Well I think I've made up my mind to go back to work. I still need to think about it some more and to speak with my advisor about what sort of options I have and to ensure that I will get some sort of degree out of this. I know it may not be the best decision but I've hit the point of total misery here and it dosen't look like this work is going to progress nearly at the rate I was hoping. Heck if I'm starting over from near scratch it could easily be another 3-4 years, whihc would put me getting out by mid 30's and virtually ruin any sort of family plans I was having.
I still need to think the whole thing over more, but until then here is a review of "superman returns".


Superman Returns: Spoilers included!!


This film was decent. I didn't have the same issues with the whole love story aspect of it many of the people I know did. I thought it seemed fairly realistic the way Lois, Superman, and Clark all related to one another.
The biggest problem I had with the film was Lex Luthor's big plan. His overly comical henchmen were of an annoyance at times too. Sure I laughed at them, but shouldn't the big bad guy invoke fear not chuckles from the audience? Also his whole marrying an old widow for her money was a bit hokey.
So on to the big plan.

Lex stole some crystans from superman's fortress of solitude. No problem there.
The crystals seem to have some sort of "magic" property that they grow in water. I'm guessing the writers had a few too many "growing" foam dinasaurs as a kid. Ok its a bit cheezy but I'll bite.
So Lex's big plan is to drop one of these crystals into the atlantic ocean. This will form a new giant crystal continent and there by displace a lot of water and flood most of america. He will then sell the new property and make a fortune, as well as being ruler over his own country.
Huh???
First off the physics behind this are just insane. Crystals don't magically grow.
Second, as soon as these giant crystals started to form and grow, it would displace massive amounts of water and create tidal waves or at the very least flood the coasts.
Third the displacement of water would effect all of the costal land not just easten US.
Fourth, we have a scene where crystals are growing quickly and heading for Metropolis (which for some odd reason is located on the east coast of the US and not in kansas where it should be). If the crystals were moving and growing that quickly it would be pushing a massive amount of water along in front of it, which would have hit the city.

Fifth, I've seperated this one because its very important. A land made up of solid crystal and rock is useless. There is no top soil there, which means no plants, no farming, no grazing land for livestock. So Lex's new great continent has no way to suport itself by way of food. So the land is near useless. Its a stupid plan any moron should see wouldn't work.

Sixth, we're now into superman physics. Kyrptonite drains superman's powers. Just being near the stuff zaps all his superness and generally makes him even weaker that a human. This island is heavily infused with kryptonite. Some how superman is able to pick up the whole thing and fly it into space.
Seventh, even if the island kryptonite didn't effect him, which would be weird because it did just one scene ago, he had a peice of kryptinite imbeded in his back. So he should have been severly weakened if not dying. Yet he is able to pull off a feat simply beyond beleif.

Eight, the whole point to superman is he is nearly unstopable, unless there is kryptonite around. If he can some how just buck up and suffer through the effects of the kryptonite then he is entirly unstopable, so why even make a film or try to beat him. It just makes all his heroics all the less heroic.

Nine, superkid was a load of shit, not a suprise at all.

Overall, it was watchable, but I feel like Brian Singer made a big mistake in doing this film instead of X-men 3.

1 hour 40 minutes.
Thats how long I stood there and just got skewered.
1 hour 40 minutes.
Thats the time it took for everyone to agree that I knew nothing.
15 pages of trash.
That makes up my grant proposal, which is now in the trash both figurativly and literally.
2 Advisors.
Thats how many useless people looked at my proposal and sent me back only surface sort of changes for feedback.
Actually that should be just 1 advisor as one didn't say anything about it.
I got some feedback from my PI too but he gets a bi in this instance because technically he wasn't supposed to help me at all.
3 months.
Thats the time I now have to learn everything there is to know about membrane and lipids and to rewrite a 1.5 page proposal of hypothesis and aims.

Fuck, you think with the people that looked at my proposal one of them might have said,
"hey you know, you might need a hypothesis for this to fly."
Just one, thats all it would have taken.

Ok, 1 hour 30 minutes.
Nervousness has begun to set in.
I've only made it through the presentation once so far.
This may not be an issue because from what I hear you rarly make it past your first few slides.
Which I hope will be the case.
The slides are in good shape finally and I'm pretty sure I can get throught the whole thing if I have to, but then it will be a very long exam.
I have a bit of a feeling some of the peeps on my comittee may have it in for me or think they need to teach me something. Which will mean going through more of it and more pressing questions. C'est la vie.
Well here goes nothing.

