William Reardon’s Blog

Interesting point brought up by Dick Morris on post-convention coverage tonight: While Bush supportors are pretty much in agreement on Iraq & the War on Terror, Kerry voters find themselves very split. The stats he cited:

Should we stay in iraq?

• Bush voters: 71 yes/23 no
  
• Kerry voters: 37 yes/54 no

Is the war in Iraq an integral piece of the War on Terror or a Distraction?

• Bush voters: 79 integral/14 distraction
  
• Kerry voters: 36 integral/50 distraction

Are we winning the War on Terror?

• Bush voters: 77 yes/10 no
  
• Kerry voters: 33 yes/42 no

So, as the debates progress, and we find out more about Kerry’s views, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. If he goes right and strengths his position favoring the war on Iraq, will he lose lose some of his base to Nader? If he goes left, will he lose some to Bush?

Another reason this election year is going to be an interesting one.

Using Craig’s Airport Express, we were able to circumvent Bally’s ridiculous policy of charging $10 per day per laptop. I’m fine with $10 a day, but making us pay for each laptop? Ridiculous.

By the way, don’t stay at Bally’s. I’ve been here roughly an hour and realized I wish I had stayed at the Flamingo. They’re both owned by Ceasar’s, but the service here has been horrible. The keycards they gave us don’t work, wouldn’t bring up ones that did to the room, have yet to send someone up to unlock the door seperating our two adjoining rooms, and despite having to patiently wait 10 minutes each time I wanted to speak to a human, when I finally did, I would be rushed off phone, being hung up on mid-sentence in one case.

Anyway, screw all of that. Shiker, the final member of our party to arrive, called to say his flight has landed & he’s catching a cab to the hotel. Time for some Vegas!

The Matrix Reloaded is on cable right now. You know, once you’ve seen it and known what a bunch of crap it is, it’s actually watchable. I’ve still bothered they screwed up the squeal to one of the greatest movies of all time, but you have to play the hand you’re dealt. The fightin’ is pretty cool — especially the little Asian fellow who protects the Oracle and reminds me of Sang. One day I hope to be powerful enough that I hire Sang as my assistant and anyone wanting to conduct a business meeting with me will have to fight Sang for “you do not really know someone until you fight them.”

That’ll be cool.

Speaking of Sang, his bachelor party kicks off tomorrow in fabulous Las Vegas. I’d be worried about the current tempatures there (high 90s), but that’s really only an issue if you go outside. To be honest, I’m not sure why you really would want to go outside in Las Vegas. No blackjack tables out there.

Dan, having called from “an undisclosed location” earlier in the week, will just be back from Iraq and joining us as well. Friends that we are, we wanted to make the transition an easy one and thus planned for him to be another desert this weekend. To make it extra easy, I’ll bring some flash-bang gernades to set off late at night, once he’s sound asleep. Maybe come charging fresh out of the shower screeming “AIIIEEEEEEEEEE” too. Gotta keep him on his toes.

Lastly, lets all come to the terms with the fact that Fantasy, as a genre, sucks. It always has & it always will. LOTR was the exception, not the rule. I think some of my fantasy reading friends should check this out:

How to write a best selling fantasy novel.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~imcfadyen/notthenet/fantasy.htm

As Sang would say “It’s funny because it’s true!”

I’d echo what Khayman said (and transitively what Brandon said), but note that 1) it’s now 3:00 am and 2) I have no cats to chase a cursor.

Anyway, bed time. Gonna try to wake up around 8ish.

After getting fitted for a tux for Sang’s wedding, he, Geoff, and I wandered into Border’s. I’m not sure if this is a political statement (and if it is, one with a right or left wing agenda), but I was amused by where they placed the 9/11 Commission report.

Some days you eat the bar and some days… the bar eats you.

Actually, Craig had a better way to express it the other night at dinner, but yeah, those are my days of late.

New Jersey Governor McGreevey resigned the other day. In the outfall, it looks there may have been other issues behind his resignation, but if it was primarily because he’s gay, it was senseless. No, the people voting for him didn’t know he was gay, but so what? You wouldn’t stand for re-election if you changed from your religion, so why should matter if your perceived sexual orientation changed?

From the viewpoint of gay rights, it also would have been a terrific boon. The vast majority of Americans who oppose equal rights for gays probably haven’t met many (if any) gay people. The only images that stick are the outlandish ones fostered by Act Up and up the like. They don’t have opportunity to see that the vast majority of gay people are no different from themselves, save an attraction to a person of the same sex. McGreevey had an opportunity to demonstrate that & it’s a shame he didn’t take it.

