I hate math

Simple enough statement don't you think? Over the course of my thus far almost six weeks taking intermediate algebra at college I have rediscovered my hatred for math. It doesn't help that my dad could run rings around my teacher, who is a nice lady but very, very different in her style of teaching. I didn't know what headaches were like until I started this class. I get one every day at some point now. If I can only survive ten more weeks!! Man I'll be celebrating that night.

Other complaints for the day is my internet. Our broadband internet company is in the process of changing all the cable tv/internet business over to Comcast Communications... and I'd like to be the first to say I was not in favor of this when it was first mentioned last year and I am not in favor of it now. They've been squabbling with the Big Ten for months about airing their games or not and basically the run-down is pretty much anybody that doesn't have Dish Network or Direct TV can't watch Big Ten games unless they are on ESPN or ABC. They did the same thing when the Expos moved from Montreal to Washington a few years back until the FCC stepped in and made Comcast air the games. According to Wikipedia, Comcast had the lowest customer satisfaction rating last year in the whole country, and that list included the Internal Revenue Service. Imagine that... more people were satisfied with the IRS than they were a cable company.

So anyway, today I ended up spending most of my day trying to get my computer on the internet. Evidently the change to Comcast just occurred a couple days ago because mine and my parents old email addresses' are acting somewhat funny and my hotmail isn't working at all. Neither is myspace. Everything works all right until I try logging in... then it does nothing. I'm really starting to get irritated with this... and every time I restart my computer I'm playing a cat-and-mouse game with my wireless connection because it just wants to sit there tell me it's trying to finding the network address.

Going further with my thoughts and complaints here are a few of my thoughts on the Presidential race thus far:

This year's Presidential race is an absolute joke. It's gone far, far beyond ridiculous. McCain and (from the looks of things) Obama? I'm sorry, but could somebody please tell me what in the world Obama has done in his very short tenure as a Senator to grant him being the Democratic nominee? I mean, I live in his state and I hadn't even heard of the guy until he managed to become elected to the Senate four years ago.

I'm very excited to be saying that McCain is my party's nominee this year. Yeah, I'm hearing all the time we conservative's need to rally around our candidate and support him against the Democratic nominee. That ain't happening with me right now. He's shown in the past he's very willing to embrace Democratic policies and in some case's succeeding in getting bills passed. He doesn't support lower taxes or having terrorist prisoners down in the Caribbean to name a couple things I disagree with him on. He supports the War in Iraq but that's not to say he wouldn't if it would get him somewhere with support. He's played both sides of the aisle many, many times over the course of his many years being a Senator.

The real key to this election as I see it are the House and Senate races. All you conservatives reading this, you need to be looking at who is running in the House and Senate races in your state and what their values. If Obama wins the Presidency we're looking at higher taxes and government health care to name a couple things. The only way to prevent this is to tie up the House and/or Senate. If McCain's elected then we're probably doomed to get these things either way Congress ends up because most of the Republicans are going to be loyal to their party and go with McCain.

And to finish off my post here are a few other thoughts:

Gas prices... notice anything about them? Yeah, everybody says it's ridiculous how high they are and that the price jumps around everywhere. Ok, I've been the one in the family filling up the tank for both our cars most of the time in the last few months and I've noticed something.... most of the time it's been in the $2.90-$3.10 range around here. Does that really show that it's jumping all over the map? I don't think so. Forgive me if this sounds harsh, but if your so upset about paying that for gas then you don't have to be driving that 15 mile per gallon luxury car or that truck that gets you 10 miles per gallon. You could drive the Hybrid and say "Now I'm screwing that big-oil!" Don't get me wrong Hybrid's will be a useful car... when we run out of oil (which isn't going to be happening anytime soon) or when the technology improves on it enough... and from what I've seen it's got a ways to go. Oh yeah, and did I tell you yet what I'm determined that the first car I own will be?



