Campaigning, debate, and a bottle of rye

Disclaimer: This blog post is being made while under the influence.

So the campaign has begun to get my brother in law elected to a municipal councilor position, and the past couple days have been devoted to that. Last night was spent putting up signs to get the word out, and tonight was an introduction and a small debate about the current issues.

I don't know how well my candidate did, it's kind of up in the air. There are five people running and two positions open. One person has been in the position for 21 years, so it's likely that he will be put back in. Old people hate change, and I live in a retirement village. I think my candidate was a little too stiff and did not speak directly on the issues, but danced around them by generalizing like a typical politician. The others did the same thing, but I would vote for the guy with the plan. While we may not have lost votes, I don't think we gained very many either.

While watching the debates, I imagined myself up on the podium delivering my platform and addressing the issues along with them. I am typically a shy person and keep to myself, so I don't know if I could actually say what I am thinking. My mind is up to the task of being a politician, but I question my demeanor. Two of the candidates are pretty much dead in the water, one killed themselves tonight by demonstrating their inability to communicate and the other by attacking the competition while at the same time targeting their father, because his father served on the council and made the mistakes he talked about. It's down to three people, so it's a coin flip as to who makes it right now.

Maybe next election, or the one after, I will try to get myself in to office. My area is a retirement village, so I don't know how willing they would be to put a 26 year old into office, but if I present good enough ideas then they won't really have a choice now will they? It's sad that the only people who vote in my county are the elderly.

I think I've rambled enough for now in my rye induced epilogue, so I'll stop now. On an off note, I think I should cut back on how much I drink during the week, I have to head off to school sometime tomorrow.

P.S. God bless Firefox's spelling checker.

Wii!

The Wii countdown has begun! I don't know why I'm counting it down, because I can't afford it to begin with. Who knows? It just feels right. Who else wants a Wii?

More cases of Democrat votes changing to Republican votes

Maybe Diebold has created Skynet, and it's determined that the best way to send us into a barren, machine ruled, post-apocalyptic world is to keep the Republicans where they are. All hail our machine overlords.

The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win. - Leonid Brezhnev

Unless, of course, you rig the election.

He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

There have been no cases of a vote for a Republican being mistaken as a vote for a Democrat. If it is indeed a "bug", then that "bug" is a Republican. Why can't the US of A take a lesson from Canada and stick to paper voting? Sure, if they really wanted to rig the election they could change the vote after the confirmation screen, but that would make it awful hard to have plausible deniability now, wouldn't it? There are enough careless, not to mention stupid, people in this world that a glitch here and there is enough to swing a vote. This coming election promises to be a circus.

The issue seems to be with the touch screens, which seems like an innocent enough excuse, but ATMs use touch screens... how often do they give you $40 when you ask for $60?

Derek Boogaard versus Todd Fedoruk - fight of the night

Boogaard is just scary, I don't know why anyone would want to have a go with him. Fedoruk ends up with a broken orbital bone and a broken cheek bone.

Clicksor is dead

Not only dead, but murdered; the blood is on my hands. I got a little tired of the not only irrelevant ads, but the downright inappropriate ones as well. I cannot morally recommend using their service to any would be advertiser.

Once upon a Friday night

I have been surprisingly unproductive these past few days. The blog posts I want to pump out just aren't getting moved along and the projects I have on the go aren't really going. Despite all that, I've been going through the motions to put another project on the table that should keep me busy for a few months. I'm starting to think that my limited attention span is going to bite me in the ass someday, because when you take into account my regular college work, I should be constantly busy. Oh well, that's just how it goes.

My goal for this weekend is to finish a significant portion of the calendar system I've been making for the college and maybe finish up the rest of Scurvy, which is a project that I don't really want to release the specifics of here. Once I get those two projects done I think it would be in my interest to find some money (trust me, the ads aren't doing too much) so I can get my own personal web server going on the net that can host a high traffic application.

After those two projects are out of the way I think I'll start doing proof of concept for Limestone (my newest project) to see how viable it might be, and hopefully within a week or two my group will be able to start coding on Doubloon.

As for blog posts, another goal for this weekend is to do the final editing on the game review I've been neglecting for the past week and also get about five or six more updates done. Stay tuned, it should be a busy weekend.

Three upcoming PC games I simply must have

Numero uno: Spore (Electronic Arts)

Spore is a sandbox game that is Will Wright's (the Sims series) newest baby. You start as a tiny organism consisting of a few cells, and collect evolution points (by eating less fortunate organisms) to create a more elaborate creature. You grow and grow, and your 2D screen then becomes 3D, you're in the ocean. You continue to evolve, eventually trading in your gills for a trusty pair of lungs and become a landlubber. Every time you break new ground the game gets a little bigger and you can do a little more. Eventually, you form civilizations and become bent on spreading your seed across the galaxy.

