I honestly wish I had written this, as it is pretty dead-on, but I didn't. THere was a trailer released for Star WArs EP III in the last couple of days. This was a review that I saw:

- Luke looks at suns setting, reminds you that SW was okay once.
- Alec Guinness waffles, reminds you that SW was excellent once.
- Shot of Liam Neeson, reminds you that Schindler's List was good.
- Troops marching in formation so they're evil troops.
- A couple of guys in robes discuss their CGI surroundings.
- Anakin looks up, grimaces, looks mean.
- Anakin rides bike, grimaces, looks mean.
- Alec Guinness again. He was great, wasn't he?
- Anakin looks around, has evil eye, looks mean.
- Lava and spiderbots from Doom 3.
- Then a slideshow of, in quick succession: Darth Suit, Obi, Palpawhatsit, Darth Suit (2), C3P0, R2-D2, Queen Amitadadadala (emotional), Mace Windup (mean), Darth Suit (3), Wookies, Yoda, Darth Suit (4), *deep breath*, spaceships, smootchy, Yoda, spaceships, Mace Windy, Wookies, evil guy, ship peeing all over another ship, Anakin (mean grimacing), R2-D2, Portman (OMG HAIR), ship, Anakin and Obi fighting, spaceships, Anakin & Obi at it again, spaceships, Obi & Anakin again (extra grimacing), spaceships, Emperor (evil, etc), spaceships (one explodes).

Mostly just pictures of stuff to remind you that, hey, this is Star Wars!


In other news, the election is over. Bush won, Daschle lost, the Republicans retained control of most of the government and, perhaps most importantly, the election results of 2000 were validated. Can anyone honestly argue any more that Bush did not win in 2000? I do not think so, else how could you explainwhat happened in 2002 and 2004.

Yeah I know damn well this will not be read by anyone. And anyone that does happen to fall into my black hole on the internet either won't care or won't be able to do anything about it. But I just heard something on the news that pisses me off. The Detroit City Council is set to sign a city regulation requiring banks to add a 911 Panic Button to all ATM's inside city limits. This is because, apparently, people are afraid to use the ATMs in the dark. This is presumably because the people are not sure that they are safe from the depredations of their fellow man. And the city council, rather than work on solving the problem (i.e. stopping the criminals,) has decided that a big red button will help. What Next?? Peril-Sensitive sunglasses???? The regulation calls for a $500 fine per machine per infraction, which has the potential for becoming incredibly lucrative. Which, in my opinion, is the reason the city council is contemplating this. They need the money.

The banks, for their part, are claiming that the city does not have the authority to require them to do this, stating that the banks are subject to state and federal regulations, not city. It remains to be seen whether this is true or not. The banks also claim that the buttons will not help solve the problem. The ATMs already have cameras at all locations and that does not seem to be stopping the criminals. The banks and other officials also claim that the new buttons will merely increase the number of false alarms. Imagine a gang out at night, pressing the panic button on every ATM they see. Ooooo this is really helping.

If it were me, and I were running these banks in Detroit, I would already have a press announcement ready. And the minute that the regulations passed the council, I would release it. ANd that press release would say that because the city council cannot keep its money grubbing hands out of our business and has as such saddled this company with an expense far in excess of its intended purpose, effective immediately all ATMs inside the city limits of Detroit will be unavailable, and will eventually be removed from the service area. Bank tellers will be available for all further bank transactions. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but the city council has made this action necessary. If you wish to complain, talk to them.

Useless government regulations only cost money. They never solve the problem they were enacted to solve, and very often make it worse. THis is a situation where the solution will solve nothing, cost more than intended, and in general piss people off.

Herald.com - Your Miami Everything Guide

I found this following a link from Blue's News. While I normally do not read Dave Barry (although I do find him funny,) the Road Map to Peace bit, which I believe is in April, had me rolling on the floor.

Michigan lost last night, which while depressing, was not exactly unexpected. I had hoped, however, that they might have done better on the field. But they were outclassed on just about every front. My congratulations to USC for fielding the team that they sis in such a short time. Even with some help from the refs (there were a couple of questionable calls that went Michigan's way) UM just could not get things running consistently. And as I have said before, never trust a ball that isn't round. Even when they weere playing well, things just did not go as intended.

I was also impressed with the Iowa game, in that they seemd to dominate the whole game, and Purdue had a real shot at an upset comeback. THey played really well in the last half of the game. but ran out of time.

My New Year's Resolution is to not make any New Year's Resolutions, which allows me to break and keep all me resolutions all at once, leaving me the rest of the year to do with as I please.

Hey look! An update. Or at least me screwing around at "work" installing crap on the server.

Looking to see how long it takes for the server to get hacked again. I re-opened the router firewall to the world and I am going to install a software firewall on the server to see if I can leave it the way it is and still allow access to the FTP server.

But we still need a new server. This one is pretty old and getting too small to handle the load we are asking of it. And, if we get a new server, we can look at things like serving our own web pages, rather than having them hosted at Iserv.

