Writing Stuff

I saw a sign supporting Proposition 8 the other day that said "Support religious freedom." on it and it made me really upset. It's not just that I think that people who support Prop 8 are incredibly selfish and not concerned about the rights of others, but it's that they're trying to pass religious rules as law in California. Not only does supporting Prop 8 push religious agendas and policy on those that may not be religious or recognize the rules of the religion as something that should govern their lives and life decisions, but it goes against a person's basic civil rights. Supporting Prop 8 is saying that since a gay person is different than you, they shouldn't have the same rights that you do. What's so wrong with allowing gay people to get married? I honestly don't think that this should even be something that we're allowed to vote on. I don't think that the general public should have any decision on what happens in the private l...

I cried a lot the other day. It was the first time I really cried a good cry in years. Crying takes a lot out of you, you know... bodies just aren't meant to deal with the intense emotional outpour and I think trying to fight it just makes you even more tired, kind of like trying to swim straight out of a riptide. It wasn't a fun day. Peanut was a cat that I've had for around 14 years. I grew up with her and she grew up with my mother and me. She was a great companion and was a great part of the family. Unfortunately she needed to be put to sleep last weekend. It was a very hard decision for my mother to make, but she'd been sick for quite a while and was treated successfully for thyroid issues. She underwent radiation therapy to treat and cure the disease, which it did, but she never seemed to become herself again. She ate less, had a very fickle stomach and lost a lot of weight. In the day before the decision was made to put her to sleep, she had stopped eating and ...

Someone stole the Obama car magnets that were on my and my wife's car last night. I'm not even that mad about it because it pretty much proves everything that I had previously assumed was true about McCain supporters. While there's no way for me to know whether the people that stole the magnets were actually supporters of McCain, they obviously despise Obama enough to steal someone else's property to further their political objectives. The theft of the magnets is definitely something that would support McCain's cause and if these people aren't supporters, they probably should be. If doing something like this would actually accomplish something politically or bring anything positive to them, the campaign, or bring anything negative upon me I think I could better understand why you would steal a magnet. The thing is, things like this just go against the cause that you're fighting for and make other people take you and what you stand for less seriously. ...

I hate cable internet service providers (ISPs). For a while there they were great and provided pretty awesome speeds at a fairly reasonable price (with promotions, of course), but now they’re changing and are more interested in earning a quick buck than providing the service that the customers are paying for. Most cable internet service providers are testing or in the process of implementing traffic caps that limit the amount of bandwidth a user may use per month. This is a terrible idea and does nothing but screw over the consumer by providing only half of the service that we’re all paying for. While an increase of throttled ISPs may lead to greater privacy for the customers, overall it will wind up costing most users more money or severely limit what they are able to do when online. Instead of monitoring what customers are doing and interfering with P2P transfers (like how Comcast recently caused some BitTorrent connections to disconnect and slow user downloads) the focus will...

I love playing video games, but they kind of come and go in shifts. There's times when I play games for hours a day every day of the week and then times when I won't touch any of my systems for months. Maybe it's that I get a little too into playing games and burn myself out. Some people think that playing video games is super dorky or a waste of time or believe that it means the gamer doesn't have a life outside of games. Thankfully for me, I won't let that be true. While I do enjoy playing video games (my wife even plays World of Warcraft with me), I don't let it get into personal time or prevent us from doing something else. We'll happily drop the controller or keyboard to watch a show we enjoy on TV, take the dog out for a walk, go out to a nice dinner, or just head somewhere other than home to hang out. Playing video games is fun, but they have their time and place. This time of year is when it gets even crazier. There's a ton of new games coming ...

Charlie attended the Halloween parade and costume contest at PetsMart yesterday and had a really good time! He went as a knight and everyone seemed to love his costume. We stopped by PetsHotel so the people there that know him could see him and they were all very excited and happy to see him. He's going back there Saturday night through Sunday since Cathee and I will be hiking in Joshua Tree for the day. Here's a picture of Charlie in all his knighted glory: While the costume seemed well received, he didn't place in the contest. There were three winners and unfortunately Charlie didn't make it in the top three. It was disappointing, especially because you could win a $20 (1st), $10 (2nd), or $5 (3rd) gift certificate for placing! I'm thinking that maybe it was a conflict of interest since most of the employees there know him by name and it wouldn't have seemed fair to give it to him. At least that's what I tell myself. How could a cute dog like him in such a...

I've been having terrible trouble with the internet recently. Bad connections and hardware seem to follow me wherever we go. There's slowness issues plaguing our work connection (which I am, thankfully, not responsible for) and up until recently our home connection hasn't fared any better. It all started when I purchased a PS3. For some reason, Sony designed a really poor networking interface for an otherwise awesome gaming system. With most routers, the wireless connection of the PS3 is ridiculously slow unless I modified the transmission rate on the router. This was great, except for the fact that it affected the speed of every other device connected. A transmission rate that made the PS3 go fast slowed down the connection on our computers or my iPhone or both. It was frustrating to get speeds upwards of 10Mbps on my computers and then see the PS3 barely pushing 4Mbps on speed tests. To try and fix the problem, I bought a new router think that was the cause. It turns out...

