Author: Gary

I avoid politics like I avoid cliches…….like the plague.

However, I think I can break that rule for an election day update.

• I had to wait an hour this morning to vote in EP. There was an MoveOn.org person outside the polling place. I thought it was odd, but they weren’t campaigning, so technically, its kosher I guess. They were just checking on people that registered through them. If MoveOn can be at a polling place and the Democrats can’t, then there is a good reason why you shouldn’t work via a political party. It also calls into question what the real difference is between a PAC and a political party. I applaud them on their organization actually. I’m amazed they even bothered with EP. The right has some catching up to do over the next four years.
• I once again wasted my vote. I voted Libertarian. I can’t vote for Bush and wont vote for Kerry (or is it the other way around?). I also voted against all incumbant canidates that had opposition. It made my ballot pretty jumbled. I voted for a liberal Democrat for congress and some right wing Christians for judge. I have a consistant algorithim I use for voting. I don’t know if I’ll use it the next time I vote.
• I hope for the following things to happen in this election: 1) Bush loses by a margin less than the what the Libertarian canidate gets, at least in a few important states. 2) Republicans keep control of congress and we get gridlock. 3) Kerry gets less than 50% of the vote, or better yet, he wins the electoral vote and loses the popular vote (sweet sweet irony).
• I’m sick and fucking tired of people asking me if I’ve voted, or if I’m going to vote. I also feel sorry for people who are getting crap for voting for Nader. They seem to get more crap than I do. I’m a lost cause I guess, but they are heritics. Wars within religions can be more fierce than those between religions.

Maybe I’ll have some interesting statistical tidbits when the dust settles.

Qwest can do nothing right. I’m not even joking. Here is the summary of my Journey with them so far.

1) I’ve all but abandoned my landline, but I do use it for my Direct TV. I’ve had no dial tone for about 3 months so my Tivo can’t dial out. I decided to just cancel my phone line and use Vonage. In the long run its cheaper. So I called Qwest and told them to a) cancel my phone line and b) subscribe me to their naked DSL service. That is where you get DSL but no phone line.

2) They said they would have to upgrade my service to some new standard they use. I’ve had DSL for about 5 years here. Ok. So I asked if I’ll notice any disruption in service. They said no. What they didn’t tell me was that I needed a new DSL router.

3) I call about my service and they tell me that I need a new router. OK. So they send it. It never shows up. I call and they tell me that UPS couldn’t find the address, which I think is total BS because they never had a problem in the past delivering me anything.

4) The only thing that has worked out in all of this is that my neighbors have an open wireless connection and I can get online via my laptop.

(reminder to self: secure wireless connection when new router arrives)

I’m writing this at the Old Chicago in Eden Prairie. I’m here because I thought they had wireless access. I need wireless access because my internet conection at home is down. My Internet connection at home is down because Qwest is an organization of fuck ups. They are fuck ups because they are a regulated monooploy with no competition. But I digress.

I all but abandoned by landline earlier this year for my cell phone. I still had it however because my DirectTV needs it to dial out. The last 4 months however, I’ve had no dial tone. None. To get it fixed will cost me money. I decided to kill the landline for good.

Two developments allowed me to do this. 1) Qwest began to offer ‘nekkid’ DSL service. You can get DSL without needing a dial tone anymore. 2) Vonage is dropped the price on their lowest plan to the same price as the cheapest line I could get from Qwest. Factor in all the services I get for free with Vonage I’d have to pay Qwest and arm and a leg for (Caller ID, voice mail, etc) and take out all the BS fees, surcharges, and taxes I have to pay for a phone, and Vonage was now a no brainer.

So, I’m getting VOIP.

However, in the process of changing my service, they (Qwest) didn’t tell me that I’d need a new DSL router. So after a 60 min cell phone call, I should have a new router (with built in 802.11b), improved DSL service, and a better, cheaper phone service.

Its just that for the next two days, I’m SOL as far at net access at home goes.

Oh, and Old Chicago doesn’t have internet access. Not in EP. And I have to submit my physics pre-lab tonight. And I lost my physics notebook. And I have a physics test on Friday.

A couple of things:

• I got the new William Shatner album off of iTunes. Its good. I mean its actually good. Its not a parody of himself. Its well produced and they have decent collaborations. You may think I’m smoking crack, but I’m serious. He even has a song about his wife drowning.
• There is a really cool program from NASA called World Wind. Its an interactive globe you can play with and download overlays to show different things (earthquakes, hurricanes, fault lines, etc). Its a big download but fun to play with.

I’m taking 5, count em, 5 classes with labs this semester.

To give you an idea of what this mean, if you take a Political Science class that meets on Tuesday and Thursday, you will have about two hours of class time per week. If you take a T Th or a M W class with a lab (and I have 3 of those) you are in class 4 hours per week per class with the 2 hour lab. I’m in lab a total of 11 hours per week. I have one lab every day. Its the equivalent of taking almost 30 credits.

I say this not to get sympathy, but to show that I’m pretty much an expert on labs now. I’ve taken them in the following departments: biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and geology.

Here is my users guild to labs at the University of Minnesota.