Pauls Rants and Revelations

I have been trying my best to spread word about Ron Paul. I really think that he can be a very good President for our troubled country.

However, lets face facts. barring a couple of well placed assassins bullets in the leading Republican runners, it is not going to happen. This is hard for me to admit, mind you, so please don’t go off on one of those rants anti-Paul folks tend to favor.

So who, then, should I put my vote to for the next President?

Hillary Clinton (Dem)? Nay, I say, as a bigger hypocrite I have seldom seen. She actually came to my little corner of the world and had I actually cared enough about it, I would have gone down to the rally just to start some shit. But that is past and I care little of her fate.

McCain or Huckabee (Rep)? Sadly, I hate both of them. Neither of them are, in my humble opinion, smart or display any definite leadership. Chowder-heads, the both of them.

Obama? Probably, as I cannot see any other logical choice. He is smart, charismatic, seems a natural leader, and is honest more than anything.

Yea, I’ll probably vote for Obama.

Sidenote: I just read my voters pamphlet, and I can feel a lot better voting for Obama now. In the descriptions of the candidates and their little blurbs about themselves, Clinton said that she has plans about fixing things. Not what she would do, but that she has plans (she said this not less than 6 times). Obama, on the other page (ha ha), laid out what he is going to do plain as day. He is going to do these things, in this way. Not once did the word ‘plan’ come into the description. So yea, Obama it is.

-Cheers

With work and family I find that my time of late has been rather limited.

It was not so very long ago that I was trolling Craigs list looking for contract work to supplement my income. With my wife working back at Nike (and me going back to the at-home-dad role) I find that I am inundated with emails with requests for work. Stuff like “whats this error” to “I need a website”. I can do the work, but the questions becomes where I will find the time to do it?

My work projects are a little behind (some of which is my fault (ok, most of it probably)) so I have been telling folks that I simply can’t. And even though I know this is the best thing to do since I don’t need any more stress, I can’t help but feel like I am passing up opportunities that would help my situation in the long run.

So I guess the question really is this: who do I piss off?

Do I piss off my boss for the projects that will inevitably be late because of my taking on personal projects? Or do I piss off clients and potential clients by saying that their projects are not worth the time?

I guess really the question, like so many others, is an academic one as I have to get back to work. However, if anyone has any suggestions about my situation (and yes, even ones from you PersonalLumbergBaby are accepted) please leave a comment.

And if you need a website, please HESITATE to ask.

-Cheers

OK. Its been a while (a month to be precise) but I have been busy with work and family stuff. So tough.

Its also, in about 15 hours, my birthday (hooray!). Since we have limited time we have to split up the fun into two days. Today we did presents (my son was extremely excited to give me a Lego fire truck) and we are doing cake tonight. Tomorrow my wife and I are going out for dinner (on my actual b-day) so a swanky place (sweet).

Other than that I am trying to finish some projects before my yearly review. It doesn’t help to have a bunch of late items when going for more money/benefits/company jet, so hopefully I can finish them in short order.

Also, paulsrants.com is going to be up soon. And soon as in actually soon, not soon as in the Urban Dictionary definition.

-Cheers

Today is my sons birthday. It seems only yesterday that he sloshed out of moms womb and now he is six years old. Where does the time go?

And since this is such a huge deal, I decided that it is time to get him a skateboard. I mean a real one; not the tiny play one like at Target. This is an official World Industries board with a nifty flame boy decal on it. He was totally excited about it and started riding around in the house. Now we just have to wait for a non-rainy day and off to the park we go.

We also got him a huge lego set that we spent the entire next day putting together (which his cousin destroyed the next day; bummer) and games galore. Board games, mind, not video games.

He was really stoked with everything including the black-light pirate themed mini-golf we did in Portland, which was a bit of a trip actually. We also had a pirate ship chocolate cake. It was just coincidence that it worked out that way since I ordered the cake and my wife  set up the mini-golf.

Everything considered, it was a really good birthday and my little dude was quite happy with everything.

