More camera fun today.
J.P.
Primary.
I’ve been keeping relatively quiet about the primary elections, caucuses and other activities that strain one’s high school lessons in social studies. Earl and I have had several discussions here at home, but for the most part I haven’t been doing much yapping on the blog.
If the truth were to be known, I already sick of the presidential election and it’s still 10.9 months away. However, I will say this: Over the past eight years I have equated “baby Bush” with the entire governmental process of the United States. As part of my extreme nature, “it’s all of them” that have been making life less than delightful for many Americans. I don’t believe that we are any safer today than we were on 9/12/01. I don’t even buy into that “be very afraid because they bad guys are going to get us” mentality. Hey, if it’s my time, it’s my time, whether it’s from a lightning strike, a bad piece of food, an anti-gay wing nut or at the hands of a terrorist. Quite frankly I think the country as a whole has it’s panties wound up entirely too tight and if people were to relax, think and ponder life a little bit instead of racing to hysterics at the smallest opportunity, the United States would be a much happier place.
A number of months ago I expressed a desire to move to Dublin, Ireland. It’s my favorite city, despite my very limited time of being there and someday I would like to live along the River Liffey. A number of months ago I also had dreams of becoming an Irish citizen and leaving Ol’ Glory behind.
I don’t feel that way anymore, and here’s why. Earlier this week Hillary Clinton’s now infamous “tearful speech” moved me.
But it was Clinton’s response to the last question from freelance photographer Marianne Pernold Young that provided the electric moment. How did Clinton keep going? “I couldn’t do it if I didn’t just passionately believe it was the right thing to do,” Clinton began telling Young, her voice cracking. “I have so many opportunities from this country and I just don’t want to see us fall backwards as a nation. This is very personal for me.”
When I heard Senator Clinton’s tearful response, it struck a chord in me. It wasn’t the tears that moved me, it was the message and the way that she conveyed her feelings on the subject. There *are* people in government that really do care about the United States. There are government officials that share my view that our great country is moving backwards on so many levels.
As children we are taught to respect the President. The President leads the entire country; it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, black, white, straight, gay or whatever, the President is leading the whole crowd. Earl reminds me that we should always respect the office entitled President, but sometimes the person isn’t worthy of that respect. If I were to vote today, I would vote for Hillary Clinton. I believe that with her as our Commander In Chief, we would have a leader that I could respect once again.
Bright and Early.
So today is Saturday. Because my body likes to play tricks on my soul, I am wide awake at 6:46 on a Saturday morning. “Heh! He’s out of work and waiting for school to start in a week – let’s get him up bright and early.”
And so I lie here in bed with the PowerBook catching up on various blogs wondering if I will still be awake after lunch.
I have to give props to Earl for going to work this early on a Saturday morning. He went in to catch up on the stuff he was unable to get to all week. I guess that’s why he’s the big guy and all at work. There are an infinite number of things that I admire in that man and his dedication and determination are just one of them.
The DirecTV man is suppose to be here between 8 and 12 this morning so that he can repair our dish that was damaged in the wind storm the other day. Aside from this brief flit with frivolity we have no plans for the remainder of the weekend. We were going to drive to Buffalo tonight for their bear night but the post-holiday budget doesn’t include hotel rooms at this time.
Now I’m starting to yawn and feel like I need to take a nap. So much for that bright and early Saturday morning.
Typical Work Day.
A stormy day in Upstate New York equals a very busy day in a telecommunications network operations center. Sometimes it feels like to adequately multitask you need to be two people. Tomorrow is the last day of my encore performance with my employer and I have to admit I’m going to really miss the folks I work. However, it’s not like I’m moving away and will never see them again; I like to think that I’m leaving on good terms so I’ll stop in from time to time. Maybe I’ll remember to bring a plate of cookies or something the next time I visit.
Life is an adventure that must be experienced. I firmly believe it’s a journey of learning. And I fully believe that it’s important to make the best of it and embrace it. Don’t sit in the window and watch life pass you by, go out and drink in what the world has to offer.
It’s all good.
Bid On This.
What has happened to ebay? Browsing through the famous auction site used to be like walking through someone’s garage sale; you’d take your time to browse and perhaps find a treasure that someone else thought was just junk. You’d offer some money for the item, niceties would be exchanged and they’d get the money for their junk while you’d add another item to your collection of stuff.
It used to be so simple.
These days it’s like being forced to go through your local Wal*Mart (Always White Trash, Always) while sober. Lights flash, ads play, snipers bid at the very last possible second, squashing any chance of you winning an item because you can’t press ENTER fast enough, people are downright nasty in their e-mails and nearly illiterate people type questions and answers in all capital letters while mangling the English language in an astounding number of ways.
