Props to John McCain for a very well put concession speech. I still say I wouldn't have been terribly disappointed if he had pulled the upset.

But wow, what a night!

I'm just posting the link and leaving you to fend for yourself. I had no idea these things existed, but did know they existed, just not in the way that I thought they did...

My mind boggles.

All of that was bullshit, this thing is awesome, and I say that as one who went into it thinking that I was going to encounter flaws, but was resigned to learning to live with them. Most markedly in the department of connecting to and syncing with my work Exchange mail, but my skepticism was ill placed and I was blown away by the functionality and ease of use. Not only do I see all of my Exchange folders, and no shitting you, I can search the global address book, something I'm not sure was possible with my MDA and mobile Windows. Also, I was able to setup VPN access to the network and was able to browse our internal websites, even logging into some services. It all functioned as expected and I found myself even more impressed of the iPhone's Safari browser. Very functional. And even cooler was that all of this was setup quickly with no muss and fuss, and I was never able to get my mobile Windows phone hooked up to the wireless at work, something I know is very easy to do with the iPhone.

So yeah, I'm very happy with my purchase and pleased that I went through with it. So far the only bad thing is what I expected and what I had already read, and that's that the battery drains quickly if you really use the device. And by use I mean do all the things you can do with it. That may be a problem later on, we'll see. I'm still apprehensive about selling my soul to AT&T, but that couldn't be helped. The salesman was cool except that when I told him I was going to use it to get my work email he piped up that I needed the advanced data plan so I could get around firewalls and stuff. Um, yeah, no thanks. I'm not sure what the hell he was thinking or trying to sell me, but he didn't pressure when I said no thanks, so it was all good.

I am, and have been, leaning more and more towards Obama. From the very get go I’ve liked the cut of his jib, and the more I heard him speak and learned his ideas the more I felt better about letting myself get drawn in that direction. Now, the one argument made most frequently against my decision to support Obama, and barring any huge catastrophic development, vote for him has been his lack of experience. And I’ve gone through the Internet and looked at evidence, read articles outlining how he is qualified to be the president, but when you get down to it he is a junior senator. He’s been in office for two years in the Senate and he’s spent a good deal of that time campaigning to be president.

That said, and even letting myself succumb to the idea that he is the less experienced candidate in the race, I have a very hard time letting myself believe in McCain. I’m not political junky, I treat politics like I do most everything else, I keep an eye on it and listen to or read stories from time-to-time, but very rarely do I get really into it. I say that to preface the comment that I’ve always kind of liked John McCain, but it seems more and more that he’s become the creature he spent the majority of his career avoiding. When I listen to him speak or see him at an appearance I find myself wanting to believe in him, wanting to have faith that he’s going to be upright, strong, moral leader that he says he will. Then I think about the fact that I’ve spent the last eight years wishing that of Bush.

I’ll freely admit that I’ve championed and defended George W. Bush about as much as I possibly can, but now I’m tired of it and I don’t have the energy to make up excuses anymore. Whether the past eight years are directly his fault or not, I feel that the Bush presidency made a lot of bad choices, and it’s all but impossible to sugar coat the Iraq war in any way. The more I look at his legacy the more it reeks of some poorly conceived and ill-executed conspiracy by people who thought they knew what they were doing. What all of this means is that I’m no longer willing to put my faith in someone because I feel that they’re being treated unfairly by the “liberal media” or at fault only because they tried their best in the face of incredibly difficult times. This may be unfair to McCain, but Pailn doesn’t help, and unfortunately I think the guy is just eight years too late.
When your engine is on fire with two tires blown out, you don’t pull over and ask someone from the same team to drive for you, you pull over and find someone who can repair the damage and then shows you a safer road to drive down.

The venue was the Palladium Ballroom and I have to admit that I was quite disappointed to find that it's a no seat venue, with standing room only. I've lately taken on the mantra that I like to be comfortable and the idea of standing for four hours was depressing, not only that but Mitzy has problems with her feet and standing was not an option. Fortunately we found, while not seats, places to sit near the back of the, I guess you'd call it a theater. This wasn't the best vantage point, but it was good enough and the relative smallness of the theater meant that you could really hear the music. Besides, I didn't expect that lively of a show anyway, I figured it'd be more about the music than the prancing about and what-not. I was a bit wrong in that regard.

