Oh, History... How Little we Knew Thee

Allow me to begin this post by explaining one thing:  I am not a financial expert.  I'm not even close.  I know what I know about economics from the few classes I had in the subject, and from just keeping my eyes open.

What I do have, though is a healthy dose of honed cynicism.  And what I see today during these trying economic times is that there is such a huge disconnect between "real America" and the American financial and social elite that this no 

longer resembles anything close to the "Home of the free and the land of the brave".  Let me explain something to you, when your country is held hostage by robber-barons, you are no longer a free people.  

The people that are running these corporations, as well as the people that are running the government are the SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE!!!!  The senior level administration that is in charge of cleaning up this mess and holding people accountable... who do you think created the mess?  Am I really to believe that these people screwed

 up, profited from it, and then once moved to regulatory status are going to prosecute their buddies who did the very same thing?  Right.

Why is it that whenever it's the little guys who are struggling and going bankrupt, that's just market forces and survival of the fittest?  Then when one of these multinational "too big to fail" banks or insurance companies or whatever the hell they do starts to go under, we have to step in there and fix it.  

Maybe there are valid financial and economic arguments for or against doing th

is.  That's not what I'm here for.  I don't care about the economics of it.  I am here to make a moral and societal argument.  Allowing this looting to continue to take place is essentially allowing an oligarchy to form right under our noses, one in which we have absolutely no say in the day to day runnings of our country.  We will take what meager scraps the ruling elite throw at us, and if we want to change anything it'll just be too bad.  There will be no avenues remaining, as the system will have swallowed all checks and balances originally put in place.

Some have said this is what was going on for years.  Only the battle has been raging for years, decades even.  The problem is now the battle is in the endgame and it doesn't look good for the plebes.  I say why we still have a little say in this (and by "we" I mean the few legitimate representatives we have remaining), we should cancel all of these "bailouts", and allow all these companies to die.  I say the population returns to survival mode.

Listen people, you don't have to have every new cell phone or tv or car or whatever new shiny distraction they throw at you.  You just don't need it.  You need food, water, shelter, and medical care.  Well all of those things will still be there if we let these crooked bastards die.  We let them die, and then we build the system back up.

Oh and anyone who has a problem with allowing companies to die because then people might lose their jobs... How is it okay to profit from a competitive system when you're winning, and then not expect losses when you're losing?  If you're gonna play the game you need to be prepared to lose.

  

A Lament of Weakness

So today's post is about my own stubborn and inane psyche. I would guess, however that the phenomena about which I will speak is fairly common among the rest of the plebes.

First let's start with a little background. I grew up in a small town (actually it was an area that was 30 minutes away from a small town) in Eastern Kentucky. Not exactly cosmopolitan. I also won't say that I had an impoverished upbringing. Let's call it "humble." Due to this early start, let's just say that you wouldn't call me the most travelled of people. In fact when I graduated college at 22, I had never been out of the country. Since then I have made it to Mexico on business, and for the record never ever stay for more than the length of a layover in Mexico City. Just don't.

On to the story. The other day I am at work and my boss calls me into his office. He begins explaining some issues that have been happening at one of our clients' installations. Then I hear these words, "How do you like snails?"

I suppose for some reason the way this statement came at me and entered into my head was just somehow threatening. I knew what he was asking. Would I be willing to travel to Paris and work for a week? And I was defensive. I immediately started spouting off all of the inconveniences this was going to cause me. I would have to have someone take care of my dog. I would have to change the timeline on my other projects. I would have to get something done about my knee. Eventually I reluctantly agreed and began lamenting my unfortunate situation.

Then I went back to my office and sat down in my chair. It was at this point, at the desk which is intentionally reserved for the most logical of thoughts, that the rational me stepped in. I asked myself, "When was the last time you had a chance to go to Paris, or Europe for that matter?"

"Well, I don't guess I ever have," reactionary Hunter replied with a sliver of humility in his tone.

"And how many chances do you suppose you'll get aside from this?" came the condescending drip of the rational side of my brain. He can really be a pretentious ass sometimes, but I deal with him because he's usually right.

"I suppose very few. I see your point, please don't go on one of your rants." The measure of hope at the end of that statement was audible, even in my head.

But of course it was too late. The rational side had gotten indignant and was on his pedestal. "So you're telling me that when faced with the prospect of a BETTER THAN FREE trip to Paris, France that the first thing you thought of was 'Oh no, what am I going to do with my dog?'..." Nothing from the primal side.

"That's good. You don't say anything. You disgust me."

The preceding was an actual (paraphrased) conversation between the two competing ideas in my head that morning and the end result is the same. I was disgusted with myself for going straight to the bad in the face of a very good situation. Since that I've noticed it happens more than I had noticed before. There's no real point to this post I guess other than the obvious feel good, pseudo-evangelical mantra of, "Try to see the good in all situations." Which I would like to append to.

"Try to see the good in all situations. Especially if they are overwhelmingly good situations to begin with. Retard."

