SuperTom.com

I’m sure you heard the news – Bush was re-elected. I am no politico by any means. I even commented in an earlier post about how I don’t really care too much for either candidate. What really bothers me about the whole thing is that half the country sees nothing wrong. You can quote “who voted for what bill, etc.” to me and I would simply respond with a blank stare, but I can tell you this:

Bush senior in office – bad economy
Clinton in office – Good economy
Bush junior in office – bad economy.

Now, tell me why people voted for Bush?

The whole “we shouldn’t change presidents while in war” and “Kerry won’t continue the fight” is a load of bull. Guess what? The terrorist’s have TV’s too, and they know that the US didn’t want GB 4 years ago, and they don’t want him now. Surprise! They want him in office! It means that they will have their way with us for 4 more years. Good job folks.

As I said earlier, one man can’t change everything. But if no one can recognize that:
1. The US is 7 trillion in debt (and someone is going to need repayment at some point)
2. We’re selling each other out by shipping our work overseas
3. The price of the most precious commodity in the world, oil, (which we are highly dependant) is at astronomical levels.
4. None of the above are getting any better.

Then we are in a sad state of affairs.

Well, after 5 months, the first release has gone out to our customers at Bascom. It is exciting times, as the new functionality and look was much needed and long overdue. It is quite exciting, as we all worked really hard on the project, and it came in on time and we’ll executed. Of course, we’ll see what happens on Monday….

Went to a different branch of my bank today. Very interesting. You first walk up to a TV screen, and just see your self. There is a single form (a bank transaction form) and a single pen in front of you, and a tube with a plastic container to your right. The teller then comes on the screen and instructs you to fill out the form, and put everything in the tube and send it up. These are not scripted instructions, but you are actually talking directly with the person, who is somewhere else in the building. The transaction went smoothly for me, but it makes me wonder if it really would have been so much of a problem to have the conventional setup instead. Too much technology for our own good? Who knows.

Ok, many you know that I moved recently. Well, I notified the Board of Elections that I moved via email a few months ago, and I *believe* I got a confirmation in the mail (I need to check at home, I could be imagining things). However, I have no idea where I am supposed to vote. There is a school a few blocks away from my house – I assume I vote there, but again, I’m not sure.

Here’s the kicker: I call the Board of Elections, and bounce around the phone system until I get a message that says – “We are closed”. The hours for Tuesday (that’s today) are from 8am to 8pm – well I called at 10:30am? What do you mean you are closed????? It could just be an unchanged message, or it could be a clue as to where our tax dollars are going. I’ll keep you posted.

In my quite busy and hectic life, I do lots of driving. A few hundred miles a week lately. And I’ll be damned if I don’t see at least 1 brake (or tail) light out on a NEWER car every day. This amazes me. I really think there is something going on.

Taillights or brakelights don’t go out on cars too often, at least from my experience. Two big manufacturers (probably more like distributors) of automotive lights are Sylvania and Philips. A quick lookup on the Philips site (which sucks, BTW, breaks in Mozilla on Linux) shows that their stock took a dump in 2002, and is on a small incline now. Ok, lots of stocks took a dump in 2002, but who better to benefit from light bulbs that don’t last as long? Yes, its a leap, but I’m amazed that is so prevelant.

Well, that’s another useless opinion from Tom. Check back for more….

My jukebox is back up in “testing” mode. I hope to have the camera back up soon, too. The jukebox is now portable, though, running off of my laptop. We’ll see how it ends up, as I *may* have a machine to put under my desk to run it, which is the solution that I like the best so far.

I know, I know, I owe everyone a big update. Life has been hectic. As my wife put it – “we are so busy, we actually need to *schedule* time to see each other!”

Well, my weekend was pretty crazy. Friday night was uneventful, as Elissa went out with some friends to a poker night, and I just stayed home and did various things around the house.

Saturday was the first meeting of my Database Design class at Post. I don’t predict too much difficultly withe course, given my experience and background. The professor is in business, and seems quite knowledgeable – something I greatly appreciate, as I feel at the graduate level practical application is just as important as theory. I asked him if he had any experience with Open Source databases, to which he replied, “MySQL?”. (I find it quite funny how Open Source translated to MySQL, considering there are hundreds of databases out there, but whatever.) He replied that he “builds enterprise applications” and wouldn’t use anything that didn’t support stored procedures. I followed up by asking if this was the only thing keeping him from using MySQL (not getting into the discussino about Postgres or others that DO support stored procedures), to which he said ‘yes’. Digressions and rants aside, I find it interesting that it is only one feature (which IMHO is not REALLY needed) is keeping an IT veteran from going OS. This definitely leads me to believe that we will likely see greater gains in OS in the next years.

So, I come home and begin to do various things around the house (the house – the consumer of all of my free time), and the power in half of it goes out. I check the box, and none of the switches are tripped. Great.

