Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in shawnppickett's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
1:27 pm	The Iran protest http://edition.cnn.com/video/ view This is a Massacre video. Now here is the problem, I agree the Iranian government is behaving horribly, but the basic problem can be boiled down to the phrase the woman keeps repeating throughout the interview "You people should stop this!" Uhm NO! I agree the Iranian government needs to be stopped, but the problem is, that the U.S. government really can't do anything about this. Let's say we go in there, clean out the Government, and manage to set up a democratic government, what happens in a few years when the next tin plated dictator comes along? I'm all for offering aid to the Iranian people, but if they want freedom, they are going to have to fight for it otherwise they will never really have it. If the U.S. comes in and does it for them, first it will be them feeling oppressed by the U.S. while we are trying to set up there government. Then they would be unhappy with whatever government is in place after we left feeling they were U.S. puppets. When we fought our revolution against the British, we certainly had help and aid from the French, but we did a lot of the fighting and dieing on our own. The French did it with even less help at the time, and the British managed to find a nice balance between the monarchy and democracy that seems to work for them, again, with out a lot of outside aid. Iran, I am willing to support your fight for freedom, I would even agree to aid you in it, but I CANNOT fight your battle for you. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
6:46 pm	X-men Origins Wolverine and Star Trek (Spoilers!!!) Went to a double feature at the drive in last night and saw Wolverine and Star Trek. First off, I have to say I liked Wolverine, is it the best movie ever, no, but it is enjoyable. I have to wonder how they thought an adamantium bullet would penetrate an adamantium skull, though I could at least buy that a blow to the noggin' like that could cause memory loss. I found it odd that at one point, some one was telling Striker that the bullets would kill Logan, and later on someone pointed out, rightly, that with his healing factor that it would kill him, just incapacitate him until he healed. It isn't the best Marvel comics movie ever, but it isn't the worst either. Star Trek, that was outstanding, the reboot was just smart. Rather than say everything you've seen before didn't happen, they used time travel to go back and change Kirk's (and Star Fleet's) history from day 1 (of Jim Kirk's) life. If you've never seen any Star Trek, you would be able to follow this with no problem. Whether or not you are a Star Trek fan, you owe to yourself to check out this movie. The only low point of the evening was that I went with my brother and 5 year old nephew, who wanted to see Star Trek because of the spaceships. The drive in showed Wolverine first and by the time Star Trek came on, he was asleep and didn't wake up until we were leaving the drive in, at which point he was upset that he missed the movie. My brother did try to wake him up for it, but he was to far gone by that point. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 18th, 2006
2:57 pm	Happy Fathers day Well, it's Father's Day today. My sister and I got my dad a new driver, a T7 Beta which is a clone of the Taylor made R7 driver, we picked it up on e-bay for a reasonable price. I started out Friday morning by hiding the driver, in my Dad's golf bag with his other clubs in the back of his van, it was a gamble, but it paid off as he didn't notice it was there until my sister and I took him golfing sunday morning. Mind you, we golf just about every weekend, so it really wasn't anything out of the ordinary beyond getting him the new driver. The club was excellent, my dad was hitting his drives straighter and farther than I had ever seen him before (he usually out drives me, but he's got a slice that can really hose him up and shave off yards). If your in the market for a driver, you probably owe to yourself to check out one of these T7 Beta's. My brother and mother got my dad an HP 1510 printer/scanner/copier that he's in playing with right now. It looks fairly promising, but we'll see. Overall, a good fathers day for my dad. My brother spent the morning taking his 2 year old to see Thomas the Train (they have a real locomotive done up like Thomas and give rides on it, and try to sell the kids lots and lots of toys). My brother seems to have had a great time with that, I suspect he enjoys the trains about as much as his son does. What can I say, life is good. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 5th, 2006
9:30 pm	Corrupting the adults I had an interesting realization today. My siblings and I have managed to corrupt my mother. Last night, the final episode of the Soprano's for the season was on. After it was over she made the comment that it was a cruddy episode, that nobody got whacked, her exact words as I recall. She used to be, and to some extent still is, such an innocent. I recall when my youngest sister was in either elementary or middle school, and my mother was discussing having one of our male dogs neutered. My sister started laughing like Beavis and said "Yeah, saw off his tweeter!" My mom was horrified, and debated forbidding her from watching Beavis and Butthead anymore (I can't recall if she did or not at the time, I just recall a serious discussion about appropriate language for a young lady). Amusingly enough, my mother now commonly refers to neutering dogs as "sawing off their tweeters", heh. Such phrases as "pimp slapping" have also entered her vocabulary now. I guess it's a shock to realize that a) my siblings and I are more worldly than my mother, and b) we've managed to corrupt her to some extent. I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but somehow, I'm just amused. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 29th, 2006
