Dr. Laura

Constitutional crisis, anyone? That's what this piece from Time Magazine claims is possible. It certainly is, the most likely scenario is that Bush wins the popular vote, but Gore wins the electoral vote. Would this lead to a constitutional amendment eliminating the electoral college? Probably... I did some more shopping this morning, nothing too exciting. For some reason, I thought that Radio Shack would open at 9:00 a.m., so I went down there at about 9:30. The big neon OPEN light was lit, so I pulled in, it was closed. I was now presented with a moral dilemma, I could spend 5 minutes driving back to work, another 5 getting to my office, only to turn around and come back 10 minutes later, to be there when the store opened. Or, I could go across the street to Wal-Mart.

I went to Wal-Mart, I got myself some AAA batteries and a new lamp for my living room. I bought the lamp because I am unable to locate a replacement halogen bulb for my current lamp, and I'm tired of sitting in the dark.

I paid for my stuff, then went back to Radio Shack and got the $5 gender-changer I needed. I did, however, wind up giving free computer advice to two senior citizens waiting outside of the Shack with me.

Now then, do I report that half hour as vacation time? The batteries complicate things even further, as they were for my Handspring Visor, which I do use quite a bit at work, so that part of my purchase could be construed as work related, so shopping on work time would be okay.

I think I'll just eat the cost of the gender changer, that should restore my karmic balance, of course, I can also claim that I was on an outreach/extension program from the University, since I gave out that free advice to the seniors...

I was amused that last night's episode of The West Wing contained a scene in which the President lectured a thinly disguised version of Doctor Laura about homosexuality. His little speech was almost entirely taken from this little gem, which has been working its way around the Internet. I found it rather funny, especially:

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

I, too, think shellfish are an abomination, but it has nothing to do with religion, rather with my general dislike of eating things that aren't mammals, birds, or plants. And I don't even really like the plants that much...

To be fair, Dr. Laura did apologize last week for her "poorly chosen" words about homosexuals. I think the episode is rather amusing, she has every right to say whatever she wants about homosexuals, she's entitled to her opinion. Of course, everyone who disagrees can start boycotts of her sponsors, write letters, and peacefully protest. This is an example of the freedom of speech at its best...

Counterpoints

I've been toying around with weblogs.com. My site now is listed there every time I update. Apparently, I'm daft, as I never caught on to the purpose of that site before. I'm afraid that "John" is going to suffer a decrease in the number of hits on his site, as I'll no longer check back every hour to see if he's posted anything new. ";->" I also added a SiteMeter image on the left pane of this site. Since I don't get nice stats logs, like I do for my personal web site, I wanted to be able to see where the people finding my site are from, and how they found it. I can also tell that my mom read my site at 12:53 (my time) as I don't know anyone else who'd be online from Kaufman & Broad.

Probably my favorite thing about my new job, is that I shop for about a third of my day, all with your money. Well, only if you live in Iowa, and you pay taxes, but in any case, it's not my money! Today, I'm looking over new Dell laptops, I've been given $3,000 to spend, with the mission of "getting the most that you can" for that three grand. It's too bad I don't get to keep the stuff that I buy, however...

I watched the third and final (for this year, anyway) Presidential Debate last night. Bush may have won the style competition, but Gore nailed home some excellent points about policy. The talking heads criticized Gore for being too agressive, probably rightly so, but Gore didn't have much of an option.

Gore could not just sit there and let Bush try to cloak himself in the garb of the Democrats. He was either intentionally vague or unintentionally stupid about the details of what type of reforms he supports. When Gore said:

I support a strong national patients' bill of rights. It is actually a disagreement between us. A national law that is pending on this, the Dingell-Norwood bill, a bipartisan bill, is one that I support...

Bush responded with:

Actually, Mr. Vice President, it's not true. I do support a national patients' bill of rights. As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through.

