Lee.org

That’s just crazy talk! Weeeeee! I have seen the future of the web, and it is a talking dog.

William Paterson offers a 33 credit masters program at $358/credit… That’s $12,000 (much cheaper than Centenary’s $600/credit or ESU’s $450/credit for PA residents. Actually, if I attended ESU full-time, the cost could fall to as low as $410/credit but I wouldn’t survive a 15 credit/semester course load).

That’s 2 full-time semesters and 1 full-time summer at William Patterson. Or if I’m working, 4 half-time semesters and 2 half-time summers. If I start in September 2003, I’ll have a degree in September 2005, just in time for my 36th birthday.

The battle of the political titans continues!

I had written to the ARL moderator, CC:ing Paul:

>Paul , Lee, please take this offlne.

I apologize. I felt that Paul’s unprovoked attack on my character needed a rebuttal. My interest is still only in the topic at hand, H1215.

Paul writes back just to me, all politic-ing slick-like

With all due respect, I never realized that the following items were
personal attacks:

1. Residency in the State of New Jersey. (I moved here from New
Jersey in 1989, my mother’s family is from New Jersey, and I like the
state.)

2. Your political leanings, relevant in a political argument.

3. Your friendship with Travis.

All of which, I believe, are well documented by entries on your website.

I will not engage in long political discourse with non-residents on the
Arlington list, as I believe people should have the standing of tasting
the benefits or pain of the political decisions in order to engage in
the conversation. I also think it would have been fair to the list to
disclose your residency before engaging in commentary on Arlington
politics.

And, yes, I am a liberal. Please note that, as an officer in the
Massachusetts Association of School Committees, I advocate positions of
interest to a statewide constituency, regardless of impact on any one
municipality. H1215 is consistent with my association’s desire to have
stable and reliable funding for public schools.

All power to the main deflectors!

>With all due respect, I never realized that the following items were
>personal attacks:

Dude, we both know exactly what you were trying to do.

>I will not engage in long political discourse with non-residents on the Arlington list

Unless you disagree with my points specifically, my questions about the bill are valid, no matter where they come from. If you don’t address them, they will continue to drag your bill down. If you want to help Massachusetts schools and teachers get the money you think they should get, you’ll address the questions.

>H1215 is consistent with my association’s desire to have
>stable and reliable funding for public schools.

But if critics (like me) poke gaping holes in it’s language and you can’t mend the holes, then public opinion will likely turn against the bill. And that won’t help your cause.

I should also say that other ARL posters have written similarly critical messages about H1215 in the past few days. You’ve got to stand on your own here but you might be able to give this a positive spin… if you quit with the petty personal-character attacks and issue-dodging. Right now, it’s not looking so good.

So, take your time, think it through and answer the questions:
—————————-
- Didn’t the override vote fail? So what is Override v2.0 doing in the House?
- Doesn’t this bill take a major and permanent bite out of 2.5?
—————————-

I’ll be waiting for your response on ARL.

lee

I had a fun altercation on the ARL list today. In response to the override failing, Paul Schlichtman (President-Elect, Massachusetts Association of School Committees) introduced a bill in the MA House of Representatives (not under his own name of course). It would allow the 2.5% per year limit on MA government tax increases to be gotten around if the spending was for schools.

I wrote to the list:

Didn’t the override vote fail? So what is Override v2.0 doing in the House, besides taking up legislators’ time?

His terse response:

Mr. Sonko, you can write your legislators, though this is not a hotly debated issue in Trenton.

(his implication was: You don’t live in Arlington. You are irrelevant. Go away.)

So I turned on the heat and closed the windows:

We’re not talking about Trenton, we’re talking about Arlington. Paul, you seem to have a stake in this so I’ll ask you directly: why is is Override v2.0 in the House at all? Wasn’t the override defeated?

