Yes, I'm still around...

Playing PC games mostly but power housing my way through Mass Effect when I can get one of the kids to take my place as a heater in our bed at night.  mommy snores though so it's a hard sell.

Read this in the Aspen Times of all places and thought I'd share..  kinda long but a good read!  Good Gaming folks!

In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man

Gary Hubbell

February 9, 2008

 There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

 

Posted by Smallwoody @ 8:42 am EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

Pandora

Sorry... I know I already posted today but I've been listening to something on-line for a while that has evolved into something I really get a lot of value and enjoyment out of. It's Pandora Internet Radio.

Pandora allows you to create stations either based on song titles or artist names and will play music based on that selection. What's awesome is the organic growth of your station based on input from you as well as other users. Music is quantified by a long list of metrics ranging from "Minor Key Tonality", "heavy lead vocals", "slight rhythmic syncopation", etc. I mean, they get really detailed. Your input is a simple thumbs up or down on a song suggested which drives whatever complex algorithm they use to come up with the next song.

I enjoy listening to music at work but this has really taken it to the next level of being interested in music. Links are available through the web interface detailing information about artists, the song and album it came from, other artists with similar qualities, etc. You can even link straight to Amazon to purchase music you hear... something I haven't done in a long time but info on the artist provided by the site actually drove me to not look for 'alternative' methods of securing the piece.

It's probably blocked for a lot of people at work, and it starts out kind of slow since it involved user feedback but I've personally used it over 2 years now and have at least 15 channels of music spanning all the 'genres' I might want to listen to from Punk/ska to 'Iron Maiden' to 'Tom Petty Radio'. The only other drawback is the complete lack of classical music though the demand for that probably doesn't create enough drive to go through the effort of providing it.

I'll skip posting tomorrow... I promise... unless of course I give notice at my job!

Posted by Smallwoody @ 2:25 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Yay For Me!

Except for the knock down, drag out argument with the wife this morning, today is going to be great! Whoo hoo! I finally spoke to the hiring manager for the Aerospace company up in CT and he gave me a number, to which I responded "Hell Yeah!" So more than likely, after the first of the year I will be working from my home. Since I know what I'm doing with my job (for the most part) I actually have a lot of down time that it utilized screwing around. I'm pretty paranoid about being productive enough that people notice so it'll probably be a little harder while working from home. Who knows... this will be a new adventure.

We also went last week and looked at a 100 year old farm house on 10 acres of land near my wife's work. House was great and while I was there I saw 4 turkey and 3 deer right outside the house. Fence for horses, pecan tree and poll barn in back yard, and it backs up to a creek and 500 ft hill (which looked pretty big).

I also reinstalled StarCraft last night... took me 10 minutes to install, patch and everything. UT3 last week took me 3 hours to download and 30 minutes to install. Amazing how much stuff the cram on a disk now-a-days.

Edit:  well, got a call from the wife and they don't have a spot for our daughter up at the school he's at since she's in "pre-K" so looks like the move is off for now.  Thing is though... I can work from anywhere now!  WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Posted by Smallwoody @ 10:46 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Why the hell is a dog on the field!?

I watched this Saturday and though to myself at the time, "What value does having a K-9 unit at the end zone bring to security of the game?" I mean, come on!? Are they gonna let them loose on someone on live TV in order to subdue them? And why two of them. The reason is obvious: They were farting around watching the game and probably getting paid $30/hr - $40/hr overtime by the University to do it. To top it off, the look on the cop's face after the dude pulled his hand out of his dog's mouth was one of disgust for the player rather than concern he wasn't controlling his animal! I think he figured it out when he departed the premises soon after. /asshat

Posted by Smallwoody @ 11:53 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Conversation with my wife last night

wife:  "I can't believe that he (Peter Parker) is ignoring her like that!  Did you see the way he blew her off!  I'd be so out of there!"

me:  "He's got an alien symbiotic organism attached to him that came down from outer space!"

wife:  "So...."

I spent the next 5 minutes laughing.  Sure as hell hope I never get infected.

Posted by Smallwoody @ 8:38 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments