Ignorance Is...How does that phrase go?

This is not the most original or truly astonishing prose, but I found, somewhat surprisingly, that it rather concisely sums up my concerns about a certain presidential candidate. I found the following to be especially poignant:

I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.

George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be

Between 1988 and 1997, the golden age of the MS-DOS operating system, I became an expert at writing boot menus. Various boot configurations were necessary in those days to run certain programs, because they all had different memory requirements, CD driver requirements (when CD-ROM's became available), and sound card interrupt and DMA settings. It was a complete pain in the ass. Usually after purchasing a new game, an entire day was needed just to figure out how the system needed to be tweaked in order to get it to run--and remember, this was before the Internet made it easy to just google an answer. Research by reading, trial and error, and plain old fashioned person-to-person communication was needed. I was such a PC gaming junkie in those days, and had become so good at doing this, that I actually parlayed the skill into a job, for a time anyway. Every PC at Cyberjocks, a local multiplayer gaming establishment, used a special version of my boot menu from 1996 to 1997.

During this same group of years, I became intensely interested in home theater, specifically multi-channel surround sound systems. There was something about high fidelity audio playback systems that fascinated me. Of course, back then home theater was sufficiently esoteric as to be out of the price range of most people, and the best a student with relatively small amounts of disposable income could do was voraciously devour every bit of information available on the subject. Of course, I fortified this with sporadic purchases of very well-researched, relatively inexpensive yet highly regarded pieces of home theater electronics. The true fuel to my passion, however, was the project of building the ultimate subwoofer with my good friend, Aaron Kondziela. Over a period of at least two or three months, we acquired the various components necessary for the project, took over his parents basement (which was delightfully full of useful tools and gadgetry), and constructed a beautifully proportioned (from the perspective of audio design, anyway), gargantuan 30 cubic-foot box. It was a ported design that required a design modification of intuitive ingenuity of which I am still proud. So exacting and fastidious were we in our construction efforts that the final product was able to move enough air to blow shut a door 50 feet away, and shake the foundation of my parents very old, very large and very brick house. I still remember the first sound produced by that behemoth: track 6 of Harry Connick Jr.'s "She:" "Follow the Music," which has an initial bass note so deep and strong that you need a good sub just to hear it properly.

So, what's the point? Well, I still enjoy video games. I still enjoy home theater. But now, I have a PS3, and Xbox360, a Wii, and a relatively capable gaming PC. Over the years I've acquired so many games that I probably wouldn't recognize them all if you laid them out in front of me. I have a dedicated home theater room with a 100" screen, a 1080p projector, and a high end multichannel surround-sound system capable of playing high-resolution audio. I have reclining leather theater seats, and about 5 gagillion movies. In short, if between 1989 and 1997 I had made a list of all the things I could possibly want, the list would be an inventory of my current home (ok, and few other things that I haven't quite been able to take care of...yet). The funny thing is that while I still enjoy all of these things, something is lost now that I own all this stuff. There is no challenge, no work in it. I didn't have to design anything, write any code, or even break a sweat for any of it. Of course, I worked to earn the money needed to buy all this stuff, but that's not really the same thing, is it? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that after acquiring all this stuff, I've never been less interested in it. The irony is not lost on me.

I feel like a prophet...

Here's a column talking about the same things I've been spouting off for years.

"We'd sell if we could, but we'd lose our shirt," Johnson said. On a recent walk, she counted 15 "For Sale" signs. A similar home nearby is listed below $400,000.

"I was so glad to get out of the city, the pollution the traffic, the crime," she said. Now, the suburbs seem mean. "I wouldn't do this again."

The plural of "Lego" is "Lego"

If this requires exposition to explain its coolness, then you and I are different on some very fundamental level:

Down with LHC?

...apparently it won't destroy the world? Well, you be the judge:

There Will Be Blood...

...watched it last night. I think it's probably one of the most relevant films ever made, and in my opinion every American should see it. Without getting into a long discussion, basically it forces the viewer to empathize with some very unsavory aspects of the "american spirit." I know that I learned something about myself while watching it, and it's not every day that one can say that about a film.

GHET-TO!

I've have a really nice road bike that I've ridden sporadically over the past 5 years. I've used it to exercise and to recreate, but I've never done anything practical (read "commute") with it, although I've always intended it for this purpose. After all, one doesn't buy an expensive road bike if one intends it only to collect dust. So, why am I not using it for my morning commute? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd likely have to duck as I ride by the 2 or 3 drug dens that I pass on my way to work. Anyway, I've started riding it to the gym during the week, and yesterday I decided to bite the bullet (hopefully not literally) and ride to work. Using googlemaps like the geek that I am, I found a route that bypasses most of the mess without taking me too far out of my way. I go thusly:


View Larger Map

3.3 miles...and that's with a relatively long detour (if you look at the map, the detour is where I ride southwest on main st. to kensington avenue.) The shortest route is straight across main, down filmore to kensington. If you need illicit substances that's the road to take, otherwise I'd go the long way...

Finally getting off my ass and deciding to do this made me realize how close I am to work, and it made me feel guilty for waiting so long to start. I highly recommend this for anyone who lives and works in the same municipality--I'd hazard a guess that even if my ride was twice as long it wouldn't make much of a difference. I timed the ride, and biking the detour route takes literally a couple of minutes longer than driving the short route. (I've biked the "danger" route and I made it in the same time it takes me to drive, which makes me feel even more guilty.) All of this aside, it's just plain nice to be out on a bike. Unless it's snowing. Or raining. Or there are 30mph winds.

To sum up, the benefits of biking to ECMC (saving $, lower CO2 footprint, exercise, "experiencing" the city) to me outweigh the potential negative aspect ("experiencing" the city.)