I suppose that your .sig. goes a significant way toward answering my questions.
>Paul Schlichtman
>President-Elect, Massachusetts Association of School Committees
>Vice-Chair, Arlington School Committee
>Population 42,389, 5.05 sq. mi., enrollment 4,470
>http://www.schlichtman.org & http://www.arlington-mass.com

I’ve been re-reading the proposed law. Although I’m not a legislator, it looks like it’s been designed to replace school money that “should” have come from the state, but didn’t… and instituting a local tax to replace that money.

But the whole idea of 2.5 is to prevent government sprawl by causing a budget crunch if government grows too fast. This budget crunch was directly caused by 2.5. In this case, schools were hit hardest. Local government could have moved a column of numbers, saving the schools and causing problems with police, fire, and library. SOMETHING had to give and it did. 2.5 did it’s job.

—————
So next year, when the police department wants a new cruiser, all the mayor has to do is take the money out of schools, declare a school budget emergency, raise taxes (via the new law), and bingo, a new cruiser.

Now I’ll grant that the new law can only be abused so much… “the difference between the minimum required contribution and the the town’s local contribution in 1993.” But this year, it can be said that the level of abuse would top $6 million dollars. That’s a lot of cruisers.
—————

That doesn’t sit well with me.

So I ask again:
why is is Override v2.0 in the House at all? Wasn’t the override defeated?

My source material:

Paul’s message:
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in
> General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
>
> Paragraph (f) of section 21C of chapter 59 of the General Laws as
> appearing in the 2000 Official Edition is hereby amended by adding
> after the word “revenue”, in line 58, the following words:- plus the
> difference between the minimum required local contribution prescribed
> under chapter 70 for the current fiscal year and the municipality’s
> local contribution in fiscal year nineteen hundred and ninety-three as
> defined in chapter 70 section 2.

The current laws
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/59-21C.htm
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/gl-70-toc.htm

Paul turned on the Flame Thrower (in a closed room! The fool!):

Dear Mr. Sonko:

The reason you should be talking Trenton is that you appear to be a resident of the State of New Jersey. According to the journal on your website, you are complaining that you do not qualify to get a teachers’ certificate in New Jersey. (6/19/2003). Your journal also references a callback from Assemblywoman Connie Myers (a Republican from the 23rd district in Hunterdon County NJ). You state on March 26, 2003 that you joined the Hackettstown NJ Chess Club.

I do not think you have any connection to the Town of Arlington, except for the link to one Travis James Ignatius Corcoran on your friends page, fourth line:
http://www.lee.org/friends/index.html
Travis also has you at the top of his list of friends, described as, “A friend of the highest caliber. I’ve known Lee since fourth grade. He was two years older than me then. He still is. Grrrrrrrr..”
http://www.tjic.com/friends.php

According to your politics page, you are a Libertarian. Thus, you seem to be seeking to inject your political philosophy into a town and a state in which you do not reside.
http://www.lee.org/politics/index.html

So, I repeat, I suggest if you have comments on state legislation, you should feel free to call Assemblywoman Connie Myers, Assemblyman Michael Doherty, and Senator Leonard Lance; you can reach them in Trenton. Join the Hackettstown e-list. And have a nice life down there in the Garden State.

Silly Paul, I was already wearing my asbestos underwear from my last post!

>you appear to be a resident of the State of New Jersey.

I am at that.

Being a NJ resident bars me from voting in Arlington but does not bar me from discussing Arlington politics, Arlington bug spray, or whatnot.

My posts on the list have been and continue to be on-topic. I refer to the list’s FAQ, “…information relevant to the residents of Arlington, Mass…”. I also believe my posts to be reasonably well informed. If you disagree, please say so.

I think that your attempt at character assassination isn’t going so well.

Since you’ve taken the time to research my journal (found at http://www.lee.org/journal), cross reference my friendship with TJIC, and post a vitriolic letter about me, could also please take the time to answer my first question?

——————
Paul, didn’t the override vote fail? So what is Override v2.0 doing in the House?
——————

In my further considerations about House 1215, it occurs to me that this would be the equivilant of a PERMANENT override for EVERY town in Massachusetts when it comes to school budgets. Furthermore, it seems that it opens a loophole that takes a major bite out of 2.5. That’s casting a pretty wide net, isn’t it? Paul, could you please address those potential issues?

