This, That, and the Other Thing

Life hasn’t been boring this month. As a result, I’m behind on some things including reviews to post. Notes are taken and even screen captures in some cases so I need to get moving on them.

Being a long term planner kind of guy, the list of things to review is getting longer than I’d like and so there will be more spontaneous ones popping up like the Gamera the Invincible review. In fact, the next movie after Thirteen Days will be one I didn’t expect to do. Summer Wars is a rare non studio Ghibli theatrical anime that should appeal to a wide range of viewers.

More music reviews will happen and I plan to review the original The Prisoner television series. That one will be quite an undertaking given all the layers of social commentary involved in Patrick McGoohan’s magnum opus. Meanwhile, the occasional early years Bleach episode review will be my fall back while putting together other reviews.

Something that amuses me is how I go through phases of being interested in various things. My current fad is finding worthwhile anime amongst all the dross out there. It is already waning, but like every other interest of mine it won’t completely disappear. I still like building model aircraft, shooting guns, collecting good literature, watching foreign films, and photography. All are past phases that I got into heavily for a period.

One that is fading greatly is video gaming. That used to be one of my main ways of killing time due to my health, but it just doesn’t appeal much to me anymore. I find myself purchasing bargain games at very low price via online sales, starting the games… and never finishing them. It isn’t that they are bad games, in fact they are very good ones. They simply do not attract me anymore.

Part of it may be me slowly ramping the writing up and the time that consumes. Maybe I am just getting old.

Back to writing…

Back Up Your Data!

There is no fun quite like that of dealing with an older PC that won’t run correctly. A myriad of possible problems present themselves before a diagnosis can be made and all of them require significant time to test. So my day is blown as I’ve been dealing with my father’s balky PC.

Thankfully, Knoppix boot DVD’s and CD’s allow one to poke into everything possible and after hours of CHKDSK follies I found the problem.

Sadly, the boot drive has developed bad sectors and Windows XP is unusable. Fortunately, the backup utility I installed on it to silently back things up has archives from a month ago before running out of space on the second drive. A month’s amount of data is lost and I need to see if the trial version of Acronis TrueImage will restore it when we get a new drive.

Of course my father hasn’t backed up any of his documents, so I’m shutting the thing down to prevent further data loss. This is why backups are a must.

I just wish I’d paid more attention to where he stood on backups. It will be questionable whether the last month’s data can be salvaged.

Health 8-16-2011

I’m writing this just before doing weight training, something I haven’t done in months. It has been a torturous year of health problems and every goal I set was obliterated before I could make any headway.

The Ames Straw Poll was a good day for me. Somehow I managed to pace myself perfectly for once and made it through amazingly well. Sunday was better than expected with Monday only being a let down because I got over ambitious with my plans. 

Food grad H2O2 is something I think I will be trying out soon. Having a set back in weight loss due to many upper respiratory infections has caused me to consider detoxifying. It has been a thought for some time but a series of discussions on the bus Saturday makes me want to do something now.

In the past year I’ve discovered the healing powers of Vasoline for various skin problems. As an experiment, I tried it out on the worst of my sunburns from Saturday and they are fading faster than the burns I didn’t treat. Of course I’ve been avoiding the sun to aid the process, but that’s what I always do. So far so good and I’ve expanded to the burns on my neck, face, and ears. They’d already begun peeling a little in spots.

Weight loss is going to be my priority again. Hopefully I can get the digestive track to work properly again. The pains I’d had since July have moved downward and are lessoning. Waiting it out seems to be paying off.

Updated:

That felt good – psychologically speaking. Weights went surprisingly well with only a ten pound reduction in the more difficult routines. The rest were at my normal maximum and no shortened sets.

Observations about the 2011 Ames Straw Poll

Once again, the Ames Straw Poll reminded me of a state fair. The atmosphere and layout contributed greatly to this, but the crowds even more so. It is the cheapest state fair you’ll ever go to because all the food is free and so are the goodies.

My father and I took a roundabout way of getting to Ames. We headed up to the Twin Cities and stayed overnight at a friend’s house to catch a bus in the early hours. To our surprise, our host had purchased a ride too and some of his local friends were coming as well.

