Random Thoughts

My 3 month old son has more international experience than Sarah Palin.

No, really.

We’re American.  He already has a passport.  He visited Europe before he was even born, and will go again before his first birthday.  He lives, temporarily, in a foreign country where he interacts with peers from many different countries and will do so for the rest of his life.  He is curious about the world around him and wants to explore beyond his comfort zone.  He hears more foreign languages in a day than Palin, and that’s just at home.  He has family and friends in more countries than Palin has ever visited.  He will visit the Texas border region and possibly Mexico before his first birthday.  His mother is Canadian and Euopean.  His father is American of Mexican descent.

Top that, Sarah.  Don’t act proud to be ignorant.  Stop talking tough and have some humility, even guys know how.

McCain turns the Presidential race into an episode of Jerry Springer.

I’m disappointed with John McCain.  Apparently he wanted to select Joe Leiberman as his Vice-Presidential running mate but was pressured by the religious right to choose someone church-y.  So he selected Sarah Palin, a  right-wing zealot who can’t think past Alaska.  That’s right, I said it.

She didn’t even want the job, when asked in an interview about her chances she didn’t look interested at all.  She already had a job as Governor of Alaska, and had her own personal issues to deal with out of the public eye.  But when the GOP calls we have to march along, don’t we, so now she’s thrust into a position she knows she’s not ready for.

That was bad enough, but now we’re having to hear this circus about Palin’s family, which I won’t go into at Obama’s request.  But I have this sneaking suspicion that the GOP selected Palin just for this shock value, and to draw Obama into a public relations trap.  You know they are low enough to do it, look at how they questioned John Kerry’s patriotism and service.

The GOP is low enough to turn my country’s Presidential Election process into an episode of Jerry Springer, and John McCain is weak enough to let them do it.  That’s not a Maverick, that’s not someone I want as my President.  I want someone who is going to bring some class to the office.

Obama FTW.

Thanks for reading.

Starting over with GReader and Feedly

I never really used these two services after signing up because I found them overwhelming.  I see a lot of people looooving them, so it made me wonder why I was having a negative experience, and by George i think i’ve got it.

Too much stuff!  When you start out with these services you’re allowed to import feeds from here there and everywhere, which I thought was a great idea.  I now think it’s not a great idea.  It created a massive wall of text, lines and lines of bold text that screamed “Welcome to the internet, and YOU”RE ALREADY WAY BEHIND!”

I bounced off of that like a…very bouncy thing…  (damn, that could have been a good joke…)

So what I did was unsubscribe and delete everything that comes into these two services.  All of it, and I’ll be adding one feed at a time from this point forward in order to give these two services an honest try.

Thanks for reading.

Judgement Call - Should I Rickroll people who hotlink my images?

I make silly animated gifs sometimes, it’s kind of a hobby.  Ok I’ll be honest it’s not really a hobby, it’s an artifact of my early web experiements thinking I could ‘make a name’ or ‘make a buck’ doing stock animated gifs of 3D stuff on the web.  That was until I discovered the massive stock art collections that already exist.

I posted a small number of those experiements to my blog, http://droffset.blogspot.com just for fun.

But now people are hotlinking to them, and It doesn’t take that much bandwitdh from me, infact it brings more hits to my content than my own blog, which says a lot for my blog…

Part of me rages and goes ‘how dare they’ and makes me want to replace that gif with something crazy, something mean, let their visitors knowthat i caught them.

One is a funny pictures blog in a language i don’t understand, the other is a Christian school.  I know, the possibilities are endless!

But then i remember that I’m hotlinking a few images from other sites as well…so i guess i won’t do it.

But i kind of want to.

Have you ever felt yourself 'level up?'

I was singing along with a CD for my son this morning.  The song was ‘Rainbow Connection,’ one of my favorites from childhood.  Just as the chorus was ending and we sang ‘the lovers, the dreamers, and me’ Lucas looked me in the eye and smiled.  A real smile, not just gas.

Remember that little buzz you got in the back of your scull and in your chest when Mario ate that mushroom for the first time and you grew twice as big? Or when you realized you aced a test, or worked out a simple solution to a complex problem?  Remember that first time that you realized that you were capable at something in life?

Yeah, it was like that, but a lot better.

Hanging out with my son is the most amazing interactive experience ever.