Written by cbte on November 19th, 2009
As I sit here, waiting for a dmg to restore its self to my flash drive so that I can begin the process of installing a FOURTH operating system on my laptop, I have decided to check out some web links. What do I see everywhere? Sarah Palin. She’s on talk shows, TV shows, people are reporting about her on their own talk shows and TV shows, and… well, you get the picture.
Here’s the problem. Sarah Palin is an awful representative of the conservative party. She is closed-minded, not extremely intelligent, and can’t make logical connections. I’ll tell ya what, I’m a conservative, but not because my daddy told me to. Not because I like the people who scream that they hate when their money is being stolen from them. My values and beliefs make me a conservative – NOT the other way around. Sarah Palin draws her beliefs and values from the GOP, and that is a shame.
Why can’t people make their own decisions anymore? Why can’t people formulate their own opinions? When Sarah Palin is asked how she would do something better than Obama, it’s like looking at a plate of spaghetti. Noodles everywhere, no coherence whatsoever, and marinara sauce. Yeah, the marinara didn’t make much sense – sue me. She doesn’t know why she believes what she believes, and she’s a blind follower. If she gets nominated for President in 2012, this country is really going down. Obama is destroying this country, but at least he acts narcissistic enough for the audience to know he’s playing them. Sarah Palin is simply not intellectually smart, and she doesn’t know it. She sounds like a fool every time she talks, and I can’t believe she’s putting herself in the limelight so much lately. Well, actually, I can – because she has no idea the damage she’s doing to the Republican party (and conservatives as a whole). She’s great bait for the libs, and there’s nothing we can do to stop her. Unless she reads my blog. Sarah Palin, please stop promoting your book, stop speaking in public, and stop thinking about being the President.
Written by cbte on November 11th, 2009
I love the layout of my blog. SUCKAH BWAAAAAY.
Written by cbte on November 11th, 2009
Unemployment has recently reached 10.2%. Every day, I hear new people making excuses as to why they can’t find work. I hear people on TV making excuses, I hear people on The Dave Ramsey (TV & Radio) Show making excuses, and I read of people on the internet making excuses. So many excuses. And you know what the main excuse is?
“The economy is bad.”
Are you kidding me, Tuna? Let’s do a quick .. fact…check:
First, the J… DI…. DJI, Dow Jowes Edustrial Aver…Index Average.
Hmmm… Now, I’m not an Accountant, but from the looks of that graph, right before the “Apr’09″ section is the bottom. And that end part, after the “Oct’09″ part is pretty high. In fact, over the past year (the span of the chart) today is the highest it’s been.
So the economy is not bad, but people are using that as an excuse. Why are they using that as an excuse? Um… because the Presidential administration keeps saying the economy is bad. Why are they saying it’s bad? So they can use that as an excuse for needing health-care reform – something that will revitalize the market and fix the economic crisis. Perfeck.
I don’t buy the “bad economy” excuse for one second. I got a job with a defense contractor after the President cut funding to the military – during a “recession” AND a “bad economy”. You know what I have to say to the people making excuses and whining that the government is not giving them enough money (or chances)? Boo on you.
This entire situation is completely bunk. Here is the skinny of my story. I did okay in college. I spent a year and a half at an Engineering internship. My GPA is 3.3. Not stellar. And guess how long it took for me to find a job after I started applying? Like 4 days. FOUR. DAYS.
If the president wants to diss America in order to pass his health care reform – so be it. However - I don’t want to hear people blaming their joblessness on the economy any more. I’m not gonna give you any more welfare, a free kitchen, or any government cheese – so stop begging for it, and go find a job, dammit.
Written by cbte on November 4th, 2009
There’s something magical about throwing a playlist on your iPod, heading out the door, and running. Running wherever you want to go. Running where you’ve planned to go. Running to enjoy the world. Running to break free of the mundane cycle that holds us all captive.
Until recently, I’ve been held captive. When I first started running, I was in 10th grade. The summer before my freshman year in high school, I lost about 50 pounds. I had many reasons, the main one being that I wanted to “fit in” with the “in-crowd”. Pun intended. Needless to say, I would have been friends with the same people, no matter what my weight was. I ended up friends with the nerds, which is the only way I would have it. The other reason for this breakthrough in aerobic activity was my desire to be healthy. By saying that my weight wouldn’t have changed the friends I made, I’m not saying that it would have been acceptable to remain overweight. People have trouble drawing the line between sympathy and poor judgement when it comes to this topic. Anyhow – the only reason that mattered was that I wanted to be healthy. There was also probably an underlying desire to be able to run a mile flat before breaking a sweat (like my hero friend, Jason Bourne).
I might need to correct the intro paragraph here – there’s not a necessity for a playlist on a run. One of the best advantages of running is that your body enters into a rhythm. If you have problems, can’t find solutions to things, or just need to think about things alone – running is the perfect remedy. I would constantly find myself mulling over personal problems, difficult schoolwork issues, and other things. The great things is that it was all so logical when I was running. I was able to completely clear my mind. Just me and the pavement.
I soon acquired a membership to Gold’s Gym and started working out there. I changed my running routine to an interval training regimen. The treadmill was useful because I could pre-program it to the desired medium and high-intensity speeds for my intervals. This worked out great. I got even more fit than before, and still loved running. On the weekends, I would go out for a Saturday morning run, to enjoy the nice weather. It was usually about 5 miles.
