After reading the following article that i found today, I couldn't help but cheer. for the past couple years i've been saying essentially the same thing. Unfortunately, it seems as though no one truly listens to what i say. What could i possibly know? I know that there is excellent information like this publication that helps back up my opinions and beliefs.
It's unfortunate that it has taken this many years for information like this to finally be pushed to the forefront of news. The more i learned about disparities like these over the years, the more frustrated i have become both politically and socially with my surroundings. What's truly sad is that a vast majority of people both ignore the facts which have been stated and believe that this is "bad for society because crack is evil". People in general turn a blind eye to the facts and resort to the 30 second sound bites on the 10pm news.
Right now i find it difficult to avoid saying the obvious "i told you so" that i'm implying here. It's important that people learn from the injustices that have been committed over the past 20 years and strive to move forward. We can't change the past but we have the ability to write our future. The laws have not been changed as of yet but this is a huge step in the right direction.
Recently the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have been overturned. Now the media is finally questioning the disparity in some of the drug laws. Change doesn't happen over night but it feels mighty good when you look around and see progress has been accomplished.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
I Laugh In The Face of Danger
After reading an article in yesterdays paper about the ICE issues which have been accumulating on houses here, I realized just how bad things were on my own house. Icicles hanging over my front door and stairs can be very dangerous. What was i to do?
As a result of fighting a nasty cold and having cabin fever, i decided this afternoon that it would be a good idea to go for a walk. As soon as i stepped outside and an icicle fell from the door opening I knew there would be no walk for me today. I was going to make my house SAFE. Yep. All of the cold remedy drugs had finally rotted away any common sense i had left. I was now a man on a mission.
Being rather tall (6'4") I knew i could smash most icicles with the reach of my snow shovel. As i take my first couple swipes at them my roommate comes outside. Here i am swinging a shovel at ice that is directly over me without a care in the world because i'm making things safer. What could possibly be wrong with this picture???
The front of the house was a cake walk since it was in the sun most of the day and so a lot of it has been consistently melting. I walked around to the back of the house as my roommate continued to observe. In theory he ws going to run to the store but this was too good of a show to miss out on! Finally he points out that this isn't one of my smarter ideas. Apparently ice is both sharp and heavy and there's an excellent chance that it'll hurt like hell if it hits me somewhere vulnerable (like my head). Bah! Humbug! I can't let something as silly as ice falling stop me from making my property safe. Besides, i was wearing eye protection (sunglasses). How much safer would i need to be?
Seeing the ice along the entire back side of the house and near our precious cable wire made me realize i must continue this nobel deed. I must smash all of the icicles from the gutters! Seeing that the snow was a good 18" deep, i used my trusty shovel to carve out a path through my grass. Every couple feet i stopped (roommate watching) and took another swing at those pesky icicles! I was more concerned with the icicles falling and breaking a window than actually hitting me. Some of these icicles were appx 3 feet long and quite thick. It was when i was half way done that i blurted out "If that fell and hit me in the head, i bet it would hurt like hell! Good thing i'm wearing eye protection!!!" The entire time i'm doing this, my roommate is standing there watching and waiting for the inevitable. Apparently he didn't want to come back to see me impaled on a giant icicle. Kept saying something about how they're sharp and could kill me easily if i wasn't careful. Bah! Humbug! I was a man on a mission!
Step by step, icicles fell. Most of them hit the vinyl siding on the house. Some hit the window. Some hit my hand or my foot. In the end, i was victorious. Every dangling chunk had been knocked down. My property was now safe (excluding all of the ice chunks that i left on the ground because i was too lazy to pick them up).
When i was a kid i got hit by an icicle that my friend threw at me. It hurt. A lot. This was clearly not one of my smartest ideas but i had a damn good time doing it. I'm sure my roommate is impressed with what level of stupidity i will sink to when i'm on a mission.
Time to go practice my Safety Dance moves....
As a result of fighting a nasty cold and having cabin fever, i decided this afternoon that it would be a good idea to go for a walk. As soon as i stepped outside and an icicle fell from the door opening I knew there would be no walk for me today. I was going to make my house SAFE. Yep. All of the cold remedy drugs had finally rotted away any common sense i had left. I was now a man on a mission.
