There was a pretty nifty eclipse last nite, for those of you who went to bed early. I almost thought we were going to miss it because of all of the clouds that had been overhead all day. But, about when the eclipse began, the heavens opened up to show us a very red moon. It was quite uber spectacular.

Nothing much has been going down. I can’t believe it’s almost Halloween already. This year is very much flying by. Next thing I know, the Cubbies will be in the midst of spring training and Episode III will be hitting theatres *drool*

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night, clinching the frickin’ series in 4 games. If the Cubbies had been there, I know they would’ve put up much more of a fight. I would’ve watched the game, but was too busy whoopin’ my brother in Call of Duty 🙂 Truth be told, he normally whoops me, but I somehow busted out the whoopin’ stick on him last night. I’ll still always whoop his butt at Age of Empires 🙂

I went with a few buds to the Renaissance Fair in Florence today. It was quite a nice time. It sorta reminded me of DragonCon, with a different breed of nerd; instead of looking to the future, the focus was to the past. And, of course, there were dealers out the yin yang just as there are at D*C. After watching that episode of Home Movies a couple of years back, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder waiting for the sci-fi convention to come invade 🙂

After that, I went back to play some games–just a wee bit of UT2004. Refreshing to have a nice lil 21st century bout on the LAN after going back to the days of armor and broad swords.

Tonite, I went with my brother and dad up to Monte Santo. David Levy gave a talk at the planetarium on his experiences with amateur astronomy and his discovery of comets, such as Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into Jupiter in 1994 in 20 or so fragmented pieces. It’s amazing to me, the energy released by such an event; thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons–around one Hiroshima bomb per second going off with each impact. It was a really nice nite.. Unfortunately, go figure; being Astronomy Day, it was totally cloudy and rainy.. So, no observing *sigh*

I was thinking.. I haven’t had an astro log in quite a long time. Perhaps I will put one on my website–I was thinking of making a whole new LJ for it, but perhaps just making it on my own–storing entries on my own server in a DB or XML file–complete with comments. I don’t know.. A little weekend pet project to be pondering and programming. I’m glad that my hobby of computers just happens to also be my job; it definitely makes life and work much kewler. Plus, I can tie in my love of astronomy into my love of computers, as well..

I’m so glad I live in the 21st century.

My tummy is so spinning out of control right now. I woke up with the most terrible cramps. They’ve subsided a little bit, after being awake for a while. Still, it feels like there’s a boxing match going on in my stomach–and I’m not sure who’s winning. I had some McDonald’s yesterday for the first time in months.. And perhaps the last time in years–like mwshook once told me.. It’s definitely pure poison. Argh.. This is worse than spilling hot coffee on my lap. I wonder if I could cash in even more? *grins devilishly*

It’s one of those days where I probably shouldn’t have crawled out of bed, and not just because of the tummy. It’s kinda dreary today, with no sun in sight. Somehow, I think the sun would’ve been better for me. lol.

A lil LAN action going on this weekend, but there’s also Astronomy Day going on. I’m probably going to split LAN action time for that–there’re going to be a number of festivities going on up on Monte Santo (an observatory/planetarium is up on this mountain, for those of you unfamiliar with Huntsville). I might even haul my telescope along.. I haven’t stargazed up there in ages 🙁

SG-1 season 7 came out yesterday. w00t. I’m going to start looking on eBay for it, because I’m sure there were actually copies out on eBay before yesterday. lol. I have a feeling that SG-1 might be one of those shows that lasts 9 seasons or more, like The X-Files. Even if it doesn’t, there’s always Atlantis.

I was feeling a lil sick at around the end of the week but, after plenty of sleep and rest, I think I’m totally kewl again. I hope. I don’t think I had anything major; I was exhausted, for the most part. Sleep is definitely a good cure for such things, of course 🙂

On the road to recovery, I got a laptop 🙂 I decided to forgo the 6 month wait and go for one. It’s quite the uber spiffy lil machine. The biggest deal is that it’s an Athlon 64–you don’t find many laptops like that *drool* When I was shopping around for it they were quite rare, indeed. It has a rather kewl feature that it clocks down when you’re not using a lot of resources; it’s something that I hadn’t seen in my own machines but only heard of. It’s quite niffty. The best part is that it’s an uber enough machine that, if I were too lazy to lug the laptop, I could bring it out for some LAN action.

