Truths for Mature Humans

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately DOD wipe your computer hard drive when you die
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is a great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Online mapping sites need to start their directions on #5; I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know you aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever technology is invented after Blu-Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection... again
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I did not make any changes to.
14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers, On any given Friday or Saturday night, more kisses begin with Budweiser than Kay.
17. I wish Google Maps has an "Avoid this Neighborhood" routing option
18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, drivers!
21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty and you can wear them forever.
22. Sometimes I'll look at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
23. Even under ideal conditions, people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and pinning the tail on the donkey - but everyone can find and push the snooze button on any alarm clock from 3 feet away in 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time.

The 5 Minute Mug Brownie

Ingredients:
1 large coffee mug
4 Tablespoons of flour
4 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of cocoa
1 egg
3 Tablespoons of milk
3 Tablespoons of oil
A Splash of Vanilla Extract
3 Tablespoons of chocolate chips (optional)


Directions:

1. Mix dry ingredients in the mug
2. Add the egg, stir together
3. Add the milk and oil, mix
4. Add the chocolate chips and vanilla extract, mix
5. Microwave for 3 minutes
6. Allow to cool and slide out onto plate
7. Eat and enjoy

Why your vote matters

Ahhh, election season.

The time of year when the leaves turn, the smell of wood burning fires fills the air, and our "respectable" politicians make schoolyard bullying seem like playful teasing.

It's enough to make any sane American despondent, disgusted, and disenfranchised - and you see that's kind of the point.

"They" don't want you to vote.
"They" want you to feel like none of it makes any difference.
"They" know that you're too busy living your own life to pay any more attention than 30 seconds during Survivor to the politics of our country.

But "They" have to be wrong.

I know, just like the leaves, the fires, and the prep for the holiday season, most of the attention is fleeting. Eventually the leaves are raked up or covered with the first snowfall, the fires move inside, and the holidays pass by. But the decisions you make, or choose NOT to make, on election day follow us forever.

It's easy to spout the platitudes like "If you don't vote, you can't complain" but it's not those who would actually listen to that statement that need to be reached. The disenfranchised, disgusted voter is not going to be moved by your personal feeling of civic pride in 7 words. You need to pass along why you are so passionate about your vote.

So here's mine:
I choose to vote because it's the loudest my voice can get. I don't buy into the whole "if you don't vote, you can't complain" because you CAN complain. You can write letters to the editor, post your opinions on blogs, call your Senators or Congressman and complain. But your voice is never louder than on the first Tuesday in November. That's the day you can stand up and say to your fellow citizens "This is the person who I feel will best represent me and my district, state, or country to my fellow man."

That's a pretty powerful statement to make. To stand up, point to one person and tell the rest of the world that THIS is who I am most like, who believes in (most) of the same things I do, and speaks on my behalf while I'm running the kids to soccer practice, working on that presentation, or grocery shopping, or just trying to get through just one more day.

I choose to vote because I'm willing to sacrifice my personal interests for the greater good. That's right, I'll vote AGAINST myself if I feel that it's better for my community as a whole. It can be as small as a tax levy that will strain my wallet, or for a candidate that while I may personally despise has a plan that will help move my community forward.

And as much as I'm willing to sacrifice my personal interest for the greater good, I do so because I truly believe in my heart that Today, Election Day, is the one day that truly makes me... makes US... American Citizens. To not vote would be to waste everything that was done for me before I was even here. The sacrifices of our soldiers, the hardships of growing pains and depressions of the past, all led to this moment.

This one perfect moment where I get to take control of our country's future and make my voice heard.
To not vote would shine a light on everything that I complain about, only this time I allowed it to happen because I was too despondent, disgusted, and disenfranchised to care any more.

And I can't let them do that to the country I love.

You didn't get mad...

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us
You didn't get mad we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq
You didn't get mad wen you saw the Abu Grahib photos
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark

You finally got mad when.. when.. wait for it... when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.   Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans... well fuck that.  That about right?  You know it is.

