Archive for October, 2008
With election day fast approaching and thousands of early voters standing in lines for hours in some states it looks like we are going to have a record turnout at the polls this year. I hope we do not have any problems with voting machines like is being reported in at least two counties in West Virginia. According to the Charleston Gazette three Putnam county voters claim the touch screen voter machine changed their ballots from Obama to McCain. They also had three voters making the same claim in Jackson county. In both counties Republicans are overseeing the elections. They claim this is an isolated incident and that the voters themselves were responsible by not being more careful. Myself I hope they are correct and this is an isolated incident as we do not need anyone to feel like the vote count is not correct. I used a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin as the title to a recent post as it fits so aptly, Those Who Cast The Votes Decide Nothing. Those Who Count The Votes Decide Everything.
A US Army intelligence report has identified the popular blogging tool Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. It along with GPS and possibly voice changing software are at the heart of this intelligence report. The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants. The report is posted on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website. Parts of the report mention how activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements and Twitter members got out the news of the earthquake in Los Angeles in July faster than news outlets. Now lets see what happens when they discover chat rooms and email.
I have been busy moving a good friends blog and a customer of my file-house hosting to her own domain name that matches her blog Brain Foggles. It was quite a learning experience for me as I had never done it before. First off I did a little research on the web and said to myself that shouldn’t be too much trouble. Well I underestimated the difficulty and the little knowledge I had gained as it was not quite enough. First thing I ran into was the plugin I had found to expidite moving a blog from site to site would not work as the database is too large. I had attempted to move it using the Velvet Blues Update URL’s plugin, but ran into a snag right away as I was limited to a 2mb file and this one was just short of 4mb’s. Plus I was creating a new database as we did not want the old site to go down at all until we had the new site up and running. So I exported the Mysql database onto my computer and uploaded it as the new database for the new site. That was pretty straight forward but where I had trouble was renaming all instances of the old domain to the new domain. I found a great blog site that helped me a ton. My Digital Life had the information I needed to work with the Mysql database. It made life so much easier and I can’t thank them enough. Alright now I have I said to myself but once more my hopes were dashed like a ship against the rocks. I had an error with the php code. It was Warning: array_keys(): The first argument should be an array in */wp-includes/widgets.php on line 676, (*= your root directory). This I found out was a common occurence when moving blogs and was caused byt the text widgets. So back to the Msql database into the options table hunting the text widgets line. Once there you remove everyting in the table and woooo hoooo its working minus the text widgets. So I am back off to the old site to get the text widgets text. It all goes in one at a time making sure none of them break the instal and we are done. I feel confident now that I can move pretty much any WordPress blog onto my hosting server as long as I have access to the old blogsite. Now I find out she has a contest running and wants to hold off the move for 3 more days. Oh well I know what I am doing now so it shouldn’t be the big deal it was when I started.
The last presidential debate is over and the candidates are steady feeding us a diet of bullshit. Both stretch the truth when it comes to the other ones record. I hate to out and out call either one a liar as that is a little harsh. Stretching or bending the truth will have to do in this instance. We are down to the home stretch and it looks like Obama has a slight lead in the polls which may or may not mean anything at all. Unless something happens to change my mind in the few days we have left I will be voting for Obama on November 4th. I have always liked McCain but am afraid his policies are still too close to Bush’s to suit me. I know he plainly told Obama that if he wanted to run against Bush he should have ran 4 years ago but 9 times out of 10 he has sided with Bush and I wouldn’t trust him to do anything right or tell us the truth either. Thank goodness he is leaving anyway it goes. One of my biggest concerns after McCain being tied to closely to Bush is his choice of running mates. I do not think she has the experience to be vice president and heaven forbid president. Plus there is the issue of her abusing power when she was mayor and then governor. Then the fact that her husband was behind the scenes meddling also. Would we end up with her husband pulling strings with officials like he did in Alaska? That is something I don’t really want to find out it will be much better if there is not even the chance for her to abuse power and let her husband use her office for his own vendettas.
As the election draws near, in Governor Palins home state of Alaska the report on abuse of power by the governors office is released. The Alaska legislative investigation finds that Palin violated state laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. Public office is no place to conduct a personal vendetta against anyone. Once again I see reason why I feel that Palin is not ready to be Vice President, and heaven forbid, President. Even more disturbing than her?unlawful acts and abuse of power while in office is the fact that her husband Todd was leading the way in the attempt to get his ex brother in law fired. Gov. Palin knowingly “permitted Todd to use the Governor’s office and the resources of the Governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. If she is elected will he be running things in the background of her office? Using her power to conduct his own agenda while using her office to empower him? I did not think that she was ready to be President and that is the criteria that we need to think of when voting as she will be a mere moment away from being President. This only reinforces my feelings that she is not ready for the office of Vice President. The only good thing about her running for office is the hilarious skits performed on Saturday Night Live depicting her. Whats bad though is Tina Fay merely had to use the governors own words to get laughs from the audience. Its sad McCain picked such as her for his running mate. He might have made a good President but I certainly can not vote for him because of her.
Yesterday was the 9th of October and the 9 month anniversary of me quitting smoking. I do not know if any of you are still wrestling with tobacco or not but I know that even now 8 months later I still get the cravings to smoke one from time to time. If you are fighting your cravings and either trying to quit or wanting to, I want to say it can be done but at the same time I recognize how difficult it can be to quit. If you are trying to quit I offer words of encouragement as I feel you can win the fight with tobacco. It is not an easy battle to win, but it can be won. If you have quit you know the cravings that sometimes pop up. Mine pop up most when I am with smokers in a group setting or outdoors. That and first thing in the morning when I feel the need to go outside and listen to the crickets chirping and frogs singing where I see a pack of smokes and a lighter there on the porch waiting to be lit up and smoked.
On the anniversary of my last cigarette I see that the Supreme Court is going to decide the outcome of a lawsuit claiming unfair marketing claiming that Phillip Morris knew that users of light and low tar cigarettes compesatedfor lower levels by smoking more or taking longer puffs. I know these people want to be compesated for injuries from smoking but they knew the risks as it is printed on the side of every pack of cigarettes sold in the United States. We can await the decision but I feel like they knew going in what could happen and smoked anyhow. I grew up in a house full of smoke andfeel like I was almost predestined to smoke. What am I going to do sue my parents for smoking? A little too late for that. At least when I smoked I did not allow a cigarette to be smoked in my house ever. At least I did not start my children on the same path I treaded.
Like many of you ?I watched the Vice Presidential debate last night and was not impressed at all with Governor Palin. Between her dodging the questions put to her and instead talking about whatever subject she felt she knew best and her flirtatious winking to the camera I was very much put off by her. She reminded me of a beauty queen who is used to getting anything her way by simply using her good looks and flirting with some sucker of a man she can manipulate. I am sure there are plenty of men and perhaps women that were taken in by her looks and personality last night during the debate, but I for one am not one of them. I wanted to see someone who knew what she was talking about and was able to answer the questions put forth to her. Even when she did speak she was not factual. At one point she skirted a question and went to taxes claiming that Obama had voted 94 times to raise taxes. Well I thought I might look this up and see if she is correct and Obama had been lying himself. According to factcheck.org this is not true. According to them 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year and many of them were duplicate votes.
I know Biden made some misstatements himself like when he falsely claimed that McCain had voted against a failed bill to fund our troops with a deadline for withdrawal included. In actuality McCain never even voted one way or the other as he didn’t bother to even show up to vote for troop funding. I still have misgivings about eh Obama, Biden ticket but am definitely afraid of putting McCain in power with a Vice President that hasn’t a clue and could easily be President if something were to happen to a 72 year old McCain.