Cameron's Thoughts

Neil gave me a link to this site, JohnKerryIsADoucheBagButImVotingForHimAnyWay.com. Like the site mentions, I don't know if I would go as far to say that he is a douche bag, but he's not the first candidate I would have picked by far. But the site has many good points, and I fully agree with it. I would have voted for any loser or freak that fell into the democratic nomination, as long as it wasn't Bush or one of his buddies. All I know is he needs to go, and ANYBODY could do a better job. So, yes, I will vote for John Kerry. In the primaries, I voted for John Edwards since I though he would have been a much better choice, but, oh well. What can we do. Whatever you do, please don't vote for Bush. Think of the children, and the parents, and the poor, and the older. Really, the only people that should vote Bush should be the rich (500K a year and up) and the family members of rich republican politicians. Or, if you are in the oil business. Those are really the only people to benefit from Bush's presidency.

Had an interesting day so far. I was just relaxing and enjoying my day off when we got a nice thunderstorm. No biggie, we have had thunderstorms all week long. But then, I get a nice little call from Nickcole at work. She sounded all panicky. She said there was a tornado warning and the sirens were going off. I didn't even hear the sirens. And they just put a new one up near Wal-Mart which is about a half mile from my house. But, the storm was pretty loud, I had to shut all the windows because I couldn't hear the TV over it. So, I think the rain muffled out the siren noise. So, here I am with an 11 month old, and me who wasn't even fully dressed in a mobile home with no basement. I rush to get clothes on, threw some shoes on, grabbed a blanket, a diaper bag, and Hailey. Ran out the door and into the car. Hailey and I were soaked since I didn't take any time to find coats and couldn't get the blanket on Hailey all the way. But, if there was a tornado on the way, getting wet isn't the end of the world.
At this point, I start driving, didn't have any clue where I was going. Didn't even have any details on where the tornado was to try and avoid it. But I headed for the highway since that was close by and could get us out of the way as quick as possible. But as I start going, Nickcole's mom calls. She says I should head for my sister in law, Tarra's, house. I then turn around and head for that direction. As I am going that way, I get a call from Tarra asking where I am since the radio says that the tornado is near Packard Highway, the road our house is on. Also, this is the road I am driving on. Not very good, so I increase speed. Anyhow, I finally make it to Tarra's and all is well. But, the flooding was unbelievable. Nearly every street corner I came to in town was completely flooded, some roads I don't think were drivable. Plus all the ditches on the Packard, which is on the edge of town, were completely full of water. I had no yard when I got out of the house, it was a lake.

This site is powered by a very nice piece of software called Movable Type. Big news has been that the next major release of the software, version 3.0 is in the testing stages and going to be released soon. Well, that time is now.
Six Apart, the company that produces the software has released a developers version of the software that anyone can use right now. But the big news that has caused a lot of controversy has been the announcement of a new licensing scheme. This is a huge change. Movable Type in the past has been completely free for noncommercial use. And there will still be a free version now, but it is very restrictive. It only allows for a single author and up to three blogs. For many, this is too restrictive for how they are currently using the software. Not only that, but the lowest cost version of the software to purchase has a price tag of $99.99, on sale for 69.95 currently. This will allow up to five authors and five blogs, still for noncommerical use. That's quite a hefty price. I understand that the company needs to make money, but for the price to go from free to $100 and still be restrictive compared to what the free version offers is a hard change to transition to.
Plus, add on to that, version 3.0 will not really add any features expect for their TypeKey comment feature, something that I really had no intrest in anyway. Once again, I have no problem with the fact that this new version wasn't going to add any features. The big thing was that the foundation of the application was going to be completely rewritten to allow for better plug-ins and more powerful features in the future.
I believe that a fully-featured version of Movable Type would be something worth paying for. Throw in every feature they can think of, and slap a price tag on it. But, 3.0 is basically just like 2.6, but it costs money. So, for the time being, I am planning no software upgrades and will stick with what I've got.

The latest version of the Opera web browser came out today. I had been running the beta version, and it has some nice new features. But, as I have only been running it for less than an hour, I am sad to see that it has already suffered one crash. This is not as big of a deal as Internet Explorer crashing because even if you have twenty web pages open, Opera will continue from where you left off. Some of the new features I have noticed:

• RSS newsfeed reader built-in
• Limited IRC chat client built-in
• Improved mail interface
• Mail client now has learning folders, some folders can learn what messages show go where, such as a spam folder to reduce spam from showing up in the inbox. This can work like the message rules found in Microsoft's e-mail clients, but instead of definite rules, you move certain types of messages to certain folders, and the client learns. There is also a rules feature still present.
• Favicon's actually show up in the bookmarks menu like IE does.
• Spell check ability. Requires a free add-on program to use.
• Menus have been reorganized to be more similar to IE. Not really more useful, probably to make the IE-to-Opera transition easier for new users.
• Added smiles to messages in IRC and e-mail.
• Better way to organize contacts.
• Easier access to Hotlist (which is called something else now, I think it's just called the panel.
• Much easier way to customize toolbars.

Just found out earlier today that our next baby is gonna be a boy. Got to see the ultrasound first hand and it was pretty cool. The due date is still the same as before, Oct. 9 so everything is going how it should.

Haven't been up to much recently. Yesterday was Nickcole's first Mother's Day. We had lunch with my mom. We went to the Eaton Place, a little hometown restaurant. My brother and sister were there, and Nickcole, Hailey, and a friend of my brother's were also there. My mom is kind of funny cause she spilt her iced tea twice and then got gravy all over herself.
After that, Nickcole, Hailey and I went to Sparrow Hospital since they thought her dad might have had a heart attack. I guess they got him there before anything happened, so he was fine.
I then got the grill out for the first time this year and was gonna make hamburgers on hot dogs, but just as I started to cook the food, a storm came in with lightning and then it just poured like crazy. That wasn't planned too well.

Hailey is now officially walking. She is now taking five or more steps. Yesterday she walked all the way across our living room. She still seems to prefer crawling as it gets her around quicker, but I think that she knows that walking is what makes her grown up.

Back in early December, I purchased the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0. It's a great wireless mouse. Does have all the buttons all over it like their Explorer mice, but it does have the standard two buttons plus a scroll wheel that not only scrolls up and down, but can rock left and right providing a full range of page scrolling.
This is my first wireless mouse, and the one thing that concerned me was battery life. If I had to keep replacing the batteries, I was likely not to use it much. The box said it would last six months on a pair of AA's. That isn't bad at all, only twice a year. But, I didn't actually expect it to last that long. For one thing, I do use the mouse quite a bit, probably more than average use. Plus, this mouse doesn't have an off button, it is always on. So, I figured that they gave the six month figure as the best you can expect under some rare circumstance. Well, I have now had the mouse for five months, and the battery indicator is still in the good range. Looks like I will probably get the six months usage that I was promised.
Anyone loking for a good mouse might want to consider this. It's optical, so accuracy and no maintenance are nice (If you don't have an optical mouse, you need to upgrade to one, even if it's a cheap one). Plus, the scroll wheel is very smooth, on other mice you can usually hear the clicks as you turn the wheel, this mouse is silent. It even looks stylish too. And you can beat not having a cord.

DirecTV's 7S satellite is going to be launching on May 4th, which will soon be bringing local channels to a number of area's, including the Lansing, MI area where I am located in. This is good news. More info can be found at the Sea Launch website.