jackofallgeeks | Recent Entries

So, Hi. It's been a few years. I remember when this journal was my biggest connection to the world; that was a long time ago, now. I mentioned my journal to my little sister recently and thought that I might check to see how things have held up. Pretty much looks like the way I left it a couple years ago.

Life's going really well for me. I'm in charge of a team of analysts at work, I own two homes (one of which I'm renting out), and I have two daughters now: Maire Shannon (2yrs) and Penny (4mo). I've been getting more in to role-playing games again lately (though, I still wish I could more games to play in, rather than running my own), and I've even started a blog on Wordpress to discuss the hobby. That's going pretty well, all things considered.

That's pretty much it, really. It's occurred to me over the last few years that I don't need LiveJournal the way I used to. I'm ad I don't see the friends I used to have here, but I'm happy and healthy. And that's good.

So, I came over here looking for one of my Vash Icons (somehow, Google wasn't able to find me a good picture) and ended up looking around a bit... It's actually a bit depressing. Like going back to my old stomping grounds and finding that my old hangout is closed down, all my friends moved away, and they paved over the park. It looks like only a few of you are left that still use LiveJournal, and even fewer that've kept their atrophied connection with my journal. That's mostly my fault; except for a Blip flood sometime last year, I haven't updated this since June of 2009, and it was sparse even before that.

Life moves on, and while I'm here I guess I might fill you in on it. Meghan and I were married the last time I posted; now we have a little girl, Maire Shannon, who's turning 6 months next week. She's teething and gurgling and generally is a very easy-to-handle baby. She doesn't fuss a lot (unless something is very wrong) and she deals well with "strangers" (you know, like her aunts or grand parents). I'm still working as a Computer Consultant, but with a recent switch in management in my office I'm looking to find a new position. I'll probably still stay with the company (I'm not sure I'd find a better deal at the moment anyways), but moving to a different office might be a good idea... We're getting our house refinanced, too, though the bank is currently taking it's time on "internal "processes." We'll see how that goes.

I've been running a regular, weekly D&D game with Meghan and some of our buddies. We just started a quick Shadowrun game (with someone else GMing) for a little break. It's nice, though I think my interpretation of the setting would be a little different (more tech-heavy, I think). Meg and I have re-activated our WoW accounts, though my usual complaints about the game (friends all on different servers, and too high level, so never anyone to play with) still hold. I also play a lot of StarCraft 2 (I loved the original), though lately I've been playing custom variations a lot more than the actual game itself.

And that's life in a nutshell. I'd say that I tend to say more on Facebook and Twitter, but lately that hasn't been true, either; in a weird way, I've been unplugged a lot more lately. With getting married, having a child, and seeing a subgroup of my friends more regularly in person, I guess I just haven't needed the Internet for socializing as much. And I think that's really kind of sad in a way.

Current Mood: blank

So, uhm, wow. I haven't been around here for a long time -- at least, it SEEMS like a really long time. Eight months at least, easy. Is anyone still out there? Nick? Dawn? Stacey? Laurel? Mel? Sarah?

Anyways, a lot has happened. Most notable, I got married about three weeks ago, to Meghan nee Donahoe, who I met about 4 or 5 years ago at my brother's school. (Not to be confused with Suzannah, who you guys probably heard more about.) Most of the last eight months were spent driving back and forth between her parents' house and mine, spending time together and visiting our
respective families and planning a wedding.

A wedding, by the way, costs a lot of money, especially when both sides have large, close extended families. I may rethink my plan of having all daughters...

But yes. We got married on May 16th, shortly after I turned 26. I took two weeks off from work and we flew to Ireland for our honeymoon. We'd both wanted to visit Ireland, and her ancestor's castle is actually being wonderfully restored. we got to tour it, which was pretty awesome. We had great weather, too, and just had a grand time all-around. Those of you who know me on Facebook should be able to find pictures there, but I'll try to get them up on Flickr or something for the rest of you.

