Sunidesus Speaks

I've been composing this post in my head for quite a while now, and finally writing it down for actual posting now.

So, why am I voting for my candidate? And I am voting for him, not against the other guy.

I am of the opinion that our leaders should do what is right, not necessarily what is popular. Yes, they do have to do what their constituents want, but sometimes what the population wants isn't what's best. They have more information than your average Joe Schmo. In theory they have a better understanding of how policies will affect people.

I realize this isn't always the case. That many times politicians don't really think about their decisions, they just vote for what is expedient for them. But that's the ideal. That's what we should be shooting for.

So where does that leave me? I have to pick someone that I think I can trust with those decisions. Someone I think will make the right choices even when it isn't popular. And you know what? Our President has already proven to me that he can, and will, do that. The Senator? He constantly changes his position and most of the time I disagree with him no matter what his opinion of the day is.

And tomorrow I will go and vote. And then I will wait and I will hope for the outcome I prefer.

I'm telling you up front, this is probably TMI, and it's a girl issues post.

Don't complain, you've been warned.

I went on Mapquest to make sure I knew where my voting place was.

_{click for readable}

I live at the "start" box, I voted at the "end" box. Needless to say, I found it!

Anyone know if there's something wrong with Hosting Matters perhaps? I can't get TCP, Michele, or Solonor to come up, and I think they all use it.

I want my news darn it!

I wouldn't really say I'm happy. I think relieved is more the right word.

I'm also quite thankful that the margin wasn't as close as last time. 3.5 million votes is quite the number! And I'm amazed by the majority issue. I had no idea that no one has won a majority since 1988. I guess I had assumed that Clinton had gotten a majority both times, but apparently that was a wrong assumption.

So that's where we are.

What does it mean when I'm listening to Kerry's concession speech and all I can think of is Jay London?

Thank you, thank you, thank you....

I am tired! And sore, and my back hurts, and I have cramps. But you probably didn't want to know all of that did you?

I just don't have much to say today apparently.

I did talk to the lady from the bird rescue today. I think it went well. I just need my refrences to call her back. *cough* But I've got my fingers crossed in any event.

I think I'm mostly just worn out and tired.

It is so incredibly windy out today! It started last night and has continued right through this afternoon. The trees keep banging and scraping the windows & roof. And there's that loud wailing wind noise all the time too. It's making the critters nervous and I want it to stop!

Did you hear me weather? Knock it off!

I just got off the phone with the lady from the bird rescue and I'm going to go meet Samantha tomorrow. If everything goes well, I might even be able to take her home! Eeeps! Wooot! *does happy dance*

So I'm crossing my fingers and trying to contain myself.

I didn't think I was going to talk about politics on here again anytime soon. I didn't talk about it here a lot before the election and I wasn't planning to talk about it after. When I need a politics fix I go to other blogs and talk in the comments. This morning Michele was talking about how the liberals have been behaving since Wednesday. It has always bothered me that the coasts seem to look down on midwestern folks, but I didn't really think it was all that big of a deal. But now it seems to have morphed into the liberals on the coasts (and I'm sure some of them in other parts of the country too) saying that everyone else is stupid because they don't agree with them. I honestly didn't think anyone I know at work would think that way. I was wrong. And it really bothered me deeply, so I'm writing about it.

I'm very aware that I live in a "blue" state. That most of the people around me don't agree with me. And that's fine. As long as we all respect each other and agree to disagree we can all get along and work together and there aren't any problems. I just wasn't ready for what I heard today.

I was in the control room looking through the rundown for one of the shows. On the tier behind me two guys were talking about GW being re-elected and how it happened and all of that. One of whom is very vocal about his opinions on anything and everything. Whether it's politics, or how someone else does their job, or the stupid bartender the night before.

At any rate he's going on and on about how anyone who voted for W had to be "irrational to think that way". And that there wasn't any excuse for it. The entire time he's talking I'm sitting right there, and the only thing running through my head is that that's what he really thinks about me.

And then there was a rant about how people living overseas would be affected. That people who voted for GW couldn't possibly care or think about people living overseas. Otherwise they wouldn't have voted that way. And what do all those people in the Midwest know about terrorism anyway? They weren't attacked.

