I now present Chrystie and Chris Dickens!

The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind for me. Chrystie and I had a lot going on in planning for our wedding on March 1st. All the planning paid off and we had an amazing event!

A huge thanks to our families and friends who made the trip to Seattle to celebrate the day with us. It was great to see you all in one place. My Dad mentioned something earlier that day, he said "One thing I remember about being married was how you're at this big party where you know everyone there." I think that was exactly right, it was strange to have all these people there, and to know everyone. I felt torn all night because I wanted to spend more time with them all, but I think both Chrystie and I did pretty well.

A few days after the wedding, we took off for a great honeymoon in Belize! We spent two weeks there, and one of these days I'll write up a nice long trip report. For now I'm still getting used to being back in the real world.

You can definitely check out the pictures:

Wedding: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdickens/sets/72157604034470341/
Honeymoon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdickens/sets/72157604216614958/

Then based on who everyone supports we'll select our four delegates from the people assembled here

Today I participated in the Washington State Democratic Caucuses. This was a pretty interesting experience, and the first time I've even been to a caucus. I thought it was important to go, since this is one of the few times in my life when I'll have the chance to place a meaningful vote in a presidential primary (alas, I ended up not doing so, more on that later.)

My caucus was in an elementary school a few block away so I walked over there. When I arrived I found the school gym was totally packed - and my local state congressman was up in front of the group talking about the process and answering questions for the crowd, without amplification. The first step was to find my precinct. I used to live in a very high density neighborhood, and remember my precinct being very small. It turns out even where I live now my precinct is very small - just two blocks by three blocks. I waded through the crowd to find my group of neighbors.

The way caucuses work here is you group up by precinct and indicate a candidate preference when you sign in, then they do some math to determine how many delegates from that precinct each candidate gets (these are different from the delegates to the national convention, delegates bubble up and get weeded out at intermediate stages.) Then they are required to spend 30 minutes talking about stuff to get people to consider switching, or maybe to pull in undecided voters. After that they take final tallies and pick delegates from the group.

I went into the whole thing in a strange place, because I can't figure out who to support between Clinton and Obama. I really like Obama, but like Clinton's policy proposals more, and have doubts that there is room for consensus with much of the republican party (side note: I watched both democrat and republican debates during the primary season this year, and was astounded by how different the parties are. These differences aren't mild, they're like different bedrock foundations.) I'm skeptical of Obama's claims of ushering in a new era of bipartisanship. My gut tells me that the republicans have been running the show for eight years in the direction they want to go, and things haven't gone well for them. I think the way to get bipartisanship is to start out without it - and take the country in the other direction for a while, potentially kicking and screaming, and then hopefully things will get better and more people will start to get on board. An an historical example, this is how I think of the New Deal.

Anyway, I found my precinct, and signed in as uncommitted to a candidate. After a little waiting around, they did the counts for my precinct and then announced the numbers (to be clear, this was just a group of people huddled around a school cafeteria table scratching things out on paper and using cell phones as calculators - announced may imply too high a level or organization.) There were 33 people there, 22 for Obama, 8 for Clinton, and 3 uncommitted. Our precinct gets four delegates, so that broke down to 3 for Obama and 1 for Clinton.

Then the debate started. I think we were officially supposed to have short speeches by people, but instead we had a bit of a free form debate. It's important to remember the context here: We're 33 people gathered around a cafeteria table in a gym with hundreds of other people in other similar groups, trying to have a debate amongst ourselves. I proved to be quite the contrarian during this debate, challenging most of the points other people made - whether they were for Clinton or Obama. I have plenty of ammunition for these debates, since I've been arguing back and forth with myself about these points for the last month or so.

