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- December 31, 2004 -

Tonight I'm going to go to Mary Lou's house for New Year's Eve.

- December 30, 2004 -

It's been almost four days since a major tsunami hit the in Indian Ocean. 100,000 have been declared dead now, but they have just discovered more cities in Indonesia and Thailand that have been totally washed off the face of the earth, so it's believed that the death toll will double and probably go much higher than that. When it first happened they quoted 12,000 dead, but it seems to double very quickly.

Last night was Ben's going away party at Lin & Brian's. Teresa worked the crowd to find jobs for us to make money for San Francisco, and we may have gotten a few too. Ben-jo-ivia (Trivia about Ben) went over very well, and everyone seemed to find it extremely funny. It was a very good night... and Bob made the most wonderful pizza square things! Mary Lou's spinach balls were also very good.

I made an Origami sphere after I got home from the party... one of the geodesic spheres made out of sixty sheets of paper. It took me about seven hours, but I was talking to Eric on ICQ and downloading the Stargate Atlantis episode I've been trying for so long to get, so it's not like I was doing just that... Perhaps I'll make some more stuff to take to work, or give to people.

I saw that I got noted on www.ditl.org on the 27th for pointing out an error in the math for warp speeds, Sara would be proud I think, everyone else would probably be a bit confused... or sad.

Christine Gregoire, the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate for the state of Washington was declared the winner today finally after a number of vote recounts that at one point separated her by 8 votes from her opponent.

I'm still pondering ideas for how my site will look next... This incarnation that just became my blog was a test in I-frames, which is basically how you can scroll content within my webpage, but browser support is very spotty with this, so unless you're using Internet Explorer, it's probably doesn't appear how I intended it. I started into CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, which is all the rage now for how one should lay out a web page, and it is very neat, but again different browsers view things differently, which is a problem no matter what method one uses, but unsupported features in that can be really bad, so now I ponder just going the old fashioned way, with tables like how my old site was technically done, but do it in a way that can support more content and expand as needed like I did with Brent's Dojo site.

- December 28, 2004 -

Christmas went well, though Mom was still really sick for it and she kept a mask on the entire time we were at Grandma's house. Carrie has fluid in her ears now from being sick, so she might need tubes put in again, and I guess each time you have that done you lose a bit of your hearing,... and she's already had it done a couple times already.

Now I have to ponder my new year's tech purchases! I Need a printer, cause I've given up hope that my Epson will ever print again... I'd like more Ram and a new 200GB hard drive.... and I've always really wanted a digital camera.

Tonight after work I went to Susan's to help install a CD burner Pat got for Christmas (That I also helped pick out), and he had tried to install it, but it wasn't working, so I was a little concerned that perhaps it didn't come with XP drivers or some'n, but it was just a jumper thing, so I told the new one to be the master and their old CD drive to be the slave and Mr. Blinky was all happy once again...

- December 24, 2004 -

It's the night before Christmas! Mom and Carrie are both sick.

A guy in Houston is E-baying off his three son's Christmas gifts... He said they were so bad this year that they could not have them. They said on the news that he would return them to the store if they didn't go very high in value... And I'm totally plexed by this. 1st) If the children were bad all year, why did he buy the gifts in the first place? It showed new things like a Nintendo DS that just came out... 2nd). Why did he go to Ebay to sell them? Would people really buy them from him and then pay shipping when they could just go to a store and buy it cheaper?

MY CD's ARE CRACKING! I came to that realization last night... not all of them, but I have a book of my most important CDs, and I think the book holds them all too tightly, and slowly over much time... they slowly get little stress cracks.

