Twitter...

So I'm trying out Twitter. First impression, seems some-what cool. No idea of I'll actually stick with it but if anyone cares check it out or follow me at their own risk.

Two For One...

I love 2fer coupons at Soup Plantation. Great way to end the work week.

Thou Shall Not Steal...

So this was taped to the break room frig this morning when I came in. Pretty low to steal from your coworkers but I found the note amusing.

Political Name Calling...

Paul Krugman lays the smack down on Jindal's response (and I use that term loosely) to Obama's non-State of the Union address to Congress.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

It's Good to be Geek...

My new guilty pleasure is Wil Wheaton's blog (of Stand By Me and ST: TNG fame) . It inspires me to fully embrace my geekness.

If you don't get why this is awesome, you never will.

iTunes: Another Soul Lost...

So a couple of months ago, Tom got me into really using iTunes and it has kinda spiraled into this semi-encompassing obsession of cleaning mp3 tags, finding high quality album art, and systematically quantifying the value of a song between 1 and 5 stars. To date, I have about 30GB of music loaded into my iTunes library (conservatively about 40% of my actual mp3 collection), which translates into roughly about 5,000 songs and 340 albums. I dunno, there's something about a coverflow that seems to stretch on to infinity. I've also rated about 8 gigs or 1,300 songs out of the 5,000.

Well, like all good addictions, I had to spread the love. After a quick gym work out on Monday, Steve came over and I burned him about 4 gigs of music for his fledging iTunes library (he recently got an 8 gig nano). As he made his selections using iTunes' album view, I raved about the advantages of actually doing all the leg work that's required to make iTunes operate at its full potential. Long story short, I think I got him hooked on the idea of being able to quickly filter through gigs of music, make smart playlists on the fly, use Genius to build playlists for him and generally just have a very sleek and cool looking music library as opposed to viewing a bunch of directory folders through windows explorer.

Also we got to reminiscing about high school, and how we use to go to the store to buy CDs for bulky discman. Now all that fits in my pocket and I use it to make calls from as well as surf the internet. Sometimes I have to stop and remember how far we've come and how crazy the times we live in are. Seriously, what is going to come over the horizon? It's almost unfathomable.

This Country...

Andrew Sullivan reminds us about the good and bad of America, and why this country is still not such a bad place to be.

...No civilised country sustained slavery as recently as America or defended segregation as tenaciously as the American South until just a generation ago. In my lifetime, mixed-race couples were legally barred from marrying in many states. But equally in my lifetime, a miscegenated man who grew up in Hawaii won a majority of the votes in the old slave state of Virginia to become the first minority president of any advanced western nation.

That is the paradox of America; and after a while you find it hard to appreciate anything more coherent. What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward.

Banking on the Brink...

Why on Earth didn't we get Paul Krugman somewhere in this new change and hope administration? The more I hear coming out of the Department of the Treasury, the more it sounds like the same crap I heard when Bush was in office, a.k.a. government hand outs to corporations with nothing in return for the tax payers. If that's the way it's going to be, I'd rather they just fail. I might not agree with everything Krugman says but at least he says it in a clear manner that people can understand. We can't fix this problem by doing the same things we've been doing or by being polite. These are drastic times, they require drastic measures. Stop hesitating and rip the bandaid off already.

Wake-N-Bacon...

Just pure awesomeness...

News Overload...

Someone once compared laws to sausage, as in seeing how either is made ruins the appetite for the end product. I've come to the sad realization that staying up to date on everything that is going on can be just plain depressing and frustrating. So for the time being I'm going to try reducing my intake of current events, especially politics. I'll still ready certain stories on google news but probably won't follow my news shows and political blogs as consistently. Doing so is having the unintended consequence of making me even more disillusioned and jaded. I think some time unplugged from that reality might do me some good. Here's to some much needed blissful ignorance.

Wedding Bells...

Congrats to Jiyon and Alan for finally tying the knot! The wedding was like a reunion from my old clubbing days and was a blast. Unfortunately it was on a Sunday which means I had to make sure I was sober enough to go to work the next day. More pics and recap to come.

Stimulus...

Wonder where the latest 800 billion in tax payer money is going? Check it out. Here are the highlights:

AID TO POOR AND UNEMPLOYED

_ $40 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through Dec. 31, and increase them by $25 a week; $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits by 14 percent; $3 billion in temporary welfare payments.

DIRECT CASH PAYMENTS

_ $14 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, poor people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.

INFRASTRUCTURE

_ $46 billion for transportation projects, including $27 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair; $8.4 billion for mass transit; $8 billion for construction of high-speed railways and $1.3 billion for Amtrak; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $4 billion for public housing improvements; $6.4 billion for clean and drinking water projects; $7 billion to bring broadband Internet service to underserved areas.

HEALTH CARE

_ $21 billion to provide a 60 percent subsidy of health care insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program; $87 billion to help states with Medicaid; $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems; $10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities.

