A Blog by Chris

All I can say is, “Finally!!!” It’s about time someone distilled this whole complex financial crisis to a cartoon I can understand. (Rated R for Language. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

All joking aside, I can’t believe how many layers of screw-ups it took to get to where we are now. And how much unabashed greed. Obviously Wall Street is greedy. Hell, it’s a job requirement. But when everyone, from the credit rating agencies, to the mortgage brokers, to the investment bankers, to the investors, to the home buyers themselves are so uncontrollably greedy you have to wonder, when does it cross the line and become plain foolishness and stupidity. And where are all the people who are supposed to be paying attention to this and stopping it from happening in the first place? I guess they were all too busy giving the crappy mortgage backed bonds AAA ratings.

Oh well, this whole thing makes my head hurt. I’m going to go get another cup of coffee…

Last night in St. Paul at the Republican National Convention, John McCain gave a speech to thousands of people and millions of TV viewers. The night before, Sarah Palin did the same. They told us why we should vote for McCain. Last week the scene was Denver at the Democratic National Convention where Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and others told us why Obama was the best choice for America.

Of course, I don’t have the slightest idea what any of them actually said.

I didn’t watch a single speech. I haven’t watched a political speech since my Speech 1A class at BC where we got to see lots of tape of Regan and JFK. That was 1999. The only reason I know who any of these people are is from newspaper headlines (I don’t read the articles). I also sometimes turn on NPR on my way home from work. It’s a 10 minute drive and I mostly zone out, but I do manage to pick up names. Sometimes.

I couldn’t tell you where either of the candidates stand on a single issue. I’m not sure what the big issues even are. Iraq obviously, and the economy, there’s something about offshore oil drilling, foreign relations (I suspect those are all really the same issue). Then there are the old standards like health care, education, the environment. They might be talking about gun control and abortion too – I don’t really know.

And that, my friends and countrymen, is why I’m a bad American.

It’s not just that I don’t know about the issues or candidates, it’s that I don’t care about them. Sometimes I try to care, but it just ends up making me angry. I never know who to believe about anything. Every time one side makes a stand about something, the other side is right there telling you why it’s all bullshit. Both sides usually sound believable to me, which makes me think that both sides are usually lying.

I just don’t have the energy to decipher everybody’s lies calculated political statements. In the end, maybe I’m too much of a cynic to care about politics. But what gets me is that deep down I suspect it’s apathetic people like me who are going to be the downfall of our country.

What to do…what to do… Oh well, can’t think about it too much. I’ve got a life to live.

Maybe some people are wondering why it’s been so long since my last post. Let me answer that for you: pretty much everything I own that takes a battery broke down last week.

It’s been a tough week for my gizmos…

I usually have the golden touch when it comes to technology. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me to look at something that was broken for them, only to have me walk over and find that suddenly the problem is gone – fixed all by itself. Especially at work. I usually can fix problems for people just by virtue of me being in the same vicinity as the afflicted machine. It just magically starts working again. I suspect that there really isn’t a problem in these cases, but it sure does wonders for my confidence in myself.

But not this time. This trip I used up all my self-confidence.

Week One

It all started with my iPod. On the flight out here my iPod ran out of juice. This is not a big problem and I didn’t really think anything of it. Why would I? iPods just sometimes run out of battery life. I hadn’t charged mine in a while and I brought my charging cable. I was not discouraged. Little did I know this was an omen of things to come…

I got to Mississippi and checked into my hotel just fine. (Even without the help of my trusty iPod). When I got to my room, I noticed that I couldn’t get an internet connection from the hotel wireless.

“No big deal”, I thought. It’s a casino hotel and they probably don’t want people hanging out in their rooms online – they want them downstairs throwing their paychecks on the Roulette table. “I’ll just connect to the internet using my phone”.

But alas, no signal. I guess we’re in AT&T territory, but I’ve got Verizon. So no internet in my hotel room for the first week of my three week trip.

Fortunately, I had a great time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and didn’t miss the internet in the slightest. Just wait for my Room With A View post on that one.

Week Two

So after a week with very little internet access, I headed east towards Myrtle Beach for week 2 of my trek. On the first day in Myrtle Beach, my computer crashed. Hard. I mean completely dead. One second, I’m reading a week’s worth of email and the next I can’t move the mouse. I tried to reboot it, but it wouldn’t even try. The screen stayed black and the keyboard lights blinked for a minute then went out.

Hmm…

So, the next day, I brought it in to class and removed the hard drive. Luckily one of my coworkers has the same laptop as me and I was able to put my hard drive into his machine and back up everything. This is about when I decided to call the office and try to get another laptop sent out to me. It’s also about the time I realized that my phone had gone through a whole charge in about 4 hours. Usually it lasts 4 days.

So by this time I have no phone, no laptop and no iPod. I would have taken a picture of the three dead devices, but yep, you guessed it, my camera wouldn’t work either. Another dead battery…

Week Three

Things are finally looking up. I’m back in Mississippi on day one of the third (and, thank God, last) week of this trip. I got a replacement laptop sent to me, and returned my broken-down one back to the office. None of my stuff got deleted. And I got my phone, iPod and camera all charged up.

So stay tuned everybody. I’ve got some great stories and some not-so-great photos of my recent travels coming soon…