It's been SO cold here the last few days, and yesterday morning I went and got gas, and the new gas station attendant guy was fighting with the windshield washer squeegee that had frozen in the fluid. It was just so cold, like -3 with the wind chill, and it was windy... I didn't even fill up my tank fully cause I pondered; "That's enough to get me to work and back twice, I don't think I need any more gas today!" So the attendant guy was still fighting with the washer fluid, and I told him; "I don't think anyone is going to want to use that today." Cause it was just horribly cold.... and he said that a guy had been in and complained about it yesterday, so I changed my original statement to; "Ok, perhaps no one in their right mind will want to use it then." And he laughed.... So then that night Dad had come home... and it was really cold then because it was late, and I started to talk about the guy fighting with the frozen fluid, and Dad said; "Yeah, I complained to him about that yesterday...." Oiy VEY.

- December 22, 2004 -

I've still not been able to fix my printer... I saturated it with the ink solvent last night, and today it was able to print about 5% of the magenta test line, and before it could do about 3%, so I flooded it again, and we'll see how it does tomorrow I guess.

The Army Reserve has an interesting new commercial. It's states you "remain a civilian" and that it would not be your "Full-time job" and it really gives the impression that if you join the reserves that you will not be sent to a duty overseas. I'm not sure if this is true or not though... I'll have to ask Bob, the commercial just seemed deceptive to me.

- December 19, 2004 -

I've got most everything wrapped. Carrie went back to Troy and called shortly after she left because her tire was flat (and pretty much shredded). Mom called a tow truck to help her and we went out too, so now that I'm back, I plan to spend the rest of the night compressing video files, working on a couple projects, and trying to download more of a Stargate Atlantis episode I've been waiting for weeks to download.

- December 18, 2004 -

Oiy, an eight hour day of shopping, and I still have a couple more people to shop for, and now I have a ton of things to wrap (mostly Carrie's stuff) and I need a nap.

- December 17, 2004 -

Oh my, just one more week until Christmas! I went shopping last night with Teresa... I got a number of people crossed off my list, but I still have some shopping left to do. Tonight after work I worked on a couple posters for Brent, reviewed my forums and wrote a few e-mails.

- December 13, 2004 -

Ok, I now have 1/3rd of my Christmas shopping complete! There was a thing in the news about Target not having bell ringers this year, and the Salvation Army was upset with them because that could lower their collections by 6 million dollars. Target put out a statement that they give $100 million to charities each year, including the Salvation Army, but some people are now trying to start a boycott of Target... I think it's just meh, do we really need people outside of every store? There were a few at Hypermart this weekend, and they were just bad, they were ringing the bell as loud as they could, and they were also shouting "Merry Christmas". There's just some aspect of "Merry Christmas" that is lost when you shout it at people as loud as you can... the merriness seems to fall away and it's replaced with a sort of hostile; "Look at us, and give us money!" ....I don't blame target at all for doing away with the bell ringers, they are still giving a great deal to charity.

I thought of another good gift idea for Craig:
10) Small earbud headphones, you know, the kind that fit in your ear. There are some on the market that and just huge though, and others have foam glued on, but that always seems to fall off very quickly. There are lots of junky headphones out there... so no junky headphones! I saw that they have really expensive headphones... like $200, that's crazy I feel... for that much I expect them to be able to show video too.

John McCain asked for Donald Rumsfeld to resign today, I doubt he will, but it's nice to see Republicans being outspoken against the administration. I'm rather torn on how to feel about moderate Republicans, they did tend to highly support Bush in the election, but when you compare them to Bush on the issues, they are not so bad really. Kansas had a shift to the left a couple weeks, which was really quite a surprise to me... Democrats have not taken over mind you, but it was reported that in the State House & Senate moderate Republicans took over a majority. I don't think they did a head count on who was moderate and who was conservative, but the new leaders of the legislature were both moderate... I hope they will all be able to work together now.

Scott Peterson will receive the death sentence it appears now... I'm not really sure to think about it, he certainly was not a good person, but I don't know if I could have voted to put him to death since there really wasn't evidence that he did it. I feel that the death penalty should be reserved for cases where there is conclusive proof that the person is guilty.

