Ranting against another Bad idea. Prop 23

Here's another example of what's wrong with California.

In 2006, Arnie actually signed off on a law to reduce carbon emissions in the state. Good for the environment and a job creator on a lot of fronts. First, new tech needed to reach the carbon emission targets. Wind, solar etc. Second, if oceans rise and California sinks into the ocean, that there will be no jobs in California. There are 12,000 clean energy businesses in California and it is the largest area of job growth in California. Third, this may just be selfishness on my part, but I would like to breathe clean air.

But rich oil people, many from outside our state, have no interest in seeing California use less oil. It's taking money out of their pocket. Thus, they've funded a California proposition to overturn California law. They've attempted to rebrand the law as California's Job Killing Global Warming Law. They want to suspend progress in green initiatives until the unemployment drops to 5.5 for 4 quarters. Essentially, just keep things the way they are with everyone reliant on oil. The argument seems to be that energy costs will go up and we'll lose more jobs than we create. Pretty weak against land to walk on and air to breathe.

It absolutely has to be a NO on this one.

No on Pot

I know this proposition going to pass overwhemingly, but I'm thinking that it really isn't that good an idea. Okay, the anti-crime political machine has made much too big a deal about smoking pot. There are a lot of people sitting in California jails that probably shouldn't be there as long as they have because of disproportionate penalties for drug offenses. And really, a little recreational use has no lasting effect.

But people are dumb enough without being high all the time. I don't think this does good things for student or worker productivity anywhere. And what happens the first guy who legally smoked a little weed kills someone on the highway. Just not a great idea.

Queen City Trip

So last week, I spent a few days in Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte was apparently a queen of England who raised 19 kids. The good people of the Carolinas chose that name as flattery for the King of England. It seems like a lot of thing got named that way when the colonies were starting out.

So Charlotte seems like a great place to live, but not that exciting a place to visit. The people are nice and very willing to talk to you, which is very strange for a person like me who would prefer to be ignored pretty much everywhere.

I went to the biggest attraction there, the newly opened NASCAR Hall of Fame. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about NASCAR. Now I know enough to fill a thimble, most of which I'l pass on to you if you keep reading this.

NASCAR really started as just moonshine runners trying to evade the cops. These good ole country folk would make their cars go faster and faster and eventually, they wanted to race them. After a while, some guy sort of standardized some rules and got everyone to go along. He was the first inductee of this initial HOF class.

The most interesting place in the HOF was the section on the pitcrews. There are all kinds of rules and ways to accrue penalties. They teach you some of the basic rules and show you a video where you have to pick out the violations.

As I left the gift shop I got a Jimmie Johnson shotglass. I know he's won the last couple titles, but not being a follower of the "sport", I have no clue how he's doing this year. The check out clerk asked me if I thought Jimmie was going to win this year. I was pretty much speechless. I have no idea what the right thing to say should have been.

Glad I got to see the place.

Password

How many passwords do you have? I'm guessing I have at least 20 for various things. It may be a little higher or lower than that.

My wife is sitting in this room right now trying to remember one of our less frequently used accounts and getting frustrated. Every site seems to require a password and they have al kinds of different rules. Some required at least one capital letter. Some require at least one number. Some can't be longer than 8 characters. Others need to be at least 15. Not that all these rules allow you to, but I'm sure we're not supposed to use the same ones over and over again. The experts also say you shouldn't write these things down, in case someone finds your sheet and takes over your entire life, but I'm not sure how else to remember all these things.

I understand it's for our own protection and as identity thefts have gotten pretty savy which has led to all this escalation of protection. I guess it's just a necessary hassle of the modern world now.