Bobbis.net

I'm just posting to let people know of my busy week ahead.

Monday - TrLog quiz (these are more like test, except essay)
Tuesday - Psych mass testing for class credit, Acct 285 Test (really need to study a lot for this one).
Wednesday - Psych class test (the graded kind), FUG and Chruch :D
Thursday - iMovie tutorial in 1340 Molecular Biology (still needs to be organized this week with table tents and flyers)
Friday - Do something fun!

I have been invited up to Yankton and am considering going to see Gaila. There is also Film Festival to get a web site organized for, the transition from ISUMUG to AmesMUG, and another ambiguously defined business group project in logistics. Only two weeks to Thanksgiving break.

To cap the weekend:

Saturday:Just after the bus left the parking lot after dropping us off at our cars after the Apple Store trip, I realized I had left my coat on the bus. Luckily, on my way home on Airport Road I spotted the bus being put away next to one of the storage units, and I was able to recover my coat before getting home :D.

I got home, showed off my iPod to my 'rents and fell asleep until around 5:30 or so when I made plans with Colin and Adrienne to get some Battle's BBQ and watch Shrek II and Dazed and Confused at her place.

Oh, speaking of movies, Colin and I went to see The Incredibles on Friday. I give that move an A-. I would be interested in seeing it again in the theater and I think I have decided to get it when it comes out on DVD (which is more than I could say for an iPod ;-) ).

Sunday: I went to church. Sometimes it is nice to have a good sleeping pattern though the weekend. I'm already ready to go to bed and it's not even past midnight. After church Ben R, Katie, Adrienne, Erik, Dave C, Noel and I went for a meal at Carlos O' Kelly's. After that Ben and I stopped by my office with Noel's computer to see if we could fix the LCD not displaying. We couldn't find the problem so it looks like she may be getting a new laptop.

Well, I've got a busy week to get ready for. Laters.

I didn't take any pictures at the Apple Store on Saturday. Sorry :(. It's late right now, so I won't go into details, but Nick has a pretty good account for what happened, so I'll just let him do the explaining.

Colin and I ended up getting a 40gig iPod (normal, not the photo kind).

Buying the iPod made me immediately think of the above consumer whore image from the Rejected video.

Anyway, I'm going to get to bed. I'm thinking about going to church tomorrow. A more detailed recap of the weekend will probably show up either later Sunday or sometime during the week.

This week went by really fast for some reason. It's Friday already. I'm disappointed about the outcome of the election, but I guess we'll have to deal with it. Michael Moore had a fairly entertaining list of reasons why we shouldn't kill ourselves.

Last night I was the only one to attend our officer's meeting (well, Sheng was there, but he had to leave early for a group project). There is so much work to get done, yet nobody seems to be motivated to do anything. They want something to happen, but I need stuff from them to make it work. I am especially disappointed with our web master. Two weekends in a row he said that he would have the new site up by Monday. All he has for over over a month is a design. He is now complaining that he can't do anything until we get the domain working (which it actually is now amesMUG.org). Ok, mister webmaster, that's your job! We need a website for people to get Film Festival and Programming contest information. If I don't see any results soon, I will just do it myself. The programming contest is ready to go, but it just needs some support. Film Festival still needs a budget. We want to give away $800 in cash prizes, and we can't use GSB funds for it, and Apple is keeping things tight looking for a huge return on investment in this project but nobody is willing to do any planning. It seems they just want everything to organize itself as it goes instead of anticipating anything. I'm thinking Film Festival will have to spawn off a separate group consisting of myself and Mark. Okay, enough ranting on that. I am disappointed in MUG :-(.

On the good side, I have managed to organize a trip to the Apple Store this Saturday. Someone from the group will be taking us down in his converted school bus. If you are interested in going please let me know. We are leaving at 8:00 AM from the parking lot behind the Molecular Biology building. We plan on being back in Ames by 2:30. More information can be found here. I might get suckered into getting an iPod.

Ohh, 10.3.6 is out.