Turkey is in talks to join the European Union, and I ponder just how far the EU is bound to spread since Turkey is considered a Middle Eastern country. Europeans are more concerned over Turkey's strong Muslim faith, and that that might be counter to what Christian Europe stands for, I doubt that will really stand in the way though, and I think the EU will be stronger for being more diverse. I wonder what the greater implication is going to be for the US in the future, as more and more countries join the EU, the more they trade with one another in an effort to raise their new combined economy... and I ponder how long it will take before the EU becomes a clear rival to the US... we've had a number of issues with European countries over the war in Iraq, we've pulled away from the world in general in the UN in a number of ways, and conservative Republicans often question why we are even in the UN... we backed out of the Kyoto Accords, and we've had a few small trade wars with EU countries in the past year- even with Britain we had a trade war over steal exports. Perhaps we should look for more land and people wanting to become a state? Hopefully a blue state.

- December 8, 2004 -

Wednesday, It's official, in March I'm going to go to San Francisco. Mary Lou booked tickets for a play today for everyone, and we haven't booked the plane tickets yet, but we'll probably do that soon. It's been quite a while since I've gone anywhere, so I'm looking forward to seeing the touristy things and such. This is a good reason to revisit digital cameras... but I'm unsure how much I will spend on the trip, and how much I should spend on a camera.

I worked on Brent's dojo site some more tonight, I've really only gotten to the photo galleries to start, but the site does have working buttons and pages to put stuff on now, perhaps tomorrow morning I'll try to get another gallery of images scanned in and up.

I really need to get to the Christmas shopping, but I'm still not really sure what to get anyone. Suggestions on what you'd like are always welcome. I pondered a few more things for my list:

8) A black leather belt (but with a fairly simple buckle)
9) The I-Robot DVD, I really liked that movie.

A good question was asked of Donald Rumsfeld today as he addressed troops preparing to be deployed to Iraq: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Rumsfeld was rather stumped on the question and asked for it to be repeated, and then he said that the US had to go to war with what it had, not what it wished it had, and then shortly after he went and got in his armored limo and was driven off... I ponder the logic of his armored limo, when we do not fully armor the military vehicles over there. Do all the White House senior staff really require that much protection?

Also in the news was a story of a brainwave mouse. You've probably seen the brain images in rainbow colors to show what part of the brain is active, well they've used that technology and a plethora of tests, asking subjects to think about moving an arrow upward to a box, and then they inform the computer: "When the person's brain makes this pattern, move the arrow up... After a number of these inputs, the system became nearly as efficient as using a regular mouse, and it was capable of adapting quickly to new users who might have slightly different brain patterns. I feel it will probably not be too much longer before people will be able to use a keyboard in the same manner, or perhaps even be able to think the entire word.

In a nearly related story a couple years ago I read in Wired Magazine that scientists were able to take a blind man who had never been able to see due to a genetic problem with the optical cords between his eyes and brain, and scientists were able to set up a direct connection between the man's brain and a web cam, it was fuzzy, and only in black and white, but as he used it more, his brain was getting better at interpreting what the webcamera was sending to him.

- December 6, 2004 -

Monday, most of the day I had a dog strapped to me. Mom brought home a malnourished Chihuahua, so I held it in a blanket for her... after an hour though I pondered I really needed to get things done though, so I took the dog's blanket and tied the ends together and then wore it around my neck with the dog in it.. It was most content after that for hours while I wrapped Christmas gifts and worked on the computer some. I just call it "Little One"... and now it cries when I go downstairs cause it wants me to hold it... and it doesn't cry for anyone else too... It's a ward of the court, so perhaps it's soon to be homeless, and that's probably for the best.