I finally had had enough and left the room. I tried really hard not to slam the door behind me, but I'm not sure if I succeded. I just wanted to turn around and scream at him.

Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm irrational or stupid. It just means we disagree! Intelligent people can have differing opinions; that's kind of the way this country works!

And don't you dare tell me that I don't care about people living overseas. I know more people that travel to more places, and I think about and pray for many of them every day.

Just because I wasn't there when it happened, and I don't personally know anyone that died doesn't mean it doesn't affect me. It's called empathy, compassion, feeling something for your fellow human being. Not wanting it to happen to anyone else whether I know them or not.

If you disagree with me, that's fine. I'm totally ok with that. But devolving to name-calling and personal attacks just makes me dismiss anything you may say in the future. Allow for the possibility that other people have brains and that they don't always think like you!

I'm just about on my way out the door to go meet Samantha!

I'm excited. Here's hoping I can bring her home. How cool would that be?!?! :D

Wish me luck.

Hey there, all you folks that have webcams on your blogs. What software are you using? And how hard is it to use? Any suggestions?

I own a webcam, and I'd like to get it up and running so that it's a little popup window to a once a minute (or every 30 seconds or something) refreshing webcam picture. I have absolutely no idea where to start. I've only used the thing for video during a chat session with my parents & brother and when we did that Yahoo or MSN or whatever we were using just kinda grabbed the output of the camera and away we went.

Any ideas? Anyone? Bueller?

I was just doing a little blog stats checking and one of the searches caught my eye. So I ran it myself. Turns out I'm the number two result on google for I came, I saw I thought that was kinda nifty.

Yeah, shut up. I'm a dork.

How does a bunny show they like something? Why by hopping around it of course!

Benjamin Jumping

(be patient, it's 10MB so it takes a little bit to download)

I really need to put all the critters back in their houses. I need to take my car somewhere and have someone look at it. It's making a funny noise when it idles and it's beling really slow to accelerate.

That means I should really get up and stop sitting here doesn't it? Yeah. I'll have to work on doing that...

I'm at the car dealership place right now... turns out it needs new spark plugs, a bunch of new wires, and another oil change. I just had my oil changed a month-ish ago and apparently the dude didn't tighten some plug or drain or something and almost all of my oil has drained out! The spark plugs had some sort of build up on them making a bunch of wires burn out. My question is... why didn't they notice this when I had my oil changed?!? They looked under the hood and everything. Shouldn't they have noticed something? Plus they screwed up my oil change! Isn't that something pretty basic?

And this whole thing is going to be upwards of 300 bucks! Which needless to say, I don't exactly have. Especially with vacation coming up and plane tickets still not purchased!

Ack! Argh! Drat! Grrrrrrr!

Today a certain bunny girl discovered that there's a gap at the bottom of Samantha's cage. It's the place where the tray slides in and out, and it's big enough for Miss Tali to squeeze her fuzzy little self into the cage. She also discovered that birds drop a lot of food!

I'm going to have to block off the hole somehow because I really don't want her in there. Now that she's figured out there's food in there she'll never want to leave! And I really don't want her playing down there (or getting poop all over her!)

I have such silly critters.

[cross-posted at The Zoo]

Atlantis Found!

I realize I'm a science geek, but I think that's really cool. Assuming of course that it really is Atlantis. But even if it's not, there's a city down there that no one's seen for thousands of years and that's incredibly interesting.

On my way out the door to work one of my neighbors stoped me and asked what kind of "creature" I had in my apartment. I didn't think Samanthat was being that noisy, but apparently she's been screeching in the evenings. I'm really not sure what to do.

I've already fallen in love, and she's such a sweetheart and just wonderfully silly and fun to have around. But I can't have my neighbors being harrased by her either. The building is so well put together that I really wasn't worried about the noise thing. The apartments hardly touch each other and I think I've only heard anyone else once or twice. But I guess they're not as good as I thought.

She and Mai-Tai are not getting along either. At first they were just ignoring each other. But today Samantha actually chased Mione around, beak open, making like she was going to bite her. Can't have that! Miss Mione needs to be safe too. And Samantha's so much bigger, if I ever wasn't there... I don't even want to think about what might happen.

