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.