Month: November 2006

Political Blog Survey

Hi, all-

My blog is being researched as part of a study on political blogging at the universities of Kansas and Wisconsin. I don’t consider the majority of my entries as political, but there is the occasional political entry. The more recent half of them are categorized here,  if you want a refresher. I guess they want a cross-section of 100% political blogs, as well as personal ones that address politics occasionally.

The researchers would like me to post a link to a reader survey on their site. If you’d like to help them out, please take the survey. It’s a little long- it took me 10 or 15 minutes – but it doesn’t ask for any personal information, just statistics, politics, and “rank how much you agree on a scale of 1 to 10” questions.

A quick note: they want to know which blog you are coming from. They initially got in contact with me when my blog was titled “Estimated Prophet,” so you will need to use that name.

Friday is supposed to be good!

So I have like…. 3 or 4 big things due on Friday. 😛

I got my latest BD210 (CIS) test back… my first test was the highest grade in the class. This one was the fourth lowest. Granted, it was still an 80%, which isn’t bad at all, but this is my major, and something that interests me! Why has it slipped so much?

All of my morning classes, actually, fail to motivate me. This isn’t a new trend, it just bothers me. I wish I could find something academic that interests me more, but something tells me that even the most fascinating of subjects won’t motivate or interest me 100% of the time. Meh.

Your Christian Voice in America: Abortion, Gays, Nothing Else.

President-elect of Christian Coalition resigns – Associated Press

The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood’s Northland, A Church Distributed, said Wednesday that the national group would not let him expand the organization’s agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

Hunter, who was scheduled to take over the socially conservative political group Jan. 1, said he had hoped to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

“They pretty much said, ‘These issues are fine, but they’re not our issues, that’s not our base,'” Hunter said.

Because Jesus had nothing to say about poverty.

This is coming from the Christian Coalition of America, probably the largest conservative grassroots organization in America. Yes, it was founded Pat Robertson, the guy who calls for covert U.S. assassinations in his spare time. But more importantly, it is the largest lobbying group recognized by politicians as a “Christian” group. Many politicians are practicing Christians, many are not, and when they (or anyone in our country, for that matter) want to know what Christians stand for, this is one of the largest beacons that supposedly represents Christ. I’ve given their list of values a quick glance, and I’ll say that maybe 30% of it is stuff directly supporting religious freedoms or “compassionate” action. The rest is all political, partisan filth that has very little to do with representing Christ or Christians in politics.

Poverty matters to Jesus, big-time. I think we are finally starting to see some big action in this. Missionaries have always been active in this realm, but I think that the majority of us who stay at home are starting to care about it, too. It certainly is one of Jesus’ biggest talking points.

What I want to know is why some of the loudest “Christian” voices in America are so quiet about the stuff that Jesus was very loud about.

de-blarificants, please.

Today at work was teh stress. To give it a very brief overview, it was a lesson in what specific types of IT careers that I don’t want to pursue. (That doesn’t mean I hate my job. Just the parts that stunk today.)

My younger cousin Kate just set up her own blog. Check it out at http://katesworld.wordpress.com . It’ll be interesting to see what you have to say, Kate! 🙂

I think I’m gonna do absolutely nothing that requires mental effort tonight. My brain needs to take a short vacation.

PS360

I’m having an enjoyable break. I still have work, but it’s work where I’m not bothered every 2 minutes, so I can actually get some stuff done.

Dabbling in drumming on my acoustic drums, which I had only played once since moving in to CSU. It’s totally different than electric drums, which have been feeling rather limiting recently. But I think that the electronics are forcing me to focus on my technique and rhythm, since they aren’t so boomy and loud to play. Less fun to play = more focus on improving my playing.
But banging the crap out of my Ludwigs today felt really good. I played some solo grooves for a while, then Rush, then The Who, then Steve Kimock. I’m in a classic rock phase where super-technical fast fills and ghost notes are less fun than just straight-up old rock beats with fat tom fills.

