OMG! Moveable Printed Type!

Is it a sign that I'm a total dork that I found this funny enough to download and make into a clip? (Don't worry, it's only 12 seconds long)

Wii Have a Question For Yuu
Apparently, I'm outgrowing my SNES.

Let's say one wanted to buy some sort of gaming system for the sole purpose of playing either Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Or possibly some sort of singing game like Sing Star or whatever. But one is not heavily invested (or at all invested) in any other games. This being the case:

a) Which gaming system should this person buy? Said person is thinking of Wii, because it's more affordable than the Playstation 3 (Hello!?! $400???). Said person is wondering if the Playstation 2 will soon be on the outs since, you know. It's an old version. Said person is wondering what's up with the XBox. Any good? Avoid?

b) Let's say said person boought a gaming system. Should said person buy Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Let the record show that it would be Guitar Hero World Tour since, hello. Drums and mic etc are a must. Which one of these is better? Does it really even matter?

c) If you bought the necessary plastic instruments for one game, can you use them with the software for the other game? Or must you buy 2 separate sets of plastic instruments? Which would be ridiculous.

d) Is there anything else said person should know?

Said person would like your (hopefully informed) comments. Please.

Sources (Liz) say that Franken now only trails by 125 votes. And the pile of disputed ballots is growing steadily. Let's go Team Al!

Fill 'er Up!
I've got gas

In the time it took me to use half a tank of gas, gas prices fell $1.00. Which is both a testament to how quickly the prices are falling, and how little I drive my car. The last time I filled up my car, it was because prices fell below $3. I couldn't resist, even though I didn't really need gas. I now have half a tank, and I feel I must fill up again, now that gas is $1.97. Plus, I'll actually be using a lot of gas over Thanksgiving weekend, having to drive to Rochester and back. I remember when gas was like $1.87, and that was back in high school. Weird. Not long ago, gas was over $4.

Apparently, consumer prices are falling and we're entering a period of deflation. How long do you think it'll take for the Wii to cost $100? That's what I'm waiting for.

OMG. Look at what Newt Gingrich said on The O'Reilly Factor recently:

GINGRICH: Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

Everything about this makes me want to die from Newt being such a friggin' idiot. Yes. Yes, it's definitely the gays and atheists that are shoving their beliefs down everyone else's throats.

The stupid video game music finally stopped. I started working on the book review again. Just as I was catching my stride, even louder music started up. This time it sounds like cheesy porno music. With lots of bass. F off, you MuthaHumpa.

I guess I'll go to bed and TRY to wake up early-ish tomorrow to get stuff done. Provided I can get to sleep with the a-hole next door being jagoff.

(I'm going to a Badger bkb game with Sarah tomorrow. No matter how much work I have, I apparently can't say no to a free Badger bkb game)

I Hate You
And I want you to die

I'm trying to write my book review (I hate this assignment more than life itself). It's a sucky task by itself and I'm already having a hard time concentrating enough to get things done, but now it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to do anything. My neighbor is playing something really really loudly. I have no idea what it is, but it's the most annoying thing on the planet. Seriously, I don't know what it is. If it's music. it's the most annoying music known to man. My best guess is that it's background music for a videogame. It's driving me completely mad, and is seriously preventing me from doing any work. The only things I can concentrate on are THOSE SOUNDS. WHY ARE PEOPLE SO NOISY SO LATE AT NIGHT??? I HATE YOU, NEIGHBOR.

OMFG, it just got louder. Pretty sure it's a video game, as I'm now hearing weird sound effects.

I guess I'm done working on this for the night. Maybe I can get myself to something else I don't hate so much...and doesn't require 340% of my concentration.

I'm sorry, but I just had to post this. Because it's adorable and hilarious.

Cat Stuck in a Box @ Yahoo! Video

Taking A Break From All Your Worries
Sure would help a lot

While eating lunch, I was watching some TV (it's kind of hard to read while eating soup). Legally Blonde was on CW. I thought it was interesting that they kept dubbing over the word "sperm" with "seed." Since when can't you say sperm on TV, especially when it's not being used in an overly sexual context? And personally, I find the word "seed" more eww-worthy in that context.

Sometimes I Have No Faith in Humanity

I just read 4 extremely disturbing news stories centered in or near Rochester.

1) A guy stabbed and killed his wife and son, and tried to kill his 2 daughters. He was only prevented from killing the daughters because his son, whom he had stabbed in the neck, fought back and managed to stab him back.

2) Two white 25 year old guys were charged with killing a Somalian guy just because he was Somalian. They're calling it a bias crime, which I guess is the same thing as a hate crime?

