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Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
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Before I go into this, let me say that in my mailbox today were FOUR pieces of direct mail. One from the Democrats and three from the Republicans. Someone knows that I'm a registered independent. Well, guess what? I voted over a week ago! Early voting has been going on for TWELVE DAYS! What are you people doing?!
This post is mostly about the local State Senate race. Back when I lived and worked in Columbus County, I heard a lot about State Senator R.C. Soles. He had apparently been in the legislature forever and brought a lot of pork into the area. There was always the implication that he was an entrenched, corrupt bastard. He is now the State Senate Majority Leader, BTW. Yes, he's a Democrat. The Democratic party in North Carolina controls most state politics. It is a pretty centrist party, more purple than blue.
I now live down in Brunswick County (again), but Soles is still my state senator. I started seeing TV ads--a lot of ads--for his opponent, Bettie Fennell. Now, I'm not so lliberal that I won't consider voting for a Republican. I do it from time to time. So, I went to her poorly designed website liked above to look at her positions. There weren't very many. Her blog had few entries. So, I e-mailed her.
Here's the text of my message which was sent on September 27:
Ms. Fennell,
I am a resident of Brunswick County and a former resident of Columbus County. I visited your website in order to find out more about a number of your positions. I was unable to find the information that I was seeking.
What is your position on abortion?
What is your position on funding for higher education?
How do you feel about the current state of infrastructure in our part of North Carolina?
I look forward to hearing back from you.
-Henry Marx
What did I get back? Guess. Go on, guess.
NOTHING. I didn't hear back from her. AT ALL.
The first thing you do if you are a local politican--or for that matter, a member of congress--is ANSWER CONSTITUENT QUESTIONS! If you're not even going to bother to answer people as a candidate, why would I think you would do an even remotely competent job once you get into office.
So basically, I have concluded that the TV ads are funded by the state GOP in an effort to give Soles the Tom Daschle treatment. They are not the result of a competent, capable, well-funded candidate.
I'm not saying who I voted for, but I sure as hell did not vote for Bettie Fennell.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
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Think of it as a meme of sorts. These are regularly in my Firefox tabs:
http://www.google.com/ig<-- iGoogle. This is my home page. I don't generally look at it that much, to tell you the truth. Occasionally, I find an interesting news item in the sections that I've customized for myself. I generally find more stuff that interests me from links posted by friends on LJ or Facebook.
http://www.gmail.com/ <-- Gmail. I finally got around to consolidating my e-mail by having Gmail connect to my POP server and load my personal mail. One less tab to maintain.
http://my.ebay.com/ <-- My eBay. This gets checked regularly. I use Turbo Lister to actually make my listings, and if something sells, I get an e-mail. This is mainly used to check on bids and how many watchers an item has. I also use it when I actually process a sale. Because I have a store, I have something called "Selling Manager" integrated into this page. As a result, my My eBay page probably looks nothing like yours.
http://www.facebook.com/ <-- Facebook. Addicted. See previous post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/ <-- Wikipedia. This isn't actually the page I look at. The page I look at (and regularly reload) is my Watchlist. Some articles I monitor for changes because I want to be informed, such as Statewide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008. Others I monitor for vandalism, such as Homophobia.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ <-- The Huffington Post. Maybe it's just because I'm watching the election so closely, but this has become my primary Internet news source. That may change after the election.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ <-- FiveThirtyEight. If you're interested in politics, polling or statistics, this is the site for you. I'm totally hooked on it now. It has the smartest analyses of opinion polling I've ever seen. Again, after the election this will probably drop off my radar as a regular read.
http://webmail.uncp.edu/ <-- UNCP Webmail. Yeah, I have not integrated this account into Gmail and I doubt that I will. I sometimes overlook a message that goes into Gmail. It can just sort of fade into the huge list of stuff. Some of the e-mails I get here are too important to overlook.
http://blackboard.uncp.edu/ <-- UNCP Blackboard. I don't have any completely online classes this semester. I have one that is "hybrid online" and thus doesn't meet every week. I have another that uses Blackboard as a supplement.
http://www.angryzenmaster.com/ <-- Angry Zen Master. A fandom news site run by a good friend of mine. Our interests don't always overlap, but his insights and nose for geek news are invaluable. Please check it out.
These are the sites that I often keep in my browser tabs. If I don't keep them constantly loaded, I usually check each one at least daily if not every few hours. There's other stuff I pull up from time to time. I may write a couple more lists like this for other stuff I check out. I could probably write another post like this for webcomics, gaming sites and even political news sites.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
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I swear that I'm going to start posting here again. I swear.
I know, I've been hanging out entirely on Facebook. Probably too much.
LJ is better because it encourages me to actually write.
