LiveJournal Project - H1 2008

This was the last year which really saw much of any substantive content in my LJ; I think by this point I'd largely switched to Facebook, which is rather ironic since I ended up deleting my FB account at one point and yet my LJ actually still exists as of 2019.

Date: 2008-03-05 00:39
Subject: I've got a rock, now give me your car, bitch!
http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/0304abrk-carjacking0304.html

Man uses rock to carjack woman

Ben Sandoval
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 4, 2008 10:41 AM
SCOTTSDALE - Police continued to search Tuesday for a man who used a large river rock to steal a Scottsdale woman's car.

The 44-year-old woman drove her 2002 white Chevy Cavalier into the parking lot of the Center Court Apartments, 3031 N. Civic Center Plaza, about 10:30 p.m. Monday when she noticed a man walk through the security gate she had just opened, Scottsdale police said.

The man approached the woman with the rock after she exited her vehicle, demanded her car, got in and drove off, police said.

Police described the man as a Black male in his early 20s, wearing a light brown hooded sweatshirt. The woman's car has Arizona license plate 091-LEE

Are you for real? A rock?!? If some guy came up to me and said "give me your car or I'll hit you with this rock," I'd probably start laughing at him. Then I'd kick him in the nuts. How's that rock workin' out for you now, buddy? Seriously, though, the woman could have just run away and called the cops without giving this fuckstick her car - he's only got one chance to hit her with the rock, and if it was a "large river rock" he probably wouldn't have been able to throw it that far anyway. What a dumb bimbo. Of course, it really doesn't say that much for the asshat that stole her car, either, that the only weapon he could come up with was a freakin' rock. I don't know who's more deserving of my derision - someone that actually thought he could rob someone at rockpoint or the person that actualy fell for it.

Rock on.

Date: 2008-03-17 06:26
Subject: The global financial collapse starts with US
Rambling on about the state of the world economy and my own pocketbook....

Fed cuts rates again in emergency action on a SUNDAY NIGHT - two days before the regularly scheduled FOMC meeting where everyone expected them to cut rates anyway. Asian markets drop like a sake cup in a beer glass, and now we see the yen is kicking the dollar's ass. Last year when I went to Japan, it was about 115-120 yen to the dollar. We're now at a 12-year-low: 96yen/dollar. Are you kidding me?! Gold was up around $1020/oz, and oil was hitting $110+ in the international markets. And, to really make your head spin... JP Morgan Chase just bought up struggling brokerage firm Bear Stearns at the downright treasonous price of $2 per share. Yeah, that's right, 2 bucks per share. This is the same brokerage firm which was trading at about $60/share one week ago. Wow. How deep does this rabbit hole go, anyway?

Most international markets that are currently open (at least as of the last time I checked in on it) were down 4-5 percent across the board. You can bet that's going to happen here, too, and that means there's money to be made if you've got access to a real-time trading platform and a stomach for a wild ride. The real question is going to be what happens on Tuesday. We all know the Fed is going to cut rates again - but will this mean a bounce for the markets or another drop as people continue to realize just how fucked up things are right now?

If I'm awake in the pre-market hours around 5am, I'm going to be checking in on DIA, QQQQ, SPY, and others in the same family. If I can get in some short action on those (or buy up some of the ETFs that are short-oriented, like QID) then I can watch the market go into freefall and collect a tidy profit. At least in theory.

I was talking to a friend of mine last week about the current state of economic affairs, and he's basically in the same situation that I am. I make a pretty good income, so I'm not concerned about being able to pay my bills, and I don't expect to lose my job due to the recession (hell, the company I work for is expanding right now) - but I'm definitely concerned that my savings is becoming more and more worthless as the dollar goes down the shitter and inflation creeps up. Six months from now, I don't expect to be in substantially different financial shape than I'm in now, but I wonder how things will be in a year or two, especially with the upcoming election and uncertainty as to who's going to be the next President (hint: it doesn't matter, we're fucked anyway - the only question is how hard). I'm thinking that things are going to be bad for the next two years or so.

