Shouzer

Eight years ago, I distinctly remember making an argument that, while his qualifications were meager in comparison to Al Gore, George W. Bush would make a good presidential choice. After all, his father was a former president, he had Colin Powell on his side, and he ran with a well-publicized inner-circle of strategists, experts, political leaders. Surely, this team would not fail.

I was wrong.

And I won’t be fooled again. Sarah Palin has given an opinion, spoken, writen or otherwise, about the war in Iraq, how to fix the economy, or international relations. She is going to need a gigantic team of advisers feeding her every line in every speech and in every town hall and in every debate. She is not ready to lead, and I highly doubt she will ever be ready to lead. The candidates themselves must be ready to govern the country and represent it in world affairs, not a committee of party insiders. It doesn’t work. The past eight years have proven is doesn’t work.

And a word of advice, if you happen to be a community organizer, I guess you should just quit your job and go the unemployment line. What a laughable role in this country you have! You deserve no respect.

I want to warn everybody that this post is a sort of random, stream of thought rant…  With that out of the way, here goes.

I’m sitting here watching Rudy Giuliani talk at the RNC as I type.  What it makes me realize is that I can’t stand the Republican party whatsoever these days.  Scott mentioned below that we’re raised to hate the opposing party, and I think that’s true to an extent.  But it’s the Republican’s hypocritical divisiveness that makes me dislike them.  Most of his speech has been bashing Obama and his “lack of experience”, yet he’s going to be followed by Sarah Palin who has about 20 months experience as the governor of Alaska.

He’s talking about how Obama wants to expand the government, but forgets to mention that his party created the Department of Homeland Security, his party created the national ID, his party is for warrantless wiretaps.  More government, more government, more government.

Giuliani talked a bit about how McCain wants to lower taxes to stimulate the economy.  He’s somehow forgotten how well that went when Bush did it.  The economy is doing pitifully, and the national debt is the worst it’s ever been.

Oh, now he’s talking about the “executive experience” that Sarah Palin has; she’s got more than the democratic ticket combined.  Yeah, because the mayor of a town of 5000 really has to make some tough decisions.  Fuck, the president of most universities deals with more people.  Oh yeah, then there was her 20 months as governor of Alaska.  The entire state has a population of like 600,000.  Woohoo!  Yeah!  Sorry, that’s not very impressive when I live 15 miles from Seattle, which has a larger urban population all by itself.  I don’t consider the mayor of Seattle as a viable candidate for president.  I doubt he does, either.  Yet McCain’s focus thusfar has been how “unqualified” Obama is.

There’s always the fact that Obama is a “flip-flopper”.  What’s an example?  He said he’d accept public financing, then he changed his mind.  Right.  My guess is that when McCain got married, he made a promise to be faithful to his wife.  Then he cheated on her.  Talk about “flip-flopping”.  Talk about family values…

Now we get to listen to Sarah Palin.  She points out that Obama can give a whole speech about the war, but not mention the word victory.  Oh, I’m sorry you naive moron..  We haven’t achieved victory there.  Would you rather him lie to you, like Bush did?  You remember the “Mission Accomplished” sign?  That was a few years ago.  Then, only a year ago, we sent 30,000 new troops there.  Oh yeah, mission accomplished indeed.  It doesn’t sound like a victory to me.

I could go on and on, but it just depresses me that people can actually stand this shit.

Last weekend, I went on my biggest meetup yet. I went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the camping and outdoors group. I have to be honest, I was pretty scared about going on a trip of that magnitude with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I figured it was pretty similar to going diving or on a day tour or something.

I left after work Friday, carpooling with two people I met that afternoon. We stopped off in this cool little restaurant on the way up called Iva’s Chicken Dinners in Sterling Michigan. It was hillbilly classy, and I liked it a lot. It was nice to take in some culture on the trip.

We got to the cabin around 1am after getting lost a few times. One of the guys in the group had opened up his family cabin for us to stay it. It was a pretty nice place, though it didn’t have electricity and the toilet didn’t flush. I met all of the people I would spending the weekend with at that time, and I was way too tired to make much conversation. I was also pretty nervous too.

Saturday we went to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. We hiked for a bit and went to the beach. Then, we took a boat ride to see the pictured rocks. Afterward, we went to this local restaurant called the Bear Trap to sample the local specialty, the pasty. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I ate one on Monday morning, though, so it’s ok.