Gore could not simply let it end at that, he HAD to make the point that the bills they support are radically different. Bush tried, during the entire debate, to paint his positions on Medicare, Affirmative Action, and Patient's Rights as being identical to Gore's. Simply because bills have similar titles, does not mean that they are even remotely the same, or contain the same rights for patients. I think that this difference may be lost on many of the voters, they'll assume that both plans contain the same details, when in fact, the Republican version of the plan protects the rights of HMO's far more than patients. Gore had no choice but to respond:

I referred to the Dingell- Norwood bill. It is the bipartisan bill that is now pending in the Congress. The HMOs and the insurance companies support the other bill that's pending, the one that Republican majority has put forward.

Bush tried the same tactic regarding Affirmative Action. What the hell is Affirmative Access? Gore was absolutely correct when he referred to quotas as a red herring, quotas are already gone from all modern Affirmative Access programs, but Bush either tried to paint Affirmative Action as something it's not, or he simply didn't realize this. As Gore said:

Affirmative action means that you take extra steps to acknowledge the history of discrimination and injustice and prejudice, and bring all people into the American dream because it helps everybody, not just those who are directly benefited.

Bush may not have been as aggressive as Gore, but I think he came across as Bush Light. If you were concerned about policy, Gore won that debate. If you were concerned about the style and demeanor of the President, then Bush had the edge.

The Onion has a hilarious Point-Counterpoint between a receptionist and her Dell Dimension 4100. I laughed pretty hard at this one, I loved what the computer wrote:

I feature a one-Gigahertz Pentium III processor and 128 megabytes of RAM. And this broad is whining that I'm not fast enough. A fucking Lamborghini isn't fast enough if you don't know how to shift, brainiac. And, believe it or not, you actually have to exit a program when you're done with it. Not just close the window. You actually have to select "Close" from the File menu. Or, better yet, Alt-F4 on your keyboard. I'm not gonna take the fall just because you left RealPlayer, AOL Instant Messager, Microsoft Word, ACT! 2000, WinAmp, McAfee First Aid, and the sound- and video-card software all open, and you're trying to open Excel! All that stuff costs RAM, dumbass. Maybe if you'd check the system tray once a month. The precise reason I'm "groaning and grinding so much" is that your stupid catalog of open programs is so taxing to my RAM that it forces me to open virtual memory, which is gonna be slow as hell no matter what computer you're on.

Meniscus

Via Midwatch:

Most tech jobs are the simply modern equivilant of construction: menial and only somewhat skilled. The theory of coding and welding are similar, they just use different tools.

Most 'Internet People' have been caught up in the hype, and believe they're white collar becuase they use a computer. Really they are nothing more than muscle in the revolution's factories.

The key to not hating your job is being the person that tells others what to do, not the person that blindly carries out those orders.

I agree with this, I often relate my job to that of an auto mechanic. I just fix 'em, I don't build 'em...

3com has introduced the Audrey. It's a counter-top device for e-mail, scheduling, and web surfing. Yes, the power of the Internet, now in your kitchen...

It looks like a PalmPilot on steroids, but I wouldn't want all the wires and hassle associated with running ethernet to my kitchen, nor would I want to dial up at 56K. Build an 802.11 wireless module into it, and we're in business...

Liz pointed me at this story over at CNN. This dog is bizarre, yes, those are real photos. Watch the video too, that dog's tongue cracks me up...

I spent part of the morning at the UNI Student Health Center. My girlfriend injured her knee last night, picking something up off of her floor. They gave her some crutches and a knee brace, and told her to come back in a week. They're guessing that it's some type of meniscal injury, at least that's what I've gathered third-hand, as I was sitting in the waiting room reading Bug Park.

While there, I noticed that they're offering flu shots later this week. I've never gotten a flu shot, and I'm a big wuss when it comes to someone jabbing a needle in me. The cost is negligible for staff, eight dollars. I rarely catch the flu though, so is it worth the pain and mental anguish of a shot? I also get a lot of quality TV watched while I'm home from work sick...

Update: Holly ICQ'ed me this:

I can't believe you put on your weblog how I did it. At least you could have made it a little less pathetic, like I was chasing a puppy killer and was injured when I tackled him. And I did it Sunday morning, not last night. So there.

