Cleveland, Curveballs
and Common Sense

Are you kidding me?

I was right, Mitt Romney absolutely cannot be trusted. This is a guy who all throughout his campaign claimed he was ideologically different than John McCain, and now he’s endorsing him? I understand if maybe he just wants the race to be over and Huckabee to quit, but endorsing the guy you spent most of your money attacking is not the way to do it.

I always have an hour break between my first two classes on Wednesday, and I think typing this blog is the only way I’ll be able to stay awake, so a couple cool things from the past three days to discuss.

First, the Super Bowl. People are calling it one of the greatest upsets of all time, and while I’m not sure about that, I am sure that it’s the greatest Super Bowl game I’ve ever seen, and probably will see for some time. Good for Eli Manning, too. Finally, he can get some of the critics off his back. The play that defined it for me was the one that probably defined it for everyone, where three Patriot pass-rushers had Manning sacked, and he somehow wrangled away from their grasp, set his feet, and threw a perfect pass to David Tyree which he pinned against his helmet as he fell to the ground. What a game.

As everyone knows, Super Tuesday was yesterday. I didn’t get to watch much of the coverage (AI is gonna’ kill me), but I was able to tune in to CNN and Fox News last night as I was going to sleep. Both networks seemed absolutely flabbergasted that Huckabee won anything, much less pretty much swept the south. It was fun to watch, because the media is doing all it can to get the Republicans down to a two-horse race, and Huckabee pulled himself into contention again yesterday (it’s a longshot, but there is a lot of backlash against McCain right now and it’s building). Also, way to go, Romney, suggesting that Huckabee concede; turns out he might have been right. :) As for what happens from here on out, I think it may be too late for Huckabee or Romney to win the nomination outright, but I think what might happen is that they could combine for enough delegates so that no one reaches the target of 1191, meaning that the Republican nominee would be decided during the Republican National Convention this summer.

As for the Democrats, it was good to see Obama continue that momentum. He’s still trailing, but this race was supposed to be over by now, so the fact that he’s very much alive definitely has to be a postiive for the Obama campaign.

Personally, I’m just working through all of the coursework of being a junior at Case. The aforementioned AI assignment was a rough one; it involved implementing three types of path-finding algorithms on grids that have obstacles and may vary in size. A cool project, but I didn’t finish until about 10 PM last night, which, considering the fact that was due today, was cutting it a tad close.

Speaking of code, I finally got hosting over at DreamHost, and created my cool little homework repository last night, as well as a repository for my projects (non-website code and video-editing stuff). I’m still working on ways to utilize all of that space; right now, I’m using about 600 MB of about 500 GB that I’m given, so I’m open to ideas.

That’s all I got for right now; should have some interesting project-related news in the near future.

So we’re down to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party, versus John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee in the Republican party (I guess we can count Ron Paul if you really want). I’ve already stated who I would vote for in the primaries, and last night’s debate really showcased Huckabee’s fantastic oratory skills. He didn’t get a lot of facetime, (why? Huckabee is clearly still in this race, but CNN has already chosen its favorites and didn’t give Ron Paul or Huckabee much time to speak at all) but the little facetime he got I thought he used very effectively. But that’s the short version, here’s the long version of how they all did last night:

1. Mitt Romney: He got the most speaking time of any of the four candidates but didn’t really say very much. Whether he was bickering with McCain about word choice used in early April or trying to state that he’s definitely not pro-choice, Romney did nothing to make me think he’s less of a slimeball than I think. Also, when McCain is talking, SHUT UP. Grade: C+
2. John McCain: McCain’s got the momentum, the lead, the support of Giuliani, the Governator, and, as Romney pointed out, the liberal New York Times. So what did he do? He spent the evening attacking Romney for the stupidest little things. He came across as petty and childish. His voice didn’t show much passion (it never really has) but instead talking to the voters as equals he was talking above them, as if he knows what he’s doing and no one is gonna’ change his mind. And also, when Romney is talking, SHUT UP. Grade: D
3. Ron Paul: It’s too bad Ron Paul doesn’t have very much support, because the fact that he’s even in the race keeps the other candidates honest. There were a couple times where he kind of came in after a Romney/McCain exchange and said, “isn’t this a little ridiculous?” I don’t agree with a lot of his policies, but the guy has ideas. His problem is that no one seems to listen. Grade: B+
4. Mike Huckabee: Huckabee’s performance last night was outstanding. His monologue comparing a governor to a president was outstanding and he did an outstanding job being humble and, to quote his campaign saying, like the guy you work with. The moderator asked him at one point “Rush Limbaugh has said you will destroy the Republican party if nominated”, but I liked his response: “I wish Rush loved me as much as I love Rush. He’s a great voice for the conservatives of this country, but he’s capable of error, and this is one of those times.” The one negative of his performance last night was that you could clearly see he was frustrated with how little time he was getting, as he prodded the moderator to give him more time and allow him to chime in occasionally. Grade: A-

Tonight it’ll be one-on-one, Hillary versus Barack. Should be pretty interesting to watch the fur fly.

I’ve kind of started thinking about how I will vote this fall depending on who is nominated, and I think the results may surprise you. I’ve arranged them into a matrix, Democrats along the top, Republicans along the bottom. Each cell represents who I would vote for if that column ran against that row.