What's the best way to cover your financial ass in these kinds of times? It depends, really, on where you're at currently, but the best thing you can do with any extra money right now is pay off high-interest debt. Save whatever money you can and invest in things that are either not denominated in dollars or that are recession-proof. Examples? When times are tough, people have to eat. When times are tough, people get depressed and they drink. You could play this by investing in companies like Altria, Procter & Gamble or Kellogg's or General Foods or you could hit up the underlying commodities like corn and wheat. Budweiser and Coors tend to do well in economic downturns, but don't invest in casino stocks. I think gold, even at $1000/oz, is headed higher - probably up around 1500 or so before we're done, so there's money to be made there, either in the metal itself or in the mining stocks (I'm leaning towards the metal). What about foreign currency? This one's a harder call, because it's not in the best interests of the governments and central banks of the world to watch the dollar get too weak against their own currencies because it hurts the profits of their own companies. (Think about Japanese automakers. If Toyota sells a car in the US at $40,000, and that $40,000 isn't even worth 4 million yen today, when last year it was worth 5 million yen, well, that's a 20% drop in revenue. Ouch.) So at some point, the central banks are going to intervene to either prop up the dollar or devalue their own currencies in relation to it, but I don't know when this is going to happen or to what extent. Given how far the dollar has already fallen against the yen and the euro, I don't know how much more downside there is. It's hard to imagine $2 <-> 1 euro or $1 <-> 80 yen, but it's not impossible, either.

Date: 2008-03-22 00:33
Subject: Overmind Works presents ... Xeric Nation 2
Tomorrow night!

http://www.overmindworks.com/xeric2.html

I'm on from midnight to 2am.

Please don't repost this on any public message boards (notice that this post is friends-only, yo.)

Date: 2008-03-28 21:27
Subject: RedHat Certified Ninjas
Took the Redhat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification exam this morning... I got the job to pay for the week-long boot camp training class and exam, as I thought it might be something useful to add to my list of credentials, both from a personal level should I ever decide to jump ship and go get a different job as well as from a company level - for whatever it might be worth, now we can say that all of our IT staff members are Redhat certified (the sysadmin we just hired has his RHCT - certified technician - the entry-level RH cert).

The instructor was well-qualified and knowledgeable, and an interesting person in his own right, but the class was something of a letdown. I guess I was expecting to learn a little more. We were told at the outset of the class that it was largely intended to be a review of things that we should already know, and that it was just designed to be a refresher course, and I suppose in that respect, it was successful, but for $3000, I would have hoped to actually pick up some more useful tips and tricks and best practices that I could apply to my networks. At least I wasn't the one paying the bill.

So, yeah, the exam... there's a lot of hype about this exam, because it's not like your typical Microsoft multiple-choice test. Instead, it's performance-based. In the first part, you're given a machine that has various things fucked up on it and you have to fix them, and in the second part, you're given a list of specs and you have to build a machine that satisfies all of those requirements. So you can't really memorize a bunch of answers; you have to know how to actually get the shit done. It's said that the exam has a 50-60% fail rate for people taking it the first time through, too. So with all of this, I went into the test today not really sure what to think. The class itself was ridiculously easy, but would I have my ass handed to me on the exam?

Yeah, right. The exam was a joke. I could see how someone who wasn't prepared could get overwhelmed, but seriously, if you know how to install basic services and do some very rudimentary configuration, there's no complicated configuration on it. We were given 2.5 hours for the troubleshooting section. Done in 30 minutes. We were given 3 hours for the server build section. Done in 2. Final score? 97.8% - so I'm now an RHCE. Woo.

I think I'm going to try to get the job to send me to one of the post-RHCE advanced courses - either the one on performance tuning and system monitoring or the one on virtualization - and we'll see how that goes. To get to RHCA (certified architect, the highest level) is another 5 weeks of classes and 5 exams (and about $15,000) - I don't know if I'll end up trying to go that far, but anything that I can get my job to pay for is always a bonus.

Date: 2008-04-10 21:47
Subject: Girl fight on YouTube
Ok, so if you've seen the news lately, you've probably heard the story about the teenagers in Florida who videotaped themselves beating the shit out of one of their classmates (I doubt the word "friend" applies here) for the purpose of putting it on YouTube. Here is a link to the CNN article if this is news to you:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/index.html

Let's put aside a moment the fact that this girl got her ass beaten in a big way -- certainly a non-trivial fact to just set aside, but bear with me a moment, dear reader -- and let us ask ourselves this question: "How much of a stupid, brain-dead, ignorant fuckhole do you have to be to have your pissant little friends taking video of you beating the shit out of someone to post it all over the Internet, where it will most-assuredly be downloaded by a large number of our friends in the porcine brigades and at which time they will get in their little pigmobiles, come over to your heretofore unassuming suburban houses, and haul your cunty asses away?!" What could have possibly been going through those assclowns' minds when they were doing all of this? Consider the possibilities.