The first act was a fellow who's name I didn't quite catch, but I believe his band or moniker or whatever was Iron and Wine. He did have a righteous beard, and I commented to Mitzy about this. She agreed. Iron and Wine, he had a very folksy earthy tone and while we both enjoyed it I found that most of his songs sounded the same. I don't know if it was our distance from the stage, or maybe something else, but it was hard to hear the lyrics. I suspect he mumbled a lot.

First off I have to say that I was impressed with the crowd, there were a lot of people there and their enthusiasm for Glen and Marketa was markedly enthusiastic. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a slim crowd there, but that was most certainly the case and it's nice to see that music like this attracts a substantial crowd. When they got up on the stage they started right of with "Falling Slowly", and then moved between other songs and the Once soundtrack pretty evenly. As I stated earlier I thought it would be a pretty dry show, but dang I couldn't have been more wrong about that. Glen really is quite the showman and was very animated on stage. I knew the kind of emotion he brought to his vocals, but I hadn't considered how that would carry over into a live show. It was unexpected, but a delightful surprise.

They pretty much ran through the whole Once soundtrack and that was appreciated, but we were treated to a lot of their other work. The only hitch to this, and I have been to other shows were the artist tells what the song is about, or what inspired it, but I don't think I've ever seen two such artists do it quite as verbosely as Glen and Marketa did. And while that was a little tiresome, both of them are so charming that I didn't mind at all. Of course after the regular set they came back out for the encore and it's been awhile since I've seen a really enthusiastic encore, but they really brought the energy back out and it turned into a little bit of a goof when Glen did a rendition of "Cry Me a River". It was absolutely hilarious, especially when he threatened the crowd with death if he saw in on YoutTube afterwards.

Overall it was a great evening and throughly enjoyable evening, a wonderful little bit of entertainment.

So our esteemed government is asking us to have Faith in it one more time, because that's worked out so well in the past. They want us to ostensibly write them a blank check, because believe you me they just pulled that $700 billion bullshit out of their ass. Hell, if the government does bail this thing out they’ll have to hire the people that created the problem in the first place to show them how to fix it. Seriously!?

I say let the ship sink, let all those rich fuckers choke on their own bile and vomit, and once they all die off maybe the next ones to come along will be a little more careful.

Obama really brought it home, gone were the warm and fuzzies and instead he took out the baseball bat and asked us to call him batman. Here's hoping anyway. At the time I felt really good about the prospect of the Dems getting some cahones from somewhere and actually standing up to the Repubs, but now I'm not so sure. I still hope though.

I missed Palin's speech, but did go back and watch a bit of it on your tube. Meh. I get the distinct feeling that they told her what to say, patted her on the fanny and sent her out into the crowd. She gave a good speech, and she did what she was supposed to. She really go the Repubs excited, though I'm not 100% sure why as I have to think that most of them were still going, " Huh, who?" I want to root for her, but she comes off as such a gimmick pick for McCain, much more so than a pick that would balance him out or provide a...wait, what does the VP do again?

McCain's speech really got me going, which it was suppose to, but afterwards it left me feeling a little hungover. Now I don't know if just don't remember it correctly, but it seemed he didn't have much to say, 'cept that he's now the change candidate too. Can you do that? Shouldn't there be a penalty like switching alignments in the middle of a D&D campaign? I do remember that he spent twenty minutes about his time as a POW, and having now read his wikipedia profile, I'd say he nailed it pretty well. I don't want to belittle the man's service to our country, or mock the terrible experience of a POW, but you know how you say word too many times and it starts to sound funny...

Since all of this went down I haven't been paying a lot of attention, though Mitzy and I have had some hearty discussions. Seems we don't see eye-to-eye, and that's for the best as it's made me think a bit more critically than I might have otherwise. Still, as of now, I'm still leaning pretty solid towards Obama/Biden, but looking forward to the debates.

I admit I did not like Mr. Clinton when he was in office, but my opinion of him went up after he was out of office, and once the W began to show us how bad it could really be. I've gone back and forth as to my opinion of him over the last few weeks. He kinda sorta bombed his wife's campaign, and he only seemed interested in stroking his own ego and pointing out how awesome he was as president. I still think he's a smarmy, slick bastard, but the dude can really bring it when he needs to and it looked like he delivered a pretty rousing speech. It got me excited anyway.