Having fun with Ubuntu Linux, as well. If OS X doesn’t come out for x86 systems in January (I have a completely unrefuted suspicion about  this) I might opt to ditch Windows instead of upgrading to Vista. I’ve basically decided to experiment through the end of the semester, and then migrate to the system I’m happiest with over the winter. The contenders include XP Professional, Vista, Ubuntu 6.10, openSuSE 10.2, Fedora Core 6, and (maybe) OS X Leopard.

I’m also looking at the new video game consoles, as well. For the last ten years, I’ve been a straight-up Sony PlayStation gamer. I don’t play video games too much, but all of the really fun games have come out for PSX or PS2. Stuff like Gran Turismo (I’ve owned 1-4), Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot, and the Final Fantasy series keep me coming back (every game I mentioned has also been Sony-exclusive). The Xbox gained a lot of network play with the likes of Halo, and many “simply fun” games have dominated the N64 and GameCube. I’ve never had much of a thing for first-person shooters or the bright colors of Mario Party 36.

But now there are next-gen consoles for each system. The Xbox 360, after some rough (and fiery) starts, has emerged as a great console overall. It’s really easy to program, and great games are coming out for it. Gears of War has to be the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. And it’s a cheaper system, too- it’s been out for a year, Microsoft has already started to turn profits on these boxes, so prices are likely to go down sometime soon.

Enter the PlayStation 3. It has come a year after the 360, and pushes hardware limits so far that manufacturers are unable to make too many at a time. We’re talking about an 8-core PowerPC-based processor, plus a crazy 533-MHz graphics system. Compared to the 3-core 3.2GHz Xbox 360, this unit blows the competition away (and three cores is nothing to cry about!)
But that’s just hardware. Programming multithreaded games- forget 8 cores – is very difficult. Basically, once developers actually learn how to program the darned thing, it will definitely blow the 360 out of the water. But it’s gonna take a lot of time.
Not to mention that the PS3 costs $600. Forget it. My strategy for now will be to wait at least a year and see if the PS3 flops or flourishes. In the meantime, it’s really annoying because I have no PS2 of my own (it was the family box and I moved away) so all I have to game on is my old PSX emulator on the laptop. Which is totally fun- I mean come on, I have Final Fantasy VII! But I want to play XII now, and have nothing to play it on. I don’t want to wait a year or more to find out about the PS3 to be able to play these games. I would almost rather buy a 360 and a PS2 now (total: $429) than a PS3 later ($600).

I have the opportunity to score a $100 Xbox this week. No, I won’t tell you how. But if it doesn’t go through (limited supply) then I will wait the extra year to see if the PS3 is worth it.

Unless I cave and buy a PS2 just to play Final Fantasy XII and Gran Turismo 4.

*chirp chirp*
Yes, I know that nobody is reading any more.

That week was hell.

I’ve gotten so much busier with school… And I’m not used to it. I’m used to slacking off all summer and putting out maybe 2 weeks of crazy-hard effort at the end of the semester. And now, I actually have to be responsible?!! What is this crap?!

…but seriously. I am VERY glad that this week is over. I literally had something huge occupying my attention at any given moment. And as soon as that thing was over, I would remember something else that was super-important. I still have a couple of really important things coming up, but they aren’t due tomorrow or later today, as everything else had been. I never had more than, say, 12 hours to prepare for the next huge thing.

I’m pretty happy overall with how all of those tests and big assignments turned out. I got an A on my Macroeconomics midterm, which I’m really proud of because I suck overall at econ. It brought my grade back up to a B (four tests make up the entire grade in that class 😛 ). I also am finally in the programming part of BD210, which is the start of classes in something that actually interests me (and is my major).

At this moment (totally on a whim), I’m not sure if I want to keep taking Spanish. Meh.

All of this studying and homework is making me really miss Gold Bar.