This is it, the count down to 1pm and the deciding factor in my current life of whether I continue gradschool or go home with my masters consolation prize: My Oral Prelim Exam.
I think I'm fairly ready, but you can never guess at which slide the examiners are going to decide to delve into great detail on. I know most of them pretty well, but there is always something you're not going to know. I can only hope what I do know out weighs what I don't
So far my nerves are holding, but we'll see how I'm doing around 12:30.
Back to take a few more practice runs.

Beleifs are BS.
So I'm at lunch today and having a conversation with a friend of mine and for some reason it turns to evolution.
"I don't beleive in evolution" She tells me.
I just sit there dumb founded. She is a smart chick and a scientist. I just don't get it.
"How can you not beleive in evolution? What about all the data?" I ask.
"I beleive we evolve." She counters.
"Well what does that mean?"
"I beleive we were created by God, with Adam and Eve." She says matter of factly. "I didn't come from a monkey."
"There is no data to support that, while there is a lot of very compelling data to support evolution."
"Well its what I beleive." She concludes.
This is about where its pointless to continue.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Blindly beleiving in something is just silly and childish. Life is about exploration and discovery. You should never be afraid to examine the world around you. If your beleifs can't stand up to modern scrutiny they are probably best left in the ancient world where they began.

Its a busy day so I don't have much time to post, but I thought I'd get a few thoughts up. First off Thanxmas went well. It was great seeing Kevin and Brandon, my brothers and having the whole family home at my parent's place agan. We played lots of games, ate until sick, and basically caught up on the last year. The whole vacation was spent eating and rolling dice until the wee hours of the morning of which I'm still feeling the rampant tiredness.

I have my prelim oral exam on wensday. This is going to be it. The day I find out if I am going to continue my graduate work or if I'm going to be going home with a masters. I'm not totally ready for it so posting the next day or so will be short.

Two things I did want to remark on are films I saw.

1. What killed the electric car.
This was an excelent film. It dosen't get overly preachy and dosen't fall into the trap these sort of films often do of stating some wild conspiarcy then spending the rest of the film doing little to support it. The film does give a lot of good info about the electric car and some very very odd practices GM undertook in their actions to promote and sell the car. I highly recomend it.

2. An Inconvient Truth.
Al Gore is a bore. This is more and a convient rhyme. Listening to him lecture for an hour put me to sleep, then I woke up, then I passed out again. I'm sure all those sleepless nights had something to do with it, but his droning voice sure didn't help. The content of the film was somewhat cliped to show his point. This is seen most readily in the opening 10 minutes of the film ( a part I was awake for). Al puts up a jagged line chart on his presentation, which shows the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Its obviously on the rise. So far the presentation is looking promising. He then puts up two charts one showing the level of CO2 and the other showing temperature. This chart goes back 600,000 years and was produced from analysis of ice core samples. The science looks good (what little they show of it) and there is a good corelation between the temperature fluxuations and the CO2 level. Both seem to have big raises and drops about every 50K years. Now he shows the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere and wow its off the chart. He then shows projected CO2 levels if things continue as they are for the next decade and it just sky rockets.
Now this is all well and good but what is he not showing us?
Maybe you guessed it, the current temperature!
He puts up a new slide showing the temperature for the last 100 years or so and we do have the highest temperature now in all that time, but how does that relate to the 600K years natural raises and falls in temperature???
This is where the presentation fell apart for me. If you are going to make a big deal about the CO2 levels and are trying to make a concrete corelation between the CO2 level and the temperature, you need to show that this massive jump in CO2 had an equally massive jump in temperature. Well he can't because it hasn't.
Is Global warming true?
Yes, we've gone up a few degrees in the last century. The earth is getting warmer.
Is this out of wack with the natural Rises and Falls the earth goes through? Not at all. In order to show this it would take many years of data from a number of sources or a real corelation between some sort of human cause of polution and the rise in temperature.
In short the film is more style than substance and more of a propogande peice than a true representation of the issue.

I had a really disturbing dream this am, which I can honestly say I never want to think of agian so it won't be recorded here in print.