Presently, I find myself in a conundrum. I completed a half-marathon last year, and I’m signed up for one in two weeks – this year. I’ve attempted to train for it, but I just haven’t had the drive to get in the necessary miles. What gives? I have a membership to a great gym with lots of treadmills, TV’s, and speakers (playing music that I despise – but sometimes they get some Miley Cyrus up in there). The problem is that I’ve been completely separated from the element that originally drew me into running. The world. The road, the sky, the trees, the fresh air (until a semi drives by, switching gears all the while). Now, when I run on the treadmill, it feels so synthetic. It feels almost like a lie. I feel like a gerbil on a spinning wheel. The magic of running has completely disappeared.
That’s why today, I set out for an outdoor 8.07 mile run. I set off at about 9:00 am. I went on a route that I’ve never run before. I actually thought it was only going to be 7 miles – due to an inaccurate calculation on mapmyrun.com. The sky was clear, the breezy air was the perfect temperature, the roads were ready for me. Right from the get-go, I was exhilarated. On the treadmill, when I need to cool off, it takes too long to get going again. When I press the run button, maybe I won’t want to be in run-mode by the time the machine speeds up; however, on the road, I can slow down or speed up at the impulse of a synapse in my brain. I slowed down less because I didn’t need to slow down. You know what the outdoors have that a treadmill doesn’t? Downhill. I LOVE downhill. My maximum speed was 8.46 mph, and I guarantee you I was going downhill during that pace.
The scenery in Texas is so beautiful, especially living close to the Hill Country. The grass on the farms was green, and I even removed my sweaty sunglasses to take in the full gamut of color being reflected off all objects – a gamut that could never be reproduced by even the highest definition of televisions. Everything was beautiful, my heart was working hard to supply my body with blood and oxygen, and my legs were happily burning to carry my heavy self. I couldn’t ask for more.
When the run was over – besides being exhausted beyond belief – I felt accomplished. I felt as if I had achieved something great. I didn’t need the people driving by in their cars to know about my feat. Heck, no one has to know about it. Running is a personal victory that makes us better people. I believe that it doesn’t matter what the distance is, as long as the run is for personal enjoyment first and foremost. When I run to train or lose weight, I miss the days of fun runs. The fun runs are the ones that get us in shape for the long time-trials. They get us in shape. They make us more productive at work and at home. They make us better people. My Wednesday morning run was by no means an amazing feat, but it is definitely the beginning of the correction of my previous ways. I will run for as long as my legs can still move under me – and I’ll do it to be a better person.
Written by cbte on November 3rd, 2009
These days, the question “How am I going to accomplish this?” doesn’t pop up as often as “Which way will I accomplish this?” At my house, I have a PS3, an AppleTV, a Sony Bluray player, a Logitech Z-5500, a Sony HTS-S360 (surround sound), a Sony 52” HDTV, and a Toshiba 32” HDTV. Granted, this is split between me and my roommate, but you get the picture. Let’s also don’t forget two wireless routers, two laptops, and two desktop computers.
One of the great conundrums of the present is media distribution. If you’re going to get your media from the web, which site will you get it from? Will you stream it? Will you download it? Will you buy it from iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster? Should you pay for cable TV service when you can watch network shows just a day later on the internet? (Of course, assuming you use an antenna for sports broadcasts on local network channels) Will you watch your DVDs on your Bluray player, or rip them to a network drive? Will you stream them to your AppleTV, your PS3, or will you simply plug your laptop into your HDTV directly? How are you going to hook up the sound?
I realize that all of these questions will be answered differently for different users; however, I think that some of them should have a simple solution. The first solution should be media promulgation. Yes, people should have choices. I believe completely in a free market system – but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a fantastic option, along with some other not-so-great options. Rather than being whimsical for a day and then some, here’s my idea:
Subscription media service over the internet, with downloads powered through Bit Torrent technology. The way Bit Torrent works is like this: Zack (or iTunes, or Amazon) has a file. They upload that file to a server. Okay, forget about Zack, let’s just say Amazon uploads an episode of Ghost Adventures to their servers. Zack wants to download that TV show. He purchases it and starts the download. Once he’s about 5 seconds in, Nick want to download the same episode of Ghost Adventures. He starts downloading it too. Aaron joins in, and so do five-thousand other people. Once the first few people get their downloads going, not only are they downloading from the Amazon server, they’re downloading from Zack, Nick, and Aaron too. Each person who is downloading the file is also sharing it – at a rate much slower than the download speed. What this does is take the load off Amazon’s servers and actually make the downloads faster for everyone.
This technology could be built into iTunes or Amazon’s downloader. The end user wouldn’t even have to know about it. Well, they probably would – it might be illegal to NOT let them know… So with this technology, download speeds would always be blazing. Marry video with music, and you’ve got all the content you could want, for a (hopefully) affordable monthly rate.
Forget commercials – let’s have this system pay the networks, studios, actors, etc directly. At the right price, this system could convince people to stop downloading content without paying for it. Hi definition, hassle free, fast-downloading content, for cheaper than the price of cable TV. You’re probably thinking, sure, that solves the problem of getting the content, but what about getting it on my TV?
Stay tuned for the next article, where we’ll explore the best and coolest ways to view/hear your prized media.