What makes this game unique? The creature editor. You can, literally, create anything you want. The game will procedurally animate and texture your creature to figure out what it should look like, sound like, and how it should move. Its only limitation is your creativity.

Number two: Supreme Commander (THQ)

Outside of Warcraft and Starcraft, RTS games have never really interested me. Supreme Commander has me salivating. Its scale is like nothing ever seen before, and finally we have an RTS game that uses 3D space effectively. Bullets are no longer random rolls for damage. Bullets are real, physical things in the game world. Projectiles are all calculated with real physics to determine whether they hit or miss, and how much damage they do. Different planes can fly at different altitudes, some weapons can't shoot high, and missiles actually travel from one point to another. Starcraft has nukes, but if you look at Supreme Commander, you realize that Starcraft has nothing. Google it if you haven't heard of it.

The finale: Neverwinter Nights 2 (Atari)

I haven't followed this game very closely, but I loved the first one. Improved graphics, scripting, gameplay, and a whole new singleplayer story to play through are enough for me to slap down $60 to play it.

What are three PC games you simply must have?

Ads, work, and a slain beast

The battle of the ads is underway, with the aforementioned mediocre adsense actually leading the bunch. The scores sit at ...

Adsense: $0.65
Bidvertiser: $0.00
Clicksor: $0.00

Some of these are CPM ads, but I haven't earned any money from anything but clicks yet. If clicks don't happen then there isn't really a point of using bidvertiser, because that's the only thing they pay out for. The funny thing is that I'm actually interested in the current advertisement but am prohibited from checking it out myself.

Onto the work.

Our group has been charged with creating an inventory tracking system for the college, but the organizational hierarchy has us spinning in circles instead of being able to actually do some work on it. One of our members has jumped the gun and started coding on the project anyways, but they skipped the entire planning stage. It's not like they don't know any better, because we started a project prior to this and the planning stages have been essential to getting it right the first time. I'm tempted to start on my own solution, so I can have some leverage when it comes time to redo everything and actually work as a group.

And as to that beast that was slain? That was my World Issues midterm. I'm not sure how well I did on it, but I know I at least passed it. Hell, I could even get 100% on it, I'm just not confident of it. Some questions needed blind guessing, and blind guess I did!

I mentioned some entries that might happen tonight in my last post, but there might have to be further delays. If I start coding on a project then I will have limited free time before settling down to watch my beloved Maple Leafs take on the Ottawa Senators tonight. I might settle for kicking out a smaller post that's been floating around in my head for a while, we'll see. Until then, waffle! (pie)

I'm a frequent procrastinator

The first sentence I read when I opened my textbook was:

The student of global politics today deserves some pity.

They aren't lying. This book is nearly impossible to read and connecting it to the material covered in class leaves me mystified on what might be on the exam. Luckily, my exam outline is vague enough that it also leaves me completely clueless (but at least I know that there will be short answer questions on the test, thanks Teach!)

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if I didn't leave the reading to the last minute, but I'm going to step away from my internal locus of control for a minute and blame my inability to study on the double header of hockey that TSN is showing tonight. Go Oilers go.

Trying out some different ads

On a quick aside before I go missing for a day or so, I haven't been overly impressed with adsense so I'm trying out a few different ads to see if they're any better. While I cannot give you specifics on click through rates or pay per click, I am allowed to tell you how much I have earned. Adsense has amounted to a grand total of.... *drum roll* ... $0.50.

I didn't start doing this to make money, but I am a college student after all, money is my friend! Lack of money is also the enemy, and right now, I have a lot of enemies. The problem with advertisements is that they require clicks, and people have been conditioned to block ads from their sight. If anyone has any tips on how to get more clicks or just on advertising in general, please drop me a comment.

Also, if any of these ads rub you the wrong way, tell me and I'll think about changing them. I'm trying not to clutter my blog with ads, and I think I've somewhat successfully incorporated them in a way that doesn't interfere with the content of my blog, but if you feel I've failed then tell me so I can fix it.

World Issues becomes Justin's Issues

I may be a software engineering student, but that doesn't mean I'm exempt from the college cramming useless classes down my throat in the name of a broader learning experience. This semester my "elective" (is it really an elective if you're only given four choices?) is World Issues. The class hasn't been that bad so far, despite having an eccentric professor who is a touch senile, but a midterm this way comes. From now until Thursday I will be entrenched in the bowels of my textbook in an attempt to prepare for what promises to be an exciting (is the sarcasm dripping yet?) affair.

I'm currently working on a game review and another movie review, which should be available either Thursday night or Friday. "So you want to be a computer programmer - part 2" will be made available by Monday night, hopefully. My weekend will be spent preparing for municipal elections, so we'll see how much I'm able to keep track of my writing. Until then, waffle! (pie)