It's late, I'm bored, and this song rocks!

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Georgia on my mind

I'm separated from my family.  My health and sanity are failing.  I'm running out of money and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to pay my bills.  The economy downturn is seriously kicking my ass (thanks, Dubya).  I need money. 

On the other hand, there's nobody dropping bombs on my home and my family.  

If you haven't heard about the conflict in Georgia yet, it's time to turn on the news.  Russia has invaded the sovereign country that was once a fellow member of the Soviet Union.  From what I've learned, this country has worked it's ass off over the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union to go from one of the most corrupt countries to a bastion of Democracy.  And now they're being systematically conquered.  They're getting bombed right now.

Georgia is one of the few countries that have sent troops to Iraq to support us there.  They had to pull their troops out last week in order to attempt to defend their own country.  I think it's been obvious that I'm not a fan of the Iraq war, but it's worth mentioning that they sent their soldiers to die with ours as a demonstration of loyalty to our country in what is a distinctly American "war".

Yesterday Russia called a cease fire, then continued rolling tanks into the country and dropping bombs.   Today Condoleeza Rice is being sent to France and to Georgia.  She's intentionally not going to Russia, which seems like exactly where she needs to be going.  I'm not sure how she's going to convince Russia to withdraw their troops from Georgia... from Georgia. 

We can't help militarily.  Even if America was willing to we're so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that we would have difficulty defending our own borders at the moment.  Apparently all Bush is going to do is throw Rice at them (pun intended).

I wish her luck, but even though I'm broke I'm going to do what I can to help the people getting bombed, because I'm still luckier than they are right now.  I'm not sure if this is the charity I'm going to use, but it seems like a good choice based on an initial google search. 

Save the Children Assists Families in Russia-Georgia Conflict

Badminton is an Olympic Event?

I've never been a big follower of the Olympics in the past, but this time around I find myself watching it from time to time.  I think somewhere in the back of my head I knew Beach Volleyball was an Olympic event, but it surprised anyway.  I did find it entertaining to watch all the same.  I think I really like Beach Volleyball now.

When I think of the Olympics, there are just certain sporting events I don't tend to think of.  Other events that have surprised me so far:

• Badminton
• Table Tennis (as in Ping Pong?)
• Sailing
• Shooting
• Archery
• Synchronized Swimming
• Softball

I really don't mean to belittle any of these events, but I have to wonder at what point someone decides they want to be a Badminton Olympic Gold Medalist.

On the other hand, I can tell by watching them that any of them could seriously kick my ass without breaking a sweat.  I just didn't know anybody took the game that seriously.

Boy: And this is my father's Olympic Gold Medal (grins)

Girl: Wow, I didn't know your dad was a medalist too!  My father was a three time Triathlon Gold Medalist.  What was your father's medal for?

Boy: (slight pause)  Badminton.  So, do you like movies?

From the "I though we already had that" files

It bears an odd resemblance to a Dalek...

Pentagon's Unmanned Spokesdrone Completes First Press Conference Mission

Just like the last two elections.

'No Values Voters' Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate

This one speaks for itself.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

A game where you play a character playing a game... I'm pretty sure I have that game.

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

And now you know

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Start wearing purple

Gypsy rock.  That fuckin' rocks!

Numbers

Sometimes we see numbers, and don't really think about what they mean.  I'm not intending this post to be for or against John McCain or Barack Obama. 

I don't think there are many Americans who would deny that the attack on 9/11/2001 was horrific, or that the death toll was catastrophic, or that the scope of it all traumatized our nation and changed us in a profound way. 

I looked up these numbers on the Internet, therefore they may not be entirely accurate, but I believe they're close.

The number of American lives lost as a result of the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001:

2,740

The number of American lives lost in Iraq as a result of the American invasion:

4,124

Interestingly, I also found this number.  I have no idea of it's validity.

The number of Iraqi lives lost as a result of the American invasion:

1,245,538

I suspect this number might be inflated in order to serve the anti-war movement's point of view, however, according to an article I found on CNN, 5,800 Iraqis died in June 2006.  I'm sure many, if not most of these deaths were caused by insurgents, not by the American Military, but they happened because we were there. 

At this point, I feel the need to clarify that I am not disparaging the American Military.  Like any other cross section of society, the military will be made up of those who are good and those who are bad, if there really is any such thing.  I support the soldiers in Iraq.  They're Americans, and they're going through a kind of Hell I can't imagine.  And they're following orders.  I only question the orders, something they aren't allowed to do.  And over 4,000 of them are dead.

I got to wondering, this is a lot of death.  How many people did Hitler murder?  I looked it up.  Six million.  That number, by the way, does not include military deaths. 

What's hard to imagine, is exactly what these numbers mean.  We hear these numbers: 2900, 4000, 1.2 million, 6 million, and we think that's horrible, but do you really think about what that means?  Imagine you come home and find a dead body in your kitchen.  Imagine the horror of finding a body shot to death violently in your kitchen.  Hollywood has made us a little desensitized to this kind of violence, but try to imagine what it would be like in real life? 

