It's easy to see based on the last post date that this blog has been an increasingly lower priority over the last few months. With work, my professional blog, my new girlfriend and just life in general, blogging has become less important in terms of keeping people up to date. Plus, with Twitter and other social networks I'm able to communicate instant thoughts to people, without actually writing a full blog entry. And so, I have decided to stop writing for Almost Georgetown.

This July will mark two years since I moved from California. In that time, I've posted 350 blog entries, you have made 596 comments, there have been more than 55,000 visits and all on custom code that I wrote two years ago. Not bad. Not bad at all.

For those who have been faithful readers, thank you. This season is ending, but I am still blogging, on professional topics, on Twitter, on social networks. And for those in Washington, fret not; I'm not leaving the area (on the contrary I expect to be here for a long time), so many of you I will see at beverage subgroups or meetups. Thanks for your support and friendship.

2:24 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Blog Administration, Relationships

Late last month, Debbie and I took a trip to New York City. As she had friends in town for Valentine's Day, we headed up the next weekend.

We spent two full days in the city, visiting Central Park, the Seinfeld Restaurant, walking around the East and West Village, having positively the best brunch ever at the Grand Tribeca Hotel, and seeing Wall Street. We saw a great Improv show (that cost no more than $20 total to boot!) and took in the sights and sounds of the city.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Big Apple. Continue Reading...

9:09 pm | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Adventures

The first Restaurant Week of 2009 is complete in Washington, and Debbie and I decided to take part in it, visiting The Oval Room for a wonderful meal last Wednesday.

The Oval Room is a favorite of Senators and powerbrokers in Washington, and it's easy to see why. With a grand menu of fantastic choices, the fare was amazing.

Restaurant Week is a cooperation between local restaurants and OpenTable to provide discounted three-course meals (appetizer, main dish, and dessert) to residents who might not otherwise try out a particular restaurant. Many of the finest restaurants in the city participate, and Restaurant Week can be found in many different cities (like New York and Philadelphia). It happens twice a year.

Debbie and I enjoyed a meal that was absolutely amazing. Debbie enjoyed a beet dish, while I had shrimp chorizo (shrimp that had been pressed into what looked like chorizo sausages). Our second course consisted of a wonderful piece of salmon for Debbie, and Chilean Sea Bass for myself, both prepared with excellent sides and a great sauce. For the dessert course, Debbie enjoyed a candied pineapple with "sexy sugar" (we're still not sure what that is) and I had a chocolate brownie with Vietnamese coffee ice cream (which gets better as you eat more of it).

The entire meal cost around $100, when the gratuity was considered, which is far below the price for this particular restaurant, and the value of the meal we ate. Still, it was a great advertisement for the restaurant, as we'll most certainly be back for special occasions (and we might go if we're in the mood for some expensive but amazing drinks). In all, it was a great experience, and one I'm looking forward to again during the August Restaurant Week.

8:48 am | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Washington, DC

See, everything went fine until Comcast's incompetent accountants got involved here in Washington.

I tweeted to the Comcast team that I was moving, and they got the move set up. With the exception of the need to drill a new hole in my wall, everything was great. The service worked, the tech was on time and professional, and everything was great.

I paid my Comcast bill today via credit card. And what do I get in my mail today? Another Comcast bill!

Huh?

I take a quick look and I'm not behind in my bills. Must be some mistake.

Nope.

I guess the people in the Comcast office figure that what people *really* want when they move is to pay TWO Comcast bills - one for their old place and one for their new place. And they really want a new account. Oh, and please bill them extra too. Really. Because we all have too much money.

It took me a couple minutes to figure out that they'd screwed up. My old account number was "09529 177521-02-1" and my new account number is "05929 177752-01-4" which made me wonder if it was a typo. Apparently it's not. Comcast expects me to pay for service from February 1st through February 28th - twice.

And this was going so well, too...

Update: ComcastBill from Twitter helped straighten this out early this week. The Comcast Twitter team is fantastic!

Updated at 2/11/2009 @ 10:09 am

11:44 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Comcast, Comcraptic

12:50 pm | Comment (3) | Print

So the Republicans want to threaten a filibuster on the stimulus package. Why not let them?

Let's get real: Democrats are riding high on election wins, people want the stimulus, and they are pretty much anti-Republican still after eight years of Bush. So let's call their bluff and make them filibuster the bill if they want to stop it.

That's exactly what the American people would loathe to see: Republicans grinding government to a halt, reading the phone book into the record, while thousands lose their jobs. If they played it right, the Democrats could look like the saviors of the economy while the Republicans stand in the doorway, blocking help for poor people. Yeah, that's the image the Republicans want to put forward.

