Tag: elections

In the UK, they have Guy Fawkes Night with a famous song/poem of which most will recognize at least this portion.

Remember, remember! The fifth of November

As I headed back into the office after lunch today, the following line of thought occurred to me.

With tonight being the election, there’s really only three outcomes I can see happening:

  • Your candidate wins and you drink to celebrate with others of your political party.
  • Your candidate loses and you drink to commiserate with others of your political party.
  • There are legal challenges to whoever wins, drawing the election out further, and you drink to mourn.

In any of those scenarios, everybody has an excellent reason to have a stiff drink tonight. So as we all watch the election results pour in over the course of the night; let’s be sure to pour ourselves a “fifth” of our favorite beverage and maybe tomorrow we can forget this night ever happened. 😀

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

Mr. Obama’s election amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.

via the New York Times

As I started to type up this great news here, I was watching McCain’s concession speech.  A couple of things about the speech caught my attention…

  • McCain still comes across as a really creepy guy.  Seriously, is he human or an alien wearing a human-suit?
  • While physically a creepy guy, McCain’s words tonight (mostly) seemed reasonable and intelligent.  If he’d gone with a campaign based more on that rather than the campaign of fear, he might have had a chance at winning.
  • Lastly, I swear he must of have been paraphrasing Galaxy Quest in one spot.  He said something like “… never quits, never surrender…” while in Galaxy Quest they said “Never give up. Never surrender.”
Change We Can Believe In
Change We Can Believe In

Make sure you get out and vote today, especially you, you and you! In fact, if you’re a registered vote in the United States and are reading this you best be reading it on your mobile from the line at polling place while you wait to cast your vote!

If you’re thinking it’s not worth waiting to cast your vote; I have two words and one initial for you: George W. Bush.

Also, voter suppression is a terrible fact of life all over our country, and the ACLU has prepared a great resource for all 50 states, with printable sheets you can take with you to know your voting rights wherever you are.

The Voting Rights Project of the ACLU is dedicated to providing citizens with information and assistance in exercising their right to vote! We are urging citizens to ACT this election year. For more information or to voice a voting rights complaint, call 1-877-523-2792 […]

I post this with apologies to Wil Wheaton for swiping the image from his site and for stealing some of the text as well.

I moved to a new house not that long ago. A couple of weeks back, my wife and I went to the DMV and updated our driver’s licenses. While we were there, we both requested that the DMV update our voter registrations. Approximately one week ago, my wife got a card in the mail confirming her voter registration had been updated. I got… nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I got busy fighting with HR and the insurance company trying to get my health insurance cards1.

Then today rolls around. On a break at work, I start checking the Internet to find out where I’m supposed to go and vote tonight. While I’m doing that I run across a link allowing Iowa voters to check their voter registration. I try it out and find that my voter registration did NOT get updated. Grrrr. Tonight after dinner (roughly 6:15PM), Ariesna and I head over to the polling place to vote. I tell the person inside the door that I need the provisional ballot. She tells me to tell somebody else after I’ve signed in. I sign in, get in line and then tell the pollworker who has the book of names. She looks confused and refers me over to my 3rd pollworker of the evening.

Again, I get to wait around for my chance to talk to her. I explain my situation, including the bit about already talking the county auditor’s office. Her eyes look a bit glazed over and she seemed pretty confused. She mumbles something and then brings me some paperwork to fill out. Then she goes to try help 3-4 other people, disappears for a while and eventually comes back to take my paperwork. I hand it over and she disappears again. I hear somebody mention that the phone in the polling place doesn’t work, so apparently she’s running around the building to another room to call the county auditor’s office. Of course, if she could have kept track of what I’d said she wouldn’t have had to do that…. Eventually she comes back, gives me one of the provisional ballots and lets me vote. Wheee!

Next year, I’m so totally going to sign up for the absentee ballot. It’s just so much easier than dealing with understaffed (one of the other pollworkers mentioned they’d all been there since 6AM) & undertrained people at the polls.

1 So far, I’m still waiting. *sigh*

I was just over at ArsTechnica, checking up on the lastest news and noticed in their
Looking back at 2004 article that WP had been declared the Web app of the year. Way to go WordPress devs!

Web application of the year

We asked forumgoers to choose the best web application or development framework of the year.

Web-based applications provide interaction for all users regardless of platform or location. If you can connect to the web, you can use it. Forums, blogs, administration tools, collaboration frameworks; there were many excellent options to choose from in 2004.

Winner: WordPress

Let’s face it. Blogs are in fashion, and why not? Vanity knows no bounds, and there are some people who actually do something productive with theirs. From the influence of blogs on the coverage of the US presidential elections to every random teenager who has problems with their partner/parent/teacher/cat, blogs are out there allowing your most intimate feelings to be shared with random people at wifi hotspots. WordPress is the most prominent rising star of weblog software, completely free and with a large and active community. Styles, plugins and hacks are readily available, with problems such as comment spamming being addressed far more rapidly than competing applications.