What I can say is that I'm seriously thinking about getting into ghost hunting for a bit. The buy in for becomming a ghost hunter is fairly cheap, maybe around 100$ which will get you an EMF detector, a digital laser thermometer, and if you're a good shopper, a night vision camera. I'm pretty sure I can make some dowsing rods, so thats 20$ saved. Then you need to organize a squad.
They typical ghost hunting squad is made up of:
1. Ghost expert: to be a ghost expert you need to:
a. have seen a ghost
b. have at least 2 friends or aquaintances who have seen ghosts and have spoken to them about it
c. read at least 1 book on real ghosts
d. seen the movies ghost busters, ghost busters 2, and the freightners, in a pinch you could substitute stripes for ghost busters 2 and any f the back to the future movies for the freightners.
e. Be well dressed, a suit is good, button down shirt also works, or if you have a suit coat with patches on the arms

2. The skeptic: to be a skeptic you need to not beleive in ghosts or any sort of paranormal stuff.

3. The psychic: the psychic should be a beleiver in any and all paranormal. They should also:
a. have telepathy, empathy, future predicting abilities, or some other sort of unusual cognative function.
b. Have previously made contact with the dead, perferably in a seance a ouji board is also acceptable. In a pinch if they have been on the John Edwards show or have called into to Madame Cleo at least once that will do.
c. to reall be the psychic its very important to be able to walk around old creepy houses and "feel" stuff

4. The Tech guy: He will be the one using most of the gadgets. Its important for him to:
a. Be able to take readings and spot any sort of anomylies, including but not limited to:
places where the EMF meters jump, like electrical wire
ghost orbs in photographs, also known as lens flares
Random noises produced from listening to subharmonic frequencies on tapes
Minor variances in temperature, even a tenth of a degree could indicate ghost activity

5. The interns: any good ghost hunter has a following and therefore has some interns. They should be:
a. Attractive, nuff said
b. Young, college age is good and shows youth apeal
c. Naieve, they need to beleive what ever the expert or psychic say
d. easily freightened, they are the audience hook, what they feel your audience will feel.

So those are the basic members of a ghost hunting team. In the next few weeks I'll be accepting applications for all positions and any other ones people might think we would need. I will also be taking suggestions for places to start looking for signs of the supernatural. Finally we will need a name for this ghost squad.

Please send all info to rtkitchel@yahoo.com or place a comment.

Cephalopodmas take two.

Unfortunatly as this is a fairly new holiday it hasn't caught in the cartoon and film industry as certain other december based holidays have. So when you're at home with your loved ones just looking to spread a little cephalopodmas cheer, usually in the form of hickies and spraying ink, you won't be able to watch "Ortho, the littlest squid" or "Randal the nine armed octopus" because as of yet they don't exist outside of my head.
If you must have a film to enjoy, I could suggest "10,000 leagues under the sea", a tragic tale of one man's fight to destroy a giant squid. At least it has a happy ending.
Or there is a lot of Anime I could suggest. They don't always have Cephalopods in them, but there is a lot of tentacle sex, which is close enough.

http://map.pequenopolis.com/

Here is a fun way to waste some time. Its a site where you can choose any place on earth and it shows you where you would come out if you dug a hole straight down through the earth.
From m,y house I'd come up just off the coast of australia. Meaning it would be a bad idea to dig straight down like that, because the tunnel would fill with water and I'd probably drown. Discounting any sort of lava or else not I'd have to dig through.

So I think I have decided to begin celebrating cephalopodmas, http://www.cephalopodmas.org/ , Its a new holiday getting off on the ground floor, which means its ripe for adding in your own sorts of traditions to it. If anyone has any ideas please post them in the comments. It begins on Dec 22, so we have some time to prepare for it.
1. Calamari or octopus should be served durring dinner.

2. Its a day for hugs and hickies, hugs to represent the grappeling arms of our tentacled friends and hickies for the succion cups on their appendages.

3. Greetings should be "Have a Sucky Cephalopodmas" In this context "sucky" is actually a good term. Other terms of endearment could be things like:
"What a squidtactular gift"
"You're in for a little cuttlefish tonight!"
"Thats Octragrous!"

4. It is acceptable to squirt other partakers with ink. In replace of ink, chocolate syrup could be used...no real reason for it, just because.


More to come.

