No politics. No rhetoric. No sound bites. Just deep and solemn gratitude.

(Image above courtesy of Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen project.)

Despite feeling like shit and sleeping most of the day, I got my sorry ass out of bed, took a shower and went to vote. (Compared to what folks went through to even allow us the right to vote, it was the least I could do.) All the usual suspects were out and about, including some friends. Usually I’m among the faithful around city hall but with a growing family and a tight schedule I ended up sitting this one out mostly.

For (central) Texas election returns, check out the News 8 Austin election returns center.

Congrats to Michelle for making her way on to the Kyle City Council. She’s fought long and hard to make her way there and it’s a win not just for her, but for the council and for the city as a whole. We’ve come a very long way in a very short time and it’s nice to see the council grow to include some very smart and dedicated individuals.

So check it. Friend from out in DC is part of the 48 Hour Film Project. The YouTube video above (Leon!) is part of that project and it’s really, really good. (For an in-house project I’m floored by the production values - the audio tracks and the slicing and dicing…certainly edited on a Mac, right?). And, yes, the acting is also very good. The most interesting aspect of this is the requirements that had to be met in making the short. Pretty odd - the requirements were:

Note, we had to make a musical, and we had to include the following elements: a character named Roosevelt Adams who was the president of something; a bracelet; and the line of dialogue, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

The 48 Hour Film Project looks really neat and just a few clicks away and you’ll see that it’s coming to Austin. Kick ass!

Motorists would not pay the 20-cent state tax on each gallon of gas for three months — perhaps this summer — under legislation that was tentatively approved by the Texas House on Tuesday.

During debate on Senate Bill 1886, a rather mundane proposal tweaking how the state collects gas taxes and monitors gas-tax fraud, House members voted 118-16 to tack on language suspending the gas tax for three months.

Statesman

Given all the things that our legislators here in Austin could be doing they have to focus time on trying to give us a tax break on Gas? Let’s do some quick math here.

Say I have a 15 gallon tank and that I fill the tank up at least once a week. Say average 4 weeks in a month (and they say they will do this for 3 months). So that’s ((15 x .20) x 4) x 3 = 36 - (i’m an english major so i could be wrong, but…heh) - so $36 bucks - wow. Of course that’d be more for the people who drive gas-guzzlers…who can afford the car payment and high gas…wait a minute…wtf? So the logic is to give it back and take money away from building roads and paying for education.

Honestly, don’t piss us off with a few dollars here or there. The purposes of taxes is to do something good for the collective. Don’t “give it back” - do something with it - and certainly don’t take away from roads (which you have royally fucked up already in Austin) and don’t take away from education (only a 69% graduation rate from high school). At the very least put the money back in CHIP or something. And if you want to give something back how about really getting rid of property taxes or finding some other fiscally responsible but permanent way to cut taxes. This 3 month gas tax break is such a tease.

Update: Related to my state senator (Jeff Wentworth) my position on the matter. Hopefully this thing will get dropped in conference…weeeee.

Found via the Burnt Orange Report. Yessir, that’s *my* congressman - representin!

However, as I’ve blogged before, the best answer for the juggle is having the commitment to your family to step back on your career expectations while your children are young. Having a shaky marriage is detrimental to your children, your own well-being, and to your job. We can have it all-just not all at the same time. You can’t give 100% to your job, your children, and your spouse all at the same time.

The Juggle

Thanks to Shabbir’s post on this item as I think it brings up a good point about parenting. I think, even given the struggles that Magda and I have, that we are somewhat in a bubble when it comes to dealing with issues with parenting and childcare. Partially, this is due to the flexibility that we are able to maintain with our work schedules thanks to those above us who are very respective of times when we need to take care of family issues. There’s a lot to be said for working in an industry where you have some flexibility with the work that you do. It’s our curse to be working late nights but it can also be a blessing. We have some friends who work on a tighter 9-5 schedule and I just don’t know how they can get things done.