Tonight I would like to see The Incredibles. Anyway, I should probably be doing something productive with my time right now.

:-( I don't believe what happened was right. Kerry concedes after Ohio's 20 electoral votes go to Bush.

Results

Well, Friday, I didn't see Ann Coulter, and by the time 11:00 PM rolled around, I felt I was too tired to try to make it to a midnight show. I watched West Wing, organized some things so I knew where I was going on Saturday and made plans to pick up Gaila in Boone and Colin on the way past Ames.

Saturday, I actually got up in the morning. I had to pick up Gaila in Boone when she dropped her car off at the tire shop. Filled up with gas back in Ames (at 1.89 vs. 1.77 in Ankeny, grr). We dropped Colin's car off in the Menards parking lot in Ankeny.

The rally was cool. I got a few pictures that I published online for you to see.

During the security check I actually emptied my inside coat pocket for the first time. I thought about unloading it before leaving, but eh. All the items in my pocket are not in a comfortable position anymore.

Ashton Kutcher was the first to take the stage. He actually was a better speaker than I would have expected. He talked a little bit about his experiences growing up in Iowa. Bon Jovi didn't say much, but gave a good performance. We also caught Peter Jennings watching the event. During Kerry's speech, someone in the crowd collapsed. Jennings helped as state troopers dealt with the problem. This didn't stop the speech though.

After the event we ate at Wendy's in the Menards parking lot in Ankeny, hung out at Super Target, and played checkers at Starbucks while sipping on hot cocoa and warm cider. Colin, then, headed home while Gaila and I went to Indianola to see Mel.

The play was interesting, as is just about every production. I think I understood this one more than a lot of the others. Afterwards Galia and I went down to Mel's place to hang out. I have to say, her roommates are quite the group of people. I got some cake there, so it's all good. After everything I dropped Gaila off at her car in Boone. Estimated mileage for the day: around 200.

Sunday, I relaxed for a while. Then cleaned the gutters and raked the yard. Monday, I foget what happened Monday, probably wasn't important.

Today I registered for my spring classes. I need to see my advisor about getting into the MIS program from business undeclared so I can sign up for MIS courses. I did not have a problem filling my schedule this semester. I was even able to sign up for Religion 105, but decided to not take it since it would not satisfy any graduation requirements that haven't already been filled (Thank you Anthropology). If I get into MIS 331 I will drop my CRP 270 class and take Religion 210 next fall to satisfy my US Diversity.

Tonight, after class, I will vote, eat dinner and meet my TrLog group in the library to organize our project. This reminds me that I should start thinking about starting my History paper about the effects Christianity had on science in the middle ages.

Anyway, I have work to do. Enjoy the pics and don't forget to vote.

Wow, lots of stuff going on this weekend. Tonight, I have been thinking about seeing Ann Coulter at Stephens. Then later going to see Army of Darkness midnight show at Varsity.

Tomorrow, Gaila and I will be heading off to Des Moines to see John Kerry give a speech at the capitol. Colin may be joining us. After that will be hang out time until we go to Simpson for The Baltimore Waltz.

Sunday, I think I'm going to relax a bit. Though, it is Halloween so I would be up to doing stuff. I still haven't found time to watch this week's episode of West Wing, and Enterprise is out tonight.

Monday evening I will be studying for the big decisions I have to make on Tuesday. There are two categories of decisions I have to make: voting, and class registration. Yeah, I know who I will vote for president, but there are other offices closer to home where my decision makes more of an impact to me. Hopefully, next semester I will be getting into the meat of the MIS program, I also am interested in taking ArtIS 308 (Introduction to 3D modeling). I have been interested in that for a while, and last night's presentation made me think that it's possible to do it.

Also, the Saturday after next (Nov 6) the Apple Store in Des Moines will be opening. If you are interesting in hanging with a bunch of Apple nerds for the day visit carpool discussion thread.

Anyway, that is an update for what is going on. I've got work to do, and organize for the weekend.

