Brian's Blog

OK, I guess I'm a bit behind the 8-ball on this but I just learned that you can actually call a phone number and leave a comment for the President of the United States. I know, logically it makes sense that you should be able to do this. It's pretty much common knowledge (I hope) that you call your Senator or Representative. It only makes sense that you should be able to do the same for the President. I can just honestly say I never really thought about it much.

So, got an opinion on something? Let it be known. 202-456-1111

I'm actually quite surprised that this is being attempted. Not that I don't think it is justified. I think an impeachment investigation is 100% justified. Heck just the torture issue is probably enough to justify an investigation into this administrations doings, not to mention habeas corpus, the attorney firings, and Iraq. In discussions with friends on the subject I've said that I thought impeaching President Bush would be a bad idea for a couple of reasons. The first one was because I thought Cheney would be worse than Bush as a president and also I never thought that an impeachment could be investigated in enough time to make any difference since Bush is out of the office at the end of this term. Honestly I had never really thought of anyone going after just Cheney. I'm not really sure if it will make any difference if he is successfully impeached. I'm guessing at the very least it would prevent him from running for President in the future?

So, yet another interesting story to follow. I learned about this bit of news in this AlterNet article where they have a short video and links to the full text of the resolution and a synopsis.

I've made it no secret that, at least in my opinion, the main stream news sources are generally useless for anything other than spin. As a result I'm always on the look out for more places to get information that is as untouched and "unspun" by government and corporate interests as I can. I've just stumbled upon something called The Real News that looks like it may be promising. Of course, only time will tell on their quality. However, they have a good start with their tag line of "NO advertising, NO government funding, NO corporate dollars, NO profit, NO strings". If you are wondering how they function they are donation driven.

So, I've added them to my RSS agregator. I think I'll watch them for a month or so and and see how I feel about them.

This one made me think a bit. Look at all that packaging for one little ink cartridge!

It can be found here in Flash or at Rocketboom in Quicktime.

This past Thursday my wife and I went to see Gordon Lightfoot in concert at the State Theatre in Easton. All in all, it was a good show. Gordon Lightfoot is classified on Wikipedia as Folk but I could pick out some country and even a bit of blues influence in a few of the songs. Of course, he's getting up there in age (68) and his voice is a bit different now than it was then but you have to cut some slack in that regard. Of course, the music was tight and very well played. By today's standards his style is very much easy listening though there were a few songs that got close to a soft rock feel.

I'm not what you would call a big fan or anything. Actually, I only discovered him about two years ago only because a co-worker at the time heard me listening to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and said I should listen to more. Heck, at that point I didn't even know who sang it. So I ran out and got a best of collection and found that there were several other songs that I had heard on the radio that were his.

I like going to the small local theatres here. It makes for a much more intimate setting. It's kind of nice being within a stones through of the performer rather than in the nose bleed section of a giant stadium. My wife and I had a good time, it was nice getting out for a change with out having to take the children along.

According to the BBC Windows XP is to be retired in 2008. In other words, you won't be able to buy it on a new PC anymore. Of course, it's no surprise at all that they intend to do this. The opening of the article says:

Microsoft is keeping to a plan to stop selling the operating system even though surveys show a lukewarm response to Windows Vista among consumers.

Well, that's one way to boost sales! Just stop selling the old one so people have to buy the new one! I will venture to guess that XP is more than sufficient for the vast majority of peoples computing needs thus the low urge to upgrade.

Of course, that attitude may change a bit as I use Vista. At work I'll have to support Vista systems so it only makes sense that I run it in order to be familiar with it. Besides, it's a work laptop so I kind of have to. I'm only on my second day using Vista so I haven't really formed an opinion yet but if/when I actually do have an opinion I may post it here. In all fairness though I'll have to make a conscious effort to compare it only to it's predecessors. If I start comparing it to Linux then it will obviously lose.