You people have all lost your fucking minds.  You are selfish, greedy, obnoxious, narcissistic, and frankly... stupid.  Your pathetic little misspelled protest signs are embarrassing.  Maybe you ought to find the smart person in your midst and let them make up all the signs, cause man, you look like a bunch of idiots.

Pirate Burgers

Inspired by some show (don't remember) I watched today on the Food Network:

1 1/2 lbs Ground Chuck
1 Dry Onion Soup Mix
Approximately 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 to 1/3 cup of dry bread crumbs
2 tbsp (approx) of beef stock
6-8 slices of THICK bacon (I prefer applewood)
Fresh sliced mozzarella cheese

Bake the bacon in the oven on 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until nice and crispy

Mix the chuck, soup, worcestershire sauce, bread crumbs, and beef stock in a large mixing bowl.
After the bacon is done, crumble it up and mix in with the rest of the mix.

Pull approximately 2 ounces of the mix out and flatten out in patty form.  Put a slice of the mozzarella in the center, then top with another 2 ounces of mix.

Firmly pat them out in patty shape.

Toss on a preheated grill for approximately 5-7 minutes per side, toast the buns, plate and enjoy.

My message to Jean Schmidt

As your constituent, I'm writing to tell you why I'm such a strong supporter of health reform.

My wife, an otherwise healthy 33 year old woman, suffered a stroke suddenly 18 months ago while we were at a Thomas the Train event in Lebanon, Ohio.  While we were fortunate enough to have health care coverage at the time to help us in our time of crisis, I can't help but be concerned about future coverage and protection.

You see she now has a "pre-existing condition."  The doctors were never able to identify what caused the stroke, and while she's made an amazing recovery we don't know what to work on to be sure we've eliminated the possibility of another stroke.

If I, just a normal voter from your district, have figured out that we can't guarantee she won't have another stroke, it shouldn't be that hard for an insurance company looking only to maximize it's profitability to identify her as a high risk to their bottom line and decline us future coverage.  Then what?

I've seen, read, and heard all of the rhetoric from the Republicans.  I'm sure somewhere in the viciousness there is probably a few valid statements of concern, but none of them have told me what your plan is for my wife to have coverage in the future.

I'm formally requesting as a registered, active voter in your district that you reconsider your stance on the pending health care vote.  Provide my family, my friends, my children, and my country with a health safety net so they don't have to face the same concerns in the future.

Please see my message to you, along with the stories and photos of other Americans from your district and across the nation, at http://my.barackobama.com/HereFor

Respectfully,
Robert Bennett

Cincinnati, is it really as bad as I think it is?

So Vanity Fair wrote an article about Cincinnati, or more specifically the Creationism Museum and attributing all the stupidity it stands for to the entire region.

It resulted in quite the uproar on my twitter feed and a couple of blog postings from one of my favorite local bloggers, Kate.

I read the article and honestly learned more about the museum than I knew before (which was basically just that it physically exists) but otherwise wasn't all that impressed.  It wasn't awe inspiring journalism and it wasn't written to inform, but rather seemed to be a piece written to take up a few columns in between ads for products that aren't meant and aren't marketed for me.  It was what I would call a masturbatory piece.  It's there for the edification of the author and those who dismiss all those who aren't "You" to prove just how much better "You" are than "Them."  More sophisticated, more educated, more everything I'm not.

OK, I'll give you pretty much all of that, you probably are.

But what the subsequent conversation about the article really made me do was rethink my opinion of Cincinnati.

I moved to the Queen City in the summer of 1993.  After my last class at Ohio University, we drove from Athens to Cincinnati where I spent the first several months of my tenure living in a pop up camper in Lebanon while working 80+ hours a week at Kings Island.  (For the record I was only in the camper because my parents hadn't finalized the move down here so there was no house for me to move into yet).

A series of extraordinarily poor decisions on my part led to my lack of return to Athens and probably tainted my overall impression of Cincinnati as a place that I have never been happy in.

