Addicted to Power

Rush Limbaugh had some interesting commentary on the Democratic party on Thursday:

CALLER: “[W]hat do the Democrats want? They own the car industry. They don’t want us to go to college. What do they want? At the end of this, what do they want? They’re going to have all the power, and what do they want?”

Rush made an insightful comparison of the Democrats’ irrational policies with that of the chemically dependent:

LIMBAUGH: “Have you ever had a genuine addiction to anything? … Well, I have. I have. I have, and let me tell you about it. It makes you entirely unreasonable and irrational. It is all you care about. Nothing else matters. No matter how important to you otherwise, it doesn’t matter as much as the addiction. Feeding it, the fear of not being able to, is what animates your existence every day. These people are addicted to power, because they think it is their birthright. And I’m not just talking about the people in Washington, elected officials. I’m talking about some of — not all, but some of — the rank-and-file, madcap, insane liberals that you will find blogging, that you will find e-mailing, that you will find on the protest march. Their lives are basically meaningless. The addiction to power and dominance and control is what drives them. And the thing about an addiction is, it can never be satisfied.

Well, I have. I have. I have, and let me tell you about it. It makes you entirely unreasonable and irrational. It is all you care about. Nothing else matters. No matter how important to you otherwise, it doesn’t matter as much as the addiction. Feeding it, the fear of not being able to, is what animates your existence every day. These people are addicted to power, because they think it is their birthright. And I’m not just talking about the people in Washington, elected officials. I’m talking about some of — not all, but some of — the rank-and-file, madcap, insane liberals that you will find blogging, that you will find e-mailing, that you will find on the protest march. Their lives are basically meaningless. The addiction to power and dominance and control is what drives them. And the thing about an addiction is, it can never be satisfied.”

The caller followed-up with:

CALLER: “But after they destroy our country, where’s their power?”

Rush’s reply:

LIMBAUGH: “What do addicts do? They destroy themselves. They do. They destroy themselves, and they destroy the things that are most important to them.”

I couldn’t help but think of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle when I was listening to this segment.   You can find the original transcript here:

• Transcript: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051409/content/01125112.guest.html

Of course, this attitude isn’t limited to just the left – I think it is common among most politicians today.

May 18th, 2009  Politics   Tags: 2009, addiction, Politics, Radio, rushlimbaugh, more...

Twig – WordPress Twitter Integrator

I just put together my first release of Twig, a plugin for WordPress that will pull your tweets from Twitter, cache them in a database, and display them chronologically intermingled with your WordPress posts.  It the first version, so there are bound to be bugs with it.  I hope to add more features soon, but I wanted to get an initial version out the door before the scope creeps into oblivion.

If you’re brave enough to try this initial release, please let me know if you encounter any bugs, as well as ideas for feature enhancements you might have.  Cheers!

• Download Twig 0.1
• Documentation
• Plugin Page @ WordPress.org
  

April 21st, 2009  Software   Tags: plugin, Software, twitter, Wordpress Links, more...

Vodka Pasta

I made an interesting vodka pasta dish using some of the leftover the remaining leftover ham from Easter.  It was delicious, so I thought I would share it with you.  You can view the recipe here:

• Quick & Easy Vodka Pasta

April 18th, 2009  Food   Tags: Food, pasta, recipe, more...

Web Site

I’m working on a project, and I’m using my web site to test its functionality. For the few people that actually visit my blog, you may notice some bugs over the next 2 weeks with my site. I should have it wrapped up by then.

April 17th, 2009  Uncategorized   

Web site changes

I’ve made a couple of changes to my site.  As you can probably see, I have added my twitter feed to my front page.  I’ve done this because I don’t post to my main blog as much as I used to – I post my thoughts to Twitter (which then automatically get copied to my main web site and Facebook).  I will probably reserve my traditional posts for longer posts.  It was not a simple tasks to intermingle Twitter posts within the WordPress loop, but I eventually got it to work with some sloppy code.   The posts are cached and updated every 30 minutes.

I also am trialing my web site back on a Windows server (previously it was on Linux).  I’m doing this to consolidate web hosts, and hosting on Windows gives me most stuff on Linux as well as ASP.NET.  I generally prefer Linux hosting when .NET isn’t needed, however, this will save me time and money.

There will be bugs with the new setup, but I’ll take care of them as I see them.  I see my Flickr feed isn’t updating, which is probably a permission issue (curse Windows permissions!).  I’ll work on that.

