wow! pompous!

So I'm going through my daily news routine, when I come across a story about some evacuees trying to get four-star accomodation in Santa Fe. Here's the article.

That doesn't necessarily bother me... until I get to the point where the article says that they were trying to get it for free. Government dollars!

And then they had the guts to complain that a hotel refused to give them rooms, when the hotel reports that they were booked. And I believe the hotel BTW, they are notiously hard to get into, and probably were booked.

But the average price for the hotel in question is between $230-280/night. WTF???

Now don't get me wrong, I do feel for the evacuees. But society does not owe them a better social situation than they left behind. They chose to live in an area that gets hit by hurricanes, and got hit by one.

That's what insurance is for.

Insurance, FEMA, and the rest of us are not liable to make their lives better by comparison just because they made the choice to live where they did.

If these people could afford a four-star hotel before the hurricane, than surely they must have the means to afford the price tag after. And the money should be used to help people who have no such means at all to get something.

And if they couldn't afford it, than they shouldn't have asked for it. Santa Fe is known for sky high prices, but nobody needs to stay in the middle of a tourist haven as an evacuee. And there are plenty of other hotels around the city, at lower prices.

As is, they did manage to get accomodations at the Hilton. Which still cost the rest of us $180/night, for four nights and one room service call.

Finally, I pose a question. If most of the rest of us (I'll admit I'm too poor) couldn't even afford to dream about staying in these places, by what train of thought is this ok?

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The (standing) line to get in the door at Dixon's Apple Orchard. We still had about a half hour from this point, and had already waited in the car line for 2.5 hours before this. But the apples are worth it. 

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Nikki got a haircut while we were up in Santa Fe over the weekend. 

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Dreams

I've been having some funky dreams lately. Very strange, and usually in the morning hours, just before I wake up. And while you ain't getting any details, let me tell you that my mind almost plans these timings so that I remember what my dreams were about.

I guess the even stranger aspect of these dreams is the sense of deja vu. Places or situations that I have never been to in real life, but I seem to have visited before in my dreams.

When my brain does this for several days like this it always gives me the feeling that my mind is trying to desperately tell me something, and that I am just too dense to 'get it'.

It also has the nasty side effect of making me want to sleep more so that I can try and plough through whatever is happeneing in my head.

Grrr.

I wish that my head wouldn't try to couch things in dreams like that. Just once I would like to have it spelled out. You know, a simple dream where you are looking at a bulletin board, and tacked to it is a note from the subconscious telling you what's up.

Wouldn't that be nice and easy???

One can only dream...(pun intended).

anyway, enough for now.

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meme

You are a Samurai.
You are full of honour and value respect. You
are not really the stereotypical hero, but you
do fight for good. Just in your own way. For
you, it is most certainly okay to kill an evil
person, if it is for justice and peace. You
also don't belive in mourning all the time and
think that once you've hit a bad stage in life
you just have to get up again. It's pointless
to concentrate on emotional pain and better to
just get on with everything. You also are a
down to earth type of person and think before
you act. Impulsive people may annoy you
somewhat.

Main weapon: Sword
Quote: "Always do the right thing.
This will gratify some people and astonish the
rest" -Mark Twain
Facial expression: Small smile


What Type of Killer Are You? [cool pictures]
brought to you by Quizilla

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questions

So before we even get into today's post, I'm just gonna let you know that I'm once again going to be rambling about setting up my new site.

But with that out of the way, I can get into rambling.

Mostly I have some questions for you all. I have some auto-install scripts that I can plug into the web site and have some fun with, but I don't know if they're worth putting on. So I'll list what I'm thinking about adding and you all let me know if you think they will ever be used.

Chat room- Personally I doubt that this would ever be used unless I set up something, but what do you think?

Forums- Message board- Whatever you want to call it- probably more likely to be used than chat, but not by much.

Let me know what you think guys, I gotta go to class now so hopefully you'll have weighed in on this once I get back.

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stuff, stuff and more stuff

Ugh, I'm trying to figure everything out with this new web page stuff. There are soo many options and different things that I can do, and I feel like I won't ever figure it all out.

And of course, since I'm not hosting with yahoo I have to change the DNS settings to point to my hosting service. It wouldn't be a problem, but they way yahoo has it set up is confusing. I can change the nameservers easily, but the IP addressing isn't right there, and right now I'm hoping that editing the a record is a good thing.

