Bloomberg for President?

It's actually not that far fetched an idea, Mayor Bloomberg as the 53rd President of the US. With the current Republican and Democratic platforms harkening back to outdated administrative approaches the time may be ripe for our first ever Independent President. Either way this means that 2008 will be a year of firsts. Will we have our first Italian American, Black American, Woman American or Independent American in office?

Gives me the shivers.

Podcasting

This is the future of the video medium, no doubt about it.

Like video games, no one really has the time or the money to spend on things like movies which are ridiculously expensive and require a 1.5 - 2 hour time investment and even television is expanding to a 1 hour time block standard. A busy individual like myself doesn't have the free time to follow a series like Heroes or Survivor, shows that are ripe with annoying commercial blocks and that take up time I could be spending with my family or doing something constructive. Instead I can go stream a 5-10 minute podcast that is just as amusing and doesn't have nearly as much obtrusive advertising. On top of that I can catch the webisodes at my own pace and don't have to invest in a TiVo just so I can keep up with shows broadcast on a network schedule.

Indeed, the future is very efficiently entertaining.

A word on Net Neutrality from the Ask A Ninja guys.

Let me start off by saying we love all of our friends and fans that we've made through Myspace.
But sometimes Myspace the company does some gross stuff that violates the spirit it was created under and the values of the Internet itself.

Over the last few months there has been a lot of debate over Net Neutrality, which basically boils down to one company blocking access to to another companies servers in order to gain a business advantage. This debate has usually focused on the companies that charge for bandwidth like AT&T, but recently Myspace has pioneered a new form -- blocking sites that users link to in their bulletins and profiles.

Right now if you link to anything at a site like "http://revver . com" (remove the spaces) Myspace will delete the link. Try it. That sucks right?

Revver is not the only site. There are dozens of smaller video and photo sharing sites that they are doing this to.

Why should you care?

Ask A Ninja was created because we were in control of where we posted the videos. That's a big deal because if we're forced to put them on MySpace video then FOX could take the episodes and make money off of them without paying Douglas or me anything. Which isn't fair and takes away the incentive to create cool shows for you to watch.

Why is this against Net Neutrality? Because videos from Myspace Video and Youtube are not effected. It's only these smaller, more innovative companies that haven't been sold for billions of dollars.

Here's what you can do:
Copy this bulletin. Repost it. Blog about it. Make Tom put up a little fix it bulletin saying he's sorry.

Once you've reposted this, send a message to Tom (http://myspace.com/tomanderson) like this (or even better, write your own):

I'm sending this message to request that MySpace stop blocking videos from sites like Revver. Choosing the video-sharing service that is right for me is very important and is why you built Myspace. What I like most about MySpace is that I can generally do what I want here. I like that Myspace is a relatively open platform where I can communicate with my friends (and promote my stuff) in all sorts of ways. I feel good about sharing videos from Revver because I know they respect copyright and look out for independent artists. Please bring back Revver!

For those of you who don't know Ask A Ninja feel free to check out askaninja.com. I guarantee it'll tickle your funny bone.

So I Misspelled Rhythm?

Yeah, sure as corn is shucked. Was it on purpose? OF COURSE! Well okay so it was actually a careless mistake but frankly the cavalier part of me says that I don't make mistakes. It is mistaken of course but being dead wrong in this case isn't bad for my health so I'll humor it. To distinguish between rhythm (from the Greek) and rythmn (from the Lee) let us define the two more precisely.

Rhythm (n.)
1. Movement or variation characterized by the regular recurrence or alternation of different quantities or conditions: the rhythm of the tides.
2. The patterned, recurring alternations of contrasting elements of sound or speech.
3. The pattern of musical movement through time.

Rythmn (n.)
1. To wit, the driving force behind the pathos and bathos of life.
2. A reference to Ryth, an imaginary place where theory and reality collide regularly and dramatically.
3. An unpatterned pattern, also a pattern disrupted and deflowered by the harsh light of honest skepticism.

And so we have it, a new idea is born from accident. Fairly typical I'd say.

Just how wrong is wrong?

Reproductive Mechanics is a very important field for both medical and sociological study, after all a good 50% or more of our time is tied up in either trying to get some or taking care of the nine-month product of that we have gotten. I propose therefore that all US colleges and universities immediately form a Reproductive Mechanics department to offer comprehensive multi-field analyses on how the act and desire for the act drive our economy, politics, collective sub-conscious and other social engines.

Of course this would involve admitting to ourselves that we are, at base, highly sexual creatures, and some of us are highly concerned that this is not a progressive line of thinking. To those of us who are still convinced that God did not intend for us to fuck like animals I invite you to consider Star Trek -- oft touted by fans as a seminal (har) vision of the future of man -- and the first question that crosses the average fan's mind when the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters a new alien species: "Where does it go?"

So is it wrong? Or Just Plain Wrong? Alien sex that is. Question of the day.

Get a jorb!

So debt is slavery, in which case an allergy to unemployment would be slavery as well. I find myself in this line of work doing crap I have no real care for and occassionally getting an interesting challenge. I detest copiers, they're messy and annoying and produce all sorts of problems that I can't always fix. Copier tech seems to be about half-a-step above car mechanic -- also a job I don't care for.

I need to finish my resume and get into IT.

My CPU

My CPU is struggling.
The HDD is sluggish and sometimes emits a distinct cyclic grinding.
And wherever my system memory is tied up it certainly isn't in anything beneficial.

I think I may have a virus today.
Wonder if I should call in sick...

Synchopated Rythmns: Lrod

Lrod = The rythmn that just keeps on hurting.

Some days I just feel like I shouldn't have gotten out of bed. Take today for example. I get up at 6:00 AM, the baby has been giving me a hard time about sleeping all night and I didn't get to sleep until later due to some personal reasons that were admittedly quite fun. Still, sleep is king and as it turns out I'm one of the peasants today. So I crawl out of bed half-an-hour later than I wanted to and have to arrange for shower space in the tub cause Rachael's washing clothes in it.

Alright, fair is fair the clothes are getting clean and we aren't paying much for it so on a tight budget it's a damn good idea. So I shower clean after sitting on the toilet for some time (been getting weird bowelly stuff laterly) and then debate with myself before getting out clean and squeaky. The pie I ate for breakfast gave me heartburn (been getting that a lot too) and then I got delayed 30 minutes getting on 80 due to traffic from route 10.

So after all that I get to the hospital and wander around for almost an hour because I can't raise anyone on the nextel and we haven't been told where Ricoh would be. When I find the group I'm frustrated and stressed an then one of the techs has to be a smartass at me. Meanwhile I have no idea what's going on and I SWEAR I hear Bob Ruth and Rob Pomante cracking a joke at my expense (might be my imagination). So then Ralph calls me over and tells me that he needs me to go back and handle the machines that will be coming into the warehouse. Of course that's reasonable, but still it's frustrating.

So that's the story so far today. I've got about 50 machines to find space for in the warehouse and a bunch of counter pages to print. Great.

Anti-narcissism

In keeping a voice journal lately I have discovered just how much I dislike the sound of my own voice. It's not just that I don't like the tonality of my voice but I also don't like the method by which I speak. It's too slow, I say "Um" far more often than I'm comfortable with and I'm terrified of silences so I just keep speaking even if what I'm saying doesn't make sense. It bothers me. As if that wasn't bad enough I was playing back yesterday afternoon's entry in the car to listen for quality and I found myself falling asleep. I bored MYSELF to sleep. This simply won't stand! For the next several days I will be developing my speaking habits till I am satisfied with the sound of my own voice. I will start with the basics.

1) No speaking unless I have something pertinent to say.

2) No saying Um

3) Put more energy into my voice.

4) Try to speak more through the mouth than the nose.

5) Stop dragging out words to fill space.

I shall try following these rules and see where I get.

Feel the Rythmn...

We live our lives at a rythmn, cycles within cycles that sometimes leave us feeling like we're really just catching life on the instant replay. The Q-Rythmn is an idea, the crux of which lies in examining that which is outside from or even anti-thetical to the frequency of this cycle. Explore and expand, that is the quintessential mandate of intelligence and to that end I intend to journey where I have never journied before. The Internet is invited for the ride. Seating is infinite but please mind the other passengers.