I don’t know who McCain was hoping to woo with his selection of Sarah Palin for the VP spot, but it certainly wasn’t me.  So far I have learned:

• She has been governor for less than 2 years, and before that, she was mayor of a town whose population is a tenth of the size of O’fallon.  So much for Obama not have the necessary experience to lead. What happens if McCain dies in office.
• She has a history of pandering to creationists.  When virtually every scientist who looks at the evidence agrees that:
  • The earth is more than 6000 years old
  • Living things evolve over time
  • The earth is not flat
  • The earth is not the center of the universe
  • The BIG BANG happened.

  and I have read about or seen significant evidence, I think the debate is over.  We don’t need to lie to our kids in the science classroom to hope they will believe a literal version of an ancient text that’s been translated and edited countless times.

• She is a global warming denialist.  Maybe I should send her the graph I collected for  pwjagwdyecn Cynthia Davis.
• She is anti-choice.  I understand opposition to late term abortions.  I somewhat understand oppositions to any abortions.  What I don’t understand are the extreme anti-choicers who:
  • support abstinence only education which has been shown not to be effective.
  • are opposed to educating on birth control- which would reduce abortions (duh)
  • want to classify any birth control as abortion
  • want to stop Plan-B, which prevents pregnancy after the fact, thus preventing the need for abortions.
• She is opposed to alternative energy solutions (big surprise, coming from an oil rich state like Alaska)

At least the Republicans have locked up that ever important swing state of Alaska and its walloping 3 electoral votes.  Because, ya know, there is a chance that at some point in the future, probably after I’m dead, that it may not be a firm Republican state.

The abbreviated version*

1. Opinion Of Feeling (7s)
2. Country Feedback (R.E.M.)
3. Travelling Not Running (EMF)
4. Nothing (D.M.)
5. Where The Streets Have No Name (U2)
6. My Alcoholic Friends (DD)**
7. Rush (DM)
8. Ringfinger (NIN)
9. If You Want (DM)
10. Guns In The Sky (INXS)
11. The Sun Song (TMBG)

• I have the office to myself today, at least until Phil shows up around 10 or so.  It seems like a lot of people are taking off in the other offices in the building as well.  That or the zombies have take over.  Either way, it’s creepy quiet.
• I will probably pick up the boat today after work.  Hopefully we will get out on the river Sunday morning.  Justin and Danielle are getting pretty good at knee boarding, and all three love tubing.
• I’m looking at upgrading our PC at home.  The current plan is to dual-boot XP and Leopard, so I can do iPhone development when the PC thinks its a MAC, but all the kids games will still work when it thinks its a Microsoft PC.  I’m thinking I can just move my existing harddrives to the new box and with a little magic be back in business.  If I believed in luck, I would have you wish me some.

* I skipped any artists whose name I couldn’t easily abbreviate or weren’t already just letters or an abbreviation.  Number of artists skipped***: 9
** Sure, most people won’t know D.D. is the Dresden Dolls, but how can a gaming geek like me not use D and D as an abreviation.  That and I really like the Dresden Dolls, so I couldn’t skip them (or skip listing them)
*** Truth be told, I listened to most of the songs I skipped, but don’t tell anyone.  And I didn’t have to skip a song until the first 5 songs had played which was about the time I noticed the pattern.

Another one from Science Idol that I thought was funny…

One of these days I need to look at PERL, LISP, and Ruby on Rails.

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Sites

• I heard the Dresden Dolls on the radio this morning on the way to work.  I didn’t think that would ever happen.  Okay, it was college radio, but still.
• I’m done with a less than friendly encounter with another office.  Over the course of the last week, it went something like this:
  • Them: There is a problem with your stuff
  • Me: Okay, I’ll look at it
  • Me [later]: I’ve seen similar stuff before.  Please show it to this group in your office.
  • Them: Okay, so you are handling it.
  • Me: Um NO, it’s not my problem…and they are in your office
  • Them: So you can talk to them about it?
  • Me [forwarding and cc’ing]: Other group -I think this is your problem
  • Other Group: Oh yes, definitely our problem.
  • Me: Great, so you can handle it from here
  • Them (the original them): No, I think you should still manage it, we don’t have the bandwidth.
  • Me [to my boss]: WTF.
  • My Boss: *^*&^  @#%$$! $^@#^%@%
  • Me: So I’m done with this now?
  • My Boss: Yes, I’ll talk to them about it.
• I appreciate John McCain being a war hero and all, but as soon as he supported the bill in congress to allow our government to use the same torture techniques that were used on him, and claim they aren’t torture, I think he loses all rights to bring his enduring the torture as something special.
• I get A LOT of email from the Obama campaign.  In a way it’s probably nice to be kept informed and see the human side of the campaign, but they always seem to have the little tag line at the bottom requesting a donation of $5 or more.
• Perhaps I’m just warped, but with Democrats/liberals often being referred to as a certain part of a woman’s anatomy, did we really need the Democratic ticket to be OB?  I can see the Republican bumper sticker now…

• I tiled and grouted the walls by the showers in both upstairs bathrooms this weekend.  I’m a bit sore from all the manual labor.  I had Justin help with the grouting.  He was more than happy to help, since Brenda had promised him that we would do lazer-tag afterward.
• I won both games of Lazer-tag.  Justin took second place in the first game, only 1 front or back tag (100 pts) behind me (each of us doubled up the competition).  The second game was a little closer.  I won by about 2000 pts.  Justin took 4th, but was only 1 tag out of second place.  At least we played with different people each game.  Usually about midway through a game, people start to figure out that they are consistently getting tagged by one of us and they start ganging up.
• I had asparagus last night with dinner with the usual outcome.  I should buy a gas mask for such occasions.
• Still waiting on a part for the TV and for the boat to get fixed.  That’s two bills I didn’t need.
• If someone wants to loan me an Intel Based MAC for a little while, I will split any money I make for iPhone Apps created with their MAC.

Supposedly one of the biggest mosquito eaters is a little fish known as Gambusia.

These little fish eat lots of mosquito larvae.  It looks like you can buy them online if you have one of those little ponds in your yard.  I can’t guarantee they would survive here in Missouri though.