So I finally just said F-it and sent in my prelim. I'm sure if I went through it again I'd find more wrong with it as I have every time I went through it, but there just comes a point where you have to say, its going in now or its never going in.
I just hope I didn't miss anything major and that it still makes sence to those who read it.

My head has been spinning around all day and I feel like hell. In some bazar miracle I'm now supposed to have my slides ready for peter to see by tomorow for my work in progress talk next tuesday. I think I'm going to go yack now.

Hey all, weekend was good even though I woke up exhausted today. Mondays are always rough. If you want read through an email exchange I had with my mom below, but be sure to start with the first part, which by chance isn't labeled as part 1.

Quick weekend wrap up:
Friday's game was good, but we almost had 2 player fatalities and not even ones that were my fault. It took some very lenient DMing to keep them in one peice.
So to give the senerio, the party is in a dungeon. they finish killing a beastie and one of them decides to throw it in a fountain. No biggie. Beasite dissappears. Hmmmm, think that might be odd.
Player D: I jump in after it!!
Me: ugh, do you have any skills which would help you survive on the elemental plane of air?
Player D: umh, no.
Me: ok, we'll get back to you.

The second near death of the night was when the party found a magic sword stuck in a block of ice. Note this is up north, but its not exceptionally cold at the moment and there was no other ice in the dungon.
Player BZ: I grab the sword!!
Me: thats what you want to do?
Player BZ: yeah, why?
Me: ok, her entire body turns to ice.

I think we were about two throghts from a TPK.

The rest of the night went pretty well.

Saturday was a nice and lazy day. Went over to my parent's house for chinese food around dinner time. then we went through the star wars books I have and started picking costumes for everyone.

Sunday I worked on my aper for part of the day. Then went to T and J's place for some shadow run. The game had a bit of a slow beginning as we had a lot of people and everyone wanted to individually check with their sources for info and stuff. I was about ready to stat shooting random people for something to do. But when we got into it the game was a rocking. J spins a good tale, though I still feel like my character gets to do way more than anyone else. Our bruisers barly got to fire a shot the whole night.

Part 3: She emails me back, please not the similearity of the link she attaches and the one I sent her.

hi guys, another teacher sent this saying the writer of the article Isent earlier is really hokey, so probably no truth to any of it. sorryfor the crap.mom :-)
Just did a google on Greg Braden. Apparently he is a pseudoscientist ofthe first degree. Here is one link.http://www.energygrid.com/spirit/guide/gregg-braden.html

Part 4: My brother chimes in

Yup.

Red Flag #1 - you are publishing via mass email. (most good scientists use what is called journals).

The description of the experiments was extremely poor (no controls were used, and there was nothing really specific about the techniques), then from that this guy is totally jumping to conclusions... magical energy, right....

Guess what, DNA is a polar object (negatively charged), I am sure that anything that actually was observed could easily be explained using real science. Although, I am concerned that this was sent to you from a colleague that might have bought into it.

Now, if you want to talk about an interesting article about DNA, I just read in the Nov. 2006 issue of Discover Magazine (page 33) an amazing article called "DNA is NOT Destiny." It's about the epigenetics that is actually controlling the expression of the DNA and thus rewriting the rules of disease, heredity, and identity. I thought that this would be actually worth reading and talking about in your classes. If you find the article, please share with your fellow teachers. Love, B

Part 2: MY responce

Where did you get this nonsence? :)

I tried to do some searches on Greg braden, but didn't get any hits in pubmed, which contains just about all bio medical scientific journals.
I looked up the institute of Heart Math. They don't have a paper in their recent publications section with the title in this email.
Do you have any published journal articles or the names of them which corespond to these "experiments" he did?

Also in his HIV "experiment" what does 300,000 times the resistance mean? What was the sample size? What was the experiment? For all of his experiments I see a total lack of controls.
Just some questions you should be proposing to your students if you gave them this article.

http://www.energygrid.com/spirit/guide/gregg-braden.html

I did find this review of his book.

You have to watch out for these pseudoscience charlatins.

I think my mom is losing it. today she sent me this Email:

Hi Ryan and Brandon - read these cool experients on DNA, I am forwardingit from our science dept chair.love, momPS looking forward to the holiday, don't go crazy with gifts, just makeit simple.Brandon, I need some ALyssa suggestions.
Mind over matter? or DNA over matter??

