Give me a break..

I should warn you now .. you might find this post offensive. If you have delicate sensitivities, stop reading.

On CNN I stumbled across this article. The short version of this story is that a 13 year old girl had a myspace page and a 49 year old woman created a myspace page pretending to be a 16 year old boy that was a love interest for this girl. The 'boy' eventually spurned the girl via myspace and she commited suicide over it.

The woman is "charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on Meier, who is identified in court documents as M.T.M. Each count against Drew would carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction."

The whole situation is pretty fucked up honestly. Why a 49 year old woman would go to the lengths of creating a fictitious myspace page to pretend to be a 16 year old boy to spurn this girl.. I have no idea. Obviously she has some serious issues she needs to deal with. I have to ask as a parent though.. why does your 13 year old girl have a myspace page? If for some reason you decided this was ok.. how are you not monitoring it? Even if you think its ok and don't think you need to monitor it at all for your 13 year old girl.. how the hell do you not talk to her about the dangers of the internet and make sure they know not everything can be taken at face value?

My problem with this whole thing is that this woman, who is decidedly screwed in the head, is being brought to trial on some pretty weak technicalities because of the fact that the girl commited suicide. Was the woman wrong to do what she did? Absolutely. Should she be pummeled about the head and neck region with a 24lb Butterball? You betcha and I get dibs! This should not be the huge trial that it is though regardless of how fucked up the situation is.

Its the internet people. THE INTERNET. I have a news flash for you in case you are new to the internet. NOT EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET IS TRUE. Let me give you an example with the following statement:

I am devestatingly handsome and I recently had a threesome with Salma Hayek and Megan Fox.

See what I mean? Only half of that statement is true. I'll let you figure out which half though. Just because I posted it on the internet doesn't make it true. Although if Salma and Megan are reading this and want to make the statement valid.. you know where to find me!

My point before I got off on a pleasant tangent there is simple. That girl, as tragic as her suicide is, had much larger emotional issues than this myspace situation. The myspace thing is a scapegoat. People are looking for someone to blame for the tragedy that is a 13yr old commiting suicide. That doesn't make it right.

Everyone goes through the trauma of being rejected. Having their heart broken. Being manipulate and used. I know my kids are going to go through it. I have been through it. I also am very confident that when it happens they are not going to think the world is over and feel like they need to take their own lives over it. I can't even imagine what that girls parents are going through, but that doesn't make it right to try to pin the blame on one persons actions.. even as retarded and nauseating as they were.

I am all for letting the parents vent some anger and use those little frozen cornish game hens to 'stone' her in a public setting as punishment for her stupidity and then commiting her to an institution to deal with her issues. Pinning the girls suicide on false representations of a myspace page on the internet sets a scary precedence.

I have seen and/or been involved in some pretty fucked up situations revolving around people creating false identities on the internet over the years. One was rather recent and affected not only myself, but several other people I know well. I am not going to go into details, but let it suffice to say that the things this individual said and did were far, FAR worse than misrepresenting themselves on a myspace page. As fucked up as the whole situation was, no one commited suicide over it. Everyone lives, learns and moves on. We try to forget the shitty things that happen and focus on the good things.

It would be a different story if the woman had tried to convince the girl to commit suicide. If there was evidence she was trying to get the girl to do that, maybe this would have more of a leg to stand on. This is just people looking for a scapegoat.. for someone to blame in a tragic situation.

As tomorrow is Thanksgiving and the chances of me posting on a holiday and a day off are slim, let me wish you all a happy turkey day. I hope you all enjoy the time you get to spend with family and friends. Remember to take a minute and think about the good things in your life and be thankful for those people that are there for you, who love you, and make you happy. Those are the things to dwell on.

/cheers
/turkeycoma ON

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The holiday season approaches.

With Thanksgiving only a few days away and xmas right around the corner, I am reminded of one main thing about the holidays. I don't like people. No.. not you. Well unless I don't like you.. in which case, yes.. you. In general though, people turn into complete idiots when the 'happy holidays' roll around.

