewhere over years, I’ve gotten too much into getting involved in work efforts, teams, this and that, that is not part of my core responsibilities. The nature of some of my assignments in past years has given me the very good opportunity to meet and get to work with lots of folks across the company and develop relationships with them. But the downside is I get invited to informally participate in this or that all the time. My core work responsibilities have suffered. Badly. So “Taking Care Of Business” is a reminder to ask myself, “Is this work consistent with my team’s work and with what my funding execs want me to be working on?” I know. I know. That’s a blindingly obvious question to ask, and yet I’ve fallen out of the habit of asking it.

“Taking Care of Business” also relates to my “hobby.” It’s amazing to me how much of my discretionary time is spent on new media, audio production, podcasting, blogging, etc. I deliberately chose to do this. It’s something I’ve been enjoying since 2005 or so and Ireally started devoting time and effort to it in 2010 and 2011. But I am at my limit. I cannot devote more time to it. But what I can do is start focusing on the aspects of this “hobby” that can be turned into actual work and even an actual career path. This means doing all the not-so-fun parts of the hobby that would enable me to convert it to a business. As luck would have it, I ran across an opportunity to help someone do sound engineering work for a comedy podcast he wants to develop. And so January kicked off with an actual paying gig related to my “hobby.” That’s a great start. Again, to state the blindingly obvious, it’s amazing how much a client focuses your attention. I need to apply that back to my day job as well.

“Talking Care Of Business” also applies on the home front. Being married feels good. Satisfying. Happy. Secure. Nothing would make me go back to my pre-married life. But I’ve been putting off some of the responsibilities that come from combining households. Lots of legal stuff like putting Pat on the deed of the house, getting her house ready to put on the market. Updating beneficiaries on retirement accounts, insurance plans. etc. etc. None of it is that hard, but it’s also very easy to keep putting it off to tomorrow. So “Taking Care Of Business” helps me focus on these things and make them a priority.

So “Taking Care Of Business” is my theme for 2012. And it doesn’t hurt that there is great theme music to go with it.

Podcast work

Show prep

Ethics in SF Panel at Illogicon 2012

Had a great time at the inaugural Illogicon this weekend. Plenty of good vibes and interesting, friendly folks. I never heard on official attendance count. But I’m guessing in the neighborhood of 200-300 people.

I’d registered many months ago, practically as soon as registration opened and so I was a little afraid they’d lose my registration. But no. Not only did they have my registration, I knew the guy running the registration table. That’s a very good feeling at a con.

Con suite was a friendly, relaxing place with equal amounts of comfort food and healthy food. The folks running it were diligent about keeping things picked up and clean without being overbearing about it. Truly a nice place to hang out.

Dealer room didn’t have many companies / organizations. But you did have good opportunity to browse and talk to folks. I particularly enjoyed talking to the ConTemporal folks who are putting on a steampunk con event in Chapel Hill Later this year.

The programming had several highlights, notable the guests of honor Joe and Gay Haldeman. They were the epitome of good guests of honor. In addition to doing multiple panels and making thoughtful contributions, they mixed and mingled with the fen in the con suite and other areas.

There were several panels I really enjoyed. Probably my favorite was theSciene Fiction and Ethics panel with moderated by  Bull Spec‘s Sam Montgomery-Blinn featuring Joe Haldeman, Kij Johnson, NCSU’s John Kessel, and Gray Rinehart.

I also really enjoyed the Baen traveling roadshow. Not only because I won a David Drake book, but because they did a really good job of getting the audience involved in the discussion.

I sat in on several panels that had John Kessel and he’s always got something interesting to say. But the John Kessel highlight was a reading he did on Saturday Afternoon, an amusing time-travel-commercialization-of-the-past story.

Being a podcaster, I was happy to discover that Rich Sigfrit of Geek Radio Daily is a local guy and was on several panels. I was glad to get the chance to shake his hand and make plans to touch base with him later.

Another programming highlight for me was the e-publishing talk by James Maxey. It was very interesting to hear from someone who’d actually jumped through all the hoops necessary to get a book on the various platforms. Complicated, but not impossible and the business possibilities are very interesting.

Kudos to Con Chair Chris Hensley, Vice Con Chair Brandon Ulick, Operations Director Chris Ross, Con Suite Director Reesa Robie, and Programming Director Warren Buff for givng us a great weekend of fun and fandom. I look forward to many more years of Illogicon.

The Raleigh Institution!

At Illogicon!,

This is James Maxey at the Kindle publishing panel

Show oreo

Hanging out

And then I match up lids to containers to find the orphans. This years result:

Two orphaned containers and two orphaned lids. About par for the course.

Their fate is sealed.

Getting ready for 2012

If you have any thoughts or insights, please post a comment!

With pat. Prepping show

One last picture from Ayr Mount. I call this one my southern gothic shot.

Christmas Eve 2011

Nice walk on a winter(ish) Day.

Blogging

Working on getting work
.

Podcast work

My entry Into the cookie decorating contest. "Top Gun" (The theme is "movie
references "

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There’s a shocker.

Show prep

In the broken green chair. That’s all that’s left! Don’t they know I’m the Duke?