I'm not a 100% on ol' Barak, his lack of any real experience is worrisome, and part of me thinks that it isn't that big of a deal, or at least not as bad as they all make it out to be. But still. I will say that the guy seems to be getting some folks around him who do have experience and seem to be pretty steadfast, and hardy. I didn't/don't know much about Biden, but I've liked what I've heard so far. I've heard him described like this:

"Biden is a tough motherfucker. God tried to take him out with a double brain aneurysm, and Biden kicked God in the nuts. Don't you want a Vice President who can kick God in the nuts and not be allied with Satan?" via RudePundit

So even if Obama is a panty-waist, wuss, liberal weanie, he's got a rabid pitbull right behind him that'll rip your neck out if you don't hop to it. I kinda like that.

I don't like extremism, so I still cringe at people who so uninhibitedly go after Bush with every disparaging comment that they can muster, the more extreme the better. Hitler? Please, if you make that comparison you pretty much loose all credibility in my book (and I'm sure that hurts a lot people's feelings). Still, as much as I like to root for the underdog, or make claims that they are misunderstood, and that they've fought the hard battle when it wasn't popular, it's very difficult to not say that damage has been done. It's hard to deny that the middle class is in trouble, that the wealthy are getting richer, and that far too many US citizens are struggling far too much in a country as rich as this one is. Something has to change, and I'm really afraid that McCain won't change things enough. The guy is not Bush's twin, he's not Hitler either, but at the end of the day I don't think he's going to help the folks who need it most, and we are at the point where we need to be paying attention to our own people.

And I'm a confused, uninformed white dude with conservative tendencies, so I can't imagine anyone who registers Democrat would ever consider voting Republican. Just to prove a point? Just to show that you can throw a big old hissy fit because your candidate didn't get the nomination, all the while putting the same party back in power that has allowed the country to get into the shape it has? That's just stupid. But I was wondering if that's the inherent problem with liberally minded people, with their high ideas and strong convictions. Are they too loosey-goosey? Do they all get too high minded with their great ideas about saving polar bears, and which all-natural peanut butter helps you lower your carbon footprint? To the extent where they really can't unite in the face of such a determined and obvious opponent? I still think this is why Bush got reelected.

I'm worried, worried that it will happen again, worried that I'll have endure another four years of fucking liberals grousing about how much republicans resemble Hitler. For the love of anything holy get your shit together and elect Barak Obama. Even HR Clinton's speech at the convention seemed like lip service, she still seems bitter that she lost, like she couldn't let it go. Sure she said what she needed to say, what she had to say, but she really didn't polish Obama's knob at all, though she got some kicks in at McCain. Maybe that will be enough to knock her rabid cohorts back into reality, so they'll realize how crazy dropping Obama to prove a point really is.

The old apartment must be vacated by Wednesday, and we still have a few things lingering there, but I feel pretty good about getting them out and away and safely stored in our new residence. I've actually met some of my neighbors and they all seem like tip-top folk, I do not fear them.

The kitties seem to have adjusted well, they seem to be loving the comparably wide open spaces and the multitude of windows from which they can now peer. Their world must seem so much larger now.

The US team, going into the floor exercises, needed to execute flawlessly, and turn it up to 11. Without both of those factors I don't think they could have beat the Chinese, baring a Commie implosion. And I think out of all possibilities that one was the least likely to happen, the Chinese were far too consistent. Still, the poor execution by the US girls was hard to watch, I know they had higher expectations for themselves and even if the chances of them beating the Reds was slim it sucks that fell farther short of what they wanted to accomplish.

It's hard to deny that the Chinese girls performed at such a high level, and it was a treat to get to watch them. I admit I'm a little suspicious, some of those girls in no way looked 16 years old, but at this point I would feel like a whiny little bitch to pinpoint that as the reason they won. Bottom line is that they brought a great product to the table and they elevated their game when they had to. The US gave them a run for their money, no doubt, and there was a chance at the end for the Americans to win the gold, but both teams were so good it was just a question of who was going to bend or break first. Unfortunately it was our girls who did, but they done real good and they have nothing to be ashamed of.

Plus, did you see how far back the bronze medal was in points? Crazy, that's how good both teams were!

I believe, but am not certain, that you can follow me @ JeffreyL

The internets hurt my brain sometimes. And I feel that because I am in IT I am expected to understand it more than the usual person. But I do not, and I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I can follow *you* if you like, though the notion of how you would communicate this to me is not entirely clear on my part. I already follow Warren Ellis, Snoop Dogg, the Diesel Sweeties guy and the Sneeze guy, plus some others who are no less awesome because I didn't mention them, so you will be amongst an esteemed crowd of Internet Gladiators.

I wonder if gladiators will ever become the next ninja, pirate, chuck norris fad?