Pauls Rants and Revelations

On the way to our snowy vacation, as my luck would have it, I got pulled over for speeding. This pisses me off.

Now, I was going above the speed limit. Well above it in fact. I was in the passing lane trying to get around two assholes in lowered trucks (who the hell drives those during a rain storm in Oregon anyway?) playing a game of car tag. This was dangerous so as soon as a passing lane opened I gunned it; and got immediately noticed by the cops. They saw the two dingle berries (in fact passed right by them) but pulled me over instead. Erg.

Try as I might I couldn’t talk my way out of it. I give him the facts but he ignored me out of hand and threw a ticket at me. $250 worth of ticket.

Frustrated, and not wanting to make a scene in from of my family, I just took it and went on my way.

After we got back, a few days later, I called the county office to see about sending in my penance as there was no way in hell I was going to waste 6 hours round trip driving and $100 in gas to show up in court. The woman was, to put it mildly, so far from helpful that the light from it wouldn’t reach her in 100 years. She informed me that the tickets from that office often take a week or more to get put through their system. She had no reference at all to the ticket number and couldn’t do a damn thing.

So whats got my dander up, you ask?

The fact that in this digital age, where a dashboard cam video of a cop tazering someone can end up on Youtube within a day, a cop can’t find the time to put some freaking numbers into a computer at the end of their shift astounds me. Perhaps I don’t know all there is to know about the other side of writing the ticket, but it seems that it would be required of them to put them in the system in an orderly manner.

I called them again today, a week later, and still it wasn’t in the system. Double erg.

Enough about this ordeal already eats at my thin veneer of patience, but is there something that could be making it take longer then normal? Does anyone have any light they could shed on the inner workings of the police ticketing system? Can someone spot me $250?

Perhaps tomorrow they will have it in their system. If not then I am going to seriously consider raising some mildly annoying hell about it. Or just wait until the next day. What ever I have energy for.

-Cheers

So today is (or was) Thanksgiving. And while America is the only country to celebrate this (and even then, not the whole of it) I can’t help but feel somewhat excited.

Not for the wonderful dinners and time of family that comes with this holiday. No, what I am excited about is the sales that are going to be happening tomorrow. The “Black Friday” super sales that are almost as legendary as turkey day are what most people are talking about. Even at the family function we attended, some were talking about what stores they were going to hit up at 5:30 in the morning.

Its almost sad, really. I mean this is supposed to be a day of giving thanks but instead has turned into just a pre-cursor to a major commercial event. But then again, the basis of the holiday itself isn’t exactly saintly, so it’s probably for the best that it is just morphed into another commercialized day and quietly mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

-Cheers

And now folks its time for some fun fun web traffic generating. In this segment, I shamelessly mention a bunch of buzz words that are sure to get a lot of traffic. How many can I fit into one paragraph? Lets find out

“Ron Paul commented on Waterboarding and Christina Aguileras baby Boobs while generating $5 million in donations. When asked about his Web Traffic Generating Secrets, a Super Mario Galaxy proponent said ‘Don’t harp on Britney Spears or I’ll smack you with my Nintendo Wii nunchuck. Meanwhile, Condi Rice assured us the Failing Dollar and Apple are in great shape for the 2008 Olympics.”

So how many was that? 12? I suppose thats good enough. If you got a better one leave a comment.

-Cheers

P.S. - Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Kittens. (had to get that last bit in there).

More and more stories are popping up regarding what could be known later as the downfall of the USA. Articles on the failing of the dollar, failures of our leaders, and ridiculous steps people are taking to ensure public safety are some of the more prominent ones.  All this is telling me that a revolution is coming; and it isn’t going to be pretty.

I was, and still am to a point, proud to be an American. But the acts of our leaders and the mockery of our allies, not to mention what must be outright laughter of our adversaries, has really shaken what little faith I have left in our government.  The fact that some are going before congress asking for the head of Cheney, for none other than high crimes against the people, is just the latest indicator that something very, very bad is going to happen in this country. But it won’t come from outside; it will come from within.

Whether it will be in the form of an awakening, a revolution, or, quite possibly, an armed revolt of the people is still uncertain. I would hope that it is more of an awakening than anything else. If an armed revolt were to happen, it would be very bad for the government as, being the most armed country on the planet, private citizens with weapons greatly outweighs the police and armed forces combined (somewhere around 80 million).

On a more cheerful note, I believe that things will get straightened out in a (mostly) peaceful manner. A couple of impeachments is a start, and a good one, but lets make sure that we don’t replace one bad apple with another.

-Cheers

I recently read a press release about a company I thought was quite good. “Thought” being the operative word.

In it, they said they wanted to”spread their services to all corners of the globe”.

Now normally since we hear this term often we think nothing of it. But if you think about it with the same amount of brain power it takes to estimate a waiters tip, you’ll see that it is a misnomer and a fairly un-intelligent thing to say.

A globe, in fact, has no corners. It has no sides either. It’s a globe. A spherical shape that technically has no beginning or end. So why do we keep saying it?

A better way to say it is “all parts of the globe” or, to be melodramatic,  “to the far reaches of the world”. At least that way one would be factually correct.

Just a  random thought to get your brain juices working.

-Cheers

I am seeing more and more on the streets people carrying around skateboards. At first I thought “Cool. The more skaters the better.”