3) In Rochester, someone shot and killed a dog when the family let it out to go to the bathroom.

4) The number of attacks against homeless/handicapped people is on the rise. People seriously beat the shit out of homeless people for fun.

WTF is wrong with people??? It makes me sick. Wtf would make a person do any of these things? People. Ugh.

The Death Rattle
Prepare to join me in singing a lament

My computer is dying. I think. A while ago, my computer's SD card slot stopped working. Which was annoying, but not too bad. This past week, however, my computer began making noises that CLEARLY should not be coming out of any computer. I dubbed it the Death Rattle. It's the sound of hardware completely breaking down and rattling about. And it's LOUD. It does come and go. Right now, it sounds OK. When I first woke it up from its slumber, it sounded like it had about 5 more minutes of life.

When it first started making these scary noises about a week ago, I backed up all my data on an external hard drive, so I'm not too concerned with losing stuff. But this is quite possibly the worst month in the history of history AND pre-history AND the future for my computer to be out of commission.

I have 3 papers due this month that I have yet to start on. I have a big project due Monday that I have yet to start on. I have a book report I have to write, before which I need to read the actual book. Due Tuesday. Plus, other things crammed in there. Seriously.

So I don't know what to do. Logic and caution tells me that I should contact Dell tech support ASAP to try to fix things before they get completely out of hand and unfixable. But that will probably take a considerable amount of time, in which my computer will probably be shipped to some facility in Atlanta. Which means I'd have to write all my papers etc, at school in the computer labs. Which I KNOW I will have a very hard time doing. Plus, it just means I'll have to spend more time at school which sucks. I was at school for 11 hours today. God. I gave a presentation on Zotero at 9:30pm for Chrissakes.

WHAT DO I DO???

(I'm hoping the rattly noise is only my computer's fan dying, not the hard drive. Both of which apparently make scary rattly noises when they're near death)

PS- Happy Pepero Day a half an hour late!!!

The vote difference between Franken and Claymation "Giant Teeth" Horeseface is now 236 votes. Come on, keep narrowing!!!

(I haven't had fun with Photoshop in a while, so I felt compelled to create this)

Tight Race

According to WCCO:

As of 4:55 p.m. Thursday, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over Democrat Al Franken is 336.

With nearly 2.9 million ballots cast, that's a difference between the top two candidates of about one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

Wow.

JavaScript?
Why yes, I do like coffee and writing.

I just went to a DoIT class on "Introduction to Scripting." Wow. Computer science majors are not teachers. :D

Missouri
No longer the bellwether state

Brighton, what's up with Missouri?? For shame. You guys really mis-read this one! :)

I see that Coleman currently has been declared the victor in the MN Senate race, with a whopping lead of...725 votes, or something. Which, per MN law, requires a recount. Maybe they'll find 1000 Franken votes laying in a box in a corner somewhere. Hey, a girl can hope...

It appears that California's Proposition 8 was passed. Ugh ugh ugh. What's the deal with the country being so damn homophobic? I look forward to the day when a black lesbian is elected president. At least California, South Dakota, and Colorado didn't pass their abortion referendums.

I randomly stumbled upon this YouTube video of the plane/Obama banner I talked about in a previous post. Here it is. Feel free to "fast forward" to about 2 minutes in. Prior to that, it's pretty boring and consists of 2 people unrolling a banner onto a field. Not that the remaining time is unbridled excitement, but you can see what I saw. Since that's everyone's goal.

The 44th President of the United States
Barack Obama

FINALLY! An election has gone my way! Until today, I was 0-2 in presidential elections. It's nice to finally win one.

Freshman year at UW-Madison was my first presidential election. I voted absentee for Minnesota. I liked the tiny pencil that came in the mail along with the ballot. :) Wow, was that a weird and stressful and crushingly disappointing and anger-inducing election. Elation turning to horror. Countless hours logged in front of the TV in the coming weeks. The infamous hanging chad. It's still bizarre to me to see a candidate get more popular votes but still lose. On a related note, I just learned tonight that Nebraska splits up their electoral votes based on percentages. I didn't know states could do that.

Then there was 2004. Honestly, I don't remember much about that one. Except Kerry lost. :( And it was really close in Wisconsin. This was the year that I was student teaching at Sherman Middle School in a 7th grade classroom. I taught about elections and the importance of reading about the issues. We had a class vote. Kerry won. The kids had to do a project that year about the future. Different groups had different themes. One group, comprised all of black students, had the topic of government, or something. I remember them saying that they couldn't imagine a black person ever being elected president. That was just so sad to me at that time. I'm now very happy that 4 years later they can say that their future predictions were incorrect. :)

As I was waiting for the bus this morning, I was hoping the buses would be scrolling "Vote!," since on Badger game days they scroll, "Go Badgers!" As the 3 bus came into view to pick me up, I saw that it was indeed scrolling the words, "Vote Today." Yay! That made me very happy. Today and yesterday I saw a plane flying around with a banner trailing behind proclaiming, "VOTE OBAMA." There was an obscene number of "Election Observers" at my polling location this morning. I don't really remember seeing many at all in previous elections. But there were probably 15 of them today.

