Cleaning

Today was a cleaning day. I didn't plan it that way, but I sit here with a large box near my feet of miscellaneous odds and ends that I pulled out while feeling too energetic… somehow leaving them on the sofa didn't seem like a good idea, so they are now in a box waiting to be sorted through.

It all started when I was looking for my Windows 98 CD to do a reinstall for a client who lost their CD (it's a valid license they have, they just don't have the CD). Anyway, then I realized I was missing two CD's from my audio CD collection. I never did find the jewel cases, although I did find the CD's in a CD holder (I forgot I had taken them out). Now if I can just find the jewel cases, I'll be happy.

Meanwhile, I have a mess. In a way, that's good. Usually the only way I ever get around to organizing things is if I'm forced to by the fact that I already have everything pulled out and it never goes back into as small of space as it came out of… thus necessitating organizing actions. Tomorrow I hope to finish.

Reflections on the Rally

Well, I know I keep promising, so here are some thoughts — scattered as they may be at one o'clock — about the rally on Tuesday.

I've already said it was great. The speakers, who hit on a lot of important issues, including the Missouri Marriage Amendment, where interesting. Save for MO GOP chairwoman Ann Wagner, it was a mostly positive set of remarks too. Ms. Wagner did do a bit of mud slinging, on the other hand, comparing a Kerry Speech to a root canal and doing an obligatory slam of President Clinton. Other than that, though, most of the presentations were purposeful statements of what the politicians hoped to do.

With an estimated 11,000 people in attendance, the arena was almost full and and certainly was full of anticipation. There was a definite sense of anticipation back in November of 2000 at the Family Arena when the then-Gov. Bush came in for one of the last pre-election rallies, but that excitement was far larger now that Dubya is the most powerful man in the free world.

The UMC Church of the Shepherd worship team did a great job. I can't imagine what their Sunday services are like, but they were very good at doing different styles of music including rock, CCM and traditional patriotic. The second group to sing was a bit too rap-like for my taste, but they did get everyone going chanting “B-U-S-H.” I need to look up their name, but I think they might be a Christian rap band.

Then, the speakers quit as did the music groups and we had canned music for a few minutes. After awhile, a man in a black suit came out and placed the presidential seal on the podium. He's arrived! Sure enough, a few moments later, the room grew dark and as dramatic music echoed through the arena, lights made to project “W's” floated around the room and the ceiling turned red, white and blue. “Ladies and gentlemen… please welcome the President of the United States!” Then the spotlight found its subject and President Bush was on stage.

At that point, the president took to the podium and spoke for probably about 45 minutes. In 2000 he presented a great vision and message. Yet his tone and message were far more purposeful and eloquent this time, showing how the events of the last three years had transformed Bush from someone apparently destined for a lukewarm presidency to certainly one of the most determined, interesting presidents in some time.

Negativity was kept to a minimum, with only a few pokes at Kerry. The big poke (and one well earned by Kerry) was about Kerry's ringing praise of the vulgar Hollywood elites and their comments made at a fundraiser earlier this month. How Kerry could listen to people like Whoopi Goldberg make obscene remarks and then say they were the “heart and soul” of America is beyond me. President Bush noted that he thought the “heart and soul” of America was “in placed like St. Charles, Missouri.”

At an earlier, more lighthearted moment, he also pointed to Kerry's flip-flopping. “Sen. Kerry has been in Washington a long time. Long enough to hold both sides on just about every issue.” Later, he joked that if you ran into Sen. Kerry and found you disagreed with his views, you clearly just ran into him on the wrong day.

Bush covered his standard stump fair, including stopping frivolous lawsuits, keeping the U.S. independent of other nations (more specifically, not to trust national security decisions to other world leaders), keeping taxes low, a pitch for “No Child Left Behind” and, of course, lots of talk about Iraq. He pledged to do all he could to keep the country safe and never allow the government to take measures that would make the country less secure “during his watch.”

He also did a small pitch for gubernatorial hopeful Matt Blunt. After making one statement he looked back at Blunt and quipped, “isn't that right, governor.”

