One, Two, Three, Four; Tell Me That You Love Me More

1. There is some sort of drilling operation going on next door to my apartment. About a month ago they started putting up giant ugly walls. They are just giant metal beams and bars with weird foam covers as the panels of the wall. They are hideous and are a terrible fleshy color. This whole thing is on the side of my apartment that has the windows so in the morning all of the once beautiful natural light is kind of a rotten peach color. It is like living next to a huge fleshy padded cell.



2. I think sex with clothes (dry humping - which makes me laugh and feel a little embarrassed to say, so we will go with sex with clothes) is mostly retarded. Lex said it is only good as foreplay and/or for 14 year olds. I agree. He said it is like an appetizer. Basically, it is garlic bread and while yummy it is not a full meal. You want the spaghetti. And honestly, if you are going to have Italian food why only settle for garlic bread not just have a whole meal?



3. Metal ≥ Rap. In the past few weeks I have been trying to broaden my musical horizons. I went through a gangster rap phase and listened to quite a bit of old skool west coast rap - all of which I have a great deal of fondness for and I have my usual collection of rap/hip-hop that appeals to me (some for what it says like Kanye, MosDef, Common, OutKast, MC Lars, and Gnarls Barkley [okay that is mostly sounds cool factor] and some because it is ridic like Lil Mama, Flo Rida, Juelz Santana, E-40 and Shop Boyz). And through all of this I have collected quite a bit of hip-hop/rap but I only have bits and pieces from various metal bands. And of course, Lex is a metal head so I thought I'd get him to drop some knowledge and give me hints on what to listen to. He gave me his list of metal essentials an I am slowly working through it and will soon venture into a bit of metal music discovery of my own (so far I am digging: Dragonforce [but that is at least 2 summers old], 3 Inches of Blood, The Absence, and In Flames) . Maybe it is because a lot of this is fresh and new to my ears and I don't know anything about it, but I am totally digging the riffs and craziness. C'mon anything that can be classified as Viking Metal is a winner in my book. Also, I have found that with rap I pay attention to the words so much more than with metal. Duh, rap is far more about the words than metal will ever be... but I don't know how to describe it... the words in metal songs are often intricate and about crazy shit but I just don't hear them when I listen to it. Anyways. I am finding that I like metal just as much if not more than rap. I will have to listen to a lot more if I am going to give a definitive answer. \m/



I Google image searched metal head and this was by far the best result.


4. I have been considering an East Coast trip sometime in the near future. I'd like to go when Courtney is in New Jersey so I can see her in her natural environment. I want to see her family again but Jersey style. Also, I really want to visit Jordan and see his apartment and where he is working and all that jazz. It would also be nice to include a detour to Connecticut to see Brad at Yale and Liz in her teaching program. And since I keep mentioning Lex - I'd get to see him too and I could get to do some more NYC sightseeing. All that being said, I have a HUGE desire to go on a solo road trip to Oklahoma to see the Survivor Tree. I've mentioned my love affair with this tree before and it is a major life goal of mine to accomplish this. I think doing this right after I graduate would be a good time for me, maybe not of the year (i.e. December- January) for driving or the tree. And going to the East Coast during that time wouldn't necessarily be ideal, though I did go to New York in January of this year and it was awesome. Some of the incentives of the East Coast may be gone though, who knows when Courtney will be there b/c of her comitments and Jordan may be moving his location since his job is rotational. I am really only in a position to do one as far as dollars go. So which would be the best choice? Ugh. I should probably figure out what I am doing with my life as far as employment and all that instead of just daydreaming about vacations.

OR

Alice in Dazed and Confused

So, I recently came across information that Tim Burton is making an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and then Houdini confirmed my suspicions (read his two cents).





I am a HUGE Alice fan. And I must say I really, really love the Disney movie for a variety of reasons, but I do agree with Houdini on this one - read the books. It seems that Burton wants to make a movie about a little girl trippin' on acid, which is not the beauty of the story. Fail.

And finally, I dislike the Disney Princesses line of merchandise because it excludes Alice (for obvious "not a princess" reasons). I would so buy Alice merch if it were available. They are loosing out on approximately $4 to $55 from me.



- isn't Pocahontas a princess?

What Matters To Me And Why

I feel like this is going to be a long one so be prepared.

Network Neutrality
I've had several conversations over the past week or so about the issue of network neutrality. I find the wikipedia article to be a fairly good overview of the issue. You can read it here. I feel quite passionately about the issue. I think it is very important for the FTC to take a stance on the issue. In a June 2007 report they said that the "broadband industry is a relatively young and evolving one," and given no "significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm from conduct by broadband providers," such regulations "may well have adverse effects on consumer welfare, despite the good intentions of their proponents." I honestly don't get wtf they are talking about other than they do not want to create any legislation that will limit large telecom companies. Pansies.
There are a lot of arguments out there for and against a neutral network, but it really boils down to the following for me: someone/some company/ some corporation shouldn't get to decide what information I see at what speed. They shouldn't put up roadblocks so that competitors information is shown at a slower rate (which will be clicked off by users). Freedom, guys. FREEDOM.




Presidential Candidates' Technology Policies (or lack thereof)
In my last post I linked to the candidates' technology policies and you can clearly see that Obama has one on his site and McCain lacks one. As someone who is currently seeking a master's degree that is focused on online communities, it really gives me great cause for concern when one of the candidates doesn't list an opinion on the industry that I and many of my friends are involved in/seek to be involved in.



