whooo! Got tixxx to go see The Matrix Reloaded on opening night at Mann’s Chinese with a bunch of friends. So, Roscoes for a chicken & waffle dinner, then off to the theater for the 10:40 show, then up in the morning for the last day of E3. Sounds like a freakin’ BLAST.
Month: April 2003
Reappraisal
Crap. So the home appraiser came today to check out the house, and reappraise it for the refininance for the new loan. The problem, naturally, is that the house is still under construction. While basically the only work left is drywalling, this appears to be a potential stumbling block, since there are exposed electrical wires, despite the fact they’re all insulated.
Could be bad news, maybe not – I don’t know. It would really suck to get held up at this point because of exposed wires, considering they could be drywalled over in a manner of minutes.
Ugh. Stressful, though.
PS2 Borked
Hrm. So what’s up? Things are sort of up and about next month – I’ll start off the month in Montreal, for work, learning how to use the wafer reactors there, so that when I have to write the software for the reactor we’re building for work, I’ll have some idea of what’s come before. Fun stuff. Hopefully, the “colder than hell” will be passed by then.
My PS2 kicked the can last night, officially refusing to play more DVD’s than not. After contemplating swapping the system at Walmart, I decided to actually call Sony’s tech support, and see about getting this system fixed. Though they say “no prob” and that they’ll waive the repair fee, I wonder what their response will be when they notice the warranty sticker has been removed. Sad thing is, that sticker was taken off because I just wanted to see if cleaning the lens would fix things. *sigh* Hopefully, I won’t be out too much $$. Or it won’t take forever and a day.
Ah, well. Until then, I guess I’ve got PSO and the other xbox games to tide me over, and since I’ll be out and about through the middle of May, it’ll probably be back and repaired by the time I’m ready to use it again.
Still, that means that every Sony console I’ve ever had has failed, except the last PSX I bought, which still works.
*shrugs*
Gotta love the Republicans. I wonder how people can really get behind an organization that makes it part of their culture to want to police private activities in the bedroom and discriminate based on race. Oh, and what’s up with the comparison of homosexuality to bestiality that Rick Santorum’s engaging in? Seem a little over the top to you? Apparently, not to him.
The Ongoing Construction Saga… & stuff.
Whoo! Drywall on one room is done! Some mistakes here and there from learning the ropes – seams lined up when they should have been staggered, and some gaps that I couldn’t quite figure out how to fix, due to trying to mesh with drywall that had been done by contractors when the outer walls re-done due to the window swap. The gaps were in the corners, where the spaces were too small to put a screw through the drywall without breaking it. But hopefully, they can just be spackled in, or something. Nothing too horrible. Took about 15 hours total, just learning the ropes and figuring out what the hell we were doing. Probably 25-30 hours with the destruction of the old walls and such. Ended up taking about a calendar month to do, but largely because we weren’t working “full-time”. Satisfying, for certain, and it’s good to know that it’s as easy as it is. Spackling/taping is going to be left to the pros on this room, due to time constraints (roomie moving in in early May, nominally May 1), but future rooms will be up to us. Next up? Probably the downstairs.
Should be fun.
What have I been up to, you ask? Phantasy Star Online, mostly. My character’s name is ‘sinj’ and I’ve been playing on Epdote-7-1. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about it. It’s a weird little game – really simplistic, when it comes down to it, and a horrible single-player game. But remarkably entertaining as a multiplayer game, and I’ve racked up 23 hours on it already, which is pretty insane given that I got the game last Wednesday, and have spent a couple days in between working on the house, and other things. Other games in the queue are Shenmue 2, Xenosaga, Zelda: TWW and Grandia 2, primarily, not in that order. But since the Xbox Live games are such social experiences, they basically take priority over anything else. Meeting a couple of the guys from TGF (see ad to your right) at E3 this year, so that should be a blast.
Iraq
Anyone remember that the reason we invaded Iraq was supposedly because they presented an immediate threat to the US, with their supposed WMD’s? Oh, Iraqis are dancing in the streets? Looks like our pre-emptive, unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation was justified. Maybe if Russia invades and kills Bush, I’ll dance in the streets for them, and justify their invasion of us.