Total Hate

Okay, I know this isn't supposed to be a political blog, but get it's just one post. Like most Americans I have been swept up by the political river that has been rushing through our land at breakneck speed and power. I have noticed that since the election, there has not been the slow-down in hateful rhetoric among a significant portion of the right, the portion that I lovingly refer to as "the morons."

In the spirit of full disclosure I must say that I was an Obama supporter in the election. Of course, now I'm an American citizen so of course I'm an Obama supporter. He's going to be our president. Now to be fair I do HATE George W. Bush, but this is for things that he has royally fucked up as President of the United States of America. See, I don't hate him for what I think he might do. I hate him for what he has already done. This is the difference between me and the morons, I think. When I hate people, it's because I have a real reason. When these people hate someone, it's generally because they've been told to.

This all comes back to something that I've been talking about this whole election. Did anyone else notice that the issue of race was very rarely ever brought up? Very few people ever talked about the very distinct possibility that the USA was about to elect a black president. Even though only forty or so years ago our country was spiraling out of control under race riots and civil rights upheavals, no one mentioned it. Are we pretending that we have come this far as a people that race really doesn't matter? Apparently we are, and our arrogance is astounding.

This is why we still have this segment of our population who sees no problem completely loathing our new president from the word go, no chance for redemption. These are people whose hate is fueled by tradition. Just look at the map to see where this sentiment thrives. I'll give you a hint, it's hot and humid there. In a time when our nation needs to band together to really overcome our obstacles and limitations, these people are instantly adversarial to the guy whose job it is to fix things.

That's just stupid.

E-Voting

"Do you like me?"
---> Yes
---> No

Even as grade-schoolers we all understood that if you wanted to know and record where someone stood on an issue, you wrote out all their options for them on a piece of paper, and let them mark which one they wished. Not so anymore. It would seem that some greedy manipulative pricks at some level of corruption have convinced somebody that we need computers to vote. COMPUTERS!!!! To fucking VOTE!!!

Let me tell you something about computers. There are so many layers of abstraction in a computer that you never know exactly what's going on. I write software at a fairly high level, in object-oriented compiled languages. Below that there is an API, operating system level, below that assembly, below that machine instructions (these are rough guidelines here, accuracy unimportant). The point is that at any of these levels there may exist a bug or perhaps even a malicious, intentional piece of code which alters the intended operation of what I wrote at the high-level language. Nevermind how easy it would be to slip a little gotcha into the program itself.

These things are not only possible to hack, they are easy to hack. There have been several demonstrations at several different universities and government offices around the country of some graduate student or programmer sitting down with the newest machine from some company's assembly line and hacking it within a couple of hours.

Just wait, this gets worse. Some of these machines don't even have paper trails. Are you KIDDING ME????? "Just trust us, guys. Our machines don't make mistakes. You don't need a paper trail." Combine this with all the reports of machines changing people's votes RIGHT BEFORE THEIR EYES and this is a pretty shady situation. Will someone explain to me what was wrong with paper ballots? Extremely simple, no usability issues. In fact it provided an extra check in the democratic process; if you're too stupid to put a check-mark on paper, you're obviously too stupid to vote.

One can't say the same thing for these computerized monstrosities. I shouldn't have to think about how to operate whatever voting device in front of me. I should have to think about what I'm voting for. These devices are entirely too complex for the task at hand. I don't know who made the decision to move to electronic voting. It must have been some greedy businessman or corrupt jackass politician, because any engineer will tell you that the simplest solution is nearly always the correct one. It doesn't get much simpler than pen and paper.

First Post

Hello to all of the people who obviously have nothing important or worthwhile to do, as they are reading an obscure blog in some random corner of the interweb. It would seem that if I am going to bore you with my dribble, I should at least tell you who's dribbling. My name is Hunter, and I am a 23 year old software engineer in Louisville, Kentucky. I have wide and varied interests, including hunting of several varieties, consuming all sorts of media, and board games. God help me, I love me some board games. More recently however, I have picked up a new hobby; people-watching.

Not the creepy kind of people-watching you sometimes experience in malls at Christmas time or in bars just before last call; I've just generally been keeping my eyes open. I consider myself different from most people in that I am an extremely logical and mathematical kind of person. I don't consider myself better because of this. You should see me try and figure out women, I could use a little less logic on that particular problem. (Easy there sisters! Not trying to offend anyone. If you think men and women really do think alike then you are either stupid or haven't been very observant yourself. Stop reading my blog in either case) This is why when I see people doing stuff every day that makes absolutely zero logical sense, I take notice.

This blog will mostly be about stupid things I have noticed the general population (or specific members of said group) doing. However, as I said before I am a software engineer so some of the stories will no doubt not make sense to a layperson. Don't worry. I will qualify these posts in advance.

Also, before complaining about my writing style, or grammar, or punctuation or some other stupid nonsense: I already told you I'm an engineer and not a writer. As such, I don't freakin' care and will ignore you. I would love to hear from people regarding the topics of the post, but as I hinted at earlier I really hate stupid people. So consider this blog a stupid people restricted zone.

If you are still reading this, congratulations. You are not stupid.