The Redheaded Penguin

Okay, as I was wrapping up that last post, I realized I was going in bunch of different directions. One of the things I think I’m going to have to work on as a blog more is keeping the posts more focused and on topic. Well, maybe… since these are likely to be more my own thoughts (and rants?) about things, there is likely to be some stream of consciousness going on with them… and my mind sometimes switches topics in the middle of a thought… speaking of which, the real reason I was wanting to post this one so close to when I finished writing the other one…

More and more I’ve been trying to think about what guides me in terms of politics. I don’t really like the whole “republican/democrat”, “conservative/liberal”, etc. labelling system, since I don’t think any of those really apply to me enough to “fit”. They’re an approximate answer I guess if someone was trying to put the label on me, so I can see their purpose, but I realize how flawed that system is. I’m probably fairly close to the libertarian view in many ways (the whole notion of personal choice and freedom), but even then there are things in the party platform/approach to government that I don’t fully agree with. I guess it’s that I’m not sure that there is really any consistency in any of the current political parties…. at least not the consistency that I’m looking for.

I want the “choice” party. (I”d say the freedom party, but that sounds a bit more revolutionary than I’m thinking.) Basically, a party that on pretty much every issue gives more freedom, choice, and opportunity to people. Don’t force me into a nationalized health care system. If you want to create a national health care option, fine. But, let me look at alternatives as well so I have more to choose from. Let me educate myself about the options. Feel free to provide unbiased information on them, realizing the national plan might not be the best fit for everyone, but given me the freedom to choose… even if it means I might choose the wrong plan in the long run. It should be my choice to make.

When it comes to choosing a school for a child, give parents more options. We all want a quality education for our children. We all want children to receive the best education possible. So, give parents the freedom to choose where they send their children. Help educate parents about the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, etc. of different options, but let parents choose where they send their kids. In my view, vouchers increase the options available to parents. Sure, some might choose the wrong school, or choose a school for the wrong reason, but even if that’s the case then it should be their choice to make.

Given the option, I’d love to be able to give more to charity. But right now, with almost a 3rd of my monthly paycheck going to taxes, medicare, social security, etc. I have very little left over at the end of the month to do that. Cut my taxes and give me more control over planning my retirement than being forced into social security allows, and if I have more money left over at the end of the month, I’ll be happy to choose a chairty to give it to.

And since I mentioned it (here’s that random thought issue again), I understand the “notion” of social security. We want to make sure that people, upon retirement, have some source of income to take care of themselves. We have people “pay in” to the system early, so we can “pay out” later on. In an ideal situation, this would be fine since it would mean that people, upon retirement, would not need to depend on the government or others, since they’d be living off what they “paid in” earlier on. Unfortunately, that’s not how the system seems to be working. The intent, although a good one, robbed people of the choice on how to plan for their retirement. Sure, it provides some security blanket to people in that they won’t loose everything if they do a bad job, but shouldn’t it be their choice? There is a risk that someone could suffer as the result of improper planning or decisions, but to me that is a risk worth taking for the sake or preserving individual choice. I’d be happy giving to a charity that would help these people out (the “bad choice” rescue fund), if I was able to plan more for myself and could make the choice to give voluntarily…

Where I deviate a little from my whole freedom of choice stance on things is when the individual’s choices begin to directly impact the lives and choices that other people can make. Obviously, a criminal who chooses to murder someone else has taken away that person’s freedom of choice. And, a fitting punishment (in my mind) is the removal of the freedom to choose for the person who committed the crime. For those actions that “might” interfere with others (meaning they might or might not have unintended or indirect consequences on the ability of others to choose), there should be some regulation and guidelines to protect those who might (for one reason or another) have their choices limited. Unfortunately, this leads into a grey area since there are many possible ways actions might influence others and understanding the impact those actions have on different people (since the same action can impact people differently). Give me time, and I”m sure I”ll think through that issue more… basically, laws/regulations/etc should exist to protect the freedom of people to make choices about their own lives…

So, in the upcoming election, I’m going to be looking at the candidates on issues from the standpoint of which stance/approach to the issue will (1) give me increased freedom of choice and (2) protect the rights of people to make their own choices. I’m pretty sure I already know which way this is likely to turn out (since I’ve been thinking about this for awhile), but it should be pretty interesting… depending on how interesting I think it is, I might or might not post about some of it between now and November…

Well, only a couple of more weeks (actually less) and I have to start back with everything again. I didn’t get nearly enough of the things accomplished this summer that I wanted, but I did seem to take it easier on myself. And, looking back, that might be for the best. I did more priortizing of tasks this summer and forcing myself to realize that somethings really could be “put off another day”. So, I was able to get a little more sleep, stress less about “being be behind”, etc. Of course, now the downside of all that is here where I realize I’m almost out of time to get to some of those lower priority projects.

