Happy birthday!

To the incomparable filbo

Not quite the decisions I was hoping for

After the dust settled, here's what we have:
DOMA
Same-sex couples who are married and continue to live in states in which their marriage is legal will get the same Federal benefits as different-sex married couples.

The way I, not a lawyer,  read the decision, if a gay couple gets married in Washington State where it is legal, and either lives in or moves to Oregon, where it is not, they will not be treated by the Feds as married. Oregon has a state income tax, which probably won't treat them as married either. I know nothing about Oregon's tax laws, so I may be completely off base on that.

Prop 8
The case was dismissed because the groups which filed it did not have a legal right to do so. The Supes in both CA and DC said so. This does not mean someone else who has been harmed by the repeal, such as a man whose wife leaves him to marry a woman, can't file another case. It also does not mean a constitutional amendment can't be put in place to define marriage as 1 man 1 woman. The latter is far-fetched in today's Democrat-controlled state legislature, but that demographic is a recent occurrence, and could change. It also doesn't prevent a similar proposition from being voted in again, which will put us back at square one.

But Moonbeam Brown has done the right thing, and ordered every county records department in the state to start issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples.

Personally, I don't think the government has any place in the marriage scam industry, and I, along with all single taxpayers, definitely am being discriminated against by married couples getting a tax break. I hear Obama has ordered a search through the US Code for all marriage-related laws so as to better enforce the change in DOMA. No reason not to just abolish them all once he has identified them.

A No-news day

Woke up to KOMO news at 7 am, which is 10 am DC time, which is when Supreme Court decisions are usually handed down. DOMA came first. As usual, they mis-reported it as being struck down when they really left it mostly intact, except for the handful of states where gay marriage is legal.

Switched to DC's WNEW news station for more educated commentary, and waited for the Prop 8 decisions. Again, mis-reporting that it was struck down when what they really did was refuse to hear the case on a technicality. Switched to the local news, got educated California commentary which explained that (a) Supreme Court decisions don't take effect until 25 days after and (b) there is still a stay in effect against overturning Prop 8 which won't be lifted until those 25 days are over, and maybe not then. In the good news side, Gov. Brown has told all the county clerks to start printing up new marriage license forms.

And last night's brave stand by Texas  Sens. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, backed by a packed peanut gallery, has to do it all again because the Putzoner has called a special session.

So that's how my day started.

Tried again and failed again to connect to the company VPN, but started early enough to not be late for work.

 Took on a particularly challenging bug fix verification because I own the feature it is about. I needed to borrow a pair of machines with a particular setup, and the engineer who loaned them to me last time let me use them during my lunchtime. But they were not the same pair, and didn't work. He fixed that, and then fixed some files which delayed testing again, so what should have been a 20-minute test took 2.5 hours. But no worries, late "lunch" at Starbucks, complete with much eye candy. Not much left to do back at work, but the day was almost over.

Called the car audio place and made an appointment for Saturday morning to have the backup cam re-attached directly to the in-dash unit now that the firmware has been upgraded.

Called the nails place and made an appointment for tomorrow lunchtime.

Straight home, thinking of going out later, but the patio and Kindle beckoned, and the new flower pots needed watering.

Online, ordered 10 packets of Domino's favorite dental treats from Petco. Half the price of Amazon.

Frozen spaghetti & meatball low-cal dinner, bananas & whipped cream w/cinnamon and nutmeg for dessert.

Watched an episode of Restaurant Stake Out.  Scheduled Tivo to record the next Crossing Lines because three diverse friends have posted good things.

Fired up the VPN again, and when it failed I phoned Motorola support, since we are still on their network even after a year of being owned by Google and then sold to Arris. Turns out they have switched to a very new and vastly improved product from Juniper called Pulse which the support guy installed for me via remote desktop. Impressed at how efficient he was.

Email from Petco, confirming my order, but ship-to was my last year's address. Went to their page, fired up chat, the supportless person said there was nothing she could do because the order had been processed. I pointed out it won't actually ship until tomorrow. She suggested I have UPS hold it for me. I suggested I can stop payment on the order. She didn't reply to that after 3 minutes, so I ended to chat and gave her all 0's in the survey.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Nails
Band practice or NASA event? Hmmm.