-Cheers

If I had a penny from every sale of something when I heard someone say “I’ll just get a new one”, I would be a semi-rich man (it is only a penny after all).

Its sad that or society has gotten to the point where everything is replaceable. No very many people now will take the time to make something instead of just buying it. They get a new one if it breaks instead of fixing it.

It just seem so wasteful and stupid to spend money on something you don’t need and immediately get a new one if something happens.

Perhaps I just feel this way since I just dropped a load of cash on bills and birthday presents. Anyways, its still valid I think.

-Cheers

Did you ever notice that if you swing your Macbook Pro around the room really hard, the hard drive sounds like a lightsaber?

Though you might find that interesting.

-Cheers

OK, so it wasn’t really the blues, but it could have easily turned into it.

I went to the local Apple store Genius Bar to get some tech support. Apparently one of my two darling children got a little excited about a movie or something and a couple of the keys became stuck and offset.

Now, I have a “no touching dads computers” rule in the house, but I can start a show for them (iTunes has Looney Tunes you know) and take care of some things while they watch. While I was tending to my flu-stricken wife, there was some yelling and screaming and as a result I took the computer away. It wasn’t until later that I realized that some of the keys were messed up.

So, nearly in tears, I called Apple support. They said take it in and if its serious they would have to keep it for up to 14 days (wtf!?). So I took it in this afternoon and waited for my name to be called. When I got up to the bar I explained the problem and the Apple genius said “Well lets take a look”.

He then proceeded to pop the affected keys off in quick succession. This alone gave me a start but then he popped some more stuff off and then some more. Finally he caught site of my horror stricken face and said “Sorry. I should have probably warned you I was going to do that.”

No shit, Sherlock.

After the initial shock of seeing a $4 thousand machine recklessly taken apart, the rest of the session went OK. Turned out that the little white springs under the keys became unaligned and just had to be tweaked back into place. All told, took about 10 minutes total.

I thanked the guy and speedily headed out the door, Macbook Pro now intact, hoping never again to have to go in there.

I’m glad they are there to help with the consumers Apple problems big and small, even though I thought the guy could have given a warning before the fact, so I can’t really complain (which I’m not), so there you go.

And if any of the above doesn’t make sense, then tough. I have a splitting headache now thanks to watching too many shows on iTunes, which will be the subject of my next rant.

-Cheers

So I am finally moving this wonderful little distraction onto its own domain now. In the next few days paulsrants.com will be the new home for this blog.  You can update if you feel like it.

-Cheers

My sister-in-law received the entire Planet Earth series from the BBC for Christmas this year. She loaned them to us as she doesn’t have a DVD player and because she thought we might like them. She was right.

I have always been a fan of nature documentaries for as long as I can remember. The ones that were narrated by James Earl Jones and Avery Brooks were among my favorites both from an entertainment and educational point. The Planet Earth series was by far the best made documentary made to date by any standard.

Shot entirely in HD, it has been 3 years in the making. The workmanship put into it by the cameramen, editors, naturalists and even the narrator (David Attenbourough) shines in every scene and shot. The best segment from the series (and we have watched nearly all of them) is a tie between the Desert and the Ocean, with the Mountain one being a close second.

If you get a chance to watch them, do so. We have been watching them on my widescreen Mac, which is great quality, so I can only guess what it would look like in native HD or Blue Ray on a large plasma.

Oh, and a word of caution: if you are afraid of creepy crawlies, don’t watch the Cave episode. And if you are fine with them, don’t watch the cave episode. It was creepy enough to watch it so I can only imagine what it was like to actually film it for weeks on end.

- Cheers

To supply the world with energy, this idea is certainly one of the best I have seen. I would love to see this idea come into being and perhaps even have an ‘energy island’ or two off the coast here in Oregon; even though it wouldn’t take advantage of the amoinia turbine.

Solar, wind and wave energy potential is great in pretty much any coastal town within 1000 miles of the equator so I could see some version of this coming to more places than just the tropics.

Full article: Inhabitat » Artificial Energy Islands Could Power The World

And if the benefits weren’t enough for you, they just plain look cool too.

-Cheers