And So It Begins…Again…

I’m currently sitting in the classroom waiting for my second class to start and am now bored. So in the unlikely event that this post is read, and the unlikelier event that someone is interested, there it is. IT Management should be an interesting class from what I’ve gathered from our only class so far, and I hope my other classes are at least as interesting. That is all for the time being.

Pence Opposes Bush Administration Bailout Plan

Representative Mike Pence is nearly alone from what I’ve heard in his opposition to the massive giveaway to failing companies. Here’s what he has to say:

“Our financial markets are in turmoil and the Administration was right to call for decisive action to prevent further harm to our economy but nationalizing every bad mortgage in America is not the answer.

“The Administration’s request amounts to the largest corporate bailout in American history. Congress should act, but should act in a way that protects the integrity of our free market and protects the American taxpayer from more debt and higher taxes.
“To have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail. Any solution to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic freedom.

“Congress should delay consideration of any legislation until the facts and competing solutions can be fully debated, consider alternatives to massive government spending and figure out how to pay for the solution through budget cuts and reform instead of more debt or taxes.

“Congress must not hastily embrace a cure that may do more harm to our economy than the disease of bad debt

“Before any bailout is enacted, Congress must set itself on an unalterable path to truly overhaul these Government Sponsored Enterprises from the top down and hold those accountable, in and out of government, who drove them, and our financial sector, to the brink of bankruptcy. Some important work is already underway, but additional reforms are needed. Even now, we read that the Treasury Department is using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase many of these bad mortgages while it seeks the authority to purchase them all. Congress should also ensure that these GSEs can no longer pose a systemic risk to the entire economy while placing them on a brisk schedule to be fully private companies with no guarantee of taxpayer support in times of trouble. And Congress should immediately repeal the Affordable Housing Fund, which will actually siphon off capital from these under-capitalized entities, in order to fund left-wing, third party organizations.

“Next, Congress must consider all available options to put our nation’s economy back on its feet. There are no easy answers but there are alternatives to massive government spending.

“Indexing the Capital Gains tax to inflation (which the Treasury Department can do without any help from Congress), or suspending it for one year, would release an enormous amount of capitol into our economy. Passing an energy bill that lessens the price of gasoline at the pump through more domestic drilling, wind, solar, nuclear and conservation would bring relief to family budgets and create American jobs. Establishing an entitlement reform commission to develop bipartisan solutions to the crushing weight of entitlements would strengthen the American dollar.

“These and other alternatives to a massive federal bailout must be fully considered and debated before Congress acts.

“Finally, any new expenditure of taxpayer dollars should be paid for with fiscal discipline and reform. If Congress decides to spend nearly 1 trillion dollars on a corporate bailout, it must find budget savings to prevent that cost from being passed along to the American people.

“We must address this crisis with forethought, creativity and fiscal discipline. Protecting the American taxpayer from higher debt and taxes and renewing our belief in the power of the free market must be our guide.”

I hope I hear more politicians echoing his sentiments in the next days and weeks ahead.

Moral of the Story, Don’t Do What the Government Says

So the government wants to spend roughly a TRILLION dollars of your and my money to bail out banks from around the world who hold too much bad mortgage debt. Why are they holding this bad debt? Because they either gave mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back or they bought these mortgages from other banks at a discount. Why did these banks lend money to people who had no business borrowing that much money? Because the government told them to. Why did the government tell them to? Because more people owning houses is apparently more important than more people actually being able to afford to own houses.
Should the government be responsible for bailing out these huge banks? Maybe. The government is responsible for these banks issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to people who should not have qualified for these loans in the first place. So in that sense the government should be responsible for fixing a problem they caused. HOWEVER, most solutions the government implements are usually worse than the problems that they created, so it could actually be better for everyone if they did nothing at all.
Listening to the random news shows on TV, many people are criticizing the proposed plan because it only helps the wealthy banking industry and leaves out the poor people who are facing foreclosure. The poor people who can’t pay the loans that they never should have received in the first place is that cause of the problem. If the government does some sort of bail out of these people I hope that there are riots in every street of the country for rewarding people for being stupid at the expense of those smart enough to not get in this situation.
Is there more to this whole situation? Probably. Ultimately it will mean that I’ll need good credit in order to get a mortgage in the next few years.

Reading List 2008

Here's the list of all books I recall reading so far this year. For the sake of simplicity, listening to the audio book on my Zen will count as reading. I think this is about average for me, but this is the first year in several that I've actually tried to keep track.