Sunday Robert, Teresa & I went to KC to eat Korean food and go to the plaza... it was rainy/misty and not very good weather for walking about outdoors so we gave up and went back to Topeka. We did get to go to the Overland Station and watch the fireworks for Topeka's 150th birthday... it was a neat event, but there were really very few people there, and the fireworks show was nice, but the music was bad that went with it, and there were several pauses in the show, so it didn't seem all the well planned out. Also I ponder that it was kind of a waste of money as they said it was more costly than the show on the 4th, and I bet only a small fraction of people actually saw it.

- December 4, 2004 -

Friday after work I went out with Beca and Andrew... we went to Lawrence and ate at the Mad Greek, I had the Chicken Marsala, and after that we went to the Java House... I had hot chocolate and they had coffee, but I did try theirs... Coffee is just horrible I think, I've never enjoyed it at all.

Today Carrie and I went to Topeka to do some Christmas shopping, and I think I now have Dad covered... just everyone else left.

- November 30, 2004 -

Nekochan is all sorts of sick again... I only got two hours of sleep last night too on account of what was going on. We're not even really sure what's wrong with him now, but he seems better today.

Epson sucks I say... and never buy printers with the scanner built in! Bah! The Magenta in my printer has dried up or something, and even with new inkers it still didn't print. So I went to the printer forums and read up.... It would cost anywhere from $100 to $350 to get the printer fixed, because Epson does not allow any of their authorized repair people to work on the model I have... I paid just under $200 for it to start with though, exactly one year and four days ago. Before I put "new printer" on yee ole Christmas list I ordered a printer repair kit... which is basicly an instruction booklet and a super special ink solvent that can reliquify dried up ink. The Epson support e-mail was no help at all, cause I wrote them first and told them what it was doing, and that I instructed it to clean the print heads six times and it still did not work...... ....and they wrote back that I should tell it to clean the print heads.

Ok... What do I want for Christmas:
1) River rock for the fish aquarium
2) Stress Coat &/or Stress Zyme to keep the fish happy
3) That new Sum 41 &/or new Jimmy Eat World CDs
4) A flash for my camera*
5) Supercool Laptop*
6) Supercool Digital Camera*
7) Large rubberbands for my rubberband ball
*These are more future wants and not really expected Christmas wants.

I guess I need to ponder a median gift... some'n that falls between rubberbands and great technology.

- November 29, 2004 -

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas now because we got our first snow this morning. I pondered I'd have to start a Christmas list on here of things I want and need, the simple things really... Like rubber bands for my rubber band ball, or river rock for my aquarium... good stocking stuffers and such.

From yesterday's blog, I fear I failed to put up Christmas lights, as it was snowing and icky outside, but I did work on Brent's dojo site some, I left the paper with what sub-pages he wanted, so I couldn't really do the buttons and such yet, but I got started on the overall design, and scanned some of his karate photos to put in a gallery.

Susan called this morning and said that Terri was very happy that I got the newsletter in to her a week early, and that she was very happy with it in general too. Hopefully I hear from her soon about revisions and such.

Enterprise has been very good lately... Its currently in the middle of a three part story of how the Vulcan High Command has strayed from the ancient teachings of Surak, and a pacifist underground movement led by T'Pau is being hunted down because they oppose actions taken by the government to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Andorians. There are many influences of from the politics and culture of today in it... so if anyone has missed it, and would like to see it, I can give it to you on CD in .wmv format.

I never get much feedback from blog readers, and I know I have a few thanks to the Google page hits per day... I like any e-mail that isn't spam.

- November 28, 2004 -

I got a lot done today really, I cleaned out the fish aquarium, and I think I've won the war against the bad snails. When I have more plants in the tank it seems like I don't have to clean nearly as much, maybe like half as much even, because it seems like I haven't cleaned it in a couple months, and it really wasn't that bad today, but the water level was down a couple inches.

I got a letter from Yuka today! It's been nearly a year since I heard from her, so I was starting to worry if she was ok or not. Hopefully she will write more, and I'll certainly try to incite more writing too.

