Who to vote for?

On a Delphi Forums group, someone posted this handy-dandy test to take in order to pick which candidate to vote for.

Minnesota Public Radio: Select a Candidate 2008

Unfortunately I had to have done something really wrong, as I ended up with John McCain as the one to vote for..

Scary Stuff.

Texas moves to England

Can someone stop the RAIN!!! Seriously, enough already.

During spring, it was nice. "Oooo I don't have to water the plants. YEAH!"

But I realized today, that I hadn't seen sunshine all freaking week.

My lawn is starting to look like a swamp. No.. my yard isn't flooding and we're not in a flood plane. Half of Austin would have to be completely UNDERWATER for us to have flooding. But that doesn't mean that the poor soil doesn't "squish" and release a puddle of water when you step on it.

I will say though that the oranges on my orange tree have never looked bigger, but dang it, I wanna see some sun!

One of the benefits of living in Texas is supposed to be the sunshine, and nearly constant sunshine during the summer. Its summer, and its not suppose to feel like an English Summer. I didn't move to London. I moved to Austin.. TEXAS.

So you global warming people stop hoarding my sun, and give it back! I'll even throw some clouds in on the exchange! :)

Traveling Back in Time

I was doing my daily addiction (reading Schlock Mercenary Comic) when I saw Howard Tayler made a blog reference to Weregeek Comic.

So being the geek-wannabe that I am, I went to go check it out. The first "strip" of it that I saw caught my attention.

"OOooo must know more.. what is this Weregeek?"

So I went to the begining of Weregeek's strips and began reading. I read, and read, and read. Ooo this is fun!

It was a total travel back in time. The "new geek friends" he makes.. Totally the crowd I hung out with in college (cept my crowd was all guys, I'd probably be more geekified if there was another girl there).

I have never laughed so hard.. ok.. I exaggerate.. I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time as I did while reading that comic.

Definitely something worth reading.. Even if you're just a pseudo-geek. :)

Ron Paul Presidential Candidate

I was pointed to this YouTube video by another blog that I was reading, and I found a couple comments made by Ron Paul in this video which makes me hope that come the elections he's on the ballot.

A couple quotes that make me think he might not be all bad:

"I think a lot of our government is very wasteful."

"We've taught a couple generations to be very dependent on government.. I think you have to have a transition period... I happen to think that the market can deliver any service better than the government can."

So maybe there is a little hope of getting more local control someday? I'll have to look into him a bit more.

Prey - Video Games Crossing the Line?

I'm really not the one to be pointing fingers on video games as I play them so rarely that my input is really of no value.

I also don't play violent video games. Ok, I have on occasion been convinced to try a violent video game, and I did play one willingly for a little while though I cannot remember the name any longer. It wasn't very "graphic" or gory, and consisted of you being on the side of good and fighting demons or something.

Other than that I tend to play games that are computerized board games or such things similar to RISK, Monopoly, etc.. Like I loved the first Warcraft, Age of Empires, XBOX 360's Catan. That's about as "violent" as I get with video games. Otherwise I'm playing puzzle games, mancala, backgammon, etc.

But for those of you, really into violent video games.. Here's a review of Prey.

It's definitely a review you should read before buying.

Scarlet Letter

24 hours.

The last 24 hours have been strange. Odd. Almost creepy. Looney.

It all started with a friend-request on MySpace from a guy I went to High School with a long long time ago.

Which seems normal enough, except I don't know this guy. I had to read his profile to figure out that we probably went to HS together, and then I had to get out my yearbook to even place him. I have never in my life spoke to him, and he wasn't in my grade. I still don't know why he wants to add me.

Then on his profile, I found in his friend's list the younger brother of my best friend in HS. Last I remember seeing him, he might have been a freshman in HS. He's now all grown up with 3 kids. I feel so old.

While both of these aren't anything to write home about, a conversation I had tonight with my best friend is.

She and I have (had?) a network of friends, some mutual, and some not, but they all vaguely know each other. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why several of them hated me so much. I knew there were rumors rolling around, but I could never get anyone to tell me what they were.

