GO VOTE!!!

PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO READ THIS IN IT'S ENTIRITY, thanks, ~Ben

Hokay, here's the deal: People like to complain about how this country sucks, it's going downhill and they aren't going to vote because they don't like any of the candidates. This is the worst thing they can possibly do and here's why...

The way our country is set up, YOU are the employer, the manager, the owner of the government. You pay for it to function and YOU control YOUR government by voting. Not voting is like not managing your business. As everyone knows, poor management of a company causes that company to fail. The worst part about this situation is that you are both the owner and client of this company. Thus, your own mismanagement leads DIRECLY to your own disbenefit. It's circular, and therefore, by not voting you are simultaneously saying, "I don't really give a damn about myself."

Continuing the bussiness metaphor, electing a candidate is the equivalent of hiring an employee. The second biggest problem in this country, after people not voting, is people thinking that their civic-managerial responsiblity is over after the election. If your employee does something that you don't necessarially agree with, you let them know. Likewise, if YOUR representative does something you don't like, you call them and tell them. Every single person YOU elect into office has a phone number. Call this phone number and let them know. Each elected official has a secretary on the other end of that phone. This secretary has, in front of him/her, a huge piece of paper with a list of every possible issue. Next to each issue is a set of tally marks. When you call in, the secretary puts a little tick mark next to what you are calling about, recording your opinion. A good representative takes nothing but these marks into consideration when making decisions. This effectively means that you can Vote on any issue at any time and actually affect change. If you are intimidated by calling, you can email and the same process occurs. A sample call/email goes as follows: "Hi, my name is ____ and I am a constituent of representative/senator/whatever and I agree/disagree with ____." That's all, one sentence. You don't even have to leave your full name or contact info if you dont want to. It's so easy.

I could not care less about who you vote for. I realize that we only have two real choices: the party who pays you for your servatude and the party who charges you for your freedom. I also realize that most people want better options then these. However, by not voting for a candidate whom you like best, you are subtracting one from his/her vote tally. This is effectively GIVING ONE VOTE TO THE CANDIDATE YOU LIKE LEAST!!! Not voting equals voting for your least favorite person. I really don't know why people (the majority of people) do this; it's so incredibly counter productive and counter one's own best interest.

www.senate.gov
www.house.gov
www.whitehouse.gov

Then people argue to me, "But I don't feel that I know enough about the issues to vote." I reply saying that one hour is enough time to make an informed decision. Every single residence in this state receives a little blue book in the mail by law for free. In this book are 2 page summaries of each issue. These summaries give you three things: a summary of the ammendment/referendum, what those for it think, and what those against it think. Also included in the blue book is the entire text of the laws to be enacted. The summaries are enough for you to make a decision. It takes about an hour total to vote.

Simply go here and request an absentee ballot.
Or go here to read the Blue Book online.

They will send you a ballot for free and all you do is take some time to fill in the boxes. Reading the blue book: half an hour, requesting a ballot: 10 minutes, filling out the ballot: 10 minutes, mailing the ballot: 10 minutes. You will live approximately 80 years. This means about 701000 hours. If you spend just one hour per year participating in this great society that's only about 0.000114% of your life! Seriously, sacrafice one hour of American Idol.

NOT VOTING IS THE MOST UNPATRIOTIC THING YOU CAN DO!!!

Over our history millions of Americans have fought and died for YOUR right to vote. Not to vote is not to honor them. You'd be suprised by the number of people who both have "Support our troops" bumperstickers and also don't vote. These people make me sad, please don't be one of them. Without exercising your right to vote, the rest of your rights mean nothing. There are 25 days until the midterm elections in November. That is PLENTY of time to get an Absentee Ballot. And, if you don't remember to get an Absentee Ballot, you can still participate with Early Voting or at your polling place on Election Day. So instead of, "If you don't vote, don't complain," I say to you, "GO VOTE!"

Thanks,

~Ben

best day ever!

