Jodag.NET

I seem to have had an odd effect on my last two employers.  You may remember in April of ‘04 as Interplay was seemingly in the final throes of a long, drawn out death I quit.  Mainly because I had my current job lined up and finally ready to start, but also because they were bankrupt and bouncing checks.  So, I received my final paycheck and the very day I received it, I tried to go cash it at my company’s bank.

After some snickering and muffled laughter the teller gives me my check back with this neat little NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) stamp on it.  Eventually I did get it paid sucsessfully, but it was just a delightful way to end four or five years of employment with them.

You can read a bit more about that here.

Now, seemingly happily ensconced in my current job there’s economic turmoil coming to find me here as well.  The good Governor has seen fit to cut everyone’s paychecks by 10% starting next month and all sorts of other fun ideas.  Whether or not that’s necessary isn’t anywhere near my scope of practice or knowledge so I’m not going to get into that.  I will say that I personally believe that unions can be a huge portion of the problem.  Unions protect the jobs of those who don’t perform their work adequately and demand equality in pay for the entire range of competence in job performance, instead of being based on merit.  Honestly, I respect Arnold for what he’s trying to do here.  I think the unions are too strong though, and stay strong by feeding off of California’s carcass.

We’ll see what happens there, but again like in April of ‘04 I’m beginning the job hunt process again.  I can stick it out here just fine, but my job has recently lost most of its appeal, nothing to do with the budget.

Speaking of money though, in other worrisome news I am either getting audited or have a fan at the IRS recently.  The last five days of visits to jodag.net include some visits from everyone’s favorite federal agency.

Hopefully it’s a fan.

I have donated to Ron Paul’s campaign. Not much, I’m not rich, but I donated. Ron Paul seems to me to be the closest candidate to my own views. True conservatism in the form of libertarianism. I don’t agree with all of his ideas, I think he’s dead wrong on Sudan and the gold standard seems a bit wonky. Even if he manages to get elected he won’t be able to push through half of his plans, but he’s honest, he’s passionate and he’s his own man.

Click here for Dr. Paul’s own issue page. In a nutshell; strong NATIONAL defense. National meaning no more bases in Europe, Asia, Africa, or any of the oilpipeistan countries. Defend our own borders, police our own state leave the world to the world. Social liberalism; if you don’t like the gays getting married that’s fine and dandy for you. If I don’t like people named Smith reproducing, that’s good for me. Neither of those two ideals should be promulgated by any level of government.

Anyone who doesn’t know who to vote for, or has any questions about Dr. Paul or anything else can feel free to contact me. RP4L.

Well, in a nutshell, Ron Paul for President

 Pure Sex. 

So, no this isn’t the sleight of hand distraction that I said I was going to use if I passed out at the triathlon. That’s just pure love right there in that video, 2 billion on something that beautiful and effective, they can raise my taxes any day of the week for that kind of gloryhole.

You are insignificant. No, really you are. All the following pictures are to scale and are intended to demonstrate how insignificant we all are in the big scheme of things.

Here is a representation of our planets, including Pluto.

Here is a representation of our planets in comparison to our own little sun.

Here’s our sun in comparison to some other stars.

And here’s our sun in comparison to some bigger stars.

Antares is by no means the biggest star out there. Something to think about next time you are outside looking at the stars, unless you’re one of those unfortunate souls that live in a city and have no night sky to inspire you. Or if you’re one of those people who’s only time outside is the time it takes to walk from their car to their destination and then return to their car.

That little white spot between the white lines is Earth. Here’s what the late, great Carl Sagan had to say about that pale blue dot.

————————————————————————————————————————

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Well, I expected it. I was anticipating it. I was fearing it and I was right, it happened. Tax time came and it was bad. Total damage, roundabout 4 grand, yes, 4,000 US dollars to state and federal taxes (in addition to the deductions taken out with every check). If that kind of news just doesn’t make your day, I don’t know what would.

At the tax bracket I’m in, it’s expected that you have a couple tax shelters. I learned that last year and sheltered everything from last years taxes and even wound up getting money back. This year, the shelters didn’t work out so well because of various complications. Now, I’ve got no problem paying the same taxes that everyone else does. The problem is where the tax money I’m paying is going.

A buddy of mine, who shall remain nameless (cough GJ cough) has been unemployed for over a year. He collected his full unemployment benefits, he lives at home with his parents and goes to school. He gets financial aid (read: my tax money) to go to school and live at home with his parents, without. even. bothering. to. get. a. job. Godamn. Then to top it all off, he got a refund on his taxes this year. A REFUND ON HIS UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT TAXES.