But upon closer inspection I found that they weren’t actually doing anything other than walking around with them. This got me a bit confused so I watched a group of them while at the local Starbucks (which should have been my first clue). The entire time they sat there with their boards close at hand. They didn’t ride them or do any tricks, just sat there. Then when they got up to leave, they didn’t ride away as I was expecting. They walked.

No mind, there was no posted “Skateboarding Prohibited” signs in evidence. So I can only surmise that they were not actually skateboarders. They were pretending to be just because it make them look cool. This was also confirmed by their choice of clothing. Very high-dollar threads that no one in their right mind would want to get ruined by failing at a trick.

My question about this is when did it become a fashion accessorie to carry around a skateboard? It is almost useless to them just carrying it around so why do it? For the chicks? No, as they were a group of guys and the girls were wrapped up in their own stuff. So if not to get chicks, then why?

Its sad, in my opinion, that a noble sport (yes, it is noble) such as skateboarding has fallen from something that was once considered “punk” to now be considered “hip”.

I mean you don’t see people walking around with snowboards or fencing blades, do you?

As one who use to skate religiously, I can only hope that this is a phase in fashion. If not, then I can only assume that this ridiculous trend will continue and those who participate in it will fall by the wayside when they finally realize that looking the part is not enough.

-Cheers

I went to Starbucks for my weekly dose of superficial culture and I saw something that I was not really expecting. It was a shirt.

Now, I know most people wear shirts when they go out, but this one said “Im not with stupid anymore”. At this I thought, “That is cool. Good for you.”

I went up to the woman to tell her that I was glad she wasn’t with who ever “stupid” was, when I overheard her talking to her friend. It was a brief bit of conversation that I gleamed but it was enough to confirm that this “stupid” person had definitely left some of their idiocy behind for this girls use (yes, she went from woman to girl in a blink of her vapid brown eyes).

It was quite sad, really. I guess she didn’t rid herself of ’stupid’ fast enough. Which just goes to prove, that if you are with stupid (often evidenced by a cheesy t-shirt saying as much), you should immediately remove yourself from their presence and go to the library. Studies have proven that Stupid-itis is easily cured with large doses of knowledge taken often.

In fact, you should probably just go to the library now. A good defense is a good offense and all that.

-Cheers

The more I use this machine, the more I wonder what took me so long to start using one.

I installed XP on a Parallels share and it runs much better than it did on a native machine. It takes about 20 seconds to start up and I have not had a problem with it even after installing all the CS suite programs and other fun things (it even plays Peggle rather nicely).

Apart from the work standpoint, I also am amazed (and relieved) about all of the communications programs I use and that I won’t be having to kill off any accounts. Using Adium for IM and Skype for calling I am still connected to the world and for email, plain old Mail works just fine.

I am a bit lacking in games but really the only games I play are Half Life, TFC (soon to be TF2), and a few other mods for same and I can run those off of my XP share. So really I’m not giving up anything. Hell, I’m even thinking about adding a Linux share so I can start really playing with that too (Boss, please let me know what flavor you run as I forgot already).

The point of this rather long winded diatribe is not so much to tell you how cool my Mac is, but rather to let those folks wanting to switch but fearing loss of data or ability to know that there is really nothing to fear.

Leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

-Cheers

Its quite sad. 10 years ago we seemed to be quite a decent country. But nowadays more and more news articles come out describing events and happenings that I would not have believed possible in this country.

Heres a quick list just from today:

• 1000 people issue a citizens arrest on Pres. Bush
• A high school girl has her wrist broken by a security guard for dropping cake
• Bush caught lying about 9/11 (with video)
• Chicago cops are investigated for 5000 incidents of abuse
• High school student suspended for wearing John Edwards tshirt.
• Religious group get $100k to improve science with creationism views

The headlines were enough to make me gag, but actually reading the articles made me rather revolted. I am not even sure, from reading the articles among other sources, what the hell is even going on in this country. All I can see is a lot of our countries allies are pissed and our enemies are laughing. Our citizens are angered and our politicians are deaf.

About the only good thing to come out of the news today s a rather good article from the Consumerist about how to properly write to congress and say your piece.

I think I’ll do just that now. Here is the Consumerist article if you are interested.

-Cheers

I just don’t understand racism. I mean, there are people I don’t like, even whole groups of folks; but it’s not because their genetic disposition for skin pigmentation (its mostly because their assholes, pure and simple).

I heard on the radio this morning that a white supremacy group is having a concert here in Portland in the next week or so. They wanted to raise money for something or other related to their misguided goals so they decided to have a concert in a city populated with a large grouping of gays, lesbians, blacks, Indians, and who knows how many other types of people.

They basically proved, before they even got stated, just how dumb they are. Perhaps if they had it in a venue that caters to their beliefs it would make more of a message for them, but their choice of location proves how blindly idiotic they really are.

But on the whole, I still am not understanding why people are racist. It’s not like there are great genetic differences between those of varied colors. As far as genes go, their skin is the only thing different so really are people who are racist also just as superficial? Probably. The facts certainly point to this conclusion.

The whole thing just gets under my skin (no pun intended) but I just can not think of an argument to convince these folks that color is not a bad thing. Maybe if I pointed out that Jesus was dark skinned it would open their eye (hey, he lived in the desert, so he at least had a heck of a tan on him) but they’ll probably just go on thrashing about to their crappy, loud music with 3 notes and no rhythm.

I almost feel sad for them. Almost.

-Cheers