It’s been a nice lil gray October day all day.. I don’t think it ever got above 55; I so love this time of year 🙂

So, Penny just decided to start to make a meal of my foot; without provocation, she jumped on her hind legs at the couch and proceeded to nibble the top of my foot.. Now that’s most certainly smarts.. She seemed quite adamant about it.. Perhaps I should sleep with one eye open as Keith may be right; she will claw my eyes out in my sleep.

This week went by so uber fast that I truly can’t believe that tomorrow is Friday.. Today went a lil slow because I woke up at 4 and couldn’t fall back asleep. It was definitely no so cool. It was about as uncool as the Astros AND the Cardinals making it to the NLCS 😛

I’m pondering getting another laptop, but I probably won’t actually do it for another 6 months or so.. The laptop I have now will do quite fine until then.. But, I think this time I wanna get a Winders box.. My iBook has been quite awesome, and I can’t complain about its performance.. Still, it kinda sucks to have duplicate versions of the same software for the differing platforms.. that and I could totally bring it to a LAN if I were lazy 😀 I’m planning on getting an Athlon 64 of some kind–whatever may be fashionable in 6 months.

So tired.. Must sleep..

Pretty dang good weekend. I’m watching the Farscape marathon on Sci-Fi on my Monday off. I know about as much about this series as I did when I started watching SG-1: relatively nothing. That’s what I definitely love these marathons. This is a frickin awesome series; I hope I don’t go out and buy the DVD box sets in my enthusiasm again. haha. It might not be a bad thing. One thing I think I will never buy are the X-Files box sets.. They’re way too overpriced for words, in comparison to pretty much every other box set out there. XF was an awesomely kewl series and all, but not that kewl.

The playoffs (baseball) are in full-swing.. Of course, since the Cubbies aren’t there, I don’t care all that much. But, I find it strange that this is one of those few years in which I hope that the Braves win the Divisional Series. The Astros are tied with them right now. The only downside to the Astros losing would be that I think the Astros would probably have a better chance against the Cardinals; and yet I really don’t want a Central Division team getting to the Big Show. Argh.

Christopher Reeve died today 🙁 He was only 52. He had definitely come a long way since he broke his neck in 1995; I thought he’d eventually walk again like he said he would.

Sucks when you’re the only one around with a Monday off. lol.

..and it’s only the beginning of October 🙂

I don’t know what it is, but Friday nites are always the worst.. Of all the weekend, this is the nite in which I totally wanna do nothing but slack. I’m tired beyond all belief. I think I just stay up too late during the week playing Final Fantasy XI 🙂 Maybe I need to ditch the uber ultra nerdish ways and settle for a milder brand of dorkish. lol.

Enterprise premiered tonite; I have it burned on DVD. The second bout of Presidential debate is about to begin. This is one of those townhall-type settings. It should be interesting, I guess.. I don’t know.. I betcha it’ll just be the typical–both sides slammin the hell outta each other; the press will call it a draw. Beh. So predictable.

Anyhoo, off to go watch and stuff.. Then maybe get to Level 15 before total exhaustion collapse 😉

We moved at work to better digs at work. We consolidated all of the software people together into a room. The best part is that we all have our own cubicles. w00t. I’m definitely all about a little room to call my own. Before, there were 4 of us in one cube–a rather large one, but a cube nonetheless. I am now a citizen of Cubeville. Scary.

It’s really starting to cool down, not to mention that it’s getting darker earlier. I think fall is finally just about here. yee haw.

I’m headed to a new LAN on the 23rd. It looks like it’ll be quite rocking, especially since they’ll be playing the same games we play at the other LAN. I’m definitely all about some more LANed Battlefront; it’s a kewl enough game on the internet, but it just seems like it was made for LAN-ing. As with the Battlefield games, this one seems to have pretty good co-op action.

Anyhoo, other than that, nothing to really report from the front. Just chillin out, watchin some SG-1. Good stuff. I’m into season two right now. This is my first time seeing most of these episodes, and they are pretty darn awesome.

As I speak, I am watching the Cubs whoop the snot out of the Braves 9-4 after 4 innings. Of course, if they had won yesterday they still would have been eliminated by the end of the day yesterday. This season was quite bittersweet. I figured they were going to go very much further than last season. Instead, they’re probably going to have one more win than last season, and no postseason to show for it *sigh* Ahhh, well.. it’s not like they ended the season without a fight.. They’re not total losers.. I think that era is now gone, even if they didn’t get as far as I would’ve liked them to.