Facebook is a big part of what's drawn me away from LiveJournal, but I've also been turned off by a lot of the announcements that have come down from SixApart and most of my communication needs are met by Twitter now.

So, uhm, yes. I guess that's really all I have to say right now... All I can think of, anyways. If you all are still around, I hope you're doing well. I mean, I hope you're doing well even if you aren't still around, but it wouldn't make much sense to talk to you if you aren't there to hear.

Yes.

So there's apparently a web page out there called "The Ultimate Joker" which is presuring
Hollywood to retire The Joker as a movie villain and let Ledger's version
stand as the last one.

I am so vehemently against this that I can't adequately
express it. Yes, Ledger's Joker was the best that I'd ever seen, and
yeah, I don't think you could improve on it. I'd go so far as to say that
anyone else trying to do Ledger's Joker would probably be a disappointment.
But I in no way this that justifies retiring such an amazing
villain! Ledger's death was a tragedy, and i'm still terribly disappointed
when I think that he'll never play another part again, but to deny Batman
his greatest rival, especially now, as the new franchise is taking
off, would simply be a crime.

I also don't believe that Ledger's performance, while amazing, is
"the best there could ever be." That's being a bit too harsh, I think, of
the potential of other actors. Even if no one can duplicate Ledger's
madman, what's to say they can't do a suitable reinterpretation?

The joker is and has been one of my favorite villains ever. The
counterpoint that he player to Batman was brilliantly brought out in The
Dark Knight. But while Ledger brought the villain to life, he didn't
write the character or direct the scenes. Ledger was a great actor, but he
was just an actor. The joker can and should live on without him.

Because I'm feeling pedantic, I'm going to pick on the author of this
article. The article itself is about how widescreen computers aren't
necessarily the best idea for business, but I don't really care. Instead
i'm going to pull out the line where he talks about the mechanics of our
eyes, specifically, "But when we have work to do, the fact that our eyes are
set up to spot a herd of jackals approaching us over the plain becomes
irrelevant."

Now, what he seems to be saying here is that our eyes are designed to let us
notice predators coming to get us. That's actually pretty false, judging
from the highschool-level grasp of biology that I have. Prey animals, like
dear, cows, and most birds, have their eyes on the sides of their heads,
allowing them some 300+ degrees of vision. They can see predators sneaking
up of them from behind, and take evasive action. Being that our eyes are on
the front of our heards, we only get about 120 degrees of sight, slightly
more if you count periferal vision. (I never do because I never use it. I
also bump into things alot.) The benefit, I believe, is that we get
binocular vision which lets us judge distances better, but as anyone who has
a little brother knows, we can be snuck up on fairly easily.

No, we aren't built as prey, we're built as predator. Ours are the
eyes of the wolf, the lion, and the raptor*. The only reason we'd notice
the jackals (who, by the way, are more scavengers than predators, anyways)
would be because we wanted to eat them. (And if you've ever
eaten jackal you'd know why even that is a fairly silly idea. Trust me.)

I didn't read the rest of the article because, like I said, I don't really
care. But I thought I'd latch onto this otherwise-unimportant little phrase
and make a big deal about it. Because after the day I've had, I needed a
bit of cerebral exercise.

*Bird, dinosaur, take your pick -- it doesn't matter to me.

So one of the things that I get on a soapbox about is the fact that the
Internet is not particularly dangerous for kids. Mostly this is an
extention of my belief that too many people are over-protective of kids, to
the children's detriment, and that kids will surprise you with what they're
able to deal with and accomplish if you give them a chance. Even aside from
that, though, the worst thing that can happen to a kid online is that
they learn something they'd be better off not knowing (or something you, the
parent, would rather they not know). You can't be kidnapped, abused,
injured, or anything else online; you have to actually leave the
house to do that (or at least open the door).

Anyways, there's an article
on Slashdot today talking about how the Attorneys General of 49 states
set out to 'solve' the problem of sexual solicitation of minors online, but
instead found that the Internet is made up of mostly good people who are
there for the right reasons. They said that child-on-child bullying is a
more troubling problem, though I'd personally disagree with that (and note
also that bullying isn't as dangerous online as in the real world, where the
other kid can hit you).