You know the people I am talking about. Even if you gloss over it and pretend they are not there.. they are. You know.. the jackasses that will cut you off in an icy parking lot to be 3 spots closer to the door at the mall. The people who will take an item out of your cart when you are not looking because they want that for their niece but you too the last one. The people who are rude to the poor checkout person who has been dealing with assholes all day just because an item didn't ring up correctly and it takes an extra 30 seconds to fix it.

I have always found it ironic how a season that is supposed to be happy and joyous often brings out the worst in people. A season that is supposed to remind everyone to be thankful for what they have. A season that is supposed be about giving. Yet a good portion of the population runs into the holiday season and treats its like a bully that is trying to steal their lunch money. It becomes an angry, stressful time. They go at the holiday season like something they have to beat, to win at. They have to beat that bully. They will not be given a swirly by the force that is xmas this year!

Why? Why look at the holidays this way? Its supposed to be about enjoying time with family and friends. Its supposed to be a time to reflect on the past year and your ups and downs. Its a time to look forward to the upcoming new year and what that might bring. Stop stressing about finding the perfect gift. Stop getting worked up over all the things you feel you have to get done for things to go perfectly this year. You know what? If you don't get a card out to your college roommate's sister's great aunt that you met that one time, the world will go on. You are not a bad person.

I would like to point out though that this "don't stress" rule does not apply when it comes to making holiday baked goods to send to me. As I am baking impaired, I rely on the generousity of others for holiday goodness. :P

I am a big fan of shopping over the internet. Sure it appeals to my geek side anyway, but the biggest reason is I don't have to deal with people. I go online, find the item I want and order it. The small shipping costs are totally worth not having to deal with the tools I talked about above. 3 minutes ordering online or hours driving to the mall, parking, fighting crowds, hoping they still have what you want.. no thanks. If you really think about it.. its cheaper to shop online anyway. Between gas driving to and from the store and the alchohol you must purchase to drink away the stress of dealing with idiots at the stores, are you really saving anything shopping locally? I think not.

For the record, it is NOT cool to start playing xmas music full time before Thanksgiving is over. You have a month afterwards, there is no reason for it before turkey day is done. Just don't. My turkey may be thawing, but I am willing to bet it will still hurt like a mofo if I hit you in the face with it. Just leave the xmas music off til afterwards so I don't have to hurt you.

I am lucky enough to be going to visit my family again for almost 2 weeks around the holidays. Its a wonderful thing to be able to spend that kind of time with them over xmas and new years. THAT is what the holidays are about.

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I'm the Prince of Darkness Dammit!

I talked about the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft.. and now they released a new commercial with Ozzy that I just found hysterical so I had to share. Even if you don't care about WoW or Ozzy .. its still great. Just watch it.

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Winter Wonderland

So I walk out the door this morning.. running late for work as my alarm never went off and the boys assumed I had the day off so didn't wake me.. and BAM .. white everywhere. It snowed that heavy, wet, thick snow. It covers all the branches on the trees and makes them look super cool. We had a couple inches on the ground.. and my car since I never got around to cleaning my garage this weekend and getting my car in there. Damn you Lich King!

I am not sure why the snow was such a shock to me this morning, but it was. I know its winter time. I know it has been cold enough to snow for a while. But for some reason I totally didn't expect there to be snow out there this morning. I love the first snow of the year. I drove to work enjoying the scenery and my mug full of Icing on the Cake coffee. I turn into a coffee junkie in the winter. Makes the morning drive so much better.

It was a different experience driving to work today. See this is the first time driving in the snow with my new tires. Last winter I drove on tires that needed to be replaced for the entire winter. I know it was stupid and dangerous, but tires for my car are expensive. You know how that kind of thing goes. It got towards the end of winter and I kept thinking I made it this far, no big deal now. My tires had very little tread on them so it was quite the adventure learning how to drive in the snow safely with them. I don't suggest it. :P

Anyway, it was nice having traction in the snow again. I felt much safer driving today. Now all I have to worry about is the idiots in the 4wd trucks that insist they can still do 80 in the snow and ice simply because someone put a sticker that says 4x4 on the back of their truck. It never ceases to amaze me that they have a complete lack of understanding of basic physics. If there is no weight on the back tires on a pickup, there is no traction. Period. It doesn't matter if you have 4wd or not if there is no traction. You will just spin the tires really fast with your big v8 engine.