Overall, his message came across extremely sincere and assuring of his positions. It was probably one of the best speeches I've heard him give. Being there definitely made it just that much better. After the end of the speech, he took a long time to shake hands, going deep into the crowd, picking up babies, and even — right before leaving — jumping up in the air to touch the hand of someone leaning down from a high row of seats over the doorway.

All I can say is this: if you get the chance to go see the President during this election season, do it. It was an experience that can't be exactly explained by putting a few words together on a screen. You won't regret it, but I think you will regret missing out on the opportunity.

One of those days

I was busy from almost the time I got up until now, yet, I feel like very little was accomplished. sigh Tomorrow I'd like to get not only “stuff” done, but the kind of stuff that will actually make me feel like I'm moving forward rather than just running in circles.

The Bush Rally Photos

Here are the promised photos from yesterday's event. I had hoped to post a bit more about the event, but time got away from me. Tomorrow, hopefully…

For now, just enjoy the photo tour. The 38 photos I've posted are the best of the bunch I got. I also recorded most of the speech using my camera's video recording functionality, but I doubt the campaign would want me to post that (copyright issues and the like).

Wow.

I went to the rally for President Bush today. It was amazing. I have lots of photos, I'll post some tomorrow.

Moving Forward with the War Against SPAM

I posted the following to CS-FSLUG and CMUG and I thought asisaid readers might be interested as well. Help me out in the war against SPAM by responding in the comments! Also, please consider posting a link to this on your blog — if the news spreads, maybe we can get more support for this project.

Hi everyone, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but I've found a really troubling occurrence over the past year. Christians [are] using spam as a medium for advertising. And, I'm not talking about variations of the Nigerian scam.

For instance, I've been signed up for several “Christian” newsletters that appear to be genuine, and even one from a well known Christian publisher, without my consent. One sends me three copies of each issue of the newsletter.

I could just unsubscribe, but I think that — in the long run, anyway — fails to accomplish anything. These organizations are still using very disturbing means to get out their message. Thus I got an idea: a blacklist of Christian Spammers. I'll create a list of all of the organizations who seem to be doing this and place them on them on the web. The page will encourage Christians to avoid these organizations, or at least their e-mail services, until such time as they “repent” of this. I will then contact them and provide them with a simple way to be removed: delete any and all subscribers they have added through means other than legitimate opt-in sign ups.

Obviously, they could lie and fail to delete all of the subscribers, but there is a simple way to test this: I will contact them using an address other than one that they presently have. Thus, the only way they can remove me (and thus convince me that they have “done the right thing”) is to remove all unsolicited subscribers (well, there are other means, but at least I won't make it easy). [Likewise, if others provide me with reports, they can let me know if the company quits spamming them after I contact them.]

The reason I'm posting this is that I'm hoping to get some more reports of Christian spammers. Especially ones who repeatedly send spam out — the kind that perhaps spam you every week or every day (as some do to me). It is my hope that when they are publicly confronted about this, they will relent (my attempts at private correspondence have failed to get the desired results).

There are two reasons I see for doing this: (1) I just really despise spam. I get so much of it, my mailbox would be useless if not for client side spam filtering and SpamAssassin on the server. (2) I don't want non-Christians to be getting spammed by Christian organizations and thus start grouping Christians with the less tasteful groups that usually spam. I'm sure some mean well by this, but its wrong all the same, and I think it would be good to put a stop to it before it gets any worse.

So, what do you say? Would you send those spammers' organizational web sites, e-mail addresses, etc. my way?

-Tim

If you prefer to send reports by private e-mail to me, that is fine as well. I will not share your name with spammers either way.

Sunday Brunch on Monday

1.  Do you or should you wear glasses or contact lenses?
No. I should wear sun glasses, but I don't do that either.

2.  What is your favorite type of footwear?
Birkenstock sandals… I love 'em. I have two standard, brown pairs of sandals, plus I recently added a pair of “Birki's” made with a rubber footbed — perfect for when you think it might rain. I've found that my legs will become sore even when wearing good sneakers, but rarely ever hurt at all when wearing Birkenstocks, thanks to their famous footbed's amazing support.

