I managed to get my incredibly apathetic friend in Florida to vote for the first time ever, and then this weekend helped organize a last minute bus trip to get 37 volunteers to canvass in New Mexico. There's already hundreds of volunteers in Ohio, Florida, Missouri, and New Mexico from Texas, spending the last 4 days of the election canvassing and trying to Get Out The Vote (GOTV) for Obama.
Also if Obama is a socialist for simply believing in a progressive tax system (that almost all democracies have) where the rich pay more because they can afford more (which I have absolutely no problems with), then McCain believes in "socialism" too. I've just got a fundamental disagreement that I should subsidize tax breaks for someone making more than me. It's welfare for the wealthy. I fully support that I should pay more taxes than someone making half of what I do, because I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, where as they do, so every 1% increase in my tax hurts me FAR less than a 1% increase in theirs. Yes there are slippery slope arguments and taxing at a 99% rate would be bad. But all Obama wants to do is put it back up to what it was before Bush came along, and we all remember how horrible of a time everyone had during the 90's economy.
Also please America, don't let Sarah Palin anywhere near the White House
I mean she thinks she knows what it's like to be a minority because she "lives it". I'm half Mexican and I don't even seriously say something like that.
In sadder news, Obama's grandma passed away today, only hours before election day started. He had gone to visit her last week since he knew her time was short. She raised him during his teenage years. Obama spoke about her at his rally this evening:
November 4, 2008
WE DID IT!
40 years after racism was encouraged and legal, America has elected a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. I've been waiting for this day for 2 and a half years, and I can't believe it actually happened. I just can't believe it. I was part of history, I helped make it happen. I can tell my grandkids I helped get him to the White House.
YES. WE. CAN.
November 18, 2008
I have no idea what I'm going to do to occupy my free time now that the election is over. I still have dozens and dozens of political stories to link to that I haven't gotten around to, I'll have to just do a mass link update sometime soon. But in the mean time, here's a collage of newspapers reporting the win around the world
So instead of politics, I'm going to write about webpages! I discovered Google Analytics the other day, that can tell me all kinds of interesting things about the people who visit my humble little website. Yes, all 4 of you. My current tracker has become outdated and they're no longer updating it. So since August 5, 2001, I've had over over 57,000 hits in all. That of course only counting the main page. That works out to about 17 people a day. This is skewed because way back when I'd get 30 or so hits a day, and now days I'm lucky if I break into double digits. Apparently my highest day was on April 28, 2004 (with 105 people), at which point my post about robots and iTunes being launched was on the front page. If I remember correctly, that's about the time that this photo of a flower in my Mom's garden was on the first page of Google Image results when someone searched for "flower". That lasted about 2 weeks until it disappeared off the search results again.
Most of the searches that end up on the front page, of which there are not many, are the result of searching for "binary fusion" (surprise surprise) or searching for "nerd". Who would have guessed?
But with analytics I can get stats for all the webpages, and not too surprisingly, the biggest draw is my article on hacking the navi system of an Acura TSX to get it to display any image you want. Not that people rush to browse the rest of the site after that, but eh, at least I can help some people out to make their car cooler.
I'm interested after posting this how many people will get to it via an RSS feed. Well here's to finding out!
November 22, 2008
I still had a few links that I never got around to posting, so here's the last "campaign" update, at least until 2011 anyways. Or well possibly even earlier considering Bobby Jindal is in Iowa already. But anyways here's some of the many many links that I had saved but didn't get a chance to write about:
Why offshore drilling won't solve or even really help our oil problems. If people think offshore drilling means oil problems are solved, it doesn't lead to conservation or investments in things that actually solve our oil crises.
An article that explains pretty well how I voted for Obama even though I'm pro-life. It comes down to that you don't reduce abortions with clean-cut political lines, but with programs to help people so they don't see the need for abortions and allowing them access to things to prevent pregnancy in the first place.
My favorite McCain campaign press statement of the entire election, where the campaign complains that Obama lives in a "frickin' mansion" after people realized how out of touch McCain was that he couldn't even remember how many houses he owns. And sums it up with the end of "John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type". Ahhh first grade name calling... classy.
The incredible hypocrisy of the right in regards to living off your wife's fortune which the right had a lot of fun with when it was Kerry back in 2004, but somehow you don't hear them calling McCain on it in 2008 for doing the exact same thing....
Anyways, tomorrow I'm going to check out Dinoland and it's the season finale of Entourage!
November 25, 2008
One of my favorite things in the world is dinosaurs, which is why I was so excited that I went to see over 30 life-sized one's a short walk away from my apartment on Sunday. It was part of the Dinoland exhibit that has been going on this fall, and they had 30 life sized dinosaurs, along with a bunch of plants and ferns that were still around back then.
The Gators are now #2 in the nation! We're three games away from another national championship!
Fedora 10 came out today. I haven't installed a new OS since Fedora 6 was released back at the end of 2006, so needless to say it's about time for an upgrade. Speaking of which, I'm also ordering a new 500GB external hard drive, and I still can't believe it's only $90 for all that space. Back when I was a kid (oh geez, here I go, now I think I've officially turned "old") it was $1000 for only 500MB of hard disk space.
I've also started doing some backups of my data, and as I was burning gigs of random internet videos (not movies, just stuff like this) to a DVD, I realized that I hadn't downloaded a video in years now. And why? Because there's no need to with Youtube. Back in the old day's (here I go again) there was nothing like Youtube, so any funny videos had to be hosted on a webpage somewhere and you had to download them. For instance, that Youtube clip I linked to above? That's one of the videos I had downloaded like 8 years ago. Or this one of the intro to the greatest dinosaur cartoon show ever, Denver the last dinosaur. This is why I love technology, it just keeps getting better.
November 26, 2008
Eight years after moving out from my parents house, I finally bought my very first printer. It's a Canon PIXMA ip4200 ink jet printer, that was released about 3 years ago. But I wanted something cheap but still of decent quality, and most importantly, something that had full Linux support.
In college I used my various computer accounts spread across departments to print, and then after graduation I use the printer at work to do the one or two pages a month I need. But often those one or two pages were needed by the next morning, on a weekend, so I figured it was about time I finally got one.
After adding the Google Analytics, it's been interesting reading the stats and just how few people actually read the site. It's like a private, but public, blog! Of course this might possibly have to do with the fact that I've been so sporadic in updates, with only one update in October, and a handful in the previous months. And the TSX nav hack page still drives about 3/4 of my traffic.
Turkey Day is tomorrow!
November 27, 2008
It's Turkey Day!
We had my famous turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, fruit salad, rolls, and lots of pumpkin pie. LOTS of pumpkin pie. This is the only time of the year I ever get to eat it, so I make sure to take advantage.
I'm currently trying to decide whether it's worth going out and fighting the crowds tomorrow morning, so far I haven't found anything that I absolutely have to have that is far cheaper than I could get it online. Unfortunately some of the things I really want, like a new camera lens, never go on sale.
November 29, 2008
This will be my first mobile update ever, courtesy of my new cell phone, the G1. I've finally joined the 21st century and now have a phone with web access, mp3 playing ability, and email. And the best feature is the open source Android OS which means anyone can make apps for it. So far I have apps to scan barcodes to find the cheapest price, an app to see star charts, and an app to do online banking.
I also picked up 3 free 4gig CompactFlash cards from Ritz camera (rebate required of course) as part of black friday.
