Yes, this has to do with Prop 8. If you don’t like that, don’t watch it. However, I believe it is a very powerful commentary on the state of the world today and how hypocritical the actions of people can be.

While I have been thinking about going back to school, what I would do is still way up in the air. I’ve had a few thoughts.

1. Music. Ever since I started singing with Masterworks, going to rehearsals and using my ears has been again giving me the feeling like I’m missing out by not being a choir director. However, because of my personal beliefs public and non-religious private schools are really my only options, and I still have my qualms about the state of public schooling. Still, I do feel like I’m missing out, and going back to school to finish a few random requirements and do my student teaching would be a short way into a new career path.
2. Computers. I’m not sure about this one. I do enjoy working on computers, but my knowledge is definitely full of holes and I’m not sure if I have the personal motivation to make programming full-time work, much less hobby work. I think I may let this idea sit, and try to get my weather app out the door for iPhone… if I have any sort of success with that, it may make me feel a bit more positive on this career path. This would probably involve going back for 2-3 years for a second bachelors’ degree.
3. Law. This one might surprise some of you, but I have been considering going to law school. I don’t think I’d make a good trial lawyer, as I’m not really quick on my feet or eloquent in my speech, but I think I might be good at administrative and constitutional law and working behind-the-scenes on cases. The idea of being a judge also appeals to me. This would involve a couple of years of law school, and unlike the other options would require me to go to Lincoln; I wouldn’t be able to do this here in Omaha unless I went to Creighton, which would cost me two and a half times as much, and would likely be much more highly selective. The biggest thing for me, though, is that in the world we live in, I feel like being a lawyer is the best way I can make a difference for the better, because only through the law can things be fundamentally changed.

The people that read this are the people that know me best, and I’d appreciate your opinions and insight, if you have any to give.

StudioMan is at a dead stop, again. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, I re-imagine the way it should work. I have trouble envisioning a user interface that’s clean, yet has a place for all the information that I need it to display.

WeatherMan is at the opposite end of the spectrum. I know exactly how I want the interface to look and act, but the implementation is what is killing me. I haven’t really been able to wrap my head around the iPhone’s UI framework yet, and on top of that the damn NWS internet weather feed is still borked. My tax dollars hard at work.

And then there’s CocoNES. I think that this is the project that seems the most appealing to me, likely because out of the three it’s the one I consider most a hobby. It’s also the one that’s been the hardest to work on, because after working all night, and then not getting enough sleep during the day, trying to wrap my head around how to implement hardware in software just makes my brain melt.

I know I can’t be the only one out there with these issues… How do you keep the motivation going?

Is this the week Mats Sundin decides where he’s going to play?

Sweet mother of hockey pucks, we really hope so. We haven’t slept a wink since the start of the season, waiting for the big guy to bring down word from Mount Olympus on where he will suit up for the rest of the season. I just hope there’s enough space on the World Wide Web to fully honor Sundin’s decision when it happens. Just wondering whether the announcement will come in the form of smoke signals, a la the Vatican? No doubt network television programming will be interrupted to acknowledge the moment. Years from now, people will reminisce, “Where were you when Mats made his decision?” No doubt Sweden will be minting a new postage stamp to honor the event. We just hope the anticipation doesn’t cause hockey fans and writers to spontaneously combust before it happens.

The sad part is, with a clean OS installed and nothing else running, Vista 64 takes up 1.12GB of memory. Good thing I added that pair of 1GB sticks.

This really hurts on my Vista 32 machine with 2GB of RAM.

So, I just ordered a 64-bit media from Microsoft and another couple of 1GB sticks… hopefully that will speed things up a bit. It sounds like driver and application support for Vista 64 is close to parity with Vista 32, so hopefully I won’t have any issues with that.

Blizzard really did a good job with this one. The environments and storylines are very well put together, and they seem to have been much more prepared for this than they were for the last expansion; realm stability is very good and bugs seem to be few and far between.

Although at the moment I am taking the time to write this post as I am unable to get connected to my realm. Oh well.

We’ll see how it goes the next couple of days.

We starting seeing it when Bush took office (at least in our political lifetime… I’m sure the term came up before then). “Activist judges.” Our current administration tries to make us believe that these so-called activist judges are evil, and they are to the detriment of society, because they go against the will of the electorate.

I’ll admit, I used to share that opinion, but now I realize that the role of an independent judiciary is to protect the minority from the majority rule. I find this especially important in California, where the supreme state legal document can be amended by simple majority vote. 50.1% of people in California get to make the final decision about how 100% of people should live their lives? Seriously?

Just look back at the past. How would the African-American civil rights battle have turned out without the intervention of the courts? Can you imagine what society would have been like if Brown v. Board of Education had never happened? We certainly would not have just elected the first African-American president. One might argue that shifting public opinion would have caused change in the legislative branch, but I hold that, especially on such a hot-button issue, legislators would have only taken it just far enough to get re-elected, and would never have made the all-encompassing statement that the Supreme Court did.

Thankfully the framers of the US constitution saw the possibility of abuse such as what is occuring in California right now, and not only made the judiciary as independent of politics as possible (life terms, non-elected), but designed the constitution to be changeable only in the most dire of circumstances, requiring a two-thirds vote of both houses and the approval of the legislatures of 38 states. I would not be opposed to federal ballot initiatives, but at the constitutional level? That’s just calling for a crisis, which is exactly what is about to happen in California.

I just hope those “activist” judges remember their purpose. Protect the minority.