Votiso's Xanga

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:31:42 GMT

I just ordered one of these tonight: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI/ref=amb_link_83626371_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=1GQ34BD687HSC1HN96JG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=469548931&pf_rd_i=507846

I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works. I was very tempted to get the first model last year.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:02:33 GMT

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope everyone is having a great holiday. I'm now off to drive to Louisiana for my cousin Beth's wedding :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:38:11 GMT

Neat chance to donate some money to charity and have a chance at a Super Bowl ring:
https://www.celebritiesforcharity.org/raffles/RaffleID_SuperBowlRing.cfm

Monday, October 06, 2008

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:37:49 GMT

For those who are fans of Tad Williams' work (in particular the Otherland series):
http://pc.ign.com/articles/915/915261p1.html

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:25:56 GMT

I haven't yet listened to the actual audio of the Treasury Dept conference call referenced in this link, but the notes someone took from it are bothersome enough. And makes me even more glad that bailout was defeated. I wonder if the Treasury dept ever saw this as anything other than an easy way to steal lots of money for their friends for when they leave public office and have people to give them multi-million dollar jobs. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/09/mussolini-style-corporatism-in-action.html

I also read about 1/3 of the actual bailout bill (http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/09/28/ayo08c04_xml.pdf), and I have to agree that the taxpayer protection provisions are an absolute joke. None of the oversight seems to have any teeth to it. It is funded purely by changing the law increasing the national debt. If the assets bought by this plan go into the toilet, it only requires the President 5 years from now to draft a plan for doing something about it. The 'golden parachute' clause doesn't really define what it means, nor does it do anything about existing contracts. Only companies that get more than $300million in help from this bill can't put them in new executive contracts for a period of 2 years. At first I thought this was better than the first draft being proposed by the Bush administration, but it really isn't.

I agree that something should be done because this situation has been so poorly mishandled that consumer confidence is shot even more to hell, and that alone will send us farther into recession. But not something that essentially takes $2000 from *every single man, woman, and child in the country* and gives it to the rich with no provisions for helping the housing problems that were the source of this whole mess. It's just rewarding those who caused the problem in the first place.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:21:58 GMT

Tropical Storm Fay has dropped 22 inches of rain so far where my older brother lives in Florida. So far his exact area hasn't flooded, but several parts of the city around him are; he's just staying indoors the whole time to avoid any problems, so fortunately he got enough food and water to last a while. Hopefully Fay starts moving again so it won't keep dropping more rain on the same area there.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:50:14 GMT

I bought some new fish last night: 2 otocinclus catfish and 3 sunset fire wag platies. You can see all 3 platies and one of the catfish, as well as my 3 harlequin raspboras that I've had a while. The neon tetra still in there is hiding.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:32:50 GMT

http://drhorrible.com

It took a few minutes to get really going, but this made me laugh a lot. It's from Joss Whedon, when he got really bored during the writer's strike last winter.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:56:40 GMT

Looks like Tor.com is giving away some free ebooks to mark its new design at http://tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=577. Along that idea, I also then found http://www.baen.com/library/ . It's always nice to find free books to explore. :) I haven't yet found any new authors that I really, really like, but I haven't done more than glance around.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:06:58 GMT

I am very much looking forward to this game. Knights of the Old Republic MMO :D http://www.gamespot.com/news/6194664.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;1