A: We won't get caught. Uh, hello, did you not see the part about the stupidity of posting video of yourselves breaking the law on the public Internet? You shitheads wanted to post this on YouTube, no less, where all manner of weird, sick, and twisted video will eventually make it to the front page if it generates enough buzz. Well, you certainly got your wish - it did end up on YouTube - but you're all being tried as adults and may get life in prison. Someone's cost-benefit-analysis filter needs a little tune-up.

B: So what if people see it, they'll think it's cool and nothing will happen to us. Right. You fucksticks beat the piss out of someone that wasn't fighting back, that was trying to get away, and trying not to be knocked right the fuck out. How is that cool? How do you really expect that nothing will happen to you as a result? Some of you are so out of touch with reality that you were joking about missing spring break and cheerleading camp. Guess what? You might be lucky to see daylight in 20 years if the DA and the victim's family really push this (and I hope they do). Don't get me wrong, I like a good fight as much as the next guy, but the fights that I watch are between, oh, I don't know, professional fighters?!@#!@ Seeing some teenage girl basically held against her will and bludgeoned by a bunch of shit-for-brains candidates for retroactive abortion, well, you know, call me an old geezer, but that's not my idea of a good time.

C: We weren't thinking about the consequences. Yeah, maybe so, but if that's the case, then you (because you're a bunch of ignorant fucksticks) AND your parents (because they raised a bunch of ignorant fucksticks, when we already have more than enough of them to go around) are prime candidates for retroactive abortion.

Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame, bitches. You won't be all happy-happy-joy-joy when Bertha comes up behind you in the shower.
Mood: aggravated

Date: 2008-04-27 00:51
Subject: life, the universe, and all of that good shit.
It's been awhile since I've really had much to say about how my life is going overall, and since I'm finding it difficult to motivate myself to finish this project that I'm working on, now seems like a good time to procrastinate with an update. This may be a very long entry.

Relationship: All is well. We're getting married on 26 July. Many of you will be receiving an invitation. I am a little tired of wedding planning shit, but eh, we'll have one hell of a party.

Health & Fitness: Still fat. Eating too much crap. Working out 3 days a week - one day of lifting, two days of cardio. It isn't enough, but I'm maintaining my current weight, and I think my upper body is stronger now than before my first shoulder surgery. One step forward, one step back.

Intellectual stimulation: Not a lot.

Job: The company I work for is going to implode. We're laying off 1/4 of the staff on Monday - thoughtfix, I said it before, and I'll say it again: be glad we didn't hire you - because if we had, it would be you that I'd be forced to fire come Monday morning. So why is this happening? Money. They've been trying to get VC funding for the last several months, only to be repeatedly rejected. The VCs say that our target market is too small and, well, they're just not interested. The angel investor that's been funding the company for the last 18 months has cut off the checkbook; he was supposed to be giving them $2M in capital for the remainder of the year but decided that he didn't want the level of involvement that would be required with ownership of that much of the company and cut it to $1M. So, at our current burn rate, we'll be out of cash in 3-4 months. The powers that be came up with the idea to cut staff from 35 to 27, slash the marketing budget, and refocus parts of the business on more-likely-to-be-profitable areas with the hope of being able to turn a profit by year's end. The company president seems to think that he can spin this whole situation into a positive scenario come Monday morning's staff meeting, but I think he's deluding himself. I think the rats are going to be jumping ship at their first available opportunity. More on this below.