STATE BLOCK GRANTS

_ $8 billion in aid to states to defray budget cuts.

ENERGY

_ About $50 billion for energy programs, focused chiefly on efficiency and renewable energy, including $5 billion to weatherize modest-income homes; $6.4 billion to clean up nuclear weapons production sites; $11 billion toward a so-called "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste; $13.9 billion to subsidize loans for renewable energy projects; $6.3 billion in state energy efficiency and clean energy grants; and $4.5 billion make federal buildings more energy efficient.

EDUCATION

_ $47 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cuts in state aid to school districts, with great flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair; $26 billion to school districts to fund special education and the No Child Left Behind law for students in K-12; $17 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500 to $5,350; $2 billion for Head Start.

HOMELAND SECURITY

_ $2.8 billion for homeland security programs, including $1 billion for airport screening equipment.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

_ $4 billion in grants to state and local law enforcement to hire officers and purchase equipment.

___

Taxes

NEW TAX CREDIT

_ Approximately $115 billion for a $400 per-worker, $800 per-couple tax credits in 2009 and 2010. For the last half of 2009, workers could expect to see perhaps $13 a week less withheld from their paychecks starting around June. Millions of Americans who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes could file returns next year and receive checks. Individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000 would receive reduced amounts.

ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX

_ About $70 billion to spare about 24 million taxpayers from being hit with the alternative minimum tax in 2009. The change would save a family of four an average of $2,300. The tax was designed to make sure wealthy taxpayers can't use credits and deductions to avoid paying any taxes. But it was never indexed to inflation, so families making as little as $45,000 could get significant increases without the change. Congress addresses it each year, usually in the fall.

EXPANDED COLLEGE CREDIT

_ About $13 billion to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.

HOMEBUYER CREDIT

_ $3.7 billion to repeal a requirement that a $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit be paid back over time for homes purchased from Jan. 1 to August 31, unless the home is sold within three years.

BONUS DEPRECIATION

_ $5 billion to extend a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.

AUTO SALES

_ $2.5 billion to makes sales tax on paid on new car purchases tax deductible.

Travel Plans...

Well I finally stopped dragging my feet and bought my ticket to Switzerland. I actually saved $15 by waiting which was strange, not that I'm complaining. I got my vacation request signed off as well so it looks like between March 25th and April 13th I shall be making my first foray to Europe. w00t! Dang it's going to cost a pretty penny but I haven't been anywhere really far away since S. America and the travel bug has been getting pretty persistent. I'll try to update the site while I'm there and there will definitely be a ton of new pics in the gallery once I get back. Anyway, this Monday was rough and I think it's time to head home.

Repair Relief...

So I drove my brother's Integra to work today and boy does it suck driving a lowered car, at least in comparison to my Jeep. The reason, you may be wondering, I am driving my brother's car is because he is currently up at Mammoth boarding. The problem that arose last week was my car's heater has been broken for some time now. I've just endured it because frankly I was too lazy to take it to the dealership to get it fixed (again). It doesn't get all that cold in SD so it's not that big of a hassle. However taking a car into the mountains without a working heater is probably not the smartest idea.

So after getting a ride from a friend at work to dealership on Tuesday, I dropped off the car and anxiously awaited the results of the inspection. The call I eventually got completely floored me. Apparently some resister had died and that in turn had cause all sorts of mechanical damage to the electrical system that controls the heater. The price tag to fix these problems? $1400! I was speechless. I expected two maybe three hundred. But $1400 is no laughing matter.

This story, fortunately, has a happy ending. A long time ago (2003 to be exact) my mom had purchased an extended high-tech warranty on this car. So in the end, my total cost out of pocket for all the repairs was $25. I'm not kidding. From $1400 to $25. The original plan had cost $1335. So from this job alone, it's already paid for itself. So I guess the lesson here is that sometimes having a little insurance actually pays off.

File This Under: Badass...

If you think dinosaurs are cool (which all nerds are required to), then this prehistoric snake is definitely badass.

Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.

"This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.

Google My Location?

Is it me, or is the internet just getting creepier and creepier? Now Google has a service that allows you to Google your friends' locations (with their permission of course).

The Daily Show...

Now I watch this show every day it's on but for those who don't, I recommend last night's show for the casual fan. The interview John Oliver has with the Kenyan ambassador is HILARIOUS. Historical note: Kenya, like us, use to be a colony of the British Empire.

Just Go Away Already...

We don't have to put up with this crap after they leave office. They failed, miserably. Their opinions are worthless as far as I am concerned.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Bailout Failure...

Like I didn't see this coming. Definitely doesn't inspire confidence in our government. I knew it would have been better to just let those greedy wallstreet banks fail. We don't need them. We gave them a ton of our hard earned money and instead of fixing the economy, they just spread it out amongst themselves as a reward for failure. These people live on a different planet.