If your big on drinking milk like our family is you can partially blame the skyrocketing price on Ethanol (it's also affecting meat prices and other stuff like that). Yeah, that stuff that was supposed to help those gas prices we complain about seven days a week. I got news for you people.... it's a bunch of bull. It doesn't and in fact has been proven to actually give cars less miles per gallon. Great money saver there huh?

You know how most neighborhoods have a Neighborhood Watch? I think there should be something added to that... let's call it the Neighborhood Shovel. Every time it snows and the city hasn't plowed your street because they are busy keeping the main roads clean the whole Neighborhood should gather and shovel/snowblow their street out. Seriously, it would safe people a ton of trouble of failing to get their cars up the street. Not to mention that it would be a lot easier to shovel as a neighborhood rather than just one person. Why am I suggesting this? Because about a month ago yours truly literally had to shovel my way 30-40 yards up the street so my dad could get to work. My work mainly consisted of just making a section of the snow not so high so that our car wouldn't get bogged down so much. I'll tell you though, it's hard work (As a side note to my parents, I kindly request we get better shovels for next winter. Those plastic ones we have were ready for the pasture five years ago).

I own five seasons of Frasier on DVD, and I must say I'm a little disappointed with the lack of extra features after season 3. Surely, out of 11 years there were more interviews with the actors and more great outtakes/bloopers than just the ones circulating on youtube. I also happen to own all five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD and there are special features on virtually every disc (each season has five discs). My mom owns a couple tapes about Lucy and there are probably a hundred more out there somewhere. So, come on Paramount and give us the goods!

I received a box set of all six (original) Star Trek movies for Christmas and I thought each movie was good. I, III, and V were the weakest and II, IV, and VI were the best. If pressed to make a more definite answer I'd say I was the weakest movie and IV was the best. How can you beat having six people from the latter half of the 23rd Century visiting the late 20th Century? It's quite funny. And as McCoy said so matter-of-factly to a surgeon,

My God man, drilling holes in a man's head is not the answer!!

I couldn't tell you if I liked the Star Wars or Star Trek movies better. Star Wars rocks but there's something really cool about Star Trek. Maybe it's because the story takes place in our galaxy, not some galaxy far, far away.

The MacBook Air recently came out. I'm not going to lie and say that it's not cool but it's also not very practical. Just look at the thing. It has no CD drive, no USB ports, nothing like that. Pretty much everything that is standard on a computer these days isn't standard with this thing. It's like the L88 version of the 1967 Corvette (for those of you who aren't familiar with the Corvette's history, in 1967 the Corvette came with an option for an engine called the L88. This sucker put out almost 600 HP but at a price... no heater, radio, or practically anything else standard on cars at the time. It also required at least 103 octane fuel. Obviously this thing wasn't meant for your commute to work every morning). And the price is kinda high for something so lacking as well. You can almost buy the MacBook Pro for the price of a MacBook Air.

Speaking of MacBook's, I want one. Besides saving money for that stick shift, V-8 powered Firebird, I'm also trying to save for a new computer. I've thought about it and I've decided that Macs are better than PC's. For one thing you don't have all the security crap to go through that you worry about with PC's all the time. That means you won't be spending almost two hours loading Norton on your computer every year so your up-to-date on those new, pesky viruses. Macs also have the benefit of having built-in wireless so you can connect easily enough anyplace there's a connection. They also have a good photo program and one for movies as well. Of course then there's music. iPod's are one of the greatest inventions in the last few years. I have almost 2500 songs on iTunes and I don't mind saying I'm glad I don't have to use a CD player anymore. And to sum up my talk on Mac's, it reminds me of this hilarious scene from Star Trek IV when Scotty is trying to talk to a very early incarnation of a Macintosh computer using a mouse.




Well, that pretty much wraps up everything going through my head. Hope you've enjoyed it and knowing how often I post I'll either be talking to you all again in a couple days, couple weeks, or couple months.