Now, I’m no saint, I’ve done wasted more tax payer money than G can hope to in a lifetime of mooching off various agencies. My wasting was done in the name of national security though, military spending which is like the 3rd rail of politics, no one can touch that without paying a price (much like social security). So I saw the immensely wasteful, but necessary expenditures the DOD puts out and can only imagine them multiplied by the 13 other major federal agencies. All of which conspire to take my hard earned money in the form of taxes.

In closing, please visit the CATO institute (Libertarian think tank) and take a look around at their ideas and proposals for America, and then send me money

I think what I was trying to say with the previous section is that it doesn’t matter one bit what gear you have, what matters is what you do with the gear.

Now that that is clear. I want to let you know that the baby boomers are going to destroy the nation’s budget (your tax dollars) when they start retiring. Neither of the two major parties have the political will to touch social security’s basic flaws, because they know the AARP would fry them. The youth of America doesn’t vote and therefore we are the ones that will be burdened with the same or higher tax rates, and less government funding for everything except social security.

As the number of ‘boomers retiring grows the SS expenditures will also chew up more and more of the overall federal budget. Without increasing taxes, this means that other programs will start being underfunded and eventually cut. You know that no politician is going to let their own personal projects get cut (read as: any project that provides jobs in their home state). So the inevitable outcome of this will be higher taxes in combination with less governmental spending on everything except SS and medicare.

This entire situation is a shitfest of unimaginable proportions. I would encourage anyone and everyone who is reading this to take 1/2 hour out of their busy day and register to vote. Then request and absentee ballot and vote from the comfort of your own home on your own time. Look into the issues and remember that you don’t just pay taxes at the end of the year, you pay them with every paycheck you get and every purchase you make.

My own personal two cents would be to vote libertarian. For the less than politically active, here is a basic primer: CLICK ME for you to read (very short and sweet).

After getting some crushingly bad news earlier this week and being pretty bummed today turned up pretty well. First of all, El Presidente will be re-invigorating the space program by endorsing a manned lunar base as a stepping stone to manned missions to Mars. I personally could care less what social programs get cut, gutted or axed, I don’t care if you don’t have a job and need food, I don’t care if your twelve kids are hungry. Governmental funds should be spent on the common good, and I don’t see how feeding you or your damn kids is the common good.

I do however see how cordless drills, cell phones, microcircuitry and CCD’s benefit the entire world. I do see the human spirit needing frontiers to push back, unexplored horizons to find and adventures to embark upon. I do see America as the one and only nation on the Earth with the technology, knowledge, financial capacity and now political will to do something so bold and audacious. I hope my offspring will see man on Mars, I hope to God I’ll get to see it.

This has been and will be a huge year for exploration, I’m sure everyone knows Spirit has touched down on Mars already, Opportunity will be doing so in a couple weeks and Stardust has collected some of the primordial soup from the tail of a comet. In the middle of the year Cassini will arrive at Jupiter and hopefully this is the year that the X-prize is awarded to the first privately funded and developed space launch platform.

Bring on the stars.

Ohh the other thing I am excited about, going backpacking (even though it’s a gimped solo mission) will be great. Snow, cold and loneliness are on the menu for this weekend.

Bring on the snowshoes.

Today President George W. Bush’s administration leaked out the information that we (spacebuffs) have been waiting for for years and years. America’s space program has been foundering in low earth orbit for over 30 years now and it’s time we got out of this rut.

The potential plans call for the United States to return man to the moon and establish a research faciilty (whether it will be permanently manned or not is in question at the moment). No matter what, this is finally a day that I can start being proud of paying taxes again. Not to sound like an asshole, but I can’t stand my money going into building public housing (the time I spent there in Chicago have soured me on that entire venture permanently). Military spending is necessary, that’s for sure, but after seeing how much ammo the ‘bush monsters’ would eat, and the number of weapons systems, vehicles, buildings and all sorts of other equipment were destroyed in the name of training… I have a feeling that the military budget is grossly overinflated and wasteful.

I’m sure there will be wasted money getting us back to the moon, but there will be research and development trickle downs to us civilians. I thank god for my cordless drill, CCD’s, Tang, Telecommunications and all the other spin-offs.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,–and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew–
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-John Gillespie Magee