I always felt the place was too conservative, too boring, too reclusive, too... not what I wanted.  As a sedentary person by nature, I never set out to prove my first impressions wrong.  I accepted them as fact, carved out my own little niche of friends and even managed to find a woman willing to tolerate me enough to marry me.

But always the opinions remained.  Nothing to do, noone to talk to, and let's face it - living in Jean Schmidt's district isn't doing wonders for my opinions on the local politics.

Then I started following some local people on Twitter.  Starting with my friend Heather I branched out to other local foodies such as Julie, the aforementioned Kate, the always opinionated Thadd, and the man who helped me become the first to monetize Twitter in a non-spammy way by buying Girl Scout Cookies via Twitter, Bob.  These are but a small but vocal segment of the "Bigger Cincinnati World" that was out there.

They are advocates for the region.  They look deeper than I do and find the gems hidden in plain site.  They share what they find.  They enjoy their lives and present it in a way that invites you to join in the fun.

But most importantly they've taken this lazy fat man and made him wonder about maybe giving Cincinnati another shot.

Windows Update error 403 fix

When a user goes to the Windows Update website, they may see an error that reads :

Server Error 403-Forbidden: Access Denied
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the
credentials you supplied.

As you can see on this thread on the Microsoft community website, this issue appears to have started some time on December 10th, 2009.

Have the user check their Windows Update log file which can be found by clicking Start-Run and typing %windir%\Windowsupdate.log and looking for an entry similar to this at the bottom of the file:

FATAL: Update required for C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuweb.dll: target version =
7.2.6001.788, required version = 7.4.7600.226

The fix I have been able to confirm here is to have the user (assuming they have the correct permissions on their system) download and install this file

This will update the failing dll file to the required version. (please note that this link will only be for this version of the windows update agent, any future updates would have a different link)

EDIT:  I'm seeing some google traffic hitting this post which is great.  If it works for you can you please leave a comment confirming?

A damn dirty tax and spend liberal complains about a TAX?!?!?!

Perusing an old article on Cincinnati.com this portion of the article really stuck out to me:

"A top Hamilton County official has proposed an array of tax increases – for property owners, shoppers, or smokers, among others – to make up for a hole in the fund that paid for construction of the Bengals’ and Reds’ stadiums."

Now to be fair before I begin this rant... I am a smoker.  I've been a smoker for over 20 years now.  I know it's bad for me, I know it's expensive, I know it smells... save your non-smoker cliche's cuz I've heard them and if my mom, wife, and 6 year old daughter haven't talked me into quitting, there's no way you've got a shot.

What bothers me here, and bothers me about sin taxes in general is not the THOUGHT behind them, but rather the application of said taxes.

See, if you keep raising the prices of cigarettes, eventually people will quit.

That's fine, that's GREAT, I'm all for it... but see you're not raising cigarette taxes to pay for something like healthcare, which costs more because I smoke.  You're raising them to pay for a stadium, or a road, or more police officers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for stadiums, roads, and cops... but if I quit smoking, you've lost that tax revenue I was contributing to pay for those things, so where does this revenue come from?  Suddenly you've got the same hole in the budget to fill because you went with the easy solution of picking on those filthy smokers again. 

We're an easy group to pick on.  We know what we're doing grosses most people out and in my personal experience we're some of the most deferential people in society.  For the most part we don't complain that we have to go outside to smoke, we'll avoid large crowds of people, the elderly and children.  We begrudgingly accept not smoking in restaurants after meals any longer (even though a smoke after a meal is one of the best 20 cigarettes of the day).  Heck you guys don't even want smoking in bars any more, fine.

We've reached a point, however, where the sin tax on tobacco has reached it's peak.  It's come to the point where those who are going to quit because of pricing us out of the market is finally really kicking in, or you're driving us across the river and losing every single bit of new and old tax to Kentucky.  So let's think about the problem, come up with a reasonable long term solution to pay for your projects and leave raising the sin taxes to programs that they actually apply to.

mmkay?

Christmas Creep Cartoon From Hallmark (Yes, Hallmark)