When inside, I prefer to be barefoot.

3.  What is your worst habit?
Worrying. I'm very bad about second guessing myself, worrying about the best way to say something to someone, and so on. I am also a worrier on things like whether meat has been cooked enough at a restaurant. My worrying when around less-than-well-done meat as well as individuals who are sick can cause me to do a good job of “getting” a psychosomatic case of something.

I'm worried I might be forgetting something I should say here.

(The bad habits Christopher mentions also apply to me.)

4.  Are you an average, so-so or very good cook?
I think I'm between average and good. Like Christopher, clean up is a lot of what keeps me from doing it more often.

5. Do you spend more time watching television, listening to music or surfing the internet?
Surfing the internet. I spend far too much time reading blogs, news and other things. Of course, much of my work involves the internet too, so I spend a lot of time on here.

I generally watch television for 30 minutes a day, usually to see something I'm time shifting off of TV Land or some other cable station (I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, Green Acres or The Beverly Hillbillies [on WGN] usually). Sometimes, I'll also watch CNN or the Weather Channel (I actually find the latter relaxing, but I don't watch it all that often).

I rip my CD's into XMMS (on GNU/Linux) and iTunes (on Mac OS X), so music goes along with the Internet. I'm currently enjoying Steven Curtis Chapman's CD Declaration.

Politics by the Numbers

The political compass divides views into a four way map with coordinates rather than just a two way spectrum in the following manner.

My “score” is:
Economic Left/Right: 1.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.97

That makes me just slightly below the middle on the up/down social scale between Libertarian and Authoritarian views and just a bit more skewed from center to the right on the economic scale. I guess that makes me a “compassionate conservative.”

Okay, one more way to look at this, courtesy of Christopher:

“32 percent liberal, 68 percent conservative - compared to 73 percent liberal, 27 percent conservative” You can click the link to view my full results and take the quiz for yourself. (The comparison part is based on the poll's ability to compare your views with someone else's. I chose to enter my father's views, as best I understand them, as the second person.)

Interesting. So I took three polls. The first puts me far the right, the second puts me just right of center and the third puts me somewhat in the middle of the right (half way between ultra-conservative and centrist). The latter two are closer together and I think they my corroborate what I generally held to be true: I'm a conservative, but not an ultra-conservative. Furthermore, I generally am slightly more liberal economically than socially (mostly due to less conviction about the issues there, I suspect), although I lean to the right on both.

Finally, the last quiz also includes a personality segment:
There has been much research on how people describe others, and five major dimensions of human personality have been found. They are often referred to as the OCEAN model of personality, because of the acronym from the names of the five dimensions. Your specific personality indicates that the following attributes will most likely describe you well:
You enjoy having novel experiences and seeing things in new ways.
You are neither organized or disorganized.
You tend to shy away from social situations.
You tend to consider the feelings of others.
You are generally relaxed.

Predestined Not to Comment?

Well, after reading Christopher's interesting post on election (as he guest blogged on another blog through BlogSwap), I wrote up a post on my thoughts on the subject, including some concerns about what the doctrine of election means to other parts of the Bible. Unfortunately, the post disappeared. I guess I must have closed the web browser window it was in (I had several tabs opened, maybe I switched tabs and then closed the whole thing) or something, because it is gone now.

Oh well. Maybe I'll write something up again another day.

President Comes to Town

I was in downtown St. Charles, a quaint little area of historic buildings along our river front, this afternoon, when I noticed something unusual: a bunch of “Bush-Cheney” signs on the street. I decided to investigate and noticed underneath it said “Tickets” with an arrow pointing up the street. Following the arrows to the side a building, I found a door with another campaign sign on it. By this time, I was intrigued, so I went inside.

As it turned out, this was the Bush-Cheney campaign office for the area and they were giving away tickets to go see the President at the nearby Family Arena on Tuesday. Needless to say, I jumped on the offer and got a ticket. I was at the family arena four years ago when the then-governor of Texas came into town just a few days before the election. This time, I get to see the President of the United States. Pretty exciting!

I guess it pays to look at signs… you just never know what surprise might arise from them.