Being rather tall (6'4") I knew i could smash most icicles with the reach of my snow shovel. As i take my first couple swipes at them my roommate comes outside. Here i am swinging a shovel at ice that is directly over me without a care in the world because i'm making things safer. What could possibly be wrong with this picture???
The front of the house was a cake walk since it was in the sun most of the day and so a lot of it has been consistently melting. I walked around to the back of the house as my roommate continued to observe. In theory he ws going to run to the store but this was too good of a show to miss out on! Finally he points out that this isn't one of my smarter ideas. Apparently ice is both sharp and heavy and there's an excellent chance that it'll hurt like hell if it hits me somewhere vulnerable (like my head). Bah! Humbug! I can't let something as silly as ice falling stop me from making my property safe. Besides, i was wearing eye protection (sunglasses). How much safer would i need to be?
Seeing the ice along the entire back side of the house and near our precious cable wire made me realize i must continue this nobel deed. I must smash all of the icicles from the gutters! Seeing that the snow was a good 18" deep, i used my trusty shovel to carve out a path through my grass. Every couple feet i stopped (roommate watching) and took another swing at those pesky icicles! I was more concerned with the icicles falling and breaking a window than actually hitting me. Some of these icicles were appx 3 feet long and quite thick. It was when i was half way done that i blurted out "If that fell and hit me in the head, i bet it would hurt like hell! Good thing i'm wearing eye protection!!!" The entire time i'm doing this, my roommate is standing there watching and waiting for the inevitable. Apparently he didn't want to come back to see me impaled on a giant icicle. Kept saying something about how they're sharp and could kill me easily if i wasn't careful. Bah! Humbug! I was a man on a mission!
Step by step, icicles fell. Most of them hit the vinyl siding on the house. Some hit the window. Some hit my hand or my foot. In the end, i was victorious. Every dangling chunk had been knocked down. My property was now safe (excluding all of the ice chunks that i left on the ground because i was too lazy to pick them up).
When i was a kid i got hit by an icicle that my friend threw at me. It hurt. A lot. This was clearly not one of my smartest ideas but i had a damn good time doing it. I'm sure my roommate is impressed with what level of stupidity i will sink to when i'm on a mission.
Time to go practice my Safety Dance moves....
It's That Time of Year Again! (Music Playlist Coming Soon)
Christmas is coming awfully fast which means that the new year is right around the corner. That also means it's time for me (like everyone else) to make end of year lists. Yep, i'm one of those people! :)
I've been rummaging through my music collection an awful lot lately. Last year's "best of" music collection was interesting and i'm quite sure this year will be just as much fun! With over 30Gb of music to rummage through, i've got my work cut out for me!
What am i doing?
My goal is to select songs that best reflect the year 2007. In essence i'll be building a soundtrack of myself for the year. The songs do not necessarily have to be from this year too. The main criteria is that they have had some influence on me at some point during the year. All genre's are fair game which means there'll be a nice sampling from my music collection. I'll try my hardest to not have any repeats from last year but some songs are just too damned good for me to pass up. These will be songs that evoke some kind of emotion in me and not some way of flaunting my taste/style.
Musical taste truly is fascinating to me. In a way i view it as a window to a persons soul. On a number of occasions i've heard people say "you don't seem like the type that would like x" which is a perfect example of why it fascinates me so much. You can walk around dressed in some polo shirt and khakis but still have a wild side that enjoys Slayer. Who would have guessed that you liked Slayer? Never mind the fact that the stereotypical Slayer fan would want to kick the ass of the polo shirt person while not knowing that they share a love for the same group and thus having a lot more in common than originally thought. That's why i love rummaging through my friends' music collections. I like finding the obscure stuff that doesn't fit in with standard pattern that everyone has. What encouraged the person to listen to Bryan Adams when 3/4 of their collection is electronic in the first place? That single puzzle peace can tell you more about a person than analyzing the bulk of their collection which follows a natural pattern.
Oh christ. I have 30Gb to rummage through. This might take a little longer than i had originally anticipated.... :(
I've been rummaging through my music collection an awful lot lately. Last year's "best of" music collection was interesting and i'm quite sure this year will be just as much fun! With over 30Gb of music to rummage through, i've got my work cut out for me!
What am i doing?