Anyway, we began talking about these old friends, most of them we are no longer in touch with, and comparing stories. Then she hinted something about that we'd "shared" the same men.

I have to say that made me laugh quite a bit. I'm actually still laughing about it. Its so preposterous that I couldn't help but laugh.

Controlling my laughter for a bit, just to say: "but we haven't shared the same man" I also racked my brain trying to find a man that we had shared or at least had been both physical with. I even tried to comb through those drunken college nights of "wild abandon" and I couldn't come up with anyone.

Turns out, that a couple of her boyfriends had told her while she was dating them that they and I had had sex.

I seriously cannot stop laughing. How she believed them? That I don't know. She said back then she didn't have much self-esteem. Well with boyfriends like that, who can blame her?

Anyway, we got to the bottom of it, and cleared the air. But it seems she had told a couple people in our friend-network, and of course gossip got out.

No wonder people hated me and kept trying to tell her I wasn't really her friend.

Its so far back in past history, that all one can do now is laugh. Though it is finally good to know why I had that scarlet letter.

(I do sorta feel like going to a gathering of our old friends, and wearing a t-shirt stating "No, I did not have sex with that man!" But that would be all to Clinton-esque and I doubt they'd believe me anyway.)

MAC vs Microsoft - Take Two.. And Action!

I love my Mini don't get me wrong. It's not that hard to "figure out" and its been really reliable (though I can't say so much for my internet router).

Unfortunately, the MAC Mini doesn't seem to have all the bells and whistles that I'm used to.

I'm certain I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out where (nor can the MAC-addict hubby). For those of you tech-support people reading this: 1. Yes I've restarted the computer. 2. Yes I have clicked on and read every possible button in the printer setup features in order to find the options I was looking for (so has hubby). 3. Yes I have the most current driver installed.

My printer is awesome. While most of my previous printers have been thorns in my side with little to no features other than color or grayscale options, my current printer is cool. I can print double sided pages, booklets, etc, plus the options of grayscale or color.

I should say I have these options in Windows. In MAC, I can print and thats about it. Ok.. so I can adjust margins and print portrait or landscape.. Whoop de doo.. I cannot print grayscale if I want. There is no option to select grayscale, actually there are very little "options" in the print mode period. If there is color on the page, it prints it. Which means with the webpages that I print out from time to time, I can easily run out of my color in my printer as the color cartriges are at least 1/3 the size of the black. And if the colors on the page that look black, aren't really black but lets say dark blue, or other "color" that might look black but isn't, my color cartriges are going to be used to print it.

So I'm a bit peeved about it all. I am currently using Google Docs to paste links or store documents that I want printed, then I access that page on my Windows computer, load the links/documents, and print them.

Its a lot more work, and I'm still debating on whether the Mini is worth the freaking hassle.

I am btw liking having two computers, as it splits up the work and my Windows computer hasn't been tempermental much at all. Or maybe it sees the MAC Mini, and is on its best behavior.

I'd just like to be able to utilize all the functions of my printer. Right now, I feel like MAC put "idiot guard" on the print features so that all you can do is "click print" to save people from manually messing with their options and thus screwing up their printing. Which might be good for computer idiots and those that completely lack creativity, but for those that actually have a need to use the features that the particular printer was PURCHASED to do, its not very useful at all.

Cholesterol - Women & Children

Proof that sometimes you can't believe everything you read, and sometimes you have to follow the money.

Is there anything in this country that isn't corrupted?

And is everything from the medical community just "guessing"?

Apple Mini

This weekend we went out and purchased an Apple Mini. I was hesitant at first about switching to MACs, well mostly because they're SOOOOO different from Microsofts layouts that I got lost just trying to get them functioning.

Not to mention the previously discussed fear of change.

Anyway, this is my first blog post from the new Mini-Mac and tonight I found a feature of the MAC that will have people tearing it out of my cold dead hands.

