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I like to keep informed. Accordingly, in addition to the Barack Obama mailing list, I’ve signed up for the McCain-Palin email list. The down side, of course, is that I now get at least two requests for donations in my Inbox every morning. The upside, though, is that I get things like this from the McCain-Palin campaign:

How are you “Joe the Plumber”? Tell us in 30 seconds… We want you to tell us how you are “Joe the Plumber” and why you’re supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin in thirty seconds. You could even see your video as an official McCain TV ad. … It’s simple … make an ad telling us why you are “Joe the Plumber” in 30 seconds and we’ll put the best ad on the air as a TV ad.

So, I’ve created a thirty second clip I call “Joe the Student.”

Guess I didn’t really need that cup of coffee …

Nope. The time is now 3:30 am … and I’m seven flavors of WIRED. And not the magazine, mind you.

I should just get up and do something productive. I’ve exhausted the internet. But it’s so warm in my bed…

Actually, today’s XKCD is rather apropro.

asdlfkja;lsfdkj

Good heavens. Microsoft Excel is profoundly worthless for trying to do any sort of statistical analysis other than the most painfully rudimentary.

And, for that matter, Excel is really profoundly worthless for most of its intended functions. As a basic spreadsheet cruncher, it’s semi-functional, but it produces painfully ugly graphs which, at least as of Excel 2003, are painfully cumbersome on manipulate in to graphs that don’t look downright awful.

So… for any sort of professional use, Excel really fails. Fails.

I guess its time to learn how to use a more sophisticated statistical analysis program, like Stata. Ug… though. Really? Why can’t there be a simple but full-featured spreadsheet application that not only can do simple spreadsheet tasks but also has a full-featured function set that can be used for slightly more sophisticated tasks?

For example: I have a list of ~5000 songs. In one column, I have the length of the song. In the next, I have the number of times each song has been played. I would like to be able to create a bar graph of weighted average, in 30 second intervals, each song has been played. But … I haven’t been able to figure it out, short of writing a bunch (40+) of functions by hand… ar!

Ah! So, here I am, working on another blog post (coming soon?), lying on my stomach in the living room, as I do, (sipping on bottle of Santa Rita 120 Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 – fruity, full body, but with a flat bouquet and a harsh, gritty finish. Good, but doesn’t seem to deserve the W&S score of 89.) … and all of the sudden I see something out of the corner of my eye…

“My God!” I say, “it’s a mouse!”

Sure enough, some audacious, furry creature just ran across the living room toward the kitchen.

Frankly, I’m for it! Huzzah! A pet! As long as he (or she!) doesn’t start eating my Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese, stored in my pantry. Then, it’s war. WAR, you hear!

Last night was the third and final presidential debate. From the Huffington Post:

The results over at CBS show Obama to have scored the biggest victory to date: “Fifty-three percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed identified Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the winner of tonight’s debate. Twenty-two percent said Republican rival John McCain won. Twenty-four percent saw the debate as a draw.”

It is, the site writes, “a clean sweep” for the Illinois Democrat.

Over at CNN, a separate poll of several hundred debate watchers again favored the Democrat by large margins: 58 percent for Obama to McCain’s 31 percent. Perhaps more importantly, McCain’s favorable rating dropped 51 to 49 while his unfavorable rating increased from 45 percent to 49 percent. Obama ended up with 66 percent favorable rating.

Digging into the details the news is even worse for the Arizona Republican.

Asked who “expressed his views more clearly” 66 percent said Obama, 25 percent said McCain.
“Who spent their time attacking his opponent:” 80 percent said McCain, seven percent said Obama. “Who seemed to be the stronger leader:” 56 percent for Obama, 39 percent for McCain. And who was “more likeable:” 70 percent for Obama to McCain’s 22 percent.

Clean sweep, for Obama. McCain was out of control … clearly nervous … grasping for anything that he could “beat” Obama at. Obama was at his best: clear, articulate, and above the muck and mire of John McCain’s petty attacks. It was inspiring to watch Senator Obama consistently take the high road during last night’s debate, even when clearly presented with the opportunity not to (especially when asked if he thought Sarah Palin was ready to be President, to which he responded, “we’ll let the American people decide that.”)

Obama FTW.