I have learned a couple of things from my tenure in management and this whole process, though. First, I've discovered how it is that bad ideas become policy. We had about 9 hours of discussion among the management team as far as who would be let go and who wouldn't and why. Certain decisions were made, and people agreed with them, and then a subset of the managers decided to override that decision. When we came back and talked about it during the second meeting, a couple of us spoke up that we thought this was a bad idea and outlined the reasons why and what the alternative plan should be. Those that advocated the bad idea then proceeded to beat us over the head with said idea until we finally just got tired of arguing about it and acquiesced. Second, I can say without doubt that the reason that the company is where it is today (i.e., in the position of having to fire 9 people) is because of poor management at the top. They wonder why we have no money and yet they've regularly discounted their rates or done work outright for free because there's a POSSIBILITY that there MIGHT BE some more lucrative future business. Uh, hello, WTF is wrong with you?! Promises and hopes don't pay the bills. They spend money on the stupidest of things like we're still in the middle of the dot-com bubble, and although they have a couple of people on staff that are absolutely the best in their field (a highly specialized financial application that has few experts anywhere), they barely charge more than I do as a consultant when I build websites or do system administration. Third, I've discovered just how out-of-touch the people at the top are with the people at the bottom. This is, I'm sure, true at most any organization, but I would not have expected it to this degree at a 35-person company where there isn't a lot of hierarchy. Me, I've been in a unique position to know what's going on at both ends, because although I'm technically "Director of IT", I don't get treated like "one of Them" by either the senior management or the rank-and-file employees. So I know what people at the top are thinking, and I know what people at the bottom are thinking, because everyone talks to me, and I can say that the whole place is pretty jacked up.

It is highly likely that the company will be the target of a lawsuit in the near future. If that happens, they will be FUCKED even if it doesn't go to trial, due to noncompliance on e-discovery rules. We don't have any kind of data retention policy in place, so should someone sue the company for, say, wrongful termination, and his/her attorney serve us with a subpoena for records, well, guess what? We don't have them. They don't exist. If someone deletes an email, it's gone forever. That's not going to look very good to the judge. I raised this issue at a management meeting a couple months ago, and the CFO (who is also a sort of in-house counsel since he has a law degree and is admitted to the Bar) pretty much pooh-poohed me and said not to worry about it. I guess he didn't think it too likely that we'd be sued anytime soon. Oops.

I went to the company president and said that if they're going to be asking people to do more over these next few months to pick up the slack due to the layoff, they need to do something for the people that are remaining to provide them with an incentive to bust ass and meet whatever our new goals are. This is now the second time that the company has tried to refocus/reinvent itself; the first time, people bought into it, they worked hard, and now look where we are. Why should they buy this latest round of BS? So my suggestion was an immediate salary increase rather than another nebulous promise that maybe they'll get some payoff at some undetermined future date. Shot down. The VP of sales suggested a bonus. Shot down. What do we all get? A nebulous promise of an uncertain payoff at an undetermined date. Yup, that's worth working hard for. =/

So what does this all mean for me, aside from more work? Well, I was supposed to get a raise at the beginning of April. Obviously, that didn't happen. I could probably use this situation to force an increase - go to them and say that if I don't get an additional X dollars per year, I'm leaving the company - and they'd probably have to do it, because with the loss of my sysadmin, if I were to leave as well, there would be NOBODY to run the IT functions of the company. However, I don't necessarily want to play that game; I really don't want to be a part of it at all. I have zero confidence that the changes they're making will enable them to become successful and meet their goals by the end of the year - I think that these layoffs are just postponing the inevitable. I think that the senior management has no clue how to run a growing company, and should they actually manage to pull it off and become profitable and start hiring again, they'll just run into these same issues again and again.

So am I going to quit? Probably. It's just a question of when. There's a part of me that would like to try to stick it out for a month and see how it goes and whether or not the ship can be righted, and there's another part of me that would just like to go in on Monday, pack up my shit, and walk. I think I'm going to feel it out next week to see what people are thinking and feeling before I decide exactly what my next course of action will be, but I've got one foot out the door, definitely.

Overall, how is life, then? Actually, it isn't bad at all. There's a lot of chaos swirling around me, particularly on the job front, but my own situation is relatively calm. Even though I'm not part of the layoff, I'm looking at the situation as a chance to reassess what I'm doing with my life and whether or not I want to keep doing it, and the conclusion that I've reached is that I don't. I'm tired of being a system/network administrator and want to get back to actually BUILDING things, but the jobs that I would actually want to have really do require a MSCS or even a PhD. So it's time to go get one of those. It's time to retake control of my time, quit the job, go back to consulting, and use all of that free daylight time to do things that I've been neglecting, like intellectual stimulation, kung fu, working out, and the like. I started imagining what life would be like if I went back to full-time consulting, and this is what a typical day might be:

Wake up around 9, go to the gym. Come back and work for a couple hours, then go to kung fu or to school, then come back and work a little more. Cook dinner instead of trying to figure out where to order from, hang out with Cory or go out with friends. Work another hour or two on homework or my own projects or whatever, then crash out around 2am.