7:08 pm	Memorial day weekend First of all, a big thank you to all military personal past and present (I'm ex-Navy myself) for your efforts, no matter what, it is your (our) sacrifices that have kept this country safe and free to do the things we do, even if we disagree with some of them. That being said, I thought Memorial day was supposed to be a 3 day weekend, with time off from work. I haven't seen that yet. Lets see, Saturday, cut the grass, installed the window mount air conditioner, dug a ditch for water supply purposes, filled in the ditch after installing line. Sunday was a bit better, played golf, I don't recall anything that strenuous that afternoon. Monday was swapping the living room and the spare/dining room, as on room tended to be cooler than the other. Okay, I guess I managed one day off in there. I finally broke down and got myself an mp3 player. Picked up a Creative Labs MuVo 2 with a 4gb microdrive from their factory store on E-bay, it was a refurbished model and I got it for $85.99. I can see why the line wasn't entirely popular, the screen is a dinky 2 line LCD that makes searching through your songs a chore. Unless your anal about the way you organize your files on your computer, luckily, I am, so I good to go with this one. I can see why it wasn't that popular though, If your computer savvy, it works fine, but a lot of people need their tech spoon fed to them, and I imagine an IPod works better for them due to that. I've already got a good chunk of my admittedly sparse cd collection on the thing and I've only used 700 MB's of the 4 gigs on it. I think I wouldn't like the player if I payed the $200 retail they ask for it, but for $85.99 as a refurbished one, it's outstanding. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
9:30 pm	My sense of humour So, I'm watching a dvr'ed episode of Dr. Who that I recorded a few weeks back and hadn't watched yet. Rose and the Doctor step out of the TARDIS and the Doctor gives Rose a quick rundown on where and when they are. They then let the geek they picked up last episode out, and Rose proceeds to completely B.S. them like she's a pro. Then they split up and the Doctor then proceeds to B.S. the natives and find out what is going on. I don't know, something about those scenes just drives home what I love about the show. Last week I mentioned Firefly, I liked the series for the same reason, I think I find the people in those series more real. Star Trek, while entertaining, had all of these people that were mostly righteous, yeah, they screwed the pooch or acted incorrectly on occasion, but for the most part, they always knew what to do and always did the right thing. Doctor Who, Firefly and the like seems more real to me, people just trying to go day by day, sort of b.s.'ing their way through, and trying to have a little fun. Not that they don't try to do the right thing, they just aren't so perfect about it. Oh well, just a thought. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 28th, 2006
8:26 pm	Serenity So, I'm a fan of Nonjon's work http://www.fanfiction.net/u/649528/ he has an interesting sense of humor that appeals to me. His latest work is a story called Browncoat Green Eyes, that transplants Harry into the Firefly universe. I remember when the series came on the air, I was interested, but I never caught it, I don't exactly recall why, I think it was on friday nights, or some other such ridiculous thing that put it in a scheduling conflict that guaranteed that I never saw the series. So at any rate, I started reading this story, and it really grew on me, and I'm getting even more curious about Firefly (for the uninitiated, Firefly was the name of the T.V. series, and the class of the ship that it was based around. The ships name was Serenity, which was also the name of the movie.) To cap this off, I'm at Fry's picking up some memory and browsing, and see the entire series on dvd for $20, feeling bold, I grab it, and decide to spend another $20 on the movie Serenity. Get home, plop the disc in the drive and start watching it. The series was frickin' outstanding, it had a mix of humor and action that appealed to me. The only reason I can figure the series tanked was because of lousy scheduling, I highly recommend checking it out. I don't know what it is with network t.v. these days, they seem to be incapable of putting on a good entertaining fictional show (I detest reality t.v. and will not watch it, I've tried, it sucks IMHO.) and when they do put out a good show, it either gets a crap time slot, or it gets pre-empted so much for stupid assed reality shows that you can't follow them. I stopped watching 24 in the third season because it got pre-empted so damned much for American Idol, Who wants to marry XXX, and other such schlock, that when 24 came back on the air, I was unaware of it for a couple of weeks and just got out sync with the show. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