There was a short thread in the comments, though, that I found both
compelling and disheartening, in part because I can attest to the same
fears. Someone mentioned that in Tokyo, little kids ride the subway all the
time, and when they appear to become distressed or confused, multiple
adults will step forward to offer assistance. I can't attest to that
personally (never been to Japan) and I'll note that their culture is
distinctly different from ours -- but that's the point. The thread
was started by a guy replying that, as an American male, his first impulse
when a child in public is distressed is to get away from the area,
and very specifically not offer assistance to the child. In America,
men (especially, if not exclusively) are not allowed to offer
assistance to children under the assumption that if they did it would surely
make them suspect of being deviant. There's an annecdote about a man who
offered a ride to a girl who was walking to the bus stop in the rain; when
she declined, he just left, but when she told someone later that someone
became concered and decided the man needed to be identified and questioned
by police. And while I can understand the concern, it seems ridiculous that
we've gotten to a such a point where offering assistance is
suspicious.

Microsoft seems to want us to rent
our PCs, rather than actually owning them. I have nothing useful to say at
this moment.

And on the heels of a long silence and a big 'hello,' I bring you more geek
news. Apparently there's a new paper out that, according to this
article, says that what we expect influences what we see. Now,
if the paper actually claimed that I'd find it really interesting, but it
doesn't seem like that's the case. First, it's not really talking about a
change in perception so much as what you notice. Two people
percieving differently based on expectations is a lot more
interesting than just noticing different things. And from the
article it seems that "expectations" isn't even really a good word to use,
because the subjects were apparently not actually aware of the
expectations that the researchers grant them. Essentially, it sounds like
someone just took the commonly known fact that we filter out most of the
visual stimuli our eyes pick up, and added on that the 'filter' that the
brain uses is not random, but based on a value system built by experience.
Fascinating. Really.

So I got a nudge from a long-standing friend of mine, so I thought I'd take
some time to write a note and try and catch you all up on how life's been
treating me.

The good news is that life's been pretty great. The bad news is that, since
LiveJournal has almost entirely been where I go to vent negative emotions, I
haven't needed to be around here as much. And with things like
Twitter and Facebook usurping the "stay connected with friends" aspect of
what LiveJournal once was to me, I'm spending even less time here, much to
the detriment of my LJ-only friends (and my own loss, since I'm about as out
of date on your lives as you are on mine). Add to that the fact that the
business decisiomns of LJ/Six Apart/whoever's running the show these days,
I'm not sure I'm long for this realm. It'll be sad when I finally do leave,
but I can't honestly say I'm not considering it.

(I'd like to say that this just means that I need to get reliable email
addresses for those I might be leaving behind, but I know myself, and I have
trouble keeping up a correspondence when things die down.)

So. Yeah. Didn't mean to start on such a down note. Life is going well.
Work is engaging and mostly enjoyable -- I've been here a year, but I'm
being recognized for my knowledge and ability, by both clients and
management, so that's cool. I got a really nice perfoprmance review, too,
so I'm hoping that translates into a promotion. With the wedding coming up,
a little extra money every month would be nice. (I'm also considering
dropping my TV and landline service -- I'm paying $140 a month for a bundle
of TV, phone, and Internet, but I never use the landline and my cable box
has been unplugged for most of the last 8 months. Internet service alone
couldn't cost more than half what I'm paying right now.)

The wedding planning is... Well, I usually say "going well," but to be
honest I don't even know what all is involved in planning a wedding, let
alone how far we've managed to get. Meghan's picked colors, and dresses for
the bridesmaids, and told me what sort of suits/tuxes she wants me and the
guys to wear. We sort of have a reception hall, but we lost the caterer we
were going to go with, and we're holding off (apparently) on making
anything official until we get a new one. we also don't have a
photographer, though we're only planning on having him for a few pictures
after the ceremony, and then having disposable cameras at each table at the
reception (something I've seen at a few weddings and thought was a GREAT
idea). We have a handful of things on our wedding registry (notably a
coffee maker and linens), though unsurprisingly Meghan seems to like really
fancy-looking designs and things and I tend toward the simple and
understated. And since we're talking about the decorations of day-to-day
life, it's harder for me to give in than, say, how she wants to dress up the
wedding. (It's my general opinion that it's more her day than mine,
anyways, in that 'all' girls dream about their wedding day -- and despite my
always wanting to get married, the details of this or that are less
particular for me.)