Saturday after work I went over to Brent's and put an extra chip of ram I had in his computer. He was bumped up to 120mb from 80mb, so he seemed happy. Tomorrow I plan to work on the design of his dojo website... and to put up Christmas lights up outside.

- November 27, 2004 -

Thanksgiving went well, and I didn't overeat too much. Olivia seems to be starting to understand things, and she's very mobile now.

I guess now it's time to start Christmas shopping, but I really don't have a clue what to get anyone, except Sara at work... and I really don't know what I want for Christmas myself... a digital camera or laptop would be nice, but I want kinda pricey ones, so those certainly are not going to be listworthy items. I guess unless I can get the magenta working in my printer I'll need a new one of those... or an add-on flash for my camera.

The new homeland security bill seems to have stalled in Congress... it's something Bush has been for, and if it came to a vote it would pass, but the Republican leadership in the House blocked the vote, so I guess it will be stuck until January.

- November 24, 2004 -

Turkey Day! Well, it's 4am and I woke up very early... it was less of "going to sleep" as it was a really late nap I guess, but I've been spending so much time on the newsletter and stuff, that I wanted to play games. Homeworld2 is a great game!

As of today... I've made $13.12 off people clicking my google ads... It only took four months to break the $10 mark, but it's still nice to get a wee bit of change each week... I'll have that digital camera in no time! Well, it's not really a matter of raising the money for it... it's more picking out the best one for what I want to do... What do I want to do with it? Yeah, I'm not fully sure! It's be nice to get a professional grade one... but then I ponder perhaps something very nice, but cheaper in a lower range... and then I'll wait for a really nice one to come along.

- November 24, 2004 -

Today it was very busy at work- all the pages were off, and Teresa abandoned her post to go home early, so it was just Debbie and me, and you would think the day before Thanksgiving people would stay away from the place... nope! I even got a headache from it all.

I got the Newsletter for the Capital-Journal done, at least ready for them to proof-read, so I won't have to worry about that for a couple days, so now I'm back to working on Brent's site.

Tomorrow we will go to Aunt Karen's as usual for the Turkey Day. I will be sure to keep a record and report what I ate.

Ben got a new job in San Francisco this week, so there is talk that in March a group of us will go and see him and do the tourist thing. It would be neat to go back and do that again, it's been quite a while since I've gone anywhere neat, and the last time I was there I didn't get to wander to everywhere I wanted really. It's also a good reason to get me that digital camera I've been wanting!

- November 20, 2004 -

This weekend I started working on a newsletter for the Capital-Journal, Susan got me the freelance job, which was very keen of her... It's been a little while since I've worked in Quark and I fear I've forgotten a thing or two, but its coming together now, so hopefully tomorrow I'll have it done and I can send it in for a first review. It has consumed most of my Saturday, so we'll see how much of tomorrow it will eat up.

- November 6, 2004 -

Saturday, this morning Mom & Dad took Grace to the vet to be put to sleep. She had diabetes and other problems, and over the last month she hadn't been doing well. We're not really sure how old she was, but we've had her for a long time, and she had a very good life after being rescued.

I went to Topeka this afternoon and went shopping with Teresa. I got a new leather jacket and a cool T-shirt. We also went over to Brent's house and got the full tour.

- November 3, 2004 -

Election Day + 1, to say that a part of my soul was crushed today is any understatement, Kerry lost, seats in the House and Senate were lost, Tom Daschel lost his seat, Nancy Boyda lost against Ryun...

So from here, I'm not really sure where it is we are headed as a country, more tax cuts, the Patriot Act will be extended or made permanent, and many political analysts say there will be a power struggle inside the Democratic Party for who will be the next leader.

- October 28, 2004 -

Yesterday I got an e-mail back possibly from a virus. My computers are not infected (I scanned them with two different programs) So I ponder someone that has me in their address book is infected. Viruses often send out from computers but make the reply to address just another address from your book, so it looks like it comes from someone else... This makes it less likely that the person will then contact the right person and say, "Hey, I think you got a virus man," so the person that is actually infected is oblivious to what's going on... You can scan your computer online if you are uncertain if you have a virus or not.