But I'm still addicted to Facebook. Sorry.
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
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It's official! For the first time in my life, I am a straight "A" student.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, November 18th, 2007
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Friday, November 16th, 2007
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Thursday, November 15th, 2007
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I have discovered the formula for postmodern tough guy speak! It is:
A pronoun, followed by a conjugation of the verb "to be", followed by a self-referential proper noun.
Examples:
"We are Marshall!"
"This is Sparta!"
"I am Beowulf!"
Plus, you have to yell it into the camera.
Please comment if you can think of other examples. =)
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
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Thursday, November 8th, 2007
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So, I went to the APO Region III Conference and had a great time! I got to see ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) andronyka and c00kymonstr for the first time in a while. I saw fenrisncsu and psychokitty627 and got a chance to say hi to each of them, but I only saw spkr4thedead51 for about 3 seconds across a crowded room and did not get a chance to say hello. I spent some quality time with shortieterp as well as tazzusk. I didn't get to talk to kecharakitten as much as I wanted, but at least I've been able to see her relatively recently.
I woke up in the hotel on Sunday morning with a slight sore throat. I figured it was nothing to worry about. My companions had some car trouble, so we needed to get them on their way first. After that, I went and had lunch with yosh103, quala67 and some other LJ-less peoples. It was lovely.
I've also decided that I'm going to keep a minimal involvement in APO, but nothing like I used to have. This weekend made me realize how much I missed it. I miss working with students and it really recharges my emotional and spiritual batteries. I'm going to keep it on the DL and learn to say "No" when asked to do more.
Anyway, I headed back and started to get a headache. As I got closer to home, it started to get worse. By Sunday evening, I had a full-blown cold, possibly flu. Four days and most of a bottle of NyQuil later, I finally left the house for the fist time since getting back.
You know, I'm one of those people who gets sick fairly often, but I usually fight it off before long. My mother and one of my brothers has the same thing. My other brother and my father have the opposite problem. They almost never get sick, but when they do it's brutal. This was one of those rare occasions where I got sick the way that they do. I'm still not 100%. This will probably hang on until the weekend. I wouldn't have even left the house, but I had packages that had to go out. Plus, I needed milk and bread. Not that I've been eating, but I thought I might want to before long.
This is my second bout with being sick so far this fall. Now, I'm afraid to get a flu shot. It might make me sick again. Ugh!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
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Thanks to mochiman for showing this to me on his awesome website. This is some of the funniest sh*t I have seen in a long time. Even if you don't like gaming, you will still enjoy these game reviews. Start with this one and go from there...
Oh, and these are NOT Safe For Work!
Edit: You might want to follow this link here that takes you to the site where you can find the other reviews Yahtzee has done.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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After being pretty sick this past weekend, I am now swamped. School is kicking my ass at the moment. I've noticed that as I've gotten older my standards on a lot of things have changed. Unlike in the past, getting a "B" is just not acceptable.
I'm going to go the the APO Region III Conference in Raleigh next weekend. I'm not doing APO stuff anymore; I'm just going to see friends and hang out. I am really looking forward to it. If it was further away, I don't think I'd be able to manage it, but this will work.
I *want* to go to the Region I/II Conference in late December. That's in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The last time I was up that way, I found the people in that region to be some of the most pleasant that I have ever encountered in my travels. I know several other people going. As an added bonus, I would get to see cyberjunkie! We'll see if I can make that happen financially or not.
Still waiting to hear back from UNC-Pembroke. In the meantime, I'm going to start substituting in a couple more districts. I'm not working enough right now.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 22nd, 2007
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I've been sick all weekend and I decided to find some icons to cheer myself up. Found some cheeewy iiiicon goooodness at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) tmg_icons! Check it out, especially if you like Miyazaki like I do.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
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Stolen from crystilline!
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of 30 September 2007). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
( Big Book List )
I haven't read enough of these! I have the feeling that many of these will be covered in classes over the next few years.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 1st, 2007
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From Thursday:
"Mr. Marx, you're not from around here, are you?"
"Not originally, no."
"Yeah, you sound like you're from way up north somewhere. Like Virginia."
*Dialogue may me modified slightly due to memory lapses... or just to make it funnier.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 24th, 2007
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There's nothing quite like substituting at a school with a shooting threat that day. Read all about it here: http://www.whiteville.com/
Anyway, long story short: I'm fine, no shooting. And yes, I'm going back there twice more this week!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 10th, 2007
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Friday, September 7th, 2007
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R. I. P.
Madeline L'Engle
November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 3rd, 2007
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lethargic.
annoyed.
awake.
determined.
pleased.
impressed.
busy.
sick.
pensive.
crushed.