The bus load was made up of various groups who pooled their resource to rent the coach. Voices of Conservative Women, FairTax supporters (that’s us), and a bunch of Tea Party members filled the bus. Or as we described ourselves, “terrorists and hobbits.”

While I though I’d catch some Z’s on the way down, it didn’t work out that way. We were all having too much fun meeting each other and discussing politics, economics, and current events. Debates over candidates and issues were the norm with everybody in a good mood despite the dire situation our country is in.

Once we got to Ames, I switched into two modes: photographer and analyzing the ground game of the campaigns. The latter isn’t something I can stop myself from doing, so political doings are different for me than most political activists. The first thing rapidly got me separated from everyone I came with so I was on my own.

On the way in the Ron Paul and Rick Santorum signs alternated along the road. Signs don’t mean as much as people think in attracting votes, but they do show who is organized and aggressive. As I wandered the campus, it became relatively easy to identify which campaigns were the best organized. I rated them in this order:

1. Michelle Bachmann

2. Ron Paul

3. Tim Pawlenty

4. Rick Santorum

5. Herman Cain

6. Thaddeus McCotter

Which were the only serious presences with a few hopeless candidates running out of delusions of grandeur.

You may notice something familiar about that top five. Yep, that’s the poll results. So I wasn’t surprised when I heard the results, though I’d wished for better for Cain. Rick Perry came in sixth on write-in votes and McCotter was dead last in tenth. At least he had good ice cream.

The Ames Straw Poll is won by the candidate who busses in the most votes. Seriously, that is the truth of the matter. There are local voters who do come in, but it always boils down to organization.

So does the Ames Straw Poll really matter?

That’s the big question right now. Mitt Romney is the front runner and he didn’t bother to show up. Rick Perry entered the race and immediately went to number two without being there. So what point is there to having the Ames Straw Poll?

To me, it has less to do with selecting a candidate and more with getting the public exposed to the candidates. Sadly, it takes a spectacle to get the attention of the masses, therefore a media circus is needed. Yes, needed. So I’ll ding points off of Romney and Perry for skipping the event.

The media circus part of the whole thing is entertaining to watch in operation. The last thing I expected was being interviewed on camera twice. A pretty young woman came up to me while I was sitting and resting in the shade at Cain’s tent. She took me by surprise and it was only afterward that I realized I’d misheard her question. So I feel bad that she thought I had voted in the Straw Poll.

But I stand by what I said about Herman Cain. We need somebody with business experience right now, somebody who has turned a big organization around. Cain did that with Godfathers Pizza in a highly competitive and saturated market. His degrees and experience also impress me greatly. His biggest asset is he connects well with every day people and isn’t playing the elitist game. Well, that and not being a career politician. He’s authentic which isn’t something I can say about the top candidates.

The second interview was fare more interesting since it had push polling style questions based around Bilderberg conspiracy points. The fact that they were couched as questions about Rick Perry’s entering the race was fascinating. Meeting with Bilderberg types to raise money was one of the questions and the other was about the Logan Act, which I wasn’t familiar with.

Having since researched that law, I do find it a pity it isn’t enforced. But treason hasn’t been either and it is a kissing cousin to that. Basically, citizens who aren’t authorized agents of the federal government shouldn’t be meeting with foreign officials and trying to do deals. Jimmy Carter messed with Clinton that way and Jesse Jackson with Reagan. It is clearly wrong.

Even so, I don’t see any one world order conspiracy going on. It is just another candidate looking for money and trying to burnish nonexistent foreign policy credentials.

Perry being pro-amnesty and a former state campaign head for Al Gore in 1988 are tip of the iceberg problems for me. If the Republican rank and file forgive him for his various liberal positions, he is going to give Romney quite a run for the money. That’s basically what I told the two young men and I’m curious if that video will every show up anywhere.

So what do I think of Bachmann’s win?  Not much, actually. She’s already showing signs of poor decision making and not having much depth. Her vanity will probably be her undoing and Sunday’s events in Iowa showed Perry stealing support from her. He’s much slicker and more personable, while she acts like a Hollywood star. Not a good thing this election cycle.