I sold my HP laptop on ebay. I will admit that I neglected to include the remote control that came with the computer when I shipped it so I am making good by shipping it out. On the other hand, I threw in a carrying case and a large amount of Windows based software that I have no use for. I didn’t charge for the software, I threw it in for free.
And the winner is still bitching about it, mainly because he can’t figure out how to work the computer and install the software I included with the auction. He also claims that the power connector was broken in which it wasn’t when it left here.
So here we are, 08 January 2008 and I am declaring it to the world in my typical “one extreme or another” fashion.
I’m done with ebay. Fin. Finito. It’s a wrap.
65 Degrees.
It’s currently 65 degrees and the temperature is still climbing. I thought it made sense to take off my clothes and take a picture in the backyard.
So much for the foot of snow we had up until yesterday!
C’mon Get Happy.
Nearly 50 degrees at 10:00 p.m. in the beginning of January. How could anyone not be happy?
By the way, I get a lot of comments and questions whenever I’m seen in this shirt. People find the logo on the front to be interesting. It’s the logo for a software development company called Ximian, which was purchased by Novell a couple of years ago. I earned this shirt as one of the first beta testers of a product called Ximian Evolution (which is now Novell Evolution), a program that is much like Microsoft Outlook (and a whole lot more) except that it runs on Linux and Unix. I wear it often and I consider it a badge of geek pride.
I wish I could find a Mac fanboy shirt that I could wear. Does anyone have any suggestions where I could find one?
Happy Spring.
I know I’m tempting Mother Nature to inflict some wicked mischief upon us by writing this blog entry but I feel like taking a walk on the wild side. The National Weather Service predicts that it’ll reach into the lower 50s today and nearly 65 tomorrow. As I write it is currently 51 degrees fahrenheit. For Upstate New York in the beginning of January, this is big. Not only will winter blahs be pushed off for a while longer, but now we’ll have rapidly melting snow to flood basements and such. There’s always both sides to every equation.
I’m still on the fence as to whether this is totally due to Global Climate Change or if it’s part of a cyclic pattern in the grand scheme of things, but I tend to lean in the direction of the former.
Whatever the reason, I plan on drinking in some of this nice weather every chance I get.
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The aforementioned DJ SuperCub mix has been posted. There’s one really bad segue in there that I could have edited to make it perfect, but then that wouldn’t have been an honest representation of my work.
Clean.
It’s official. I have cleaned our home from top to bottom. Now, the trick is to keep it this way.
After the hustle and bustle of the holidays it was good to spend the entire weekend at home. Tomorrow I start my last week of work since I’m starting school soon AND they no longer need my services. The timing couldn’t be better. I’ll be training the “new guy” all week. I’m looking forward to the challenge.
As I look at today’s “365 days” photo, I’m a little surprised to see that I vacuum with my hand in my pocket. What’s that about?
Evaluate.
So this afternoon I watched the video I made last night. It’s the one I blatantly shared on the blog; the one called “The Ride After Guinness”. After watching the video I realised that it’s a good thing I live life without regret and choose to treat everything as a learning experience. To be quite honest, I didn’t enjoy seeing myself a little intoxicated. On one hand I wasn’t puking or anything, after all I was sober enough to edit the video when I got home (though I don’t really remember doing it). I guess drunks everywhere are lucky that the latest version of iMovie can export directly to YouTube. However, on the other hand, I kind of blabber on like an idiot. It reminded me of the time I was drinking with co-workers and inadvertently grabbed the company Vice President’s ass.
I think I’m going to calm down on the Guinness. My gut will thank me for that and the scale will breathe a sigh of relief.
I decided to celebrate the first weekend of the New Year by cleaning the house from top to bottom. I figured it should be done once a year and I might as well do it at the beginning of the year so I remember when to do it again. Earl was up at the crack of dawn so he could go to work so I didn’t make him join in my fun when he got home, though he was kind enough to pack up the Christmas decorations.
He did join in the merriment for a moment when I nearly passed out from bleach fumes. I didn’t know you weren’t suppose to put pure bleach in a squirt bottler and found myself a little woozy while cleaning the bathroom. To remind me not to do that again, he took a video of me coughing, gasping, wheezing and lying on the bathroom floor.
I don’t think I’m going to share that video.
Tonight’s fun (and subject of today’s 365 Days photo) has been making a new DJ SuperCub mix. If it passes quality control later on I’ll share it with the masses.