Yeah, it's been a while since an update again. There really isn't much to talk about lately. Thursday we had our officer's meeting and decided to change the name of the ISUMUG to something that doesn't contain ISU or Iowa State to avoid issues. We will make a decision at the general meeting next Thursday. If you really want to learn more about the name change and stuff see the e-mail I sent about it.

Friday, I had dinner with Adrienne and ended up going to a party at Ben J's place. There was some drinking there (don't worry, I did not partake), and it was somewhat amusing. Plenty of dirt on everyone that I can use later ::Devilish grin::, but I didn't get much of anything other then excusable stupidity. While there, I learned about this interesting Charlie Brown video. I ended up home around 2:30 and told my mom (who was still up) I was watching the South Park marathon (we were for the most part, so it wasn't a total lie). I could have gotten away with telling her where I was, but I would have gotten myself into another lecture about being responsible and crap that I have heard too many times already.

Today (Saturday), I slept in 'til 3:00. I need my 12 hours every weekend. I thought about getting some people together to see Team America: World Police, but ended up watching the new eipsode of Enterprise. I also watched Spaceballs. Perhaps tomorrow a bunch of us can see Team America.

Next week Gaila will be in town. We are planning on going down to see The Baltimore Waltz at Simpson and visit with Mel. It has been a long time since I've been able to hang out with her.

Anyway, I should attempt to reestablish a good sleeping pattern. Good night.

Well, it has been a while again. Nothing too important going on right now. Saturday I got FreeBSD installed on a work computer. I hope to play around with it a bit, perhaps make it into a new server to replace yogurt (the server hosting this page). Sunday night I hung out with Adrienne watching Something about Mary, and Shrek 1. Mom left for Grundy for Sunday and Monday night. Tonight I plan on seeing Shark Tale with Adrienne and Colin after work.

I sent my rant about voter education to the ISU Daily. The Ames Tribune seems to be doing a better job reporting on local politics, but I feel that the message is more important for students since the Daily's demographic are voters from all over Iowa and the country.

I have forgotten about my rant about ISU's internal trademark policy. I need to make sure that I know the subject before Thursday when I want the MUG to make a decision about what we are going to do about it. We want to make T-shirts and a banner to publicize our group, but if we are going to have problems with trademark issues, I would like to know what our options are. Perhaps tomorrow or Thursday I will do a pont-to-point rant about some the things in the policy that are going to get us.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I have been fairly busy. I took care of my two back to back tests on Wednesday. I decided not to take my psych exam during the alternate time because if I did, I would have to take a comprehensive final. I feel I did pretty well on both exams and will be content with the grades that I get, especially if on the curve.

At the MUG meeting today, we got to experience the C4 virtual reality lab. It was a pretty cool technology to experience. I can just see something similar being used as a home entertainment system in 20 years. We also had someone stop by to announce a network security experiment. They want people to help set up and protect a network from hackers (experts in computer and network security will be the hackers). The actual experiment will be in April, but they are looking at organizing teams right now. This is something that I may be interested in doing. There may be an email to the MUG list in the next few days about it. They are looking to compare different systems for security and are interesting in comparing Mac OS to other Windows, and UNIX-like systems.

Wednesday, campus organizations got an email about the proper use of ISU trademarks in URLs. Apparently, the MUG and a bunch of other organizations are now in violation of ISU's trademark usage policy. They are having a fit about the string "ISU" being in our domain name isumug.org . They offer no exceptions for any campus organization to use trademarks in a domain. Because our organization name is ISUMUG we are going to have a problem operating. This controversy is cause by the recent change in the way ISU handles its intellectual property. Before, the ISU Research Foundation was responsible for ISU trademarks. It has been turned over to the Office of the Vice President for Business and Finance. In case you didn't know, ISU is a registered trademark. I will probably have a longer rant about this later when I research the issue some more and perhaps get some questions answered.

InstallFest for FUG is this Saturday. Colin and I will be attending. I haven't figured out what I want to do, but I'm leaning towards installing BSD on an x86. Sunday I'm hoping to go out and do something fun with friends.

