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Mitt picked up a couple more delegates in Michigan since my update yesterday. They just keep coming. :-) Yesterday when I posted the post-Michigan results, while the winner had been declared, all the counts actually were not in yet, so the delegate counts were actually still in flux. When I made my post the CNN page where I get this data had Romney getting 10 delegates and McCain 8. By the time things were fully settled (and by when I did tonight’s update) the revised estimates based on the full results had Romney getting 22 delegates, McCain only getting 5 and Huckabee getting 1. This gives Romney a much bigger win than that early incomplete estimate gave. Today’s revised graphs show this:
We can see that at this point Romney has really opened up a big lead in delegates. With his lower Michigan delegate count, McCain now barely moves ahead and no longer appears to be “about to catch Huckabee”. At this point both Romney on the Republican side, and Clinton on the Democratic side have more than 50% of the delegates awarded so far. Which are pretty strong leads. Now, of course, only a small percentage of the total number of delegates has been allocated at this point. (4% of delegates on the Republican side, 9% of delegates on the Democratic side) These “big leads” can be erased by the results in only one big state, let alone the flood of delegates coming up on February 5th. So things are really still completely up in the air. But it is very interesting to see how the media narrative is so very different than looking at the delegate counts. On the Democratic side, Hillary has had a strong lead from the beginning. Obama has been catching up a bit, but Clinton is still WAY ahead. On the Republican side, despite the wins by Huckabee and McCain, aside from two days, Romney has been significantly ahead the entire time. Of course that brings up back to the small number of delegates awarded so far, and how fast this can all change. Bring on Saturday for Nevada and the South Carolina Republicans. A bunch more delegates. And perhaps more changes. I really want to see both frontrunners drop below 50% of the delegates. That’s when things are interesting, when nobody has more than 50%. So we need big wins by people other than Clinton and Romney to make that happen. Nevada Dems… could happen… it is neck and neck. Nevada Repubs… eh… we’ll see… Romney could take this. South Carolina Repubs… probably McCain or Huckabee, probably not Romney. All of that is based on limited recent poll data though… and with the low attendance expected in Nevada, it all kind of depends on who bothers to show up… so they really all could go in unpredictable directions. Anyway… we’ll see in a few days. Oh yeah… I’ve also adjusted all the graphs so the data points reflect the time of day I take the “sample” from the CNN page rather than showing all the data points at 00:00 UTC. I have updated the Delegate Graphs. On the Democratic side there were no delegates awarded from Michigan. However CNN (where I get this data) updated their numbers based on more superdelegates declaring their support for Obama and Clinton… and Richardson’s delegates going away.. and for some reason Edwards actually losing one delegate too:
Clinton still retains a commanding (over 50%) lead in delegates already committed. But as a percentage, she has pretty much been holding steady. So has Edwards. Obama is gaining. On the Republican side, there were indeed delegates awarded today. Romney got 10 and McCain got 8:
Aside from the two days between Iowa and Wyoming, Romney has been ahead the whole time. With his win in Michigan tonight he increases his lead somewhat. He’s got about 45% of the delegates so far and has stayed about there through the last couple of states. Huckabee hasn’t gotten any new delegates since Iowa, so his percentage has been dropping. McCain has been rising and is just short of catching Huckabee at the moment. Next up… Saturday gets us Nevada for both parties, and South Carolina for the Republicans. Nevada on the Dem side… three way race between Obama, Clinton and Edwards… could go ANY way. Nevada on the R side… who knows… only one poll so far, also looks very up in the air… McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee could all do OK. South Carolina on the R side… looks like Huckabee vs McCain if you look at the most recent polls. With McCain ahead in all the recent polls. So… craziness on both sides. Bring on Saturday. This is so much fun. [Edited 04:44 UTC to update totals gained by Republicans in Michigan with later figures.] [Edited 17:34 UTC to revert to the totals and graphs I originally posted with… I shouldn’t have changed it in the first place… history revisionism and all… in any case, all delegates from Michigan had not yet been allocated at the time of my post, so there will be a further update tomorrow… in a new post, not this one.] Eh, I wasn’t excited by any of that. I guess the Air is OK, but I’m more a MacBook Pro kind of guy. We’ll be in the market for a laptop for Brandy in the next month or so most likely. I was really hoping for a MacBook Pro update for her. We shall see if those come soon. They are overdue. I guess I do like Time Capsule. If Brandy does get a new laptop soon as planned, we’ll probably get one of those with it so it can be backed up easily. And to upgrade our base station to N at the same time. Only 12 hours until the MacWorld keynote starts. Woo! Of course, I have a meeting at that time. So I’ll have to catch up after it is all done instead of hitting refresh every few seconds on one of the sites liveblogging it. Drat. Sam and Ivan talk about:
