Posted by bytheway
Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:11:00 GMT
Tomorrow Amanda and I are taking a trip to Buffalo, NY for a little open house with her family. Most of them weren’t able to come to the wedding here in Utah, so we’re flying back there to have a little celebration. We’re leaving late Tuesday night for a Jet Blue red-eye flight and we’ll be gone a week.
Along with the open house, we’ll take the time to visit the church history sites in Palmyra and Fayette. We were able to go to Palmyra when we were there in December, but didn’t make it to Fayette. I’m sure the place is going to be a whole lot greener now than it was last winter. Before the last trip I had never been to Cumorah and Palmyra and quite enjoyed it.
I just hope I can get a little shut-eye on the flight tomorrow night. I usually have a lot of trouble sleeping on planes.
Posted in Personal | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bytheway
Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:00:00 GMT
I don’t think I’ve quite gotten the handle on this blogging thing. I’ve been reading, thinking, studying and I haven’t taken the time to record some of my conclusions here.
Saturday night I wrote a few things down in my analog blog (a study notebook) that I’ll expand on here in the next little while.
no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bytheway
Thu, 05 May 2005 11:13:00 GMT
During the last semester, I took the opportunity to listen to a variety of political radio talk shows as I drove to and from school. Because of my conservative leanings, I listened to most of the favorite personalities including Rush, Sean Hannity, and others. Locally, I listened to a bit of Doug Wright and Bob Lonsberry.
I don’t know exactly why, but I have a really hard time stomaching any of them anymore. Some of them have interesting things to say, but I get annoyed at how they harp on the same subjects over and over again. Most aren’t interested in finding out what is true, without the spin normally attached to political rhetoric. These shows are entertainment, pure and simple.
I think I started getting this feeling during the months leading up to the last election. I found a website that would analyze each presidential candidates claims for truthfulness, and provide research backing the analysis. This site was not hard to find, and I found the analysis very helpful, but inevitably, I would flip the radio on and hear these personalities repeat distortion after distortion.
I think I’m just dismayed at the state of politics in general. We’ve ceased trying to do what is right for the people and instead divide solely on party lines. The point is not to do what is right by the country, but making sure the other guy doesn’t get any credit for doing a good thing.
So here I sit, dismayed at both parties, thinking that the founders had it right when they considered political parties to be dangerous factions. Of course, those same founders also started their own parties and got us into this mess.
So, today we have the situation of partisan politics, career politicians who have lost touch with their constituency, and a judicial system running amok doing a bit of legislating of their own.
Come election time, the people are left to choose (with our republic turning more and more into a pure democracy) between two usually equally objectionable candidates who then get sent to Washington to build for themselves a little kingdom of power, prestige and wealth.
Is there any hope of a different course? I sure don’t think so. I would wager that as time goes on special interests groups, corporations and lobbyists will only gain a greater influence. Soon the few most populous cities will hold the majority power over the greater land area of the US, especially in presidential elections. (An event that nearly happened in the 2004 election). Neo-conservatives and liberals alike will increase the size of the Federal government as each tries to show just how much more compassionate they are then the other.
In spite of all this, I have still decided I must decide for myself what kind of political philosophy I must live by. As a member of the LDS faith I have very definite moral feelings that must influence my voting, but there is much that still must be decided upon. Perhaps the one most important tenet that LDS theology has taught me is that the US Constitution is an inspired document, that God had a hand in bringing about. For me, any political leaning must begin and end with that document.
Posted in Politics | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bytheway
Tue, 03 May 2005 11:10:00 GMT
As some of you probably know, I’ve become quite a fan of the programming language Ruby recently, specifically because of the RubyonRails project. I’m acutally using rails right now to write a sort of issue tracker for my department at work.
In any case, the guys originally behind much of the Rails magic have a new site coming online tomorrow called BackPack that looks to be a sort of reduced version of their popular project management site Basecamp.
I was curious, so I signed up to be notified when it launched, with the chance to be given a golden ticket to see the site early. Well, I got my golden ticket this afternoon, and have had a chance to poke around a bit.
I haven’t really had the chance to dig deep into the site, but I was very impressed at the extensive, and very appropriate use of AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xmlhttprequest for the web geeks out there. for the non-geeks its the technology behind google maps and google suggest). I loved being able to edit and add things to the site without having to reload whole pages. It made the whole user experience more friendly and working with the site that way is much faster than waiting for full page reloads.
The basic function of the site, as I see it, is to be a personal management tool, which allows you to make to do lists, leave notes, files, etc. I’ll have to play around a bit more to know if such a model really works, but I have a feeling that after a while I’ll be wishing I had a side project or two to justify subscribing.
Posted in Technology | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bytheway
Mon, 02 May 2005 04:02:00 GMT
Okay, so I’ve gone and done it again, made yet another blog interface for myself. I really wasn’t happy with the complexity of Textpattern, which was the software I used most recently.
In any case, this software runs on Ruby on Rails, which is my preferred toolkit for creating web pages.
This is really just an introductory message saying my blog is back. Look for posting to be more regular now, especially since I’m out of school for the summer.
no comments | no trackbacks