It sounds a lot better than my current routine, that's for sure. Is it financially feasible, given the salary that I'd be giving up? Actually, yes, it is. With my current level of consulting work and the amount of money in my checking account, I won't go broke for at least 18 months, and that's assuming that I don't have to raid my 401k. If, between finding extra consulting work and little bits of income from my own projects, I can pick up an extra $2000 per month, I'm golden. Shit, I've discovered that I could probably make $2k per DAY playing online poker (although poker bores me after awhile and then I start doing stupid things). And, of course, the worst case scenario is that I can always just go get another job.

We shall see....

And, just as a random aside... There are a lot of prophecies which say that something big is going to happen at the end of 2012. Let's suppose, just for a moment, that this is true (I make no claims of belief one way or the other) - that the shit is going to hit the fan in about 4 years. I wonder what that says about those of us that are alive right now. Again, we shall see....
Mood: contemplative

Time: 07:05
Subject: more procrastination: chess and politics
First... if any of you play chess, find me on facebook if you're not already on my flist, add the chess application, and challenge me to a game. Come on, you know you want to. =)

Second... I continue my procrastination with a foray into domestic politics. We all know it's going to be John McCain vs. somebody in the next election, and while I am not an outright supporter of either Clinton or Obama, I am definitely a detractor of Clinton. That said, though, I have changed my mind on one thing. If Clinton gets the nomination, I'll grudgingly vote for her. Even Dennis Kucinich(sp?) would've gotten my vote over John "100 Years" McCentury. However, there are a few things that have really bothered me that I think are worth comment on.

1: The whole fiasco with Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been unfairly condensed down into one "God Damn America" soundbite. I bet you that a good 80% of the people that have heard that quote during the last several weeks and then gotten upset about it haven't taken the time to actually listen to or read a transcript of the whole sermon. I have. Yeah, it's inflammatory, but you know, there's a lot of truth in what Rev. Wright said. He went a little overboard with the whole "AIDS was created to kill the black man" stuff, but the basic idea of the sermon, which is that America has failed to live up to its promises, well, you know what? That's TRUE.

2: They call Obama an elitist because he said that people are bitter. How are John McCain and Hillary Clinton NOT elitists? Look at their background. They're both senators. They're both multi-millionaires. I read an article in which the author noted that anyone running for President is inherently an elitist. If you're running for president, obviously you think you're good enough to run a country of 300 million people better than the other 299,999,999 of them. Think about that.

3: Obama hasn't a chance in hell of beating McCain. It has nothing to do with being black or white or democratic or elitist or any of that other shit. You know why he won't win? He's too smart. I watched the last debate between Clinton and Obama where the moderators were asking Obama a bunch of stupid questions - one of them was about how he doesn't wear flag pins but the other two do - and the essence of his response was that patriotism isn't measured by a pin, but by what you do. He called out the media for sensationalizing these kinds of trivial issues at the expense of discussing real issues (you know, the economy, Iraq, civil liberties, all of that stuff) - and you know what, he's RIGHT. George W. Bush wears a flag pin, and we see how much good he's done for the nation. However, to Joe Sixpack in middle America, the fact that Obama doesn't wear a flag pin and then tries to explain why he doesn't do it just means that he's a Bad Man. It means he's of questionable character. Obama has said that the views of people he knows are not representative of his views. This seems like a self-evident statement, doesn't it? I mean, shit, my grandfather was quite fond of words like "nigger" and "coon" - but, what, exactly, does that have to do with me? Oh, right, absolutely nothing. Except, of course, to our buddy Joe Sixpack again, it means that I must be a racist. Three cheers for guilt by association! God damn America, indeed.

