Archive for January 14th, 2008


Last week I walked into the break room. There were two folks taking opposing views on who did better in which debate.

8 days into 2008 and the presidential election is in the break room.

I’d like to take this opportunity early in this hell year to make a request of the readers of this blog.

Be intelligent and not apathetic.

This actually goes a long way. The terms ‘democrat’, ‘republican’, ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ have all pretty much lost their original definition.

The bi-partisan government wants you to be polarized, pick a side, and then see if they can get a 50/50 vote that will require their unbiased hand to help decide.

The issues that will be argued and debated are all things that will not be dealt with. They are simply hot button terms designed to make you pick “one side” or “the other side”… Black or white… there is no middle ground.

Well, the government would like you to believe there is no middle ground.

Last hell-year, I watched as intelligent friends fell right into the morass and backed their candidate based on how well they linked up with their list of pointless issues. I watched as they bickered these points. I saw people in social circles actually come to blows.

This year… think about what’s important to you. What are the problems you see on your street, in your town, state, etc. Because I can guarantee you; stem cell research, gay marriage, social security privatization, removing evolution from the school books… will not occur in the next 4 years.

People say that their vote doesn’t count. That government doesn’t accomplish anything.

Both are unfortunately, untrue. Unfortunate, because we let the government polarize us into a 50/50 split. If just one state did something unexpected the election would change. Visibly.

And before you tell me that government can’t accomplish something in a timely manner… get me started on how the Washington state legislature made online gambling a felony in 45 days from law proposal to passage.

I stand by the phrase with which they promoted the move “V for Vendetta”

“People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of their people.”

I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican.

I am an individual.

I’ve spent several weeks thinking about this since the initial announcement.

LiveJournal, Inc is in the process of assembling an Advisory Board.

This board will have elected two members from the LiveJournal user membership.

The reasons leading up to this decision were based on my qualifications:

1) I have been an active user of LiveJournal for over 5 years. I established my account in October 2001.
2) I have been researching and developing in the technology area of “Social Networking” for about 20 years.
3) My net based experience actually goes back 30 years.
4) I am for the most part… sane

Interestingly, I don’t consider myself the average user. But I consider myself a typical user.

If you have any questions, suggestions, reservations, etc… please feel free to ask.

Granted, there isn’t a whole lot of details yet on the position or the election process. So… Once more information comes out, I will either elabourate or withdraw. My guess at this point will be that it will confirm what I believe they are looking for.

Okay.. that’s my two cents. Back to work at the office.

This weekend we had the stunning SkinnyWhiteChick, S.J. Tucker (aka s00j) along with stealthcello for an evening of music, mirth, and stories.

We didn’t realize that we could put 63 people in our basement. But now we have to figure how to raise the bar.

It was an honour for our first FreePeople concert to be s00j and stealthcello. If the wind is with us, it won’t be the last concert we host and we certainly will see these two beautiful women and hear their stunning music again.

Everyone seems to have had a very good time and I’d put a call out to anyone I didn’t know to drop me a line so we can keep in contact with them for future FreePeople functions.