I end up calling a few electricians, one of which calls back. Very nice guy named Danny, and he shows up in about an hour. He does some basic tests (which I should have done myself had I known anything about electricity) and concludes that it is not my problem, but LIPA’s. Apparently, a “phase” to the house was down, which is something they need to fix. I confirmed this with a buddy of mine, who agreed.

Now, the wait.

I called LIPA 40-million times (it seemed like that anyway) and didn’t get much of a response. Saturday, we had a nasty storm, and because of this, alot of power was out throughout Long Island. Saturday night, no power. What do I do? Hey, can’t stay home, right? So, we went to home show at Sports Plus.

The show was disappointing, but at least it was free to get in. I signed up to get an estimate for central air from Sunray Systems, and am having someone come to clean my chimney next weekend.

Afterwards, had a snack at John Harvards with Carl and Michele. It was fun, and the food was pretty good. I recommend the Bavarian Laguar if you go….

Sunday morning: went to church, and then to the American Waffle house for breakfast. That place sucks. The food comes right out of a box, and is more expensive than local towny diners that actually make the food. I won’t be back.

Then, the spending spree begins: Off to Home Depot to buy a new stove and range hood. It costs what I thought it would, so I’m not phased. Delivery in two weeks – we will definitely bake a lot of cookies this holiday season!

We get home, and the LIPA guy comes. Really nice guy. The does something on the roof of my house, but then pulls the meter and sees that the wire is severed inside. This is my problem. So, it looks like I need a new “meter pan”, and some new cable. He was very nice, and hooked up the entire house to the one remaining phase. This means that I am now running “unmetered” – I have all-you-can-eat electricity – WooHoo! Unfortunately, I have to fix it in 5 business days. 🙁

Then, I finally do the deed. I really wanted a laptop, and broke down and did it. Dell Outlet had a really good deal on an Inspirion 5150, and I was going back and forth, until I found a coupon on the net. That pushed me over the edge, and I bought it. Elissa was Ok about it, and I haven’t bought any computer gear in a while, plus I could really use it – I can’t wait.

Afterwards, we went and got some shelving, and started moving things into the basement. Tacos for dinner (Yum!) and then we watched “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” on Comedy Central.

Didn’t get half of the things done that I thought I would, and spent way too much $$$$. But, that’s how it goes….

I’m pretty sore.

We moved all of our junk from my parent’s yesterday. We rented a 15 foot truck, and packed it all in. I’ve never driving anything that large before. It wasn’t too bad though, you just need to make wider turns.

Well, my fellow work geeks are going to splish-splash today, while I will be moving the remainder of my junk from my parent’s house to mine. I’ve been storing it there for years, and now, finally, most of it is coming home.

The course I’m teaching, Intro to UNIX, has been given a new dynamic. I’ve come to realize, thanks to discussions with my students and friends/co-workers, that I can add alot to the class by using Knoppix. I have understood for quite some time that it gets boring for students to use the command line (although it is VERY important), so this will give them a way to explore what Linux is all about. I’m excited!

My RES program is starting to take shape, and I hope to have something (somewhat) usable by the end of the weekend. We’ll see.

I just lost yet another game at Bocce. This is really starting to suck. I think I’m on a four or five game losing streak. I really need to consult the Bocce Buddha.

so I figured I would post. I have a million things to do, but it has been way too long.

I’m sitting watching Bush speak at the Republican National Convention. It makes me angry. But not for the “typical” (at least I consider them typical) reasons one may think. To put it bluntly – I’m tired of all the crap.

Bush or Kerry? It doesn’t matter to me. And it shouldn’t matter to most of us. We all seem to expect one person to change everything. We’re all looking fot the next JFK. Everyone liked JFK when he was alive, everyone LOVES him after he died. He didn’t really have the chance to make his mark. What if he had lived? I’m sure he would have been OK, but I doubt the results we would have seen would be amazing. It’s only guy, folks.

What I don’t get is this: People in the U.S. are thinking about retirement in their mid-fifties, early 60’s. They are ending their careers, not likely beginning. So, why the heck do we have presidents who are over 50? More likely over 60? John Kerry – 61. George Bush – 58. What is this? Presidents should be 40! An age where you still have your wits about you and you’re still in good physical health, yet old enough to have experience and command respect.

Why don’t I care? Because I feel we’ve come to a time where we can’t trust or count on anyone. Or at least it seems that way. People don’t trust big corporations or politians. Most view public sector employees as lazy. Really, do you think one person is going to fix all of this? Think again.

Four years from now will most likely be the same regardless of who’s elected. I don’t really care for Bush or Kerry. Who am I voting for then? Well, I voted for Gore 4 years ago, as I thought Bush was an idiot. Since I still do, I will vote for Kerry, but not because I feel he’s any better. I just think I’d rather roll the dice this time around then stick with what I already know about Dubya.

I have lots of other things I’d like to rant about, but I’ll save those for another day….