A big part of me wishes I could have you, my LJ fiends, come to the wedding
-- Mel and Sarah and Nick and Dawn. But even if it was reasonable for any
of you to make the trip, I'm afraid you'd each be terribly uncomfortable
being there. Maybe that's just me, but... -shrugs-

What else is going on? Oh, my little brother, Josh, got engaged. He's
actually in the same class as Meghan (though when he goes back for the
Spring semester, she's staying here and taking correspondence classes.) He
proposed to his then-girlfriend-of-two-years over Thanksgiving. They don't
have a date yet, but they're thinking sometime in the Summer of 2009, and
they're going to stay in this area (which is a good thing in my book). My
sister Beth, just shy of 13, has her first 'official' boyfriend, which is
cute and amusing and frightening all at once. I think all of you know that
dad retired from the Navy and got a job as a consultant/researcher thing.
Yeah, I'm not really clear on what he does, but that's nothing new.

Christmas was lots of fun. I spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with
Meghan's family; they got me a stocking full of chocolate, and several DVDs
(including The Dark Knight). More importantly, though, they got
themselves a Wii, and the boys were overjoyed. I trhink Bridget was also
pretty happy, and she definitely likes her American Idol game. She
and Katey also both got iPods, which they liked. Here it occurs to me that
none of you are familiar with Meghan's family, who I'm already considering
my own siblings. She has a younger brother (Corey, 20), then two younger
sisters (Katey and Bridget, 14 and 12), then three more younger brothers
(PJ, Michael, and Seamus, ages 10, 8, and 6).

We spent Christmas evening and the next couple days with my family. There I
got a few more DVDs, some sweaters, and Roborally (an awesome board
game), but more importantly I got gifts for my siblings -- Twilight
audiobooks for Jenny, a City of Heroes subscription for Gene, a
pirate expansion to Munchkin for Josh, the 1960's Casino
Royale for Tim, Magic cards for Greg (also: I'm teaching Meghan
how to play MtG, and so far she likes it), Ender's Shadow for Beth,
music for Becky, and a Barbie DVD for Emi (she's really into Barbie right
now). More significantly, my siblings got Rockband 2 for the Wii, and we
spent a lot of time playing that (I have a goth-rocker named Guin who plays
bass for our band, the Wrought Iron Rose). Then we went back to Meghan's
parents' place and saw a stage production of "A Christmas Carol," which was
pretty well done. And now I'm back at work.

With Christmas day passed and presents opened, I'm now going to have few
excuses to not buy myself things, and I'm probably going to start by getting
a few additional D&D 4E books. I'm planning on running a (hopefully)
regular and (hopefully) long-running campaign with my brothers starting
after the wedding, but we'll see what happens with that. I have an idea of
a story, but I probably need to sit an digest it a little before it becomes
managable pieces that I can build a game off of. And nevermind the fact
that no one can really tell me where they'll be or what they'll be doing
this coming summer -- it seems all my brothers are in a state of flux; Tim
earned his Associate's Degree, Josh is getting his Bachelor's and promptly
getting married (which is funny if you think about it), and Gene is doing
well but seems to be in a constant state of flux...

I guess, really, that pretty much sums it up. There's more (like how Meghan
and I have discussed baby names (James, Charlotte, Penny, Gwen, etc),
thought that's a little silly since it'll be at least a little more than a
year before we have any. But yes. I hope you're all well, and I'll try to
check in more often.