I'm just feeling very conflicted about everything right now. I kinda feel like I'm neglecting the rest of the zoo to take care of the new resident. Everyone's still getting their cages cleaned, and fresh food and water and all that. I'm on the floor with the bunnies a lot (Samantha seems to get along with them just fine so all of us will hang out on the floor together) I just feel kinda bad.

Of course it doesn't help that I'm out of meds (haven't had any since Saturday) and my phone isn't working so I can't call my dr. to find out why she didn't call a refill in for me. If it was local I'd just call from work, but I'm not about to call long distance from my work phone.

I wanted to do this, I wanted to help this wonderful birdie-girl. I feel like I'm a failure if I can't. I hate even writting this down. But it's all running through my head so I really need to. I need you guys to know what's going on with me.

I'm worried about leaving her for a week when I have vacation in December. Will she flip when she doesn't have someone to play with every day? When it's just someone coming to do food and water? What if she screams the whole time I'm gone?

I feel horrible and I just don't know what to do. I hate this.

I decided to skip dance today to see how Miss Samantha behaves in the evening.

So far... absolutely nothing noisy. Couple of somewhat louder "He-woo!"s, but nothing loud. And it's not like I've been pampering her all day either. She's been on me, on the floor, on (and in) her cage.

Of course, now that I've written this she'll start yelling, but I honestly doubt it.

I thought I had made a decision earlier today, but not I'm kinda re-thinking it.

I'm just so conflicted. I hate this.

Also, still out of meds. Phone is working finally. I'm experimenting with Firefox at the moment. Not sure if I like it or not yet. I know my photoblog looks kinda goofy in it. Not horrid, just not right!

That's non-animal related... promise.

I'm in love!

With Ikea! Someone at work had a catalogue and I looked through it a little and decided to get one of my own. It came in the mail today. I would happily decorate my place with just about anything in it! There's a couple things that seem like they ought to be requirements! Do they have a wish list option on their website?

BTW, the bunnies are currently chewing on said catalogue on the floor.

OK, so there was a little animal stuff in there. Just couldn't resist sharing.

For the out-of-towner Thanksgiving dinner...

pop, chips, cups

11, Laura's place

I know, I know. I've been all about the critters lately. I was just poking around on the House Rabbit Society website and they're got a page that randomly puts up a different bunny picture. If you refresh the page a new picture pops up. It's great fun. Net Bunny Gallery

So I've got the webcam hooked up and taking a picture every minute (using ChillCam) which I saw Laurence using for his catcams. It set up pretty easily, is taking a picture every minute and saving it to my hard drive. All is hunky-dory. But I can't seem to figure out the ftping part. It's sending something to my server every minute. But it seems like it's just the file name. It's 0k and when I click on it it's just he little red x box thing.

I will beat this thing!

So I'm cheating and using another program, but it's working! I downloaded a little ftp scheduler thing and that is uploading the webcam image no problem. So now I just need to write some code to get the image into the blog and away we go! I shouldn't be needing to use the scheduler program, but it works so that's good enuf for me!

Now I'm at work and it appears that the webcam is working. I just refreshed it a couple times and it's still updating. So... the two programs that I left running when I left home are still working. Yay! At the moment I have the thing pointed out the window where I leave birdseed for the sparrows and chickadees, and the occasional squirrel. I don't have a long enuf USB cable yet to reach it all the way into where the zoo is. So for now, you get to look out my living room window! The thumbnail will change if you refresh the whole page, and the popup also has to be refreshed manually. If I can figure out the code I'll have the popup refresh automatically, but leave the thumbnail alone. I don't want my whole main page refreshing every minute just so the little thumbnail will change.

Heehee! I have a webcam on my blog!

Yep, I'm a happy geek.

[Update: And it's now nearly 5pm which means the thing is completely dark! I need to figure out how to get it over to the zoo so there'll be something visible more often!]

There's another blogger fund-raising challenge happening over at Spirit of America. According to the dates on the page it's supposed to run from December 1-15th. It's not even December yet and they've already raised more than $3,700! Go bloggers!

In case you haven't heard of it before... SOA is an organization that helps the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by helping them to help the people living there. They help to buy everything from medical supplies to toys to television equipment. It really is a great cause, regardless of your feelings on the war.