Sooooo, friday kicked major ass. It was one of those bizarre days on which all the planets align and just good stuff happens. Firstly, it was the last day of school, that's always good: +1 point. Next, it was Cinco De Mayo, which adds a non US holiday bonus of +3 points.

During his 15 minute noontime news brief, Paul Harvey did a 45 second segment on my former high school. This segment featured the exploitation of a "secret room in the rafters" that I have adventured to in the past. Being somewhere that you're not supposed to be and having that somewhere be on national syndicated news: +45 points.

The guy at Blockbuster (his name tag said "Sasquatch") gave us a free movie without even thinking or blinking an eye: +13 points.

Eating a Banzai Burger at Red Robin: +9 points.

And finally, my girlfriend and I were stopped at a red light and in the lane next to us was a big van. This van was a GMC Safari. The man driving the van had on a safari hat, a safari vest, had a safari mustache AND one can only infer that he was most certainly, ON SAFARI. He looked kind of like this. So, seeing a guy on safari in the middle of Fort Collins on the most awesomeist of Fridays: + a bizillion points.

ps. the safari guy made us think of watching Jumanji and incidentally that became the free movie! crazy connections.

Q & A With Colo Weather

We're here today with Colorado's newly appointed Director of the Department of Weather Control (DWC). He is here to address a few concerns we citizens have had of late about Colorado's crazy weather. We'll jump right in...

Q: Thanks for coming in today Mr Director, I'll get right to it and ask the question that's on a lot of Coloradan's minds: WTF mate?

A: Well Mitch, as you may well know, this is the first year the DWC has been in existence and likewise, my first experience controlling the weather. The transition from Mother Nature to myself has taken a hit on the traditional weather cycles in our state. We hope to have most of the bugs out of the system by mid July.

Q: But seriously, what's with this 60-35-40-75-37 degree high temperature pattern? It's messing with us all.

A: That particular decision concerning the temperature is two fold and, as you might have also noticed, the temperature swings coincide with a light dusting of precipitation. Firstly, this system is part of the new "Grow Don't Go ...Up In Flames" initiative for Colorado's forests. The idea being to have enough early season growth in certain higher risk areas during the spring and early summer months in order to reduce the number of serious wildfires in our state toward the end of the summer. If I may use an analogy, it's a little like watering your lawn. You don't water it constantly because you can over saturate the ground and run off the topsoil. The second goal of the fluxuating temperature is to reduce Colorado's overly high rate of skin cancer.

Q: Um... How exactly?

A: Well picture a recently opened pool in a student housing community. When we post a 75 degree high and then turn up the dial, inevitably, young men and women collect by these pools to work on their base tans. We at the DWC calculate how much sun the average tanner should get per session and convert this to a time based on our current conditions. As soon as we tick off that much time for the day's tanning session, BAM! afternoon shower to make people go inside.

Q: So really you are performing a public service with this bizarre weather?

A: That's exactly right Mitch.

Q: Ok, well we're almost out of time so just one more question: Why April? Both the Denver Post and RMN have recently run stories critical of your decision to move Colorado's weather transition month to April. How do you respond to that?

A: That was my own personal decision. March most certainly came in like a lion and went out like a slightly older lion. We move the transition month to April because, according to our sources in Paris, April is the new March. March was so twentieth century. Plus, global warming was slowly moving the month anyway, making summer and winter more extreme. We anticipated the transition month requiring more employees for the change over so we moved it for billing cycle reasons as well.

Q: Well, that's all our time for today, thanks for joining us Mr. Director. I do hope you can come back to our show in the future. May I close by asking what's on the menu for today?

A: Today will be a mix of clouds early, followed by a temperature spike around noon of about 85 degrees. That will be followed by the next ice age starting around 3:00. The late afternoon will feature a tropical hurricane or two and then by later tonight the fire and brimstone should be falling quite steadily and the seas might start to boil. Lucifer takes the stage promptly at 11:30 and by midnight, Apocalypse.

Q: Sounds like fun, I can't wait.