Side note: mere hours after I purchased my domain for 2 year at $4.98/year... yahoo went and lowered the price again, to $2.99. Go figure.

On to other stuff... I really need to get the next post up in community book project, I just still don't know where I want to take it. I'll have to think about it some, and then just get it out.

Spent three hours in line for apples on saturday, but they're worth it. Mmmmmm, aaaapppllles.

And that's about all I can think of for now. Catch ya'll later.

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Busy, Busy

Hey all,

If you're wondering where I am today, sorry.

I decided to go ahead and get a domain and hosting started. I've been futzing with that since sometime this morning.

If you're interested the domain is phoenixwaller.com, but right now it just points to my geocities account. I will be changing that over the course of the near future. I just need to figure out how I want my pages to look, and I need to figure out all the new options I have.

Please be patient.

Anyway, I know that right now I have waaaaaay more room and bandwidth than I really need. But I hope that won't always be the case, and the price was comparable to other plans with far fewer features and less room.

Anyhow, I'll keep you updated on how it's going. And I may occassionally ask for input.

So till later...

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Test

So I had a test in circuits this morning. I thought that I had been prepared, but somehow I feel different now.

I didn't finish everything, but that's realy not what I'm worried about.

What I'm really worried about is one particular problem. The instructions were to get a general solution withut values using both methods, and then use one of those with values added in to get the answer.

Somehow I was getting different answers where I shouldn't have been. And that could mean that I'm not understanding something on a fundamental level.

That is also the reason I'm not as concerned about the stuff I didn't finish. I kept going back trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and thus ran out of time for the other stuff.

Oh well, I can't do anything about it now.

SO I'm going with Nikki to Dixon's tomorrow, and we'll just kinda have a girl's weekend.

So since I'm out of things to say, have a nice weekend all.

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High Heels

My feet are killing me.

I ended up wearing high heeled sandals to the career fair, and while I feel that I looked better for it I am still not used to walking around in those things.

But they had a better turn out than in years past, IMHO. Quite a few smaller companies that could afford to talk with us and tell us what was going on rather than rush us through because the line was growing longer by the second.

And there was one place that was real excited because I'm A chemical Engineering Major that's planing to graduate in December. They were excited enough to ask for an unofficial copy of my transcripts. WHich of course they grimaced over, but they said that my information would still be passed on. w00t!

Anyway after that I had to rush to get to class, and I honestly still haven't had a good meal. And since beadmaking had been cancelled yesterday I was able to do that today rather than try and figure out a new piece for fusing.

Which is good, because I still have no clue as to what to choose next.

Anyway, my mind has kinda turned to slush right now. So that's enough.

Bye.

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internet

You'll get used to this if you know me long enough.

Yesterday I complained about money, and today I'm going to ramble about a major-minor purchase (yes that wording will make sense if you can follow my winding train of thought).

More and more I am finding that I am tired of my geocities pages. I hate the ads, and even more I am tired of my stuff being at the tail end of a large url. I also have started to exceed my bandwidth usage, and that is bad. If somebody want to visit my site there should be no hindering that.

But, as stated yesterday, I have no money. Thus the major-minor purchase phrase. It really can be a minor purchase, I've looked at a lot of prices and I can do this at what would usually be considered reasonable prices. Easily less than $100/year if I do it right.

But when you don't have the money any spending has to be viewed as a major purchase. Heck, I consider gas a major purchase anymore.

Of course I was waffling over the upgrading to a premium shop on cafepress, but I don't regret the decision and I have almost made back my initial 3 month payment in just over 2 weeks.

I guess I'm getting this out there to ease my own mind. I know I'm going to do it, but I like to give the option for people to try to convince me not to. I guess I'm just at the point where I'm going to be looking over hosting plans and deciding how much I really need.

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money

I seem to have missed out on the job boom on campus.

I sit here, still without a job. I really don't want one right now, but I also will quickly run out of money and therefore need one.

Here come the problems...

most offices are going to want students for more than one semester. Which means that they will probably pick someone over me for just that reason. And I remember seeing so many ads that said exactly that, that I didn't get in on this sooner.

pay: while I have managed to get at least one set of loans deferred, I still don't know about the other and most places on campus pay slightly higher than nil. I hate to admit it, but I got used to that pay in santa fe.

available times. yeah, this is a strange one. I have a pretty strange schedule, and some days I could work a full day, and others not at all. I also can't work on weekends due to my going home and still working the occassional saturday at the pool store (which barely pays for my gas for that week).