In related news, the California Supreme Court struck down all gay marriages conducted in San Francisco recently, the reason being the city didn’t have the authority to conduct them. Which is the case. The responsibility of the Executive branch of government is to uphold the law, not to create the law. As it stands the majority of Americans, or even the majority of California’s, apparently feel that gay marriage is the way to go. And while I support the effort to change that, the solution is to try to change their minds, not to end around them.

In totally unrelated news, and on a more somber tone, Lt. Dan’s unit was featured in a Washington Post article, Death, duty in forgotten corner of war . Despite emailing him on a regular basis, I hadn’t realized his battalion had the 2nd highest casualty count of all units in Iraq. Dan’s even quoted in article:

“The first killed-in-action we had, everybody was quiet for a long time,” said Lt. Daniel Casey, 30, a former Peace Corps volunteer from Chicago. “They stood around the hallways here, and nobody even thought of going for chow. It’s sad what you get accustomed to. Unfortunately, now we have a casualty and the routine just goes on. You feel guilty, but that’s how it is.”

His unit is set to return to the States in the next week or so, and if all goes to plan, he & I will be sharing a room in Vegas for Sang’s (aka graffiti blogger james carter) bachelor party. Here’s to a safe return.

At long last, my new furniture arrived yesterday. I got a new couch, a chair and a half, and an ottoman. The best thing is the fabric & color is pretty close to what Brandon and Erika have, so if I spill and ruin a pillow, I just break into their apartment & steal a replacement.

I guess this means I can put the backseat of my Jeep back in the car.

BTW, if don’t have KRS-One’s compilation Retrospective you’re missing out. Well, unless you have the individual CDs. Because then you’re not. Missing out that is.

Lastly, only a few months to his wedding & it looks like the word is out about Sang. Alas.

Actually, lastly lastly, I just got off the phone with my brother Jimmy. He is internship at the dark side ends at the end of this week. It looks like he kicked so much ass that they decided to offer a fulltime position when he’s done with school. Congrats Jimmy!

Sometimes you’re just glad you trusted your instincts.

At work, almost everyone uses Outlook. You more or less have to as it’s how meetings are scheduled and conference rooms booked. I’ve never got on with Outlook. Not that I haven’t tried. I can think of at least three different occasions where I gave it an honest go. But there were a few big reasons why I didn’t make the switch:

• No hotkey for next unread message. (Seriously, how do you
  people live without this?)
  
• Crappy filtering.
  
• Something about ‘archiving’ messages that I still don’t quite understand.
  
• Storage of mail in some weird-ass .pst binary format.
  

Now, I’ve been told things have gotten better. And after reading Getting Things Done, I rely a lot less on the read/unread status of a message (though a hotkey would still be nice). And it is kinda PITA to have both Outlook (for meetings, etc.) and Thunderbird open at the same, with the need to occasionally switching back & forth. So I’ve given thought to switching.

That last one was always still out there, however. That last one can be a stickler if the .pst file ever gets corrupt. It’s also fairly inexcusable. Losing all your email sucks. Your mail file is probably the file that sees the most write action, so it’s probably also the most likely to become corrupt at some point. So why store it in a binary format? Why not use the bizarre, but common, mbox format? Okay, fine. But at least why not maildir? Or just something plain text so you can at least save your mail if something goes askew?

As you’ve probably guessed by this point, that happened to me today. Apparently, when checking email last night, Thunderbird chomp’ed a newline at the end of one message, destorying the ‘From -’ header of the next message, and for some reason, royally confusing Thunderbird. Basically all my mail from 6/30 (where the corruption happened) to new mail I go today disappeared. It took some twiddling with emacs & mutt, but in the end, I got my mail back.

*whew*

I think the easiest way to solve Outlooks deficiencies is to just not use it.

Over the weekend, I checked out Hard and Kumar go to White Castle with Sang & Carrie. Funny stuff & well done. After the movie Sang & I argued about which of us was Kumar. Granted I’m no Indian, but dude, Harold is Korean. Sang is Korean. It was like arguing who would be Han Solo with a frickin’ wookie.

In other news, Craig has started to blog! For those of you who haven’t met Craig in real life, yes, he’s really like that.