Right-Wing & Right Minded Is Dead

Well, it's not actually dead. But this is sort of the end of an era. Ok, maybe not that dramatic but it is a change. I started this blog in 2003 as a political site for me to try and enlighten wrong minded Liberals with the truth. But over the past nine or so months things have changed. This site, along with myself, has moved away from politics. As you may, or may not, have noticed I've been doing more military posts. Mainly Wednesday Hero. So I guess Right-Wing & Right Minded has unofficially become a Milblog. It's not going to be an actual Milblog but since that's what I mostly post anymore... I've had some good times on here arguing politics with people. I do miss the old days, but not that much. Took way too much energy and just wasn't that fun towards the end. I've thought about changing the name to Wednesday Hero but it's been RW&RM so long I just can't do it. There may still be a political post here and there though.

Thoughts Are With The Tornado Victims In The South

We've all been watching the coverage of the devastating tornado outbreak that hit the Southern states. 250 people, so far, confirmed dead. Beyond sad. Watching all this I can't help but be reminded of May 3, 1999. That was one of the scariest nights of my life. Between 3 & 5pm they started forming near OKC and just blew up. The F5 that formed that night was almost, if not, a mile wide and recorded the strongest winds ever at over 300 mph. Data's still not in for the storms that hit Alabama but the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa may have been even bigger. And that's beyond frightening. Thoughts and prayers go out for the those down South. Let's hope this doesn't happen again any time soon.

Connection Troubles

Having some problems connecting to the internets. It seems to working ok now, but if I disappear for a few days you'll know why. I hate technology sometimes.

Too Damn High

Dear Cox Communications,

I've just been informed that starting next month you will be raising your fees which will be bringing my cable bill up another $6/month. Do you not realize that things are tough for just about everyone and that raising your rates will hurt a lot of people? I don't want to get rid of my cable service. I would honestly go a little more crazy than I already am if I had to. But with the way things are going it may have to be a bill that I cut before too long. I have a question for you. Why do I have to pay for channels such as OWN, CMT, MTV, Style, Logo and a whole host of others that I don't watch and I don't want? I'm not big on sports but I do like Fox Soccer Channel. But to get it I have to pay for a crap load of ESPN channels that I don't want. I don't watch MSNBC or CNN but I sure has shit have to pay for them. Why don't you let me choose the channels I want and pay only for those? You still get your money and I get a bill that I can afford.

Break It Down

Sitting here looking at my pages stats and here's how it breaks down:

My number one visited post is the Wednesday Hero Blogroll post with an average of 56 views a day and a total of 16,290 since I posted it in 2006.

I get an average of around 100 views of my blog every day with a total of 34,471 since Blogger started keeping track. Not sure when that was.

My number one traffic source is The Pink Flamingo. Thanks, Cindy.

The number one search term that leads people to my page is "barbara boxer". Why? Because of this post I did back in 2005.

Only 38 people have read Blood Plague and 17 for Tony The Gerbil.

Surprisingly, IE is still the number one browser used at 61% while Firefox is second with only 23%. Huh.

Windows is by far the number one OS with 88%.

And, the US is the number one country for pageviews with, awesomely, South Korea in second.

Break The Shackles

Nigger. I said it. Oh no, I must be racist. Ban me or fire me from something. I tell you, I am so sick and tired of the language police that have taken over this country. I honestly don't have a problem with the way Burlington used it. He didn't say it to be mean. He didn't say it to someone in a racist manner. People, stop being a damn slave to political correctness. And while we're on the subject, I'm tired of having to pay for what our ancestors, and even our grandparents, did. None of us had anything to do with slavery and the majority of us had nothing to do with segregation, yet we're made to feel guilty about it all the time. Well, I don't. I have zero guilt about slavery or segregation because I had nothing to do with it. And this is coming from someone who's people were severely wronged, as much if not more than Blacks, in the past, but I've let it go. I urge others to do the same.

Things That Piss Me Off

Animal rights activists

Flash

These stupid "talent" shows and games shows that try to call themselves reality. Simon Cowell and Mark Burrnett are Satan. And I am waiting for the day when it all blows up in the faces. God, that day can't come soon enough

Eco Nazis

Justin Bieber and the teenage girls who have made him as big as he is. Damn you all to Hell

People who "push the envelope". Morons

People who feel the need to constantly tell the world how much they hate Soccer. Oh..my..God, get over it. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Just shut up about it. You don't hear me bitching about how much I hate basketball or that ignorant game we call football

People who refer to all MP3 players as an iPod. Same goes for search engine/Google and pop/Coke

Guys who take photos of themselves without a shirt and use it as their profile picture. I don't care how "ripped" you are, put on a damn shirt

Celebrity gossip shows

E!

