Post-election poll-worker props

No matter which candidates you supported in yesterday’s elections, I think you’ll agree that the Wake County Board of Elections did an outstanding job managing the election. Early voting was super-easy and wildly successful, voting machines worked well, ballots were easy to understand and counted fairly, and poll workers knew their jobs and performed those jobs efficiently. Rarely did I see anyone waiting more than 5 to 10 minutes at the polling places I visited. Even the Board of Election’s post-election results webpages, farmed out to SOE Software, easily handled the load.

Managing a presidential election is a mammoth project but from what I can see Wake County pulled it off flawlessly. Kudos to all the poll workers who put in long hours to make voting so effortless!

Yes we did

Its been a long day, but it had a happy ending (except for my friend Al Swanstrom, who sadly lost in a squeaker). I’m beat and the blogging will have to wait but tomorrow will sure feel like a new day in more ways than one.

One poll greeting done, one to go

I’m in the eye of the election storm right now. Just got back from the Apex polling place where I’ve been campaigning for Al Swanstrom since 6:30. Things went well except for the bone-chilling drizzle. I came prepared for that with a raincoat and an umbrella, though I didn’t use either of them. More of that in a minute.

The polling place was at the Fairview Rural Fire Department station on Ten-Ten Road. When I arrived at 6:30 there were cars lining both sides of the road. I parked about a quarter-mile away as that was the closest parking place. When I got there there were perhaps a hundred people already waiting inside.
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Crunch time

Vote!
I’ve taken tomorrow off to campaign for a few good candidates. I’ll be in Apex tomorrow working as a poll greeter for Al Swanstrom (NC House). Then in the afternoon I’ll be in Raleigh’s Five Points campaigning for Josh Stein (NC Senate) and Grier Martin (NC House). I hope to wrap up the day celebrating victory but I won’t know that until the evening.

Believe it or not, I’ll be so happy all this is over, even if its just a little while. Its high time to get on with other things!

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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Bob Harris goes to the North Korean border

Pusan, South Korea was one of my first port visits in the Navy. Though its as far away from the DMZ as it can be and still be on the Korean peninsula, I could still feel the tension between the North and South. Even there I had this sense that things weren’t quite normal.

I never did get up to the DMZ (which in hindsight was probably a good thing) and so I was fascinated to read Bob Harris’s account of a tourist trip he took up to the North Korean border. Harris’s writing captures the crazy atmosphere of that part of the world.

I think this is as close to the DMZ as I’d like to get, thank you very much.