Normally I would step in here and hit these people in the melon with a shovel. However, in light of the cold weather, snow, and impending thanksgiving holiday I have changed my mind. No, I haven't turned over a new leaf, I am just trying to get into the holiday spirit and thus have shelved my shovel. Instead, I will hit them in the face with a frozen turkey.

This idea came to me when we got our free turkeys from work the other day. It was in one of those convenient net carrying bags with a handle. As I was walking out to my car with it swinging, I thought to myself that I was basically carrying a 20lb rock with a convenient handle for swinging it...at the melon of annoying people. How festive is that!?

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Wrath of the Lich King

Most of you that read this probably don't know what I am even referring to much less care about an expansion for an online MMORPG, but this is my blog.. so deal. I have been looking forward to this expansion for quite sometime. I am going to delve into the game design behind MMOs and maybe explain to someone who doesn't play, why I was excited about this expansion.

I have run an online gaming guild for about 10 years now. We have played many different games over the years finally ending up in World of Warcraft (WoW for short) and Warhammer Age of Reckoning (WAR for short). Some of the folks playing WAR have come back to WoW for the expansion.

One of the things that keeps a game like that interesting is the interaction. Any game gets old fast if you are just playing it by yourself. Its like Rock Band for those of you that have played it. I play it solo every now and then, but that gets old real quick. But get a group of people together to play and its a ton more fun. It's the same way with MMOs. Its the people and the interaction that makes it fun and enjoyable. Most nights we'll have 15-20ish people online and on Ventrilo (voice chat software) joking around and having a good time while playing together.

One of the big things to do in MMOs is raiding. Tackling very tough 'end game' level content together. Over the years we have done everything from massive Relic Raids in DAOC with hundereds of people all the way down to heroic instances in WoW which was limited to 5 people. WoW itself, which is where I have played for most of last few years has undergone changes. They used to have standard 5 man instances and then the big raids were 40 mans. The logistics of running a guild or alliance of guilds as we did, to have that many players available on a given night and then coordinating them all to raid together to accomplish a goal was crazy.

I have been a raid leader, the one calling the shots for just about every game we have played. I enjoy it, but it gets very old having to try and keep 40 people at least semi happy and working well together. It got very frustrating trying to keep track of what 39 other people are doing, where your weak spots were, who was causing the problems, etc. Balancing peoples schedules with raid success. Dealing with conflicts. Mediating arugments over loot drops. On and on.

Blizzard made a change with the last expansion. THey opted to move away from the 40 man raids and made the biggest one 25. Our hope was that with this change we could leave the alliance we had behind and do 25 man content on our own as a guild. We did for a while, making it through Gruuls Lair and parts of Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. We just didn't have enough consistency to really move foward past that.

The problem? Logistics plain and simple. My guild is made up of adults for the most part. Older people with jobs and families and commitments other than playing games 24/7. So when we are dealing with everyone scheduling their gaming / raiding time around sports games and piano lessons and meetings and homework and bedtimes.. it just got to be a headache to try and get 25 people together at one time with 4 hours available to try and get some raids progressing through the content.

Now there are the 'hardcore' guilds. People in that stage of life with no commitments, no desire to do anything but raid. And they do. 6-7 days a week.. often 8+ hours a night. My guild has never come close to that nor had a desire too. So where does that leave the 'casual' raider as far as getting to see content? For both the original release and the BC expansion, there were sections of the game we missed out on all together as they required stuff from lower difficulty dungeons we had not yet completed to get into them.