HmmmDNA REPORT by Greg Braden
Below are three astonishing experiments with DNA which proves that DNA can heal itself according to the "feelings" of the individual as reported recently by Gregg Braden. In his recent program entitled Healing Hearts/Healing Nations: The Science of Peace and the Power of Prayer, Gregg Braden discussed how in the past we lost huge amounts of information from ancient spiritual traditions (when the library at Alexandria burned we lost at least 532,000 documents), and that there may be information in those traditions which could help us understand some of the mysteries of science. To this end he reported on three very interesting experiments. Gregg Braden started off as a scientist and engineer, before he began pursuing these larger questions.
EXPERIMENT #1
The first experiment reported was done by Dr.Vladimir Poponin, >a quantum biologist. In this experiment, first a container was >emptied (i.e. a vacuum was created within it), and then the >only thing left photons (particles of light) they measured the >distribution (i.e. the location) of the photons and found they were >completely random inside the container. This was the expected >result. > > >Then some DNA was placed inside the container and the >distribution (location) of the photons was remeasured. This time >the photons were LINED UP in an ORDERED way and aligned >with the DNA. In other words the physical DNA had an effect >on the non- physical photons. > > >After that, the DNA was removed from the container, and the >distribution of the photons was measured again. The photons >REMAINED ORDERED and lined up where the DNA had >been. What are the light particles connected to? > > >Gregg Braden says we are forced to accept the possibility that >some NEW field of energy, a web of energy, is there and the >DNA is communicating with the photons through this energy.

EXPERIMENT #2
These were experiments done by the military. Leukocytes (white >blood cells) were collected for DNA from donors and placed >into chambers so they could measure electrical changes. In this >experiment, the donor was placed in one room and subjected >to "emotional stimulation" consisting of video clips, which >generated different emotions in the donor. The DNA was placed >in a different room in the same building. Both the donor and >his DNA were monitored and as the donor exhibited emotional >peaks or valleys (measured by electrical responses), the DNA >exhibited the IDENTICAL RESPONSES AT THE EXACT >SAME TIME. There was no lag time, no transmission time. The >DNA peaks and valleys EXACTLY MATCHED the peaks and >valleys of the donor in time. > > >The military wanted to see how far away they could separate >the donor from his DNA and still get this effect. They stopped >testing after they separated the DNA and the donor by 50 miles >and STILL had the SAME result. No lag time; no transmission >time. > > >The DNA and the donor had the same identical responses in >time. What can this mean? Gregg Braden says it means that >living cells communicate through a previously unrecognized >form of energy. This energy is not affected by time and distance. >This is a non- local form of energy, an energy that already exists >everywhere, all the time. >

EXPERIMENT #3
The third experiment was done by the Institute of Heart Math >and the paper that was written about this was titled: Local >and Non local Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on >Conformational Changes of DNA. (Disregard the title! The >info is incredible.) > > >This is the experiment that relates directly to the anthrax >situation. In this experiment, some human placenta DNA (the >most pristine form of DNA) was placed in a container from >which they could measure changes in the DNA. Twenty-eight >vials of DNA were given (one each) to 28 trained researchers. >Each researcher had been trained how to generate and FEEL >feelings, and they each had strong emotions. > > >What was discovered was that the DNA CHANGED ITS >SHAPE according to the feelings of the researchers: > > >1. When the researchers FELT gratitude, love and appreciation, >the DNA responded by RELAXING and the strands unwound. >The length of the DNA became longer. > > >2. When the researchers FELT anger, fear, frustration, or stress, >the DNA responded by TIGHTENING UP. It became shorter >and SWITCHED OFF many of our DNA codes! If you've ever >felt "shut down" by negative emotions, now you know why your >body was equally shut down too. The shut down of the DNA >codes was reversed and the codes were switched back on again >when feelings of love, joy, gratitude and appreciation were felt >by the researchers. > > >This experiment was later followed up by testing HIV positive >patients. They discovered that feelings of love, gratitude and >appreciation created 300,000 TIMES the RESISTANCE they >had without those feelings. So here's the answer to what can >help you stay well, no matter what dreadful virus or bacteria may >be floating around. Stay in feelings of joy, love, gratitude and >appreciation! > > >These emotional changes went beyond the effects of electro- >magnetics. Individuals trained in deep love were able to change >the shape of their DNA. Gregg Braden says this illustrates a new >recognized form of energy that connects all of creation. This >energy appears to be a TIGHTLY WOVEN WEB that connects >all matter. Essentially we're able to influence this web of creation>through our VIBRATION.