My takeaways from Barak Obama's technology policy :
1. open internet (though his site spells internet as Internet and that bothers me. You don't spell television as Television - it is the same shit. Catch up grammar police).
2. Encouragement of diversity of media ownership - Yes. Standing up to The MAN!
3. open government up to citizens (he kind of wants to make the government a blog - "Giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation" - I like the idea of gov't as a forum, but this is just asking for crazies and censorship debates)
4. Government into the 21st century - a CTO [chief technology officer for the knowledge impaired] for the country. (p.s. I love this idea and want to be CTO of America someday).
5. Communication infrastructure investment - widespread next-gen broadband deployment! We are so behind on this compared to a lot of the rest of the world - especially compared to Asia (okay, Japan and South Korea).
6. Education - technology literacy! He talks about preparing youth, which I totally believe in - math, science, technology to stay competitive in 21st century economy. But I'd venture to say that we need to educate a whole lot of people that are currently in the workforce about technology. Productivity suffers because of technology illiteracy.
7. Investment in the sciences - since 1970 our investment has dropped in half in the physical sciences and engineering research. fix this - get competitive, start leading again.
8. Protect American IP abroad and IP at home [IP = intellectual property for the knowledge impaired again]. I don't know that he will be the man to take on the challenge of reforming copyright law, but I like that his is starting this discussion. His section on IP was very short, but I think it is something, as an electorate, we can push to have the candidates talk about. (Lawrence Lessig endorsed Obama, fyi).
For more on Obama's position on the issues go here.




My takeaways from John McCain's technology policy:
1. He wants to go to space. "Let us now embark upon this great journey into the stars to find whatever may await us." NASA!
I don't mean to be a dick about this, but really, he just doesn't have a technology policy.
Why this sucks and I want more from him as a candidate:
Does he have an opinion about any of the following and how will he help America to reach goals in these areas: open internet, broadband deployment, intellectual property rights, technology literacy, education in technology for workers (young and old), funding for the sciences - research level (on this planet), communications technology investment, media ownership.
I'd like some straight talk on that.
For more on McCain's position on the issues go here.

A Study in Contradictions

Manipulative and I don't care.

Obama's Technology Policy
McCain's Technology Policy closest I could find. But more accurately: this is his policy.


and this because it is funny:

Hostage!

So back in October I got stitches in my eyebrow from an incident involving Jordan, some binoculars, and AirWick.

I went to Good Samaritan Hospital for the stitches and everything was swell. After my face was sewn back together, they just sent me on my way. I inquired about them taking my insurance information but they said it was all taken care of and everything was fine. So I went on my merry way.

It is now July and here is what went wrong in this scenario. Good Sam assumed that my USC student insurance was the plan I wanted to cover my visit and didn't involve me in the conversation about what was going on. I didn't do much to help the situation by letting this all fly by and not asking more questions and demanding more answers. So now we (and insurance companies) are in an epic battle over money that will all be resolved soon because we both realize the errors made by both of us. I have about 10 more hours worth of phone calls and time on hold ahead, but after next Monday I should be golden. Ugh.

In regard to these stitches I have another bone to pick... After the procedure I was sent a bill for physicians fees (totaling more than $600) which I promptly paid in full thinking this was my total hospital bill. I later figured out the error in my thinking and called them up to figure out if they had billed my insurance first etc etc. Turned out they didn't, so I was able to fill out an online form so they could process my insurance info blah blah blah. Long story short, they didn't contact me in any way about a credit so I figured it just wasn't covered and I was out the $600+ bucks. However, because of the craziness with Good Sam, I figured it would be a good idea to give the physician's billers a call to see if any similar error was made. They told me over the phone, Oh yea, you have a credit of $500+ we'll send it to you in approx 1 month. Ummm.... WTF? They were just going to keep the $$ hoping I would never ask for it. That seems a tad bit shady.

I am largely dissatisfied with this process as a whole. Such a headache over some shitty assumptions that were made while I was having my face sewn up.

When Work Feels Overwhelming, Remember That You Are Going To Die

So a little clue into how I've been spending my day at work:

I've had the banana phone song stuck in my head for approximately 2 months and yesterday I found this on our site:

So I was inspired to make a "This Shit Is Bananas" list of banana products. You can find it here. 

When I run out of ideas I have been listening to the following YouTube Videos for inspiration:

and

my life is slowly becoming a big joke. 

Awesome, Not Awesome, Awesome

Before I head off of the interwebs to exercise bike my little heart out here are a few things:

Make Someone Smile Week
I became aware of this because of work and wrote a blog post for the ThisNext blog which should be put up sometime soon [UPDATE: TN blog!]. It is a charitable event put on by Teleflora where they send out Be Happy Bouquets to nearly 40,000 people in need - "hospital patients, children in foster care, nursing home residents and many other people who do not usually receive flowers but whose day will be brighter because of this surprise gift." I think this is a fabulous idea and jumped at the chance to write the company blog post about how awesome they are for their generosity.

(via Teleflora)

Fails and Funnies
Here are a couple things I found as I was going through the interwebs and things are exceptionally dumb and hilarilous:

Think Blue
and finally, because we have a couple Dodgers games this week and they are back in the race for the NL West (only .5 game back from the D-backs [which makes me thing D-bags]) here are a few picks I made on ThisNext of Dodger gear. I really love the spinner belt buckle!

See more of my Think Blue: Decked Out In Dodgers Gear list at ThisNext.

Quotable

Check out this craigslist ad here. 

I love it.

And finally, my life is strangely like Fight Club in many aspects:

A house full of condiments and no food... how embarrassing.