Now imagine it's two bodies.  That adds a whole new dimension to the horror. 

Imagine ten.  This gets harder for a sane person to imagine.  Ten murdered bodies in your kitchen.  Given an average of 150 pounds per person, that 1500 pounds of dead human in your kitchen. 

We're only up to 10, folks.  If you can imagine 10, try to imagine that 10 more times.  It takes a few minutes to really digest the horror there, doesn't it.  That's only 100 people, and yet we can barely fathom it.  100 people would not fit in your kitchen, we'll have to move them to the back yard.  That's 15,000 pounds of dead human.  The mind really can barely grasp this kind of horror anymore, and we're only up to 100. 

Following our average of 150 pounds per person, the death toll in Iraq has resulted in 600,000 pounds of dead American bodies. 

At 600,000 pounds of dead American, I want a good explanation of why we're there. 

"We believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of Mass Destruction"

We've [the American public] since found out that the only evidence to that effect known before invading a sovereign country in another part of the world was a single report that was out of date by years.  The Soviet Union had weapons of Mass Destruction for decades, and the remnants of the Soviet Union, to the best of my knowledge, still has them.  We've never invaded the Soviet Union, and they really didn't like us.  Nor have we invaded North Korea, and I think we be pretty sure they have them too, and probably more likely to use them on us than Saddam ever was.

Saddam Hussein didn't like or trust Osama Bin Laden (or so I heard on CNN). 

We basically had no evidence whatsoever that Iraq was linked with Al Queda and the terrorists that attacked us seven years ago.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, admitted they had him and wouldn't give him up.

Saddam Hussein defied the U.N. weapons inspectors, but he had been doing that for over a decade since the original invasion of Kuwait.  Suddenly in 2003 it became a crisis that couldn't wait for diplomacy. 

We've lost over 4,000 American Soldiers in a war that, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack which resulted in 2,900 American casualties. 

"We have to finish the job in Iraq."

What job?  What is it we have to finish there?  We declared hostilities ceased in 2005.  I watched it on the news.  Why are we still there?  What do we have to do in Iraq which is more important than finding the man who was responsible for killing 2,900 American Citizens?  Seriously, I want to know, this isn't rhetoric. 

Think about this when deciding who to vote for this November.  And think about this too.  Watch these, then watch anything from John McCain and/or Barack Obama, and ask yourself, who would you rather have running our country? 

Henry '08.

Netflix and XBox part II - It's true!

Back in Feburary I caught wind of a possibility that XBox might be partnering with Netflix to allow streaming movies to the XBox.  Here's an update: They are.  It was officially announced at E3 a couple of days ago, along with some other pretty cool XBox enhancements.  The official announcement to the world is on XBox.com. 

I'm seriously stoked about this.  I've complained before how expensive XBox movie rentals were, this totally alleviates it.  This would really be great if it were available now, instead of this fall, since I'm stuck in a studio apartment 500 miles from my family with nothing much to do.  As usual, the timing kindof sucks, but whatever.  Welcome to the future of movie rentals.

Stranger in a Strange Land

The voting on my last post was a bit sparse, but the one vote I did get was to not delete this blog.  Alrighty then.  (Thanks, Celes). 

This post runs the risk of being one of those sad, depressed entries I so despise.  I'm in my second week in Minnesota, and I'm starting to wonder if this is all worth it.  It's true that earlier tonight I attended my first XNA user's group meeting ever (KC doesn't have one that I'm aware of), and sat next to one of the most well known people in the history of software development.  In fact, I was supposed to talk to him afterwards, but I bolted because I didn't want to miss the nightly phone call I have with my kids.  I haven't seen them in nearly two weeks. 

In short, this place is starting to wear on me. 

I've never been a consultant before.  It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but the lifestyle seems a bit lonely.  Especially when you come home to an empty apartment.  You get switched around to different projects alot.  So far I've been on two different projects in my two weeks there.  Tomorrow I go to interview for my third.  This is the part of consulting I didn't expect.  You have to actually go interview for each gig.  It's like constantly applying for a job.  And if you don't get it, you're not making your employers any money.  When you become overhead, you run the risk of unemployment.  E.g. you had probably better get that gig. 

I find interviewing depressing.  It's probably why I stayed at my last job for two years, and the one before that for five.  I made lots of friends at both places, and I miss all of them.  Most of all I miss my family, especially my kids, and yes, my wife too.  I'm feeling a little bit socially deprived.

I had cable and Internet hooked up two days ago.  So far only Internet works.  That wouldn't be such a big deal if I could figure out how to stream Dr. Who.  I need my Doctor Who.  BSG is on hiatus, and one can only watch The Matrix so many times.  Wow, yet again Neo is the "One".  Shocker.  I can watch streaming news, but my laptop is pathetically old, and the video is choppy and difficult to watch.  Forget about full screen viewing.  It just ain't happening. 