So I sit here, for some strange reason.

Moving on...

I have started selling stuff through my store. Not enough yet to even get a commission check, need another $15 or so before that'll happen. But I am happy to see the occassional you've made a sale email. so if I'm lucky I'll see a few dollars from there slightly before hell freezes over.

And to finish today, I recieved this coupon for cafepress calendars in the email. You're welcome to use it on the one calendar I have and I linked straight to it. You'll probably still have to manually input the coupon code.

Bye all.

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weekend

So, like normal, I went home for the weekend. When I left Socorro on Fri. I was expecting to work on saturday and then hang out with my aunt and cousin who were visiting from Florida.

Of course, everything went sideways once I actually pulled into the driveway.

I found out that my grandmother had gone to the hospital on fri morning. So fri turned into a waiting game to see my aunt and mother as they spent until almost 10 that night trying to get information and helping my grandmother settled into her room.

Saturday I went to work, and then headed to the hospital to visit and se how my grandma was doin. But when I pulled into the parking lot I was told by everybody else that she was trying to take a nap. So we all ended up a Tomasitas for lunch and then we walked around downtown santa fe for a bit. Of course, since I didn't know that this was happening I had worn heels to work and thus my feet were killing me as we walked.

But I did end up buying something. We went into this naturalish store, where hemp clothing was big and I ended up getting a bumper sticker (Let me know in comments if you want to see it on the rant). So that was interesting.

Anyway, after we got done downtown we ended back up at the hospital. Where we found out that right after we left grandma was taken for some more tests, so she didn't get her nap in.

So after a few minutes I decided that it was time to go and me and my cousin went home.

Time passes..., and my brother gets to the house. He was coming up to have his bachelor party.

More time passes..., guys get impatient because they are waiting on my mother and aunt to come home in the bigger car. After they arrive we realize that it would have made more since for me to have brough my mother's car home earlier so as not to have rushed them from the hospital.

So on to Sunday, where nothing much happened until I was ready to leave.

I had remembered having a tire vibrating a bit too much for my comfort the day before. So I inspected my tires to see that one was bald on one side. Grr. Of course I know better than to drive 120 miles on a bald tire. So I went to Sam's club and had both fronts replaced, $11o.

Ouch! I'm already poor!

But by the time my tires and shopping were done it was already time for me to head back, so I didn't even get to visit grandma yesterday.

Finally, my cousin was leaving today. But I think my aunt is extending her visit to help with grandma.

Anyway, it felt good just to get some of that frustration off of my chest. Hope you all had a good weekend.

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whoah

So I was going through the news when I came across this article.

Wow!

I mean it's just incredible. But honestly I would have to consider myself a fence sitter on a topic like this. At least for now.

The potential benefits are absolutely incredible. Patients that have been disfigured bad enough for this to be a viable option would see a dramatic increase in quality of life if the procedure works.

But then there are the problems. Anti-rejection drugs, the knowledge of wearing the skin of another person's face, and the psychological implications.

Then there are the potential benefits to science, even if they only do one and then decide that it is not right to continue. The has the potential to advance the science of transplants and probably some other areas as well.

Anyway, we won't know everything until it is decided to be done or not. But that they are even seriously considering this is incredible.

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We're making a mockery of ourselves.

Here I go on the whole 'Intelligent design' bit again.

SO in my readings this morning I came across this article. Some nobel laureates are teaming up to show that they are against some of the proposed measures to implement ID in schools.

Good is what I was thinking. Surely some of the most respected scientists in the world would be able to get something across to the bible thumpers.

But this one line in the article really got me p.o.'d. While talking to reporters about the letter the chairman of the school board said that he was unmoved by the letter. His reason...

"I don't think anything should be taught as dogma," Abrams told the Lawrence Journal-World.

WTF?!?!?

What dogma? These are proven scientific theories, that can be repeated to show how it works. These are FACTS! Of all the science out there, Darwin's theories are some of the most stable because they don't require conjecture based on the unknown. We can see and decode the DNA, we can watch natural selection in nature. We can even track the changes to see how things happened to change the world around us.

Of course... we can't forget that this is the same state that gave us Phelps and his band of psychos.

So maybe it is just a location problem.

