Pauls Rants and Revelations

So its no secret that I am voting for Obama (see my previous post, Vote).

This, I think, is a fine thing to do. Not fine as in grand, but fine as in generally acceptable. However, some of my close friends have stated that this may have been a, not necessarily bad, but at the least a somewhat dangerous thing to do.

My wife said that I should keep my official position to myself. The logic behind this being that nobody wants to be to blame for putting the wrong person in office should things not get better. She wanted the ability, I think, to participate in a thrashing of the candidate along with her friends should they be doing so. Following the crowd in the simplest sense. While it may go deeper than that, that is what it seems like to me. Perhaps she simply wanted to avoid any unseemly remark by the same friends if they knew her political position. We tend not to talk too much about politics since I enjoy sleeping indoors.

My friend though expanded in a different direction when I asked him what he thought of it. He said that its understandable to keep such things to yourself for security reasons. If you back the wrong horse, so to speak, and the more militant portions of our civilian population know about it, you could potentially be making yourself a target should these yahoos decide to get aggressive.

Leave it to my friend to instill that extra bit of paranoia into my life (thanks Lindberg Baby).

I can certainly understand that particular position when it comes to telling the world who you are backing. However I cannot understand why people are afraid to say who they are voting for when it comes to possible arguments from their peers. These same people will tell a random stranger calling their phone asking who they are voting for. They will also post onto forums who they are voting for. They do this, I believe, because they think they have a certain amount of security in their anonymity.

This, however, is not true. You are not anonymous. As a web developer, I know how easy it is to get anyone’s life history and vital info with a few simple searches. And even thought I know this, I still spout to the world my choice. Am I crazy? Am I asking for a beat down from some militant wacko with too many guns?

No, I say. I simply believe that we should not have to hide something that we believe in from either invisible threats or from our friends and family. I also believe that we should not fear those that would sway our opinions and thoughts under duress or through fear.

But mostly because I know that should some ass-hat come to my door yelling at me and telling me I’m wrong and going to hell for my choice, I can either cause them great physical harm (if needed only) or verbally abuse them to the point of tears. Telemarkers, Jehovas Witnesses, bill collectors and Mormons are already aware of this.

In short, I say don’t fear what may or may not happen should you choose to voice your opinion on something that your name is on. After all, if you are afraid to tell people who know who you are what you believe, then you shouldn’t bother voting.

OK. Let the comment spam and rude comments begin.

- Cheers

So this weekend it was fairly kickback, for the most part. Saturday was very good as there was an event that day. And since it was sunny we had an archery competition which, I’m stoked to say, I was victorious in. I had thought I lost so it was a pleasent surprise at court. I got a nifty carved feather as a prize (bonus).

We also did our pumpkin gathering on Sunday which was, well, quiet. We got there right when they opened and were first in line for everything so we got to do all the activities (face painting, boat ride, etc). We also came away with some honking huge pumpkins. I’ll post pics in a bit (I seem to have misplaced our rather expensive camera).

How was your weekend, Internet?

-Cheers

You know you want to.

- Cheers

After a long hiatus, and a lot of sweat and tears getting WP 2.6.2 working on this blog, I can (mostly) safely say that this blog is back up and running.

I know it doesn’t look much different but believe me, there is some really cool shit on the back end and I can enjoy it (instead of curse it) now that its working.

For those of you that are also updating to the latest and greatest Wordpress install, I can offer come very useful tidbits of information. I moved this blog from one site to another so info is based generally around that.

• Take a full backup of you existing site. You’ll need it.
• Start with a clean install of you can. Don’t add anything, even templates and especially plugins, that isn’t part of the install package from WP.
• Permissions. Enable them for as few folders as possible. Since I host with Media Temple (they use Cent OS) everything I uploaded had no permissions set so I ended up staring at a blank site for 10 minutes. After permissions are set (usually 775 is needed to get it going) its smooth sailing.
• Importing is a gem. From your old site use the default WP export button. This is very easy and will be great for importing. However, when importing DO NOT import the attachments. This will kill your import after 30 or 40 posts. Instead, export from the old site, modify the XML file and replace the old site URL with the new site URL, copy over everything from your old wp-content/uploads folder into the new site, then import the XML file into the new site. I used Dreamweaver to edit the file but anything that can handle a potentially 2 meg large file will do.
• Wash, rinse. If you have to repeat, you weren’t paying attention.

Now that the site is back up I can start re-publishing all the posts that were lost during the last 2 months or so. I’ve been pretty busy with work and side projects and have lots to report, including my sons front teeth coming out, but that’s for another post.

