The Random Thought Pages Online

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I’m testing out the wordpress app for the iPhone. It works well. I would like to use my phone to get thoughts out there and clean up the formatting when I get to a pc…

Had a run-in with the dentist, that’s never fun…

A co-worker said that The Dark Knight was good but not great. Maybe I am just a comic book nerd…

This concludes this test of the WordPress iPhone broadcast system…

Most of my friends are tech-savvy, and glued to their email. If something happens in the world, especially in tech or sports, there will be an email thread started. This used to be a good exchange of ideas and philosophizes. Now years later, it’s all rhetoric! It’s not really their fault as much as we fully know what everyone’s stance. The fanboys will each tout their platform, but never acknowledge their deficiencies. The non-enthusiast will say they haven’t touched it since “brand x” technology. The super-enthusiast will say everything needs what they have, even though that technology may only have 2% market share!

Nothing new or fresh, just the same old party lines. Sound like anything else going on in this country? I need to write a book, “The politics of technology and pop culture”.

Quick Hits

Tech

• I guess American Gangster is going to be my last HD-DVD. I’ve always been more of a renter than an owner but I bought a lot of HD-DVD’s to support the format. I should have known that Sony owning the actual movie content and the technology was too much to overcome. That’s all I’m going to say. Quit kicking the format, it’s dead…

Sports

• My girlfriend is in grad school at Purdue, so I support them when they are not playing one of my established teams. They lost to Indiana, to snap their 11 game wining streak, but I still think they can win the Big 10 and make some noise in the big dance
• I think my Niners are straight NIT bound now…They have lost 5 of their last 6 after beating Clemson when they were #18. That will take you off the bubble quickly… Auto bid or BUST. I guess NIT is better than nothing like last year.
• Tar Heels are growing without Lawson, but every game is going to be a close one until he comes back. (Beating VT like that was an anomaly)…
• Kidd is back in Dallas!!! I love how Cuban puts the money on the table! He’s definitely my roll model when it comes to starting a internet business, selling it for big bucks and buying a sports team as a hobby. That needs to be ME! The west is still crowded, but I think we’re ready for a run.

Election 2008

• The “YES, WE CAN” crew is on fire right now. Clinton is prepping to make her stand in Texas and Ohio. For her sake, I hope its not like Custer’s…. Even though we know Ohio is a legendary swing state, thats a lot of eggs to fit in one basket.
• I also don’t know if McCain is going to be able to keep the independents that love him while rallying the republican conservative base. His talking points have changed tremendously since he became the front runner…

Randomness

This blogging thing would be much easier if I had one of dem der laptops.  I need to look into that, seriously… Thanks for coming back writers, even though we have to wait one to two months for new episodes and we’ll only get 8 of each show at the most, if that.  I hope the cable shows like The Shield and Battlestar Galactica are moved up to fill the gap. Aight, gotta do the work thing… OUT…

Super Tuesday came and left!  We’re still neck and neck,  at least on the democratic side… I wonder when this race is going to shift one way or the other…  McCain is looking like the person to beat on the elephant side if Mitt and Mike don’t figure out how to pick him off instead of picking off each other.

I’m a casual gamer and I usually dont get hooked to games, but I’m hooked on Burnout Paradise!!! I has a bunch of techie references in the game, check my twitter for example.

Speaking of microblogging, is anyone using Pownce? It looks cool, maybe I can get one or two friends to check it out with me

Crutchfield has a package deal on the head unit i want for 799, including the ipod connector and the bluetooth connector! You can’t beat that!  It’s also time for me to start seriously start looking at a laptop. I used to having a work laptop, but I haven’t had one on my current job and it’s starting to get old. I’m trying to decide between a macbook pro and a thinkpad running linux. I must admit the main issue is cost. I want a macbook pro but it’s not cheap.  Normally, I would say just get the macbook, but I think I want that extra screen size of the pro. I generally save and wait until I can get what I want, so don’t expect any rash decisions!

The writer’s strike is really starting to get to me. Luckily, I love college basketball and have rediscovered my xbox 360.  It really hurt to hear that 24 probably wont come on until 2009 at this point! I think I’m going to get a netflix subscription soon, but only an one at a time plan, since I work crazy hours, LOL.

Ok, I’m going to focus on watching the rest of this Carolina/Duke game. Maybe, the tarheels can make a run but I don’t think it’s their night. Niners couldn’t get the road win at Dayton. Starting to look like automatic or else for Charlotte

Later…

Saturday has to be my favorite day of the week on general principal, but it feels really good today. It’s a busy time at work and I’ve barely had sometime at home. When I do get that time at home, I spend it sleeping! So after a 71 hour work week, I came home early this morning to have a great weekend. Hopefully, I’ll recharge myself. Enough about me, lets talk about what’s going on in the world…Politics…

•  Obama wins South Carolina (55% with 96% of precincts reporting)… Before I said that things were heating up. After this night, the race is now real… The ugliness of the race is getting worse and worse. I know this is politics, but this one has been rough for a primary! I hope that the winner has some limbs left to run in the general election. I really respect Bill Clinton, but I don’t think his tirades are helping his wife or the perception of how her administration would be. The body blows are only going to get worse because the back and forth of winning states will continue up to Super Tuesday and beyond…