4: Clinton doesn't have a chance in hell of beating McCain, either. The majority of her policy ideas are not really that bad, but I think she has a major image problem. I think people look at her and see Slick Willy. I think they look at her as an opportunistic, power-hungry carpetbagger who is more interested in her own aggrandizement than doing what's right for the country. I think these perceptions are probably too harsh when compared with reality, but I think she needs to do something about them nonetheless if she hopes to become the nominee or the next president. I wonder how many people will not vote for her solely because she's a woman. I'm sure it's a nontrivial number; that's just the nature of the American electorate. I was on the Clinton website today just poking around, and there's an interesting little quiz on there which basically just attacks Obama, and one of the questions is "Who claimed Hillary Clinton has a secret 20-year plan to become president?" - the answer, of course, is Barack Obama. You know what, though? That's actually true. I was told the same thing by someone who's working on the Clinton campaign and knows people in their inner circle. I guess it's not so secret....

5: Getting stupid again... Remember what I said at the end of my last entry, bringing up the various prophecies which say that the world as we know it will end in 2012? I wonder if that means John McCain is the antichrist? Hmm.... hehehehe
Mood: working

Date: 2008-05-01 18:58
Subject: John McCain and Hillary Clinton: dumb and dumber.
Gas prices are high. Compared to the rest of the world, though, $3.50/gallon is still relatively inexpensive.

Our buddy, John "100 Years" McCain, thinks that it makes sense to give the struggling American gas-guzzling consumer a break from high fuel prices during the summer driving season, and his proposal to do this involves a temporary suspension of the 18.4cents/gallon federal gas tax. A gas tax holiday, he calls it. John McCain is a moron for believing that this is actually going to make any kind of meaningful difference in the average driver's bottom line.

Hillary, not wanting to appear as if she, too, cannot pander to the unwashed masses, has also jumped on this bandwagon. This means that she is even DUMBER than McCain for being the second idiot on the bandwagon. Hello, Mrs. Clinton, do the fucking math.

If any of you, dear readers, think that this gas tax holiday is actually a good idea which is going to have any meaningful positive impact on your pocketbook, then I am saddened to say that the average IQ of the folks that read this humble blog has just dropped. So let's break it down:

A gas tax holiday that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day (the traditional summer driving season) would run for approximately 13 weeks. Let us suppose that you are like me, and you drive to work every day, and you drive a little bit on the weekends here and there, but that you're neither always on the road nor always at home. In other words, you have average driving patterns. I get gas approximately 3 times per month, at a rate of about 16 gallons per fillup. For ease of calculation, we'll round it up and say that I will get gas 10 times between the end of May and the beginning of September. So, with Johnary McClinton's gas tax holiday, this means that I am saving:

16 * 0.184 = $2.944 / fillup * 10 fillups = $29.44, or about 10 bucks per month.

10 bucks a month. That's the net individual result for an average American driver under the McClinton plan. Who are they kidding? Who is that really going to help? If you're so strapped for cash that an extra 10 dollars per month is going to make a meaningful difference in your bottom line every month, you shouldn't own a car in the first place.

Let me say it again. 10 motherfucking dollars per month.

Now, let's look at the other side of the equation. This tax money normally goes towards highway maintenance and construction and other such infrastructure-related things. Suppose that it's taken away for 3 months. There are 300 million people in America. Some of them don't drive at all, but others drive a lot more (for example, long-distance truckers). For the sake of estimation, let's say that over the next 3 months, 150 million people will be affected by this gas tax holiday. At $30/person, that's 4.5 billion (billion, with a B) dollars in lost revenue that could have gone towards highway improvements or even, god forbid, alternative energy research to try to wean us off of the Middle Eastern petro-tit.

Fuck you, John McCain, for being a stupid, pandering politician, and fuck you harder, Hillary, for agreeing that it's a good idea. But most of all, if you can't see past this ruse, FUCK YOU, AMERICA.
Mood: annoyed

Date: 2008-05-05 10:48
Subject: The Three Stooges in: 'Presdential Politikz'
From CNN (emphasis mine):

"In the face of criticism from a slate of economists who say her gas tax holiday plan would be ineffective or even harmful, Hillary Clinton said she wasn’t taking stock of their opinions and emphasized that this was a short-term fix that would primarily benefit long-distance drivers."
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” Clinton told George Stephanopolous on ABC’s ‘This Week’ after he asked her to name a single economist supporting her plan.

She's going to do what she thinks is right regardless of what the experts say. On one hand, you could admire her fortitude. On the other hand, you might find it enlightening to examine past events where a president has ignored the people that know a particular subject area the best and gone off on his own course of action and see where that has gotten us. Oh, right... Iraq.