The other “odd” thing, is that somehow over the past month I’ve developed a weird pattern of going to be really late, sleeping in a bit, then not getting to work as early as I used to do. The pros and cons of a flexible schedule I guess. I mean, during the second half of summer, my first course was at noon. Well, if I got to campus at my “normal” time (10ish), then I’d be there about an hour, have to rush to lunch at 11, and rush back in time to get myself together for class at noon. So, I took it slower in the mornings and started eating “brunch” (really just an early lunch) before I got to work. Downside was that in the afternoon after my classes, I really only had about an hour or so before I needed (okay, maybe wanted) to head for home. Well, that meant I only put in a few hours outside of teaching time “in the office”. (I did a lot of stuff at home, but some things I couldn’t do from home, so they kept getting put off…) I want to get back to actually being “in the office” around 9, so I’m there for a couple of hours or so before heading to lunch. And now that I won’t have class at noon (well, except for Fridays), I don’t have to “rush back” to teach. I’m gong to have to put myself on a schedule again to really force myself into a better pattern of behavior in the next week or so… plus there are a couple of days coming up where I’m going to need to be at work by 8, and with an hour commute, it means I”ll be leaving a lot earlier than I have been…doable, but one of those changes I have to prepare for…

And, last point for the evening… I was watching the re-airing of Psych on USA and after it ended they went into the Olympics coverage… and what exciting and action packed sport is it tonight? Walk racing? What the? I think I probably had the same reaction last time, but what the? Power walking is now an olympic sport? I’m sure that the people competing are in good shape (especially compared to myself), but at the same time it just seems like everything is being made into an olympic sport… next it will be power sleeping, and that is a sport I think I stand a good shot of winning the gold in… just ask my wife…

Wow.. it’s August and the summer session is almost over. It has been a longer summer than I expected with the 10 week methods course and then the 5 week I/O course the second half of the summer. The methods course did work better in the 10 week format (rather than having it condensed down to 5 weeks as well), but it has been an intense past few weeks. Needless to say, that’s kept me from posting here (I still resist using the term “blogging”). I’ve come up with some new ideas for the methods course this Fall (the only course I’ll be teaching this coming Fall and Spring). And, related to that is a possible new direction I might be taking here as well.

I’ll still post my random comments, thoughts, etc. as time permits, but I’m going to add something a little more “work” related as well. With my new position at work, I’ll need to be doing a lot more in terms of staying current on research in a few different areas. So, I’m going to try and post comments, thoughts, etc. of various articles I’m reading related to those areas. Since I’m hoping to integrate discussion of these articles into my methods course, what I write here will also help me in preparing for my classes based on what I’m reading for my research projects. Essentially trying to kill 3 birds at once, so to speak.

I’m still following a handful of other blogs, so I’ll probably be posting comments from time to time in relation to those as well… and trying to find a way to make posting things here a little easier/quicker for me so I can do it more often…

Well, guess that’s it for now since I do have to make sure I get to work in the morning…

From a recruitment video from the State of North Carolina…

We are here now. We are everywhere… we will touch all you care about: your precious neighborhood, your precious children, your precious parents… and what are you going to do about it? You think you’re safe, think again…. We are here…

http://nditsvns01.its.state.nc.us/osp/osp_we_are_here.wmv
Okay, so I did take some creative license with putting that quote together, but it still seems a bit “strange” to me as a way of trying to get people to go to work for the state…

(Tip o’ the Hat to HR Tests for mentioning the video…)

Wow, how time flies… hard to believe it’s been over a month since I last posted something. I have some pictures still to post, but still no idea when I’ll have time. My attempt at project 365 has pretty much come to an end I’m afraid… just not enough time to take and get pictures posted everyday like I had hoped… anyway, just figured I’d post something since it had been so long…