Anyone under 25

Friendship

Please bare with me. This post might get a little cheesy. Names have been withheld to protect the guilty.

What exactly is a friend? Webster's defines one as

A: one attached to another by affection or esteem
B: acquaintance

That's kinda cold. I, along with most people, I think, would define a friend as someone who's there for you when you need them. Maybe not necessarily in person. You're best friend could live halfway around the world. That don't make them any less your friend. There have been less than a handful of people in my life I would call a friend. I'm not a people person. I'm what they call "antisocial". Whatever. I don't like people so I'm not very adept at making friends. There is, however, someone I've known for a few years that I've considered a friend. I can't say that I took that friendship for granted, mainly because I didn't realize that I was. This person has stuck by me for years and I've only just recently realized that they are my best friend. But here's the kicker. I've never met them. This person lives in another state and chances are we'll never meet face to face. But that doesn't make them any less a friend. I realized all this when I was dealing some personal issues a couple of months back and this person was there for me when I needed someone to just listen to me ramble on. All this while they were dealing with some personal issues of their own. I thank them for that and I only hope I've been able to return the favor in some small way.

Christmas Time Is Coming

We are only three months away from Christmas and this is the first year that I'm not sure whether or not I'll be in the mood. I haven't thought about doing any kind of shopping. Hell, I haven't even started on my Christmas theme for the blog yet. By now I'm usually on my third or fourth version. Maybe when the temps start to cool off and it starts to feel more like Winter I'll get in the spirit.

Changes

I've been dealing with some personal things recently and haven't felt much like blogging. So for the foreseeable future Right-Wing & Right Minded will be mainly used for Wednesday Hero and Music Czar Monday with maybe an occasional political post.

Well I Done Got Old

So I turned 31 yesterday I've been kind of dreading it for some time. I know some of you are thinking "31? Please", but for me it's a significant moment. I can remember my brother turning this age, 15 years ago, and now here I am. Pink Floyd once sang "And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun". I still feel like I missed that starting gun. Here I am an adult but I don't feel grown up. Perhaps that's the curse of my generation. And something else I've noticed. I've been saying "Back when I was a kid" or "Back in my day" a lot.

Anyway, on to the meat and potatoes of this post. I saw this story and, while it made me laugh, it also caused me to think of things from my past that "kids today" may have never experienced or even heard of.

Cassette tapes

Vinyl records before they were retro

Pre-GHz processors

Popples

Gas under $1/gallon

Rotary telephones

Bo Knows...

The Gulf War

Mr. Wizard showing me how to insert a needle into a balloon without popping it

Pogo Ball

Tupperwear parties

Sticker books

Windows 95

Seeing my first Compact Disk

Life Lesson #5

Be careful with those cans of compressed air you use to clean computers with.

Did something really stupid. I just bought a new can and took that straw thing-a-ma-jig from the old one. Thought it would be cool to see how much of the contents comes out of it without that straw thing-a-ma-jig. So I turned it upside down and let loose, away from me. Not realizing that I had done it behind my fan that was currently on. So the fan sucked it in and blew it right in my face. Now this stuff I have uses something called Bittergent to deter people from huffing it. It works. I can't get that crap off my lips or out of my throat. This sucks.

Just Leave Things Alone

Anybody else seeing this on their Gmail account? First, leave it alone. Gmail is fine the way it is. Second, "faster Gmail and the newest features" most likely means it'll be HTTPS which takes FOREVER to load on dial-up. Third, "upgrade to a modern browser". What does that mean? I'm using Firefox 3.6. It's not like I'm still using Netscape or something. Why can't people just leave things alone? Why do they feel the need to "improve" everything that's not broken?

Someone Call Mr. Peabody, I Need His Wayback Machine

I want to go back to my childhood for a second. You probably won't find this interesting so just stop reading. I remember when you use to turn on wrestling and actually see wrestling. Back in the 80's and early 90's when WWF was king. Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, The Ugandan Giant Kamala, Andre The Giant, The Freebirds, etc... You could turn on Saturday Night's Main Event or Monday Night RAW and actually see guys wrestling. You turn it on now and what do you get? Maybe 40 minutes of wrestling in a 2 hour show and the rest is gimmick matches or talking. When my dad was alive he was the biggest fan of "grunt and groan" as he called it. I was right there with him. I loved it. I loved watching when Hogan was getting the snot beat out of him and would take his pill, as my brother would say, and nothing could phase him. He could take 100 guys on and beat everyone of them. When Sgt. Slaughter turned bad and sided with Colonel Mustafa during the Gulf War I was heartbroken. AHHHHHH.......What a RUSH. It was the ultimate. We even went to a show in Tulsa once. It was awesome.