Hillary won't listen to the opinions of economists in reference to the economy, believing that she knows better, yet Obama is the one they call an elitist? Come on, Hillary, can't you just admit that you're wrong about this and get on with it?

I had originally said that I would not vote for Clinton under any circumstances, but then I changed my mind, thinking that she'd still have to be better than John McCentury. Now I'm not so sure. This gas tax issue, although certainly not on the scale of the Iraq invasion, really speaks volumes about Hillary's ability and/or willingness to listen to outside advice and to keep an open mind rather than just seizing on a particular course of action and holding on for dear life. I'm sure her heart is in the right place, but sometimes you just have to admit that a bad idea is a bad idea and move on. We don't need another four years of stubborn single-mindedness that refuses to be swayed because it believes itself to be on the path of true righteousness.

Obama '08. He's not perfect, but he's a shit-ton better than Moe and Larry.

EDIT: It just gets better. Here's the latest Clinton gem, this time from a rally in Indiana, wherein she again talks about the gas tax holiday. Once again, emphasis mine:

"Do they stand with hard pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the big oil companies? That’s a vote I’m going to try to get, because I want to know where they stand and I want them to tell us - are they with us or against us?”

With us or against us?? The next thing you know, she's going to come out with her own version of the "axis of evil" speech. Hell. she's already said that she'd "obliterate Iran" if they ever attacked Israel. Even McCain isn't stupid enough to say something that incendiary.

I know some of you are Clinton supporters. If you support Clinton because you dislike Obama, I can understand that, because that's basically why I support Obama over Clinton. If you support Clinton because you genuinely like her and think she'd be a good change from El Chimpy, I invite you to take a good long look at the attitude and general disdain for anyone's opinion but her own that she's shown recently.

Date: 2008-06-11 08:09
Subject: I'd buy that for $4/gallon
So, as I'm sure anyone living in the US knows all too well by now, gas has gotten to be quite pricey (please, let's not get into discussions over whether or not gas should actually cost more as a means to spur conservation - that's a topic for another post). Even the regular unleaded is over $4/gallon in these parts. A couple weeks ago, I told my boss that I wanted to start working from home at least one day per week as a means to, well, use less gas. It's not that saving me, say, $10/day on gas is going to make all that big of an impact on my bottom line, but honestly, I just find the idea of spending upwards of $60-$70 to fill up my car to be rather offensive. Ok, great, so now I'm working from home on Thursdays.

Then I started thinking... wouldn't it be nice if I could bike to work? We have a shower in the office, so I'm covered on that front, so all I'd need is a bike (since my last bike got stolen a few years ago). The only problem with this plan is that my house is about 15-20 miles away from the office, and I'm just not really in shape for that kind of ride to AND from the office in the same day. Add on to that the fact that summer is rapidly approaching, and the thought of an hour-long bike ride in 110-degree weather just doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

But I found a solution. I have a parking card for Hayden Square, which is in downtown Tempe, about 1/2 way between my house and my job. So I can park my car there in the covered parking (for free!) and then just bike the rest of the way. Then I bike back to my car at the end of the day and drive home. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a start. Just need to add a bike and then figure out how to get my ass out of bed at 6am so I can be at the parking garage by 6:30 or so and be able to do the morning ride before it starts to get really hot out there.

So, last Monday, armed with my foolproof plan, I went to the bike store and I bought one of these (mine actually looks a little different because I replaced the handlebars and seat, added some bar ends, and took off the clipless pedals, but you get the idea - it's the same model - a Trek Fuel EX 8).

Woo!!

And then, all last week, I failed to get up early enough in the morning to actually put my plan into motion. See, if I don't get up until 9am, I'm not out the door until 9:30, which means I don't get to work until almost 10. If I were going to throw an 8-mile bike ride into that equation, we're talking 10:30 or so before I actually start to get any work done (of course, I'm at work now and not getting any work done, either.)

Boo!!

But fear not, dear reader. Ravyn went to bed early last night (thank you, Xanax!) and managed to get a good night's sleep and then woke up this morning at 6am. I made it to the parking garage by 6:45, got on the bike, and pedaled my ass down the street and to the office. It actually wasn't too bad of a ride, although my butt started to get a little sore there at the end. The ride to work is mostly uphill, which means, naturally, that the ride home (when it's hotter than fuck outside) will be mostly downhill and should theoretically be pretty easy. So that brings us back to...

