Robots Don’t Sleep

For anyone that’s interested in the power of Microsoft Silverlight, I recommend checking out this amazing project by a blogger named Liquidboy. Basically, he recreates iTunes entirely in Silverlight, and blogged about every step of his process. If you have some time, please check it out. It really blew me away when I saw it.

Here is the main blog post with links to each of his steps. You will need Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh to view any of the prototypes or the finished application. It’s well worth it to see the insane power that Silverlight offers.

Source: dnknormark.net: Silverlight 1.0 Officially Released

It’s titled, “Do We Really Want Another Black President After The Events Of Deep Impact?” Read it here.

When is it acceptable for a team leader to encourage “hard-code everything for now, and then maybe we’ll fix it later”? What about when the rest your team is fine with it? What then?

Hack now, refactor later.

I hope the real world isn’t like this.

This is probably dead news by now to most people, but it’s still pretty important for a lot of reasons, like voters choosing their nominee for the upcoming election.

So, my roommates and I were just talking about politics, and Iraq came up. Now, I never agreed that we should have invaded Iraq. I believe that our continuing occupation there is not only digging us further in debt, but also costing the lives of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers. So far, it is estimated that 88,000 Iraqis and 3,950 U.S. Armed Forces have been killed in the Iraq War (sources: ¹ and ²). Compared to 9/11, which had a death toll of 2,974 fatalities, the Iraq war has killed over 30 times more people.³

Let me preface this by saying that an uncle of mine is in his second tour of Iraq, and my friend’s brother has been there more times than that. I don’t agree with the war but I still support the troops - blah you’ve heard all this a million times before so why should I bother.

Anyway, I had some key disagreements with them, but my biggest issue is that one of my roommates denied that Bush tried linking the attacks of 9/11 and Iraq in order to justify the invasion. There are really two different arguments going on here.

First of all, there’s the notion that Bush was wrong about Iraq (no WMD’s, no real Iraq link to 9/11), and we know that this notion ended up being dead on. Now, most people can agree with this notion, while others simply refuse (”Well, how do we know Saddam wasn’t planning on building WMDs?”). However, most of us can agree that we didn’t go into Iraq for the reasons Bush was telling us. This is fine, but our argument stemmed from the idea that if Bush had stated plain and clear that he wanted to invade Iraq to kill Saddam, “liberate” the people, bring democracy to their front door, and occupy the country to have control over the oil, we should still support that! I don’t agree at all. I think that the only way he could garner support for this invasion was by stirring up the American people by using the “If we don’t attack them, they’ll attack us!” ideology. Don’t get me wrong, I think Saddam was a bad guy and the world is probably better off without him, but are we the ones to trade so many lives to take down one evil man? If our country really only cared about saving the world from evil and bringing democracy to countries in need, why would we randomly pick Iraq out of the bowl? Simple - there were hidden agendas from the start.

The second argument is that Bush didn’t try to make non-existent ties between Iraq with 9/11 to gain support from an angry and emotional American people. That is simply not true. The whole administration played the American public and got 70% of the country to agree that we didn’t care that we couldn’t find bin Laden. On September 11th and 12th, then-Defense Secretary Dondald Rumsfeld suggested that the US should use 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq. Then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz pushed for a regime change in Iraq, claiming that there is a 10 to 50 percent chance that Iraq was involved in the attacks, and claims that Iraq should be attacked because it is ultimately the source of the terrorist problem.⁴.

There are just a ton of quotes from Bush that I could quote here, but I think I’d be just mostly preaching to the choir. Also, it’s late and this blog entry is way too long. Everyone knows that Bush lied about what we were going to war for, and I thought that with an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting us to get out of Iraq, people out here would agree with me for the most part. But, I like debating about politics, so I guess I got my fill for the day.

I don’t usually do political blog entries, but I’m still in the mood from yesterday, listening to the news all night and watching polls go up and down. I’ve only recently struck an interest in politics, honestly, but I truly do enjoy debating with people over issues. My friend Brandon and I used to argue for fun but now I don’t really have anyone to do that with, so I usually just end up pissing people off with the way I debate.

