Sawblade's speeches

This week at work I compressed our entire digital image archive into image files of a much more reasonable size to handle, backed the high quality ones onto DVDs, and at the same time entered 536 survey records into an Excel spreadsheet, all the time while listening to various songs on my playlist.  Who says men can't multi-task?

You know, it's ironic... at the end of this past school year, I was thinking I would only go back to Delaware if there was a job waiting for me. And I had a job lined up, involving a database conversion project that would require massive amounts of fixing-uppingage once the conversion took place. I figured it was a job that would be able to use my limited, although useful, programming expertise. The conversion was scheduled to take place July 1. But, as a result of some problems with the graphic design structure, it was delayed until July 15. Then, my boss realized she had vacation for 2 weeks starting, well, now! So it was delayed again until August 7 or so. So in the end, I would have 1 week to get done stuff I was going to have a month and a half to do. And now, an urgent project involving object inventorying has pushed the conversion back indefinitely. In the end, I was back doing a lot of manual changes to object records, same thing I've always done; essentially the "dirty work" that no one else wanted to do. While I have developed several short programs to assist in these changes, the work ended up being what I thought I had finally worked my way out of! I guess it shows that it doesn't pay to hold out for much, does it?

Is wisdom tooth extraction more invasive than regular tooth extraction? I was talking to a friend over IM yesterday who I haven't seen in about a year, and she said she had her wisdom teeth taken out and she looks like a puffy squirrel. I've had a tooth removed (in fact, sawed in two to get it removed), but I don't remember having swelling for a week. I just remember sticking my tongue around, realizing that I had this big hole in my mouth. I feel bad for her, and I can sort of relate, seeing as how much dental work I've had over the years. It brought back memories of when I first got braces, how it felt like I was being shot in the mouth just trying to bite into a muffin. Ouch!

I should state first that this post will be controversial, so if you are faint of heart, perhaps this is not the post for you to read.

I am so damn sick of Bush trying to pass an amendment to ban gay marriages. The message boards once again flare up with homophobic people saying, good for Bush for taking a Christian stand to ban these 'immoral' practices. I'm not sure who is worse; Bush trying to take away civil rights from people in this country, or the people that feel justified in viewing gay people as subhuman that want their rights taken away. Several posts made very wacko comments... one paraphrased example: `Ship them all off to some place like Rhode Island out of our hair.... no offense to all those great people from Rhode Island!' Others on the message boards throw out the 'God views what you are doing as a sinful abberation...' card. Once again, the hypocrisy in man comes out in the face of message boards.
First let me comment on some of the stuff that is on the message boards: using the Bible card to justify condemning homosexuals in the name of Christianity is ridiculous. I'm not the most religious guy in the world, but I don't believe that Christianity justifies the condemnations that Bush and people on these message boards place on gay people. Ok, the Bible says in the Old Testament (Leviticus I think) that it is sinful for man to lie with another man. But using this idea to justify condemnation and hatred towards others is absurd. If you don't agree with two people of the same gender having sex with one another, fine; if you think God views it as sinful, again, fine. But it's not people's right to condemn people for their personal lifestyle. Christianity does not promote hating people based on their own personal lifestyle; it is based on the principle of 'Love thy neighbor as thyself', not 'Love thy neigbhor only if he's straight'. By going against our neighbor, we violate the primary doctrine of Christianity; I consider hypocrisy far worse than lacking desire for the opposite sex and going against procreation.
Bush shows himself as a hypocrite in trying to take away a human right from parts of the American people. In his efforts to get votes from the modern American families who believe in marriage strictly between a man and a woman, Bush alienates a good portion of the American people; he takes away parts of their freedom, which this country is supposed to be based upon. I have heard that Bush uses religious reasons to support this ban, which he shouldn't be doing in the first place. What happened to separation of church and state?
Bush says, "If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost and the institution is weakened." You have got to be kidding me. He's worried about marriage becoming strictly a mere legal contract? Does he not think it's possible for two people of the same gender to love one another? Secondly, if he thinks that two people of the same gender marrying would reduce marriage to a legal contract, he needs to look in the mirror. The United States does not present marriage as a sacred bond; one's own cultural and religious traditions make it a sacred bond. Marriage is, in the eyes of the state, a legal contract; it becomes more than a legal contract through the Church (or other cultural symbols) recognizing it. How can Bush justify thinking that the state makes marriage a sacred bond between two people, considering that so many marriages end in divorce and the state allows people to remarry an indefinite number of times? And also, what about all these celebrity marriages that occur but only last several years? Or, in Britney Spears' case, 2 days? The state's lax attitudes on divorce have created an American pop culture that already hardly considers marriage to be a sacred bond.
I don't believe that given the state of the country, Bush can justify on moral grounds a reason to deny gay people the right to marry within America. The difference between union of a man and a woman and two people of the same gender is one: sex. To condemn based on sex is ridiculous, for it is hardly seen as sacred in pop culture anymore. It is commercialized and promoted, videotaped and put on the Internet. It becomes a pretty casual deal in the eyes of many; look at how many one-nighters take place at bars and frat parties. If this country wants to morally justify denying people the right to marry based on sex, then America as a whole, and not just the individual, needs to jump out of an age of promiscuity and stress the importance of sex as a complement to a loving relationship. Until America can do that, I don't believe Bush can justify denial of marriage on moral grounds. Unless you believe that sex should only be used for procreation, I don't believe that they should be condemned from having a relationship with one another if it won't lead to procreation.

Maybe you're wondering why I'm even making a big deal out of this...as many of you who read my blog know, I am not gay. But I know as well as anyone that, unfortunately, you can't control who you're attracted to, and usually have no logical justification for being attracted to someone. (If you don't agree with that, then the next time you see someone you're attracted to, ask yourself why. And if the answer is "I like his/her [you fill in the blank here]", then ask yourself why you like it. See if you can answer this with logic, and not using 'because of the way it makes me feel'.) Therefore, I don't believe people who say that homosexuality is a matter of choice; you're just attracted to whom you're attracted to. This is the land of the free (perhaps the land of the immoral as well, depending on how you look at the world), but a place for freedom. And people shouldn't lose parts of their freedom because of a private lifestyle choice.

It's strange...after 2 years in Hooville, I never really became a Southerner. I came to this conclusion one day while trying to learn the chords for a Dave Matthews song. I mean, Dave's probably one of the most popular artists at UVA, and I've just now bought one of his CD's for the first time. Nor do I care about the difference between sweet tea and normal tea w/sugar (although that's not a northern thing, that's just a "me" thing).

What does it mean when two different bosses both send you away on the same day because they've run out of work for you to do?