Something happened last night that hasn’t happened in a long time; I lost in bowling *GASP!!!!!* I lost 2/3. There was actually one game where I didn’t bust 100.. I had a low of 80 and a high of 144.. Not a very good night of bowling, for sure. It was still a blast, though. I’m definitely a big-time bowler.. Maybe not so big that I’d join a league, but definitely fun enough to play every few weeks or so.

This election is turning out to be really strange.. This country is extremely polarized for this one; it’s very surreal. We’re almost ripe for another civil war, although I truly doubt things would get that extreme. While I agree that we haven’t found anything in Iraq to this point, Iraq was still a damn good idea.. I think, though, that would have been a bad idea if it turns out that the dethroning of Hussein caused or is causing the proliferation of WMD in a way that wouldn’t have been done if we hadn’t gone in. Ultimately, I don’t think that’ll be the case. The world and, more importantly, the terrorists see that Bush does what he says. I think this country is in pretty darn good shape security-wise.. At least at the moment.

The Patriot Act does scare the heck out of me in many ways–but the only thing that truly petrifies me is if it remains a permanent fixture of our security once the world settles down. I think it’s a good band-aid for security for now. Repealing at this point would be a bad mistake; I personally don’t see my rights being trampled on but, of course, any surveillance that might be under the cuff. I have nothing to hide.. Privacy is never a guarantee in any nation, even ours, but the Patriot Act should certainly not be a permanent fixture.. And, I don’t believe the current administration sees it as one.

Socialism.. The Democratic Party’s mostly left-leaning policies also frighten me. What can I say? There are elements of both parties that frighten me, but socialistic tendancies frighten me the most. I am of the belief that government should be charged with administering very little. At most, the purpose of government should be defense and the creation and maintenance of basic infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges). Social programs and discretionary spending run rampid in Washington (even with Bush in charge), and I think Kerry would do nothing but increase that. I believe that welfare should be eliminated; charity should be a decision left up to the individual and not left to Washington bureaocrats, all of whom are quite distant from average Joe American. Government should have nothing to do with health care, mostly nothing to do with education, nothing to do with “family planning”, and certainly should have nothing to do with a pooled pension (social security) that my generation will never see. Most of all of the above should be done on either an individual/family or local level.

Socialized health care will give the nation nothing but hospital after hospital riddled with inefficiency. VA hospitals; they are the epitomy of inefficient health care. Imagine a whole nation of hospitals run in that way. You don’t even have to wait for it to happen to see it happen.. Look at Canada or Europe.

I really don’t care what Kerry says, the tax cuts were not for the rich. Everyone got one.. I was a student when the tax cuts went into effect, and I was making around 10K at the time.. Even I got a tax cut. Democrats, and many Republicans, complain about unemployment. If you do happen to give big tax credits to corporations, then they are given a monetary incentive (e.g. the wages) to hire more and new workers. This brings down unemployment, which also helps the economy. We may have a wartime economy going, but that doesn’t have to mean that we need to take more from everyone.. War should be a good hearty portion of how things are spent in Washington, but it doesn’t have to be all-inclusive. Things are dire, but not that dire. Certainly, much of the almighty pork in Washington can be diverted–even if on a temporary basis.. We have many battles going on as a nation; not only the War on Terror, but also a war to keep unemployment down and keep the booming economy booming.

There are those who say that Bush was given his chance and blew it. Of course, if I were given the intelligence from not only the CIA but European intelligence that Hussein was both creating WMD and working to procure more, then I most certainly would’ve done something about it. When you are dealing with the possible distribution of that to terrorists, you can’t help but act pre-emptively about it. If he didn’t act, and something happened, then we’d be in one terrible situation if those weapons did get distributed due to our inaction. I’m sure many of the terrorists see nuclear weapons as nothing more than very large firecrackers.

Anyhoo, enough of my political ranting. Election time just gets me all worked up sometimes. This country is very evenly split, amongst those who care.. Basically, it’s 1/3 of the country who are one way, 1/3 who are another, and 1/3 who don’t care. Either way, it will more than likely be a minority that will elect the next president–I doubt that either Bush or Kerry will get 51%.

In the end, it probably doesn’t really matter. He who gets in, gets in. Personally, I don’t think Washington has much of an influence over my every day life and I hope it stays that way no matter who gets in. The less they take away, the better. Isn’t that one of the things this nation fought against in its infancy? It does disturb me, though, that apparently Kerry brought a cheat sheet to the debate on Thursday. If we can depend on that kind of honesty from him at a debate, then what can we expect from him as president?