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. We chilled around the cabin and the river it was on, and took a brief trip to a fresh water spring which had crystal clear water. Then, we had a nice campfire in the evening.

Monday was just driving back home. Michigan opens the bridge between the UP and the lower part of the state on Labor day for people to walk across it. My car decided to go on home, but a few people from the group did the walk. I never did understand the novelty of walking across a bridge, but whatever.

The highlight of the weekend was easily the people I was with. They were an incredibly interesting and diverse bunch. I really enjoy meeting people outside the usual circle of engineers at GM.

When I moved here, I knew that making friends would be tough so I tried to look at the problem as an adventure. I would honestly say that it is a bigger challenge for me than learning to live in a foreign country. I have come to appreciate other people a lot more in this journey, though. I have found that almost everyone I meet has something interesting to say, and it is fun “exploring” them in conversation to learn more about their lives. I think I have also become much more sociable as well, but much of that change happened in Prague and Bangkok.

I still haven’t made a lot of friends here, but I am enjoying the process of finding them a lot more now.

I am writing this in response to Jared’s News Bits post. As you can imagine, I have a lot to say about this topic as I have lots of friends in that city. Normally, I’d put this in a comment, but it’s probably going to be pretty long. I thought it deserved its own post.

Jared already linked you to a news article about the situation so I’m not going to repeat that, but I think it’s worth giving my take on the situation. The group in control of the government right now, the People Power Party (PPP), is accused of coruption by the opposing political parties which have come together under a common banner under the name People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). About two years ago, the military ousted the Thai Rak Thai (Thai Love Thai) party, and then ruled the country under a military junta for about a year. The coup was supported by street demonstrations by the then newly-formed PAD group. The military and the PAD strongly believed that the Thai Rak Thai government was corrupt and had come to power by buying rural votes. Now, the PAD is making the same accusation against the PPP as well as claiming that the PPP is merely a puppet of the dismantled Thai Rak Thai and its leader, Thaksin Shinawatra. This time, however, the military is refusing to intervene in the conflict, stating that another coup would be bad for the country. The PAD is refusing to back down until the PPP is removed from power, and they have mobilized many unions, particularly in the transportation sector, around the country to cripple its infrastructure.

Judging from what I saw in Bangkok, I would say it is extremely believable that the PPP is corrupt. There were physical signs of corruption all around Bangkok such as decades-old half-completed highways that were never completed because someone stole the money that was budgeted to build them. However, it is hard to see what the PAD truly hopes to accomplish. The PPP maintains strong popularity in rural Thailand, and they would probably win again if another election was held today. Presumably, then, the PAD is advocating for some sort of non-democratic government; ironic considering their name.

I find shocking similarity to our own government situation. We, too, have a party in power that is largely supported by rural voters and hated by the urban citizens. We, too, have large protests that turned violent (at the Republican National Convention). I think the biggest difference is toppling the government is seen as a viable option in Thailand because it is how they have historical dealt with political problems as a country. In the US, we had the good fortune of having forefathers who fought for revolution and then turned around and created a strong central government. That is an amazing feat when you compare the US to other democratic upstarts around the globe.

I look at the PAD with a certain amount of admiration. I question their end goal, but at least they care enough to fight for their country and do something. My personal apathy is truly appalling. I’m not suggesting when should start a sit-in at the White House demanding the impeachment of Bush, but maybe a little revolution would be healthy in our country. Our human nature as Americans is not better than that of the Thais. The only thing separating us is a historic precedent.

I was chatting with a certain friend of mine in Bangkok following the government declaration of the state of emergency yesterday, and she brought a fresh perspective that amazed me. I asked her which side she supported, and she answered “I am Thai. Everyone is Thai.” I realized today that this viewpoint has been completely eliminated from the American discourse. We are programmed to divide along party lines. One either supports the left or the right. The only other option is to support neither and hate both, a category I find myself in. The never-ending criticism constantly fueling the fires of negativity, insisting that we hate the opposing party. I hear so much of it that it makes me hate them both.

Somewhere that fourth choice of sorrowful disagreement has been lost in the haze. When two brothers fight, a strong family grieves for the lost love and urges reconciliation. They do not stoop to the level of the combatants and join the fray. Obviously, criticism is both necessary and healthy, but perhaps we take it too far and inadvertently add division and destruction to the American political arena. Perhaps instead, our refrain should be, “I am American. Everyone is American.”

