Ever since Ron Paul (predictably) failed to secure the Republican nomination for president, I have found myself uninspired by the current field of candidates. I can't even find a third-party candidate that makes me feel that I can hold my nose and cast my ballot. I think this is because I find myself no longer willing to vote for the most-qualified candidate; instead I find myself asking if any of the candidates is truly qualified to serve in the Constitutional role of chief executive and check on the power of Congress. It seems that we, as a country, have forgotten what the President does. Instead, we treat him as an elected king, much like the Romans would appoint term-limited dictators.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Politics on August 28th, 2008 at 9:34 pm | No Comments »
After the death of the long-in-the-tooth desktop, I was looking forward to getting a shiny new one to replace it. I'd been intending to upgrade for a long time, but the total investment was proving to be a bit much for something that wasn't so necessary. Once it decided to kick the bucket, there was some real justification to rebuild. I give you: Behemoth.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Geek on August 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm | 7 Comments »
I think that flying is meant to be uncomfortable by design. You cram 150+ strangers into a metal tube with recirculated air and barely enough room to shift in your seat, hoping that nothing goes wrong at you soar through the air at 550+ miles an hour. (It doesn't help when you forget to charge the DVD player the night before and have no other entertainment options planned for the trip.) The only thing that makes it worse is screaming children, an unfortunate condition that occurred on my most recent flight from Salt Lake to Atlanta.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Travel, Work on August 12th, 2008 at 5:51 pm | 10 Comments »
I'm wearing a collared shirt with a tie today because I'm doing some on-site consulting for work. This is a departure from the normal dress around here which usually consists of jeans and some kind of collared shirt. What I hate, though, is what everyone asks me when I'm dressed up like this and am in the office.
"So, you going to a job interview?"
Yes, I'm so oblivious to social convention that I though it would be a good idea to go a clandestine job interview and then appear in the office looking totally out of place. Because, obviously, a job interview is the only reason anyone would ever dress up nicely. It's not like anyone goes to weddings, funerals, client sites or anything else that requires attire more formal than "two steps above weekend slob".
Seriously, the "joke" isn't funny. Don't use it.
Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Rants, Work on August 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am | 3 Comments »
… until we started watching it again this past weekend at Shauna's insistence.
First off, there's Shannon. She's utterly useless (and no, the weak French translations of nonsense don't count) and spends her entire time whining, tanning (she wears at least three different swimsuits before the season is halfway done), and making all kinds of snarky remarks like the spoiled little brat that she is. I'm glad she died and even "got the hots for her" Sayyid seems to have forgotten about her by the middle of season 2 (which is what, a few weeks?).
And then there's Michael. The dude's got two lines the entire series: "WAAAALT!!!" and "THEY TOOK MY SON!!!" Couldn't the writers, for all of their crazy imagination, come up with something better than that? Maybe someone who wasn't treating his kid like some kind of unwanted stepchild and trying to justify all of his bad behavior on someone else's kidnapping? I was so happy when he left at the end of season 2, then mad when he was back in season 4, then happy again when he exploded in a giant fireball so I wouldn't have to worry about him coming back again.
Even with those too big annoyances (which were thankfully later corrected), I'm really enjoying re-watching it with perspective from what happens in later seasons.
Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Rants, Entertainment on August 5th, 2008 at 10:31 pm | 6 Comments »
In modern politics, it seems that the mainstream approached to governance involve a tightly integrated and uniform system of government from the federal level down to our individual neighborhoods. Unfortunately, this model has the most in common with Stalinist central planning regardless of if the goal is to create an anarcho-capitalistic society or a socialist paradise. In the end, such proposals lead to disenfranchisement and limit your ability to get the government you want. Instead, we should be approaching government as a competitive marketplace of ideas with the most power invested in our counties and cities.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Politics on August 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am | 7 Comments »
One of the first major projects we had to do when we got this house was get the roof replaced. As long-time readers may recall, the corner in the kitchen was a veritable fountain as snow melted off during our first winter in the house. Not content to let that one slide, we got the roof replaced, albeit with more than a few headaches. Aside from having to coax the swamp cooler back into action every year, the roof has served its purpose of keeping water out of the house. Well… it did until last Thursday.
I got home a bit early on Thursday with the intention of doing some work from home. I'd managed to eat something for lunch when Sara came upstairs and said that water was coming down in the laundry room. I was a bit perplexed and went down to find water dripping from several places and a rather significant amount of it. After running back upstairs, I noticed water coming down in the kitchen. Enough to warp the new counter we just installed and ruin the paint that Shauna had put on just months prior. The drywall is also feeling a bit over-squishy. All of this is after I thought I had fixed the leaking problems with the swamp cooler with some caulking, but apparently water is still leaking and getting under the shingles.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Homeownership on July 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm | 1 Comment »
For the last couple of weeks, we've had the pleasure of playing host to Sara and her wonderful kids Max and Corina. This recent trip started off kind of bumpy when they experienced a blowout around Lagoon in the middle of what would best be described as "what roads would look like after a nuclear armageddon". (Slight exaggeration, but the construction in Davis County is horrible right now.) Apparently someone in our neighborhood thought that increased adversity only makes you stronger and egged her car the next day.
As I was pulling away to go to work this morning, I noticed small white fragments on the ground and yellow blotches on her car. Yep, someone had decided that they liked the egging so much that they'd do an encore. What's the deal? Do they have something against Canadians? Maybe they hate Chevys? Does Sara have a secret detractor that (creepily) knows where we live? I'm at a loss. It's really disappointing since the worst we've had happen in the nearly three years we've lived in White City is a stolen snow brush.
Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Life on July 24th, 2008 at 7:37 am | 4 Comments »
I've been using Firefox since it was known as Phoenix back in the 0.1 days and have always been really pleased with the project overall. Using Firefox has always been a pleasure with good performance, stability and extensibility. It had gotten so good that I didn't think Firefox 3 could really be that much more awesome. After using it for several weeks, I can tell you that it far exceeded my high expectations and sets a new bar for what we should expect out of a browser.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Geek on July 16th, 2008 at 4:53 pm | 10 Comments »
When I left Las Vegas for a new life in Utah, I also left behind several friends. Just prior to moving, I'd had a falling out with one of them that bordered on epic. Since we both had mutual friends and I was the one leaving town, it pretty much cut me off from all of them. After arriving in Salt Lake, I had contact with him a few more times, mostly to close up some loose ends like domain registrations and the like. (When you're friends with someone for nearly a decade, you tend to get some things mixed up.) It had been left at that for almost three years.
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Posted by Jesse | Filed under: Geek, Church, Life on July 12th, 2008 at 5:00 pm | 4 Comments »
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