Long Time Away

Ok, it's now August 6, 2008 in the name of a Christian Lord year 2008.
Lets do a ramble of what happened in the last 6 Months

March: School
God was that the longest month

April: School, that's about all I can remember

May: End of School
Made a kickass LED sign for my dorm hall
Finished Finals strong
Nearly went insane after writing a paper on Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

June: Hung around the house
Power Washed the Deck

July: 4 o July
Helped renovate Grandma's house
Painted the kitchen and Hallways
Redid the Floor (Composite Wood Flooring FTW)
Threw out lots of Junk(Mostly cardboard boxes)

August:
Went to New York City
Did NOT do the classic tourist "Lets see all the overcrowded national monuments"
Went around and saw more down to earth typical New Yorker Fare
Chinatown, where we got some really good beef and pork jerky
Time Square (bought a T-Shirt, and looked at the work needed to rig up those millions of lights)
New York Botanical Garden. This place has an amazing collection of Lilies, Roses and Lotus flowers this time of year
7th Avenue Bazaar. Saw plenty of vendors. Found a welding expert's shop and bought a bitchin' tank sculpture from him. Gave the sculpture as a present.
Took about 500 pictures during the trip

Found the New Jersey wasteland somewhat alluring. The desolate, functional industrial look kind of reminds me of a sad puppy waiting for someone to take it home.

My thoughts, which, because of devaluation, is worth about a penny, instead of 2

--Barack Obama is still my favorite candidate, even if it's because McCain is making himself look like an idiot on a weekly basis.

--The economy is in a fairly shonky state. The storm of mortgage collapse, rising gas prices, foreign outsourcing, corporate mismanagment and incopetent administration will take a few years to fully resolve.

--Got to see the secondary effects of high gas prices, as people are unwilling to commute further out to see friends or engage in commerce (there's gotta be a verb for engaging in commerce)

--People can be idiots sometimes, the trick to being wise is being aware when one is an idiot

--If you feel like you need to share your opinion with the rest of the world [this blog does not count because no one will ever read this and I am just a rambling loser], before you make it public in a newspaper, TV ad, or prominent website, follow this procedure:

1: Find a friend who disagrees with you slightly on what you consider to be a critical issue
IF you just have friends who agree with everything you think, you need more diversity

2: Give them a very well thought out arguement of why your opinion should matter
Remember, opinions do matter, but they are not necessarily relavent

3: If your friend cannot find a well reasoned rebuttal, then your argument has some weight
Repeat this starting with 1

4: If you've run out of friends and you've successfully defended your point, then you can give you now well thought out and tested argument to the world

I used the above method to reason if torture of suspects is ever justifiable
My position is that is is not
Other Disagree... Strongly
My argument is that a clever rewording of the 4th amendment is all that separates us from detention
Others argument is that we need torture to keep the terrorists at bay
I used Franklin's quote: He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.


Fan Stuff
--Medic Update was crap, so many bleeding requirements to get the goods. And half of the medics didn't even know what they should do. At least time sorts everything out

--Pyro Update was hella fun, although I am kinda sad that the BB is no longer a suitable alternative to the AB, oh well. Deflecting ammo is certainly satisfying. The AXT is probably the most fun melee I've had

--Heavy Update is next, gotta practice my spy skills (I'm god-awful horrible at it)
As always, my moniker is Wumaster125