9:25 pm	An interesting pardigm shift You know, when I was younger, I loved ST:TNG and couldn't really get into ST:DS9, I mean it was on a space station, it never went anywhere, so what? I started paying attention towards the end of the series with the Dominion wars, but by that point, the series had been running a while, and I never really latched on to it. Recently, after getting a DVR, I've been catching DS9, and have discovered I've really enjoyed it, the characters seem to have a bit more depth than TNG's did. I'm trying to decide if I'm finding it more enjoyable now because I've been able to catch it more regularly, or if I've just matured enough to appreciate it properly. Actually scratch that, me and mature probably don't belong in the same sentance. I find it interesting none the less. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 27th, 2006
7:45 pm	Uhm.. Stuff Okay, I'm sitting here listening to T'Pau The Promise, that I just got in the mail to replace the cassette I had stolen out of my truck years ago, and installing Doom 3 on my computer. This is after listening to Godsmack in my car on the way home. There is a certain contrast there that in a moment of introspection I find odd. On another front, I missed the premier of Dr. Who, but I caught the recent two episodes, very entertaining. I had seen a few other Dr. Who's with Tom Baker as the doctor when I was in the Navy and some of my buddies highly recommended it, but never saw much more than that. I'm glad to catch some more, the series looks to be well done. Too vent a bit, my state (Indiana) just passed a law that if you flip somebody off, or blow your horn at them, you can be arrested and jailed for up to a year for road rage. Now, while I understand the motivation behind this, I'm more than a little cheesed off that my government voted to abridge freedom of speech like this. Yes, it is rude to flip somebody off, but honestly, every body here has seen somebody on the road that has deserved it at one time or another. Also, the horn blowing thing, come on, its a signaling device installed on a car for a reason. Who decides whether someone was blowing the horn to alert someone to danger or if it was road rage? It seems rather subjective. Also, what about those times at a stop light where somebody is too busy dinking with their radio or some such and hasn't noticed the light has changed? I'm sorry, a toot on the horn is warranted then, but we can't do that now. Rest assured, I doubt I'll ever face prosecution for this law, but if I do, I will not go quietly, this law is one I would feel justified in rebelling against. If I could afford it, I would probably flip off a police officer (though part of me cringes at the idea, the poor cop wouldn't deserve it like as not) just to deliberately get arrested and take it before the supreme court. I can guarantee I will be looking at my elected officials voting records, and anyone that voted for this I will work hard to remove from office. Well, at least the weather is starting to turn nice, I should be able to get out on the golf course more regularly now, so overall, life is good. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
11:38 am	Rockstar games, media whores So today, I'm watching the news and they are getting up in arms about Rockstar Games (of Grand Theft auto fame) called Bully, where you apparently are either picking on, or getting revenge on Bullies in a school. WTF! But as I think on it, it makes sense, Rockstar had this great hit with Grand Theft auto, which had innovative game play, but was controversial because of subject matter. They apparently took away the wrong lesson from the success of the game, the controversy isn't what made it popular, the free form game play is. They've since done a few other titles that were not Grand Theft auto, and I don't think any of them really were anything that great, just some lame concepts that were trying to rely on their controversial nature than any truly innovative game play. The good news to this is, that when the news commentators brought in the Psychologist to talk about this, she pointed out that this game, or any other, isn't going to make someone snap and start acting it out. That the truth was, that anybody that would emulate a game would have committed such actions any way, and that the game merely added to the situation (think of it light shortening the fuse on a bomb, it was always going to go off, it just took a little less time). At the end of the day, it's the parents responsibility to make sure that little Johny or Susie are well rounded individuals who could cope, and not some sort of ticking time bomb waiting to hurt people with the slightest trigger. I rather liked this, because, if I recall correctly, when Columbine happened, and everyone was yelling about DOOM, some one pointed out that a far worse school shooting had happened (and the year is the part I'm unclear on) back in the '50's. That something like this isn't exactly a new problem. Today it's the Video games, in the 80's it was Dungeons and Dragon's in the '70's it was T.V. in the '50's and '60's it was Rock and Roll, hell prior to that it was the books. Isn't it amazing how many different sources there are for a problem. Even more amazing (please note the heavy sarcasm) is that most of society is exposed to these influences, yet 99.9% of us don't go on shooting sprees. I'm so sick of people trying to assign blame for their actions on everybody and everything but themselves. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
