Dear Senator Obama,
During your candidacy, one goal I recall that you mentioned is getting high-speed Internet access to as much of the nation as possible.
Pleasepleasepleaseplease–for the love of all that is right and holy on this Earth–I really need you to get my folks the high-speed Interwebs. After all these years, they are still on dial-up, and I could write all the stories on cnn.com myself in the time it takes that mother to load.
I mean, shit.
Thanks.
I tried to import all my previous blog entries via RSS the other day. That didn’t work at all.
It brought in the titles of all the posts and the timestamps, but none of the content itself. I’m not quite sure why, when you run that importer, the WordPress looks for a local file, rather than a feed address. I suppose one could, in theory, import ANYONE’S blog as their own (???). Anyway, I figure I’ll give it another go at a later time.
I’m having some trouble getting logged in to my server from work the last few days, too. But only when I use WinSCP, not PuTTY. Eh, weird.
Please do stay tuned, as a major overhaul of the soloshoots web presence is due this spring..!
Meanwhile, I found a fantastic joke at McSweeney’s, that more or less encapsulates my experience with financial aid.
Now go forth, and follow baseball.
Some tidbits from a New York Times article:
Gas Prices Soar, Posing a Threat to Family Budget
“For ordinary Americans like Phyllis Berry, a 31-year-old factory worker for General Motors in Cleveland, gasoline costs are starting to hurt.
“‘I used to fill it up pretty regularly, but now I drive it until the tank is almost empty, looking for the cheapest place to buy gas,’ said Ms. Berry, who drives a beat-up Dodge Caravan.
“She said that she used to take her four children to the movies four or five times a month. But with the cost of gas, tickets, popcorn and soda adding up to $70, they now go only once a month.”
Glad I don’t have kids. I can’t imagine what they would do to me if I couldn’t afford to go to the movies FOUR OR FIVE FRACKING TIMES A MONTH. These are tough times, ladies and gents. Tough, tough times…
Lifehacker once again offers up a nice link:
http://lifehacker.com/353817/verify-campaign-claims-at-factcheckorg
… I’ve used factcheck.org myself recently, but haven’t really mentioned it to anyone else. Seems as good a time as any to bring it up.
I think the way that CNN is tracking the primary delegate count is probably the easiest to digest.
I think the race for the Republican nomination really came into focus last night– John McCain is looking like the front-runner, with the others remaining (Romney and Huckabee) splitting up a portion of the leftovers.
I haven’t tried to hide the fact in this space that I’m a lot more focused on the Democratic race up to this point. Hillary is hanging on to her lead, but it continues to be pretty slim. Obama is still racking up more ‘pledged’ delegates (the ones that are decided in these primaries), and he continues to pick up more and more financial support (and from people like me, if you can believe that).
I have some friends in Minnesota and California who I know went out and voted for Obama yesterday, and now I’ve got a chance to do the same thing in two weeks. When the primary season started, I didn’t think Wisconsin would matter much, coming after this ‘Super Tuesday’– now it’s clear that the campaign is going to go down to the wire, and if we want a change, a fresh perspective, and a person in the White House who can bring people together, we have to get out there and make it happen.
Take a look at this, too, and make sure you get the polls on the 19th, or whenever you have the opportunity to vote.
First week of school.
Assuming I survive, I’ll catch you on the flipside.
I would really like to ski this weekend. Some fresh(er) snow, cold, but not unbearable– yeah, that would be nice.
I’m kinda sick, too, so we’ll see.
… and Spring Training starts in 25 days.
Just want to mention to myself and fair users to come– if you’re going to read this blog via RSS, I really recommend doing so via the ‘Live Bookmarks’ feature in Firefox.
This method preserves the visual style of the page, and allows for quick and easy commenting on posts. Of course, if you want to use some other reader, it’s your life– I’m just trying to run it…
Should also just mention– odds seem really strong that this wordpress is going to be the next incarnation of my blog. Still need to smooth out the edges, but it seems pretty promising.
I don’t want this to turn into a political blog or anything (and I don’t really have the knowledge or experience to make that happen anyway), but I notice that I just wrote something about Obama about 4 or 5 posts ago, and I didn’t want you to think that’s all I’m going to be thinking about this year.
With that in mind, here is a story about fluorescent pigs.
But on the topic of Obama, I sent him money the other day. It was Monday. I don’t think I alone could have ‘jinxed’ the outcome in NH, but you never know.
Anyway, I’ve never felt compelled to give money to a campaign before. So it was a new thing for me. If you dig on Barack, you probably know that his campaign is not taking money from lobbyists or political action groups. I think that’s part of what makes his strong showing thus far so freakin cool.
Regardless, two weeks ago, I seriously did NOT think the man would have come out on top in either Iowa or New Hampshire. I don’t claim to be any sort of pundit, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from watching television, reading news, and being alive during this season and over the past few election cycles:
– polls are often helpful, but are also often bullshit
– The ‘base’ of each party– the hardcore MF’ers that don’t even need to know a person’s name to know their candidate– they will either be behind a candidate in the general election, or they will stay home (probably the former).
– The “independent” or “swing” vote is what every candidate is always hoping to capture– the people that are looking for good reason to vote for someone.
– Obama won in Iowa because people like me– ‘Independent’ folks who have never felt really excited about the political process or about a candidate before– came out and supported him.
– The same thing happened yesterday in NH, where the majority of independents casting ballots were for Obama. Hillary won because of the support from the Democratic base.
– The biggest challenge for Obama going forward will be keeping these people (again, the ones like me) that are just barely feeling invigorated by the democratic process, active, involved, and excited.
I never finished his book last year, but I started working on it again this morning on my commute. Hope I can finish up quickly and maybe share with other peeps.
I really hope this ride keeps going. I gave some money, and I’m talking about it here, so I guess I’m doing what I can. Involvement and personal initiative of the Everyman seem to be at the core of what Obama talks about. If this works and this man gets elected, it will be proof positive that we, the people, all together, are bigger and more important than any political party, action committee, or lobbyist. To me, that’s really exciting.
I added a plugin the other day called NEXTGEN gallery or something like that. One of those things that I dig about tikiwiki is being able to easily manage image galleries. This plugin claims to do a lot of the same stuff, with similar amounts of minimum effort.
That being said, I had no trouble creating an ‘album’, ‘gallery’, and then uploading an image. However, I couldn’t immediately figure out how to display said gallery. I think I need to have a “page” dedicated to it. But I’m not sure.
Does this work? Just putting an image that I’ve uploaded in a post?
Sure it does. What the H.