And While I'm Bitching about Politics

Since I'm on a roll about politics, I want to point out a couple things that people seem to keep forgetting about the presidency:

1. The President is not getting ANYTHING except wars done by himself. And this last Iraq one was pretty much signed off on by everyone. Shame on everybody. Quit acting like any of the current candidates are going to be getting us out of Iraq or anyplace else. You want to drive around in cars? You love your ginormous SUV? We're stuck there until we wean ourselves from foreign oil. Good luck on that.


2. NONE of the current presidential candidates is "looking out for average Americans" -- they want the top dog job. They're going to say and do whatever it takes to get it. As Tom Clancy has pointed out more than once: they would drive a car over their own children for that job. Don't look to politicians to look out for us anymore. It's not their job. Their job is to get elected, then to STAY elected. Bureaucracies are built to maintain themselves and little else.


3. If you're going to choose a candidate, your going to have to look over the offerings, and pick the one that's going to SCREW YOU LESS. I'm not sure ANY of these candidates are going to cause me less pain in the next 4 years.

Questions about Lewinsky shadow Chelsea

Okay, even if you're a die-hard Hillary hater (and I'm nearly in that camp, mind you), CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Questions about Lewinsky shadow Chelsea « - Blogs from CNN.com has some FASCINATING commentary from "average Americans" on the bottom.

I hate to shock you slew of assholes, but Monica Lewinsky is not "Chelsea's private life", and it's not her place to talk about it. She didn't screw Monica, her Dad did. What would she really know about it? Why would it have any impact on her Mom's presidency, if she gets elected (oh God please no)? Do you all think Hillary is gonna invite her back and get busy in the Oval Office? Good God people.

Why does Bill banging Monica have anything to do with Hillary's morals? Does everyone think this is Bill getting 4 more years? If Hillary wins, I doubt Bill is gonna have much more than his own opinion on what Hillary would do.

And finally, quit lumping Chelsea into her parent's moral fiber and calling her a liar and a cheat and a womanizer etc etc etc. She's their DAUGHTER. She's her OWN person. Treat her as such.

What a pack of imbeciles this country has turned into. A good porton of the crew commenting on that blog entry are obviously unable to do any independent thinking.

New Windows

We just finished having our new low-E windows installed in the house today. While this was a fantastically expensive project, the payback this summer should more than make up for it.

We went with WindowWorld's window system, and their installers were quick and professional. The massive bay window looks awesome. I would link their website, but honestly it's hardly worth visiting. Find the local franchise and work with them. Ours was excellent.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: The Business of Walking Away

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: The Business of Walking Away discusses the current mortgage crisis and what's going to happen as individual families, and the banks involved, start walking away from the properties that cannot sell.

It's scary what happens when megacorps walk into bad investments with their eyes open, and consumers follow along.

Some Vista Advice

We've been working with Vista at work since mid-summer, since Dell really hates selling XP to businesses now. I have a couple of tips for those who are going to be trapped into an upgrade to Vista and Office 2007:

• Don't order the PC with anything less than 2GB of RAM. If they insist, refuse the upgrade and stay on whatever POS machine you're on now. Vista at less than 2GB is slower than anything I've ever seen. Grass growing is lightning quick in comparison.


• Make sure you turn OFF encryption between Outlook 2007 and the server. It's ungodly slow if you're on an office network. If you're on the road, I might reconsider this suggestion. I went from about 2 minutes to about 20 seconds for Outlook to start with this one change.


• We found a network setting to turn off dynamic speed negotiations with the network. Changing this setting helped the speed of network copies, and fixed some issues with TAPI drivers on Vista. To change the setting, right Click Command Prompt --> Choose Run As Administrator and then type the following:
  

  netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

I'll chime in wtih more as we find it.

Wii Remote Internals

SparkFun Electronics has an article up documenting the Wii Remote internals. I love these internal/undocumented type articles, which is probably why I always liked to read John Carmack's agony-inducing .plan updates.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times covers a recent study on the transmissability of flue -- it's the cold, dry days. This is fascinating, because for years the fears were about being in crowded spaces or something to do with schools. It turns out flu survives much better in cool (41°) dry air. Flu doesn't live well at room temperatures or high humidity. Good to know.