Ok, so here’s my issue: I want to know why people like Hillary Clinton so damn much. More accurately, I want to know exactly why certain people don’t like Obama. I truly feel like he is the real thing — a true leader; he’s smart, he inspires people, and he stands up for what he believes in. Have you ever listened to one of his speeches? Best of all, I agree with his ideas for how the government should work for the people. The only thing I’ve heard negative about him is that he is isn’t as strong as he should be on the torture issue, but from what I’ve read, that’s not the case.

“When I am this party’s nominee, [my opponents] will not be able to say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or not it is ok for America to torture — because it is never ok… I will end the war in Iraq… I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus.” — Barack Obama, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, 2007

I like his policies dealing with technology. I like his foreign policy ideas. I like him as a person. So, what don’t people like about him? I want to know. And don’t say you don’t like him because he doesn’t have enough political experience. I think this quote by Robert DeNiro puts it best:

“Barack Obama does not have the experience to be president of the United States. For one thing: He wasn’t experienced enough to authorize the invasion of Iraq. And that’s not all. It’s clear Barack Obama does not have the experience to let the special interests run the government. That’s the kind of inexperience I can get used to.” — Robert DeNiro, East Rutherford, NJ, February 4, 2008

What really bothers me is when I tell someone that I like Obama and they cringe, “Eh, I don’t really agree with some of his policies… but he’s better than Hillary.” Well, what don’t you agree with? Seriously, name a policy that you don’t like. If you’re going to say that you disagree with his policies, you should be ablee to name the ones you disagree with. The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard is religious nuts that receive misinformation and take it for truth. The notion that Obama is secretly Muslim, and is trying to destroy America from the inside-out. Or, that Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart when the National Anthem is played. Are you retarded? Honestly, I want to know if you were dropped on your head as a child.

I could tell you a million reasons why I do not support Hillary for President. I really want to know why anyone supports her at all. What do people like about her? That she’s a woman running for president? That she’s Bill’s wife? Honestly, I think that she is contrived - a carefully calculated political machine. She will do whatever it takes to get votes, and I don’t know how people can fall for that sort of thing. She chokes up the night before the New Hampshire primaries, and she comes from behind to beat Obama. Now, she’s starting to fall behind again, and then lost to Obama in South Carolina. So, what does she do the day before the Super Tuesday primaries? She gets all teary-eyed again in the public eye. It’s pretty pathetic.

Anyway, as of now, New Mexico is still too close to call. It’s pretty crazy. Obama’s barely winning by around 117 votes, which really makes me regret not registering to vote in time. He took Utah pretty easily, which was kind of a surprise for me. Of course, it does not surprise me at all that Romney won Utah by a landslide — somewhere around 90%. Wow, who would have guessed?

So tell me, why do you like/dislike certain candidates?

There are a lot of things going on right now, and it’s kind of hard for me to collect all my thoughts and make them form cohesive sentences. I might just stay up all night — I’m calling it a “hard reset”. You probably know what that means so I won’t bother explaining.

Most of the last year and a half has been a blur. I remember most of that blur being some of the best times that I can remember, but some of that blur seems like I was just spinning my wheels — not really going anywhere but still pushing the gas to the floor.

Sometimes I’ll be driving to school or on the train to work and I’ll remember something odd about my childhood or a memory from high school that I thought was a defining moment. Maybe at the time it seemed like it was, but now it just seems like a time that never happened. I mean, I know these things happened and I can picture myself there, but it’s so much easier just to stow it away and stop thinking about it.

My 21st is coming up soon, but not soon enough.

I had a great idea for a short story the other day, and I almost sat at my keyboard and starting writing it out. But, I didn’t. It takes too much time to be creative and do my own thing.

I’m starting to get really fed up with a certain person, and I can’t even explain it. I said to Josh today that I’m starting to get annoyed with how much he annoys me. Every word that comes out of his mouth makes me cringe, and I’m starting to wonder if I create this annoyance just so I can have something to complain about. Maybe not.

I’m going to have some really cool stuff to talk about soon, but first I need a big slap in the face and maybe just one glance from a person on the train. I’m here, I’m waiting.