Why should I .. as an adult player, be unable to see content because I cannot commited 50 hours a week to raiding? Why should I be unable to experience parts of the game because I am unwilling to try and handle the logistics of 40/25 person raids? Blizzard finally listened for this expansion. All the 25 man content they are putting in has a 10 man mode as well. Meaning we can experience the content with only having to deal with the logistics of getting 10 people together which is quite reasonable. The loot you get from the 10 mans is a notch lower overall, but that is not a big deal. Its still very good and really its the challenge of the content we are looking for anyway.

Its very interesting at online games become more popular, how gaming companies are adapting their games and actually listening to their player base to an extent. There were many design changes to WoW with this expansion that made things much easier for the casual player / raider. Its welcome news to the majority of the players out there. Hopefully listening to the people playing the games will become the norm and not the exception to the rule.

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So its been a week..

Its been a pretty crazy week. Last week was a nightmare at work. Some pretty major hardware issues caused a ton of stress, work and late nights. Thursday into Friday for example consisted of about 22 hours of work, 5 hours of driving, a crapload of stress, and a total of about 90 minutes of sleep in very short bursts.. most of the time at my desk at work.

Friday morning after it looked like everything was finally running well and stable again at work, I took off to go home, sneak about an hour of sleep before I showered and went to the airport to pick up a friend who came to town for the weekend. We had a nice relaxing time and as she had traveled all night on a red eye, she was fortunately tired and wanting to sleep too so we spent half of Friday she was here sound asleep in bed. It was needed.. and relaxing. It was a very nice weekend overall despite her claims that she was going to get frostbite in the 20 seconds it takes to walk to the bar and grill behind my house.

Wrath of the Lich King was also released on Thursday, which is something I have been looking foward too. For those of you that don't know what it is, you won't care even when I explain it to you, so I won't wasted your time. I am looking forward to hopefully getting some playing time in this week finally so I can play catchup a bit.

Winter is finally really here. It was 16 according to the guage in my car on the way to work this morning. It's dark when I leave for work and its dark when I get home from work. My agenda for this weekend includes cleaning my garage to be able to park in there again as well as make sure the snowblower is working and accessible.

I have been enjoying going to watch B play basketball. Its his first year and the squad he is on is quite bad. It reminds me how much I enjoy basketball though. We are trying to see if the school gyms are open for practice / free play on the weekends and after games so we can work on stuff. The point guard on his team makes me crazy. He is a horrible player and looks like a long limbed monkey with a balance disorder when he's out there. I lost count somewhere around 20 turnovers this kid had.. in 12 minutes of play. This is the POINT GUARD. The guy who is supposed to be good at handling the ball, passing, and running plays. You could have taken a blindfolded walrus .. put him at point guard... and he would have done just as well swatting the air randomly with his flippers hoping to make contact. He at least would have been more entertaining to watch.

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Its still fun.

There are certain things that you do when you are younger that seem silly, but bring you great joy. Sometimes as you grow older, those things will pop back into your head and there are even occasions where maybe you cut loose and get a chance to relive one of those things.

For example, I remember when my kids were young, im talking stroller age, I would push them fast towards an obstacle making it look like they were going to smash into it and then swerve at the last second. I remember doing similar things on my bike when I was a kid.. speeding towards a tree lined curve and at the last possible second trying to turn and make the corner. The excitement of almost crashing .. the fear of maybe miscalculating and going head on into the obstacle .. made it fun and exhillerating.

My kids used to giggle and laugh when I did that to them in their strollers, but they outgrew the stroller eventually and I thought maybe I had outgrown that little stunt. Yet when I was in AZ visiting my family, I was pushing my adorable nephew in his stroller when we went to the mall, and instinct kicked in and I was right back at it. Zooming towards a palm tree, or planter, only to swerve at the last possible second to a squeel of giggles from Cade.

