Gave up on university internet system
I finally disconnected my cable modem and rolled back up the ethernet cable before sticking them into a box in the closet. The cable internet system hasn't worked since I moved here, and I'm still pissed that I paid for two accounts for Summer I and couldn't even access the net. They kept promising to remove the charges, and they never did. Now, the people to contact are completely inaccessible.

I tell you what really finally did it for me. A technician came out two days ago and re-snipped the cable line in the wall and said that should take care of it. An hour after she left, my cable internet went down again. Then, and this is what I love the most, it came back up the next morning, I tried to access the net, but instead of a web site, it gave me the registration page (asking for more money). I decided I'd wait to see if the system went down again, and sure enough, half an hour later it did. It hasn't been back up since.

I just thought it was pretty interesting that the system came up long enough to try to get me to pay more money for an account I'd never be able to access.

I'm using a phone modem now. It's slow as hell, but what can you do? I don't know of any other way around this mess.

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My experience with the official Kerry site is causing me to swing back towards Bush
I hate Bush. I've said that over and over again. I've even participated in the "anything but Bush" rhetoric in a positive manner.

However, and this is still subject to change, my experience with the official Kerry election site is quickly informing me of what I can expect for the next four years if Kerry is elected. People have been nothing but rude to me since I have posted there. I'm not talking about the usual internet flame baiters, but the moderators who are actually part of the Kerry campaign itself.

I see unthinking, unfeeling individuals who are really getting on my nerves. I get zero response from any official channels of the Democratic Party, and I can't even seem to get a proper Michigan web site for the Democratic Party that works to the extent that one can join that party's information base.

The way it is starting to look is that I have nothing to lose by focusing back on Bush. Neither one is that much better than the other, and as I can't seem to get anyone to take voters seriously from the Kerry side of the house, why should I think about supporting that candidate who I'm starting to believe is falling into this groupthink of believing he is better and more important than the average voter.

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Which science fiction/fantasy character are you?
Well,, it turns out that I'm Galadriel from Lord of the Rings. So, this leaves me wondering, does it mean that I also get to stare at myself in the mirror for a long time and um....never mind.

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If my search is indicative, Kerry's gonna have a hard time in Michigan
I was just doing a bunch of searches for Kerry information in Michigan, and after trying to join a number of official Democrat sites in Michigan, they all kept bringing me to error pages or utilized bad cgi.

If Michigan is such a crucial state for the Democrats this year, perhaps they should take Michigan a bit more seriously then.

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The thing about politics that bugs me
I recently joined the Kerry for President Web site to discuss issues with other people who are thinking of voting for Kerry. It took me a little surfing through the message boards to find an interesting posting from Dick Bell, the Kerry site administrator, who explains that the purpose of the Kerry site's message boards is, well, here's an example: "As you get ready to leave a new post, please think about the rules, and think about whether your post will advance John Kerry's campaign for the presidency."

This is what bothers me. I went to the site hoping to engage people in conversation as to how Kerry might address those of us on the outside who might vote for him, but aren't his greatest fans. I don't anticipate they care about us. Why have a discussion site with the sole purpose of spouting only good things about a candidate? Who wants to discuss in an atmosphere like that.

And no, this isn't an anti-Kerry thing because you won't even find a site that allows you to discuss Bush on the Republican dime, so it's not any better on the other side of the field.

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Same Old Song
This poem was published about 8 years back in one of the national poetry journals. I just found it while going through some old files while putting together my book of old poetry.

SAME OLD SONG
By Duane Allen Gundrum

Every morning the same bird sings its waking song
Bringing the world to life.
Cheerful.
Without a care in the world
Does he lift his wing to soar
Or does he just fly?
Does he wonder what it’s all about?
Or does he just sing?

The roads keep turning
And the turns keep twisting
And the twists keep changing
Till the road is all there is.
The distance between us is no longer a straight line
But an endless cavern of words and silence.

Do you still think about me when the birds sing?

Do you still listen to the same old songs?
Do you say the same old words?
Do you still think of the world in the way you do?
Every morning the same bird sings its waking song.
And I wonder if the meaning ever changes.

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Downtime
Well, I think I'm done for the summer. I e-mailed the grades to Dr. K, and I haven't heard back from her, so I can only assume everything went off okay. Who knows?

This means I have the rest of the summer to myself finally. This is the first time in about 12 years where I don't actually have to be doing something for nearly two months. I'm not exactly sure what to do now. If it wasn't non-stop school or work, it was a relationship that required 24/7 maintenance. Well, been a LONG time since I was in one of those.

For the last few days, I've been vegging out on the couch, watching Buffy and Smallville. Yeah, that's real productive. But you know, I don't have to be productive right now.

I've been seriously considering finding a girlfriend in another part of the country, or world for that matter, and just moving there, giving up this whole school thing for good. I'm tired of school and really think I'm wasting my time pretending to actually care about what I'm doing.

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My familiar internet song
They're doing some work on my internet service today. It turns out they've discovered there's a signal leak in the apartment below me, which means not enough power is being driven through the system. Well, we kind of knew this some time ago.

It should be interesting to see if they actually succeed in fixing this thing. Using a dial-up has really sucked ever since I moved here.