After we talked for a while, they sent the sign in sheets around to let people change their preference. This kind of bummed me out. I was hoping we'd all go stand in our groups and let people do some good old fashioned convincing. Alas, I should know better, Seattle residents are way to passive aggressive to do that. But the thing that really bummed me out was that even in our ultra-local politics situation, with only 33 voters deciding on four delegates, me changing my vote to one of the candidates wouldn't have made a difference in the delegate count. I kind of wanted to have to take a stand and pick a candidate, but the numbers let me off the hook.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers didn't change at all between the first and second round, which meant that my little six square block area and our 33 democrats who showed up on a Saturday afternoon sent 3 delegates for Obama and 1 for Clinton to the next round, the King County local caucuses. Then they'll bubble up to the state level, and then some of those people will head to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Even if my vote didn't count (at the smallest possible scale, every 8 people represented a delegate) and I wasn't forced to make a real decision, it was pretty cool to be involved in a meaningful presidential primary. It's the first time in my life that's happened, and I may not get another chance to do so for a long time. The good news is I like both Clinton and Obama, and I'll be thrilled to support either one in the general election.

Colbert: Why do you thik the people of Texas will go for your message?

Huckabee: Because I understand BBQ

I strongly disagree with Mike Huckabee on most of his politics, but I give him serious props for his various appearances on The Colbert Report. He's repeatedly asked Colbert to be his vice precidential running mate if he gets the nomination, and this week he played air hocky with the state of Texas on the air during an interview.

It's so important that people have the ability to not take themselves seriously, and to recognize the fun parts of satire. I wouldn't vote for him, but I greatly respect that Huckabee is able to do these things.

This is something we wanted to be able to do for Storm fans and the community.

Great news today! The Seattle Storm, Seattle's professional women's basketball team, has been purchased by some Seattle locals. Last year an ownership group from Oklahoma City purchased both the Sonics and the Storm and was trying to move the teams out of Seattle to Oklahoma City. It's been looking like the there's no chance the Sonics will stay, and I had figured that this next Storm season would be the last. This sale means they should stay in Seattle for years to come.

The team was purchased by four local women, one of which is Lisa Brummel, the senior vice president in charge of Microsoft HR. Since she's technically a coworker of mine, I wrote her the following email this afternoon:

I’ve been a Storm season ticket holder for several years and was dismayed about the possibility of them leaving Seattle. I was thrilled to read today that a local group purchased them – which includes one of my Microsoft coworkers. I believe in the importance of sport as a social and learning activity for both boys and girls, as well as men and women. It’s critical that we can offer women playing at the highest level as role models and a goal for young women – otherwise I feel we’re just paying lip service to gender equality.

In addition to the social importance of women’s professional sports, the games are a much better environment than their male counterparts. Not only are they much more affordable, but there’s a good natured vibe at Storm games that I really enjoy. Basketball isn’t my favorite sport, but I have far more fun at Storm games than I do at other sporting events. I don’t have kids yet, but this sale gives me hope that when I do I’ll be able to take them to Storm games throughout their childhood.

Thanks again, and I promise to do my part to help out. I’ll remain a season ticket holder for years to come, and I’ll even offer to get my hands dirty if you need some volunteer work getting the organization up and running.

You’ve done a great thing for our community. Though you’ve done such great things for our company, I’m hardly surprised.

While it's a bummer that the Sonics look to be headed out of town, I care much more about the Storm staying, and I've very happy with this result. There's some fun timing here too: tomorrow is my scheduled appointment to go down to Key Arena and pick out my seats for the 2008 season. It should be a fun day to interact with the Storm organization!

Labels: Personal

Do you know what this is? It's a do what ever I want and get away with it badge!

Over the holidays I watched a pair of fluffy summer popcorn movies, Transformers and Spider-Man 3. My general reaction to each of them was pretty much the same, though for different reasons. I thought they were both pretty blah. They share the big reasons for that, a weak script and plot. Without a good script, plot or characters, it's hard to really get into a movie - no matter how flashy or fun it is. Even pure comedies at least need characters you can empathize with a bit.

I suppose there's some empathy for the characters in Spider-Man, but it gets ruined by the poor dialog and the giant goofy section in the middle - where we stop caring for them. In Transformers, true to Michael Bay fashion, they didn't even try. It was just a joyride from the start.

