Finally, it’s Election Day. Soon, I’ll be able to stop tossing the hit pieces from the various candidates into the recycling bin and get on with the usual work of the season: tossing holiday catalogs from various companies into the recycling bin.

Vote early, vote often, vote Gore!

Diane and I just voted — the precinct is very conveniently located at Jeffrey’s school, so we usually vote at 8:30am, right after walking him over to school. This morning, there was a longer line to vote than I’ve ever seen, and the election worker who signed me in said that it was a very heavy turnout so far. I’m always surprised that I’m not asked to show ID to vote, just to sign, though the people working the precinct here have been doing it for years and years and know most of the people in the neighborhood by sight if not necessarily by name.

The house directly across the street from the school has an enormous Bush sign in its yard; I wonder how far from the actual polling place electioneering is prohibited? The answer: Any “electioneering” must be conducted from a minimum of 100 feet from the place where people are voting. (EC &167;18370), as quoted on the California Secretary of State’s website. I’m pretty sure that this sign is at least that far away, since it’s on the house, not at the front of the yard, and all the way across the street — my GPS isn’t accurate enough to measure it that precisely, I’m afraid.

How the hell am I supposed to decide?

I got a note yesterday from “Paid Prescriptions, LLC,” the manager of my prescription drug benefit program, telling me that they’d suggested to my doctor that I be switched from Nasarel to Nasacort, a “preferred medication”, and that he had agreed to the switch. They also mention that “Your decision to change to the preferred medication is voluntary and does not determine benefit coverage.”

How am I supposed to know whether to accept this change or not? If the doctor had prescribed Nasacort in the first place, I would’ve been just as happy as I am with Nasarel, I’m sure, but now I have to wonder if the substitution is really a good idea or not.

Al?
James? Any comments? (Not necessarily on this particular substitution, but on the general case.)

The Wireless Web loses the election

We went out for dinner tonight, and naturally we were all interested in what election news was available. So I used my Sprint phone to check the CNN.com “Wireless Web” site and was horribly disappointed — the news was old and hard to read; in fact, they didn’t even bother to give a total electoral vote number in the stories they ran. The New York Times’ site was worse — it still had the morning’s stories. So much for modern technology. I’m glad to be back home with a connection to the real Web, though I’m not happy with some of the news I’m reading (especially Florida).

We seem to have a political junkie in the house

Jeffrey is having another sleepless night — he’s been watching TV all night (as have we all), and just came out of his room to tell us to let him know if they announce who’s going to become President.

I’m afraid he, and all of us, are going to be waiting a long time. I just hope the result isn’t what I’m afraid it’s going to be, with another Bush league presidency looming.

The people have spoken

Or at least the media has decided that the people have spoken. We survived Reagan. We survived Bush the first. We should be able to survive Bush the second. I hope.

Pete and Debbie’s plane finally arrived at SFO at about 7:15 last night, more than three hours late, and by the time we got home (after stopping to feed them — since the flight was only supposed to be two hours long, there was no food on board other than pretzels and “nutritional bars”), it was quite late.

We’re supposed to be on vacation this week, but since Jeffrey’s in school, we can’t go very far. Today, we took a nice walk after breakfast; then, since it was lunchtime, we walked to lunch — the same walk, as it happens, since that’s where the closest restaurants are. Oh, well, I needed the exercise!

After that, I had a conference call I couldn’t avoid (I’d suggested scheduling it for today before realizing I was “on vacation”), and then we visited the Saab dealer to get our new, slightly smaller keys, and then Fry’s to return my failed X-10 ActiveHome controller. Returning things to Fry’s is always an experience — this one only cost me an hour or so. And they didn’t have any more ActiveHome controllers (they had a huge stack a week ago; maybe they were all bad?), so I’ll have to find one elsewhere later on.

This is definitely not a high-pressure vacation so far.

How do you read a ruler?

I got an odd e-mail from my mother yesterday. One of our cousins is a teacher in Richmond, and she asked Mom if I could find anything on teaching the kind of “rulers” I used to use in school. I guessed that what was meant was slide rules, and I sent off a pointer to Sphere Research’s Slide Rule Universe, which has more than you need to know about slide rules — and even a 43-page brochure from Pickett on teaching the slide rule.

This morning, I got a reply from my cousin — she didn’t mean slide rules — she meant rulers. Plain old regular rulers. Apparently some of her 10th grade students can’t read them, and it’s not covered in high school curricula.

I did a search, with limited success; I don’t know if it’ll help her or not (I did find a $149 instructional videotape on the subject, as well as some porn — I doubt either of these will be useful), but we’ll see.