Lori Drew is found guilty of misdemeanor "unauthorized access," and this
presents a
problem for the Internet at large. Before reading that article I hadn't
known that it was a California attourney who claimed authority over the case
on the loose basis that MySpace servers reside in California. He argued
that because use of MySpace is conditional on accepting the MySpace ToS
(which require "truthful and acurate" registration information,") using the
site in violation of the ToS is "unauthorized access" under the federal Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act, which was meant to apply to hackers. The problem
here is applying CFAA to ToS, meaning violating a site's ToS is a crime (not
just grounds for account termination, as has generally been accepted) and
what's more, the misdemeanor can be 'upgraded' to a full felony charge if
it's done "in furtherance" of some other crime. (The intend was that
hacking into a bank's network is just a misdemeanor, but hacking into a
bank's network and stealing money is a felony, on top of the theft charge.)
So as the article notes, "So, for instance, upload a few minutes of
copyrighted video to YouTube, and you've violated the site's terms of
service while simultaneously committing copyright infringement.
Congratulations, you're a felon!"

Hopefully this won't stand, and either the judge will discard the jury's
verdict or the case will be overturned in appeal.

So this whole Lori Drew case is something of a huge mess.

If you haven't heard, Lori Drew is a lady who created a fake MySpace persona
(Josh) in order to find out what an ex-friend (Megan Meier) of her daughter
was saying about said daughter. Things moved from there to a plan to
confront and humiliate Megan, but then it was decided that they should back
off, pull out, and remove the page. The decided the best way to do that
would be to have "Josh" start being mean to Megan in order to get her to end
their friendship. Instead, Megan killed herself.

The details help clear up the issue a bit more, but that's the long and
short of it. There are some who say that Megan's suicide was a result of a
fight she had with her own mother, but apparently she killed herself shortly
after "Josh" said the world would be a better place without her. The point
though is that Lori Drew has been taken to court on three counts of
"unauthorized computer access" and one count of conspiracy.

That's the bit that gets me, though. Lori Drew clearly
seems to be a wretched woman. I think it's clear that she harrassed Megan,
though I think it's more than a stretch to try and say that Megan's suicide
was Drew's intent. None of that's the point, though, because she
hasn't been charged with harrassment or manslaughter or anything else
of that nature. She's been charged with "unauthorized computer access";
computer fraud, hacking. Where's that come from? Because she made a fake
MySpace page, and fake pages are against MySpace's Terms of Service. So
they're trying to say that breaking MySpace's TOS is a criminal act of
computer hacking. Which is not only terribly troubling, it's absurd.

drew deserves to be vilified, and I hope the guilt of what her plot lead to
weighs on her for the rest of her life. But trying to twist the law in
order to punish her for something generally unrelated to the charges at hand
is unjust. As such, I hope Drew wins this case and gets off.

So, OK. It's been going on for a while, but I kind of wanted to throw out
my two cents on Microsoft's "I'm a PC" ad campaign and why I think it's
really poorly done. I might've said something sooner, but I don't watch TV
(like, ever) so I haven't really been exposed to it.

I'm not sure what really spurred Microsoft into action, though I expect
(especially judging from the rather pointed head-nod of the current
campaign) that it was due to Apple's "I'm a Mac" commercials. I'm a fairly
dedicated PC user (mostly because I'm a gamer, and all games are PC games),
and if I ever got up the will to leave I would probably go to Linus (of one
flavor or another); but I love the "I'm a Mac" commercials.
They're funny, informative, insightful, clever... I've downloaded pretty
much all of them to my iTouch. It's a very well done set of ads.

Originally, Micosoft ran an ad that had Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates trying
on tennis shoes and eating churros. You don't get much more mid-90s
has-been as Seinfeld, and the ad didn't really say anything. But it
got people to notice and it got people to talk. They were
complaining, but they were talking. Microsoft had people's
attention. Instead of hold to their guns and take advantage of the
attention to actually communicate something to their audience, they caved
under the criticism and pulled the ad. A really dumb move, in my opinion.