- October 25, 2004 -

The election is just eight days away! There is talk of an election return party around the office. I'm on the edge of my seat reading and watching all the current events going on and how the polls go back and forth.

My weekend has been ok, I wrote a letter to Yuka, it's been so long since I've heard from her, and I wonder what all she's up to.

Friday I went to the first Topeka Tarantula hockey game, it was ok... The mascot is very lame and beaver-esque. It only had four limbs and two eyes! If someone just saw it on the street, I think they'd be hard pressed to guess what it actually was. Overall the game was interesting though, even though they lost... mayhaps I'll go again, a lot of work people went, so there will probably be return trips.

- October 15, 2004 -

Yes, yes, I know I've been very delinquent about blogging, but did you really think that I was so interesting that I needed to keep you up-to-date on every aspect of all my days?

My computers are all happy now, and I've replaced the burner, I really should make a backup of all my files too.

We had the Pet Fair earlier this month for the Humane Society, and this year I did doggy photos with Santa, and Teresa came to help. She was very good help indeed, but most people really weren't in the Christmassy spirit, so we didn't do that many. They raised over $5000 though, which was twice as much as last year.

- September 27, 2004 -

Its been a while since I made an entry because I've been house/dog sitting for Bob for the last week. I've saw "The Forgotten" yesterday with Carrie, it was an ok movie, neither bad nor exceptional. I found the entire story to be somewhat meh, but it was slightly interesting. I also saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this last week as well and it was very good.

The CD burner on my new HP has been acting up, and after talking with four different HP customer service people online, and one on the phone, who I could not understand at all, I should soon be getting a replacement burner in the mail. Goes to show that you really shouldn't buy the extra warranty, because Tiger Direct really tried to sell me on it (it was like $118), and the HP people didn't even ask about it... They just asked how long ago I bought it, and said they'd send a new one. I really don't believe in the warranties.. because if any given part of it does break on it... I'm sure I can find it for under the price of the warranty.

- September 13, 2004 -

I made a discovery today... and solved the mystery of the really loud pop... Several months ago right after I got my new monitor I heard a very loud pop, it was equal, if not a little louder in volume if I were to try and clap as loud as I could once... It was so loud that it was very alarming, and I searched for what caused it. It was so sudden that inexplicable that I couldn't figure out where the sound came from, and I asked around at what computer wise could have caused it, and a couple people suggested that a capacitor in my computer or monitor exploded, but such an occurrence is usually accompanied by smoke and the smell of burnt plastic, and I found it hard to believe that my computer could still work perfectly ok. Today the pop occurred again. But unlike the last time today I also had to change the batteries in my mouse right after the pop, and I noticed one of the batteries had ruptured, and I recalled that I had noticed that there was dried battery acid in my mouse before. How long a battery can keep providing energy after it is ruptured I do not know, last time I didn't notice anything wrong with the mouse, but this time it was very instant after the pop that the mouse became sluggish... I'm just glad it was an old AA battery and not a vital computer component.

Sunday I went to a Jazz concert with Mary Lou, Teresa, Lin, & Brian... I thought the music was very good, but with Jazz I think it's best in certain settings as background music rather than to just sit and listen too as an activity in and of itself.

Saturday I went with Carrie to see Cellular, and I found it to be a very good movie and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone. I felt the credits were carried out in an innovative way as it showed clips from the movie at times when he'd look at his phone, and on it would be the text for the credits... it made things a lot more interesting, and most the theater stayed seated for them.

- September 10, 2004 -

Today is Sara's birthday at work, She's an ever-happy sort and she loves Star Trek just as much as I. She's a big collector of Star Trek, so I got her an action figure.

