I was thoroughly unimpressed with Bush’s State of the Union address this evening. Again he was more focused on the poorly performing war on terror and illegal wiretapping than on anything substantive. It was the same old rhetoric we’ve heard from his speeches the last four years. Where is his vision, where is the leadership? It’s apparently his plan to continue his failed policies that have gotten him some of the worst approval ratings of any president.
Of course the Democrats completely screwed up their response. I completely agree with The New Republic on their assesment:
True, the selection of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to deliver the rebuttal to tonight’s State of the Union address probably wasn’t a brilliant move. As the liberal blogosphere has already noted, selecting a man who’s held his current office for all of two weeks seems a bit, well, unwise. Even Republicans must be starting to get frustrated that Democrats continue to be so feckless.
What were they thinking of choosing this guy? He hasn’t been in office long enough to prove he can do anything yet. He lacked charisma and energy to me. He may have been clearer in his message, but I certainly didn’t feel inspired after hearing it.
Maybe some day the Democrats will get a clue and capitalize on a situation that should have voters running to them in droves.
As I begin to get everything in order to return to collegiate life starting in March to work on my MBA at CSU I have realized that precious time may be too fleeting to do all the things I currently do.
Some things are potentially easier to cut out than others. For example I can always cut down on how much TV I watch or drop to a lower number of movies from Netflix. But things like leading the junior high youth at church, all the various discussion groups I go to, the book club, not to mention all the magazines I receive (BusinessWeek, The New Republic, National Geographic, and Cleveland Magazine) which I love to read. Oh and of course my computer time will be sharply curtailed I’m sure.
At least I don’t have to make the decisions quite yet. 
There are times when you miss a great opportunity only to find out later that it could have happened. Today was such a day.
Originally Adam and I were supposed to attend his department’s year end event this evening. However, our apathy got the better of us and we decided not to go afterall. What was the missed opportunity?
I found out that Lifehouse was performing at the House of Blues downtown a few days ago and really wanted to go to the concert but we were supposed to go to the year end event so I didn’t buy tickets. Quite a let down, but I’m sure there will be another chance.
Published by Bryan 2 years, 3 months ago
in Life.
Adam’s venerable 1994 Honda Accord finally decided to quit working with almost 170,000 miles on it so purchasing a new car was in order. We originally were looking at getting a used Civic but in the end we purchased a brand new 2006 Saturn ION Type 3. I’m very pleased with the choice. I’ll let him blog the details.
Yesterday we upgraded our cable internet speed. It’s quite fast now…
When I switched my blog to Wordpress I also started using Flickr and I have to say that I love it. It makes organizing and sharing photos fun again. I’ve already upgraded to a pro account. Yes I know I could come up with some free solution on my own server here but Flickr just makes it too easy and offers so many slick features it’s not even worth bothering with my own solution.
I’ve already started to upload most of my iPhoto library but I still have a ways to go. I just finished uploading some pictures from a trip to visit my Grandma in Grand Haven, Michigan this summer.
There are some neat tools for Flickr as well. For Mac I use either Flickr Uploadr or use the FlickrExport for iPhoto. And of course the myriad of Flickr plugins for Wordpress, in fact my photo gallery on this site is powered by Flickr.
If you’ve got a Flickr account be sure to let me know so I can add you as a contact, if you don’t have one it’s free to sign up and I highly recommend it. And feel free to subscribe to my photo RSS feed.
While driving on the highway the other day I just really couldn’t help but think how ugly billboards are. I think the world would be a much better place if they were outlawed.
Each time I get a new version of iLife I usually try to go back to using all Apple apps so everything works smoothly together. Normally though I stop using iChat pretty quickly and go back to Adium. This time though I found a program that makes iChat much more bareable called Chax. It fixes a lot of the annoying things about iChat and add some features that always should have been there. I’ll see how long it takes this time before I switch back, or maybe I never will.
Another interesting thing is that Flip4Mac is making their WMV Quicktime playback component free. It’s actually also being distributed on Microsoft’s site. I wonder if this signals the imminent demise of WMPlayer for Mac (not that it would be a big loss).
My arm has been killing me all day. I have absolutely no idea what I did to it, all I know is that whenever I reach out for something or lift my arm it is killing me. Almost like I just got a tetanus shot.
Besides that I’ve installed iLife ‘06 today. I’ve not had too much time to play around with it but I can say iPhoto’s speed is certainly enhanced and some of the new tools are nice especially the easy to use one-touch enhancements. The biggest thing about iPhoto that annoys me unfortunately still has not been fixed…its keyword support. Unlike iTunes where you can just start typing a music genre for a song which will prefill or on the fly allow you to add a new one, in iPhoto you can only select what’s already on a list or to add to the list you have to go into the preferences. Just not Apple UI friendly to me.
Besides that one little quirk I would say that iPhoto 6 is worth the upgrade. iWeb is, well, rather disappointing. Just seems like .Mac’s web templates just on the desktop and when I published a test site to my .Mac account it gives you this obnoxious URL which would not be easy for someone to remember. I haven’t had a chance to try out the other apps yet but I’m interested in seeing Garageband’s Podcasting feature.
I have so much on my to do list and so little time to get it done. Time to sit down and prioritize!
Another reason why Pat Robertson should not be allowed to talk.