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Videocard woes
Recently, my videocard stopped working correctly. This means I have to go through Ibuypower yet again to get a replacement, which takes forever as they have a screwy return policy involving charging my credit card again whenever they send replacement parts, so I have to have them send me a mailing label, send them back my videocard and then wait for a new one. Kind of a crappy way of doing business, but what can you do.

But my concern is actually talking to some really STUPID customer service people. Here's how I intend to continue communicating this problem with them:

"Grok say video card no work. Grok call Ibuypower and IBP want money to send Grok new card. Grok have no money, so Grok need to use old card while IBP send mailing label to Grok to send back card, leaving poor Grok with computer with no videocard.

"Grok try kick computer, but computer still no work. So Grok use very old videocard he find on dinosaur until IBP uses magic to send Grok replacement card."

Think this method might work?

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License to Quill by Davina Marconis
I wrote an epic poem a few years back that I have been revising for submission. I'm planning to submit a book of poetry (it's amazing I have this much) for publication soon. This is a piece of the first poem (which is extremely long) that will front the book of poetry. The poem is written in the voice of a young woman living on the streets whose poem was found buried in the bottom of a dumpster one day (supposedly by me):

Mr. Gregor told me my poem was powerful
and told me to keep working on it.
I told him it was finished
but he told me all poems are works in progress
As are all lives
A life is just a work in progress
until one dies.
And then it’s done
So was Socrates a work in progress until
he took the swig of Hemlock in his chambers?
What was the finished product
but a product of another?
What will be my end product
but a product of another?
Will there be a Plato to cherish my thoughts?
Or a Nietsche to explain how wrong I was?
What did Socrates get for bringing his wisdom
to the world
Socrates
Whose knowledge begot Plato
Whose knowledge begot Aristotle
Whose knowledge begot Alexander.
Who took over the entire known, free world.
In only a few generations
were the teachings of Socrates so lost?
Why change the world when the world
will probably do the same to me?

Stumble It!

Searching for clues takes thinking like a child

The latest article.

The Western Herald - Searching for clues takes thinking like a child

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Old friends out of the woodwork
It's kind of strange, but one friend contacted me through my blog, and it was good to hear from him. Today, an old friend I knew from high school contacted me through my yahoo account.

I guess it's strange for me because while here in Kalamazoo, I've really felt like I'm alone here. I don't really have any close friends that I hang out with on a daily basis. Most of the people I hang out with (through work or school) all tend to be a lot younger than me, and I get the impression that I'm more an add-on at times than an actual participant. That was such a change from when I was living in San Francisco, and any time before that.

So, it was kind of strange to hear from one of my old, good friends from San Francisco, and then to hear from a complete blast from the past from high school.

I sometimes feel like I'm observing my life rather than living it, if that makes any sense.

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Lawnmowers
This just pisses me off. 7 am they decided to mow the lawns out here where I live. This went on until about 9am. Try sleeping through that.

I wouldn't mind as much but today I actually have to do work, so I was kind of hoping to actually get some sleep.

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The greatest game I've ever played
Last night, I finished playing Knights of the Old Republic, and I will be honest when I say that it has been a very long time since I have played a game that was so interesting and so filled with everything that makes a game great.

It was like playing a movie, but a very good movie. It's a Star Wars game that takes place 4000 years before the first Star Wars movie, and you are a person smuggled onto a rebellion ship that is attacked by the Sith (the evil people that would eventually be known as connected with Darth Vader 4000 years later). Throughout the whole story, there are a number of mysteries that get solved along the journey, and the essence of the story is that you become a jedi and lead your friends you pick up along the way to battle against the most evil Sith Lord ever imagined.

The story was just brilliant. The game play was enjoyable, if not a bit frustrating because sometimes it was SO hard to beat some of the situations you got yourself into. The characters you hang around can range from frustrating to hilariously funny (there's one robot that is part of your group that was sold to you as a "translation droid" even though it's pretty obvious he's a psychotic killer droid that keeps asking you stuff like "Master, can we blast these meatbags? Please let me. Please, please! I mean, if you want me to, of course."

Anyway, not much else going on other than that.

Practically giving up on my Internet connection
They don't care. They really don't. I have been complaining for weeks, or pretty much about two months since I moved here. I can't maintain a stable connection, and for the last two days I've had no connection at all. Finally, I went to Best Buy, got a Juno disk and installed a dial up service on my computer instead. I mean, what else can I do?

It's been really frustrating. But if they don't want that $160 a semester from me (2 computers are $80 a piece), then it looks like I'll just have to compromise with something else. I'm starting to do less with the Internet these days anyway, so I guess I can live with it. It will make it really hard to do research this way because already the library has given me nothing but errors as I've tried to access Lexis-Nexus, even using my account information.

What can you do?

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I did it even though I know it doesn't mean anything
Today, I was kind of bored while reading Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action so I did something I was thinking about doing for awhile. I filled out an online application for the FBI to be an intelligence analyst (counterterrorism division). I went through the motion, and I realized that I have more than enough qualifications for one of the high-end analyst jobs. So I filled out the application.

Now, I know I don't have a shot in hell, but it was just one of those things I felt like doing at the time. A long time ago, I applied to the CIA and was actually accepted. At the very end, they were going to require me to fill out a form that meant I had to turn over every one of my novels in the future to them to decide if I could publish it. Being a novelist, that just didn't sit right with me.

Anyway, I blame Mancur Olson if they accept me. He and his blasted collective goods!

Stumble It!