My wife and I got back from our second BlizzCon late Saturday night and had an awesome time, just as we did last year. There were about twice as many people at this year's convention (15,000) and it was definitely noticeable, especially in the merchandise lines. I actually waited in line for 4 1/2 hours to buy some Blizzard schwag. I definitely regret waiting that long, but it honestly didn't look that long and by the time I was 2 hours in it was too late to leave. BlizzCon started off kind of shaky when we went to pick up our admittance badges the day before the convention. While it looked much more organized than the year before, it turned out to be the opposite. There were a bunch of booths with sections of the alphabet listed above, showing you which line to get in by last name. We got in the appropriate line and waited over an hour to get to the front. Right before it was our turn, some poor sap realized that the line was by last (not first) name and the guy working the bo...

Just last week I boarded Charlie to the PetsHotel boarding service provided by PetsMart . He stayed there for just two days and one night. The first day was a standard boarding day while the second was a playday, where he got to play around with other dogs his size inside of a doggie gym-like area for 8 hours. Apparently he loved it and the employee watching the dogs during that time said she held him a lot. Awesome! The cost of the PetsHotel service is probably more than something like a local boarding service or a smaller chain, but I think that the service they offer is much better and they get more interaction at PetsHotel than they would somewhere else. Plus, I just like it and paying a little more for peace of mind while being away is totally worth it in my (pocket)book. In addition to standard boarding, there's a variety of addons that you can get for your pet while they're staying at PetsHotel. There's an option for a snack and play feature, which gets them out of...

My family and I just got back from our (sometimes) annual trip down to Miramar for the airshow . We used to go on a pretty yearly basis but went to our last one back in 2003. I think the extreme heat of that year's show pretty much drained everyone for the next five years, which is why nobody really brought up the option of going back again. I'm super glad that we decided to go this year, though, because I had an awesome time. Even though I had a great time, part of it was slightly emotional. It was the first time going back to the airshow since my Grandmother died of ovarian cancer in 2004. She would come with us every year and was just as excited about the whole experience as everyone else was. It definitely felt like something was missing without her and I'm sure that everyone else felt the same way. On a happier note, this was the first year that I got to bring my wife with me! We've been dating for nearly four years now (married happily since June) but we haven...

Ads are a beautiful thing. They give us the best free services, keep cable TV prices in check (somewhat), and can even provide recommendations for products that may be useful. I'm a huge supporter of ads on the internet and hate it when people install plugins like Adblock for Firefox. With that said, I hate obtrusive ads that attempt to annoy or deceive, like pop-ups, pop-unders, full page Flash ads, and ads pretending to find viruses and spyware on people's computers. There's a lot of free services that I really enjoying using on a daily basis on the internet. Google, Gmail, news websites, etc... All of these things have one thing in common that keep me from having to pay for them: ads. As annoying as some people think they are, getting into the habit of blocking them is counterproductive to the expectation and appreciate of free services online. Do you really think that a great free email service like Gmail would be available and be as good of a product as it is without a...

Everyone knows that Josh Jones hates the environment. He does everything he can to make sure that DreamHost has the greatest environmental impact of all the web hosting companies on the planet. Actually, I'm just kidding. While Josh does try to make DreamHost have the greatest environmental impact of all other hosting companies, he's trying to do it in a good way. Did you know that DreamHost is a green web host ? It's done through carbon neutralization. That means that carbon offset credits are purchased to offset every bit of carbon produced by the company. There's debate as to whether these actually mean anything, so Dallas spent a lot of time making sure that the company we purchase our credits through is reputable and invests the money in good, green causes. DreamHost (and Josh's disgust for a healthy environment) doesn't stop there. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes that a lot of people didn't know about, until now. Over the past fe...

I've been on a persistent quest to squeeze the best battery life out of my iPhone 3G as possible and have found some good tips for getting it to last quite a while. The best combination I've noticed so far is, unfortunately, turning off the 3G and Wi-Fi connections. These are the hugest battery hogs and with them off I can easily go multiple days without charging. That's obviously not ideal for most that enjoy high-speed data access everywhere, and so I've played around with a bunch of other configurations. I recently gained (and then lost ) 3G coverage in my apartment so I've been trying out leaving 3G on 24/7 with mixed luck. Having 3G turned on in a place without coverage for an extended period of time is absolutely one of the best ways to destroy your battery life. That used to be how my apartment was and while the office has full 3G coverage, having the iPhone stay powered on at my apartment for the majority of the day (and night) caused me to barely squeek by...