Last Friday, December 11, 2009, 27 years to the day after I was born, our son decided that it was time to come out and see the world. His name is Peter Sidney Cooper, III. He was born at 12:46 A.M., weighed in at 7 lbs. 8.1 oz. (3405 g), and was 20½ in. in length.
Of course, everyone really just wants to see pictures:
Peter, Mommy, Daddy, and big sister Hannah are all doing well, though Mommy and Daddy are rather tired.
The more I look into it, the less happy I am with really any of the candidates. I’m questioning my support of Brown over Robinson. But either of them would be better than the others. It’d be nice to have someone who I agreed with everything on, but then again, the only way I’d get that would be if I ran myself (which I won’t do). So, I need to figure out which principles I’m willing to compromise to try to get someone in office who I at least agree with somewhat.
*sigh*
My wife and I last night finally looked into the candidates for the upcoming special U.S. Senate election. Our choice is Scott Brown. While we wish he were even more conservative, perhaps that means that he’s actually electable in this state. Perhaps thinking that someone even somewhat conservative is electable in this state is too much to hope for. My dad says that he was impressed when meeting him while working with the Chernisky campaign, which is an endorsement that means a lot to me.
For those who see when I mentioned it on Twitter, I made the front page of this week’s Charlton Villager (9.1 MB PDF) due to voting at last month’s Town Meeting.
Basically, the Moderator generally only votes if his vote would change the outcome. (Since if it wouldn’t change the outcome, there’s no point in making an appearance of being non-neutral on a vote, since the Moderator should moderate impartially.) But, the Moderator is a registered voter just like everyone else, with just as much of a say.
In this case, since the motion required a ⅔ vote to pass (meaning the number of Yes votes must be at least two times the number of No votes), and it would have been 85-42 without my vote (and would have passed), I voted No, making it 85-43 and thus not passing. Now, it failed because 43 voters in the room voted No, not just because I voted No. Any person changing their vote could have swayed it in either direction. But because I’m in the front of the room, it becomes news that I voted.
I’ve been spending a good chunk of my non-work time this month preparing for moderating the Special Town Meeting coming up in Charlton on Tuesday. There are several million dollars worth of spending up for voting, as well as different town boards that may want to amend each other’s motions, plus the possibility of a secret ballot vote. All sorts of excitement, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
On the minus side, I think that tonight is the only weeknight this week that I’ll get to spend some nontrivial time with my family. But, town meetings don’t happen that often, so they’re pretty understanding.
This week’s Charlton Villager (8.5 MB PDF) features pictures of Hannah, Jessi, and me at Charlton History Day on page 8.
(Server name/IP redacted due to being from work)
Pinging XXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXX.XXX [192.168.X.XX] with 32 bytes of data:Reply from 192.168.X.XX: bytes=32 time=-14ms TTL=127
Reply from 192.168.X.XX: bytes=32 time=-14ms TTL=127
Reply from 192.168.X.XX: bytes=32 time=-14ms TTL=127
Reply from 192.168.X.XX: bytes=32 time=-18ms TTL=127Ping statistics for 192.168.X.XX:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = -18ms, Maximum = -14ms, Average = 1073741809ms
And yes, the responses did, in fact, show up very fast.
What do you think about secret ballots?
(I’m intentionally making the question rather open-ended, although the inspiration for it is somewhat specific.)
There was a very amusing column in the Opinion section of today’s Southbridge Evening News, reprinted on the author’s blog. It very much describes what it feels like to live in this part of the state sometimes.