The logic behind people’s thinking that this is now a just war, because some residents of Baghdad are happy is so patently absurd on its face that it boggles the mind that such a high percentage of our citizenry can be so god damned stupid. We invaded a sovereign nation. We did not prove that it presented an immediate threat to us. We deposed a bad guy, who we knew was a bad guy, that no one questioned. We walked all over their military, something no one quesitoned would happen. We did so at the expense of alienating our allies, spending well into the trillions of dollars (by the time our nation-building exercise is complete), and creating a new, pre-emptive doctrine for “self-defense” that upends the concepts of real “self-defense.”
It is staggering to me, to believe that people are so unwilling or unable to see the consequences of what our nation has done. It boggles my mind that people *support* this nonsense, and it is obscene, to me, that I can be labelled “not supporting our troops” or “unAmerican” for even *questioning* why we would undertake such a monumentally stupid course of action.
Fuck you, President Bush. Fuck you and your Republican cronies, who have manipulated the nation with fear, with intimidation, and by using the memory of the tragedy of September 11th. Fuck you, Ashcroft, for the Patriot Act (and its potential sequel) and fuck the Congress for allowing this to happen. This is no democracy, this is capitalism run completely amok. The real test of our nation is whether we have the capacity to understand what we have done, and bear the consequences, starting with removing this criminal administration from power in 2004, and bringing those responsible to justice.
Starting with the incompetant leader that was foisted on us.
Flip-Flop
Hm. So I sorta chickened out at the last minute, and cancelled the car donation. There’s some chance I can get a relatively cheap engine replacement, after which I can either fix up the rest of the car, or sell it. Either way, if the engine works, it’ll either be worth more as a donation, or it will be useful to me for longer, or it’ll get more in a private-party sale. It’s hard to say. Regardless, the little car’s sitting in my work’s back lot, where it’ll stay ’till it can be repaired. Hopefully, I’ll know something more soon.
Sorry.
An open letter to the rest of the world:
Dear Sir/Madam/etc.:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry that the country I live in has waged a unilateral, preemptive war in Iraq, based on no proof of an immediate threat to our country. I’m sorry we have an unelected leader who is a right-wing ultra-“conservative” zealot, who for some reason or another believes that there’s an omnipotent being backing his actions. I don’t know what lead to that delusion on his part. I’m sorry we’ve completely screwed your country, whether you’re “with us” or “against us”, and whether we’re dropping bombs on your country, or merely have coerced your military to send members of your country to die along with ours, for this pointless slaughter.
I’m sorry I haven’t personally been able to do anything about it, try though I might – I send letters to my elected representatives, and though some manage to speak out for me, most of them are real disappointments, more concerned with their own political survival than doing what’s right. I’m sorry that I won’t get another substantive chance to speak out, by voting, against this sham of a President until next year. Honestly, that date can’t get here soon enough. I’m sorry that by then, the war will likely either be over, or have cost us, and everyone else, thousands, if not tens of thousands of needless deaths.
I’m sorry that there’s so many people in my country who are so blindly ignorant that they support this nonsense – believe me, I don’t understand them any better than you do. If I could fathom the staggering ignorance it takes to believe that Iraq was somehow behind the attacks on 9/11, or that a pre-emptive war based on no evidence was somehow “self defense”, or how invading a country when the inspection process was in full swing would be beneficial, perhaps I could understand the causes behind this mass idiocy, and work to correct it. But unfortunately, I have no understanding of why so many people are so completely mentally crippled that they are unable to understand the consequences of the country’s actions. I guess perhaps our educational system has failed us, or we spend too much time watching TV, or something. Whatever it is, I whole heartedly apologize.
I’m sorry that we’ve squandered our role as a partner in a multilateral world. I’m sorry that we’ve backed out of international treaties, that we’ve ignored the pleas of countries really in dire need, in order to blow up Iraq. I know it seems senseless to you, and it does to me, too. I don’t really have any good explanation for it. I hope you can believe me when I say that I don’t support this administration, that they do not speak for me, that the actions they commit aren’t in my name. I hope you can understand that these are the actions of a tyrannical madman and the people controlling him, and not what we want out of our country’s leadership. I hope you can understand that I will do everything in my power as an individual to make sure that his reign of tyranny ends as quickly as possible, and I hope that one day, we can mend the fences we have broken, restore the alliances we once had, and work together, in a multilateral way, to achieve a peaceful world for everyone.
Until then, I again offer my apologies.