Now I am headed to lunch the other day and as I was walking through the main lobby, I see an older couple. The woman is in a wheel chair and the old guy is pushing her towards the buffet, which is lined with those retractable barrier things. Without missing a beat the old guy accelerates right towards one of those barriers. The wife is all wide-eyed and nervous. I thought maybe the guy was having a heart attack and lost control of the wheelchair, but no, he was fine. At the last possible second he spins the wheelchair a bit and they miss the barrier. The woman takes a big breath to relax, but has a grin on her face the same as the old man does. He is quite proud of himself actually.

I chuckled to myself as I went on my way, very happy to find out that some things in live are still fun as you get older.

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Monday Fun

So I get into work today, hoping for a nice quiet Monday morning. Go from 3 day weekend to a quiet day to another day off tomorrow for Vet's day would have been perfect. No such luck.

I arrive today a bit before 6am to find my office open already, some lights and computers on and music playing. Odd for 6am on a Monday as I'm usually the first one here. Turns out one of the main revenue generating systems at work was having 'issues'. I get up to speed on what the problems were over the weekend and my coworker that was on call said he has been here since 2am working on it with our vendor.

My immediate supervisor shows up around 6am, which is surprising as he was supposed to be in training this week. He comes over to my desk and says he needs a writeup on how we can move forward very quickly on viruatlizing the servers associated with this revenue generating system. It has been our plan all along, but there have been many difficulties along the way that have pushed it back time and again.

Here's the basics. We want to virtualize the servers so we can fail them over to a remote site quickly and easily should a HARDWARE issue occur. We made it perfectly clear when we requested the money for this project that it only provided us safety from HARDWARE problems. Once more.. HARDWARE only. Meaning if we lost the servers or the server room, we could bring those servers back up at a different location.

Enter in our department head Dedicated Understanding Magnificent Badass Astute Supervisor Stud... or DUMBASS for short. Now let say DUMBASS doesn't have a clear understanding of what this project actually allows us to do. Lets say he only hears "quick failover" out of the whole thing. Instead of getting clarification before making promises.. he decides to just go all out and promise the powers that be that we will never have more than 15 minutes downtime on this system. Ever. Boy.. that is a DUMBASS move to the core if I have ever seen one.

This weekends issues I found out are all software related. So even if we had been setup for failover, the data is replicated realtime. Meaning the same software issues would have existed on the hardware at the remote site if we had failed them over. The issues had to be resolved within the software. It had NOTHING to do with hardware. That didn't stop DUMBASS from cancelling training, pushing the panic button and calling a meeting to discuss how we can fast track a very detailed, risky server and SQL database conversion. Thats always the best choice. If something goes wrong, panic and make snap decisions without thought to the consequences!

There are 3 kinds of bosses. Two of them you can work easily with. The third is a nightmare.

1. Your boss knows as much or more than you. If you boss has a full understanding of what you are working on, he can provide guidance and direction and is easy to discuss things with. Its easier to get support for projects etc.

2. Your boss knows almost nothing about your area of expertise and admits it. This kind of boss will listen and try to follow your explanation. He is smart enough to know he doesn't know much about the topic and knows he hired you for your knowledge in the area and takes your recommendation. He knows his limitations and is willing to let the people who know what they are doing take care of it.

3. Your boss knows almost nothing about your area, but likes to fake it.

This kind of boss does things like:
-Pulls random keywords out of an article on the topic he found on the internet an hour before the meeting.
-Makes your department look like a bunch of circus clowns when he asks questions that don't even belong in the current discussion or asks them in a way that makes no sense
-Likes to ramble on about random topics not related the issue at hand because maybe he knows something about that random topic.
-Likes to offer support and guidance which you must listen to until he lets you leave the meeting so you can ignore said guidance and continue to do it the right way.
-Makes grand assumptions based off of nothing more than a random though that flitted into their head while having a beer the night before.
-Listens to what people have to say and then takes credit for it 2 seconds later with a "Thats what I was thinking last night, but I wanted to see if you would come up with it too"


Yes.. DUMBASS is a fine example of #3. Oh how he keeps life interesting around here. Only problem is.. I work in IT. The ideal situation for your IT staff is to walk into their office and find them all asleep or surfing the web. Oh I know.. as a general rule that is very unproductive. Think about it though. Think of it like you are walking into a nuclear weapon facility. Do you want to see those people running around in a panic? Hell no. You want them half asleep in their chair. That means things are running smooth and there is nothing to worry about. Its the same in IT. We don't want exciting in IT. We want smooth, steady, stable, status quo. Excitement is for after work. We don't need a DUMBASS creating issues for us.