So, head over to Michele's or one of the other bloggers that are participating in the challenge and donate whatever you can! Or link it and get the word out.

So apparently some freak show in Rice Lake is hunting people instead of deer.

It happened to catch my eye when I was going through my scripts today because it's near where I'm from. But then I actually read the story... Yikes! What is wrong with this dude?!?

The webcam has been up and running for a couple days now and it seems pretty stable. Woohoo! I am going to need to register the programs I'm using though since they'll expire at some point and that would be un-good.

I ordered a USB extension/booster cable thing that should let me get the camera a heck of a lot closer to the objective, but it won't get here for another week or so so I'll just have to be patient.

Also, there may be stuff at the other place at some point today.

I'm most definately ready for my vacation! And very glad I have tomorrow off. I've just been so worn out lately, hopefully having a day off will help. Plus I need some time at home to work on an ER tape for a certain someone.

It's Norman Rockwell meets Area 51...

It's...

Norman Roswell!

link from Solonor

I slept for at least 11 hours straight last night. I could have gone right back to sleep too except that I had to get up and do a couple errands.

I haven't been this worn out in a very long time. And just kinda out of it too. The last couple days it's been like there's this big foggy cloud in my brain and getting it to work has been a strugle! I think hope that I'm through the worst of it though.

So tomorrow I'm going to the "out of towners" Thanksgiving dinner at Laura's place. (not me, the other Laura, and no not that Laura either) Should be interesting, and hopefully fun.

At the moment I am burning a Christmas CD. I ripped all my Christmas music to my hard drive and now I'm putting it all on one CD as mp3's which I can play in my car thanks to a wonderful birthday present last summer :) Push play, flip it to random... tons o' Christmas music!

And I think I need to delete some stuff off my hard drive. I only have 600 mb left on it! Whoops!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! By now you should all be stuffed silly and probably watched a few parades and football games.

There's a few pictures from the "Out-of-Towners" dinner in the photoblog if you're interested. Nothing too spectacular, just snapshots really.

I have tomorrow and half of Saturday off, which makes me very happy! I'm not quite as tired as I was, but I'm still pretty darn worn out so I need the time off. I'll just say that at the very least being nuts keeps life interesting. Although isn't that an a Chinese/Russian/somewhere curse or something like that? Something about living in interesting times?

I'm babbling. It's dinner time but I'm soooo not hungry, which means that I don't really have anything to do and I'm a tad on the bored side.

When the polar bears are on TV!

Just saw my first polar bear commercial of the year. For some bizarre reason the brilliant minds that designed Coke's website have their other ads on the site, but none of the bears! What's up with that?

Last night during the "Covering America" part of the show, one of the stories was that it snowed 2 inches in Minneapolis.

Yep, that's right. It snowed! In Minnesota! At the end of November!

Why exactly that made it onto the wires as anything other than a factoid is beyond me.

I made a wish list at amazon for the critters yesterday. It's not public just yet though so I can't link it. Apparently it takes 3-5 days for a wish list to be searchable. Weird. I'll link it once it's public of course. Because what good would a wish list be if people couldn't get at it!

At the moment there's just parrot things in it, but I'll add bunny stuff too at some point.

cross posted at The Zoo

In case you all hadn't noticed, the zoo cam is stuck at 12:40 this afternoon. That is the time when a certain fuzzy someone managed to wiggle behind my desk (which I thought was all blocked off) and chew through a cord. I think it was Benjamin, but I caught both of them back there so there's really no way to know which one did the deed.

I should have a new one up and running within a couple days, but for now it's stuck in a twilight zone where it's always 12:40 and the lights are on!

Luckily the thing isn't expensive. I found a good one at Best Buy for 15 bucks (after rebate) so it's not a huge deal. I just need to block off the back of the desk a little better!

I'm itching to get it fixed 'cuz my extension/booster cable thingie came in the mail from Amazon today. Geek stuff always makes me happy. Once I get the new camera I just have to hook up my timer to my light and then I'll have zoo cam goodness.

There's another 26 Things set up to start December 1st. Yay! I missed the last one, but I'm making sure I get in on this one.

A lot of the words seem to have obvious results, so I think the challenge will be to come up with something original.

Can't wait to start!