Fat chance of that happening.

There is a news story up on the drudge report right now that details the difference in the cost of Sen. John Kerry's haircut vs. Sen Hillary Clinton's haircut. Apparently, Sen. Kerry pays less than Sen. Clinton does, even though the same person is doing the cutting.

There are a lot of things wrong here, the first of which being: Who cares??!?

But aside from that, there are apparenly legal issues here. The District of Columbia has a law on its books that abolishes gender-based pricing. This law does not even allow for increased work load - a hair cut is a hair cut apparently. California has basically the same law, although they allow for pricing based on the amount of work done. So, the good Sen. Kerry is apparently recieving a discriminatory price break for his hair cut. He is also apparenly lying about it, saying he is paying the same rate as Sen. Clinton. Typical of politicians to break the laws they make.

Which brings me to my other complaint: With all the problems that this country has, do our law maker really have time to sit around worrying about making sure barber shop pricing is "Fair?" Who were the lobbyists for this disaster??

Good God! I now know - I am absolutely certain - that the XP in Win XP stands for Xtra Pain. I find it utterly amazing that a drive cable can bring an otherwise technologically advanced OS to a screeching halt without any indication or warning. XP even ate my video card. All because the numb nut that built this machine had a drive cable reversed, with the master plug in the slave drive. And it took me two weeks to determine that little bit of information. THis really needs to go on the Rants page, but since I have not updated this page in a while, I thought I would start here. Finally have a job, although it ain't the best in the world. Working at my Church as Sexton (glorified janitor.) Pay is alright, I am making the same as was at Steel Stud, and the hours are ok. I usually work half days, but I do have to work Sat and Sun in order to get my 40 hours. I will have benefits for the first time in 4 years as well. Maybe I will actually go see a doctor or something. naaa I have taken a liking to golf, and I am wishing that I could play more often. However, so far the only people I have played so far have been Todd and Jeremy. I think Todd's desire to play the game has flagged a little, seeing as how he is having trouble, and as a result he would rather raise hell with the cart than play the game. Jeremy goes along with it, and then gets offended when he gets called on it. The two of them nearly got us thrown off the last course we played. Yay. In the meantime, I thought my game was improving. I was actually driving the ball pretty far, if not necessarily straight, and was having reasonable luck with my short game. I think I want to learn the Natural Golf system. The more I look at it, the better I like it - now if they would just lower the cost of their equipment. Their stuff looks very good, and is supposed to be designed to compliment the system - it is just very expensive. $700+ for a set of irons with no woods and no wedges is way out of my league at the moment. I would have to see if the system would work for me first though, and that would take playing more often, and actually taking the time to learn it. Maybe with my free afternoons. BTW, anyone who still believes that the problems with the voting in Florida during the 2000 elections were the result of the system being bad have to shut up now. They fixed the system, and the same three counties proved that their voters and their voting regulation authorities are too stoopid to vote properly. The same people have caused the same problem for the same people a second time. Dimocrats regulating a Dimocrat primary have grounded the campaign of Dimocrat Janet Reno. Keep up the good work guys!! The nation needs all the help you can give it!


Oh, and I had to post this in my rants page because Blogger screwed up my template, and I cannot reproduce it yet.

Here is an example of media and educational overload screwing up the minds of the people they are supposed to be informing. Without a doubt, in any objective view, Diana's death should not even rank in the top ten. She was not in line for ascendancy. She was no longer a "royal" by nature of her divorce from the family. She was not a political figure, elected or otherwise, charged with the defense of the country and its principles. She was not even killed in an attempt to defend her own principles (unless you count avoiding the media as a 'principle')

No, Diana was a public figure, popular with both the media and the people, whose death, while tragic, is more well known for its publicity than any impact it may have had policy or history.

The key here is that she was a media figure. And the media, particularly in England, is failing in its secondary role of educating the people. But then, so are the schools, although they are probably better off there than they are in the Untied States, where I would imagine that they could get the same result here, if they asked the right people. The ensuing media circus surrounding her death and burial has placed in the minds of the population an undue measure of importance. Rather than putting the events in their proper perspective, the media chose sensationalism and aggrandizement.

So you get the results you have here. The people have this tragedy burned into their psyche night after night for weeks, and then are reminded of it every time they turn around. And the people, when asked to recall historic events, remember this as if it were important. THen people run around shocked, wondering why?

While my knowledge of English history is somewhat lacking, as I do not live there and I am not concerned with their day to day events, I can assume that in the past 100 years, there have been more significant events that warrant greater importance than the Death of Diana. I would imagine that many of the events surrounding WWII fit that description. And I also know that if pressed, the people in England would honestly agree with that. There are other events just as important historically, I am sure. But you will not hear that from the people, because they are not thinking about it, they are feeling about it, and that is what the media wants.

I hope they do this again in a year, and the results are different - because if the people consider Diana to be the single most important historical figure in their minds, they are not doing well as a people.