Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Ralph Nader, the man who handed the presidency to King W in 2000, is running for President again. The only thing I can think of is that he is on a Republican payroll. He had no reason to run otherwise. He has no chance to win. All he can do is steal votes from the Democratic candidate and *deity* help us if he puts another Republican in office. This makes me so angry.

Earlier this week Karen won a radio contest (on her birthday actually). One of the prizes was a free pass to Explore and More, a children’s museum in East Aurora. So today we drove out to the radio station to pick up the tickets and then we spent the afternoon having a really fun time at the museum.

This is the closest to a smile I have been able to get on camera from Erin

Gillian was looking pretty cool in her purple outfit, pink Chucks, and braids

Bella pausing to consider her building

The other day while waiting for Bella’s bus Karen took some cool pictures of branches covered in ice

So today I needed to call one of my utility services to speak with a human. However, their robot would not let me. Since I did not have the correct things to say to the robot it actually told me to call back later and hung up on me. Since I didn’t want to lie to the robot just to get service I remembered reading about how if you get trapped in phone robot hell make your voice angry and start swearing. So I did my best Samuel L Jackson imitation and after a few angry MF’s I was connected to a real live human.
Now I understand that the robots make it easier for companies to do business, however I think that the customer should always be given the option of talking to a real person. If the robot could have helped me I would have let it, but I really needed to talk to a human. I shouldn’t have to trick the robot, it should just let me choose to speak to a human. I’m not even saying I have to be connected immediately (although I was after shouting and swearing at the robot), I’m OK with holding for a reasonable amount of time. Just give me the option to speak with a human next time. I hope the robot doesn’t feel bad after I yelled at it….

Erin had her 4 month checkup today. She is 16 lbs 3 oz and 26 inches long.

Something that is often glossed over in the coverage I’ve been following for the election is that the popular vote doesn’t really mean anything. The number of delegates and super-delegates won is what will decide who is the final candidate for President. The best online counter I have found so far for watching this is CNN’s Election Center.

You can check the Democrat Delegate Scorecard or the Republican Delegate Scorecard.

At the moment it looks like both Clinton and McCain have a comfortable lead over their respective opponents. Of course it is not over yet.

I was voter 106 this evening at my polling place to vote in the Primary. With 98% reporting it looks like Clinton and McCain will win with a landslide victory. (link)

The best thing I heard while waiting in line was from the person in front of me who was a registered Republican. They wanted to vote for a Democrat because “none of the Republicans are any good.” Unfortunately of course they had to vote for the party they are registered as.

For all the press that Obama has been getting I’m surprised he didn’t get more votes.

What I also found interesting was that you could still vote for candidates who have dropped out of the running. I see that Edwards still got some votes even though he dropped out.

As the Baby Boomers get older those of us of Generation X have the chance to step forward into leadership roles. My suspicion is that this will be the last Boomer president we elect. Will 2012 or 2016 be the year we get an Xer in the White House? Should be interesting to see.

Today marks the end of active support for the granddaddy of all web browsers, Netscape. I used Netscape for years, although it was not my first web browser. Mosaic, as provided in Spry’s Internet in a Box, holds that honor.
It’s funny to think about how the internet and World Wide Web have become what they are today. I have witnessed pretty much the whole evolution of the consumer grade internet. From QLink in the mid-80′s through to today. I find it fascinating. It is also humorous to talk about things that happened about 20 years ago as if they were ancient history. Except that they are. All things must pass, although Netscape really does live on in Mozilla Firefox. When you think about it, the main advantage of Firefox is that it was everything you liked about Netscape without all the bloat. So maybe Netscape as a name is gone, but its legacy lives on.