But to keep me from going off on a complete raving, lunatic rant. I'll make some predictions for the State of Kansas if they insist on this path. In roughly 12-20 years you will...

• see science based industries suddenly looking for new locations outside of the state.
• see your students having a harder time in science fields, especially biology, while in college
• see outside industries bypass the state when looking to set up shop due to low levels of proplerly trained personnel
• become the base for christain fundamentalists, who will only make things worse

let's see if I'm right.

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Shock

I'm in such a state of shock today that I don't even know what to write about.

I know that I had something clanging around in my skull that I was going to post here, but that all evaporated when I got online and went immediately to my statcounter. I was ecstatic to see a huge jump in stats. And then I saw where they were coming from...

Then my brain turned to mush.

I am still in a state of shock even more than an hour after I first saw it.

I was given a Huuuuuuge compliment on Sean Kennedy's Livejournal. I mean this guy has a lot of people that listen to him, me included. And it wouldn't surprise me if there are a slew more that aren't as vocal as some of us. SO for him to do this is incredible, at least to me.

Wow.

I hope that my mind clears up soon. I get to go play with glass in just over a half hour, and I still need to get some landscape pictures for photography today.

And I get to dance tonight. I guess I should be glad that I did my homework last night.

And with that said, and other random things I might say having vanished for the time being... Bye

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fused glass

I know it's really hard to see the colors in this. I'll get a better picture later, maybe when it's not in a window. Anyway this is one of my fused glass pieces

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glass beads

some of my beads. They're kinda hard to see, but it gives a decent idea of what I've been doing. And of course I pulled out the strange not-so-good ones.

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And for an unwelcome change of pace.

Here we go again. Same atheist dad, same battle of one line in the pledge
article

The bible thumpers can piss me off, but this guy isn't endearing himself to me either.

I thought that this whole issue was figured out a while back. Now it feels like a waste of public money to fight something that this guy has already been denied.

And I know if you read that article you're saying that there were these other families. But why aren't they named in the article. And they have the right to fight this, but he doesn't. SO why is he even there? Do these other people even exist?

Isn't it a worthless argument anyway? It hasn't been that long since I was in public school. And we were told on day one that if we didn't agree, had religious problems or anything else we didn't have to say the pledge. We were allowed to stand silent, omit lines, not stand at all or even leave the room.

So unless this guy lives somewhere where they have gotten gestapo about the pledge then it really shouldn't matter. He isn't being forced to say it, and his kid had options as well.

Now I won't say that I completely disagree with his point. I'm all for religious freedom and the line 'under God' does kind of force the whole god thing. But that is why there were always the other options.

And more importantly, he's just wasting system time and resources for an argument that we thought had already been settled.

Ok enough ranting about that.

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SEO

I used to not care about it. I had my dinky little web site and it didn't bother me that I never got any visitors.

Sometime recently that changed. Now I look at my stats and get concerned that my more popular pages get only about 10 visitors a day (exception for the cafepress store, it gets more but a lot of traffic is from their forums and shopkeepers don't buy as much). And my not-so-popular pages sometimes get one visitor a week or less.

EECH!

I guess it's worse by the fact that I am now trying to actually make some money from some of the stuff I do online. Between my stores, adsense and me being a beta tester for the cafepress affiliate program I can sense the potential. I just don't have the traffic.

I'm also to the point where I'd like to get a domain and bring all the random elements of me around the web into one central location. And without the geocities ads. Extensions eventually become a pain in the butt and I'd like to end it.

But I'm poor, and if I really want to do this it needs to be self-sufficient for now. I just don't have the money for hosting and other fees. Heck I cringed when I opened my premium shop because I hadn't yet made a sale, but I've been making sporadic sales for 2 weeks now so I guess it's a good thing.

Which brings us to the topic of this post, Search Engine Optimization. I know that I need to do it. The only way people find most things on the internet is through search engines, so if I want traffic then I need to place well.

And there are some things that I place VERY well in. But things to be expected. Type phoenixwaller into google and there I am, for probably 2 pages and then it gives you the similar results thing. And I am trying to at least brand my own name. Hopefully (with the exception of AIM) if you see that name it will be me.

But I'm really not going to get anywhere by branding myself. Yeah, it gives people a consistent idea of who I am and what I'm about. But unless you know me or stumble across something of mine it won't work as a search term.

Grrr.

