Like a bat outta hell...

I’m trying to get ready for a three-four week road stand starting Friday morning so there seems to be too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Leaving on one of these trips at the end of a week always leaves me feeling like I’ve forgotten to do something important, even though packing out and driving halfway across the country has gotten old hat and I can do most of the preparation on auto-pilot. Excuse the all too brief post tonight as I get back to the giant pile of laundry in the middle of the living room floor.

Fool me twice, shame on me...

guess it serves me right for believing internet rumors, but I just can’t help myself when it shows up on usually reliable sources like Boy Genius added to the slew of forums where it made the rounds. Late last night the rumor mill started circulating that BestBuy had the Blackberry Bold in stock and would begin retailing it this morning. Yeah, not so much. Once more, the AT&T/RIM/Bold succubus got everything worked into a lather only to disappoint. So now it’s back to eight more days of impatient waiting. Of course I’m so annoyed with the miserably bad roll out this device has had, I might just wait the extra week or two and try the Storm on Verizon. Then again the even bigger probability is that I’m going to end up with both of them until I can figure out which one to keep.

Early Voting...

In one of the great lines that endeared him to the party faithful, Ronald Reagan once told his fellow Republicans "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me." My feelings about the Republican Party are more or less the same. My Republican Party, the party of Reagan, has been hijacked by fanatics and religious extremists inflexible on a single issue and unable to see a broader policy agenda. The Republican Party left me and for the first time since I registered to vote in 1996, today I voted for a Democrat at the top of the national ticket. I take no joy in it, as I believe John McCain is a good and true servant of the republic, but the thought of a vice president who doesn't believe in evolution or in letting kids talk about sex in an academic setting and who thinks that living near Russia counts as foreign policy experience is more than I could bear. America deserves better than either of our alternatives this year and in the end I cast my vote for who I believe is the least bad alternative.

Bold...

It’s true, I crave neat new electronic toys like drunks crave their next drink or junkies their next fix, but come on now, you have to admit that the BlackBerry Bold is one sexy beast. Of course with the endless series of delays from our friends at RIM and AT&T, it’s been almost interminable waiting for this phone to actually drop. But now it looks like November 4th is the official release date. Yes, it’s election day here in the states and yes, I’ll be on the road, but you can bet your sweet bippy that once I get away from class that afternoon my first stop won’t be for a TV update on the election. I’ll be too busy looking for an AT&T store.

Conflicted…

For the first time in my adult life, I’m actually conflicted over who will get my vote in a presidential election. Ideologically, neither major party candidate represents my general positions. McCain has me covered with his notions on defense, smaller government, and lower taxes across the board, but Palin terrifies me on social issues. Obama has a prayer of a chance of unifying the 75% of the country that aren’t insane rednecks, but I’m deeply troubled by his positions on foreign policy and taxation. I’ll be doing the whole early voting thing next weekend here in West Tennessee due to out of state travel plans on election day, but as it stands now, my vote is still thoroughly up for grabs. Right now it’s even odds and with the clock running down, I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that.

Down with the sickness…

It’s not so much being run down, congested, and generally achy that I object to as much as it’s the sheer grinding monotony that comes along with being sick; the hour after of hour of doing essentially nothing except wandering to the kitchen for beverages and to the bathroom to divest myself of the beverages I got from the kitchen. There’s also the occasional very interesting side trip to the DVD player to change movies. Two days of it is really more than enough. I don’t have a clue how people who are well and truly ill deal with days, weeks, or months of it. After two days, I’d pull my bloody hair out if I had any. Sure, I guess I could have toughed it out and gone to the office, but inflicting my particularly sunny disposition and potentially contagious leftovers on my colleagues didn’t seem like a terribly good idea.

The good news, I suppose, is that I’m feeling better now than I was last night so I seem to be well along the path to recovery. Lord willing, I’ll even be able to muster the oomph to get out of the house tomorrow. It’s ironic that I usually spend all weekend trying to avoid people. All I want to do now is see someone that isn’t in HD. I’m sure that fascination will wear off quickly!

Change of venue...

After some serious consideration I have decided that it was time to enlarge my horizons a bit and jump into a more serious mode of blogging. That’s not to say that my previous blog wasn’t serious, but rather as an adjunct of MySpace, blogging wasn’t what the system was built to do. I’m happily ensconced here at Blogger now, and hope that we will all find it a productive change of venue. I’ll get to strengthen my chops among the serious bloggers here and hopefully those who stumble onto my new home for ranting and raving will find a better product. Sometimes you just need to change your perspective and I’m hopeful that this will be a good one.