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More Madness

If you haven't seen some of the celebrity costumes from halloween, check them out. Its pretty cool what endless money can come up with for costumes. Some were exceedingly lame, but some were pretty kick ass. Heidi Klum dressed up as the Hindu goddess Kali. Check it out:



Now THAT is a costume that should be winning the costume contest. But her prize did not come without repercussions. Apparently because she is a super model, she offended the entire Hindu nation by dressing as their goddess. A "Indo-American" leader (more on the idiocy of 'Anything-American' in a min) had this to say in a public press release:

"Goddess Kali is highly revered in Hinduism and she is meant to be worshipped in temples and not to be used in clubs for publicity stunts or thrown around loosely for dramatic effects," Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed said.
He added: "Hindus welcome Hollywood and other entertainment industries to immerse themselves in Hinduism, but they should take it seriously and respectfully, and not just use the religion for decoration or to advance their selfish agenda.
"Casual flirting sometimes results in pillaging serious spiritual doctrines and revered symbols and hurting the devotees."

Seriously? Get the fuck over yourselves. You want to tell me that there weren't a whole bunch of people that dressed a Jesus or Buddah or some other religious figure for halloween. How about priests? How many priest costumes or monk costumes or the Pope? Does no one see the irony in what this guys is doing? How does her dressing as Kali "pillage serious spiritual doctrines and hurt the devotees"? Is there suddenly Hindus feeling the need to switch religions because it has been cheapened to a point their faith is not there anymore all because Heidi dressed as Kali?

He lives in a country that guarantees him religious freedom. It guarantees him freedom of speech. Yet he then turns around and feels he should speak on behalf of an entire country's Hindu spiritual body when he says that they are all mortaly offended by a costume that represents one of their deities. All the while identifying himself as a "Indo-American". Hey.. I am going to use my freedom of speech to say.. SCREW YOU BUDDY.

Either you are an American.. or you are not. There is no Indo-African-Jewish-Italian-Irish-Scottish-WestJersey-Compton-DownSouthOnTheChattahoochie-American. Give it a rest. If you live in the US and are an US citizen. YOU ARE AN AMERICAN. Period. If you don't like that.. if you want to be a different person.. then by all means pack your damn bags and move there. Apply to be a citizen and live your life in happiness. Stop calling Obama an African-American. He is a US citizen and thus an AMERICAN. He wasn't born in Africa. He didn't reside there for half his life. He has never applied for dual citizenship with the US and Africa. He is an American same as you, same as me.

I have Scottish, German, Dutch heritage. I don't call myself a Scottish-American despite the fact that I look dashing in a kilt with my killer legs or the fact that I am a big fan of the Braveheart movie. I lived in NY for 11 years.. AZ for about that and now WI. I don't call myself a New York-Arizona-Wisconsin-American because that is where my 'people' are from. Why not? BECAUSE IT'S STUPID. That's why. We don't need this overly political correct bullshit anymore.

Be proud of your heritage, your beliefs, religion, clubs, teams, family, and pets. Practice your rights and rituals and festivals. Do so knowing that you live in a country that protects your right to do just that. Be happy that you live in a country where you can write a blog like this. Where you can discuss and criticize the government without fear of them arresting you and taking you computer like they do in China.