1984*
   George Orwell
The Amber Spyglass
   Philip Pullman
Atlas Shrugged
   Ayn Rand
Belles on Their Toes
   Frank & Ernestine Gilbreth
Cheaper by the Dozen
   Frank & Ernestine Gilbreth
Freakonomics
   Steven D. Levitt
Godless
   Ann Coulter
The Golden Compass
   Philip Pullman
Good to Great*
   Jim Collins
Have Space Suit Will Travel
   Robert A. Heinlein
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)*
   Ann Coulter
If Democrats Had Any Brains They’d Be Republicans
   Ann Coulter
Inventing a Nation
   Gore Vidal
The Millionaire Mind
   Thomas J. Stanley
The Millionaire Next Door*
   Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
Noble Vision
   Gen LaGreca
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
   Thomas E. Woods Jr.
The Rolling Stones
   Robert A. Heinlein
The Star Beast
   Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers*
   Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
   Robert A. Heinlein
The Subtle Knife
   Philip Pullman
What’s So Great About America
   Dinesh D’Souza
The World is Flat
   Thomas L. Friedman

* Books I've read before

Books in my stack of reading material that I'm currently reading or will be reading soon:
The ACLU vs America
   Alan Sears & Craig Osten
Built to Last
   Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
   Benjamin F. Morris
The Fountainhead
   Ayn Rand
My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book)
   Chad Fowler
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*
   Robert A. Heinlein

Free Pop and Popcorn

Parkway Plaza Theater is giving away free pop and popcorn to everyone to gives them one of these coupons this weekend. Just print one out per person and enjoy.

I win!

The Stranger, the more hippy of the ‘news’papers in Seattle wrote an article criticizing the current state superintendant for not being able to answer 3 questions they gave her from the WASL* (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) test. These particular questions are logic problems used to evaluate students’ reasoning processes. Students are instructed to “Write to help explain your best thinking using words, numbers, or pictures” when answering these questions. I believe partial credit is given to those who do not correctly answer them but show how they got their answers. The three questions given to her are as follows:

Tom, Dick and Harry work in a bank. One is the manager, one is the cashier and one is the teller. The teller, who was an only child, earns the least. Harry, who married Tom's sister, earns more than the manager. What position does each person fill?

Penny works in the Package Palace. It is Penny’s job to stamp the sides of packages that are not touching the floor and not touching another package. Today there are 25 packages on the floor. Penny put the packages into 5 stacks, and the sides of the stacks touch. How many sides of packages must penny stamp.

The local recycling plant has just bought a new metal compactor that produces a smaller cube of scrap iron than does the older machine. Somebody noticed, however, that the combined volumes of one cube from each compactor was numerically the same as the combined lengths of all their edges. What are the dimensions of the cubes, if you consider only integral solutions?

The superintendant, Terry Bergeson, only attempted the first two questions and got both of them wrong. I tried and got all three right, therefore I’m now accepting write in votes for the position as the new State School Superintendant.

*The WASL test was put together by a panel of teachers and representatives from the largest employers in Washington to evaluate the basic knowledge and reasoning abilities of Washington high school students. Those who pass the test show that they meet a satisfactory level of reasoning ability required to be hired by these companies. Sadly, few students pass every section of this test on their first attempt, and most teachers (including the superintendant) fail as well.

It Is Finished

The massive printing project at the shop is done and I'm no longer working nights. Tomorrow will be the first day since 26 June that I have not worked at least part of the day (counting a day as 00:00-23:59). Given that I've seen more sunrises in the last month than I have in the last few years combined, I'm planning to start going to bed a bit earlier now.

I have a new computer, an HP Pavilion DV9657cl laptop, being the first complete computer I've ever purchased for myself, and the only one I've owned that had 100% stock parts. This will change when RAM goes on sale as I'll upgrade it to 4GB and possibly rip the entire thing apart and apply a tube of Arctic Silver 5 liberally to all the hot parts. It's got a 17" screen, HD-DVD drive, 320GB of hard drive, an nVidia 8600M GS video card, and most importantly a numpad. It weighs slightly less than a textbook and I get 3+ hours of battery life when in the balanced power mode.