I really need to figure this whole thing out. I know from forums that I read where SEO is discussed that links are important, and good descriptions and tag information. But somehow I'm still having a hard time with this.

Any opinions or sugestions?

BTW this will be cross posted between my LJ and daily ramblings so comment on either. I don't care.

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Random rant, and a maybe meme

Rant:

Why can't we have clear communication?

Let me explain. As I got back to campus on Sunday afternoon I found what appeared to be the perfect parking spot. I could see my car from my window and since there technically wasn't a spot on the other side I wouldn't have anybody crowding my driver's side door.

So I am getting my stuff from the trunk when my RA comes running up and says that where I parked isn't a spot. I immediately say it is because I'm between yellow lines. She says no, it's not because the curb is a different color, and that the trash collectors have a hard time getting to the bin when somebody is parked there and that then cars get towed.

I respond with if that's not a spot then P-Plant should come and paint diagonal stripes so that there isn't the confusion.

She says just don't park there.

And now to the kicker... I did move my car. But since about ten minutes after I vacated the spot there has been another car there. And since yesterday the car has been a land yacht. So what happened to the it's not a spot thing?

OK, enough of that. Paint the damn lines so that people can park illegally like they do all up and down that lot.

Meme:

So we all hate that word verification thing. And honestly, I don't know what these words mean. Or even in what language they're in.

Since I know that they're just a jumble of letters, let's turn them into words. In the comments tell what your "word" was, give a pronunciation (if possible) and a defination. And for an added challenge try to use it.

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disgusting beliefs

while I'm on the disgusting theme, I'll share a news story that showcases some of the disgusting beliefs that are showing their ugly faces since that hurricane struck

<>and news from the dark side of the internet

article

It's so bad that I really have nothing to say.

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disgusting personal habits

weren't we all taught as kids to get rid of disgusting personal habits. And then if we didn't learn to get rid of them we all gained the common sense to make them private disgusting personal habits?

Lately I have encountered a person who didn't get the memo. *shudder*

Warning- just so you know how bad it is I will let you know what this person is doing, so if you are easily nauseated I'd stop reading now.

So I'm stuck in this classroom where the designers forgot that not everybody is super thin, nor kindergardner sized. Seriously I've sat in more comfortable seats in movie theaters and airplanes. And I know skinny people who don't like this room for the same reason, so it ain't just becase I'm fat.

Well I found a seat in an acceptable location (2nd row middle) and it accepts my hips. SO that is my seat for the semester.

Disgusting habit boy is in first row center, almost dead in front of me. So no matter how I try and ignore what he is doing it is impossible because I have to look right around him to see the professor.

Anyway, it started several class sessions ago. He started running his fingers through his hair. Which in itself isn't bad, but can be annoying depending on arm placement when the person behind is trying to see what is being written on the board.

But then I noticed that he's actually picking stuff out of his hair and eating it. Yes, and when the prof is more to one side of the room you can actually see him put this stuff in his mouth.

That just makes my stomach turn circles. I have actually got to the point where I do not eat before class, by choice unlike my usual lack of time, because I fear that I will be sick if I actually have something to purge.

But no boys and girls, that's not all. It gets worse.

Today somebody got to class before disgusting habit boy and took his seat. So of course he sat DEAD IN FRONT OF ME. And to go along with an even slimmer chance of being able to ignore him he chose today to expand his abilities to make me queasy.

He progressed from picking stuff out of his hair, and eating it. To picking the pimples on his face and eating the pus.

To top all of this off it isn't like he is doing this absentmindedly. He inspects whatever he got before putting it in his mouth.

*shudder**ugh*

so if you have managed to read this far without losing your lunch, what would you do? Would you try and ignore it, ask him to stop?

And please don't suggest moving. I explained why earlier. And I am serious, the seats are that bad, I don't fit in most.

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shamless self promotion

So I thought that I'd use the remaining time this weekend to showcase some of my designs.

All of these can be found on various products at phoenixwaller designs



These can be found in the space dreams section






The above can be found under current events, and then in gas pains.


And this can be found in the misc and fun section.



So check out everything, browse a little. Maybe buy something. ;-)

Have a nice weekend.

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Maybe meme.

I get found through some strange search strings. I know that all this stuff ends up in some search bot cache somewhere, but it always surprises me that something I wrote months ago comes up in a search.