Well, time for bed.

Okay, I haven't updated since last Friday. It seems like a long time for me. Not much has happened over the weekend other than studying. I had my History blue book test today. Wednesday I have two more tests. One at 5:00 and one at 6:30. This means I will get out of one test and go directly to another test. Perhaps I will take my psychology test during the class time so that I will not have the stress of back to back tests and I will be able to attend the entire FUG meeting and not miss out on dinner.

Anyway, during some of my free time over the weekend I put together a few of my opinions I have been wanting to record about politics recently. These ideas have very little to do with the presidential race, but I believe they are very important to everyone. Thinking about this stuff, I have been thinking that I should do something to help voter education. I don't want to do anything for any particular party or candidate, but something non-partisan. I don't know. I figure if my points are good enough, I might submit it to the Daily or Tribune. Anyway, I would like to hear your opinions.

--


Voter Education
With all the attention given to the presidential race, it?s easy to forget that we are choosing more than just a president when we go to vote on November 2nd. Many places also tack on other votes to the ballot. Decisions for house and senate seats, state representatives, local, and municipal issue may show up on the ballot as well.

The system of checks and balances make each branch of the government equally powerful, though, the media tends to focus more attention to the executive branch than the equally important legislative and judicial branches. This is understandable since there are so many races and the districts have become so small that local TV news outlets, and even some newspapers, reach several different districts. It becomes difficult to report equally and intuitively on all the different elections their audience will be experiencing.

Many people don?t know what districts they reside in. There are web sites out there that help you find out what districts you are in and where to go to vote, but a lot of times they are hard to find through all the campaigning propaganda. I didn?t even know who my incumbent senator and representative were. It took me a while just to find out basic information about these people. It?s even harder to find those who are not incumbent. After a bunch of digging, I found a web site I was looking for at congress.org. There, I was able to find basic information about which candidates will be on my ballot, what district I am in, a little background information on the candidates and even a quick way to read what their position is on a variety of issues. It?s not as in-depth about local issues, but for a web site, I was very impressed.

It is important for voters to be informed about what their options are. They must know what candidate best represents their issues in order for our government to work the way it was intended. When I?m not informed enough to be comfortable with a decision, I?m less inclined to actually voice my opinion, and I?m sure that is probably true for a lot of people.



Partisanship
Before the Iowa caucuses in January, I was very much against the idea of political parties. I was registered as independent. I thought the parties were only good for making sure nothing happens, but after participating in the caucus I gained a new understanding of the system, and why there is such a thing as partisanship.

When I went to the caucus I changed my affiliation to democrat so I would be able to participate. I knew that I didn?t like the way Bush was running the country, so I felt I had a responsibility to voice my opinion on which possible candidate would best represent my interests. It was then I realized that having an organization, such as the Democratic party (or Republican, or Socialist, or whatever), allows people with similar interest to better support someone who will best represent theirs. Without the support system a political party provides, only those who already have money would be able to do any effective campaigning. If there were no party support systems, billionaires like Ross Perot would have become president, and only the interest of the rich would be represented, even if the majority elected them.

Having several different beliefs represented in our government by different parties ensures that the people are getting what they want. In our system, the minority has a strong voice. Our government was set up in this way for a reason. No one idea or belief would be represented by our government. I am reminded of a South Park episode about how this form of government allows us, as a nation, to ?have our cake and eat it too.?

Compromise is a result of debate caused by differing views in the government. You can look at compromise two different ways. Either both sides get what they want, or both sides don?t get what they want. Either way, when a bill is passed, it is ideally altered by compromises so that the law will represent the beliefs and ideas of the citizens.

I currently consider myself a democrat. This, by no means, is a permanent affiliation. Party affiliation seems to be a somewhat permanent thing for most people. I will continue to have an open mind to other opinions. I may be persuaded to change my mind and become a member of a different party, or become independent again. In the end, I have a greater appreciation for the way our government works.