Let poor Heidi dress as a Hindu goddess if thats how she wants to express herself for halloween. If it pisses you off.. dress up as Jesus or some other religious figure and express your displeasure. Don't go to the media with a big damn hissy fit over how a super model is opressing your religion. I'm thinking a good couples costume would be a guy dressed as Jesus and his significant other dressed as a sexy Satan.. they could make out at the party. How cool would that be? We all know women are the root of all evil anyway right? ;P

If that last statement offended you... well then you should probably just turn off your computer.. go listen to some classical music and bury your head in the sand so nothing could possibly offend you and your delicate sensitivies. You know I have an Aunt, who won't read my blog anymore because she is pouting that one family member or another didn't stop to visit on their way through one time, who gets offended over stuff like this. But rest assured she has boycotted my blog as well even though I was not one of the "offenders" so she will not have to endure this post as it would probably make her bleed out of her ears. On the off chance that she still reads it in private.. yes I still let my kids play Halo.. and yet my kids are smart, well adjusted, happy and not prone to killing sprees. So get bent.

And that I guess, is enough of a venomous rant for today. Rest assured dear readers, I am not angry today.. just frustrated with the retards of the world. If you are overly sensitive, hypocritical idiot.. would you would please take a number and line up in a single file, my shovel and I will be with you shortly.

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I don't care.

I don't care that Obama is the first black president. Honestly, the more I heard on CNN, NBC and every other news program, the more it irritated me. I voted for Obama, but not because I wanted to help make him the first black president. I voted for him because I think he is the best choice to lead our country right now.

I found it rediculous that such a huge deal was made about his race. Yes I know, its a first. Its a long way for the country to come.. blah blah blah. I know minorities came out in record numbers to vote. But you know what? So did the 18-24 year old demographic, and the old people demographic (old people demo.. I crack myself up), and every other demographic. It was a record year for voting, period.

Are there some people who voted for him just because they are a minority and wanted him to win for some kind of vindication for minorities? Im sure there were. The same way I know there is a bunch of KKK redneck hillbillies out there that voted for McCain for the simple reason that they refused to even think about having an black man running the country. Does that mean that the news has to spend hours dwelling on the fact? Focus on what he did, has been doing and will be doing in the future. Look at his gameplan and discuss that. Talk about his goals and stances on important issues.

I don't care that MLK's youngest grandniece's sister's best friend's cousin was overjoyed at the victory this is for 'her people'. I didn't need to see the tears in Jesse Jacksons eyes for 5 minutes on CNN while they discussed why he was in tears. Why can't they let Obama stand on his own as the future leader of our country and start looking at how he is going to change the state of affairs we are in right now.

I watched the speeches last night. I was impressed with McCains speech conceding to Obama. I liked Obama's speech as well. I hope they both meant what they said and I hope the American people can get past the thrill of all the "firsts" of this election and focus on the issues at hand. Democratic majorities in both the house and the senate gives them real potential to get things done. I honestly hope the next 4 years are about trying to turn things around for this country and its economy and not focused on all the wonders of the fact that there is black man at the helm.

Frankly, Obama could grow out a bitchin fro, shave it bald in a strip down the middle and dye each side a different color and wear a pirate costume on tuesdays and casual fridays to the oval office as long as he gets things done and steers us forward in the right direction. All the news organizations had to have 2 or 3 black people on their discussion panels this year. All the shows spent so much time talking about how much this country has changed to be able to elect a black president. If we have changed so much, then why are we talking about the color of his skin at all and not just talking about the fact that he is an American who won the democratic nomination and here is his stand on things.

I don't envy Obama now. He is taking the helm in a time where we are in one of the worst economic climates in a century among other issues like the war in Iraq that is lingering on yet. I hope he is able to lead us to the change that he talked so vehemently about. Wether you voted for him or not, I hope everyone can respect him and support him as the next president of the United States .. and not pidgeon hole him. He's not an african-american.. he is an American. Period. He will not be the first black president, he will be 44th president of the United States. Period. He is a citizen of this country we the people elected to lead us for the next 4 years. Lets just focus on that fact.

My one request to Obama right now.. can we PLEASE keep gas down at 2.25/gal? Much thanks ;)

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Supa dupa clean!

There are some of you out there.. and you know who you are, who are taking this whole clean and sanitized thing to an unhealthy level. Its an argument I have made for years. You can over-clean. Sanitize and disinfect too much. Keep your kids in sterile environments so much that you are actually hurting rather than helping.