April 9th, 2009  Web Site   Tags: blog, hosting, twitter, update, website, more...

American Idol 8.11

Alexis Grace got screwed on Idol last night.  Michael “Roughneck” Sarver should have gone, and I’m shocked that Allison Iraheta was in the bottom three – she rocks.  Alexis was clearly disappointed during her second run of the song, but that’s understandable.

It’s going to be a tough year – lots of talent, there is.

March 19th, 2009  Television   Tags: 2009, americanidol, music, tv, more...

A new pair of eyes

It’s been two days since I got LASIK eye surgery, and I must say that I’m impressed with the results.  I had the procedure done at the Alexander Eye Institute in Grand Chute.  I would highly recommend them – their staff was professional and courteous, and I was impressed with their facilities.  Dr. Alexander is great too.

I also had a initial consultation done at OptiVision, one of the other popular LASIK providers in the area.  Their staff was also professional and friendly, and the prixe was considerably cheaper.  After doing much research, however, I felt more comfortable with Alexander’s bladeless (IntraLase) procedure over OptiVision’s use of a microkeratome.  Besides reading about fewer complications, I was convinced that Alexander’s Allegretto laser was more appropriate for my eyes since I have larger-than-average pupils and extreme astigmatism.

I was a little nervous, since we were dealing with my eyes.  I thought it would be freaky watching them cut the corneal flap, lift it up, and have the laser do it’s thing.  Perhaps it was the Valium that they gave me, but I found the process completely comfortable, and it took only a few minutes to do the entire procedure.  Although I suffered bluriness and very dry eyes afterward (which is normal), I was able to drive without corrective lenses the very next day.

I have to put in eye drops every 20 minutes for the next month, which is a bit of a pain, but it’s worth it.  I can’t wait to go boating/swimming and actually be able to see.

February 28th, 2009  Health & Medical   Tags: 2009, eyes, lasik, surgery, more...

Recipe Exchange

I enjoy cooking, and Wanda has been trying to get us to eat more healthy (goodbye meatloaf, I barely knew ye). I was wondering if any of you folks have some decent recipes you’d like to share with me – perhaps some of your favorites that you make at home. Some easy-but-healthy ideas for chicken, pork, turkey, fish and veggies would be ideal, but we’re open to anything. I’m looking for something different from our usual line-up.

February 10th, 2009  Food   Tags: cooking, Food, health, recipes, more...

You reap what you sow

I find it amazing and ironic that the religious right is crying discrimination with regard to a provision in the stimulus bill to ban money designated for school renovation from being spent on facilities that allow “religious worship”:

• Conservative Groups Declare Obama’s Stimulus Bill a War on Prayer

These are the same people that argued that government should stay out of the affairs of private schools:

• Christian School Can Expel Girls Over Alleged Lesbian Relationship

I do not feel that public funding should be extended to any organization that discriminates against an individual based on their sexual orientation. If you want your child to be indoctrinated, you’re going to have to pay extra for it.

February 4th, 2009  Politics, religion   Tags: discrimination, news, religion, more...

Skyfire, mobile browsing unleashed

I have been looking for a decent web browser for my Windows Mobile phone lately. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend why Windows Mobile 6 came with IE 6. It’s quite frustrating to use – slow, featureless, clunky, and did I mention slow? I tried Minimo, and although it supports tabs, I thought the navigation on my Motorola Q9c was clunky. I went to download Opera Mobile, but the download page says it’s for touchscreen Windows Mobile only, so that wouldn’t work for me. I then did a Google search for “windows mobile web browser” and one of the early hits was for Skyfire.

I downloaded and installed it on my phone. I was nervous, because I forgot my SD card and my internal storage was very low. Amazingly, the download was a little over 500k, and there was enough room on my phone for it to install.

I launched the browser and was pleasantly surprised. It was fast, easy to navigate, and the rendering was phenomenal. I had always thought the download speed on my phone was slow, but I think it was a problem with IE 6, since pages render very quickly on Skyfire.

The only problem I had was when the installer asked if I wanted to install a search widget onto my home screen. I approved, since it sounded handy, however, it totally mangled my theme, so I eventually switched back to my previous theme (easy fix). Beyond that, I think the browser is great!

December 24th, 2008  Mobile, Software   Tags: browser, Mobile, skyfire, smartphone, web, windows mobile, more...