Continuing Resolutions

No, not the kind that you renew every New Year's Day. I'm talking about the ones that Congress passes and the President signs almost every year to keep federal facilities operating in lieu of a budget appropriation. In my 14 years in government science research, my agency has never had a budget passed before the start of the new fiscal year. It leads to fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and is a drag on long-term planning (I wonder if FUD has ever been used in this way). Every year we're warned to spend at some reduced level under the CR until a budget is passed. Every year this tends to slow decision making in that time frame.

This year though, appears especially bad. With the switch in the balance of power in Congress, a second CR will presumably be passed tomorrow that will be in place until February. It is not expected that a budget for most agencies will not be passed until then, after the new Congress takes a whack at it. What makes it bad is not the time (not unusual after all), but the fact that we have been under a CR that restricts spending to a unexplainably low budget mark in the House draft budget. If the CR doesn't change this we could be in big trouble. The agency has a number of contracts and grants it must honor first. Then what ever is left gets doled out.

Since it's not enough to even pay the salaries of the federal employees at my research center, the hit will come by canceling or not renewing all contract technicians, travel to scientific conferences, and the inability to buy supplies for the lab. Research will stop and we could end up just sitting. I can keep some busy as there are some papers to write, and I'm writing grant proposals (not the norm for government science but has been for me). But for others, they could just be sitting.

For a group of dedicated, talented, and hard working researchers, this could be devastating in the short term. In the long term, we could lose some of these people back to academia or biotech if they get too frustrated. I know that's what I'm thinking after my 14 years.

random thoughts of the month

November's bullet statements:

• Democrats take control of the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years (it was interesting being in DC on election night and walking past the White House the day after when final projections wrapped up the Senate for the Dems).
  
  
• We've had the most precipitation in one month in the recorded weather history of Seattle (rain, floods, wind storms, snow storms, quick freezes, and now more rain).
  
  
• What's the difference between sectarian violence and civil war? To me it seems to mean the same thing....countrymen killing countrymen (and woman, and children). I think too many base their idea of civil war on the American one, with armies against armies. "Modern" civil war appears to follow the same definition as terrorism....creating fear to advance a political agenda.
  
  
• Iraq exit strategy? Go long, go strong, or get out?
  
  
• Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld finally is booted. Why did Bush wait so long?!
  
  
• The election results seem to be pushing the Bush Administration towards finally figuring out how to get out of Iraq. The policy now appears to be one of saying that the Iraqis need to figure out how to take care of their own problems. Granted, they existed for a long time under a brutal dictator. But haven't we created the environment that now exists there?
  
  
• I've been reading Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial. Talk about screwups. It's hard not to wonder how things would be if Rumsfeld had been fired a long time ago.
  

It's almost December 1!

and we have to trust them?

After the last post, I turned off automatic update on the Windows XP lab computer. Now, everytime I log in, it nags me about a new update.

After ignoring it a few times, I checked to see what it was about. Why, it's an update of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications!

Evidently, there's now two class action lawsuits over WGA, calling it spyware. Not to mention the fact that it would erroneously label some Windows XP installs as non-legitimate. What a pain. I suppose I will have to install the update though. At least then it phones home less often.

Microsoft makes us all beta testers

Microsoft's attempt to ensure that the copy of Windows XP you have installed is legit, has pissed off more than a few people. A couple of weeks ago, my organization mandated that all XP machines install Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. If not, the threat was that Update would stop working. It's other purpose is to do the OS validation. Our overworked IT staff took MS's word for it and deemed it required. Luckily the majority of the computers my lab uses are Macs, but we do have a few Windows boxes running lab equipment. So I dutifully installed it.

Turns out, WGA is BETA SOFTWARE! When I found this out I was not happy. I pointed out the inherent problems with the installation with the IT manager, who was fairly meek about it (because of the threat "Critical Software Update - Apply NOW!" type of warning, I don't think they actually knew this). My biggest gripe, besides it being beta and spyware, AND IRREVERSIBLE, is that a buggy update could break the software/hardware combination controlled by that computer. And it's a royal pain to install and get working if the OS had to be reinstalled. Besides controlling an instrument that often has long run times, it also runs a Sassafras Keyserver for a networked software license.

So, yep it bit me in the ass today. MS Software Update ran over the weekend, automatically rebooted (which would have killed an experiment if one had been running on the instrument), and promptly froze at the BIOS prompt with an alert that the bootsector had been changed (and could be a virus!). When I cleared this, booting finished, and an alert popped up happily proclaiming software update had completed. Evidently the update did something at the BIOS level (who knows and I really don't care), which triggered the antivirus software. A complete scan of the hard drive showed no viruses.

But, if that had happened in the middle of somebody's experiment, it could have been expensive, maddening, and, well I can think of several stronger words.

Tomorrow I have to try to turn this off.

more of the same...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, blasted by a couple of 500 lb bombs from an F16 after his location was finally confirmed long enough for a strike.

There is no doubt that al-Zarqawi was one of the worst of the terrorist insurgents in Iraq. For that just remember Nicholas Berg. There is no doubt that if the US invasion of Iraq hadn't given al-Zarqawi his battlefield, he would have found another one with al Qaeda. But neither should anyone doubt getting this one guy will change anything in Iraq, at least not for a long time. I fear that our policies have created a new generation of terrorists, and we won't be 'winning' for a very long time. And the number of Americans that now believe this has become very high.

How long?

random thoughts

So many things running through my head.

The morass that is Iraq has more or less degenerated into a Civil War.

• Bombs, suicide bombers, Iraqis killing Iraqis, students pulled off of buses and executed.
  
• Over 2500 American deaths. Close to 10 times that in injuries, many of them severe, amputations, limbs lost, brain injuries, and lots of PTSD.
  
• I can no longer see how any exit strategy has a chance of working.
  

The state referendum to repeal a state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation failed miserably (and thankfully) to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Thank God, and here's hoping that Tim Eyman just goes away. He truly is a horse's ass (which is actually denigrating to horses). We can only hope he now just goes away.

all blogs go stale....

Blogs...blogging...the blogosphere. Pod casting, audio and video. When I was writing more or less regularly (and it's been almost a year), blogs already were pervasive. Now, they are even more so, with many essentially becoming mainstream media. any news, no matter how trivial, is on the web within minutes of an event, with almost as many different opinions and analyses as there are blogs. Reminds me of a book, "Earth", by David Brin. One of the plot devices was what is now the internet and blogs, world wide instant opinion polls on almost any matter.

So, I might start this up again. Sometimes I feel like I have something to say, at least for myself. We'll see if anything comes out of it. Over on the other side, I'l probably start up the again on the more personal category. I intend to start keeping up a running journal on our preparations for our trip to Tanzania this summer.