Elections

We tried a new restaurant this weekend with some friends, El Coyote. It was good Tex/Mex with very good salsa, but how many times have you ever been behind parties of 35, 21, and 14? On the way back I was driving Rachel's car and a guy was following me pretty close. At the next light he pulled up along side and asked us to roll down our window, "where did you get that Obama sticker?" Based on today, he must have been visiting from another state, maybe Vermont.

Speaking of voting, despite living in my precinct for 6 years, there is no record of me being registered. Despite the fact that I voted last year and back to 2004.

Why are most poll workers condescending and almost try to make you feel thankful that they will allow you to vote today?

Why is online voting so hard, when I can access all of my money online w/o worrying about losing a penny? Maybe we'll be voting at US Bank in the future.

Voting Instructions should read:
Come to America, where you are free to register to vote to influence the delegate who actually gets to vote on your behalf for whoever will benefit him/her politically.

Our country is a mess because more people voted for David Archuleta than any presidential candidate.

Dale is buying a Honda

Jim loves charts so here is a good one on who owns what car companies:

Here is the link to the Map

American Idol brings hope...

My DVR watches American Idol. I just skip past the 30 mins of commercials.
My favorite part of Idol season is:
1. Vote For The Worst
2. Dial Idol

Dial Idol predicts who will get kicked off by testing the phone lines to see how often they are busy for each idol. While not as accurate as it was before the lawsuit, it saves you from watching the results show. Why do we let them drag it out for 30 mins just for the 1 min of info we actually care about?

Vote for the Worst tries to buck the system to gain support for the worst singer. This may help explain why Sanjaya was around so long.

Both of these bring me to my real point. Individuals have so much power these days (ignore 20 years of failed Rock the Vote) and the internet can help people get together. Here are some Flash Mob examples.

But our government is still a mess. They spend more time trying to stay elected than trying to get anything done. These tax rebates are a great example of this. The economy will not rebound out of a recession because we gave people some money to spend on Chinese imports. But I am beyond being frustrated with this situation because 10 years of Survivor should tell us that winners are never the most liked, most qualified, most athletic, most deserving, they are somewhere in the middle.

Traveling to Toronto and fielding questions from Canadians about our election process and why it has to take 2 years gives you a good objective view at how out of hand our system has become.

My hope for the future is that there is a web site where people can vote on the priorities and work plans for their elected officials.

This session you will:
Pass an alternative energy bill
Fix Social Security
Repeal the Patriot Act

You will not:
Hold hearings on Steroids or Spygate

And like any good W&DP, if they fall short of their goals given to them by those who elect them, then you vote them out of office.
How much more efficient would our government be if everyone went to work knowing this was their only term if they didn't get things done?

The special interest groups will continue to get their way in the government, because right now they hold the only key ($Money$) to getting these candidates re-elected.

The power people have is to ignore the money and vote out anyone catering to special interests, but we aren't efficient in getting together so we lose that power.

To help bridge the gap until that system is created, I think we need to start with VoteThemOut.com. Where we get together to vote out every single incumbent until the overall satisfaction with the government goes up (is 50% satisfaction really too much to ask of our government?).

HDTV Chart

Sick

I was in Toronto last week with some coworkers.
One wasn't feeling well on the way up and felt terrible by the time we got home.
Another started to be sick on the way back.
I managed to fight through and feel fine...until the weekend.

Toronto also had a foot of snow while we were there and the city didn't shut down.
We did have to push our rental cars out of our parking spots.

Luckily, I think I am done traveling until Mid March.

On the Road Again

Signs you have been traveling too much:

You wake up in Cleveland, drive (ride) to Cincinnati, drive to Dayton, fly to Newark, drive to New Brunswick then sleep.

Tomorrow I head back up to Toronto for a couple of days. By Toronto I mean the airport since my hotel and the plant are within 5 mins of the airport.

The worst part of traveling is knowing that Rachel and Lucy sleep better when I am not in the bed turning every 5 mins.

I know my Mom tracks my flights from home so I found a few more helpful links.

This one shows a map of turbulence reports:
Turbulence

This one tracks something a little more important:
Boo

Hopefully this will be the only trip in Feb.
Good news is I am Silver Medallion again which means... almost nothing.
I am an Emerald member with National rental car which feels like stealing. Sometimes I try to go to the counter but all they want me to do is hop in any car I want and start driving to the check out. I liked my Mazda 3 but my Impala was roomy.

"It's looking pretty good right now" that next week will be my first full week in the office in 2008.

I want to be apart of it...Newark, Newark

I spent the past 4 days in NJ for training w/ 2 guys on my project.
Here are some key learnings:

1. I really underestimated the size of the Newark airport.
2. I am glad I did not go to Rutgers (the town was dead).
3. There are too may toll roads in NJ.
4. A GPS was a great idea but falls apart when there is construction.
5. The turnpike smells, sometimes it is swamp and sometimes it is trash.

The training course was given by 2 professors who have been giving this training for 30 years (Purdue and Michigan). It was one of the best training courses I have attended. The format made the days go by quickly. Each professor talked for about 90 min on a subject then they switched so it really broke up the day and the material.

The first night we decided to hit up Atlantic City.


Atlantic City was 2 hours away but when will I ever be in the area again?
We chose the Borgata, because my friend Ken said it was the closest to a Vegas style casino. It was really nice:



They were filming a World Poker Tour Tourney but we didn't see anyone famous. I also had my first Fatburger which was OK but not great. Overall Atlantic City was bigger than I thought, but nowhere near on par with Vegas. It has the beach, but it seemed like you had to drive more to get to each casino.

The second night we decided to hit up a NJ Nets game as they played Dale's Bucks.



It became an exciting game at the end but overall each team did play well. It was like watching street ball. I had to text Dale to find out how bad the shooting percentages were. I was very close on my guess of low 30's. The stadium held 17,000 and I see why it is used a lot for the NCAA games. It was easy to get in and out and there wasn't a bad seat. This picture was taken from the 2nd to last row on the side.

Now I am glad to be home. I haven't had a full week at work yet, too much travel and training (Toronto, local training, NJ, and Toronto next week).