You’ve got to admit, it would be kind of cool to be able to tell people that you were in one of these planes.  They weren’t really that close to colliding, but they were close enough that they had to take evasive actions.  Then again, I don’t know how soon after that I’d feel like flying over the open ocean…

It’s pretty strange to see things like this, knowing that Scott was there just a few months ago. I honestly haven’t kept up on world news like I probably should have recently, so I don’t know too much about what’s going on.  It sounds to me like there’s people who feel that the current government is really just a proxy for the previous government, which was ousted a few years ago.  Yeah, that would seem to defeat the purpose.

Next up is Google Chrome.  Apparently Google doesn’t think that we have enough browsers between Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, and whatever else is out there.  They’d rather have their own.  Honestly, I think that’s pretty silly.  Who knows, maybe it’ll be the greatest thing ever, but I doubt it.  Wouldn’t their time be better spent investing in Firefox, which is itself an open source browser?  Hell, they already employ Ben Goodger, who used to be the lead dev on Firefox.

Lastly, I thought this story about the credit card companies and Mythbusters was pretty weak.  Basically, the Mythbusters were going to do a show about RFID hacking, and Visa/Mastercard/AMEX shut them down.  How about instead of trying to hide security flaws, you just fix them?

Chad Johnson legally changed his name to Chad Javon Ocho Cinco.  I don’t care what anyone says, that’s just awesome.  Still, I hope that he gets back to focusing on the Bengals a bit this year, after some of the stuff that went on this offseason.

I’m having trouble formulating this thought into words and sentences in my head, so the following could be a mess.

What’s so wrong about voting for someone who appears to be smarter than you? Better yet, should that not be our collective mission? When electing someone to public office, especially that of the executive branch, I’m quite certain that it is in my best interest to mark the box next to the name of the person who is least likely to be at the same aptitude level as my friends and neighbors. I want someone who is overly intelligent, whose education far exceeds my own, who, when faced with a decision that affects the lives of millions, would be better equipped than me to lead in the right direction.

Nevertheless, popular opinion seems to reflect that this is not something to be desired in running for office. That “aw shux,” “just one of the guys” act was probably one of the biggest reasons that our current president was elected over either of his opponents. How has that worked out? Again, what is the appeal? When one candidate attacks another for being “elitist,” that should be almost a backhanded compliment. “Thank you very much, yes, I do consider myself to be well-educated, and knowledgeable about many things in which you are not.”

That is my thought for the day. If presidential decisions were easy enough to be made by the guy whose locker was next to mine in high school, then the framers of the constitution probably wouldn’t have been so concerned about it. But things are not that way. One of our candidates has graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law, was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, has over a decade of experience in Chicago politics and the U.S. Senate, and picked a VP mate who has been in the Senate for over 35 years, heading up multiple committees. Those two men are WAY more equipped than me to do almost anything. But that makes them the lesser candidates, according to some… I just don’t get it.

Over the weekend, Obama announced that he had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is an experienced, six term senator from Delaware, currently serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You’d think that’d be a good thing, right?

No, apparently in politics it underscores the fact that Obama isn’t ready to be president.  Why else would he have chosen somebody who had so much more experience than him?  Oh, it also shows that Obama can’t deal with other countries.  That’s why he needed somebody with Biden’s experience in foreign relations.  Mmmhmm.  That’s how it works.

Obama’s selection couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he believed Biden might be the right person for the job.  No, of course not.  Realistically, he probably could have picked somebody who would deliver more votes (ala Edwards).  Instead, it looks like he focused on choosing somebody that deserved to be vice-president (that should not be taken as a shot against Edwards).

This is why politics is stupid.  Rather than focusing on who Biden is and what he brings to the table, everybody’s analyzing the choice and coming to dumbass conclusions.  What a waste.

I got a sweet bonus last week (I suppose all bonuses likely fall into that category), and like any good American consumer, I decided to spend a portion of it on stuff I don’t really need.  And, like any good American man, I decided to upgrade my home theater system (i.e. TV speakers just don’t cut it).

First on the short list was a decent receiver.  I went with an Onkyo TX-SR606.  It’s nothing super fancy, but it does a few things that were very important for me:

1. It has four HDMI inputs
2. It upconverts all my video and passes it out through one single HDMI to my TV
3. It supports 7.1 sound
4. It decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD

Next up were the speakers.  I got the Definitive ProCinema 800 set, which is (only) a 5.1 set.  Originally I was looking for 7.1, but then I heard these at Magnolia and was thoroughly impressed.  According to CNET, they “redefined [their] expectations of what a small surround speaker system can do.”  I figure I can always buy two more later on, but I’d rather start with quality.