Politics- I found this site that has every Party Platform since they started writing them.

- September 6, 2004 -

Labor Day, and today Teresa and I went shopping, I got new shoes, a pair of pants, and three button down shirts, and some jelly beans.

I've made 54 cents on adclicks, this is just from setting it up to test, I'm not so happy with the results though, cause the more people that see my blog and do not click an ad, the less I make per click, so if you came here, now I shall force you to click the ad! I'm also not so happy about how it loads in the same window and doesn't have a scroller, it was how I designed my site, but that conflicts with how the adclick works, so I think I'll soon move the ad to a different page or something.

- September 5, 2004 -

Sunday, and I didn't do very much really today besides clean, and compress video. Tomorrow Teresa and I are going shopping for shoes and assorted other things... Teresa likes to read about herself in my blog, I need to get my ads up so she can click them too.

Saturday at work I looked up information on Isabelle Jenkins... When I was a sophomore in high school we were going to have a cemetary study project in social studies class, and Kathy and I found a tombstone of Isabelle. She died in 1931 at the age of 20, and her picture is on a ceramic oval on her stone, so it really made us ponder about her. So yesterday I found her obituary in the Holton Signal. It did not say exactly how she died, just from illness. I'm glad medical science has advanced so much in the last seventy years.

Lin gave me a collection of plants for my aquarium Friday, Thanks Lin! I'll have to take pictures of it now because it looks so much better with live plants, and the fish seem happier too... as much as their mental state changes anyway.

- August 31, 2004 -

Today at work we had a micro-party, Teresa made me a key-lime pie, Lin got me a chocolate cheesecake, and as gifts I got a micro zen garden, and a magnetic aquarium scrubber. I'm still rather amazed at the magna-scrubby, it cleans much better than trying to do it from the inside of the tank.

Republicans... bah, tonight's theme was "Compassionate Conservatism", I really don't understand how they can present themselves as they do. Laura Bush spoke about how Bush has supported stem cell research in a responsible manner, how he has passed a health care bill, and how no child has been left behind. -If you ask any scientist in the field of stem cell research if Bush has had a positive or negative effect on research, well, I guess they would shrug because most of them moved to Britain where they could do research. Basically as stem cell research exists now in the US, there were a dozen stem stem lines that were being studied when Bush banned funding for any new research for new lines, but the old lines could still be studied. So Bush is able to tout how he has supported the study, but the fact that most of the lines that were under study were found to have later been contaminated and not worthy of study, the US is now unable to continue at a pace it could be. Laura Bush proclaims that study would not yield immediate or magical results no matter what... Still, I feel more secure in knowing that people are at least attempting to work towards the goal of cures for diseases, but they cures next year, or two decades from now. -Healthcare, oy. The pharmaceutical companies wrote the new prescription drug bill. 60 Minutes had a report on how a lot of the language from drug company lobbyist literature is the same word for word in the new bill. In the end we have a bill that most seniors are too confused to even try, and their new discounts are counterbalanced by a recent increase in all the medications seniors commonly use. So to them the price is the same, only it's more complex. Yeah for Bush. -And no child left behind... Improved standards for testing, and for certification of teachers, and then the bill wasn't funded, and educational funding was not increased to keep up with rising costs. If Bush were so brilliant and his policy successful, why then to the teachers unions not support him?

I've been researching modem problems, tonight I learned of retraining a modem, which is what I think is wrong with the Compaq. Retraining is telling a modem to go slightly slower, because often a modem tries to go as fast as the line will allow, and when a problem comes up it has to slow down... and then the computer and the server get a little plexed at just how fast each should be communicating... so telling them a slightly slower speed to communicate at makes things much more steady. I also found a new modem Debbie could have, so we'll see how that goes tomorrow.