If 2.5 is so bad, then maybe a vote to repeal it should be put up.

lee

I followed up a little while later with a more personal message to the list. The last part is quite introspective:

Paul, I’d like to answer the more comments you made about me in your post:

>According to the journal on your website, you are complaining that you
>do not qualify to get a teachers’ certificate in New Jersey. (6/19/2003)

Yup. it’s been a career changing nightmare for me for the last year and a half.

>Your journal also references a callback from
>Assemblywoman Connie Myers (a Republican from the 23rd district in
>Hunterdon County NJ).

Actually, she’s an Assemblywoman in Warren County but I see how her homepage might make you think otherwise.

>According to your politics page, you are a Libertarian. Thus, you seem
>to be seeking to inject your political philosophy into a town and a
>state in which you do not reside.
>http://www.lee.org/politics/index.html

I don’t understand the connection that you make. “Thus” doesn’t make any sense in your argument. But I’ll go ahead and explain a little bit about my Libertarianism….
As my page says, I call myself a “soft libertarian”. When looking at a situation, I find myself keeping in mind the philosophical bent of libertarian thinking. I’m definitely not a strict Democrat or Republican. Mostly because falling into either camp picks up way too much baggage… I.E. being Republican means being pro-life and pro-death penalty, two contradictory things… and not for any solid reasoning. I like the “feel” of libertarianism added to the mix of political thought. It helps me think out my position on issues. I use libertarian thought as a tool to carefully think out my position on issues. But I definitely would not want to live in a country completely controlled by a libertarian government!

I could write a lot more about this, but again, as my politics page says, “I could talk for a while about this but I’ve got more important things to do than argue over the internet. I’d rather yell at you in person.”

>I do not think you have any connection to the Town of Arlington

I left my heart in Arlington. It’s a long story going back to 1987 when I started Tufts and found myself in proximity to some of the most lovely and historic cities in the country. Several friends live (or lived) there, a very serious (ex-) girlfriend lived on Cleveland street. Arlington has always been a state of mind for me. It’s important. I left Boston a few years ago but I still reminisce about it and think about going back. I think the main reason I haven’t is that there are too many ghosts of my past that reside there. I want to live in Boston but I can’t. ARL lets me connect with Arlington without the discomfort of staring-down those ghosts every day.

lee

So far, the feedback on the list has been a mix of positive and negative. I received a private message from someone saying:

I appreciate you pursuing an explanation from Paul. I am anxious to hear his answer.

It’s very nice to hear that my words are valuable! I thanked the author profusely. Another poster (Lori Vollers Uhland) wrote to the list saying that he hadn’t dissed me. Yea, whatever. And another (Jerri Newman) said, because I was geographically challenged, “I am not interested in this or anything else you have to say”. Yea, whatever.

I went to the movies Wednesday night. I saw the first 35 minutes of “2 Fast 2 Furious“. It was 2 brainless 2 boring. The producer/mechanic forgot that they needed a script, forgot that a buddy film needs buddies, a cops and robbers film needs cops (and robbers), a good-guy bad-guy movie needs good guys AND bad guys. Either the movie was playing to a fantastically advanced moral and ethical subtext, or maybe it was just stupid. I can only watch a speedometer rev from 100 to 160 in Furious-vision so many times before my brain goes numb. (Do these guys -ever- decelerate?) I’d like to live in their world; No matter how fast you’re driving, or even if you’re not driving at all, all you have to do to underscore your point is is downshift forcefully.

I walked out of 2 Fast 2 Furious and in on Dumb and Dumberer. The title doesn’t disappoint. Except for some ridiculousness issues, it was moderately mindlessly funny. An example of ridiculousness: Harry smeared chocolate all over a bathroom and the owner thought it was poop. A few scenes later, the supposedly intelligent owner had cleaned it up but apparently not figured out that it wasn’t poop. But hey, it IS called “Dumb and Dumberer”…

I also snuck in on the last 10 minutes of Bruce Almighty. Sappy, stupid. And I saw the last 20 minutes of Finding Nemo. I couldn’t get a good read on the film from just the ending… Disneyesque?