Ron Paul won’t got anywhere, of course. His supporters will try to pack the caucuses here in Minnesota and other states, so there will be grief to be had yet.

I don’t feel sad for Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out on Sunday. Too much of his vision for the future was focused on running for President when he simply didn’t have what it takes to appeal to voters outside of Minnesota. He really should be running in the Senate race against Klochubar and I hope he does.

On a more personal note, I survived Saturday better than expected. That is despite a bad sunburn. If only I had gone to the green energy lobby’s tent first and found the free sunscreen…

The bus ride home was slightly quieter as some of us tried to rest here and there. Still, the company was fun and conversations kept going. I met some good people and am glad I went.

I hope to do it again in eight years.

Photos can be found in my other posts on Ames:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 5

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

My favorite thing at the FairTax tent was the custom painted motorcycle.

As the afternoon progressed, a lot of us at the Straw Poll were getting tired. While I’d paced myself because of my bad health, others were finally wilting. Even members of the news media took their chance at some downtime in the shade.

Voices of Conservative Women cleverly chalked amusing messages on the steps of the Hilton Coliseum. What a great way of advertising their tent.

While passing through AARP’s tent on different occasions, I caught parts of Bachmann’s and Pawlenty’s speeches. Tim’s was dull and Michelle’s was irritatingly obsessed with identifying herself as a native Iowan. Neither impressed.

Abe Lincoln was in the audience and probably thinking he could teach those whipper snappers something about making speeches. For some reason I wasn’t surprised finding somebody born in 1909 in the AARP tent.

One.org had a tent in the midst of the Paul tents. They are a charity mainly focused on food and medical aid to Africa. Bono of the band U2 is one of the cofounders and from his lobbying knows that conservatives give a lot to charity, so that explains their presence. They got a lot of traffic from what I witnessed.

This gave me a laugh. Pointed satire at its best.

My father thinks this was the best band out of all that played at the Straw Poll. They were pretty good.

Most of the tents in this picture are part of the Paul campaign. I met a young Mexican national who was a volunteer which surprised me. Before I could ask him about it, I was queried by another young man looking for the FairTax tent and had to direct him. Never did find out the story behind his involvement.

Strong America Now is a political group devoted to opposing increased taxes and also advocates a program to reduce wasteful spending. Their tent was very large and I didn’t explore it as much as I should have.

The first and only Gadsden flag I saw outside of a vendor. Normally something you saw at Tea Party rallies the past two years, this turned out to be an unusual sight at Ames.

A random accordion player appeared. Like the girl in the yellow shirt, I found the accordion fascinating when I was little.

As the day grew long, the lines at Santorum’s tents began to shrink and I finally could see their signup table. I was surprised at the size of his effort.

To complete the state fair atmosphere, the Bachmann camp had people swinging away trying to ring the bell.

Herman Cain’s supporters march to the coliseum for his speech.  Surprise! There’s my dad with the FairTax sign after having been drafted into the group. Turns out he got to be right in front of the podium for Cain’s excellent speech.

The last photo I took before I was too tired to continue only tells part of a story. Bachmann made a big show of going in to vote and the media swarmed to record it. Then the boos began and the Ron Paul supporters got ugly like they always do. They tried to shout her down and basically blew the good will they’d scored with me through the day. It was a classless act by them.

So ended my photo tour of the Straw Poll on a sour note. That wasn’t my intent, but that’s how things go. I’ll collate my thoughts and analysis in another post.

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 4

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Also on the bus down to Ames were women from Voices of Conservative Women. Their tent was across the sidewalk from the FairTax tent and they were fundraising by selling kernels of corn that you could dump into a jar labeled with your favorite candidate.

Also in the tent were some other conservative women’s groups and they had very heavy traffic. This is something I would call “the Sarah Palin” effect as I’ve noticed just how many women have become involved in tea parties and politics since 2008.

Behind the Tea Party stage, the Georgians for FairTax had a small tent. It wasn’t a good location and was also hurt by the poor attendance at the Tea Party stage.

Save Our American Republic suffered the same fate. They are a 9-12 Project associated group in Iowa.

