Until this election, I’ve never voted.  Some reasons for never voting include that I don’t believe that my voice is heard.  I.E. the Electoral College which is way over due to be dismantled.  I’ve got to admit the truth that to me, it never really mattered that much.  It seems that the person elected is the one who has the most money, etc.  In the end, I don’t believe that the choices the elected officials make are made for the betterment of society.  How can it with political action committees, etc. lining the pockets of these officials?

So, the year I finally decide to vote, I’m given some tough choices.  Do I favor risking going back to the time when it was illegal to have an abortion?  How deeply do I want the church to be involved in the state?  Do I believe that what’s offered is any different than what’s in office today?  Or, do I vote for an unknown, who gathered an unheard amount of money with knows what sort of strings attached?  I’m also concerned with his ties to his old church.  How can someone who says they are closely tied to their church not deep down have similar beliefs to the views of their minister?

With both parties preaching and wanting to tie federal money to churches I question just how they plan to maintain the separation of church and state.  I do think that churches are a valuable part of society.  I think that they can do good things for those less fortunate.  That said, today most of what I see is churches taking in money, building grand buildings, and doing things for their own congregation.  What I don’t see as much is the local outreach.

As I watch things moving forward, I see the cabinet members being chosen and yes, I’m jaded but here comes the first round of favors being called in.

The new administration is also going to face the 2010 census.  How will we as a society handle the changing demographics?  What sort of games will get played to get the results that the strongest party wants to hear?

Today was quite an early and long day.  Yes, I was up at 04:30 this morning.  I had to catch a flight out of BWI at 8:00 to San Francisco.  I arrived just before 11:00 PST.  I think that they are shrinking the seats because the other option is I’m growing and that’s not an acceptable answer.

When I got to San Francisco, my bag was pretty much destroyed.  I was quite surprised that United gave me a brand new bag without much fuss.  All I had to do was fill out some very basic paperwork.

I’ve been toying with renting a car in San Francisco.  I really would only be able to use it today and on Tuesday when I need to head back to the airport.  I decided that it was not worth the hassle and I’m really pressed for time on my way home.  I.E. the meeting is supposed to let out at 5 p.m. or so In San Jose and my flight leaves at 8 p.m. from San Francisco.  In a perfect world, it’s a 50 minute commute.  My guess is it’s going to take me quite a bit longer given it’s rush.  I’m hoping that the cab knows a better route.  I say cab but what I really mean is a Limo.  It’s actually cheaper for me to take a Limo than it was taking the cab from the airport to the hotel.  The cab was $130 and the Limo is going to be $110.

I spent the day at the Great Mall.  I went and seen the movie “Bangkok Dangerous”.  It was ok, more of a DVD rental not a first run expensive movie ticket.  I ended the day having dinner at Outback Steakhouse.

I’m here for a Cisco briefing.  The group of companies represent Cisco’s more complex installations.  In our case, we’ve got one of the more complex IVR installations.  The day starts at 7:30 and runs until 10 p.m.  The last part of the day is a Docent tour of the Computer History Museum.   Tuesday starts at 7:30 and runs until 5 p.m.  I’m not staying for the dinner.  My goal is to catch a 8 p.m. flight out of San Francisco to Los Angeles.  I have a 10:30 p.m. flight out of Los Angeles to BWI.  I get home around 6:30 a.m.  It’s going to suck and I’m going to be burned out by the time I get home.

I woke up this morning and tried to figure out just want to do as a family. We seem to always end up at some sort of mall or shopping center. What could I find that would be fun for the kids and maybe even include a bit of education? You’d think that living in the Baltimore/Washington coridor, we’d never run out of exciting things to do. We just don’t seem to do them. It’s time to (re)discover our area. Well, after a lot of brain drain, I came up with a trip to Port Discovery. Port Discovery is a Children’s Museum in Baltimore MD. At $11.75 per person 2 and older, it’s sort of pricey. In our case, a family of six costs $70.50. So, we decided to take another route and get a yearly membership for $125. The additional $54.50 allows us to visit other Children’s Museum’s that belong to the “Association of Children’s Museums“. This is over 150 children’s museums in the US and Canada. One of the museum’s is located in Annapolis, MD. Jonathan love’s visiting it. There is also another one in Tampa Fl. Between those two, we’ll get our monies worth.

Today’s outing was a lot of fun for the whole family. Thumbs up rating for this one.

After having Netflix for over a year, I finally dropped it.  In that time, three movies that were returned never made it back to NetFlix.  The second problem was we’re just not watching them nightly.  I.E. I’d get a movie in the mail and it would sit for a week before we’d get around to watching it.

Roll the clock forward and I’ve decided to try out the RedBox.  It’s $1 per movie per night.  That said, I was paying almost $20 to NetFlix to have 3 movies out at a time.  I don’t think that in any month we received 15 movies so it seems that the RedBox solution is cheaper.  NetFlix has a huge selection of movies.  RedBox is very limited to very current films (maybe 100 or so).  I’m going to guess that a hybrid solution, I.E. getting a limited NetFlix like plan for say $5 per month allowing for one movie out at a time and use RedBox is the right mix.

Welcome to my blog. I hope that I can give you some insight into my life and who I am.