Unable To Establish A Connection

So I've been having trouble connecting to the internets. It started last night and continued this morning. I was finally able to, thank goodness, but I'm not sure how stable it is or how long it'll stay that way. I might not be able to later, I don't know. And this got me to thinking. If I were to lose my connection for good, what would I do? Now I'm ass-u-me(ing) that most of you get your service through a large company. Cox, Comcast, AOL, etc... and really don't don't have to worry about them going under any time soon. I, however, get my service through a small provider called Address. And although I've had it for a few years now, it could very well decide to stop it's service at anytime. The economy isn't very good and small companies are going under all the time, so... Maybe I should start looking for alternatives just in case. I had Netzero at one time but they dropped me because their "unlimited" service wasn't so unlimited after all. I might want to get their info again just to be on the safe side.

Was Prince Right?

Is the internet dead? I mean, there's nothing good on it anymore. At least for those of us using dial up. Everything's so geared towards broadband anymore that it's getting to be not much fun for some of us. More and more websites are image heavy and loaded with Flash and Javascript and I can't view them. I can download music if I want, but most files are between 5-7MB and can take up to an hour or more to download. And that's not including the time it takes the page to load because it's full of Flash or Javascript. Games? Nope. Videos? I can watch the videos I post for Music Czar Monday, if I feel like sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting. Even television is going broadband with Twitter, Netflix and YouTube services being included in some new HDTV's and Blu-Ray players. How much longer before we're no longer able to watch it without an internet connection? Woe is me, woe is me I guess. Maybe when the government deems broadband a right I'll be able to get it. Government run internet. How cool would that be? Sure, they would need to monitor what sites you're visiting but it'll be "free".

I Don't Believe It

For the past few years I've had this idea. A spray that tastes just like food that people could use when they want something but don't necessarily want to actually eat something. They could spray it and satisfy their cravings. It would be great for people on diets. So I was turning it to Iron Chef last night and the show before it was going off and they were talking about a product called Le Whif. My jaw dropped. It's my idea come to life. Somehow this company read my mind and stole my product that I never actually created.

HTML vs XML

If you run a blog changes are you've messed with it's code.  Maybe to add a picture or move some piece of code around to change the layout.  I've been blogging since 2003 and all of that has been using HTML.  It's easy to understand and simple to figure out.  I've recently switched over to Blogger's new design which uses XML and I'm not a big fan of it.  It's much more difficult to figure out than basic HTML.  I spent almost two hours yesterday messing with it just to move a few things around.  I eventually got what I wanted, sort of.  It's not exactly what I would like but it'll do.  I don't think I'm going to be mastering it anytime soon.

New Design

I kinda like this one. I might just keep it for awhile.

Firsts

We all have a slew of "firsts" in our lives. I thought I would do a post talking about a few mine. Most will be geared to basic things because personal things are just that and private, although there are a few.

My first video game system was the NES. I remember when we got it my brother and I stayed up most of the night playing Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. My other brother had one as well with "The Legend Of Zelda". I pwned that game.

My first CD was a best of the Beach Boys I'd gotten from the BMG music club.

My first DVD was either The Matrix or a documentary on musician Robbie Robbertson. Can't remember which one I got fist.

My first computer was a graduation gift from my mom. A Packard Bell. If I remember correctly, it had either a 144 or 177 MHz processor. I still have the speakers.

The first song I learned all the lyrics to was "Boot Scootin' Boogie" by Brooks & Dunn. I was a Country fiend back in the day.

The first time I ever had to deal with death was with my dad. I was in the 11th grade and he had recently had open heart surgery.

The first crush I had was in the 1st grade on a redhead named Summer.

The first girl that I really had feeling for was in the 10th or 11th grade. Her name was Christie. I'd even wrote a very crappy poem about her. But, being the horribly shy person that I am I never said anything.

My first kiss is something that I actually don't remember too well. I was maybe 11-12 years old. I don't even remember her name. A bunch of kids were staying the night with my brother's then girlfriend. She was there as well. We just kind of clicked. I'll never forget this for as long as I live because it was so very embarrassing at the time. We all just slept on the floor and I apparently fell asleep with my arm around her shoulder. Everyone woke up before I did and saw this. The older boys were relentless in their teasing. I now know it was all just good-natured, but at the time I was mortified. I hid behind a chair most of that day I was so embarrassed.