Unfortunately Harry Reid doesn't seem to have a pair and would never force the Republicans to actually carry a cookbook up to the dais. If he did this would be easier. Eventually the Republican support would crack, and since it only takes two Senators in states where they have a 50% chance of losing next election (see Arlen Specter [R-PA]) the Republican caucus will crumble in about a day and a half.

My message: call their bluff, Senator Reid. Make them do it. Let them grind the government to a halt and embarrass themselves. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

10:36 am | Comment (2) | Print | Categories: Economics, Politics

Tomorrow is my last day in my current apartment; I am moving to a larger one-bedroom within my building. For those of you who would like my new address, please let me know privately and I'll be happy to give it to you; I would prefer not posting it online for some people who I might not want to give it to.

I'm looking forward to the new place, and the new memories that I will be able to make. And, the new place is even cheaper than the place I'm in now, so that's a blessing.

Now to start the process of packing and moving stuff. Oh dear...

3:48 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Apartments

A friend of mine went to a party last night hosted by Rebuild The Party, a group that is taking the Republican Party to task over its recent electoral failures and promising change. This younger, internet-based group of conservative activists have put forward their own plan, and I promised him that I would provide some ideas about how I think the Republican party can once again be a force in American politics.

As someone who started college a conservative and graduated a liberal, I have a unique perspective. I didn't change my mind because of some voodoo magic, but because facts were presented to me and our President behaved so badly that I simply couldn't justify supporting his party. But I'm not immune to good reason, and I like many of the ideas regarding self-sufficiency. So here are my ideas, in no particular order.

1. Adopt some humility. The biggest problem America had with George W. Bush was his unapologetic approach to things. It was his way or the highway; that's not how it works in the real world. Six years of a Republican President and Congress together produced both some of the most lopsided legislation in history AND the longest string of bills ever to be presented without a veto by the President. Was this string because there were no Democratic ideas in those six years? No; it was because leaders like Bush and Tom Delay refused to accede to Democratic demands, creating a toxic congressional enviornment and angering the liberal base enough to rise up - the effects of which you saw in your crushing in November 2008
2. It has got to be about community. In good years, it's hard to sell people on the need for national service or for community involvement. This task becomes easier in lean years, but in all years it is important. For a long time the Republican party has stood as the party for less government and more self-reliance, but has missed a critical aspect: the community. Republicans have long ignored the fact that people are not an island but a member of a community and that the power of the community is greater than the power of the government to effect change. Self-reliance only works when you give people a safety net - that has typically existed in communities but in an increasingly interconnected but isolated world where people know others in foreign countries but not their own neighbors, fostering community becomes essential.
3. It has got to be about helping people. A recent expose in the New York Times faulted the Bush administration for failing to remember that people needed to be able to afford their homes, but it missed one of the most compassionate things Bush ever did: he made home ownership possible. Bush may have failed dramatically at making continued homeownership possible, but he did believe (and I think correctly) that a large part of self-sufficiency was having an asset, like a home. Why didn't he sell this better? Conservatives have always had a hard time explaining how their policies will help people. Usually they explain it in abstract terms, requiring a complex understanding of economics or the Federal regulatory structure to understand. But Americans understand things like making it easier to buy bread or own a home or go to college. They understand those things. Rather than presenting things in abstract terms ("reducing regulation on lenders will lead to new lending products") why not put it in terms people get ("reducing regulation makes it easier to buy a house.")? But one caveat...
4. It must both be slow change and it must work. The Bush administration was famous for ignoring experts who predicted things they disagreed with. Most famously is the crisis we're now in, and what spelled disaster for your party. Bush rushed to deregulate the government but the rule-changing was not done with any sort of acceptable rule that would prevent the meltdown we're experiencing. Change must happen, but it must happen with caution and it must be proven to work before going full speed.
5. Experts are not bad people. From the enviornment to health care, the Bush administration chose ideology over facts and provable statistics. Don't do that. People are smart, and especially the people you need to convince to vote for you. You know the type - middle class, middle-of-the-road voters that actually elect you to offices (your base isn't responsible for that, so stop pandering). There's no fear in taking something from an expert and understanding it and then deciding that a policy you were pursuing was wrong and changing course - and then telling people that.
6. Drop the social issues for goodness sake!
Seriously. Being staunchly pro-life anti-gay gun-fanatical moose-hunting rednecks may appeal to your base but it turns the rest of us off. Stop it. The American Dream is financial. Stick to that. Stick to talking about freedom and liberty and being happy and staying alive. The Founding Fathers didn't care about the social issues of their time - in fact they even edited out lines regarding slavery in the Declaration of Independence. The greatest social issue of its time and they didn't even address it. Yes, if you drop the social issues the right-wing Christian part of your base will flip out. Let them. They don't win elections for you. The middle-class middle-of-the-road voters do, and they really care about their pocketbook. So speak to that issue.
7. It's about governing, not winning. Remember when you put John Murtha's war resolution to vote? You know, back when you controlled Congress? The smug smiles you wore said that you were really pleased that it crashed and burned. You even got large numbers of Democrats to vote against it and used that as a reason to beat him up on television and the morning shows. But you know something? That really didn't work out well. Americans were starting to sour on the war; now more of them oppose it than originally supported it - and you have only yourselves to blame. Americans want leadership. They want people who are going to debate the tough issues, not hold a sham vote preceded by a sham 20 minutes of "debate." Winning the vote is not governing. And Americans know better. Instead, be willing to talk about the hard issues, debate the tough stuff. You may win, you may lose, but that's governing - making tough choices.
8. Stop cutting taxes. Start cutting spending. Republicans love tax cuts. But they hate spending cuts. The truth is that deficits do matter. They matter a lot. Ignoring this fact makes you look stupid. And cutting taxes is pretty much an economic theory that most economists will disprove in about 45 seconds, so that angle doesn't work either. So let's try this: get spending cuts. Get spending cut so that the government has a surplus. THEN tell people that they've overpaid the treasury - and what would they like you to do with it? Chances are they'll ask for it back. In the form of - you guessed it - tax cuts! How can Democrats oppose giving people back their money? But they can oppose running huge, irresponsible deficits that will force tax hikes later on. And that's where you're losing the battle.
9. Liberal isn't a bad word. Being a liberal doesn't make you a bad person or a freedom-hating bastard. It just makes you think differently. It's your job to point out that it's okay to think government solves all problems - and then to prove it wrong. With facts. And evidence. This is where you erred for so long: you painted the opposition as a bunch of wusses, incapable of standing up to a flea let alone terrorists and recessions. But I think America saw through that smokescreen. Democrats may not have their fingers on the trigger button but it was a Democrat who led us through World War II. Keep that in mind.
10. Stop running douchebags. Seriously now. You need to start running some people who actually make Republicans sound intelligent, compassionate, and responsible. Moose hunters from Alaska are bad choices. So are people who run ads in Georgia accusing World War II veterans who lost limbs of terrible things. Norm Coleman makes my skin crawl and that's before I hear him speak. You need to run guys like Michael Steele who was a great candidate for Senator in Maryland. I disagree with his record but he was warm, inviting, and friendly. You need to find people that speak to the core of America, sound intelligent but inviting, and most of all, don't conduct themselves like brutal dictators. Sure, behaving that way might win you elections, but only because you make the other guy look impossible. The second someone true comes along, you're done.