See... with MAC's there is this handy-dandy "dashboard" feature, which is mostly just a bunch of gadgets that you can set up, that are on a separate screen... a semi-transparent overlay on top your real screen, when you're not using the computer, or if you just want to check on them.

You hit a key, and woosh the dashboard goes up and you can check things like weather, dictionary, address book, time, stocks, or whatever. The dashboard also shows when you log into your machine or when you come out of screen saver. It disappears with one click on the screen as well, which makes it easy to use.

Now most of that doesn't sound that fabu-lous, and those features aren't really all that.

What I do love is the post-its that it lets you put up on the dashboard. Post-its with grocery lists, notes of things to do, reminders.. Now when I'm in the middle of doing something on the computer and I remember "Oh yes, tomorrow I should go do" I can click to the dashboard, make a post-it and remind myself.

The other feature, is this widget (thats what they call all these fancy-pants dashboard things) that imports your google calendar into it. So you can see at a glance any meetings you have for the day or scheduled errands, doctors appts, etc. (now if only my phone would sync with Google Calendar). So far I haven't done much of anything with it but put in a few reminders, but I'm imagining much much more.

8am Breakfast
9am Gym
10-12pm Errands
12-1pm Lunch
1-4pm Get cracking on that novel. jk
5pm Put on Superhero suit & Save World
6pm Cook
7pm Serve Dinner
8-11pm Relax & Watch TV (Superhero's have to have their downtime)
11pm Sleep

Yes, I am easily amused. :)

I hate my Computer

Warning: Temper Tantrum

For months, years.. I can't remember how long actually. My computer has been ticking me off.

When I first got it, it was amazing. Then things went down hill.

It had memory errors, so we switched out the memory. It worked fine for a while.

It had internet issues, we switched routers. It didn't help much.

It blew up! (seriously, I had black soot all over my office to prove it)

So we replaced all the insides, and reused the case.

I still had issues. Ok thats an understatement. I've had nothing BUT issues since.

The stupid thing won't boot up without the original CD in the freaking CD drive, even though it doesn't run off the CD while its working, just needs it there like a freaking safety blanket. We've tried to figure out why, but it hasn't been that big of a deal.

Then it would suddenly need rebooting for no apparent reason. I'd get some "failure" message, then it would start a countdown to reboot. If I tried to save anything during this countdown, the file would be corrupted beyond repair. I did figure out how to stop the countdown, but the computer wouldn't let me do anything anyway so I still had to reboot.

On top of this, it wouldn't stay connected to the internet and acted like it hated the router. Which we finally discovered was because the freaking router which is supposed to do wireless and cable connections both, would switch between the two cutting out one or both of the services for no apparent reason. So we shut off the wireless feature on it, and its been behaving 90% better. I only have to reboot the router and cable modem every 3 days, vs every 3 hours.

Hubby checked the thing several times for hacking and found nothing. My computer has been checked for viruses, and does a full scan.. I mean FULL FREAKING SCAN every night.

I also have to restart the computer about every 2 days.

Now I could understand this better if I did something highly taxing on the computer like active games that require a lot of memory and CPU. But the most I do, is have 2-3 documents open, a few webpages, and a couple IM programs.

We've souped up the computer with lots of memory, a fast good quality CPU, and a SATA drive. You would think that it could handle it?

Now today's lovely problem!

Datarat posted a link to a You-Tube video about something that Ayn Rand wrote.

I really really wanted to watch this video. I also wanted to watch a couple other You-Tube Ayn Rand videos. Which I can do, if I could be satisfied with only watching the first minute of each video.

Instead, I get interested in it. I'm waiting at the edge of my seat for the next words, and it stops. I tried it both in FireFox and IE and neither will freaking show me the video, though FireFox does show me more of the video than IE but thats hardly any consolation.

When hubby gets home, I think we're going to have a talk about getting that Apple Mini we've been discussing.

I really hate change, and having to learn how MACs work is not going to be easy for me (or for my hubby as I am going to bitch about it), but I have to do something.

I just want the damn computer to work. It shouldn't be rocket science.