Measuring elections in terms of concerts, in 2000 I saw Melissa Etheridge perform at a Gore rally. In 2004 I saw Bruce Springsteen perform at a Kerry rally, and this year I saw Wilco perform for Obama. Only not at his rally. I did go to both Hillary Clinton's and Obama's rallies in Madison when they were campaigning for the Democratic nomination.

Very discouraging news on the number states passing referendums denying rights to homosexuals (both marriage and adoption). I haven't heard anything about California's Proposition 8 yet. In Minnesota races, I'm saddened to see that it appears Michele Bachmann will win her race. Coleman and Franken are currently neck-in-neck, with Coleman having the slight lead (80% reporting). I wish I knew which 20% have yet to be reported. Traditionally Republican or Democrat? I hate Coleman. The only reason he got voted into office 6 years ago was because Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash a few weeks before the election. Good to see District 1 (including Rochester) overwhelmingly voted for incumbent Democrat Tim Walz.

VOTE!!!

It makes you live longer.

I have a bone to pick with Madison. They never give out "I voted" stickers after you vote. I love those stickers! And how will people know I voted? Now I will undoubtedly keep being harassed by people with clipboards on the street.

I got in line to vote at the Madison Ice Arena at 7:55am. The line was pretty long. They did have a giant table full of goodies (coffee and bars and cookies, etc) that you could buy. I didn't. Being as it was an ice arena, there were also arcade games and vending machines. I contemplated getting a hot chocolate from the vending machine and playing that giant claw game (where you try to get stuffed animals), but I didn't. I was sad to see that the beverage vending machine didn't have chicken noodle soup. That was always my favorite. But weird. Chicken noodle soup from a vending machine? Huh.

But man, the organizers at my polling location had their shit together. People who needed to register were filling out forms while in line to speed things up. It ended up only taking me 25 minutes. Rock on. People who voted early to avoid long lines had to wait in line like an hour or more. Hehe. When I left the line had been almost cut in half. I was the 307th person to vote at my polling location (an hour into the voting day).

I had forgot that the coat I was wearing had an Obama sticker on it. As I was walking to the building, a lady leaving said to me, "You better take off that sticker! One girl got all the way to the front and they made her go to the back of the line because she had an Obama button." So I flipped my collar inside out. All was good. You'd think they'd have someone monitoring that as people get in line so that wouldn't happen. Oh well.

Apparently Starbucks is giving away free coffee to people who voted today. And Ben and Jerry's is giving away a free scoop of ice cream to people between the hours of 3-5 today. And Krispy Kreme is giving away free donuts. I don't think we have a Krispy Kreme here.

Yeah. I still want an "I voted" sticker, dammit!

And I will leave you all with this presidential candidate dance-off:

If you believe in death, disgrace, or immorality, vote for Barack Obama!

I just got a RoboCall from the McCain campaign telling me that Obama loves abortions. Ok, not those words exactly, but pretty close. It ended with, "If you believe life, dignity, and values are important, vote John McCain." I guess I don't think life, dignity, or values are important as I will NOT be voting for McCain.

I've also gotten an increase in political mailing recently. All of the ones from the McCain campaign/RNC are strictly bashing Obama and don't even mention McCain. All the ones from the Obama campaign/DNC are about information on voting, making no mention of McCain. And the conservatives are claiming that Obama is being just as negative as McCain...

I went to a free Wilco concert on campus today--Concert For Change, or something. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold gave a short speech beforehand. The Russ Feingold of the McCain-Feingold bill (Campaign Finance Reform). He endorses Obama, not McCain. It ended with Representative Tammy Baldwin (lesbian representative of the district that includes Madison) giving a short speech and leading a march to the city/county building to vote early so people can help "get out the vote" on election day. I think the march was piteously attended.

I personally want to vote on November 4th, as it makes me feel like I'm "part of the day," if that makes sense. It's more exciting for me. But I'm going to have to go pretty early as I'm away from my house from 11:30 until after the polls close. And since the lines could be very long (they always say that, but I've rarely had to wait that long) I feel I should give myself plenty of time so I don't miss my bus or something.

Yay. Election day almost here!