-Cheers

So I was helping out my friend Jennifer with a CSS issue (lightbox was being dunb on IE) when I actually stopped and checked out the site it was for. Bot-Lab it is called. And it looks really nifty.

Basically, a group of folks gets together (in the Seattle area for now) for a tinker day and make interesting things. So far they have done some screen printing, made some nifty artsy lights, and a couple of other things that are interesting curiosities. Makes me a little sad I don’t live up there any more.

Anyways, they have a new event happening soon where they are going to make some Fireflys (lights in the window that are solar powered and light sensitive so they go on when its dark). I keep asking for her to have another tinker day in the Portland area so if you are here also let her know.

You can check out the calendar for more information on it.

OK. Back to my cave I go.

-Cheers

So today is my friend Peggy’s 29th birthday. She was a little bummed because none of her friends were getting back to her about festivities for the evening. So it’s Paul to the rescue! Also, you can drop a comment on her myspace page if you feel so inclined.

Were going to meet up with a few friends who finally for back to her and go bar hopping in Portland.

She sounds a little down with being almost thirty, so maybe a night of drinking and kareoke will cheer her up.

- Cheers

Update: a picture of the birthday girl.

You know, I really don’t mind taking care of my responsibilities. Family stuff, take out the trash, do the dishes, polish the weapons, all that is fine. However there is one task that I really, really despise.

Giving the cat a bath.

For those of you without the scars from claws, this is not as easy a task as you think. You fear holding the kitty tighter cause its so small in your hands and at the some time you want to squash it into a jelly mold just so it would sit still long enough for you to get the overpriced pet shampoo on it (and let sit for 4-6 minutes).

Anyways, Tom, our cat, is never happy about it. And every bathing he gives me a few good scratches to let me know so. The least I can do asuage my pain is to post pictures of our wet cat. They are funny to look at and I get a sense of fulfilled revenge, even though Tom doesn’t give a shit (and will possibly take one in my shoes later).

- Cheers

For those of you who don’t know, I am in a medieval renactment group called the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). In it, we do all kinds of things that some people think are weird. But we also fight.

And not like play fighting, like with broom sticks (although that is allowed). We fight with rattans, swords, seige engines, and we have wars and battles and the whole nine.

We also have archery, which is my focus in the society. I’ve been doing it for about 5 years now and its been great fun. Although this weekend, I had a not wholly unexpected turn of events. This weekend was an event called Acorn War (and yes, there were 60 or so people on a war field beating the crap out of each other; it was great fun). Also during the event, there was a tournament to see who will be the next defender of the area know in the society as Mountains Edge.

The tournament took all day Saturday and consisted of many different types of shoots, but in the end I emerged victorious! I had the highest cumulative score and the highest number of shoots won so I won two ways. There were about 15 others shooting for the defendership also but I beat them all!

What does this mean, you ask? Basically, I have to stand in court behind the Mt Edge seneshal (the leader of the area) and look intimidating next to the heavy defender, equestrian defender, A&S defender, and bardic defender. That, and I get free admission to Mt Edge events (bonus).

So, that was my weekend. What did you do?

- Cheers

Sorry for the lack of posts in recent weeks. I’ve been busy with work and with going to SCA events all summer so my posts are rather sporatic.

Anyways, things are starting to calm down again so I can start posting more regularly since there are lots of new developmenrs on all fronts in the chaos that is my existence.

Stay tuned!

-Cheers

Since my wife works at Nike (bonus) she gets access to all these really nifty things. Yes, she gets cool clothes and shoes and such, but mostly its the Nike events we like.

And so it happens we have a very energetic 6 year old boy and Nike has a Youth Triathlon planned. Convienent timing for sure. We told him about it and he was all fired up to do it.

The race was 2 laps in the olympic size pool, a 1.5 mile bike ride, and a half mile run. I thought this was a lot for a 6 year old but it turns out I was wrong (which often happens when I think). During the pool section he was in the middle of the pack and doing well. He sprinted out to his bike and took a bit longer than I though was needed to change into his shirt and shoes and get going, but he was off in good time.

I didn’t see the bike portion because it went all the way aroung campus but I was there at the second change point to see him off to his run. It was 2 laps around the olympic track (are you spotting a theme here) and on the second lap he kinda half-walked half-strutted, but still did really well (somewhere in the middle i think). They didnt have a first or second place, but each participant got a really nice bronze medal (solid bronze) with the youth games insignia on it.

I can’t say when I’ve been more stoked to be his dad. We were so proud of him I irritated my coworkers when I told them. As a treat (and because we were planning on it) we got him a Nintendo DS since he was asking for like 6 months. All in all it was a great day to be him. Pictures after the jump.

- Cheers