Unfortunately they’re not due here until Friday, but considering I got 0% interest until 2012, I’m willing to live with that.  I don’t seem to buy anything these days unless I get some 0% interest financing.  If they want to give me free money, I’ll take it.  Seriously, how can they afford that?

Oh, and of course I bought my speaker wire from Monoprice.com.  Nobody can beat them.  For real.  Nobody.

Anyway, it’s going to be awesome when I set this shit up and get some gaming in.  Nobody’ll be able to sneak up on me anymore when I’m playing CoD4.  Or, perhaps more importantly, I won’t be able to blame my deaths on that anymore… 

There’s something about the Olympics that I just love.  I don’t know what it is, but I really can’t get enough of the stuff.  Swimming, Volleyball, Track & Field, Basketball, whatever.  I love it all (with the obvious exception of speed walking and ribbon dancing :)).

While it’s all pretty impressive to watch, I think the single most impressive event for me is the still rings in men’s gymnastics.  The sheer amount of strength that takes is absolutely amazing.  I mean, I can do it, but I’m just surprised there’s so many other people who can, too.

Seriously, though, how weird would it be to win a gold medal, confirming that you’re the best in the world at what you do…only to have to return to work the next week?  I’ve read that a fair number of olympians suffer from depression after returning home, and I can definitely believe it.  One week you’re on top of the world, and the next you’re back at Home Depot.

I had some company up in Michigan last week. My sister was visiting during her vacation between finishing school and starting work. It was certainly nice to have someone to hang out with every night after work. I could probably get used to that.

We didn’t do too much exciting stuff except for eat out a lot. The highlight of that was probably The Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. I had been wanting to go, and it’s not exactly the type of place you can go with the guys from work. We ended up going the night she got her test results as a celebration dinner. The cheese and the chocolate course were fairly new to me, but the main course seemed like a combination of a Korean BBQ and a hot pot. All of the food was delicious though.

On Saturday, we hit up the Woodward Dream Cruise, which is kind of a big classic car show. People cruise down this main road in Detroit, and there are little fairs all along the way. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of classic cars there. It was very cool.

We also went over to Canada for a bit because it’s always nice to visit other countries. Windsor, the city just on the other side of the border, is a pretty boring place, unfortunately. They have a nice park down by the river though, and we just hung out there for a while.

The customs guard on the way back was the rudest I have ever encountered in my life, which I feel is saying a lot. This man was incensed by the very thought that we would want to visit Canada for the afternoon just to see it. He just couldn’t understand why we would want to go there just to hang out. Maybe he was trying to scare us into admitting we had crossed the border to pick up a stash of illegal prescription drugs. Maybe his wife decided she didn’t want to take his crap any more, and she left him that morning. Maybe he had to pee, and his break wasn’t for another hour. Maybe he was just a monster douche bag. All I know is, I never want to go across that border again.

I check up on Shouzer several times a day, and there has been no activity for almost 2 weeks. That makes me bored, and I suspect that the same holds true for whatever readers we do have. For me personally, I’ve been trying to come up with stories to write about, but I’m drawing a blank. Not much has happened over the last 2 weeks either. Life is settling into a groove, which is nice, but it is not conducive to story-telling.

There are some news articles that have come out recently that I feel are worth mentioning. The first is GM’s quarterly earning release, which is important to me. They lost $15.5 billion last quarter. Ouch. From what I’ve heard, my department won’t be going through any forced layoffs, despite a 20% company-wide reduction in salaried “expenses”. There will be a few people leaving my area through early retirement. I could go for some of that. I’d probably take it if I got the offer.

In much, much better news, the death toll in Iraq in July was at its lowest since 2003. It’s nice to hear some good news coming from that region after years of bad news. Honestly, I have become a bit numb to it. I am at the point where the news of a suicide bombing in Baghdad does little to pull my heartstrings. That is honestly a sad reflection on both me and the situation as a whole, I think.

The other big question I hear a lot is, What exactly do you do at GM? (I think it’s mostly my parents that ask me this.) Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure yet, but I am starting to get a grasp of it. I am a controls integration engineer on the 6 speed transmission platform. My group manages the releases of software for these transmissions, and troubleshoots any problems that come up. We are the go-between for the core software people, those who write the code, and the calibrators, those who test and tweak the code in the vehicles. I am mostly on the troubleshooting end of that spectrum.