- August 30, 2004 -

As of today I am 27 years old, the Olympics has ended, and today the Republican National Convention began. I watched McCain and Juliani talk tonight and I found both of their speeches lacking any substance or talk of any issue besides 9/11 and the War on Terror. I feel that there are numerous reasons why Bush has been very poor in his job as it pertains to terrorism... well, as it pertains to everything. I could go on and on about why I disapprove of his judgment, the Center for American Progress has a list of 100 mistakes Bush has made in office & "The Cost of War" website has the current amoung spent at $130,210,231,932 spent on the Iraqi war. I feel we did need to remove Saddam, but how it was done was such a waste. After 9/11 President Chirac of France proclaimed, "After today, we are all Americans." and now most of the world has a very poor view of America, and why? I feel 90% of it rests in Bush violating the UN mission of the weapons inspectors to determine the truth of the Iraqi threat to our country. The world looks at us having misled them into war, and I feel the war has only played into the hands of terrorism..... The radical muslim groups want nothing more than to create a real jihad with the west, and in pushing to war on false pretense we have become their greatest recruiting tool. As Bush said; "If they're not with us, then they're with the terrorists," and I realize in the partisan atmosphere I feel the same way with my vote. I the last election I actually voted for more Republicans than I did Democrats, but this time I feel that party loyalty is paramount, anyone with Bush is against common sense.

Ok, end of political talk for the night... I'm going to have to ponder different subjects to talk about I guess that will be mutually interesting to all the random people I know.

I signed up for Google Ads today. I've always really disliked any and all site advertising, but these ads are kinda different. Unlike an ad that you see on someone else's homepage, I'll get paid if you click the ad and allow the next page to open. I have a couple net friends that have them on their sites, and they were able to make $100 a month, so I pondered that I might just try it as well. So, Come here and read my thoughts, learn more about me, and click an ad so I get my money!

- August 5, 2004 -

I got a new HP today and named it Chroniton. I ordered it from Tigerdirect.com and got it for $900 after shipping. I saved a number of images from the site and put them in the log folder. Tachyon is still running well, and I hope to sell off the Compaq and some other stuff that's old, but still of value to someone that might not need to be as up to date. Chroniton has a 2.8GHZ processor, but came with XP Home, and I've found that the Home edition is very limited, so I ponder it shouldn't be too long before I put Pro on.

Last week Carrie, Jeff and I went to the Maroon5/John Mayer concert. We got very good seats on the second tier behind the VIP seats. We didn't have to stand at all, and that was nice, because people in other sections had to stand for the entire time for hours on end. The concert was very good, Maroon5 and John Mayer both sound very true live to how they sound on their CDs.

- March 31, 2004 -

I started my new job yesterday at the Kansas History Center (the museum and state archives), as "Administrative Assistant" Most of my work will be scanning ancient books and documents on a big planetary scanner. The computer is somewhat old, a Dell before the black cases, but the monitor seems newer than the machine, and it only has Photoshop 5.5, it's seems to get the job done, but it's really slow. The people there all seem very nice, happy, and interesting sorts. Robert works there, and there's another guy named Robert that holds the same job as I, but in the mornings so I didn't really get to meet him. My supervisor's name in Teresa, and she's very conversational with lots of stories.

Tachyon has been working very well for a year now, but just the other day the video began to shift and jump in the most annoying manner... I fear the video card is close to death, and I got the internet bill the other day, so I now know what "nifties" I'll be putting my paycheck to! I'm sure I'll get some'n frivolous as well.

I put a TV Capture card in the HP and converted it into a media center, and then ran it through the VRC so I can convert VHS or Cable TV into a digital file. I've also been learning to edit video so I can take commercials out and such, so I've been rapidly filling up my drives as I collect all my favorite programs.

Carrie called last night and asked if I could teach origami for the art teacher in Hanover... it was phrased much more as a "when could you" because I think she kinda pre-volunteered me to do it, and to talk about the history of it. They've already learned the crane so I'll have to ponder what should come next, and maybe take some of my more complicated things and books.