One of the oldest Universities in San Antonio, Our Lady of the Lake University, is currently experiencing a horrible fire in their main building. Built in the 1890s, it is reportedly the oldest building on their campus. Because of the age of the building, it is primarily a wood and stone building. The first call came in a little before 8PM and by 9PM it was already at 4-alarm. Although it appears they are starting to get things under control, it still has a long way to go. And so far, the fire fighters have not been able to actually go inside because of the potential of the building collapsing. Most of the buildings in this area of campus are either connected or in close proximity to each other. This means there is a potential for the fire to spread to other buildings before it is over. Also, looking at some of the video coming in live from the scene, the fire appears to be working it’s way down inside the building. So, even though they are getting it under control on the roof of the building, the inside is still a huge unknown. I probably won’t update this post, but a search of the major SA news sites (and likely beyond) will probably have more of the story as it develops…

Okay, a few days ago a mentioned that Google now knows where I am… via the GPS in my phone… well, I thought I was at home, but I just checked and I’m apparently in a field somewhere west of Helotes now… it’s good to know that Google knows where I am or else I’d be really lost…

Okay, I have to admit that I’ve grown attached to using outlook… I think it has to do more with exchange than outlook itself though. Basically, since we have the exchange server at work, I can easily keep an electronic calendar with me at all times and not have to worry about forgetting things as much. Had I not switched cell phones, I probably wouldn’t be as excited about it though. So, really it’s the combination of the new phone and outlook that has made things better I guess. And also, for the first time in years, my in box at work is EMPTY! Yes, completely empty. I used to leave emails in the inbox if they had details about an upcoming meeting or something as a reminder, but since I can easily switch over and put them on my calendar, the need to do that has gone away. Also, I’m not sure why, but it seems like I’ve been able to respond to emails faster since making the switch. I don’t know why that would be and don’t really want to attribute it to Outlook, but things did seem to fall in place about the time I made the switch. I still haven’t been able to connect to the exchange server at work from home (I’m thinking there’s some port blocking going on somewhere) and am having to depend on my phone and outlook web access… well, actually, I’ve started using remote desktop to connect to my office machine from home and use outlook from there sometimes as well… anyway, I’ll eventually get the exchange issue sorted out at home, but that’ll happen after I finish getting papers and projects graded…

Well, I finally got a chance to upgrade my WP install to the newest version… I generally try to do this as soon as the new version is out, but in some ways I’m glad I waited this time. The patch from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1 seemed to come out pretty quickly, so I only had to do one upgrade instead of 2. Now I just have to get used to the new layout of the admin screens. Looks like my theme and plug-ins are working though, which is good news… but I can already tell there are somethings I’m not going to like… for example, the box to indicate the category of a post is way down on the write screen now… think I’m going to look around for some of those fancy admin plug-ins to see if I can find one that creates a layout I like better…

Okay, I decided to play around with my new fancy phone yesterday and remembered a Google Maps feature for mobile phones. Basically, if the software is compatible with your phone, Google can figure out where you are… or at least where your phone is. You can download the software at http://mobile.google.com if you want. If you phone has built in GPS (and it’s enabled) then that is what will be used to locate you on Google Maps. (Makes sense given that’s what GPS is for I guess.) But even if you don’ t have GPS (or choose not to allow Google access to it), Google can still find you. From what I’ve gathered, it triangulates your position based on the strength of various cell phone towers around you. It actually got pretty close with this method, but was a few blocks south of where I really was at the time. Then I decided to go ahead and try it with the GPS enabled and bingo it found me. Then I noticed I could use the satellite view in google maps… so suddenly, Google had me represented by a flashing blue dot inside of my house (well, okay, the dot was actually “on” the picture of my house and not an interior shot of the house… though I think that might next on Google’s mapping venture after they complete the street views.) Anyway, it just so happened that I noticed where the dot was in my house was actually pretty close to where I was sitting. So, I decided to go to the other end of the house… sure enough, google followed me through my house. No admittedly it wasn’t “that” accurate, but it did seem to know within just a few feet. It’s one thing to see the blue dot showing you were you are on a map… it’s something else when you realize it knows which part of your house you happen to be in…  when they have the street view following along with the GPS I think it will really start freaking people out a bit more…

(and yes, more photo 365 pictures are coming… just have to find time to get them cropped and uploaded… probably after this week though because of final projects I have to get graded…)

Oh, and yeah, I know there are probably hundreds of people (or more) out there who have been playing with GPS units and all this stuff for a while now so this is “old news” to you, but hey… it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want