Month: November 2004

Ah, Turkey Day. I hope everybody had a wonderful extended weekend. I know I sure had a nice time. And since my sister Laura complained that I don’t talk enough about my family, I figured I would write a brief synopsis. Thanksgiving is a weird holiday for my family. Not big on the usual celebrations, it eventually became the one holiday where we all really got together. But that all changed with my sister Lisa and her in-laws. Somehow we got stuck with Christmas even though half of us don’t celebrate it. So nowadays, Thanksgiving has become a rather subdued evening with some of us showing up for dinner, and possibly more later in the weekend; but certainly not the big event with a dozen or more people crowded around the table it once was.
Continue reading “Family Matters”

Argh, I haven’t had a chance to post in forever. I feel pathetic. Well, not really, but I’m disappointed in myself because this blog is supposed to be more than just some ego trip, but a chance for self-expression. But life gets in the way of that sometimes. So what have I been up to? Good question, and here’s a quick breakdown:

• Work – I’ve been swamped lately. Between projects that need to be taken care of, the usual tech support crap, and my own desire to close certain things before Thanksgiving had led to heavy workloads. I’ve even been putting in late night hours to deal with major server maintenance. No complaints here, but it has led to less enthusiasm in my personal life.
• Family – One of my Uncles died last week. Don’t worry about condolensces and whatnot, we weren’t close in the least. I was (and am) far more concerned about my Aunt and cousins, not to mention their kids. That’s hard to go through, and the least I could do was help get a couple of my sisters up to Connecticut for the funeral. This subject, however, commands more attention at a later date.
• Football – Ah yes, the Eagles are 9-1! And believe, I’ve been dedicating as much time as possible for them. I may have missed the Steelers game (thankfully), but I still got back on track with a fun Monday night at Mark’s place for the Dallas whooping, and a visit to McMahon’s in Hoboken for the latest romp over Washington. Let’s hope this all keeps me in good spirits.
• San Andreas – Come on, I told you I got the game. Of course it’s sucked me in. While I have my complaints, the latest installment is clearly another improvement in the series. I need to write a full post about this one.
• Personal Projects – I’ve put off dealing with all of the photo and video editing projects on my desktop for too long. The last few weeks has seen me pouring over thousands of image files from the past few years as well as gigs of video. It is daunting to say the least, but I think I can actually see some sort of end (or at least a breaking point) in the near future.

So, no more apologies. Life goes on, and now so does the blog. Let’s see if I can actually stick to this now and also catch up with my regulars.

Boy have I just disappeared. I’m not even reading my friends’ sites these days. I gotta get back into the swing of things. So here’s a quick pseudo-political post for you all. First a quick front page pic from the UK that a co-worker found:

Next comes a wonderful non-Bush supporter apology site, entitled (appropriately) Sorry Everybody. It’s filled with images of people sharing their sympathies with the world for the colossal mistake that was our election.

Lastly we have a discussion page from my old roomie Kris over at discuss04.com. So go over and vent your frustration!

Now we will resume our usual (albeit random) broadcasting schedule.

I’m trying to clean up this site. As I constantly point out, I really neglect the way it looks, and it’s starting to urk me. Sure it looks nicer than before, but it’s just someone else’s default design at this point. Also, the other pages have either become a mess, or are simply MIA. And the links? Where to begin?

So I’m organizing things a bit, and getting rid of extraneous items. For friends of mine, you’ll notice that most of your links are gone. The reason for this comes down to Livejournal. I don’t have any serious issues with the service, but I tend to view those pages as at least somewhat private – more like a journal than a blog. So for now, although I put a priority on reading them, they are no longer linked – please don’t take this personally.

We’ll see where all of this leads. Hopefully to cute pictures later today…

So I’ve been a tad quiet. Actually, I’ve been fighting the urge to read and write about everything that’s been going on. I’ve barely even read the responses on the usual sites as I just can’t face them. Tuesday night was a long and painful evening that sent myself (and millions of others) into a serious bout of depression. I could barely look at anybody at work the next day, and the only reason I’m feeling ok right now was the opportunity to hang with Joseph last night for the first time in months. Otherwise, I’ve been angry, sullen, and tempermental. It’s been a tough week.

I fought the urge to write earlier, because there was so much wrong that had occurred, I couldn’t figure out where to start. Do I rail against the system, the participants, the results, the future, the past, or what? I needed to chill out for a bit and just deal with my immediate life. So I went through the motions, did my work, ate, slept, etc. And lo-and-behold, I have emerged from the other end (relatively) unscathed. So where do we go from here?
Continue reading “The Failure of a Lifetime”

What can I say… today’s the day. It feels so weird, like I never really thought we would make it to another election. I still have my doubts about how this whole process will turn out. And although I’ve already made my intentions clear, I thought I might ask a question about the whole process that really bugs the piss out of me:

Why isn’t Election Day a holiday? Why do we celebrate the birthday’s of presidents, the deaths of soldiers, and the documentation of our freedom, yet we don’t take a day off to actively partake in the government? I just don’t get it. If voting really is that important, why is it continually made a chore. Michael did point out that most states have laws that give employees the right to take time off for voting, yet my home and current state (PA and NJ) aren’t on that list, and neither are 18 others. That’s just not good enough. I know that other people have broached this subject, so why am I sitting here at work thinking about the millions of voters who would do their supposed civic duty if only they could get away from paying the bills?

As a side note, have you heard the story about Detroit defensive tackle Kelvin Pritchett? When his absentee ballot failed to arrive on time, he hopped on a flight from Detroit to Jacksonville to vote. Now obviously not everyone can afford to do that, but it says a lot about the guy. And here I am, actively not voting, and yet getting pissed off at people on message boards who are skipping out on it because they don’t feel like waiting in line for 45 minutes…

At least I have my reasons, but laziness and apathy are how we got into this mess to begin with.