SUMMARY:
What do the results of these experiments have to do with our >present situation? This is the science behind how we can choose >a timeline to stay safe, no matter what else is happening. As >Gregg explains in The Isaiah Effect, basically time is not just >linear (past, present and future), but it also has depth. The depth >of time consists of all the possible prayers and timelines that >could ever be prayed or exist. Essentially, all our prayers have >already been answered. We just activate the one we're living >through our FEELINGS. > > >THIS is how we create our reality - by choosing it with our >feelings. Our feelings are activating the timeline via the web >of creation, which connects all of the energy and matter of the >Universe. > > >Remember that the law of the Universe is that we attract what we >focus on. If you are focused on fearing whatever may come, you >are sending a strong message to the Universe to send you whatever >you fear. Instead if you can get yourself into feelings of joy, love,>appreciation or gratitude, and focus on bringing more of that into >your life, you are going to avoid the negative stuff automatically. > > >You will be choosing a different TIMELINE with your feelings. > > >You can prevent getting anthrax or any other flu, virus, etc, by >staying in these positive feelings, which maintains an incredibly >strong immune system. > > >So here's your protection for whatever comes: Find something to >be happy about every day, and every hour if possible, moment-to- >moment, even if only for a few minutes. This is the easiest and >best protection you can have. If nothing else, be joyous ANYWAY. >

Life is a yo yo: good, bad, good, bad, bad, bad, good. Yeah he did some trick in there. So things seem better but we'll see for how long they last.
In good news it is a big weekend of gaming.
Friday is the Viking Campaign. I have to get a few things set up for it tonight so they can complete their mission and I need to boost them up a few levels to get them up to where they can compete in the Viking olympics (yeah I know they started in Rome, thats why this is fantasy). Then they will finally get to go out in the boat. I'm excited for it.

Sunday will be shadowrun, which is always a good time. I can't say how much I enjoy playing. I'd play just about any campaign, but J is particularly good at spinning a tale so its always interesting to see where the game will go. I've got some friends comming up to play too so I need to finish designing characters for them.

Things are going well in lab. I'm hoping to refinish my prelim tonight and send it out tomorow. Then schedual the oral part of the exam for next friday. We'll see.
Thats about it for new news.

I wonder.....

How difficult would it be to simply evaporate.
Its been years since I had any true fight in me. Would it be easier...beter...to simply fade away?
To close your eyes one day and realize that all you have to do is stop beleiving and you would cease to exist.
Everything good goes bad.
That which should build a foundation may only destabilize the structure.
So why try? You are just going to fail anyway.
I've even stoped responding to forums and discussion boards. There onces was a time I couldn't stand the sight of the injustice and the spread of lies. Now I write half a post and realize the futility.

They say you can never go home again.
They say home is where the heart is.
They also say a rolling stone gathers no moss. But thats not as relevant.
Or is it?

I should be rewriting my prelim.
I should be setting up my second experiment of the day.
I should be finishing the first experiment.
I should be writing my book.
I don't know if I can get out of this chair.

Apparently I can.

And I can't log into my live journal which is probably just as well because it isn't that hard to find.

In other news Brittany and K-Fed have finally filed the papers. This was no big suprise. She's a hasbeen super star and he's a wanna be never was so its doomed to fail from the start. Not to mention he left his then pregnant wife to be with her. I can only hope he cleans her out and on the way out the door. Bah thats mean, even for me.

I have little to say and not enough time to say it. Thoughts on the election to come later today.

It all just gets better and better. I feel like life is slowly going down the crapper one day at a time. I really need some where else to spew all my aggrevations because this site has become too populated.

Well, the dream is over.
I got the email from K-biz today. He didn't order any of the stuff we would need to make up the last 200 odd boards we have for sale. He apparently dosen't have time to do any more Cons. So this enterprise is officially over. I'm still pissed that we invented this thing and other people are going to be makking more money than we ever did off of it. Bastards.
I should take this as a lesson of some sort, but I know me well and I won't.
Now I need to find something to do with the 100ish boards that are mine.
If anyone wants one I'm willing to sell cheaply.