There was a good article on MSN today about this phenomenon. Link here. Basically its talking about how our bodies NEED a lot of the stuff that people are constantly trying to prevent. Sure you don't want to start rubbing raw chicken onto your child, but there is a big difference in watching out for salmonella and making it so that every inch of your house is scoured with industrial strength cleansers that are more dangerous than the stuff its supposedly removing.

Its the same thing with parents that don't want their kids in daycare or in public in general for the simple reason is they don't want their kids to get sick. You can't protect them that way. Putting them in a bubble doesn't help in the long run. Unless they have some physical complication, their bodies are designed to deal with sickness and disease as it encounters it. Sure it sucks when your kids is sick, but sheltering them to the point where their immune system never develops is not helping them in the long run.

Now I'm not saying that keeping a clean house is a bad thing. On the contrary, I like my house clean. I don't however bleach the place every other day. I don't scrub out my shower with super disinfectant and a brillo pad after each use. I don't carry a bottle of hand sanitizer with me just in case I actually have to touch a door handle out in public.

There is someone at work .. and I don't know who.. that irritates the living crap out of me. He uses the restroom by my office. I can only assume he scrubs up afterwards like a surgeon sterilizing before going to cut someone open. Afterwards, he drys his hands and then takes the paper towel with him to the door. He then uses the paper towel to open the door and then leaves it there as he is ducking out quickly so the big scary germs can't catch him. So you made it out safe.. and now the rest of us get a nice wet paper towel left on the door handle? There is no way a warm damp paper towel is going to breed any kind of bacteria or germs right? Right? Get a hazmat suit to walk around in if you are that damn paranoid.

People need to chill the hell out with this stuff. We were all like this once though. Remember back in elementary school where you wouldn't touch the opposite sex for fear of cooties? I suppose its not the same though, because back then you would also drop food on the ground, blow the dirt off and eat it. Kids sneeze on each other, on the playground equipment, on their neighboors grilled cheese sammich. They get cuts and scrapes, let the dirt clot that stuff right up, and keep on truckin.

Oh how times have changed. When I was growing up, my parents would drive for 12 hours with me in my crib they put in the back of the VW Bus they had back then. There are pictures of me freewheeling around the back of this thing as we cruised to Myrtle Beach. Now you have to have kids in a 14 point space shuttle type harness til they are 12. Lawn Jarts was a toy given to kids to play with back then. We quickly determined that the point of the game was to stand in the circle, throw the heavy sharp metal object straight up in the air and then run around and try not to get impaled through the skull. Nowadays parents might as well put their kids in a sanitary sealed hamster ball and let them roll around and bump into the other kids so they can't come in contact with anything bad for them.

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Its that time. Vote.

Its the big day. If you haven't already, get out and cast your vote. Who you vote for is your business and I am not here to sway you one way or the other. Honestly, if you are undecided at this point and are influenced by my blog the day of the election, then maybe you shouldn't vote after all.

My gaming guild has had a couple lengthy threads on our forums discussing the election and candidates and the government in general. We have people from all over the country chiming in with many varied viewpoints and stances. We have quite a few Canadians in the guild as well and its interesting to get their opinions in there as well as an outsider and see some of the comparisons to things going on in their government.

Someone had posted this picture.. and I liked it. Simple and made a very good point.



Does it matter that Obama could be the first president with a skin color other than pale? Does it make him better? Does it make his policies and platform of 'Change' any more potent? Is McCain's choice of Palin as a VP candidate an obvious counter to that as she would be the first woman to hold that office? Does it matter?

People are so focused on all the historical, ground breaking firsts going on in this election. It has a positive effect in that voter turnout is already looking better than it has been in a very long time. As of Monday, 24 million people have voted already with the ease of restrictions on early voting.

All I am hoping is that the majority of the people can look past all the amazing firsts and all the excitement going along with this election and actually vote for the candidate based on his stance on the issues.

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