So since I track several sites I'll list here some of the more interesting search strings I have shown up under.

Daily Ramblings:
torn wallet, what does a fire do?, night blindness and brights, bad traffic phoenix, about bad drivers, california license drunkard addict, hispanic beauties,... And the two winners, the ones I see more often than any others. single sucks and lightening pics

Bumper Sticker Rant:
eye confusing picture, phoenix car sticker, voldemort bumper sticker, mean sticker, and my fave from what I saw... rant a car

And I glanced through some of my other stats, but those above were the most interesting.

SO for those of you who can track this kind of activity... what kind of search strings bring people to your site?

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Friday's random rant

SO today the big question is... What is up with scented trash bags?!?!?

Seriously, what is the point? They don't smell good by the time that you're ready to take the trash out, and honestly who's going to check?

Also the scent isn't heavy enough to actually block/ cover up any garbage odors, so they are effectively useless in that sense.

Why do we need these things? You only notice the scent for the few seconds that you spend preparing to put the bag into the can. After that are you really going to notice/check that the bag is scented?

I guess I should explain the origination of this rant.

I usually use the plastic bags that stores give you your stuff in to line my small (bath/bed room size) trash can. But sometimes they have little holes in them.

Usually that isn't a problem, as I throw away paper and stuff.

But since I am now throwing away food, drink, and etc. in this trash can I didn't want any holes. So I decided to pick up some proper bags at walmart.

The first thing I noticed is that the smallest size is nearly impossible to find. The next is that it is only available in vanilla scent. (Smiths didn't even have the smallest, not even in scented. And the scented do come in a range of sizes, even up to full kitchen bag, 13 gal, size.)

Which brings me back to the original question. What's the point of scented trash bags?

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Science wars

SO I was browsing the news this morning when I came across another article that goes through the reason of why it is a bad idea to teach "intelligent design" in america's classrooms.

article

Maybe I should stop posting articles that I agree with.

Anyway, back to posting my thoughts on the subject.

I am all for freedom of religion. And if you don't want to believe in science I'm not going to force you. But in return you shouldn't force me or my kin to sit through religious rhetoric and call it science.

It's disturbing to think that we would actually have elected officials trying to enforce this course of action.

And I think that this course directly contradicts freedom of religion. Not only because it forces religious doctrine on children, but because it eliminates all other creation theories out of the equation. If you have a youngster of another faith in those classrooms you are effictively confusing them by saying that their faith is dogma, but that creationism is science.

What Kind Of Crap Is That?!?!?!

Do these people even have a CLUE as to how damaging this is going to be over the long term?

We see every year an increase in the necessary level of education in order just to survive. And all this will accomplish will be to confuse future generations about what science really is.

And what happens when these people get to college, and are told that what they learned in school was false forced upon them by religious institutions that couldn't accept that their dogma wasn't the truth they always claimed it to be.

I hate being lied to, and I'm not alone. What do you want to bet that this actually hurts the religious establishment in the long run as those kids learn that they were lied to.

Kids aren't stupid. And they'll figure it out.

SO to close. Leave religion to the church services and parents. Leave science to the scientists.

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The water recedes...

And the lowlifes rush in.

I'm on my second round of news for today when I come across this article.

I knew that it was happening, but is always upsets me to see people trying to take advantage of a bad situation like this.

All it accomplishes in the long run is to make the honest and helpful people wary of making the contributions when they are needed.

Believe me, I have a ton of opinion on this. But it would be like preaching to the choir.

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tumbleweeds

Wow! Talk about a dead blogosphere. My satcounter is showing something like 2 people having looked at this page so far today (3 afternoon, my time).

And yesterday wasn't much better, only 8 people all day.

My other 2 blogs that I can put counters on are reading big fat 0's for today, and one for nearly a week.

Is everybody like this, or have my blogs gotten lost in the shuffle?

Anyhow, if you know let me know how your stats are looking. General will do: down, up, sideways.

and if you're one of my regular readers let me know if there's a reason you haven't been browsing here lately. Did I change something and you don't like the change, too busy? I'd like to know, because even my regular readers aren't showing up as often.

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Q and A

SO I really don't have anything to say so far this morning. I've gone through the news, and there are several articles that I liked and suggest you read. But in an attempt to actually use my LJ account I've started posting news links over there to see how it goes. Link to LJ Blog

So with that out of the way I'd like to open up the floor to questions. Some of you know me in real life, others just online.

