Zac Bowling’s Blog

Ok. I got a new laptop. You might remember my rants about my laptop order from Dell. I waited over 2.5 months to get that laptop and they never shipped. So ordered an Alienware. A $5,000 dream machine.

Its been a month since I ordered and I just got it. Turned it on and used it to upload a couple pics, and then about 6 hours layer I decided to stretch its legs and try half life 2. Played great for 30 minutes, then *CLICK*, no video. Apperently the video card wasn’t screwed down tight or there was poorly soildered connection somewhere. All I know is that the mother board and video card are damanged ($2100 worth of parts). I called and no questions ask, they are taking the machine back and sending me a new one. Dell would of given me the third degeree.

While I still don’t have a good machine yet, but at least I don’t feel like I’m getting up the rear like I did with Dell.

In the mean time, I just ordered a new Soekris board. Going to get Mono on it. Might tinkering with getting mono running on iPod linux later thats to the new working port on the ARM processor. Hehehe

People who use talking points and dumb exit rebuttals should be shunned and slapped from this point on. If you hear one, slap the person who said it. We need to institute a requirement of some original thought and personal research if you wish to have a public opinion. I believe in freedom of speech, but not freedom to spew someone else’s crap just because they said it and you must repeat it. Its cachos. I don’t care what politcal group, goverment, agency, company, team, school, or whatever you are part of. No body should stoop to “talking points”!!

If you are appointed to speak for your group, you should know the material personally and be able to answer on your own. If you are asked for an opinion or to make a judgement call about something you directly don’t know, yield to someone else or just say your not sure. If you have to use prepared statements to speak on behalf of your group and try to debate on that foundation, you should not be speaking.

As another option, if you must, you may speak in the third person repeating someone else’s opinion since you really don’t have one of your own and that way we know its not your own personal opinion or statement (from you, the clueless representative to your group). You may defend the person who said it then based on your own personal experiences. That way we can stop this jumble of misinformation.

On another note, one thing that has been driving me nuts lately is the rebutting of the argument against Bush’s reaction to the most recent disaster in New Orleans saying we are blaming Bush for the weather. The argument is not about Bush could do anything to prevent the weather (which is still much more debatable that he could of helped that), but what is hardly debatable is his horrible appointments to FEMA, his timely response time to the disaster, and his countless bumbling through fixing the issue.

Carlos Mencia says it best: “DUHHH-DUH-DUUUUUHH”.

I guess thats just my personal pet peave or something but seems to make sense.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zbowling/sets/

nuff said…

Your first wrap up of the PDC event here!

I’m two floors above where the event took place. Miguel just left and Gonzola, Chris, Joesph, Todd, and a few other dudes I’m forgetting are right here with me all drinking it up. We are all wearing our new mono tshirts and having a ton of fun. The turn out was AMAZING!! Lots of people showed up!

Well I need to get back to drinking with the dudes because I’m getting shuned here on the laptop. More to come!

Every now and then, I get around to reading Dilbert and I’m amazed about how true it is:

Got my travel plans in place and I’m starting to get excited. Going to be in LA for Tuesday and Wednesday for the Mono meeting in LA (just a short walk from the Microsoft PDC conference). If you are going to be at the Microsoft PDC conference, I urge you to come on over. Directions and information about the meeting here. It starts at 6 and goes until 9:30 so it should fit into the PDC schedule nicely.

Ok. Its a little late I know. I just got my first iPod and I have to say “IT JUST ROCKS!”. Got a 30gig iPod Photo. I’ve have had other, smaller MP3 players before, but nothing even comes close. When Apple sets out to do something, they do it right. I might start tinkering with iPod stuff in the svn a bit later today, after I transfer all my music and go nutty with iTunes for a bit.

Really amazing pictures but I do warn you to enter at your own risk.

http://www.digitalglobe.com/images/katrina/new_orleans_msi_aug31_2005_dg.jpg

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM