First up, I really want to play with gOS. It looks like a tight little Linux distro that I might enjoy. A co-worker of mine ended up trying the gOS live cd in an attempt to breathe a little life into his laptop. He found that the laptop took an install of the gOS on the hard drive, something that Windows has been crashing on for a while now (tried multiple install disks as well as a couple hard drives). Seems odd that he could install this operating system and not Windows but such is life with computers at least he now has a laptop that is operable. I dig the widget engine and all that, plus being built on top of Ubuntu doesn't hurt either. Burning image to disk right now.

Man, I have a ton of Linux discs scattered around my computer room... weird, I still keep using Windows primarily. Too many games I guess, that and I have to share my systems and MS makes the comfortable product that people are used to.

I also thought a bit about last nights debate. I want to state that I have found NPR's political twitter stream extremely handy during the debate as well as the race. If only for the fact checking, the feed is totally worth following. Here is the feed! I have to say that my mind is already made up and I know who I will cast my vote for never-the-less I watch and follow the progress of the campaigns. The most troublesome issue for me was John McCain's treatment of Barack Obama's support of a bill, which did not pass, that would allocate $3 million towards a new projector for the Adler planetarium. McCain called it an 'overhead' projector which takes away a substantial amount of the meaning of projector when it comes to a planetarium's projector. We all know what and overhead projector looks like and well all know that there is no way on of those things could display the features of the night sky. In digging a bit deeper one finds that the cost to replace the projector was a lot more that they asked for and the planetarium was also seeking out the rest of the funds to cover the additional cost from private investors.
The big deal about this is that it shows just how anti-science and anti-thought that these people are. Seriously, what's wrong with learning? These are the same people who think people and dinosaurs co-existed! Granted it works for Barney and Fred bur there is no way primitive man could survive!

There is more but I just woke up from being passed out from being tired.

=

So that´s it... I will write something, daily, no matter how trivial. Just like today´s rant of a post. Sounds good to me.

I was just thinking about the question posed by Leo Laporte; "Is radio dead?"

Yup, he asked that right here on the Pownce but that is not what I'm thinking about. What has me writing this wordy diatribe is what I wrote for a response. I apparently have an affinity for talk radio, makes sense due to the amount of podcasts I listen to. Really though I listen to more people babble on than I do to good ol' music.

Seriously, my commute to work has me listening to Thom Hartmann, who I must say is one of the most brilliant people I have heard on the radio. It is a show that is in stark contrast to the show I listen to on the ride home which happens to be Coast to Coast AM hosted by George Noory.

Is it the fact that I am older now or just the fact that I do not enjoy the auditory feces people call music these days. I know I'm being a bit harsh but on occasion I feel that way especially when you can just get on the internet and discover and download music you do like. Which makes me want to mention www.archive.org mainly because what I do listen to tends to be bands that allow tapers and many of their live shows are posted there. Good times.

Well that's about it. I think it's just a matter of where you are in life and at this point I would rather listen to people blabbing.

First things first, the obvious; lose weight. That is a very typical thing to 'resolve' for the new year but in my case it is imperative. I need to get myself into the habit of exercise and putting down the damn candy So I'm looking at wanting to lose 60 pounds, at the minimum... I really let myself go.

With regards to my presence here on the Internet, I have always wanted to get into tech writing and reviewing and I believe that I can do just that I need to focus in on that. There is also Nervous Reflex, the site that is ever changing due to the fact that I can never really get it to what I think it should be in my head. I want it to be a user drive content site for gamers, modders, and developers. I have a few things to deal with before I actually open the site to users. I need to take measures against comment spam and blog spam (since the site is a multi-user version of WordPress spammers are able to create spam blogs).

The Nervous Reflex podcast is also coming back, I don't know if it will keep the same name but I am currently shopping for a good microphone to unleash my terrible sounding voice on to the world with. I also received a new video camera for Christmas (many thanks to my loving wife), which I intend to use in order to create video content. 

Basically, what I need is FOCUS... I need to keep my eye on the prize this year. What's the prize? Well, the prize will ultimately be myself not feeling like I waste my free time doing stuff that I don't find enjoyable.

Right now I have to focus on getting my ass to work... thanks for reading and stick around... Focus, focus, focus!

Apparently not, it seems that the hallowed halls of eBay have become a haven for scammers. I have put this laptop up for auction seven times now each time the winning bid has come in from a scammer and eBay has taken down the listing. These people put in last second bids making it damn near impossible to use the function eBay gives you to remove bidders. I grow weary of this re-occurring and am now looking to sell the thing through other means. Craigslist comes to mind as does the paper.

I wonder if all this activity has anything to do with the recent hack of eBay. I sold my X-Box smoothly and without issue a while back and was pleased with the whole operation. Now I have doubts as to whether I'll use eBay ever again. I don't like the idea of putting something up for sale so many times.

With that said the issue of video games causing the violent behavior is not the issue. There may very well be someone out there that plays games that will commit a crime. As a society we try to look for causes to violent behavior, often times taking the quickest and easiest route to conclusion. History shows us that there have been many scapegoats for the cause of violent behavior. Movies, music (through every generation), books, theatre even the religious writings of many faiths have been cast to the flames of the violence inquistition. While it's obvious that there are people that use any or all of the scapegoats as a shield to justify their actions, whether on a conscious or subconscious level.

I believe that the true circumstances that lead to violent behavior lie in the way that the individual percieves his or her environment. This perception is formed from the beginning of the individuals life. We all know that conditioning is possible in humans, conditioning is not something that is just actively done with motive but can also occur without the conditioner(s) knowing that they are doing it. There is also the prevalent instincts that humanity has subdued through it's history of creating civilization. These instincts include defense of person, property, territory and family. There are people in every generation who have to face these instincts... even here in our civilized first world country. There are children who grow up being the punch-line to many demeaning and discouraging jokes as well as the target of attacks. The issues we should be looking at is the development of our people not video games.

I take this position because I understand that stresses faced while in the stages of development greatly effect the individuals behavior. Now some people would say that these incidents 'build character' and no doubt will, the question is what character traits are being built. It's a known fact that those who've been abused are likely to later abuse. I find it more offensive that education and social funding gets cut across the board and then the same people who cut funding for those programs wonder why there are these problems in our society.

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