Ask anything you want (within reason, nothing that I wouldn't know the answer to) in the comments. I don't promise to answer if I don't like the question, but I won't ignore it either. I'll tell you why I don't want to answer.

Ask away, about me, some of the stuff I do, ABout Torn. Whatever.

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Aid

There are a slew of articles today about how officials are preventing aid from getting into the devastated areas. Here is one, but there are others if this really upsets you.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050905/D8CEAHT80.html

Opinion time.

OK. I understand how it benefits rescue workers and relief agencies to keep people out. Especially those people who arrive with nothing except themselves and a boat or a truck. These people will eventually need food or water, and if they didn't bring any with them then they will only be a drain on an already strained system.

But what about those that arrive with truckloads of essential supplies?

They are being turned away as well. And if I understood all those articles right, the supplies they are bringing are being turned away with them.

That is utterly deplorable. We've been hearing for a week how desperate everything is, and how desperately supplies are needed. So why would anybody turn these supplies away?

And if I've heard right, (internet radio, can't seem to find print to back it up) even the red cross is having a hard time getting aid into these areas. And not for lack of trying.

So we have to ask at this point why we can't get aid in. There are people dying, and yet there are/were guys with guns saying to leave when people try to help.

Honestly, in situations like this, who is to blame for deaths after the first day or so? If we have a case of the government turning away people who are trying to help, and are actually qualified to help. And a lack of help from the government itself. Then we actually have our own elected officials to blame for these deaths.

Couple that with the recent cut for the N.O. levees by the shrub. And we see that the whole situation is a massive government failure.

May this be a lesson, and may they actually learn from it.

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we need to make a stand

Raise your hand if you want another conservative judge on the supreme court.

*crickets...*

Yeah I thought so.

But if the rest of us don't take a stand, right now, that is exactly what we will get. After the nomination of John Roberts some conservative groups were outraged because he wasn't conservative enough.

If those people have their way we will surely decline into a society ruled by religion.

We already have judges that are being kicked out of their own churches for ruling according to the laws as written by the government. And we are seeing a rise in judges that rule according to their own morals, and usually those defined by their church.

These are the same people that justify hate based on a passage from the bible, when often another passage completely negates the one that they are using.

We cannot allow laws and the legality of issues to be decided based on the writings of religious texts. We are now seeing constantly how these same texts are being used to justify discrimination and withholding of rights to those who are seen in a negative light in those writings.

MORALITY DOES NOT EQUAL RELIGION!!!!!!

Personally, I'm tired of the conservatives trying to force their morality down our throats. We have freedom of religion for a reason. But lately it seems that those on the far right are trying to silently alter freedom of religion to freedom to choose which denomination of christianity.

Sorry, I ain't buying it. And neither should you.

If we don't say as the nominations approach that we will have none of it, then we are opening ourselves up to be ruled by texts that we may not agree with. We are also opening ourselves up for eventual persecution.

So let me be the first to scream it to the internet.

MR. BUSH,

NOMINATE A MODERATE.

Ok people, let's beat the far right to the punch. Let's stop our squabbling and join to keep sanity in the government.

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Oops, my bad

Sorry about not posting yesterday. Time kinda got away from me.

SO I sold something else this morning. YAY! But a pricing bug meant that I earned nothing. When I reset the prices after the sale a few select items were priced at base. So the shirt I sold this morning had a zero markup on it, and I learned the hard way to make sure everything is priced correctly.

Of course I went in and fixed it, but what a disappointment. If not for the bug I probably would have made three or four dollars.

Anyway, tired or being an anonymous poster on livejournal blogs that I read I set up an account over there. Don't worry, I'm keeping this blog as my primary. It's just an FYI. And if you're really bored you can read my inane ramblings over there. my LJ blog.

That's enough for today.
Bye.

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Busy Day

Well, not really. But somehow it feels that way.

Last night, just as I was about to change the prices back in my stores, somebody bought something. I was surprised, and they bought it through the cafepress search not anything I did. Needless to say, I was happy. I only made a small commission since everything was still on sale, but a little is better than nothing.

And since we're talking about stores. I read on someone's blog that they knew someone who had been gouged for almost $7/gal. SO I added some gas themed designs to my current events section.
That's really all I have to say for today. I haven't even seen the news yet, so I can't comment on anything news related.

Later.

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