I do have my XBox.  That helps, but I've only got so many games, and they get old too.  I left my violin in Kansas City, because I thought I'd be traveling right off the bat. 

Add to all this the stress of realizing that I probably can't sell my house, and I'll have to give up on this whole endeavor and move back to KC, and I'm feeling just a little down at the moment. 

A thought occurred to me the other day.  Some of you may remember SaveToby.com.  I don't know who did this, but he was a freaking genius.  Basically he put up a web site where he threatened to kill a cute bunny unless people sent him money.  He made a killing.  Finally some company came in and bought him out to put a stop to it.  Who knows if he really would have killed the bunny.  It doesn't matter.  He made the money. 

I need money. 

I can make websites.

When you put those two facts together, it's almost like there's some kind of idea just out of reach that might save me from my impending financial ruin. 

Anyway, I wanted my legions of loyal fans to know that I hadn't forgotten about them, and I'll continue to blog here in the near future.  Expect some boring technical content as I try to establish myself as an expert in compooters along with the self aggrandizing political and general rants you've come to know and love me for.  Tootles.

Happy Birthday, Idiot with a blog!

Actually I'm a bit late.  My first entry in this incarnation of my blog was on May 6, 2007.  It's interesting how it turned out, as in, not what I intended at all.  Sometimes if you just let things happen they way they're meant to happen, you get a bit surprised by the result. 

I intended to do two things with this blog when I created it.  One was chronicle a spiritual journey as it happened.  The journey never really happened, or at least not the way I thought it would.  So there wasn't much to chronicle there.  Occasionally I needed to re-center myself.  All I ever really did was remind myself of what I already knew. 

Two was to create some technical content.  I think I did one of those, and all it really did was point to a code project article I wrote.  That leads me to what I'm really thinking about here.

I've been pretty much absent for about a month and a half now.  I apologize to the 4 or 5 regular readers I have, and the smattering of casual readers.  This has been due to a couple of things.  In my last post I hinted that something big was going to happen, but I couldn't talk about it yet.  I couldn't talk about it because I couldn't be sure that people at my job didn't read my blog and that the information wouldn't get to people who could make things hard for me.  Let me try that again.....

I was about to quit and I didn't want management to know. 

There, that was much simpler.

An opportunity came up, and (for me, at least) it was big.  I try to avoid mentioning my employer's names in my blog, mainly because I'd rather that the content here didn't embarrass them.  That's probably even more important now, because this is a consulting job, so public appearance is even more important that it was before.  So I'll suffice it to say, that it's a well known company, with a handful of Microsoft MVPs, some .NET rockstars, and, as of about 8:00 this morning, me.

Oh, and they're in Minnesota.  That's right, I moved for this job.  I moved a long frakin' way away for this job.  I got the hell out of Kansas.  Don't get me wrong, I actually kind of like Kansas, even if there isn't much to do there.  That's what the Internet is for, right?  So here I am in a little tiny studio apartment in Minneapolis trying to find a house to buy while my wife tries to sell the one back in Kansas.  We're getting along pretty well lately.  Who knew all I needed to do was get us out of Dodge?

So I'm at a bit of a crossroads.  The vast majority of content here if various rants, followed by a bit of spiritual dogma, with a little bit of attempted humor thrown in.  Not really what I was trying to do.  As I left my old job, I saved a couple of blog posts I had written on their tech blog, and realized that I'm not all that bad of a technical blogger, I've just never done it here.  I'd like to focus on technical content more, but I don't want to alienate the little bit of readership I've managed to acquire. So here are my options as I see them.

1. Delete this blog.  I've put a bit of effort into the online presence known as The Cowboy, so that feels a little like shooting an old friend in the head.  I've never hidden my real identity from anybody who asked, but very few have.  In fact, if you look carefully you can actually figure out my name without even asking me.  I leave that one to the "Where's Waldo" fans out there.  If I delete this blog I'm free to create another filled with purely technical content, and become the next Robert Scoble.  Shuh, right.
2. Create a new blog, while maintaining this one.  That feels a bit like having a split personality.  But it works.  So far this seems like the most likely prospect.  I might even link from this blog to the other occasionally, but I doubt I would link the other way.  This seems like the best way to maintain the anonymity needed to not embarrass my employer and/or get me fired while still providing you, my loyal readers, with the incredible entertainment value known as Another Idiot with a Blog.  Eh?
3. Come out of the closet.  No, not like that, dumbass.  I mean just start posting technical content here and use my real name.  Damn the consequences.  It worked for Rory Blyth, didn't it?  He even ended up with the kickass job at Microsoft I'm so hot for.  I'm just not sure I'm that cool.  I've also given up a lot to get this job, it would really suck to blow it now.  I've also been wondering how I could use the words "suck" and "blow" in the same sentence without being crude.

Okay, loyal readers.  This is where you come in.  I need you to comment like you've never commented before.  If you want to save this blog, now is the time to speak up.  If you're a lurker, time to come out of the shadows.  Let me know how you guys feel.