The American people have spoken. Instead of going to Costco for gas, they’ve elected a fascist with absolutely no respect for The Constitution as the next president of the United States.
You have two months to get your stuff together.
My blog entries for the next few days are going to politically oriented as I work through this in my head. I really thought the American people were better than this, but hey, at least they can keep being racists out loud.
My first recommendation: To my LGBT+ brothers and sisters, make sure your union is legally documented OUTSIDE of a standard marriage certificate. Get all the legal power you can with power of attorney, right of survivorship, inheritances, wills, everything.
The American people are going to screw us hard to save 30 cents on a gallon of gas. We need to have our legal ducks in a row.
I gotta say, I didn’t have “GOP Presidential Candidate simulates oral sex on a microphone at a campaign rally” on my bingo card.
I’m curious, if so many folks are simply aghast at explaining the whole gay thing to their children, how in the world will they explain Trump simulating a blow job on a microphone on national television?
I have a tremendous amount of respect for the men and women in our military. They put their lives on the line to keep the rest of safe and secure. Some of them have seen atrocities we probably can’t even imagine. They embody three principles that are incredibly important to me: Honor, Integrity, Commitment. I would lay down my life for them as they have done for me. Non negotiable.
No presidential candidate is going to be perfect. But I can’t even consider the candidate that has called members of our military “losers”, shows a complete lack of respect for citizens of this country, and spends much of his time denigrating other human beings. A leader should lead, not belittle. Selflessness vs selfishness.
I don’t expect anyone around me to think as I do. However, I am resolute in my moral foundation. We all should be. Vote with compassion, vote according to your moral compass. Your vote is your voice. It speaks to character.
We’re not going to find perfection in this election. But let’s move forward together. 💙 🇺🇸
I did not write a blog entry on 9/11. I was too consumed by what was happening on that day. I did write a blog entry on 9/12/2001, and here it is.
I’m not going to make this a long entry as I’ll be late for work otherwise, and with news feeds and such, work is plenty busy.
I am still in shock and disbelief as to what occurred yesterday in New York, Washington, D.C. and southwest Pennsylvania. It’s amazing how fragile life can be sometimes, even living in the greatest nation on the planet. To see the second airliner crash into the World Trade Center tower, live on television, was astounding. The number of innocent victims killed or injured will be staggering. To think that human beings could commit such acts against other human beings is terrifying. There is already a renewed sense of unity in our great nation. I believe our lives changed yesterday at 8:48 a.m. forever. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
This has been bouncing around in my head for nearly a week. After the DNC, I read too many awful statements and opinions on Gus Walz’s display of pride, happiness, joy, and amazing outpouring of emotion while his father spoke at the Democratic National Convention. The reaction from too many people was so incredibly toxic. Prime suspects like Ann Coulter and her ilk said such horrible things.
Gus’ position on the Autism Spectrum is irrelevant in this discussion. Gus is a human being. Full stop. He is a human being that is very proud of his father. Full Stop. People making fun of his display of emotion has bothered me so much, because no human deserves to be mocked for being true with their emotions. Especially when it was clearly so much love and pride that was on display.
Whether you support Harris/Walz or not is also irrelevant in this discussion. Hateful comments, remarks, and countless memes speak to the character and the moral foundation of those who share these things, of those who believe these things, and of those who support those that share these remarks.
When you come for Gus, you come for me, a fellow human being. Instead of trumpeting around about your political beliefs, let’s take a step back and find our common humanity and put that above all else.
Kamala Harris’ speech at the DNC last week was so inspiring. Her words gave me hope. Her passion for this country is inspiring. I haven’t felt hope like this in a very long time.
So after this amazing speech, CNN cuts to a bunch of pundits sharing their comments on the situation and then John King slicing and dicing every word, every number, every scenario.
Why can’t we just seize the moment, let the hope breathe a little bit, before we delve into the nightmare also known as “The Electoral College”. Can we live in the moment? Can we enjoy the feeling of hope? For an hour? For a week? Maybe through November.
Seize the hope. Let is breathe. We can look at the numbers after the nightmare is over.
In case you haven’t heard, we are experiencing what some have termed as “the worst global Internet outage in history”. It’s because of Crowdstrike, a security company used by many, many companies. They sent out a security patch to systems running Microsoft Windows yesterday, and that patch had issues. Computers that applied this patch then crash and can’t be restarted without removing said patch. The kicker is, getting the computer to a state where the patch can be removed is tricky, especially if the computer is not locally accessible by someone that knows how to do this sort of thing.
And because of this, airports and airlines and DMVs and banks and hospitals and telecoms and all sorts of businesses that run Microsoft Windows and use Crowdstrike to keep their systems secure and hurting bad today.
Apple devices (Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc) and Linux computers are not locally affected by this outage, but systems they access could be affected. Microsoft based computers on their own (not managed by Crowdstrike) are also not affected. I’m 99% sure your gaming computer is fine.
We have been dealing with Crowdstrike all day at work today and it looks like the fun and frivolity is going to continue into the weekend. Luckily, the applications my team at work supports all run on Linux based servers, outside of two legacy applications we inherited from another group during a recent re-organization at work.
I’m surprised a patch from a prominent security company made it into the wild with such a defect. Usually these things are caught well before they’re released to the public. As of this writing, Crowdstrike’s stock price is down over 11%. I’m a little surprised by that; I thought it’d be much more.
Judging by the number of filtered out posts marked with “SCOTUS” on my Mastodon feed, I can only assume the Supreme Court laid out some stupid, partisan, greased palm rulings again today.
As a kid I remember being in awe of the Supreme Court of the United States. They seemed like wise people who knew the law and were to be respected. Fast forward to 2024 and I realize two things: 1. They weren’t really that supreme to begin with and 2. The court now is just a bunch of paid off hacks that are doing whatever they can for monetary gain. They’re a bunch of idiots in robes. Honestly, if their stupidity and paid off rulings didn’t impact the populace I wouldn’t give them nine of them a second thought.
It’s kind of disheartening to realize that even in my mid 50s I’ll probably outlive the United States as we know it today. It’s really a shame the Democrats are too weak to do anything about it and the Republicans are gleefully taking us back to days reminiscent of the Third Reich.
I’m still voting for a large meteor. The 50 states will be nothing more than Spirit of Halloween states come November.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
