Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Virginia House of Delegates, 87th District, 2017

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Commonwealth of Virginia

In the race to represent the eighty-seventh district in the Virginia House of Delegates, one-term incumbent Delegate John Bell (D-VA 87th) is challenged by local real-estate businessman Subba Kolla (R).

The Virginia House of Delegates is the oldest legislative body in the Americas, having been established (as the House of Burgesses) in 1619. Delegates must be at least twenty-one years old and residents of the district they wish to represent, and they are elected to two-year terms with no term limits. There are one hundred districts across the commonwealth. Today, the Republican Party holds an overwhelming sixty-six seat majority, and the Democratic Party holds thirty-four seats.

The house’s eighty-seventh district includes much of the eastern border area of Loudoun County and a small portion of northern Prince William County. Communities in the eighty-seventh district include Antioch, Arcola, Dulles, South Riding, and parts of Ashburn, Broadlands, Cascades, and Sterling.

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Bond Referendums, 2017

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Loudoun County

Article VII, Section 10, of the Constitution of Virginia requires local governments to obtain voter approval to issue bonds. Voters in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked to consider two bond referendums on this year’s ballot.

Bonds are debt. When they are sold, the issuing government receives an influx of cash from the purchasers. But, like a bank loan, that money must be repaid over time with interest.

Like any other loan, bonds should only be used when necessary. Most projects should be funded directly from the general fund (i.e., from the “money in the bank”). Only when a particular project is very important, but too large to fund directly, should we turn to using bonds for financing.

Read more . . .

The ‘Bill’ Animations

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When I was in high school, I was often bored. And when I was bored, I often played around with programs on my Texas Instruments TI-82 graphing calculator. Most of the stuff I wrote for the calculator has been lost to history . . . I still have the calculator itself, but its memory has been wiped countless times since the late ’90s, and I didn’t have any mechanism for backing it up.

Well, while I was looking for something completely unrelated in the dark recesses of my hard drive, I stumbled upon some text files with TI-basic source code. Apparently, at some point, I manually transcribed some code over to my PC . . . specifically, the code for two short animations starring an unfortunate stick figure named Bill and his demented, unnamed companion.

Because I’m a nerd, I was able to get these programs/animations into a usable TI-82 format (via a Windows 98 virtual machine and the ancient TI GraphLink software) . . . and then it was quick and easy to transfer them to the TI operating system in an emulator (WabbitEmu) and run them. There were a couple transcription errors, but, after fixing them, they ran perfectly.

So, yeah . . . here are two short animations that I put together on a TI-82 calculator when I was bored in high school. . . .

Read more . . .

Randy Bresnik, NASA
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Much of Florida has been devastated by Hurricane Irma, the second major hurricane to make landfall in the United States this year (after a twelve year hurricane drought). The state is just beginning to repair the damage; large portions of the state are still without electric power, and some areas remain flooded.

Many people have been displaced, or have had their homes and businesses seriously damaged. If you would like to help, please consider making a donation to a reputable disaster relief charity like Catholic Charities USA or the American Red Cross. Your donation will be used to help provide for the safety and well-being of the victims of this disaster.

Announcing ‘This Stupid Day’

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Every day is a stupid holiday now. It’s always ‘National Donut Day’ or ‘National Textiles Day’ or something. I think it’s getting pretty silly.

Rather than argue with it, I’ve decided to embrace it with my own set of idiotic “holidays.”

Head over to https://www.this-stupid-day.com/ and see what day it is today, or what day it is/was on any other day.

This is not necessarily the final version (I’ve given it a release number of 0.9, pending finalization). Feedback is welcome, and some of the “holidays” may change in the final version.

Enjoy!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.