My goal is to select songs that best reflect the year 2007. In essence i'll be building a soundtrack of myself for the year. The songs do not necessarily have to be from this year too. The main criteria is that they have had some influence on me at some point during the year. All genre's are fair game which means there'll be a nice sampling from my music collection. I'll try my hardest to not have any repeats from last year but some songs are just too damned good for me to pass up. These will be songs that evoke some kind of emotion in me and not some way of flaunting my taste/style.
Musical taste truly is fascinating to me. In a way i view it as a window to a persons soul. On a number of occasions i've heard people say "you don't seem like the type that would like x" which is a perfect example of why it fascinates me so much. You can walk around dressed in some polo shirt and khakis but still have a wild side that enjoys Slayer. Who would have guessed that you liked Slayer? Never mind the fact that the stereotypical Slayer fan would want to kick the ass of the polo shirt person while not knowing that they share a love for the same group and thus having a lot more in common than originally thought. That's why i love rummaging through my friends' music collections. I like finding the obscure stuff that doesn't fit in with standard pattern that everyone has. What encouraged the person to listen to Bryan Adams when 3/4 of their collection is electronic in the first place? That single puzzle peace can tell you more about a person than analyzing the bulk of their collection which follows a natural pattern.
Oh christ. I have 30Gb to rummage through. This might take a little longer than i had originally anticipated.... :(
Saturday, December 15, 2007
How Much Do You Really Know About Someone?
In Jan 2003 I started working at the journal. Yep, it's been almost 5 years for me there as a part time grunt. This is the background for my latest observation on life....
As a part time employee, most of the full timers would barely acknowledge that i existed since i was new. On my first night i met some cool guy named Mark. He's a really happy go lucky and laid back type of person and was willing from day one to tell me the loop holes in the system and really showed me the ropes necessary for survival. I consider him a friend because he's helped me through some rough nights at work.
Mark was out off for a couple days from work and i'd heard through the grapevine that it was a death in the family. No surprise really if you think about it. Wed night when i saw him, he clarified why he was gone. His daughter (didn't catch her name) had just died the previous weekend. She was 26. I was floored. From the picture he showed me, she was very cute!!! She was his only kid too. He's divorced and she stayed with her mother after the divorce. Apparently she was a psych major at UWM going for her masters.
A number of things caught me off guard by this. First of all i honestly never knew he was divorced. Seriously. It never came up. Usual daily chatter and no mention of something like this. I suppose i can understand that it's history but it's still very surprising for me. I obviously didn't know he had a kid. So after all of these years of talking about school (he had been a poli sci major way back when), politics, history, work, etc, i find out there's so much about him which i'd never known. That got me really thinking. How much do you truly know someone? You get to know a person over the years and talk about the day to day stuff but do you ever really learn about where they came from? Or do you focus on who they are right now?
Another thing that hit home with me regarding this situation was the age of Mark's daughter. She was 26 and i'm 28. I've known this guy for almost 5 years and never knew he had a daughter close to my age let alone going to the same school as me.
The icing on the cake is how she died. Apparently she had been drinking heavily that weekend and passed out in her boyfriends arm. The positioning of his arm was such that his forearm was under her chin. She choked on her own vomit. Wow. As bad as it is for Mark I can't even begin to imagine how the boyfriend must feel. It's creepy because i could see that happening to me. I'm comfortable with a girl using me as a pillow like that and so that could very easily have been me if i was truly unlucky.
What i'm trying to get at is that i'm still shocked by how little i knew someone i considered a friend from work. I write this with the intention of asking you how much do you really know about your "friends" from work. Considering that most adults spend 40+ hours a week in their work environment and thus make friends there, I'm truly curious if the majority of people would be as surprised by me by similar circumstances.
Just a thought to consider....
As a part time employee, most of the full timers would barely acknowledge that i existed since i was new. On my first night i met some cool guy named Mark. He's a really happy go lucky and laid back type of person and was willing from day one to tell me the loop holes in the system and really showed me the ropes necessary for survival. I consider him a friend because he's helped me through some rough nights at work.
Mark was out off for a couple days from work and i'd heard through the grapevine that it was a death in the family. No surprise really if you think about it. Wed night when i saw him, he clarified why he was gone. His daughter (didn't catch her name) had just died the previous weekend. She was 26. I was floored. From the picture he showed me, she was very cute!!! She was his only kid too. He's divorced and she stayed with her mother after the divorce. Apparently she was a psych major at UWM going for her masters.