Here is a great take on The Matrix Reloaded. From http://ter.air0day.com/index.php?script=matrixreloaded. Thanks to jwz for the pointer.

OUCH! From YourZagi.com and http://www.wrightbrothersrc.com

You know, the more I stare at speed 400 brushless motors, the less I think I want one. It basically comes down to:brushed vs. brushless speed 400 motor

• Brushless is 20% more efficient (making for potentially 20% longer flights)
• Brushless is $200 ($100 motor, $100 ESC), brushed is $40 ($10 motor, $30 ESC)
• Brushless provides 2x the thrust per lb of motor (drawing about 1.6x the amperage…) (average 400 brushed motor is about 3 oz) giving me the opportunity to push the throttle such that I’ll use up the battery really darn quick.
• top level flight speed goes from about 50 mph to about 70 mph
• Brushless improves powered handling considerably

I’m not into electrics for super vertical performance. I’d switch to .90cc glow engines for that. So I’ve been looking around and I’ve got a lot of other options besides plunking down $200…  I could switch to a high performance speed 480 motor, an 8″ x 4.5″ prop and get 3/4 of the way toward a brushless for under $20. Hobby Lobby reference. Or a Rocket 400… or the new Zagi Speed 400 for $10. I’ve got a lot of options that cost a heck of a lot less than $200. Hey, $200 would get me a lot of Estes model rocket engines….

I’ve started ripping the old covering off the plane.

My mom isn’t the best pilot. How do I know this? This is how I know:

Don’t let it be said that the Zagi flying wing is indestructible. I brought my mom, dad and niece out to the airfield yesterday. After a couple minutes of flight (they oo-ed and ahh-ed in all the right places), my mom wanted to try her hand at it. So I gave her a quick lesson, brought the plane up to 200 feet (what I thought to be “2 mistakes high”) and handed her the controls. She promptly pointed the nose down and gave it full throttle. Three seconds later, there was a 5″ deep hole in the ground. It was astounding. RIP Lee’s Zagi version 1.0

Dad and I have been having a good time joking about it. We’re saying that we should get her a purple heart. Or maybe she should have watched more of my dad’s war TV shows before taking to the air. She just keeps repeating how she’s so sorry and will never fly it again.. never ever ever. But I struck a deal with her. I’ll feel better about it if she learns how to fly and takes the controls just one more time. After all, we can’t have her grieving about some silly little plane forever. It also doesn’t hurt that she volunteered to pay for the damage. That last bit means I’ll be rebuilding the plane to version 1.1 :-). I was never happy with my Monocote job. So I’ll send away for new trays, maybe a new motor (brushless?? hmm? hmm?) and we’ll be back in the air in a month or two. Actually, speaking of indestructibility….. The only things I lost in the crash were the motor tray and canopy. The entire rest of the plane is still intact! wing, winglets, elevons… The motor, receiver, and servos are still good too. It’s the loss of the motor tray that “killed” the plane. That’s because I have to rip out a lot to fix it the motor tray. And if I’m going to rip out so much, then I want to do a total overhaul.

I’m a fan of funny/scary/weird/real-world stories. And if you throw in deviant sexual-social behavior, well I really enjoyed True Porn Clerk Stories. Here’s a local archive of those pages: one, two, three, four.

Very nice day at the field. I played with doing a kind of Immelman. Fun! My maneuver was a bit different. I did my 1/2 roll while in the vertical. That seemed like more fun at the moment.Today I felt much more connected to the plane than previously. This gave me a lot more control and smoothness than I’ve had in the past. I’m rolling better, managing power better, managing the exchange of altitude and speed better.

