turkey day
As I sit here on Sunday afternoon, my 9 days without work is coming to a close. Tomorrow I return to work. I didn't get many of the things done that I wanted to, but did get some done. I'll be off for a couple weeks at the end of the year, so hopefully I can make more progress then.
We spent Thanksgiving afternoon/evening at my parents house for dinner, and last night at Eddie/Denise's for their holiday party. We drove around, did some shopping, and hung out around the house.
On Thanksgiving morning I ran in the First Annual Maricopa Cops Turkey Trot. Well, ran and walked at least. Running is quite a bit harder than riding a bike. When I've done bike events we often got police escorts while we cruised along in huge packs at 20-30mph. Here, I got an escort while I jogged with a couple other people at about 5-6mph. They could have just asked us to get on the sidewalk =).
Anyways, here are some pictures linked directly from one of the local news websites;
I am in a white long sleeved shirt with an ASU hat on, on the left behind the guy in a short sleeved black shirt.
And.. me in the background taping my number on, which immediately fell off when we started running. Wet weather and masking tape don't really work together.
The full story and more pictures are here;
http://maricopa360.com/?p=2617
And, last but not least Lori would like to inform everyone that she does not like dried kiwi. She's eating trail mix while reading, and tossing pieces of it across the room for me to eat for her. Talk about breaking news..
i work on the internet
Well. Kinda.
Anyway, if you don't have a clue what I do, here are some of the business aspects of what impacts my market. These are some of the problems I work on at work. In fact my employer is mentioned specifically in the article. I don't just work on this one product set, but it is the one that impacts my personal life the most. After all, I play on the Internet as well.
It's a good read;
http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/11/will-work-for-bandwidth.shtml
vacation to southern california
We went to Disneyland and Newport Beach back in May, here are the pictures;
http://www.disturbed.org/gallery/v/mikes_pictures/vacations/california/
school update, website traffic, macbook review, and easter pictures
Tomorrow is my last day of school for the year, woohoo! It's the last core class I have to take as well. That's a major step for me.
You probably didn't notice, but a while back I started tracking website traffic with Google Analytics. I've averaged 73 site accesses (HTTP GET commands, not browser visits) per day over the last 5 months. Not too bad.
I love my new macbook. It's an awesome upgrade from my three year old PowerPC iBook. For those that read the reviews this probably won't be too exciting. The only three things I've dealt with that I didn't like are the reflection on the screen, the new trackpad, and the lack of firewire. I've been able to reposition to make the screen work, but it has annoyed me more than once with a light or window being behind me and reflecting while I'm watching a dark TV show/movie (go hulu!). The way I was used to using the mouse on the iBook wasn't working at first on the MacBook. I've since switched to just tap clicking, but it seems that Apple is going to release a software patch to fix my problem, so I'll report back if that does happen. Lastly, our camcorder uses firewire for data transfers. There is absolutely no way to import video directly to this laptop from that camcorder. That is lame. Thankfully I still have the iBook so I'll just import/transfer. That, and flash card based HD cameras are becoming more prevalent/cheaper, so maybe someday we'll upgrade and remove the problem. All in all, I'm very happy with the purchase.
Lastly, here are pictures from Easter of this year;
http://www.disturbed.org/gallery/v/mikes_pictures/events/0803-Easter/
backstage
Very cool.
http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/
election status
The Internet really has changed how we deal with information.
I've been using this map from Google to look at this election, and compare to the right with past elections.
Very cool.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/elections/index.html#2008_election
election day
For some reason many people are hush hush about who they vote for. Politics seems to invoke way too much anger. Thinking Democrats or Republicans are all bad should be considered a bad thing. You should be thought of as a bad person for making such wide sweeping generalizations about people. It seems to me that these things seem to be almost accepted as the norm. Sad.
Of course, if you read that and immediately thought "Damn Republicans being divisive!" or "Democrats just need to stop taxing everyone!", then yeah, you're part of the problem.
I spent quite a few hours researching most of these. Those running unopposed I did basically nothing on and just voted for them.. so I left them off of here.
Presidential Electors
- OBAMA (DEM)
U.S. Representative in Congress Dist. 7
- GRIJALVA, RAUL (DEM)
State Senator Dist. 23
- RIOS, REBECCA (DEM)
State Representative Dist. 23
- BUSTAMANTE, ERNEST (DEM)
- MCGUIRE, BARBARA (DEM)
Corporation Commissioner
- NEWMAN, PAUL (DEM)
- STUMP, BOB (REP)
- WONG, BARRY (REP)
Board of Supervisors Dist. 3
- SNIDER, DAVID (DEM)
Sheriff
- BABEU, PAUL (REP)
County Treasurer
- DOOLITTLE, DOLORES "DODIE" (DEM)
County Recorder
- DEAN-LYTLE, LAURA (DEM)
County Assessor
- LARKIN, L. PAUL (DEM)
Constable
- HOFFMAN, GEORGE A. (REP)
Question No. 1
- BONDS, YES
Board Member Maricopa Unified School Dist. 2
- GODDARD, GEOFF
- VARGAS, CARRIE
- COUTRE, PATRICIA
Question 5
- FOR THE BONDS
Board Member Central Arizona Water Conservation Dist. Central Arizona Project
- HARTDEGEN, JIM
Judge of the Superior Court Div.6
- VANDERPOOL, JANNA
Shall BALES, SCOTT, Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, be retained in office?
- YES
Shall VASQUEZ, GARYE L. Judge of the Court of Appeals, Div. 2, be retained in office?
- YES
Proposition 100
- NO
Proposition 101
- NO
Porposition 102
- NO
Proposition 105
- NO
Proposition 200
- NO
Proposition 201
- YES
Proposition 202
- NO
Proposition 300
- YES
There you have it.. Some of these I couldn't find hardly anything on (like the CAP Board Member), others I found videos on youtube of debates and speeches. The one I struggled with the most was the US House, as I really wasn't a fan of any of them. I really considered voting for the Libertarian, but Grijalva ended up being the closest to my views overall, despite some things he fundamentally stands for that I disagree with. Some of the people running locally honestly didn't have a clue what the job was going to even entail. People talked about lowering taxes when what they were running for didn't have any direct impact or responsibility for it. I actually met the Democrat candidate for Constable at Founders Day and he pitched his campaign to me as "I need a job". His interviews with the press didn't seem to add too much either.. Inevitably some of these will end up with people just voting party lines, and some of these candidates without a clue will end up being elected. Scary.