Dark Knight for the Win

Last night we saw Dark Knight at the Valley Drive In. We were expecting to have to wait until after Journey to the Center of the Earth to see Batman in the double feature, but they decided that since most of the people going were planning on seeing Dark Knight they were going to show it first. It was also the busiest I've ever seen the drive in, with the gates opening a half hour earlier than planned just to accommodate the extra crowds. Sadly it was not dark enough to see it well for the first half of the movie, so some of the darker scenes were very hard to make out. Also it took us a while to get the sound at an optimum balance of bass and treble to hear it well. Neither sound or video were that bad but they definitely detracted from the movie experience as a whole. I will therefore reserve judgment on the quality of the movie until after seeing it in IMAX next week. Other than that, it really was a very good movie and very much deserving of it's new record for the highest grossing box office receipts for a single day, estimated to beat Spiderman 3 by several million dollars.

Three in a Row

Last night was the third night in a row I went to bed before sunrise. I’m really tired of my work schedule right now, but not because of the hours. I’m tired of it because I’m really tired on the days that I want to do things with people, because it means getting up many hours before my body is ready to wake up, thanks to being used to going to bed between 5 and 7 in the mornings.
What else seems important right now..? My parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary this past week. I got my truck fixed with my grandpa’s help so it should get me from point A to point B for a few more years to come. I acquired a new computer thanks to eBay; I’ll completely finish it with parts from Fry’s Labor Day or Thanksgiving sales, but I’ve got more than enough parts sitting around to make it fully functional until then.

Weird

Last Sunday I had one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had in very long time. I was talking with random people at church after second service and noticed my mom and sisters talking to some random woman I’ve never seen before. One of my sisters comes over and says something to me that I can’t remember. My mom then points to me and mentions that I’m her other son. Then the lady asks if I’m the girls’ younger brother.

I’ve gotten used to people asking if I was my brother’s younger brother since he’s been taller than me for years and has been gaining weight so he’s bigger than me too, despite the fact that I’m 2 ½ years older than him. But this was the first time anyone has asked if I’m the younger brother of my baby sisters (they’re 9 ½ years younger than me). It might be one thing if they were bigger or taller than me, but I’ve got them beat in every measurement.

Goodbye Sonics

On Wednesday a settlement was reached between the city of Seattle and the owners of the Sonics and the team will be leaving for Oklahoma City. As I’ve never cared for basketball, other than for a Super NES basketball game, I’m rather glad to see them go. Now I don’t have to worry about programs on the TV and radio being preempted by basketball games. Many people are panicked and angry because this might mean the end of professional basketball in the region. To that I say “I hope so.” What I would really like would be for Seattle to acquire a professional hockey team instead. I have fond memories of attending minor league hockey games with friends and family in the past and would actually go to see hockey games if they were available.
The city is hoping that the state will raise some tax to give them half a billion dollars or so to renovate Key Arena in order to try to persuade a new team to come to Seattle. I vote that if a new team wants to come here and are dissatisfied with the current facilities (where were completely renovated 15 years ago or so at great expense) that the owners pay the full expense of these desired upgrades.

Happy Birthday USA

As everyone knows, Wednesday was the 232nd anniversary of the independence of the American colonies from England. Although we observe (with illuminations) the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th every year. I vote that we continue to celebrate both days as long as we are legally allowed to do so, and then even more so after that point. There are those who claim that our independence is not something worth celebrating, I say that they can move to Palestine or Cuba or some other 3rd world crap hole that they admire more than the US.

Frogpole

Here's a picture I took of a frogpole (not quite a tadpole anymore, still not quite a frog) on Sunday.


Right now Deviant Art is my only real hosting service for pictures, and I've been posting new things to Deviant more frequently than I've been blogging in recent months. I'm taking a short break at the print shop right now and will be getting back to work momentarily.

Working

I'm sitting at the print shop right now for the sixth night in a row. Babysitting laser printers isn't very hard or exciting after a few hours; they will run unattended for over an hour. I need to keep emptying the top tray so that there's still room for more paper to come out. I also keep the paper trays full so there's no risk of running out of paper. Once I have a large stack of books printed I take them back to the cutter and jog them up, cut them in half, and box them for safe storage. During the rest of the time I keep busy with random tasks and I keep myself entertained here alone by listening to music and audio books on my headphones. I just started The Golden Compass. I'm working 6ish to 3ish every night and try to wake up by noon every day. That's my schedule until further notice.

I'm also keeping myself busy by reading books on various Adobe programs. Right now I'm going through a book on Illustrator CS3. I know a bit about Illustrator already but I really would like to learn how to do much more than I can at the moment.