7:52 am	I am such a geek So first off, I finally broke down and got a DVR for my DISH system. My god, I have trouble keeping the thing from filling up, between recording Star Trek (there's an average of 10 hours of Star Trek on a day between TNG DS9 Enterprise and the occasional other ones on the various channels), Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica and such. If you've got one of these, just enter the name of a series and see what happens. I put Dark Angel into mine, and some spanish channel that I never watch has it on (and they do show it in English). So, last night I got Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD and watched it (I didn't get around to seeing it in the theaters.) I'm not that impressed, don't get me wrong, there were some definite enjoyable parts in it, and the acting was good. The problems I had were 1, the set design, it started in POA, for some reason, they felt this need to make Hogwarts look like it's on the cusp of falling apart. It's supposed to be a MAGICAL castle, which means that while it's old, it should be in excellent condition, not looking like Norm, Tom and crew should be walking out talking about what their going to do this week on This Old House. Second is the editing, it started in POA, but got even worse in GOF, some of the jumps in the plot were rather jarring, and while the individual scenes may have been good, the transitions between them were abrupt. Yes, I know that GOF was a large book, but look at any one of the Lord of the Rings movies compared to it's book, then compare GOF to it's book, and you see how badly the movie was done. Oh well, maybe I'm just a purist, or it could be the fact that I was thinking more of playing Morrowind the Elder Scrolls or KOTOR 2 the Sith Lords on my PC than watching the movie. Which brings me to an interesting question, you see dozens of mods for these PC RPG's, but no Harry Potter ones? For that matter, why are the only Harry Potter games these watered down platformers? I've played them, there fun, but I'd really like to see a HP RPG on the lines of Baldur's Gate, or Morrowind, or KOTOR. Oh well, what can I say, I am a geek. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
7:40 am	The critical stupidity of people I work for a company that shall remain nameless. My job involves board level repair, as well as phone tech support. Three things. 1) Why the hell do you think it matters that your machine is down hard and that its shutting down your business? Don't get me wrong, I understand it's important, and that you need help, but do you honestly think that I can see you as any more important than the other 50+ people I talk to every week with the same EXACT problem. Yes your machine is down hard, yes it's costing you business, I'm sorry your problem will be dealt with in the order that it was received, it may be harsh, but there have been 50 other people waiting in line to have their problem dealt with, do you honestly feel yours is more important than theirs? 2) You come crying to me about how this machine is shutting down you business, A) The job this machine does is a convenience, a person could stand there and do the blasted job just as easily. B) It's called redundancy, if this machine is so fraggin' critical to your operations that when it's down that your business is in serious trouble, then you probably need to invest in either another machine, or at least some on hand replacements as back ups. These things are not really field serviceable, if you call me on the phone, I will do my level best to get you up and running, but the best machine in the world is going to break at some point, and if it's a big enough problem that you feel the need to sit there and cry about how it will destroy your business if it isn't gotten up and running right now, then you need a backup. 3) Upgrades, certain changes in the business have necessitated a series of upgrades over the last few years, fortunately (for our customers at least) after the initial upgrade, it mostly involves a relatively inexpensive ($30) software update, some of the machines need a special tool to get this installed and they have to go to a service center, others it's merely a matter of installing the software in the field. Regardless, the procedure hasn't much changed since the second round of upgrades, yet nobody seems to remember how and what to do. I understand some of our newer customers may not have had to do this before, but when you've got our oldest machine, you've been through it. You should be able to call up with all of the pertinent data at hand, unless your memory retention is that of a goldfish. Well that ends the angry rant. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
12:47 pm	Just random So this morning, I'm watching the news and seeing Bush spouting off about the UAE deal with the ports. Yes, I understand that there is really no risk with this company running the ports, though at the end of the day, they are going to be the bosses, and that means they make the decisions, but I digress. It seems to me to be a really bad idea for ANY foreign country to hold the reigns, even indirectly, for ANY part of our security. Yes, I'm aware a company out of Britian held it last, and while I feel somewhat better about that, it still strikes me as a bad idea. Yes Britian is an allie of the United States, but in the end they are a foreign power that needs to look after their own best interest. To expect any company from a foreign country, to put the U.S.'s best interest above their own is just plain foolhardy. Oh, well, there are lots of topics I agree with the President on, this just is one of the many I disagree on. On a lighter note, one of my co-workers, who drives a rather beat up old Buick Century (1985). He routinely spends more than the car is worth (the blue book is $200 or so on it). We finally talked him into buying a new car, but he is dinking around an spending a ridiculously long time on it. I'm thinking of seeing if I can schedule some test drives to help him make up his mind, you know something your average American could afford (snort) like a Hummer, or a Ferrari, well you get the idea. Thats all for now. (Comment on this)