Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill...

D'awwwwww

Wow, it's been over a month since I last posted. I gotta get back into this regular blogging thing again. I have been updating my Twitter account pretty regularly, though.

Here's an executive summary of what's been going on with me:

My website-making job is coming along just dandy. I just finished a pretty big project for a company that makes refrigerated display cases for delis and supermarkets and stuff. They've just deployed it live earlier today - check it out if you have a minute.

Sarah has quit her job and is now running her own business as a massage therapist, having gotten her licensure not too long before. If you want a massage in Iowa City, you should look her up. I helped to code her website, but she did all the design and copy. Go team.

O noes, bunny is eating my important documents!

So, I'm up to my eyeballs in debt because of my student loans.  If I make the recommended payments on them, I'll be making those payments for the next 20 years, and with all the interest I will have paid twice what I borrowed.

I figure the obvious solution to all of this is to get my loans consolidated.  Has anyone here gotten their (private, not Federal) loans consolidated?  Who did you go through?  And how much did it save you?

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/10/25/kentucky-math-or-wall-street-math/

Last night, I voted early for president.  It was really easy.  I think more people should vote early - it would increase overall voter turnout and make the lines much shorter on election day.

One thing I found interesting about the ballot, though, was the dearth of local candidates.  For nearly all the city and county positions, there were exactly as many candidates as there were open seats.  Way to go, incumbency rates.

I already posted this to my Twitter account, but I want this to get as widespread as possible.

Every Single 2008 Nobel Laureate from the US endorses Barack Obama.  62 other laureates from the US do too. Here is a Boston Globe article about it.  A PDF of the letter of endorsement can be found here.

Somebody new moved into our apartment the other day. Or, shoudl I say, somebunny...

I want one of these. Too bad it's so expensive...

Apparently THC is an antibacterial agent. I forsee hemp soap becoming more popular, much to the delight of obsessive-compulsive stoners everywhere.

So, I just caught Rachel Maddow's new show. I didn't watch it on the teevee, as I'm usually doing other things during 'prime time,' but MSNBC puts up all of their shows on the internet for easy sequential watching.

I respect Rachel Maddow all the more now. Why? Because she had a guest on that disagreed with her.

This is something that I think is sorely lacking in the other nightly newscast I watch, Countdown. Don't get me wrong, I think Keith Olbermann is a great journalist, and is doing the country a great service by being a credible voice that is critical of the government and other bodies in media. But his guest selection is horrid. In the (admittedly short) time I've watched him, I don't think I've once seen a guest on his show that disagreed with him at all. I hope it's just something I've missed.

I mean, even Bill O'Reilly has a liberal guest on from time to time. (Although, it's either a straw man or he cuts their mic, so I guess I can't make that argument.) The points made on Countdown would be that much more compelling if he crumbled the counterpoint as he was making it.

Regardless, Countdown is a great show, and the points are made and defended very well. I will probably end up watching both shows now.

Dr. Lawrence Lessig, one of my heroes, put up a video last week in reaction to John McCain releasing his technology policy. It wasn't until now that I thought to share it with you all. Silly me. You should have a watch:

McCain supporter, at a town hall: "If we don't reenact the draft, I don't think we'd have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell."

John Mccain: Ma'am, let me say that I don't disagree with anything you just said."

No further comment.

My favorite application of Barack Obama's very versatile icon so far:



(From the comments in this blog post.)

And here's another one I like, combining two distinct logos:



(From this forum thread.)

"Not... every violation of the law is a crime." 

From my government's Department of "Justice."  Finger-quotes are now mandatory.

Very interesting.

Apparently the Westboro Baptist Church, of "God Hates Fags" fame, has suffered a fire.  It's too bad the damage was so minimal.

[I should preface this entry with a statement. 2 weeks ago now I moved from Ames to Iowa City. I had failed out of school at my university (ISU), and after moving I'm now at the hometown of their biggest rivals (UI).]

Interesting dreams I've been having. This is the only one from last night I remember. In said dream:

My girlfriend and I were moving into the UI dorms, rather than the nice apartment we have now. It was a bit small, and the building had hundreds of them, but they were more like smallish apartments than dorm rooms, so I was happy. The apartment number was the same as our street address now: 404.

Sarah went off to work, and I set out to drive about town for a while. For some strange reason, 'driving' became 'swimming,' as I was suddenly wearing nothing but my underwear, and my car was filled with water. The water was warm, though, and nice for relaxing in, so I didn't mind. Somehow I was in the passenger's seat at the time.

After relaxing a bit, I heard a huge ruckus in the distance - a bunch of 'bad guys' were approaching, and everyone else was running from them in fear. By the time I understood what was going on, they were too close for me to escape (and I was still just in my underwear) so I tried to hide in the car as best I could. There were sirens and flashing lights of police cars, and a lot of shooting happened, but the 'bad guys' must have won because eventually the police cars disappeared.

My hiding place wasn't as good as I had hoped, and one of the bad guys (he looked kind of like a biker with his beard and vest and chain) came up to my car and pulled me out. He mocked me for being in just my underwear, then told me to run away. I complied.

After running for a while, I got over the feeling that I was being chased, and decided that I wanted to go home. It started raining very heavily, but I was somehow clothed again. I also put on my ISU Marching Band coat and the ISU stocking cap I was somehow carrying, and walked back to the dorms.

When I got there, I couldn't find the building I was looking for. I knew I needed building 40, but the buildings jumped from 39 to 60. I went into one of them and tried to find my place, but all of the numbers had recently been changed, and the paint was still wet. After walking 3 times up and down the hallway, I asked a janitor where my place was. He had no idea, but told me the numbers were changed.

Frustrated, I went back outside and tried to find the right building number again. To my surprise, the UI marching band was completing their exercises in the lawn just outside. (The rain had completely vanished by this time). The band finished, and one of my sister's friends - who is actually in the ISU marching band - showed up along with Sarah to walk home. I told Sarah I was lost, and she rolled her eyes at me, and they led me back to the proper building.

When we got there, the door I had to take was more of a crawl tunnel than an actual door.  I had to get on my stomach and army crawl my way in, but the narrow passageway was blocked in many parts by hoses and dryer ducts.  I threw the blockades into open dorm room doors nearby, and eventually I made my way to our room.  Once I got back, I woke up.

Kind of a bizarre dream, and more detailed then I usually have.  I'm currently puzzling out what it may or may not mean.

I went to see Wall*E Sunday night with my girlfriend. It was worth the ticket price. And then some. Pretty much everything that I want to say about it has already been said, essentially, but I would still like to say that I was amazed at just how much emotion those cute little robots were able to show. That was some masterful animation there.

( A few more spoiler-ish thoughts... )

Today, the next major version of Mozilla Firefox is released. I have been using the betas and release candidates for months, and I have to say it is worlds better than Firefox 2, even with extensions. It uses much less memory, and the new smart location bar (called the "awesomebar" by some developers) is a lot more convenient than you would think.

A Mozilla employee has put together a Field Guide that explains the new features much better than I could. I encourage everybody to take a look at this.

Mozilla is also trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most copies of a piece of software downloaded in a single day. It will be available after 10 AM Pacific time, so try it out!

Why do they call pork shoulders "butts?"