I stand corrected.

Commercials without a product

I'm reading over UNI's web policy, as I format the machine I'm going to use as a web server for now. I just noticed a particularly restrictive bit:

University trademarks, symbols, and wordmarks (e.g. "University of Northern Iowa", "UNI", or "Panthers"), may not be used as html page, site descriptors, or titles without permission of the Office of Public Relations.

So, if I'm a student with a web page, I can't put a meta-tag in my page that says "Web page of Seth H. Bokelman, a student at the University of Northern Iowa"?!?!

Need more RAM? It's a good time to buy, JNCS has 128MB of PC133 RAM going for $99! RAM prices fluctuate a great deal, up to $50 for 128MB chip, maybe I should buy another one now while they're cheap...

Iomega released a new version of their IomegaWare software for Windows, bringing it up to 2.7. If you've got a Zip drive, update your software. 2.5 and above were major rewrites, prior to 2.5, the Iomega sofware would often crash on my machines. I reccomend downloading it here, for everyone who has a Zip drive.

As I sat watching the Vikings beat the Bears last night, I was puzzled by two of the commercials that played repeatedly. One was a commercial for BASF, the message was, "We don't make the products you buy, we make the products you buy better". Okay, so if you don't make anything that I do or can buy, why are you advertising to me?

The second one was for Texas Instruments, it was an advertisement for their DSP's. Do you know what a DSP is? I do, but it was never explained in that commercial. Are you in the market for DSP's? I'm not, nor is anyone I know, but the ad ran three times during the game. What percentage of the population really decide what DSP they need to buy? And what percentage of those were watching Sunday Night Football? Oh, and DSP stands for Digital Signal Processor, it's a component used in electronics, especially things like cell phones, PDA's, etc. You've probably got a few in your house. But did you know or care who made them? Probably not...

Ames

I'm sitting in the Parks Library as I write this. So what am I doing in Ames? My girlfriend suggested that we come down and do some shopping today, and I quickly agreed, as I do miss Ames from time to time. So far, it's been a busy day, as soon as she gets the information from some books here, we're going to head back to Cedar Falls. First on the agenda was a trip to the University Bookstore, and then the Campus Bookstore, to get some Iowa State clothes. Then we headed over to Hickory Park for lunch, where I saw four people that I knew from when I went to school here.

After lunch, we drove up to Main Street, so that Holly could go to the Fairlight Quilting store. I stood around for a while smelling the candles, while she picked out fabric. We then headed over to the Mall, where she bought some more clothes, and I looked at computer games.

On the way out of the mall, I ran into Dr. Joel Coats, from the Entomology Department at ISU. He and some of the Entomology students had some cockroaches they were letting people hold. Holly chose to pet the rabbits at a competing booth instead.

Next, we headed over to the Brunnier Art Gallery, to check out the Christian Petersen exhibit. We had about 40 minutes until they closed, and we thought (foolishly) that this would be plenty of time to view the exhibit. If you go, and I highly recommend that you do, budget at least an hour to see everything in this show, it was excellent, lots of beautiful artwork. If you're anywhere near Ames, make the trip to check this show out.

We journeyed on to Hastings, where I found a Heinlein book that I didn't have, and Holly sat in a chair waiting for the aspirin to take away her headache. I found her a book on headaches, while rummaging in a bargain bin, but that didn't seem to help.

That brings you, the loyal reader, up to speed! I've done ISU some good while writing this, the mouse on this computer was full of goo, so I took the time to clean it out. That, and the thousands of dollars I've paid ISU, entitles me to sending a few bytes over their Internet connection, at least in my book. I was unable, however, to correct the broken delete key, which I don't feel too badly about, as Gateway offers a lifetime warranty on these keyboards anyhow...

Update: We're home now, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Jimmy John's on our way out of town, and I listened to the first half of the Iowa State - Oklahoma State football game on the road. ISU needs to get a kicker...