11:42 am | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Politics

A light layer of ice covers the Holly bushes and paths leading up to the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009, after an ice and snow storm moved through the Washington area overnight. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

2:50 pm | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Washington, DC, Weather

Washington was treated (er, can you say that about a winter storm?) to a blanketing of snow overnight. Since it shows no signs of stopping for now (at least until it turns into rain tonight), it's both beautiful and totally paralyzing for the region. Montgomery County closed their schools, and half my office called in to say they wouldn't be in due to the snow.

Snow does provide some fantastic photo opportunities, though, and until it freezes again and turns to ice, it's reasonable to walk around on. So, for those of you who need a picture of the winter weather for your viewing pleasure, here goes (this is also today's entry in the Project365)...

9:50 am | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Washington, DC, Weather

A satellite photograph of the activity on the Mall right before Barack Obama's inauguration. You may need to zoom in on it when you click on it because it is so large.

1:33 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Metro, Rail, Washington, DC

The National Mall hours before the inauguration. Many people spent the night.

Obama delivers his inaugural address to the masses.

Bush boards Executive One for the ride to Andrews Air Force Base.

10:03 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Politics, Washington, DC

In a little more than 11 hours, the Bush administration will come to an end.

In a tribute to the power of term limits and peaceful transitions of authority, Americans everywhere will witness one leader stepping off the stage and another of a different party stepping up. Without a fight.

The transition will mean the end of perhaps the worst presidency in American history, too. The drubbing given to Bush's party was the final disgrace for a man who spent a third of his presidency on vacation, but missed a hurricane, ignored dire warnings of terrorist attack, failed to see faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, limited the civil rights he claimed to be protecting, and dismissed the warning signs of a groaning economy ready to collapse. But America has term limits, and tomorrow none of that will matter.

The viewing stand where President Barack Obama will view the parade down Pennsylvania avenue. This is right in front of the White House.

12:14 am | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Politics, Washington, DC

12:47 pm | Comment (4) | Print | Categories: Adventures, Friends

Obama shakes hands with employees of Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street in Washington, DC.

6:35 pm | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Washington, DC