AARP had a big tent full of chairs, tables, wicker couches, and television screens of C-SPAN covering the speeches. They also had a somewhat scary inflatable Uncle Sam out front. To the ire of of one of my bus mates, the pro-Obamacare organization had a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan you could have your picture taken with.

You couldn’t escape the energy lobby anywhere you went. These signs were all over the walkways.

The bus the energy lobby had was next to the misting fans so popular with children. People who signed up to ride this bus in were given a tote bag of freebies including a digital camera. All they had to to do was watch a half hour presentation in return. Amazing how much money was put into this lobbying effort.

The Ron Paul tents covered a considerable area and his red shirts could be seen everywhere. They really thought they could win the poll and catapult him into the lead. Compared to four years ago, the Paulians were much better behaved.

This massive outdoor screen was erected by the energy lobby. Their efforts were on a par with any of the presidential campaigns present.

This spectacle caught the corner of my eye. While I saw more than a few Rick Perry stickers on people, the draft Sarah Palin lobby were few and far between.

Another micro-candidate I’d never heard of and I can’t remember how his name ends. The wind was a constant foe for taking pictures of banners, but a welcome friend cooling us off. It doesn’t really matter, he’s not going to be the nominee.

Here is one line for free food extending for a long distance. You can glimpse another parallel line on the right going to a different food tent. Half an hour or more was the typical wait.

Obamacare borders on being a four letter word these days. Though the recent 11th Circuit court ruling makes it more likely it will be overturned, people aren’t resting.

Anti-war and anti-taxes is what the Paul supporters are all about. And by no taxes, I mean NO taxation at all. They are much closer to being anarchists than libertarians in what they say, but the behavior is more disturbing. Glassy eyed fanatics worshiping Doctor Ron is how I’ve heard them described and I have to agree. A friend of mine remarked on how they reminded him of brown shirts in 1930’s Germany. Another four years ago made a similar comparison.

Inside the green energy lobby’s air conditioned tent there was free kettle popcorn to be had. While I di partake of that, the solar powered race car was far more interesting. Built for $150,000 it hit top speeds of over 70 mph with the potential to hit higher. It is retired and being replaced by a new smaller one to meet new government regulations.

A marching band was present in the afternoon and I have no idea who they were affiliated with. It used to be you always had marching bands at political rallies, but that is a thing of yesteryear. It was nice to see and hear them.

A small band of devoted Sarah Palin fans getting organized. They fanned out to circulate in the crowds shortly after this was taken.

Michelle Bachmann heading to the coliseum to give her candidate speech. I nearly got run over while taking this picture. Not by golf carts with security, but by photographers and video camera people from the media. I had no idea they could run so fast with heavy equipment like that outside of a war zone.

To be continued…

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 3

Volume 1

Volume 2

On the bus there was talk of Pawlenty being given a terrible location near the entrance. The moment the Famous Dave’s BBQ signs were visible any disadvantage was gone. It was a brilliant move to have them cater and it made the tents a big draw.

The lines to get in were lengthy and from what I could see were as heavily trafficked as any candidate’s tents.

Most of the candidates had big stages for bands to play music. This was a change from last time when only Romney and Huckabee did.

What, Dairy Queen too? That’s a killer one two punch of free food. Sadly for Pawlenty free food did not buy votes.

I really liked the design for the FairTax signs. They stood out amongst all the others.

It seems like quite a few organizations were giving away iPad 2’s. While I don’t know how many entered the drawing, the FairTax petition got 3000 signatures on Saturday. That was a huge success for us.

There were a lot of people at the Straw Poll and that added to the state fair feel of the occasion.

Finally found my father and his friend Ed coming out of the Cain area. I wouldn’t see them again for hours.

The Iowa Republican Soapbox was an interesting collaboration with Google to stream interviews with candidates and attendees on the Net. They also gave away an iPad 2. The videos are still up at their web site and youTube channel.

A staggering amount of people attended. At least I was staggering…

On the bus we had an activist going to protest against wind turbines due to a project up by the Twin Cities. She was hopeful we would write anti-wind power slogans on the blade. I found a whopping one and it was a call to build more nuclear plants. Alternative energy is the touchy feely fad of the moment and it is in full swing.

To be continued…