Their follow on ad(s?), though, were an even dumber move. Like I said,
they're an obvious head-nod and direct response to Apple's ads; the first
one even apparently had a raggedy Hodgman-lookalike saying something like,
"I'm a PC, and I'm a stereotype." Such a direct reference to Apple's ads is
a big mistake, I think, because it just serves to remind people of the
deeply-entrenched ads of the competition. they're trying to compete
directly with Hodgman, and they look even more lame for the comparrison.

On top of that, though, it seems the whole thrust of the ad is just a parade
of "regular people" all saying "I'm a PC." I'm not a PC.. I'm a
gamer, I'm a geek, I'm a goof -- I just happen to use a PC. Mac and
PC from Apple's commercials are very obviously meant to reprisent the
machines themselves, not the users. By pretty much equating their users
with their machines, I think Microsoft does a lot of harm to themselves.
No one (except Mac users) defines themselves by what computer they
use.

Anyways... as lame as Seinfeld is, Microsoft would have been better sticking
with that, doing their own thing, and communicating relevant information to
their audience. instead they've fallen back on typical, bland,
uninformative advertising which is at best forgettable, and at worst
implicitly insulting. Fail.

Our Friends over at PETA have apparently thown up a Parody of
Nintendo's "Cooking Mama," titled "Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals." The
article says PETA's game runs in a browser and plays much like the DS and
Wii versions, but casts Mama as "a knife-wielding murderess with a demonic
glare in her eyes." I haven't checked it out, but honestly? If this does
anything but encourage more people to buy the Nintendo game (a new
version on the Wii releases soon), I'll be really surprised.

So I saw the new Bond movie over the weekend. I'm not going to say a whole
lot on it because I don't want to spoil anything, but over all...? I found
the movie to be lacking. If you took all the bad bits from Casino
Royale (the confusing plot twists near the end, 2-dimentional
characters, and apparently shallow villains with little-to-no real
motivation) and added in a bit more of the bang! from older Bond movies (the
car chases and explosions from the Pierce Brosnan movies) that would pretty
much sum up Quantum of Solace. Craig's Bons is still a very awesome
chacter, I really can't complain about him (though he was maybe a notch or
two lower on the "cool badass" scale relative to Casino Royale).
There were two more-or-less flat love interests who were pretty much only
around to give Bond a convenient out or to die dramatically. (I liked
Fields, but aside from sleeping with Bond and tripping some guy, she didn't
add much at all to the film, and neither of those were terribly believable.)

I was really disatisfied with the ending, which was essentially a montage of
half-cocked scenes which successfully satisfied Bond's quest and curiosity
without clueing the audience in to anything relevant. "I told you want you
wanted to know," one villain complains to Bond, who agrees, but we never
find out what Bond asked, let alone what the answer was.

The opening car chase was probably the best scene of the whole movie.

So, is it worth seeing? Meh, you probably won't regret it, especially if
you're just looking to see a moderately-bland action movie. It's not high
on the intellectual scale and nothing terribly clever happens. It
(predictably) begs for a third movie (though the ending gives Bond
enough closure that they could just kill it here), so you may want to get it
under your belt in anticipation of that inevitability. But don't go in
expecting to be wowed.

I'm an emotional wreck. I don't know why.

Work's been stressful the last couple of days. Humiliating. It's been pointed out several times that I don't know what I'm doing. And I don't, which makes the whole fucking thing worse. My boss(es) keep asking me to do their jobs for them by telling them what my tasks are supposed to be, and I don't know. I keep missing details in my answers that no one else knows or catches before it's submitted, but which basically makes me wrong as soon as it's pointed out.

I'm having a little fight with Meghan because I didn't call her last night. And I didn't call her because I was depressed and didn't have anything to talk about. So I just quietly crawled in bed. and I've never liked sitting on the phone unless I had something to talk about, and I don't want talking to her to ever feel like a chore. But she's angry because she was expecting me to call and I didn't.

My house is a mess. I'm depressed. The only reason I plan on getting up for work tomorrow is because I'm out of sick time and I'm saving my personal leave for my honeymoon. I can use no more than 4 days between now and June 2009, or I can start cutting my honeymoon short.