This is a book that was suggested to me as being useful for work. A textbook that would be useful for work. A long textbook for work. Anyway, I got it and started reading it when the next non-fiction slot in my rotation hit, jumping it ahead of other non-fiction books that were in line. The first 3 chapters or so went very quickly as they were high level overviews of various things. Starting on Chapter 4 though (Data Cube Computation and Data Generalization) progress slowed down greatly. The content was a bit denser. And the reading a little less fun. Chapter 4 in particular was a subject that I could not get excited about. So I slowed down. I would have to force myself to read more. And that killed my momentum. Chapter 5 and beyond were more interesting again (at least to me) but with me out of the habit of reading regularly I actually changed my evening routine o include a “block” of reading time after my blocks for email and bills, and before my block for genealogy. Now, on an average weekday, I try for two blocks, but often only get one. It is only weekends where I usually get to blocks 3 and 4. So this meant I was only reading this book maybe once or twice a week, for 40 minutes at a shot. Now, this was still faster than I was doing without having a specific time set aside, as I would rarely just get the “Hey, I want to read the Data Mining textbook this evening before bed!” sort of feeling. So this got me going again, although still slowly. Also of course here, I was just READING, I was not doing the exercises and problem sets in each chapter. So I definitely was not getting everything I would if I had, say, taken a class that actually used this as a textbook. But never-the-less this gave a good overview of concepts relating to Data Mining, much of which is clearly relevant to the kind of things I am responsible for at work. So this is good. Now, do I know each of the concepts back and forth deeply enough to be able to be able to give a presentation on it or explain in detail to others? At a high level maybe, but at a detail level, no. But I am more familiar with all the concepts than when I started. Enough so to know what is being talked about if the concepts come up at work and to talk about them at a high level, and to follow discussions that go deeper. And I know where to look to refresh myself on details if I need them. So that is all good. I do wish I’d forced myself through this at a faster rate though. That was just a matter of discipline. Taking almost 8 months to read this was a bit much. When actually sitting down and reading, I was running over a page a minute. I just didn’t sit down and actually do that enough. I have to get better at that, because two more similar large non-fiction books for work are coming up soon in my queue. They will be similarly chock full of good information that will be useful for me, and often interesting stuff… but not exactly page turning reading where you just can’t wait to sit down with the book to read the next chapter. So I’ll have to work on that. I’m thinking that rather than let the next work book take the next non-fiction slot I’ll let one of my other non-fiction books take a slot. So a fiction book, a non-work non-fiction, then another fiction, then the next work-related non-fiction. We shall see. And when I do the next work-related non-fiction I do have to make myself go faster. Doing this one at an average three pages per day killed my reading for 2007. In 2007 I only finished reading THREE books as opposed to ELEVEN in 2006. And I thought 2006 was actually a horrible year for reading for me. Once upon a time I read much more than I read today, and that is a shame. I need to start increasing that volume. I mean, come on, at LEAST one book a month, right? One a week would even be reasonable, but I think that is out of my reach right now… Anyway, Data Mining by Han and Kamber… if you are working on Data Mining topics for work or school and need a good overview, grab this. If you are looking for fun reading on the beach… don’t.
Not having heard of this, I was worried it was going to be some sort of anti-abortion/pro-life propaganda film… I figured Brandy and I should definitely watch it in case any “conversations” would be needed afterwards… of course if I’d looked up any more about it I would have seen that was not the case. Quite the opposite. It was quite the satire of the born again crowd in terms of their attitudes toward… well, everything… but specifically toward teenage sexuality and teenage pregnancy and such. It was for the most part pointing out the absurdity of some of those attitudes. And all done in a pretty humorous way. There was lots of laughing out loud. And I can understand why Amy wanted to watch it alone… just because some of those type issues are awkward at that age… especially around parents… but there was nothing in here I found any more objectionable than any other PG-13 movie. (Which Amy has been allowed to see for years, despite not being 13 yet.) Still a somewhat odd choice for her. But aside from the teenage pregnancy angle and the religious satire, the rest was your standard sort of teenage romantic comedy / high school hijinks kind of movie. And that is right up her ally. Of course, it was a lighthearted comedy movie, so it had a happy feel good ending… so it never addressed any of the serious negative consequences that often do accompany teenage pregnancy… but that would be something that a more serious movie would do. This movie was mainly a movie poking fun at fundamentalist Christians whose own self-righteousness leaves them hopelessly out of touch with the reality around them. And of course in the end everybody is happy (including the baby) and Jesus still loves them. But it was funny. In just under an hour and a half… at about 05:07 UTC… it will have been two astronomical years since I first walked in the door of my current employer. Plus or minus the fact I can’t quite remember exactly when between 17 and 18 UTC I walked in on 11 Jan 2006, so I’m calling it 17:30… :-) Anyway, time sure flies, doesn’t it? |
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