For example, I am at a plant right now helping with a problem with the transmission output speed. We are getting some noise on the signal related to the sensor that is used to measure said speed. Lots of people from many different groups are involved in the troubleshooting process, but my group is spearheading the effort. It’s what we do. I have a few other responsibilities, including tracking CPU utilization on all of the software releases and handling serial data communication mismatches. Often, a test car will be put together with a hodgepodge of components. Sometimes, the controllers for these components are using different versions of the serial data protocol, and I have to sort that out. I haven’t done too much of this yet as I am not fully trained in this area, but it will become a big part of my job.

Yesterday, I went to a meetup for the Detroit International Social club. This meetup was as good as the first one was bad. I was blown away by how enjoyable that experience was.

12 people showed up to this Indian restaurant for dinner. We were there for about 2.5 hours, and the conversation never really lagged for this entire time. The food at this place was really good as well. Most of the people that sat near me had never been to one of these events before, and no one really seemed to know each other. That probably helped in allowing me to join in the conversation because there wasn’t a set, core group of people. And it was so nice to talk about something besides engineering for a night.

I would say the biggest downside to this group is that they only meet every other week. The lack of a core group could get old after a while as well because it sounds like a different set of people show up ever time. Still, I’m really excited that this went so well. I will definitely go back to their next event.

I had my advanced drivers training today that will allow me to drive on the proving grounds roads. It consisted of a lot of evasive driving techniques.

First, they put us in a high speed lane change situation. Basically, we had about 60 ft to change lanes at high speeds without touching the brakes. We’d drive down this little lane of cones with a wall of cones in front. The instructor would yell, “Left!” or “Right” and we would change to an unobstructed lane accordingly. It’s much harder than it sounds. The wall of cones is actually very close, and the car slides a bit when you change lanes. I actually lost control of it completely at 65 mph. It felt like the car was going to flip over.

We did a slalom course along with this test, but it was pretty uneventful.

Next was the low friction surface. They have a skid pad there that they spray with water to simulate ice and snow. We drove onto this skid pad and then immediately started sliding around. This was pretty fun. Basically, they were teaching us to regain control of a car with the back end fishtailing. My driving partner was pretty bad at this, unfortunately. I was in the back seat, and we did numerous donuts on this surface. The crazy part, though, was when the car returned to regular pavement and violently corrected itself. I was flying all over the place back there. Then, we did some ABS brake tests. They had us do 2 wheels on/2wheels off and then slam on the brakes. With no ABS, the car just spun like mad. With it, it was pretty well in a straight line. Lucky for me, my new car doesn’t have ABS, so I could be having some fun this winter.

The last test was stopping and maneuvering under a locked-brake condition. It was pretty bland compared to the other two. Nothing really worth writing about. We finished up by taking the car on and off the pavement at highway speeds to show what this is like in the real world.

Basically though, I had a blast doing this. I wish I could go out and do stuff like that every day.

In other news, I’m going to another meetup tonight. There are 13 people RSVPed to come. Hopefully more than one person will show up this time. I’d hate to be in another blind date type situation over dinner. That would far more awkward than the movie theater. On the other hand, it could result in a very good story.

Al came over to Motown last weekend to visit me. I’d have to say that I had a good time. It was nice having a visitor to hang out with.

On Friday night, we decided to go downtown to check out the awesomeness that is Detroit. I actually hadn’t been there since I was an intern 2 years ago so it was a bit of an experience for me as well. I printed off directions for the drive down there. We were to take I-96 to I-75, then get on I-375 before getting off downtown. We got to the exit for I-75 only to find that it no longer exists. They have completely closed I-96 and I-75 for a mile long stretch near the Canada border.

This would not have been such a big deal if they had bothered to properly guide us with detour signs. We were to take I-75 north, but when we got off the I-96, there were only signs for I-75 south to the left and forward. Al’s new GPS unit instructed us to detour through Canada, which just wasn’t an option as neither of us had our passports. I had to pull a u-turn right in front of the toll booths for the bridge to Canada. People weren’t too happy with me.

There was a guy standing there directing traffic or something. He gave us directions out of there, and Al’s GPS carried us the rest of the way. It was a nice little Friday night adventure.