I can't seem to do anything right. I haven't spoken to, much less seen, most of my friends since mid-summer.

I haven't had free time to honestly relax in over a month.

I'm on the wrong side of every issue.

I should just shut up.

I get so incredibly discouraged whenever politics comes up in any of my friends' groups. It seems like 87% of my friends are all on the other side of the political fence, and while I think the diversity in my friends is great and helps keep me (mostly) sane and reasonable, I can't help but get the feeling that I'm terribly out-numbered, uninformed, unenthusiastic, and insignificant.

I don't really have any commentary on Thuis, but
Il'l be laughing about it for a while. MTV recently started a video hosting
site where they're putting up every music video ever (something YouTube
wanted to do, but which The Lables have successfully stopped from
happening). The funny thing here, though? Weird Al wrote a a song called
"Don't Download This Song," which basically made fun of the RIAA and how
they're making file-sharing out to be some horrid moral evil. At the
beginning of the song he mentions Morpheus, Limewire, and a couple other
(old, now) file-sharing apps. And on MTV's site? The words are bleeped
out, as though they were censoring curse words.

Now, I've never really cared much for censoring songs -- I just tend to like
songs less when they have excessive or unnecessary cursing. I've also been
amused by some of the things that get censored or now (like in Wheetus'
"Teenage Dirtbag," where the only thing in the song that they censor is
"gun" in the line "he brings a gun to school"). But this is really, really
dumb. I mean, really. Who's bright idea was this? And why did they think
it was a good idea?

An Interview
with John Hodgman.

*Watching you on The Daily Show, I admire your ability to fake knowledge,
because, knowing very little, I have to BS all the time. What's the
secret?*

John: Wear glasses and keep a straight face.

*That's it?*

J: Are you wearing glasses right now?

*Uh, not yet.*

J: Well, that's why I don't believe anything you say.

*I get that a lot.*

J: I don't believe you.

On the heels of my last post, The
Onion shares a similar sentiment.

It's Fox, so you may want a grain of salt, but I find This
article to touch on a concern I have with every election, and the concern I
have with the emotional fervor Obama's drawn from many people. Basically,
the Obama campaign is working on a plan to "manage expectations" because
they fear that people's expectation of change may be "unrealistic." Obama
was allegedly the first to realize that expectations may be overblown.

I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed by how little
change actually happens should Obama win. Honestly, the fact that
he's such a media darling and has the backing of his party behind him tells
me, at least, that it's going to be business as usual. Real promise of
change would have been met the way Ron Paul was -- to hear Paul
supporters talk, he had as much charisma and grass-roots support as Obama,
but I recall him being not-invited to debates and ignored by the media. No
one in power wants change.

Even more concerning for me, though, is the thought of unified
Executive and Legislative branches. For most of my cognizant life I've
known a split government, where one party controls the Congress and the
other has the White House. Generally, I think that's a good thing,
for the simple cynical reasoning that as long as they're fighting with each
other, at least they'll be leaving the rest of us alone. If Obama wins, i'm
afraid we'll see a Democrat congress with a Democrat president (nevermind
the fact that I don't bellieve Obama has what it takes to be more than just
a Party figurehead and moth-piece) and I think that's a bad thing.
It will minimize the checks that I generally rely on to ensure the
Government mostly leave me alone.

To be frank, though, I really think Obama would be a bad choice at this
particular time in history. I'm no great economist, but I do know that he
wants to tax businesses, and I also know that the best way for a business to
protect profits from taxes is to raise prices. Higher prices is not
something we need right now. It's arguable that McCain's plans could see
people's net income shrink, and it's further arguable that such a situation
would be like raising prices. The difference is that if people don't
have the money to spend, prices will tend to fall toward actual cost; Obama
would raise the effective 'cost' of business, making that lower-limit on
prices higher. At least with McCain businesses might have a lower settling
point.

Anyways. Just some of my thoughts.

Profile

John Noble

August 2012

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