I'm finished!

After some careful consideration, I've decided that three years of keeping this blog is enough. I thought I could make it to a fourth year, but that won't happen. There are other venues for writing that have been keeping me occupied of late, and that's where I'll be. So it's time to take out the proverbial bowling pin and beat this blog over the head. Thanks for reading.

That tickles!

This should be enough to psychologically scar the average toddler.

A new year

2009 has gotten off to a whiz-bang start. Just a few days into the new year my car began giving my trouble. Might I add at this point that a mini van makes an excellent traffic control device when it stalls in the middle of morning rush hour traffic in a school zone. Fortunately someone came along and helped me push my van into a nearby driveway and out of the traffic. Off to the shop with my car on a flatbed wrecker. The diagnostic computer said there was a bad crankshaft sensor, so that was replaced. I picked up my car the next day, and when I was about a mile from home, the van started doing the same thing it was doing the day before--stalling out, but cranking back up and then stalling again when put in drive. For the second time I had to call a wrecker to come pick up my car from the side of the road. And also for the second time the same guy who had been dispatched to get my car the first time showed up again. As he pulled my car up onto the flatbed wrecker, I told him, "Given the schedule my car is on, I guess I'll see you on Saturday."

The diagnosis for my van the second time in the shop was a bad power control unit, the computer that reads input from various engine sensors and keeps things running. It would've been an expensive fix were it not under warranty. The next day after work I head back to the shop and picked up my car. Even though they logged 20 miles in the post-repair test drive, once again at the same point the car started acting up after the first repair, it started stalling again. I did manage to keep it running long enough to make it the last mile home, me popping the car into neutral and restarting the car every time it cut off on me. It was almost like riding a bucking bronco.

Saturday morning and another call for a wrecker to come get my car, which this time sat in my driveway. And the same wrecker driver who had come pick my car up the first two times pulled up to my house. "See, I told you I'd see you Saturday," I told him as he got out of his wrecker.

By this time what I had been feeling as a nagging thought was screaming through my head: my van had been a very reliable vehicle for almost the past six years, but what if now we're entering that stage where we'll be slowly, and expensively, replacing the car piece by piece, one repair after another? That afternoon it was off to the dealership under the guise to look, though I knew in my heart I'd be leaving with a new car. I needed something I could trust when I drove it, and that wasn't the van anymore. But there was a new Jeep on the lot that not only could be trusted, but also fell well into the range of what I could afford.

Even though 2009 got off to a crappy start, things are starting to look up.

Feelin' refweshed

If you've seen the film Blazing Saddles, then Madeline Kahn's faux-Dietrich accent in the title will make sense. Once again I've neglected my blog. I was giving thought of shutting it down come January, 2009. It seems that the shelf life of your typical blog is three years, so it seemed natural to pull the plug on this distraction at that point. But something wonderful happened to me this past weekend. Being off from work for two weeks has allowed me to go to bed much later than usual. And as luck would have it, I caught a few minutes of a truly awful movie called, "Blood Freak." To sum up the whole plot in a sentence, a guy is turned into a giant turkey who then goes after drug dealers. No clue why the major studios turned this script down. To see a guy wandering around wearing a giant turkey mask, well, makes me believe in mankind again and realize that there are things still out there that need to be brought to the publics attention.

Holy crap!

The frequency at which I've been blogging has decreased quite a bit over the past year. This is due in large part because I've been focusing more time on my Flickr account and trying (trying is the key word here) to become a better photographer. I have a shotgun philosophy when it comes to taking pictures: point and shoot everything you see, then decide later on what's worth keeping. There are a few pictures in my collection that I'm genuinely pleased with; for the most part I think I could've taken most of my pictures better, either in composition or in exposure levels. But it seems the goofy shots are the ones people lock in on. At the moment there is one such goofy shot in the first page of my pictures. I posted it last Wednesday, and since then it has had, at last count, round 7,570 views. Consider that for the most part my pictures average between 20-40 views, with a couple in the 400-700 range. That I have a picture with over seven thousand views boggles my mind. But it's also pretty cool insofar that people are looking at my pictures. If you know me, then you know how to contact me for my Flickr account address.

Sarah Palin - Socialist

Hypocrisy...it tastes just like chickenhawk.

Full court press

With the Election Day less than a week away now, the frequency and negativity of political advertisements have picked up dramatically. That's really been the case in the senatorial race between incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin. Things have taken a turn for the ugly between the two campaigns, with allegations flying back and forth every 60 seconds. I'm assuming the Chambliss campaign didn't take Martin too seriously at first, as they originally aired advertisements that were weak and ineffective, to say the least. But Martin closed the gap and the polls show the race to be very close.

What's more interesting to me are not the commercials both candidates are running on television right now, but the increasing number of commercials being run that are sponsored by national organizations outside of Georgia. It would seem both parties have woken up and realized that Georgia may not be the red state that they thought it would be and are now fighting it out. In order for the Democrats to establish a veto-proof majority in the Senate, they have to win one of the seats up for grabs in the south, and Saxby's looking like a boxer who's been bloodied and bruised, but not beaten. We'll know this time next week whether Jim Martin can pull the upset or not, and whether the Democrats further secure Congress.

But until then, six more days of these damned political ads on television.

That long?

You mean to say that it's been over a month since I last posted a blog entry? Geez. Not sure what I should write about. I could write about the U.S. presidential campaign, but I'm getting kind of tired of it. I've cast my vote already, so be done with it. I could write about the 10% budget cuts we're expecting at work for next year, and how unsuspecting students are about to get waylaid by a serious recession of approximately one-third in classes and seats in our schedule next year. I could write about the two toilets in our restrooms on this floor, one of which can barely flush water while the other one has such power that I think it actually creates a black hole around the seat; nothing escapes, not light, matter, or some poor unsuspecting dope who stands too close to the bowl.

As of this January I will have been blogging for three years. My goal is to make it that far at least before quitting this hobby.

Hypocracy...it's what's for dinner.

Can you smell the hypocracy? Can you taste the double standard? This election is about issues, folks. Don't fall for manufactured circus sideshows.

Aim high

I recently took my family out to dinner at a local restaurant. From a neighboring table I overheard one of the more ridiculous comments I've heard of late. A young man with his girlfriend and his mother dining with him said, "One of the things I really want to do before I die is go to Vegas and lose $1,000."

Such aspirations! Still, it doesn't top the comment made by a girl I worked with 15 years ago. She told me she wanted to be a Hooters girl (she definitely had the bust for it) because they got into NASCAR races for free. But she also used to abbreviate the word "associates" as "ass." Imagine receiving a letter addressed to "Emergency Medicine Ass." Now I'm wondering if I pissed away four years of my life and thousands of dollars to get a college education.