In completely unrelated news, Google Street View has finally landed in Seattle.

So, I’m proud to say I did my civic duty today, and it feels great.

The other day NPR played a very interesting music interlude during All Things Considered, so I went to look up the name of the piece (you do know how to do that, right?). Turns out the artist was Bombay Dub Orchestra and the song was Strange Constellations. It’s a great piece, so I went ahead and downloaded it, along with several others, from Amazon. They’ve got some good stuff – I recommend checking them out if you’re into downtempo/chillout music. Also, it looks like the third album from Conjure One is (finally) on the horizon. The first two were fantastic, so I’ve got high hopes for the new album.

Finally, although I’ve had a voracious appetite for everything related to this year’s presidential election, I’ve kept all of that separate from my blog. My one exception to that practice will be just to say, it sometimes feels like this, doesn’t it?

And you know, it sure is tricky to come up with descriptive titles for these posts that span multiple categories!

Chances of sticking with Live Search for the long haul: Not good.

In other blog-related news, I’ve added a new category for my posts: politics. Not that you won’t get enough election coverage from the news, newspapers, magazines, blogs, friends, and your next door neighbor’s cousin’s sister’s father’s sister’s cousin’s next door neighbor. But, since we’ve finally entered the election year, and the fact that blogs tend to flock to presidential candidates for content like cable news to Paris Hilton on a bad day, I might as well pretend to keep this blog marginally hip. Um, so, I have a new category: politics.

And finally, Go Hawks! (needed to add a Sportish entry–it’s been a while)

After surviving initial stages of disbelief, shock, and mild depression, my final state of mind has settled on disappointment.

Strangely enough, however, I’m hopeful that perhaps Bush might actually be able to seize on this (second) opportunity to unify a country that desperately needs it. Although Democrats lost the battle, the war was waged for unity, and there’s no reason for that to be a lost cause. Everyone who voted for John Kerry knows Bush would love to sit around, grin (stupidly), and feel clever about actually winning a mandate from the people, but what he must do of course is extend a hand to Democrats and start the bipartisanship he claims he can foster.

So the other day I managed to infect my home computer with massive amounts of spyware and malware. I committed the cardinal sin of downloading an executable without running it through my antivirus program. I know, I know… what was I thinking? Have I no common sense? Have I learned nothing from the constant barage of Windows security updates? Anyway, after double clicking, I sat there staring at the screen for a good 10 seconds as my hard drive thrashed, wondering 1) if something would happen, and 2) what the hell I had just done.

The worst part is that as I was double clicking on the darn thing, it occurred to me that I really should have scanned it first because the site seemed a little suspicious. I did so, and low and behold, Norton’s bells and whistles went off, alerting me that the file was massively problematic. I suppose I deserved it.

Two days later, I’m still struggling to clean the sucker up. I’ve downloaded more programs than I can count to clean up all that junk, but I have to say, the damn thing is pretty resilient. Worse comes to worse I can always reformat (hey, it would give me a good reason to buy a rewritable DVD drive to backup all my stuff).

In other news, Boeing recently completed building its last 757. I’m really going to miss that bird. The great majority of flying I’ve done in my (short) life has been on the 757-200, and it is a shame to see such a steadfast plane pass into history. The first time I ever tuned into ATC was on a United 757, and the pilot, who was obviously as much of an aviation enthusiast as myself, gave a mini-lecture on the history of the 757. It was incredibly awesome.

You will be missed.

“The Constitution of the United States says we’re all — you know, it doesn’t say that.”

Karl must’ve been tuned in on the wrong frequency.

In case you forgot, Bush had this to say about tribal sovereignty.

• First, he accused the democrats of failing to take advantage of efforts promoting bipartisanship. Is he serious? President Bush squandered chances at promoting bipartisanship when A) the democrats humbly bowed to a ruling from TSCOTUS crowning W as dictator president in order to preserve our constitutional order, and B) the democrats, and the WHOLE WORLD were spilling over with support for our damaged nation. If, after 4 years of a Republican Presidency, and a more often-than-not Republican-controlled Senate, our country is still deeply divided, I think Zell needs to reevaluate where blame should most appropriately be placed.
• Second, Zell attempted to give Kerry hell by pointing to Bush’s strong stance on America’s military might. I know most of you will never be persuaded by Kerry’s military record, nor his ideological views on the use of force, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, how can you turn a blind eye to President Bush’s own service record without some hesitation?
• Third, Zell believes weapons won the cold war. He actually said this.
• Finally, it seems pretty clear to me that most of his distain for Kerry stems from the fact that Kerry is not the type of person who openly supports compulsory worship of Jesus Christ.

Anyway, enough ranting from me. I’ve got work to do.