This day is just getting better and better.
So in the few minuites I have inbetween doing experiments I decoided to check the traffic and sales for the Adventureboard (www.adventureboard.com). We're still getting so so traffic but haven't made asale in months. So I decide to go further and start work on it again. My friend T runs our website and a while back we were going to do a comparison of the Adventure Board and some similar products. So I go to Open Minded Games, one of the sneaks who ripped off our idea and click on the buy button to get one of their Combat Pads. And low and behold what happens?
I'm sent to Piazo.com.
For those of you who don't know, Piazo is the compagny who now owns Dragon magasine and is one of the biggest online retailers for Wiazrds products. So great, their product looks official now and is listed to a cheaper price than our's.
Its eithor time to do a massive turn around or to throw in the towel.
I should pick up a copy of dragon and see if they are running adds for the combat pad in there. If so we are pretty much totally sunk. We don't have the money to advertise there and even if we did I don't think we would make it back.
Well this is the third compagny I've been part of which has run into the ground. Excelent!

So here is a question, where does freedom end and establishment begin.
Take for instance the issue of muslim women wearing veils which is currently plaguing the UK right now and has come up here in the past.
The Muslim religion (or at least certain factions of it) states that women must not leave the house with their face uncovered and there are a lot of follow ups to this of who and who can see thier faces. This religion also is a male dominated religion. Women hold no power and are often see as little more than livestock.
So here lies the prediciment. In a free country like america where these women have a right to choose their religion is it right to allow them to wear these head scarves?
The easy answer would be to say yes. Its their choice to be in the religion and their choice to wear the garb.
But if you take this a step further and concider that women born into the muslem faith may not have a choice in which they wish to enter that religion. They may not have many rights at all and no choice what so ever if they want to wear the veil. They also have a fear of honor killings or the like if they attempt to leave the faith.
So what to do?
On one hand we shouldn't be laying down the law on what is and is not permitable by a faith.
On the other hand american citizens should have a real choice as to what they wish to beleive and which arceaic rules they wish to follow.
So do we force freedom on these people, freedom meaning you can't do what you beleive so that we know these woman have a choice in the matter, choice meaning do what we think is right.

So there it is the internal conflict of freedom.

Bill O'Riley is a two faced jerk.
I know this isn't really news but I was listening to his show this morning on Sirius "Fox News" and it really set me off.
So the first story he was doing was about some kid who dressed up as Hittler for halloween. His point, don't you think this was insensitive and inflamitory to Jews, etc.
Now to take this in context, O'riley is one of the people who was pushing this "War on Christmas" nonsence which has been going around for the last few years. Spouting angry retoric about how its wrong that some businesses are starting to ask their employees, greeters, etc to use the phrase happy hollidays instead of Merry Christmas to be more inclusive of other religions. Needless to say he was very against that.
So you want to have your cake and eat it too eh Bill. Its fine to offend people as long as the offensive act or language is something you agree with, but do something that offends Bill O'Riley and now you have to stop.
At least he did mention that it is constitutional to do these offensive thing.
Bah, I need to stop listening to that show.

I got a few more figures painted last night. If I can keep this pace up I will have my pirate gangs ready to go by the time the party actually runs into them. Its so much slower to paint the new figures Reaper (http://www.reapermini.com/) puts out. They have so much more detail than older slop and go sorts of figures. Where I would do three of four a night now I can barly get one done. I must say they do look good and if I get a nice wintery one done I may submit it for their next contest. I should have gotten my rear in gear and gotten one in for halloween, but oh well.

I hate money.
I hate not having enough.
I hate how difficult it is to obtain at times.
I hate that it is overly neseciary.

So I went to deposit money in my account this morning and found to my delight that I have a balance of -349$. Wonderful. So whats in my savings account, my funds for a rainy day, because this is sure looking like one...24$. Even better, not even enough money to go to eat at a cheap resturant, well maybe if you order a side salad and water and leave a crappy tip.

Makes me glad I didn't win any of those auctions I was in on ebay.
Makes me glad I didn't place that Amazon order I was going to yesterday.
Makes me sad I just blew 50 bucks on a costume.
Makes me sad I blew 48 bucks on make up flowers and a film, especially with the lack of appreciation.

It may be time to take a good hard look at my life again and begin to slim all of it down.
I hate money.