Favorite moves:

• Launching, giving it full throttle and watching it climb directly away from me in a straight line, ascending at 20 degrees. It just gets smaller and smaller.
• I was flying 45 degrees away from being into the wind and straight toward me. I noticed that in order to track correctly, the plane was actually side-slipping a lot. We don’t need no stinking rudder!
• Standing in the middle of the field and having the plane zip around me like a loyal dog darting around in the grass.
• Getting up to 250 feet, pointing the plane directly at me, building up speed and then bringing the plane straight up, right over my head. As it ascends, I roll. My view sees a dark line in the sky rotating around an axis. I then pull out and dart away.
• Flying by low and slow, low and fast, low and really really fast out of a steep decent, low and really slo[crash!] oop! When it flies by, engine off, silent except for a “shhhoo” of air, I grin ear to ear.

Oh, I forgot to mention what I did on Sunday! I went to the Poconos field.  I watched just one Stick 40 combat. Zowie! They had to cancel the rest of the combat because moisture was tearing the streamers after just a few seconds in the air. I saw a plane on the ground rev into a fence, shooting 1/3 of a prop 50 feet over peoples’ heads and into the side of the truck. The fuselage of the plane was broken  in-two. Lastly, back at Great Meadows, I saw a 7′ wingspan pattern plane (?) do looping, rolling, flipping 3-D tricks that blew my mind. My jaw was literally agape! It looked like a sprite fluttering about, only this sprite was larger than me and weighed like 50 pounds. Earlier in the day, I was impressed with a biplane doing what looked like shoulder rolls. But this new stuff was in a class 3 times removed.

Oh, I also tried flying at a local unused baseball field. I can now tell you that I can just barely keep the Zagi flying in a little league baseball field. I can also tell you that it sucks to have to fetch a plane in chest-high grass. Personal note: That’s about the smallest field I think I could ever fly at.

The old lead-acid batteries in my workshop aren’t cutting it. I think one cell is shot. The other three are probably good, but they aren’t large enough anyway. With these 4 6-volt sealed cells, I’ve only got 8 amp/hours at 12 volts. And I’m trying to charge a 1.1 and a 1.7 amp/hr pack… At their best, they’d be good for 2 chargings. And it’s just a big pain to keep monitoring my car battery charger –> 12v lead-acid batteries –> peak charger setup. It’s too easy to mess up.Since it’s just 15 minutes to the field, I want to charge my batteries at home. (a reasonable slow charge is 1 hour per battery or longer… times 2 batteries). If the field was 2 hours away, I wouldn’t have this issue, I could just charge in the car… but then I wouldn’t go, would I? I’ve been looking around and the best advice I can find on fast charging vs. slow charging (i.e. 3C charging (20 minutes) vs. C/10 charging (10 hours) is that “fast charging can put more of a strain on your batteries so they’ll wear out faster”. Well, if I’m in no rush, I’m happy to slow charge. But I feel uncomfortable leaving a charger pulling my car battery dry for 10 hours. One day that’ll leave my car battery dead and sulphated. I looked around for a good 12 volt power supply. I could rip one out of a computer… I hear that computer repair stores are a good cheap source. But I lucked out and found a 12 volt, 13 amp supply on eBay for $30, shipping included. That’s way better than the $30 -3- amp supply at Radio Shack. Well, it hasn’t arrived yet, so I’ll tell you how well it works when I get it.

I flew today. Well, not really. I had the Zagi up high at a distance and the prop fell off. I should have remembered that I had knocked the prop off the last time I flew on a rough landing… I had reved the engine -after- I was sliding along the ground and justifiably bumped the prop off. I had just stuck it on and flew again, but I should have fixed it with CA glue or something when I got home.

So, I coasted in, landed the Zagi and looked for the prop. No luck. I really really hate those little canals on the flying field (it’s on a sod farm)!! So I broke out the Firebird. No luck there either. Both control horn-holder-downer-thingies had broken, leaving me with no tail controls. I considered cranking it up and throwing it into the wind anyway. But refrained.