Author: Thom

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.

1. Invite friends over.
2. Watch scary movie.
3. Send friends home.
4. Stay awake in bed long enough to see kitchen light suddenly turn on.

This was just bizarre… and freaky. A couple friends of Lisa wanted to come over Friday night and watch some scary movies. I threw a few on my Netflix queue, but due to an odd turn of events, I didn’t get any of them in on time. But fortunately, a new collector’s edition of The Thing (one of my all time favorite horror movies) just came out, and I happened to pick it up earlier in the week. So after Lisa and her friends cooked dinner, we settled in for a fright. It ended up being a great movie to watch, as I was the only one who had seen it before and it scared the others sufficiently.

Fast forward a couple hours…

Lisa and I are in bed. I am basically asleep, and Lisa is drifting off. She opens her eyes just in time to see that there’s a light on in the kitchen. Only we had turned all of the lights in the apartment off. And we don’t have any automatic timers (inside at least). Okay, we now have restrained panic. When she told me that a light had just gone on, I was sure that it was just illumination from outside, or maybe the computer monitor making it look like that. But when I opened my eyes, it was quite clear that one of the lights had just been turned on.

The pragmatist in me keeps saying, “There’s a logical explanation for this.” But the film enthusiast in me keeps saying, “This is when everybody in the theater screams, ‘Don’t go in there, jackass.'” So I calmly get out of bed and look for something to make myself feel safe and secure – and wind up with a flashlight. On second thought, that was a really stupid item to pick up. I mean, a light had gone on, not off. But somewhere in my mind I thought that the cheap, flimsy, plastic flashlight would protect me against the ungodly kitchen-light-turning-on demons that I was about to encounter. Thankfully Lisa was there, giving me an excuse to act manly – otherwise I probably would have just wet myself… just kidding (I hope). So I gather my wits, and start off to face the evil.

I approach the kitchen, and as I get to the doorway, what horrors do I see?…

The light over our table – that would be the light with the loose switch – is turned on. Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with me turning it off earlier and thinking, “Hmm, that switch didn’t click… oh well, at least it’s off…”? Okay, so at least I got a chuckle out of it in the end. But I certainly wasn’t going right back to sleep at that point. Instead “Frasier” took my mind off of anything remotely scary in the world.

I’m sure some of you have seen this before, but Lisa forwarded this gem to me last night:

The GOP National Committee announced today that it is changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to a condom because it more clearly reflects the party’s political stance. A condom accommodates inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

It was also reported today that at a White House staff meeting last week a heated discussion arose about the health of Vice President Cheney and his angina problem. President Bush interrupted and stated emphatically that men do not have anginas.

Yes, it’s juvenile. But I still laughed (especially at the end).

Today I placed my pre-order for GTA San Andreas. “But it come out tomorrow,” you say. “Why bother pre-ordering now?” Well, the guys at the local Game Stop told me that the shipment will be in at 7 tonight. Chances are, it will sell out. But if I put the pre-order in then, I’d still have it guaranteed for tonight. Oh well, it was nice spending time with my girlfriend, but I guess that will have to come to a stop now. Any of you fools silly enough to not pick it up right away are welcome to watch me enjoy killing sprees with mouths gaping.

The release comes at a crappy time, financially. Last week I already dropped a chunk of change to pick up the much delayed DVD release of Tim Burton’s masterpiece Ed Wood, as well as the first season of the greatest new show on TV, Arrested Development and the latest installment of Invader Zim. On top of that, Best Buy also had the special collector’s edition of Hellboy and the final season of Farscape out on the shelf. Somehow I managed to make it out of there with my bank account intact. But it looks like the coming months could be difficult. Especially if I finally cave in and join the Xbox community in time for the next big thing. Hey, who needs to save money, anyway.

Lisa came over to me with a somewhat excited yet serious look on her face, insisting that I turn down the TV. “It’s the Gallup Poll,” she explained. As much as we both wanted her to be the one to do it, their attempt at randomness pegged me (whoever had the most recent birthday). Why her? Well, I knew that in the end they would be asking whether or not you are likely to vote and I would have to say “No,” which could effect the way my answers would be used. And don’t bother asking why somewhat who despises Bush as much as I do won’t be voting – just accept it, or be prepared for a full-on lecture regarding my beliefs.

Anywho, it was an interesting experience. I’d say that my answers were a fairly good look at my political sway – a moderate liberal who considers himself Independent, but leans toward the Democrats and thinks that Bush is possibly the worst President ever. I said that if I were voting it would be for Kerry and that I endorse him, etc. About the only credit I gave to Bush was saying that he was a stronger and more decisive leader (which in my opinion is one of his failings). Other than that, on a scale of -5 to +5 I rated Bush’s performance a -5 and gave Kerry a +3 as for my own support.

The demographic questions at the end were interesting. They asked the usual age/race/religion type stuff, but also asked me about my favorite type of music and what kind of car I drive. I’m curious to see how that adds up. I was very intent on being honest, which is why I reluctantly had to say that the election means more than usual and that I think the country is headed towards the shitter if “my candidate” lost, but I still won’t be voting…

Overall, a cool experience, and I gave them permission to call me back for follow-ups. Lisa was commenting just the other night about polls and how “they didn’t ask her.” Well, now I can say that I was asked, and that my opinion, at least temporarily, mattered.

Yes, I did watch The Game last night. Yes, it was awesome. Yes, this could very well mean that just about anything (even a Philly team winning a championship) is on the horizon. But the funny thing is, the whol ordeal was rather anticlimactic. If that had been any team other than the Yankees on the losing end, that game would have been a snore after the second inning. If that was the Cards-Astros game, most people would have given up once the score hit a ridiculous 8-1. But instead, we all watched with baited breath… waiting for the other shoe to drop…

But it never did. The Yankees were never really in the game. One hit through 6 innings against a starter people were hoping could make it to 5? The only life they showed was a short awakening when Pedro came out, only to have him slap them right back down. With 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth, everybody was nervous as hell when that routine grounder was hit to seemingly end the game. Even the second baseman seemed confused by the ease of the final out. And then I realized that another dynasty was going out with a whimper – just as the Lakers had done against the Spurs. There was nothing to fear from them. There was no mighty magic that would save them from such an ignominious end. There was no Yankee mystique to be found.

Nevertheless, I’m happy that it’s over. I can only hope that the Sox finally put this whole “curse” nonsense to rest. Afterall, I am a Philly fan… I need to believe in miracles.