Obviously the US prison system doesn't work quite as planned. What're you gonna do, send 'em to jail?

I've been meaning to update my spew for quite awhile since there's been a lot to talk about but one thing led to another and I didn't have enough time to do it until now. This is actually my 4th attempt to write this, hopefully I'll actually be able to _finish_ this time. Anyways, here goes...

There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says "Fool me once..... shame on.............. shame on you..... if fool me you can't get fooled again."

Geezus how anyone can possibly still respect this guy I'll never know. I mean I've always heard about his propensity for verbal gaffes but I've never seen one before so I didn't realize how much of a moron he looks like when he does it. I mean sure, people can have brain farts every now and then and usually are suave enough to laugh it off or something but he just comes across as someone who has absolutely no clue about what he's talking about. Thank goodness he has staff writers to do most of his speeches for him cause the few times I've seen him try to answer press questions that weren't scripted has been pretty disastrous. Like recently when he was asked the difference between al Quada and Saddam Hussein he pretty much went "abababa..." for awhile before saying something to the effect of "well I can't really give you an answer on that but they're both evil, destructive, blah blah blah." For someone who's made "homeland security" _the_ top priority of his administration I think it'd behoove him to know what the fucking difference is between the two. Who the hell voted for this guy???

And is it just me or does it seem like him and his herd of elephants are just trying to ram this Iraq deal down our throat's in an attempt to distract us on how much of a mess he's making of domestic issues. Thanks for the $300 tax refund and all but have you seen the stock market and unemployment rates recently? Making a pathetic example out of the founders of Adelphia just isn't gonna cut it. It seems like there's only 2 things his administration is interested in at this point: 1) blowing the shit out of Iraq so come 2 years down the road they can point at something tangible that they've done that they'll spin into a positive reason why we should re-elect him and 2) regaining control of Congress by using the good ol' "if you don't agree with us, then you're un-American" bullshit. I mean gimme a fuckin' break already. If you're going to place more emphasis on foreign policy, at least do a good job at it!!!! Alienating every single country in the world besides the UK just doesn't quite cut it in my book. Goddamn pinheads.

Anyways, sorry if I sound more irate than normal. I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder that's just been kicking my ass this past week.

The other big news of late is that I managed to survive yet _another_ round of layoffs here a couple of weeks ago. One third of our division gone this time so we're down to around 140 people nationwide. Plus we've switched focus from web apps to call center/telephony stuff to be more in line with Qwest's overall business focus. The only web app focus they're keeping around is content management which I am part of so I assume that's why I was spared. Plus I've actually had billable projects to work on these past few months so that probably helped as well. However, I've just been transferred to the telephony group so I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad about it.

The good:

• Telephony is more in line with what Qwest does so job is slightly more secure
  
• My new boss isn't even in this office
  
• More telephony deals in the pipeline so could be more to do, thereby increasing job security factor
  
  The bad:
  
• Kinda veering off the whole programming track. I mean yeah, it does require coding but it's mostly scripting stuff with ASP/JSP. No more Javabeans and servlets and stuff. Lightweight programming
  
• Because new boss isn't in this office, if a layoff does occur that doesn't kill our division entirely, he might be more inclined to retain the people actually in his physical surroundings
  
• Not sure if telephony is what I want to do. Granted I haven't done anything with it yet so we'll just have to see
  
• Little logistical things like expense reports and requesting vacation time will be more of a pain since once again, the boss isn't here

So I dunno, guess the next few weeks and months will be interesting. Actually it was my officemate that was supposed to have switched to the telephony team but the managers decided against it since he's currently working on a project for content management. Maybe we can switch after he's done with that project. *shrug* Or maybe I'll like being on this new team. Anyways, more on this in the next few months I'm sure.

Who here hates the "A Moment Like This" song by the American Idol show winner as much as I do? I mean granted, Kelly's got a pretty impressive voice but the song just sucks to high heaven. I can't believe what ridiculous drivel this song is. It's even worse than the crap they normally have for the boy bands. I guess that's what you get for being a manufactured star. You can't exactly veto the songs they want you to sing. Then again I was never much of a diva fan. Whitney Houstin, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey... hate 'em all. "Skaterboy" by Avril Lavigne, now _that's_ a song. ;-)

Oh, before I forget, a moment of silence please for Satirewire. The sole creative personnel for the site has decided to call it quits. Which is too bad since he was doing a pretty good job for awhile there. But I guess it _is_ pretty tough to be so funny all the time. Ah well, that leaves The Onion as one of the few remaining satire sites left. That and Asianguy which I recently noticed came out with an interesting experiment that I thought I'd never see online: Adventures in Personal Ads, which examines the results of placing an AF for WM ad on Craigslist. Nothing particularly unexpected but interesting nonetheless. ;-p I should email those guys and ask them to try the same experiment on the NY boards too. My guess is the results won't be much different. =p

Anyways, it might have occurred to those who know me well that I haven't seemed to have gotten any new gadgets in the past few months. Well, desperate times calls for desperate measures I guess. ;-) But fear not, for recently I was able to get quite a tasty little gadget for free. My new SonyEricsson T68m. You can check out my review of it here. It's really quite a fun phone to carry around. Now I just need to take more pictures of everyone so I can have them associated with your phone numbers on my phone. Wheeeeee!!!!! ;-)

the amount of 9/11 trivial emotional flak is just disgusting. Who the fuck decided that the 1 year anniversary will be the day that everyone's supposed to "officially" get over it and move on. I'm glad I made the decision to avoid every single 9/11 special on TV today cause it would've driven me insane. Just watching the goddamn commercials for 'em pisses me off. Thank goodness for Comedy Central and the YES Network. Fuck. Andy, as the only person I know who works for an accursed network TV station, I hold you personally responsible for this ridiculousness. =p