• Another thought became a reality tonight as well… It’s over for John Edwards in terms of winning. There is an outside chance that he could be a kingmaker if the race between Clinton and Obama is close, by handing over the the winning amount of delegates. I wonder what his next move is going to be…

• I can’t believe McCain’s comeback. He was left for dead 6 months ago! I’m so glad that Fred Thompson’s out of the race now. Lots of times it seemed like he didn’t want to be there anyway. Maybe he was just doing it because a couple of his buddies said he could win. The pundits say that it’s over for Huckabee now, but I wouldn’t count him out yet. Florida may be a free for all…

Technology…

•  The dust has settled from Macworld. The MacBook Air is interesting, and I wonder why it has generated so much distain. It’s an ultraportable, not the first and not the last. Sony has made them for years. They all compromise performance for size. Just because there is that tradeoff, doesn’t mean that the device is a failure! Some people like style, lots of people don’t need a desktop replacement. I think that it’s not for everyone, but the people that it’s designed for will flock to it.

• CES was very lackluster to me. I saw one or two hot things but only a few emerging technologies wowed me…

Time for The Wire, but I’m going to add some short posts based off of things from my shared items feed on Google Reader so keep checking out the spot…

I’ve always loved reading. I probably spent most of my childhood either inside reading or outside in someone’s back yard playing. My first job that did not involved making fries was in a library. That being said, college pulled me away from pleasure reading. The time didn’t seem to be there with the all of the required reading that was going on. If I did read anything, it was usually technical to help my career. But now, the bug is back…

I just spend 3 hours today finishing, Exit A by Anthony Swofford. This is a interesting book that I enjoyed. It wasn’t very high brow, but had much more depth than (insert your average tv show or movie here). I think that the thing that I missed about reading was also the thing that made it difficult to get back into it. Reading a novel takes patience. The first three chapters of a novel aren’t going to make you frantically flip from page to page. The scene has to be set, intricate back stories need to be fleshed out, characters need to expand past the basic identity of someone’s mom or brother. It took me awhile to develop that patience, but now I’m on a roll. Exit A was the second book that I’ve completed of late, the other being, The Emperor of Ocean Park. I’ve got another book in my position to read and I look forward to applying that literary patience in other parts of my life…

Thanks to anyone that has been reading my blog as of late! I hope it’s interesting to you and feel free to post comments! I would also recommend Google Reader for keeping up with Random Thoughts and other blogs, including my friends in the Blogroll!

I’m going to start pulling items from my Google Reader to discuss from time to time. I’m going to do some quick hits in a minute, but I wanted to discuss some of this political stuff up front…

•  I need all of the Obama fanboys and girls to calm down. He won ONE primary. Slow down the acceptance speech talk, it’s still a long time till the nomination… I do agree that is was big to win a state that’s 2% black, that means his message does seem to resonate with middle america. He is still going to have a tough road seeing how Hillary has the northern liberals on lock (i.e. New Hampshire).  Which leads me to…
• How the south is absolutely critical, specifically South Carolina over the next two weeks. It’s important to the Republicans because SC is a hard core RED STATE. It may give some clues to how the candidates will do in similar states without a lot of moderates.  I expect to see Huckabee to come out with it, with america’s mayor and McCain in hot pursuit.
• SC is also of importance to the Democrats. First of all, because this will be John Edwards’ last stand. He won this state in 2004, but he didn’t have to deal with the charisma of Obama and the name recognition of Clinton. I personally feel that he came out 4 years too early. He should have rode out his term in the Senate and came out for this election, definitely some bad advice was going around in his camp.  I like the guy, heard him speak a lot here in North Carolina before he became a presidential canidate (including my sister’s law school graduation in 2001) and he had a good message and platform. He would make a good vp, but I don’t think he wants to go down that road again..
• So looking at how I think that this is going to be a 2 horse race between Obama and Clinton on that side of the house, it becomes clear that those two are diametrically opposed and have no shot of being on the same ticket. The winner needs to take a hard look at Bill Richardson for VP. He ran the US Department of Energy under Bill Clinton, was an UN ambassador, served in the Senate and is the current governor of New Mexico. I’ve been following him way before now and he knows his stuff! He’s a smart guy to have behind you that won’t steal your shine, think Al Gore pre Nobel peace prize… The fact that he is Latino wont hurt if this is the year that the Latino vote asserts itself on the political scene.

Well, I’m no political pundit, just a guy who has always had an interest in Civics in school and refuses to be disenfranchised! Will the black vote go with the black man or with the woman that holds the name recognition along with the “honorary” black man that is Bill Clinton? I don’t know but all will become clear in a few weeks… In full disclosure, I’m a registered democrat in the State of North Carolina…

wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted… Hmm, what all happened?

My baby came down the day after my previous post, i whisked her away to the mountains for a wonderful weekend, which lead into a great Christmas with my family and a chill new year’s eve in the house with movies!

Now she’s back home and I’m on the grind again. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions but I do take a little time at the beginning of each year to reflect and see how I can improve. I’m going to work on improving my professional standing and using that networking to help Fillmax when at all possible. There is always my continual growth as a person emotionally that never stops no matter what year it is.

There will also be improvement to the blog, pulling in more of what is going on in the world, utilizing google reader and even more of the random thoughts!

Here’s to 2008! I hope that it becomes everything that you strive for it to be!