Webs’ Random Ideas

Well just last week, on Wednesday, I found out I got a new job. I can’t believe it. I am friggin soooooooo ecstatic. My first full time job, and it is in computer support, or IT stuff, which is my expertise. It will be half time at one IT dept at ISU and half time at another. But it is still a salary job with benefits. I am really looking forward to starting and actually being out in the real world.

I wouldn’t mind staying a student forever and just keep on learning… but money is important (especially for my girlfriend… just kidding baby). And actually she just got a new job also and starts the same time I do. As she said, “I can’t believe it hunny we are finally growing up. Isn’t it exciting we’re going to be adults soon…”

As I get further into things I will keep you posted… For now it’s off to getting Linux on my Laptop.

Just who I imagined myself to always be…

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, skilled in horsemanship and archery, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, you enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the other’s language. However, after illness you became a tad unstable. When a raving lunatic ran up to your entourage spouting an incoherent prophecy of doom, you were unsettled enough to slaughter four of your best men when a page dropped a lance. Your hair and nails fell out. At a royal masquerade, you and your courtiers dressed as wild men, ending in tragedy when four of them accidentally caught fire and burned to death. You were saved by the timely intervention of the Duchess of Berry’s underskirts.

This brought on another bout of sickness, which surgeons countered by drilling holes in your skull. The following months saw you suffer an exorcism, beg your friends to kill you, go into hyperactive fits of gaiety, run through your rooms to the point of exhaustion, hide from imaginary assassins, claim your name was Georges, deny that you were King and fail to recognise your family. You smashed furniture and wet yourself at regular intervals. Passing briefly into erratic genius, you believed yourself to be made of glass and demanded iron rods in your attire to prevent you breaking.

In 1405 you stopped bathing, shaving or changing your clothes. This went on until several men were hired to blacken their faces, hide, jump out and shout “boo!”, upon which you resumed basic hygiene. Despite this, your wife continued sleeping with you until 1407, when she hired a young beauty, Odette de Champdivers, to take her place. Isabeau then consoled herself, as it were, with your brother. Her lovers followed thick and fast while you became a pawn of your court, until you had her latest beau strangled and drowned.

A severe fever was fended off with oranges and pomegranates in vast quantities, but you succumbed again in 1422 and died. Your disease was most likely hereditary. Unfortunately, you had anywhere up to eleven children, who variously went on to develop capriciousness, great cruelty, insecurity, paranoia, revulsion towards food and, in one case, a phobia of bridges.

It seems the Christian Embassy is doing everything they can to infiltrate our government. And from the looks of the promotional video below, so far they are doing a damn good job.

The Washington Post has reported that an investigation has begun into 7 officers that appeared in the promo video in uniform. Personally I find this pretty disturbing. If members of our government want to practice a faith, fine, but keep it out of the government by leaving your practices at home. I find it a little absurd that they need to pray on lunch breaks, before breakfast, during 15 minute breaks, etc.

Then there is the lovely Major General Jack Catton. Gotta love this guy huh. He tells those that he meets upfront about his faith in the lord, “My first priority is my faith in God.” Wonderful, I hope you don’t do this to those you interview during a hiring process as well, or to those you work with on a team. I can only imagine how comfortable those of a differing faith, but lower on the totem pole, are when you meet with them and tell them about your Christian faith.

The YouTube video shown is not the entire video. Crooks and Liars has what appears to be the original…

Origanlly posted at SEB by me…

What a great site I found today via SEB. Make sure you watch the Carlos Mencia rant on the FCC, he words ring true to me.

Choice! The beauty of this country is that they have the choice to either listen or not listen and to watch or not watch. Parents get off your fucking ass and do you job. Take the TV out of their room and put it in the living room and just have one TV to moderate what they watch. But until you do get off my fucking ass and leave my show alone!

Well not exactly what he said, but I got out of it what most people should. We don’t need the fucking FCC to govern our airwaves, if parents would do their job.

And some other FCC goodness:

Go Here Now and Read the Post!!

Found via SEB

Have I ever mentioned how beautiful Oprah’s eyes are… Yea, I guess she probably doesn’t read my blog enough to know I am trying to brown nose my way onto her show. Oprah is holding an essay writing contest on global warming. The winner(s) get a chance to be on her show. So below I have decided to include the essay I wrote for your reading enjoyment.

I have always been interested in global warming since middle school in the early 1990’s. I had a teacher that helped the class raise enough money so that, we as a class, could buy a plot of land in the Amazon Rain Forest.

Through this teacher, and others it became apparent that we as people needed to stand up to make a difference. So I started reading and learning sciences so that when I got into a discussion with people I could not only talk and reference scientific studies, but help them understand the issues at hand.

Then in college I met a particular individual that had a positive influence on me, a coworker at the College of Business at Illinois State University (ISU). This individual not only furthered my interest in science but helped to show me the impact sound science can have.

George Wiman runs a blog at www.decrepitoldfool.com. His writing style, humor, and sensibility are what persuaded me to attempt a similar endeavor. So I created a blog of my own, www.webs05.com.

