disconnected notes

#1) Job is going great. I’m really digging working for myself, and I’m making a very comfortable living, and I’ve even been able to carve out time for my own projects. Things are busier than I expected – but I’m sure that it’s “feast or famine,” so I’m trying to stay disciplined and keep taking the work as it comes in. The work is almost all consulting, very little programming. Lucky I didn’t buy that 17 inch Macbook Pro, that would’ve been pretty stupid.

#2) Excercise is….not going so great. My weight sorta hovers around the exact same place, no matter what I do. I’m getting really discouraged. I can try to move from cardio to strength training, but it’s all guesswork, and I have no clue what I’m doing. I think I’m going to have to really try and dig deeper into this one. Do some research. Actually track what I eat. Cut out the beer. Oh, the beer….what will I do without you? Sigh. At least with the new gig I almost never drink beer at home now, which is good. I do know the last time I stopped drinking beer for a few months, I did end up dropping a few pounds.

#3) There’s a mac browser called ‘stainless‘ which uses the same multiprocess model that Google Chrome does. They say it’s a “technology demo only” but I’m actually using it as my day-to-day browser. I like it. We’ll see how much I like it once I’ve crashed it and lost some work.

#4) Veep debate. Palin didn’t do as bad as she could’ve. She said some ‘homey’ things which I thought was a good touch. I still feel like the Obama camp has this one in the bag, but you never know…

#5) Republicans vs. Democrats – or, more accurately, any partisanship – Democrats are fucking idiots for not properly looking at why they lost in ’04. They love to use the ‘go have a beer with’ theory – that polls say that people would rather have a beer with Bush than Kerry. That may be true, but that’s *not* why they lost. That’s just embedding liberal elite thinking in more palatable container – “The bulk of us in America are dumb, that’s why we lost.” No, that’s not why we lost. We lost because Kerry seemed not genuine, and Bush, though wrongheaded, seemed genuine. Genuine-ness is more important to people who aren’t jaded like us New Yorker Liberal Elites. Kerry seemed like he was the product of a focus group. Obama does not. McCain is starting to look that way. Too bad, the ‘maverick’ McCain (long dead, it seems) was interesting. I don’t think I would’ve voted for him, but definitely, more interesting.

#6) Words. With the mainstreaming of net-speak, some words that used to be no-no’s – that I was taught when I was, like, 10 years old not to use because they were derogatory – are coming back. Specifically ones referring to diminished mental facilities, and sexual orientation. And everyone I’ve met who uses them does so with a wink and a nudge, like they’re in on the ‘joke’, and they know what they’re doing, and don’t really believe the kinds of things that can be (simply) inferred from what they’re saying. But words have power. In your own brain, and other people’s. And if you keep allowing the association between <slang word> and <negative connotation>, you just may end up, subconsciously, reinforcing <slang word meaning> and <negative connotation>. And no matter how clever or smart or enlightened or…whatever you are, even if you can avoid that aforementioned trap, you could still inadvertently drop <slang word> in front of someone who is, or knows someone who is <slang meaning>. Is your vocabulary so limited that you must refer to things as ‘retarded’, or ‘gay’, or ‘fags’? You really can’t come up with anything else? I think you can. So stop it. It’s still offensive. Unless there was some memo passed around that I hadn’t read. And c’mon, there’s still cursing. There’s tons of milage left in that – fuck shit motherfucker. Cock. See?