A number of things caught me off guard by this. First of all i honestly never knew he was divorced. Seriously. It never came up. Usual daily chatter and no mention of something like this. I suppose i can understand that it's history but it's still very surprising for me. I obviously didn't know he had a kid. So after all of these years of talking about school (he had been a poli sci major way back when), politics, history, work, etc, i find out there's so much about him which i'd never known. That got me really thinking. How much do you truly know someone? You get to know a person over the years and talk about the day to day stuff but do you ever really learn about where they came from? Or do you focus on who they are right now?
Another thing that hit home with me regarding this situation was the age of Mark's daughter. She was 26 and i'm 28. I've known this guy for almost 5 years and never knew he had a daughter close to my age let alone going to the same school as me.
The icing on the cake is how she died. Apparently she had been drinking heavily that weekend and passed out in her boyfriends arm. The positioning of his arm was such that his forearm was under her chin. She choked on her own vomit. Wow. As bad as it is for Mark I can't even begin to imagine how the boyfriend must feel. It's creepy because i could see that happening to me. I'm comfortable with a girl using me as a pillow like that and so that could very easily have been me if i was truly unlucky.
What i'm trying to get at is that i'm still shocked by how little i knew someone i considered a friend from work. I write this with the intention of asking you how much do you really know about your "friends" from work. Considering that most adults spend 40+ hours a week in their work environment and thus make friends there, I'm truly curious if the majority of people would be as surprised by me by similar circumstances.
Just a thought to consider....
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Updating the DS Frimware
Wow. This was a breeze. I had been using ver 1.02 firmware for most of the year because i never really saw the need to update it. If it ain't broke then don't fix it, right? Here's what i did for upgrading to 1.08:
-removed micro SD card and plugged it into USB card reader
-copied over every file from micro SD and thus backing up all of my files
-copy over unzip'ed firmware files
-copy over game data
-done!
Somehow i ran into an odd issue. The zip of 1.08 had the following four files:
A properly configured 1.08 firmware (like mine now)should have the following:
This whole ordeal took me appx 30 minutes to resolve. Not bad considering i had no idea what i was doing initially but then this also reflects how easy the M3 Simply card is to use.
On a negative note, i feel the need to comment on my only grumble thus far with the M3 Simply. Since it uses micro SD as it's memory and you need to remove that card so you can transfer files and/or firmware updates, you have to constantly swap the card in and out. On occasion the micro SD doesn't make a solid connection with the mod cart after a swap which can be annoying. Micro SD cards are very small and i keep worrying that i'm going to break either that or the cart. So far i know four people who have the same carts that i do and none of theirs has broken yet but they have all expressed the same concern as i have about this happening. Just my $.02 worth on what is otherwise an excellent purchase for my DS Lite!
Yay! Rayman 2 is ready to be transferred over so i can try it out!!!
:)
-removed micro SD card and plugged it into USB card reader
-copied over every file from micro SD and thus backing up all of my files
-copy over unzip'ed firmware files
-copy over game data
-done!
Somehow i ran into an odd issue. The zip of 1.08 had the following four files:
- _system_
- moonshl
- _Ds_menu.dat,
- _Ds_mshl.nds
- ds games (my game data)
- moonshl
- _ds_menu.dat
- _ds_menu.sys
- _ds_mshl.nds
A properly configured 1.08 firmware (like mine now)should have the following:
- ds games (my game data)
- moonshl
- _ds_menu.dat
- _ds_menu.sys
- _ds_mshl.nds
This whole ordeal took me appx 30 minutes to resolve. Not bad considering i had no idea what i was doing initially but then this also reflects how easy the M3 Simply card is to use.
On a negative note, i feel the need to comment on my only grumble thus far with the M3 Simply. Since it uses micro SD as it's memory and you need to remove that card so you can transfer files and/or firmware updates, you have to constantly swap the card in and out. On occasion the micro SD doesn't make a solid connection with the mod cart after a swap which can be annoying. Micro SD cards are very small and i keep worrying that i'm going to break either that or the cart. So far i know four people who have the same carts that i do and none of theirs has broken yet but they have all expressed the same concern as i have about this happening. Just my $.02 worth on what is otherwise an excellent purchase for my DS Lite!
Yay! Rayman 2 is ready to be transferred over so i can try it out!!!
:)
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