The Transformers did have one aspect that was very interesting; the effects were amazing. There were these giant talking robots interacting with people, and the whole time it just worked. Computer graphics have come a very long way. I remember when I saw Jurassic Park being struck by how real the dinosaurs looked, but you knew they were still fake, they looked both real and fake at the same time. We're past that now, things just look like they're actually there. It's a wonderful power to put in the hands of creative filmmakers. I love science fiction and fantasy, and to give filmmakers the ability put realistic looking visuals to the amazing things they can dream up is pretty cool.

Of course, sometimes they don't pair all that coolness with an intersting story, and then it's just an exercise is imaging cool things, instead of doing what great sci-fi and fantasy do: explore personal stories outside the constraints of our realistic world.

Labels: Movie

Universal health care can be the cornerstone of a new New Deal.

I recently finished The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman. Krugman, a Princeton economics professor, is also a columnist for the New York Times. He's long been my favorite columnist, and I greatly enjoyed his book a few years ago: The Great Unraveling, which wasn't a traditional book but a collection of his columns. Krugman has a great ability to break down complex economic problems in 800 words or less and I always find his columns interesting. He rarely does purely political bits, the focus of a column is usually economic in nature (health care, China, and the sub prime mess have been popular recently) and there's a heavy dose of politics mixed in.

I really enjoyed The Conscience of a Liberal, but found it wasn't as tight as his columns. It just seemed to wander a little. Of course, there was a whole lot of content in it. The main take-away's that I remember:

1. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the big change that swung a lot of national power to the Republicans over the last 20 years was rooted in race, and the key was Southern Whites switching to the republican party.
2. We're currently in a period of out of control economic stratification, which is reminiscent of the gilded age at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries.
3. The strong middle class, created in the 40's, 50's and 60's and disintegrating now, was created mainly through government and social involvement in the economy and with increased involvement now we could regain a strong middle class.
4. Universal health care is something we have to do, and should be a cornerstone of a new liberal movement that begins with the 2008 election.

Since he's mostly preaching to the choir with me, it's hard for me to judge how well he supports his points. I read it with a critical eye, but I'm pretty sure if I was theologically opposed to his views there wouldn't be enough supporting evidence to sway me. Of course, I chose the term theologically on purpose. I feel like our political climate is more and more about people believing in a certain system and structure of beliefs, and that's just how it is. It's clear to me that republicans and democrats just think about the world differently, and it's hard to find any middle ground.

Krugman recently wrote a column about this too. I guess if you start with the assumption that a whole bunch of people will never be open to your ideas then you can write to the people on your side of the fence and maybe a few of the undecided's in the middle and call that good enough. So I guess the verdict is if you thought those four take-away's are clearly totally ridiculous and only an inept socialist living in fantasy land could think they're true than this book isn't for you. But if you just read them and think that they don't seem right but could be plausible, then you should give this a read and see what you think.

If you're unsure, then go read his columns to get a feel for his style. The book is very similar.

Labels: Book

Do you know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. Somewhere warm with no memory.

My friend Guy just posted his year in cities, which he stole from Justin Kottke. I thought it was a good idea so I'm passing it on. The idea is you can use the cities you visited in a year as a recap of that year. Here's my list, in order of first visit:

Seattle, WA*
Spokane, WA*
Priest River, ID*
Eugene, OR*
Bakersfield, CA
Cashmere, WA*
Carthage, MO
Virginia Beach, VA
San Francisco, CA
Burlingame, CA
San Luis Obispo, CA
Poipu, HI
Carlsbad, CA

I spend at least one night in each city, and cities with an asterisk were visited multiple times (multiple nights on one trip don't count.)

The biggest thing that stands out for me is I went a lot of places, but I didn't leave the country. I'm looking forward to travelling overseas in 2008 (Belize in March) and hope that I get a chance to use my passport at least once a year in the future.

Labels: Personal

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