Some more Linkys

Check out this cool stuff:

How Cool is your IP address?
Awesome Retro Games by Paul Neave
Fighting Dems
Apple Boot Camp
Graffiti Research Lab
USARPS (probably the best link)

G-to the USTER

As many other and myself have said before, Love Guster, Don't Eat Them. They rocked the Aggie on April 1st. It was one of the better guster shows I've seen. My compadres y yo were about two to three rows from the stage. This happened to be close enough to hatch my master plan. To the concert, I brought a double sided sign with the words, "I was there, Trippin' Balls - 9/5/4," on one side and the song title Parachute on the other. Much to my glee, Ryan, one of the lead singers of the band, saw and read the trippin balls sign outloud early in the concert and proceeded to say, "I dont know where they are now, but I'm sure they're off somewhere, trippin balls." So that was cool and makes for a good concert story, but it gets better. Later during the show, I held up the Parachute side. Ryan also read this and was about to play my favorite Guster song when some other Guster fan, presumably from the Univ of Wyo (this fact is currently under investigation), held up his own song sign for Rocket Ship. Unfortunately for me, this new sign happened to be cut in the shape of a rocket ship and was in Ryan's arm's length. He said that they had to play it because the fan went through the effort to make his sign in a cool shape. Well, not to be outdone, I grabbed my brother's knife and quickly began cutting my sign into pieces. My slicings created a pretty decent rendition of a parachute and a few songs later I thrust it into the air. Ryan started laughing pretty hard but, again did not play my song. O well, it was way funny. Two other awesome signs at the show said, "New Orleans Loves Guster," and my personal favorite, "Shalom Guster." What an awesome night.

Guster dot com

PS. I really hate it when overly agressive, overly horney, overly drunk off their ass couples attempt to have sex in a very crowded room as if no one else is in the vicinity. Vicinity meaning they were touching my ass.

Some linkys from me and my associates

Go To Bed!!
Only Revolutions
The Moment We've All Been Waiting For
Thank You For Smoking
The Last Stand
Cars
Guster!
The Aggie

Java Babies

At the risk of sounding offensive: I HATE WHINY JAVA BABIES!!!

Ja·va
1. An island of Indonesia separated from Borneo by the Java Sea, an arm of the western Pacific Ocean. Center of an early Hindu Javanese civilization, Java was converted to Islam before the arrival of the Europeans (mainly the Dutch) in the late 16th century.
2. A trademark used for a programming language designed to develop applications that can operate on different platforms.
3. Brewed coffee.

ba·by pl. ba·bies
1. A very young child; an infant.
2. An unborn child; a fetus.
3. The youngest member of a family or group.
4. A very young animal.
5. An adult or young person who behaves in an infantile way.
6. Slang. A girl or young woman.
7. Informal. Sweetheart; dear. Used as a term of endearment.
8. Slang. An object of personal concern or interest: Keeping the boat in good repair is your baby.

Ja·va ba·by
1. An undergraduate in the computer science department who is characterized by the following traits:
- The first programming language they learned was Java
- They are horribly spoiled

I can conclude from my short reasearch that these people are totally and completely addicted to the STL (standard template library) and the built-in functions of Java. My first language was...well it was english and then: C++. Keep in mind that I am neither a professional programmer nor am I incredibly talented at the art of code writing, but these kids do nothing but whine and complain about how the teacher in my C++ class has to go easy on them because they're just starting out. My assignment calls for us to write a short compilation program for a made up language without the STL. Upon announcement, this sent the class into an uproar. A large contingent of students started vocally complaining and, I felt, rudely shouted at the professor that this assignment would be, "Too hard if we can't use the STL," and that they needed, "More time." For you non programmers out there, the STL allows programmer to utilize prewritten code (like algorithms or data structures). These structures often take a little more thought than, let's say a program that adds the numbers from 1 to 10. If you can't learn to write your own data structures then you will never be a decent programmer. Yes, it will be diffacult to write your very first Stack or Queue or Vector without the STL, but I'm sure you'll pull through, now shutup and go start programming!!!