Deviations

Today I started posting some stuff onto my Deviant Art page.  I don’t have very much artsy stuff to share with the world so I’m starting with so picture from Soos Creek Trail from Tuesday.  (I thought the trail was about 4 miles long, but Brenda and I found out that it’s closer to 11 miles round trip from end to end).  We walked about 4 ½ miles before turning around at the park and heading back to the car. We also took over 150 pictures, a few of which are now on Deviant Art. See them here if you care to have a look.

And So It Begins…

No, I’m not copying the Babylon 5 into, although that was one of the coolest shows to ever be broadcast on TV. Tomorrow we start the marathon printing session at work. I’ll be working from 21:00 tomorrow night, until about 03:00. Everyday after that I’ll be working from about 18:00 to 03:00. I’ve loaded up on audio books to keep myself busy and will probably finish more books in the next few weeks than I’ve finished in the last few months combined. I’m also going to work more in the next few weeks than I’ve worked in the last few months combined. I’ll be shopping for a car and laptop sometime in the next month after figuring out my budget for the school year to see what I can afford; right now I’m in need of something in addition to my 1994 S-10 pickup and my 1999 Toshiba laptop.

Project

We’ve got a fun new project at the print shop this coming month. Apparently we’ve got an order for 1500 catalogs and they’re at a size where it’s not economical to print on a press. Therefore all of them will be printed on 4 laser printers. It’ll take about 45 minutes per set to print the pages of each individual book and they want the printers to operate 18 hours per day. So as soon as the final sign off is made on the samples I’ll be working 18:00-03:00 everyday for about 3 weeks straight, or 4 weeks if it’s decided not to run weekends. Each book will have to be cut to size, have tabs inserted, and boxed to be shipped to the binders. In total I’ll have to work close to 200 hours during this period, which a huge portion being overtime. I should make enough in those three weeks to completely cover fall tuition, books, and fees; as well as possibly acquire a laptop that’s less than 10 years old.
Should be interesting.

Movies of 2008

So far I’ve seen 5 movies that have been released this year. There really hasn’t been that many that I’ve had a strong desire to see, or at least be willing to pay money to see. So here’s my five movie countdown:

#5
Veggie Tales: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

I enjoyed most of this movie, but I cannot comment on the entire since I fell asleep in the middle of it; which isn’t a good or easy thing to do when seeing it at the theater. It definitely had its moments though.

#4
27 Dresses

While seeing the first part of this movie I thought it was a rip-off of The Wedding Planner. It was pretty good overall, but lacked the sheer awesomeness of the other movies I’ve seen so far.

#3
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

Definitely the better of the cartoons that have come out this year. It reminded me that good animations actually do come out more than once a year. I’m not sure if I’d spend money to buy the disc, but it was still a good movie.

#2
Speed Racer

This movie was excellent. The story was good, the animation was superb, and the characters were likable. Some of it was total sensory overload on the big screen, which can be very fun once in a while. The one thing it lacked to make it the best movie of the year was a character named Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr.

#1
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I’ve been waiting years for this movie and was not disappointed. It wasn’t quite as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but still awesome. It was better than Temple of Doom and more exciting than Last Crusade, and had some of the humor from both. The only Indiana Jones story that could have made a better movie would have been Fate of Atlantis, that is and would be an awesome story to see made into a movie; I’d rather not wait almost 20 years for another Indiana Jones movie if they decide to make one. Nursing Home Brawl probably wouldn’t be a very exciting sequel to my favorite Lucas/Spielberg joint project.

I still want to see Iron Man and Narnia. Hopefully the drive-in will have the two playing together and I can see them back to back in the near future.

I think I'm done procrastinating now and will start my online final for Operations Management.

Hooray for Bush!

Finally, he’s taking a step in the right direction as it relates to illegal immigration.  According to breitbart.com Bush signed an executive order requiring all employees of federal contractors to be legally eligible to work in the US.  This will cut off jobs to probably thousands of illegal workers who will have to either find new work or go home and then make those jobs available to legal immigrants and US citizens who need them.

School is almost done, need one more online final and then it's over for three months. I'm hoping to get at least one day off per week this summer to do whatever I want.

Almost Done...

I've got a paper and presentation due tomorrow, then I'm essentially done with school for the year. Right now I can't focus on much of anything for more than a few minutes at a time, so I've decided to make a quick post as one of my distractions. We're writing a paper on one of the print shops I work at sometimes. This should be an interesting project when we finish it; it's not due for another 12 1/2 hours though, plenty of time.