Woo!!!!

So the plan is to bike two days per week and work from home one day per week and then work that up to three days of biking and two days of working from home. I may be stuck paying $4/gallon for gas (which will probably be $5/gallon by the end of the summer) but at least I won't have to do it quite so often. So, let's say it again!

Woo!!

Date: 2008-06-22 08:45
Subject: News from the front
While I wait for a bunch of code to import and some other code to transfer over the network, it seems like a good time for an update...

Job: still lame. Nothing to report, really, other than it's basically the same old shit. Had a meeting last week with the dev manager, director of client support, CFO and president wherein we discussed one of the technical guys that thinks he deserves a 20% raise. When they told me that he wanted to be making 102k per year, I started laughing. Probably not the most tactful of responses, but yeah, whatever, that dude doesn't deserve that kind of salary. He thinks he's a "data architect" or an "engineering director" - talk about a serious identity crisis. Fuck, I'm the bloody director of IT - I'm the whole damn IT department, actually - and I don't even make 102k. There's no way this fool ought to. Add to that the fact that he can't even get all of his work done in a timely manner, the end result of which being that it overflows onto me (because there isn't anyone else that can do it). Screw you, buddy.

Contract work: Picking up a little, but not yet enough to give the job the heave-ho and be comfortable with it. I'm picking up a 1/2 rack of colo space in a Tempe datacenter for a client project, and I'll end up with a good amount of extra space that I can use for my own shit. The director of sales at the data center said that he'd throw some business my way if he got inquiries for stuff that his company can't or doesn't do. All I need, really, is one or two more clients that want to pay me a couple thousand per month, and I'm golden.

Wedding: Not much to say here, either. Cory's bridal shower was yesterday, and she gets back tomorrow. After that, it'll basically be one more month to go. We still have a good amount of shit to get done, but not enough, I think, that it's overwhelming.

School: Decided that I'm going to go back to school in the fall. I've been debating whether to just enroll at ASU and go for a Masters in CS or to continue on with the Harvard distance learning program. I'd kinda like to be back in the classroom setting again, but as Cory noted, it's ASU vs. Harvard. There's really no choice to be made. I'm thinking that she's probably right, so I'm going to make it my goal to take two of the distance-ed classes this fall. After that, I'll be ready to formally apply to the program (basically, I get in as long as my overall GPA in the classes I've taken thus far is 3.0 or better), at which point I'll have 5 years to finish another 6 classes and write my thesis. I also want to get back to doing kung fu; I'm trying to figure out how I can manipulate my schedule in order to make that happen, but I think I can make the most of being able to work from home on Thursdays and take my lunch hour at the dojo (which is right down the street). So I can train from 12-1 on Thursday, then go home and get some work done, and then go back and train from 5:30-8:30 on Thursday night and then again on Saturday morning from 9-11 (assuming that I can wake up, of course). There's also the possibility of Tuesday nights after work, but I'm planning for Tuesdays to be one of my regular bike-to-work days, so the odds that I'll have energy for kung fu after biking home in 110-degree heat are, well, pretty damn small.

Biking: Did it again one day last week - picked up a gel cover for the seat so now my ass doesn't hurt quite so much. I'm going to aim for two days this week, as I need to see what kind of recovery time my ass needs before I can ride again.

Other: Looks like Ryan Jamieson is off my shit list. He IM'ed me last week to congratulate me on the wedding, and we started talking, and ended up going out for dinner on Friday to catch up. It seemed to me like we just sorta picked up our friendship where we left off, without any weirdness or anything, and that was pretty cool. It always sucks when you write someone off, particularly someone that you had considered a good friend, so I'm glad that we've reconnected. Oh, and I got to have some really good pizza from a place that I'd never eaten at before (LGO, on 40th & Campbell) - so you can bet I'll be picking up takeout from there on the way home from work now and then.

And finally, I think I'm going to start trying to keep better track of my workouts. I was looking back through some old LJ posts wherein I used to record my lifting, and I realized that I haven't done that, even on paper, in quite awhile. I used to spend time coming up with a weekly program, writing it all out, and doing it, but lately I just go to the gym and lift for a bit. I need to pay more attention to what I'm doing so I know whether or not I'm making any progress. So I'm going to use LJ as my training diary again, but I think I might create a separate journal for it.

Whew. I think that's it.