No Internet

By the way, our Internet connection stopped working at 01:58 UTC on Saturday. Since then I've been leeching off a neighbor's unsecured wireless. Trust they don't mind and that's why they have it unsecured. :-) Brandy got off the phone a little while ago with our DSL provider. They think our DSL modem is fried and they are sending us a new one. Hopefully that will get everything up and happy again.

But, in case anyone has been wondering (yeah right!) that's why the AbulCam has not been fully functional this weekend.

But it makes me glad that I moved AbulWiki to paid hosting a while back. That is currently the part of my site that gets the most traffic (by far) and if it had still been hosted on my iMac, it would be completely offline. Of course, the additional traffic it has been getting over the last month probably would have made my iMac unusable too, but that is another story.

New Sitemeter

Sucks. Can I have the old one back?

Edit 22:18 UTC: Apparently I can. Pretty much everybody thinks it sucks, and they are rolling it back. Good. Not like the old system was awesome, but it was useful. The new one was unusable.

Electoral College: New Hampshire Flips to McCain... ELECTORAL COLLEGE TIE!

There are bigger states that change today, and they are probably ACTUALLY more important to the state of this race than a swing state moving from one side of the line to the other... either way it is still a swing state and REALLY too close to call... but, I have to put this one on top. New Hampshire flips today from "Lean Obama" to "Lean McCain". Which means that if each candidate gets all of the states where they are even slightly ahead, the result would be 269 electoral votes for McCain, and 269 electoral votes for Obama. Which would throw the election into the House of Representatives.

At the moment fivethirtyeight.com puts the odds of this actually being the result of the election at 1.09%. That is not a very big chance, but still. Thinking about that possibility gets any political junkies very very excited. And for the first time this election season, the model on this site actually shows it as the "current" situation. So, I admit, I squealed with excitement when I saw it.

Anyway, calming down a bit, there are two states with more electoral votes that actually move from being swing states to NOT being swing states today, which is arguably more significant to gauging the actual current state of the race.

For once, there is actually mixed news here, with some good for both McCain and Obama. McCain's good news comes in a bigger state, but given there has been no good news for Obama since before the conventions, the news there is significant too.

Florida (27 ev): McCain's lead in Florida has now gone over 5%, moving the state out of the swing state category and to "Weak McCain". Obama has never actually showed a lead in Florida, but at times he had been keeping it very close. No more.

New Mexico (5 ev): Just a few days ago new polls had shown McCain eating into Obama's lead in New Mexico and had pushed that lead to less than 5%. Today new polling moves the five poll average back above a 5% Obama lead, moving New Mexico back out of swing state territory into "Weak Obama" territory.

New Summary:

McCain Best Case - McCain 319, Obama 219
Obama Best Case - Obama 328, McCain 210

If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) - 269/269 ELECTORAL COLLEGE TIE

Again, I must just say "wow" at how close this looks at this moment.

Another thing to note is that our inventory of swing states is shrinking. We now have only 10 swing states, accounting for 106 electoral votes. Given that neither candidate (at the moment) is even close to being able to win without swing states, those swing states, all essentially too close to call at the moment, WILL make the difference in this election.

Right now, the swing states are: Pennsylvania (21 ev), Ohio (20 ev), Michigan (17 ev), Virginia (13 ev), Indiana (11 ev), Colorado (9 ev), Nevada (5 ev), New Hampshire (4 ev), Montana (3 ev), North Dakota (3 ev).

If you live in one of those states. Pay close attention to this race. Your vote will matter.

Moo! Moo!!

Ah yes, she puts the same effort into picking staff as McCain put into picking her. Excellent.

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell, New York Times, 13 Sep 2008

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.