This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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February 2008
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One more Thought…

And then really it will be it. Last night I saw some analysis (I forget where so can’t link to it, sorry) where someone had basically done the math based on a range of likely outcomes on the Democratic side and determined that absent a complete switch to one candidate or the other having an absolutely commanding advantage in every contest from here on out (or one of them drops out), we will end up with a situation where in the end at the convention the winner *will* be determined by how the superdelegates line up. Neither candidate will have enough delegates from primaries and caucuses to win. So it will be all about how the superdelegates end up breaking. So far Hillary has a big advantage amoungst superdelegates. But superdelegates are people and will be subject to lobbying and changing their minds up until the actual moment of the first vote at the convention.

And that could be fun.

Oh yeah, the R’s

Just realized I completely forgot the Republicans. Romney might get enough delegates to keep this going a bit longer (especially if he wins California), but I think McCain will win big enough that the race will essentially be over. The question will just be if Romney wants to fight on a few more weeks in the hopes that there will be a massive last minute swing in his direction. And that’s all for that.

Lunch Predictions for Super Tuesday

I got a cheesesteak and some chips, so another quick thing while I eat, and then back to trying to figure out some fun work things that I need to have done for tomorrow.

Anyway, I thought I would give some final thoughts on Super Tuesday before the polls actually close. (Except for Americans in Indonesia for whom the results are already in – 75% Obama, 25% Clinton.)

Of course, I gave most of my thought’s in this weekend’s podcast, but I thought it would be good to do it in writing. And then I realized I already had… in an email to someone earlier today. So rather than writing it again, here is what I wrote about 12 hours ago:

Subject: Re: SPF20080130: Edwards Out….
Date: 2008 Feb 5 09:44 UTC
To: (Name withheld)

… (other stuff) …

As for Super Tuesday (today!!!) I’m standing by what I said in this weekend’s podcast. Obama has been surging, but I don’t think he has had enough time to pull out enough clean wins that he will actually be ahead in delegates once today’s results are counted. (Especially since some of the states, most importantly California, have been voting by mail for weeks.) If he had another week, I think he would win in a lot more states and pull ahead in delegates. But while he has had a big surge, I’m not sure he’ll quite get there. The latest polls as of right now don’t show that. Hillary is still ahead in too many places, and comes into it with a delegate lead (when superdelegates are included). Of course, polls lag reality by a few days. So maybe with a last spurt of momentum over the weekend he could get there. We shall see. I can’t say I wouldn’t be pleased if that happened.

But I think more likely Obama will still be behind in delegates, but he will have closed the gap considerably in percentage terms, and the big question will be just how close he got and how it gets spun by the people reporting the event. Will it be: A) So close, nice try, but no cigar, Hillary wins! Woo! Obama’s done! or B) Obama closes the gap, his momentum is huge, Hillary may be ahead on delegates, but Obama’s momentum is unstoppable or C) Wow, we have a complete dead heat in the delegate count! For all intents and purposes it is a brand new race, now lets watch Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State on Saturday and see what happens then… and then Maine on Sunday… and Maryland and Virginia next Tuesday…

A, B and C above are all different ways to spin the exact same delegate count coming out of today. But which way of talking about it becomes what people pay attention to will make all the difference in terms of what comes next.

Having said all that, I think what happens in California will be a big part of determining that. In pure delegate terms, it is almost certainly going to essentially be a tie. One of them will get a little more than the other, but it will be close. But whoever “wins” will get all sorts of attention from it. Especially if it is Obama. If Hillary wins, she was expected to. If Obama wins, it will all be about the come from behind victory, etc. The latest polls are all over the place on this one. If you average them together you basically get a dead heat. So who the hell knows.

As of right now on the states with polls it looks like:

Obama: Illinois, Georgia, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah

Toss Ups: Alabama, Connecticut, Arizona, Missouri, California, Massachusetts

Clinton: Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma

(And then there are about 5 states with no polls at all, who the hell knows in those… but they are also smaller and matter less.)

I base the categories on it being a toss up if both candidates have some polls from the last week showing them ahead. If all the polls in the last week are for one candidate, I’m putting the state down for them, even if the trend is against them and the most recent poll shows them barely ahead (this is the case in New Jersey for instance).

In any case… with so many toss up states… and even the possibility for an upset or two in the “safe” states… it will be a very interesting night… I’m going to be trying to get out of my last meeting for the day so I can be home and in front of election coverage by the time the first state results start coming in at 00:00 UTC (4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern). And I will be pissed as hell if I can’t manage to be home by an hour later when a whole BUNCH of states start coming in.

Because things are proportional though, even if we get state “winners” early… it may be a bit later until we get good delegate counts. And if some of these states are close… especially California… it may be a long night.

And I’ll be enjoying every second of it. :-)

And for those of you who work with me who may read this, my last meeting turned out to be a duplicate of one tomorrow, so I’m just going to go to that one instead, so I won’t miss anything significant and I’ll make up any lost productivity on Wednesday and Thursday. :-)

OK, I’m also done eating now, so back to what I need to get done before I can leave… :-)

Lunch Songs

Just a quick comment while I’m doing the lunch thing. Well, when I would be doing the lunch thing. I went down to the cafeteria and the line was long, so I went back upstairs to my office and am waiting a couple of minutes before trying again. If the line is still long, I’ll just get some chips or something.

Anyway, everybody has been going crazy about the new Obama Yes We Can video. I’m sorry, I think it sucks. Not that it will hurt him in any way mind you, just that it sucks as a song. It isn’t catchy. I don’t want to hum or sing along to it. It is fairly tuneless. And slow. Bleh. Whatever. Just does nothing for me. I’ve still actually never made it all the way to the end, I get tired of it what before that.

The original Obama Girl song was much better. Catchier, sticks in your head if you want it to or not, etc. And just funny. And of course completely not supported by the campaign, etc. :-)

SuperDuper!

No, not politics, for at least a moment. But the new version of SuperDuper! came out today. This is the program that I always used to back up my Mac before Leopard came out. The old version was not compatible with Leopard. This one is, and adds some new features.

I have actually been without regular backups for almost a month now. I cloned my drive once but with that bad directory both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner were choking on doing a regular backup, and SuperDuper! wasn’t Leopard compatible.

Even though I fixed that one directory, I had been waiting for 10.5.2 to come out to hopefully fix more TimeMachine issues before trying TimeMachine again. Especially since I only have one external drive, so to start up Time Machine again I’d have to delete the existing backup, leaving me for a bit with no backup. I do have a much older (pre-Leopard) backup stored on Amy’s computer. With some juggling I could delete that OLD backup, then move the more recent (But still old) backup to Amy’s machine, then restart regular backups.

Sounds like a potential plan, it will just be a bit of a pain.

I could also get a second external drive… I’ve been wanting to do that for awhile anyway. That would make the juggling a lot easier, and I could potentially once a week swap out which external drive is at home and keep the other one elsewhere, giving me off site backup, which would also be good.

I wish 10.5.2 would hurry up and come out. I think between doing SuperDuper! style backups and doing Time Machine style backups, I’m leaning toward Time Machine, but I kinda want to wait for 10.5.2 to try it again.