the frig blig

The only reason I-1053 “made it” to this year’s ballot is because several dozen corporations collectively put up close to $600,000 to help Eyman. Not counting Eyman’s loan, their contributions constitute about 76% of the funding for I-1053. That’s more than three fourths!

The top corporate and trade group contributors to I-1053 are:

* BP (yes, that BP) – $65,000
* Tesoro – $65,000
* ConocoPhillips – $50,000
* Shell – $50,000
* Washington Farm Bureau – $50,000
* Washington Restaurant Association- $45,000
* Washington Realtors – $25,000
* Washington Beverage Association (Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper) – $20,000
* Kemper Holdings – $20,000

The above information helpfully provided by Northwest Progressive Institute and brought to my attention by Publicola — good work y’all!

Today at work I rewrote a SQL stored procedure, replacing code which used a cursor with code that does not. I did this because since last week when we upgraded the database engine, this stored procedure has been executing dog-slow. I’d heard that cursors cause a performance hit so I was very happy to see the cursorless version running at least twice as fast as the original.

The new version declares a variable as a table datatype, which acts like an in-memory table. This technique was new to me. So I was very pleased when my work paid off.

If I were a genetic engineer dabbling in DNA I would definitely want to attempt mixing chromosomes of dogs and cats.

Of course it would not be easy, but if the resulting creatures lived and were able to reproduce, I would quickly patent them and begin marketing them to pet-lovers as super-pets, containing all the best and none of the worst qualities of each species.

This would certainly confuse many people, especially cat lovers who despise dogs and dog lovers who despise cats.

But it would appeal to the exotic pet crowd, and would eventually grow a legitimacy and constituency of its own.

The first person/company to successfully enter this market will make history, and a killing.

You heard it here first!