It’s that time. It is time to cast your vote if you haven’t already. I hope that you plan to take advantage of one of the greatest rights afforded to you as an American (sorry to our non-US readers). I don’t want to draw out my beliefs and tell you that you should believe what I do. I can so that I have a voice in this world via this website, so I am going to use it.

Remember when you vote. Remember what is important. Think about why you are voting for a particular person. Is it because of what they stand for or because of their race, religion, gender, foreign policy views?

I will never agree with any candidate 100%, or with any person for that matter, but that is what makes us who we are. I had a discussion with someone today about a particular issue. This person doesn’t agree with a particular candidate because he is pro choice to an extent (do your own homework). This person said that the candidate is killing unborn babies. I asked how that differs from me killing someone in my line of work with the military? Not all people killed are combatants. I’ll leave it at that, think about it for yourself.

Another issue that I have heard is that some people are too old or not qualified for the job. I know plenty of good older folks who have a lot of lifelong knowledge to share. Those people may live to be 100, and some may drop at 50, we’ll never know. As far as qualifications go, I hope that everyone gets to experience what I have experienced some day. I have worked for some wonderful people. I gave a vow to defend some people with my own life. If I am going to do that, I want to know that the person that I am defending isn’t doing something for just for me, but he is doing it for the betterment of mankind.

When I vote I cast a vote for everyone, not just myself. All the tax-breaks in the world won’t keep me employed or healthy if everyone else’s life is going down the crapper. If I have to lose my comfortable, do-nothing, government job in order for three other people to gain employment, well, I hope that I can be one of those three. If not, then it is still a good trade. I will find work elsewhere. I’ve worked at Burger King, a Family Dollar, as a roofer, and as an engineer. I’ll do whatever I need to do to make ends meet. Failure in my life is not an option. Failure during this next presidency isn’t either.

Best of luck, and may the best man win.

~Jon

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Jon is being very general here. He and I both feel Barack Obama is the best man. Last month I wrote a post after I watched Barack Obama’s party acceptance speech and I said that it was too early for me to decide who I’m voting for. Well a couple days ago my wife and I went to place our absentee votes (we’re going to be in the hospital having a baby on the 4th) and I’m proud as hell to say that we both voted for Obama. For the first time in my life I’m actually completely interested in the election of my president and it’s because of Barack Obama.

Let me be more specific. I just said “my president”. Sen. Obama had a 30 minute tv ad on several major networks last night. He said something that reassured me that I made the right decision in my vote. He said:

“I’m reminded every single day that I am not a perfect man,” he said. “I will not be a perfect president.

“But I can promise you this: I will always tell you what I think and where I stand. I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you when we disagree. And, most importantly, I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.”

All my life I’ve felt a seperation between us citizens and our government. Isn’t this our country? Isn’t our President supposed to listen to us? When Barack Obama says “I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again”, how can that not make you want to stand up and say HELL YES! It’s about damn time!

The picture Jon used is of course Thomas Jefferson who was our 3rd President and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence just so happens to contain this line:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

What that means is that if I’m not happy with my government then it is my right, and the right of my fellow citizens, to alter our government. I believe our government does need to be altered and I believe that Barack Obama is the right choice for that reason. I hope I’m right, I think that I am, and the way it’s looking, we’ll soon get to see what that man can do…

~Brad

 What caught my eye is that they DIDN’T announce it for the T-Mobile G1 which of course runs Google’s own Android operating system. That would have been a pretty cool built-in feature for that phone, right? I’m sure they’re hard at work on the Android version and I do think it’s awesome that Google is all for supporting other platforms, but I kind of thought they’d at least support their own OS first. There’s no shame in that. Every software company out there does that. I kind of feel sorry for the G1 users…

~Brad

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What!?!?!?!?!?

Excellent marketing, Google! I love Google just as much as the next guy… heck, I even have family that works there, but this seems kind of silly for me. It may be that they’ve had more dev time with the iPhone, but how long has the G1 been in planning? Maybe they’re just that proud of their product that they’re willing to put it out as quick as possible on any platform possible? Maybe the iPhone is more versatile than the G1? I guess the following months will tell.

~Jon

~Jon & Brad

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A good while back, I spent a lot of time searching for a nice, solid, smooth email server for use on my system at home.  I host my own domains, and my own email server.

At that point, I tried several different systems, everywhere from simple Postfix IMAP/POP servers, to full-blown groupware suites.  I won’t take the time to list them all.  Some of them are free, some of them are not.

I decided that since I was able to use virtual machines (VMware has a free server product in case you’ve been living under a rock), it was time for me to implement a simple ActiveDirectory at home.  Just because I could.  It seemed logical to try out Exchange in this little lab of mine.  It worked well.  But as I moved my desktop/laptops over to Ubuntu, I needed something better than OWA through Firefox - OWA is no good without Microsoft’s junky ActiveX in case you’ve never tried it.

Click here to jump to jdsnow.net and read the full story…

The MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008) includes a new feature in the Energy Saver system preference pane for adjusting graphics performance. You can select Better battery life or Higher performance, as shown below.

• Select Better battery life for situations where heavy, graphic-intensive applications are not being used or use of the MagSafe adaptor is limited.
• Select Higher performance if playing games or carrying out other tasks which involve heavy graphics processing.

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I’m kind of on the other end of this argument. I think that it does suck and they should have gone the extra mile to make it easier to switch. I hate getting into system preferences for anything, but every time that I want to conserve battery life or play a game I have to navigate to the above screen? No thanks. MAYBE someone will make a nice app to be placed in the menu bar, much the way that the wireless settings are. Maybe it could be incorporated like iStat as a 3rd party app?

I could imagine that most of the time I would have mine switched to the integrated card, but I’m not much of a gamer either. I think most people will use the switch as much as I will, they’ll use one card or the other and NOT use the switch.

~Jon

1. Neverwinter Nights
2. Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City
3. Rad Racer II
4. Eve Online (the largest persistent MMO with a record 42,000 users online at one time)
5. Final Fantasy VII
6. Dark Age of Camelot

I can still pick up any of these games today and play them with a great amount of enjoyment.

~Jon

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Jon surprised me with this post and I had to think about it a little.  I’ve played some great games over the years..

1. GoldenEye 007 (for N64)
2. Neverwinter Nights (I have to agree with Jon on this one, we still try to play this once a week)
3. Perfect Dark  (also N64)
4. Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (there were several good ones in the R6 series but Raven Shield was my favorite)
5. Battlefield 2
6. Dark Age of Camelot (just so I have a #6, I played DAoC for several years and quite a bit with Jon and I always had a blast)

GoldenEye was the first game that really got me into FPS’s and was also the first game that got me to play a game through the entire night.  Neverwinter Nights just has awesome replayability, story, and game design and if it wasn’t for GoldenEye it would easily top my list.

~Brad