Regarding the idea that you have to step back on your career - I think that’s true but to a point. Lord knows my dreams are bigger than the allotted time given so I simply have to make choices about where I can get the greatest bang for my buck (time). This has been the biggest adjustment that I’ve had to make personally and I’m still not very good at it but I’m getting better (damn my feed reading habits!). I don’t think you necessarily have to put your career on hold, you just need to find alternative strategies to keep things moving forward without killing yourself in the process. I realize that with Seth now (and then there were two!) that this ideal must manifest itself in a more aggressive manner. Discipline and structure will necessarily have to rule the day.

If anything suffers it might be your friendships - which is another reason why the work that I do is so great. A lot of my friends are web-enabled (hell, they’re web warriors!) so things social networks keep me in the loop even if I don’t have a chance to visit with them as often as I’d like. Maybe I can’t make it to an Austin On Rails, Wordpress Austin or Refresh Austin meeting but I can be on their lists and get tweets from some of the brilliant folks who are part of those groups. This helps immensely in periods where I may need to lay low for a while when family issues arise and need the entirety of my attention. At the very least I can stay on the periphery and not be totally out of the loop. And I can even let other folks know what’s up in my life (read: crazy busy).

My mother raised an only child, had three jobs (in my early years) to keep things going, helped put me through college, was an involved parent and had pretty good success (if i do say so myself) despite doing most of that on her own (just the two of us) and with numerous challenges spread before her. So yeah, being a parent is tough, but relatively speaking we we are blessed with wonderful circumstances and opportunity still. I’m not daunted.

Get the full report here (pdf). If you read the full report it’s interesting to note the run down of numbers over time. You can see the tide changing regarding support for the war. Have we reached the tipping point?

Well, the waiting is finally over - we can talk about what we’ve been working on all this time. Today, a completely redesigned version of Google Analytics is launching, bringing a lot of the simplicity and data visualization techniques we learned building Measure Map to a whole new scale.

Jeffrey Veen

Kottke breaks the story. I just started utilizing google analytics for WA to get more familiar with things and don’t have the redesigned viz stuff yet but am interested to see the results. There’s a comprehensive (read: very thorough) overview on Kaushik’s site as well. More interesting to me though is what Veen had to say about what he’s doing now:

On a personal note, I’ve got a much different job now that the design work on Analytics has wrapped up. I now lead a team of over 30 designers and researchers responsible for the user experience of Google’s web applications. We’re working on Gmail, Calendar, the Office-like tools, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa, Talk and a bunch more. And that means I get to dig into some of what I consider the Web’s most interesting challenges and work with some of the smartest people in the industry.

Given how good the overview looks for the new analytics I can’t wait to see what they do with the other stuff.

“The primary message coming out of the November election was that the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock, and they want both the president and Congress to start governing the country,” warned Leon E. Panetta, a chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House. “It just seems to me the Democrats, if they fail for whatever reason to get a domestic agenda enacted … will pay a price.”

TPMCafe

What complete and utter bullshit (let me tell you how I really feel). The point of getting the Dems in congress was to reduce corruption (we know both parties have that stink, don’t we?) and to provide better (hell, any) oversight and, yes, fight the administration and Republican party on Iraq. This is not to diminish the need for a strong domestic agenda but right now Iraq is what needs attention and fixing - not tomorrow, not next week, not two months from now — it needs it now.

Jim Dean, head of Democracy for America and brother of Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, said he understands the reluctance of Pelosi to lead Congress into impeachment proceedings during her first 100 days in office. “We took control of Congress because people are fed up and want us to get things done,” he observed, adding that impeachment proceedings would bog down Congress.

But he noted, “Just letting these guys off is setting a bad precedent.” Asked about the prospect of impeachment, he observed, “I think it’s more on the table than people think.”

Raw Story

This has been my biggest gripe regarding the Dem leadership when they took control of congress. Impeachment should never be off the table - their duty on this matter is declared specifically in the constitution and they must uphold the law. It’s been good to see us getting closer to legislation that makes a real and definite change regarding the war in Iraq, holding the President accountable and such - but will somebody please grow a pair and stand up to these people?

Well…there’s always Kucinich.