Kind of surprising to those who know me, but there you have it.

Hello blogosphere! After what I know must feel like forever, I’m back and writing some stuff on this thing. So much to discuss, so I’ll just kind of go down a list.

• “You Decide” 2008: Please, please, please, please do not vote for Hillary Clinton. I’ve determined that if you are absolutely inclined to vote democratic, that Barack Obama might actually be your best choice. Here are some reasons why the other two (anyone actually believe Gravel and Kucinich have a shot? Stop reading this blog immediately):
  1. John Edwards has absolutely no idea that the campaign is a competition. Has anyone seen this guy? He’s lost every state he’s run in, and invariably, after the votes are in and its determined he’s lost, he CELEBRATES! I think we can predict what would happen if he were elected: something would eventually happen that would tick China off, they would attack us, they would win in a war. But President Edwards would say, “It’s okay America! We came in SECOND! YEAAAAAAAH!”
  2. Hillary Clinton lies like her husband. I wonder if anyone in the Clinton family has ever told the truth (voluntarily, anyway)…
  3. For all of you liberals who complain that by this time next year, we will have had a Bush in office for 12 of the past 20 years, there is a conservative that feels the same way about the Clinton family. Regardless of your beliefs, regardless of how much you hate one party or the other, you cannot possibly argue that having the country run by two families for 24 years (or more, if, God forbid, Clinton gets reelected in 2012) is good for this country.
  4. Of the three candidates, Obama has been in politics the shortest amount of time…which is a good thing. The longer you’re in politics, the less likely you are to do what is right over what is popular.

  A few of you might recall that I’ve supported Rudy Giuliani for president for a long time. I liked his national security strategy and his record on crime, as well as a lot of his social and economic views. However, when it comes time to vote on Super Tuesday, my vote will go towards Mike Huckabee. Let me tell you why:

  1. No negative campaigning. The fact that Huckabee has not released any ads attacking his peers has greatly helped his campaign, and for me has increased his likability. One of his main mantras is “Americans want their president to remind them of a guy they work with, not the guy they work for.” That’s a great attitude to have. A lot of other candidates say they “work for the American people”, but I like the idea of a team setting from the beginning. It’s a fantastic vision of what American can be. And the fact that he hasn’t gone on the offensive and attacked any of his peers shows his difference from the other candidates.
  2. No more IRS! This idea is probably the main reason I’m voting for Huckabee. The IRS has become a bureaucratic mess. Here’s a question: how many of your tax dollars go directly towards funding the effort to collect taxes again next year? I do not have an exact figure, but getting rid of that from the budget leaves more money for more important things. But the main thing is that it doesn’t tax Americans on their INCOME. It encourages more conservative spending, and could help to fix a lot of things wrong in the economics of the basic American family.
  3. Accountability. Huckabee has already admitted several mistakes he has made and has held himself accountable. His weight, which was astronomical just a few years ago, has gone down because he started watching what he ate and exercising, not because of a miracle drug or liposuction. His policy on Iraq has also changed. He was not a supporter of the surge earlier in the year but has admitted that he was wrong and that the surge is working. For the record, he also believes the war in Iraq should be WON, not just ended.
  4. Social issues. Pro-life, against gay marriages but for gay rights, against amnesty towards illegal aliens.
  5. The most important issue: endorsed by Chuck Norris. Need I say more? His Chuck Norris commercial was pretty humorous, and he’s said some pretty funny stuff in debates as well which only increases the guy’s likability.

  Apart from Huckabee, I would still support Giuliani and McCain in a general election (against Obama). But if it were Mitt Romney… I actually think I would cross party lines and vote Obama. I don’t agree with everything Obama says, but I think he would be a much better president than Romney.

  And those are some of my political views of late.

• Technology world: A few random ramblings:
  • Since November 26 (my last post), I’ve tried Fedora 8, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian, Ubuntu again, Fedora 8 again and Linux Mint. Clearly I had some issues with a few distributions :). I stuck with a Fedora 8 installation on my desktop and and going to install Linux Mint on my laptop at some point fairly soon. I’ve really liked Fedora thus far, I only had some minor issues with graphics and sound, and Linux Mint seems like a great distribution for my laptop because it comes with a lot of codecs and drivers preinstalled. I may try an openSUSE installation on my laptop too, it seems like that offers some interesting new features as well.
  • The MacBook Air. At least its not the iPhone (in terms of hype). I would seriously recommend against getting this, even if you are a Mac person, even if you really need an ultra-light computer. It’s overpriced, it’s underpowered, and I imagine the first models will overheat like no other laptop ever has.

• Had some free time, so I wrote a sleep timer app for Windows PCs. Check it out if you want.
• I’ve also checked out some new languages, including Python, which I am already a huge fan of.

In other news, I’m in Operating Systems as I finish this post and we’re talking about process control. The C function for creating a new process is the system call fork(), the professor is Asian… so he pronounces it as “f***”. The result is pretty hysterical, I’ve about lost it a couple times already:

“How do you create child process? Call fork(). The parent process will fork() and create a child process.”

The slant rhyme makes me wonder if the designers of C had this in mind when they were choosing what to call things.

I think that’s all I have for now. I’ll post more when I can.