Bush on Thursday defended the decision of his EPA administrator.

"Is it more effective to let each state make a decision as to how to proceed in curbing greenhouse gases? Or is it more effective to have a national strategy?" he said.

Schwarzenegger: California will sue federal government, CNN

I'll grant that "size of government" is something you can classify as partisan issue. However, I'm not so swayed by the popular notion that Republicans are for "states' rights" while Democrats seek to strengthen the power of the federal government. Appeals to federalism are generally politically pragmatic.

That has a lot more to do with the fact that the Democrats held the entire Congress from 1957-1981 (not to mention most state legislature seats). No surprise that "states' rights" became a GOP/Dixiecrat rallying cry (say, for example, during the civil rights movement).

Legislators are most concerned about getting their hands on levers, and once they do, they don't much care if they're federal levers (if so, all the better). So if Bush says that California can't impose its own emissions requirements, I say, "hey, states' rights, buddy."

My tonsils (particularly my left one) had been giving me problems for a long while now. I had seen the doctor when it started (who assumed it would go away in time), but the annoyance never really seemed to go down. So, last time I was in Wisconsin, I stopped by to see the ENT. Given the length of time that they were giving me problems, he just said "let's take 'em out."

Tonsillectomies are performed most often in children, though they're not as common as they used to be. They're also easier and less painful in children. For adults, the tonsils are larger and are likely already quite scarred.

The most likely complication is heavy bleeding, so the doctor requested I not fly for 12-14 days after the surgery. As a result, I came home for Christmas a week early — I'll be taking it easy, playing video games, watching movies, and doing a small amount of work (since I'm on painkillers, I can't legally drive a car, but I can write code that runs on millions of people's computers — I suppose it's significantly harder to kill people with JavaScript).

The surgery was yesterday. After the initial tonsillectomy, I woke up in the recovery area. I apparently was still bleeding a lot and ended up swallowing a lot of blood, as I began to feel nauseous. The nurse came in and asked "Are you feeling nauseated?" I responded by vomiting the contents of my stomach into the emesis basin, mostly bright red blood and a clot or two (surprisingly, it didn't phase me much. Seeing my blood is less disturbing than seeing others').

Since the blood was so fresh, it must have been from a fresh bleed, so the ENT was called back. He used suction to remove the clot and tried to stop the bleeding with silver nitrate, but it was insufficient. So the anesthesiologist was called over to put me back under, and I was wheeled back to the operating room, where they did more cauterization and put in some stitches.

The first surgery started at 12:30 in the afternoon. I had gotten to the hospital at 11 or so. I finally was rolled out in a wheelchair (they wouldn't let me walk) at 8:30 at night.

Today, I'm finally able to eat things like pudding and cottage cheese, which is great, as there was about at 36 hour period in which I ate nothing but popsicles and Sierra Mist (non-diet, for the calories). I've actually been able to put some work in today.

This will probably be my least calorie-dense Christmas ever.

For all of you that are concerned, don't be. As you all know, I'm a tough guy.

Remember, nothin' says lovin' like bakin' in the oven.

Somewhere along the line, I figured out that 5551234567@vtext.com would send an SMS message to a Verizon cell phone at 555-123-4567 (which, obviously, is not my number).

Anyway, a month or two ago, when staring at a console window waiting for a compilation, I remembered this fact, and wrote a little script called sms that looked like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo $1 | mail 5551234567@vtext.com

I also wrote two other scripts named smsdone and smserror that would send the strings "done" and "error" (sms "done" and sms "error").

Then, when need to do a compilation, I string together whatever commands I need to run and form a boolean expression that will call either smsdone or smserror:

([[[cmd1] && cmd2] && ... ] && smsdone) || smserror

Then I walk to the kitchen, go on a walk, or swordfight on office chairs until I get a text message to come back.

(thanks, Gabe and Max)

Call it egoism, but I like to think I'm pretty good at making software.

So, oftentimes, when using various software, I think to myself "You know, I could make something better than this." Or at least something that better serves my needs.

And most of the time, this is true.

The problem is, I don't have time to make something better. Nathan is a finite resource, and I've found that, when I get home from a long day of programming, I find I don't want to do, well, more programming.

So here I am, back on Blogger. Sorry for the hassle.