November 2008

There were 84 posts published in November 2008 (this is page 9 of 9).

Brainiac student supports McCain

The N&O talked to some campaign supporters for a story in Sunday’s paper. I found this one totally laughable:

[Christine DiPietro, the 21-year-old head of the N.C. State student group Students for McCain,] said that after sitting in class next to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, she considered which candidate would make the best commander in chief.

“I feel John McCain is the best man for that job,” she said.

Amazing. Sitting next to actual veterans has given DiPietro special insight into the mind of veterans. It must work like osmosis or something. Hey, I sat next to a brain surgeon on a plane once. Now I can perform brain surgery!

Maybe DiPietro should venture outside of class every once in a while. Then maybe she’d find out that our troops support Obama over McCain by a six-to-one margin in donations. And if that’s not enough insight into the military life for her, maybe DiPietro could take a four-year hiatus from class and sign up herself. No osmosis needed!

She can support McCain all she wants but she should find a reason other than that’s what she thinks veterans want.

Home, but not quite alone

Kelly took the kids up to visit her parents this weekend. I stayed around to get a few things done and take care of our new dog, Rocket .. er, Rocky. He’s been keeping me company and snores below me at this moment as I sit on the couch. Rocky’s been getting lots of exercise this weekend, and by extension so have I.

I took him on his first visit to a Raleigh greenway yesterday, though he opted to drag me along for most of it. I then let him hang out in the backyard while I spread some mulch around in our front flowerbeds (it was a picture-perfect fall day). I felt like rewarding Rocky for his patience so we hopped into the car again for a trip to the dog park. He and I were both ready for bed around 9 PM, though I had to change almost 600 clocks to standard time before going to bed.
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Opus comic strip ending

Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is ending his Opus comic strip after five years. The last strip ran this morning. Breathed says his core readership – the 13 to 30 crowd – no longer reads papers. He also says he doesn’t want to see Opus take on Breathed’s political pessimism.

“Now is the time to get out and leave the sweet little bastard the way people would like to remember him, and how I would like to remember him, before he inevitably gets drawn into my bitterness, which I cannot seem to divorce myself from in cartooning,” Breathed said.
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Digital TV ready

I spent a moment this morning doing some research on which digital TV converter box to buy. We’ve got an HDTV but also have a standard-definition TV which is is very good condition.

Wikipedia made it easy with a handy comparison chart. It seems that very few of these converter boxes (a large group of which are known as Coupon-Eligible Converter Boxes or CECBs as they qualify for the $40 government subsidy) sport S-video outputs. The clearest input for my analog TV, a mid-90s model Sony, is its S-video input. To me it doesn’t make sense to have a box convert from a perfect digital signal to an analog output if that analog output isn’t going to be at least S-video quality.
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