I decided that I would not only have an open and free forum, but I would discuss issues that were important to me. And in doing so I got interested in the new environmental movement. What I mean by this is that environmentalism is seen as something more than what it used to be seen as (mostly anti-globalization), and now the support for environmentalism is growing at a rapid pace and grassroots groups, major corporations, and politicians are all stepping on board.

People on blogs all across the Internet have come together to show that caring about your environment does not mean you have to tie yourself to a tree. You can care about the environment in simple and effective ways such as buying electronic devices that are energy efficient, buy a hybrid car instead of the gas guzzler, car pool more often, start planning errands to avoid useless car trips, donate money to organizations that will help get you to become carbon neutral, and show companies an interest in alternative energy which furthers growth of eco-friendly technology.

Some of the things above are more expensive than others, but people are starting to see practical use to them. Just last month I wrote a business plan for an individual who is excited about using alternative energy and other eco-friendly technology to help run his small business, and I gave him some ideas and contacts he never new existed. People still think alternative energy is one of the only ways to be eco-friendly. But there are many new products now available. I also told a graduate assistant for ISU physical plant how ISU could start paving parking lots with porous pavements, an idea not previously thought about.

And what really amazes me, is that people hear these ideas and new products and actually get excited about them, ask questions, and really want to look into their feasibility. This is something that was a lot less prevalent 10 or 15 years ago.

Really what the new environmental movement is about, is fostering awareness and excitement, so that these new great eco-friendly technologies become tangible. Not fostering the idea that people and companies are evil and making them feel like the bad guy.

My interest in global warming is one of just personal interest. I unfortunately do not have the time to devote to pure environmental movements nor am I affiliated with any environmental action groups. I am just another average American that cares about my country and the future of our planet. I do what I can, and when I graduate from graduate school I plan to do more and invest more resources. Until then I am satisfied knowing that I still have an impact on the Earth, even if it is rather small.

Gotta search for a word, but short on time. Then you need Ninja Words! Now you can search for words at the speed of a Ninja, something I have always wanted to do.

Give it a try, the searching power of the site is kind of cool.

Two Japanese Children Commit Suicide Over Bullying in School. So, my question is, when will school officials start to understand that bullying is a huge problem. Not only can it lead to emotionally unstable children killing themselves, but it has also lead to children bringing guns to school.

Bullying causes a lot of problems, and these poor tormented children seem unable to look ahead into the future. If someone could just grab and shake em and tell them, “Hey, don’t worry about those dipshits that are getting to you. Once you get to college no one really cares about your past, and you will likely find many others to confide in.” If only they could just see how insignificant high school is, even though at the time it appears to be everything.

This issue has always been a hot topic for me. I went through some rough times in school, and yes I never did commit either act mentioned previously, but I consider myself to be fairly strong mentally. Even today I take insults and snide remarks in stride. Someone has to truly try hard to get me upset.

I had a horrible time in high school. I had few friends, I did poorly in school, I was always edgy and pissed at the world for making life so miserable. Then after I graduated, my Dad got a new job in Kankakee and we moved again. I decided that it was time to start over. I was moving to a place where I had no friends and I kinda figured that it was up to me to make a difference. From that point on in my life I have had little trouble, and have actually enjoyed things.

The article states that Japan’s problem of teen suicide is apparently growing in the last few months, posing a problem for authorities. It really is a hard issue to tackle. But really these children need someone to talk to. Someone they can confide in. I would normally recommend a student counselor, but that doesn’t help much, because once one person finds out you saw the counselor, suddenly you are bat shit crazy, and the bullying intensifies. The only other thing I can think of is to have smaller class rooms so teachers can more easily identify children getting picked on. So punishing the tormentor and talking to the tormented about their problems would be easier. I truly do feel one of the best ways to solve this problem is to get these children to open up to someone they feel safe to talk to.

You might ask, “Isn’t that what a parent is for?” Yes but being as I was a child, I can answer that children feel embarrassed to open up to their parents about how big of a loser they are in school. And parents assume things are going well when the child says nothing. Which explains why these events can be so surprising. I think it might be easier for the student to talk to the teacher as long as the teacher can be trusted. I see this trust forming by punishing the bully.

If only these children could look ahead…

Well thanks to spammers I had to change my site settings so that you have to be a registered user to leave a comment. I had an awesome plugin that stopped spammers in their tracks without having to have users register. But this plugin also made it so some users couldn’t leave a comment at all.

So as I said, sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s nice not having to remove spam comments, or having to delete spam comments from my spam plugin everyday. I will keep you posted of changes to this.

I think this is also a good time to inform you all of some changes you may have noticed with the site. Links will appear with bolded text as always, but when you put the mouse over them, the text will also be encased in a border. Also blockquotes will not look a little different. Before the blockquote was just indented and still was normal size text and all. This made it confusing to decipher the difference between normal text, and text in a block quote. Not anymore. Below is an example of a link a blockquote, for your viewing pleasure.

Link: Here is a link to Yahoo
Blockquote:

Here is an example of a blockquote. Normally there would be text quoted from an article, commenter, or any source that is worth showing.

I also plan to write up a quick page that will explain some HTML code that is allowed on commenting, so for those of you in the dark, you now have the opportunity to get in on the action.

Here are some hilarious political clips. One from Simpsons the other from Family Guy:

Thank you Crooks and Liars!!!