Barracking for Huskies in the Emerald City

Updates on my bug.

2009-04-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

So for those of you that know me hopefully know that my bug isn't an insect but my daughter who is 8 months old. We have been pretty good about filming her so far but the camera is a mini dv camera so it takes time to get them on the computer. Luckily Jen's digital camera takes video but no sound so after I finally got the video on my computer, here are a few videos of bug we have taken recently.

Emma has started holding herself up on the coach and this morning she pulled herself up to a standing position by holding onto the coach!

One day she started crawling around while sucking on her toy. We couldn't decide if it was a way to carry it with her or what but it was rather funny.

This video is two part. The first part she is way to excited to actually walk and then she does. I love how big steps she takes. It is funny to watch her walk, but exciting.

The world is Ending

2009-01-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to a program called StumbleUpon. Its a cool program that helps you find random websites based on certain criteria you enter in. It actually really fun, you should check it out. But anyways today I found two things that I couldn't believe. Both were really funny but for vastly different reasons. The first one is the video below of Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno commenting on the Government bailouts. Check it out. But if you don't want to scroll down because the best is yet to come.

Okay so after I found that I stumbled on this picture. Thinking it was a joke I went to the website attached to it and found they were serious. Mrs. Mime and I decided that not only is this retarded but I might actually start eating fish, I mean, "Sea Kittens" just because. If you want a really good laugh look at the About Our Campaign link on their website and read the rotating information on the right side of the screen. Its pretty good as well. I thought that this might make someone's day. Pretty funny in my opinion.

2009-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

"When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life." Unkown

So I realized that I hadn't in a while. I realized that for two reasons, one being that it is my blog and I remember when I wrote in it last and two, Mrs. Mime always reminds me that I haven't written. In my defense I have been busy alot lately with trying to get an internship and starting school again but I probably have time to write in here if I get up the energy. To quote one of the most said lines by Roger in the show American Dad " Don't Judge me" Anyways There has not been much here but taking care of my daughter. I am trying to decide what internship to take right now but I am not really that sure. I have possibilities from a couple different companies that I could go with but the one I really want I won't know about until March which is scary so I might take one before then because I don't know if I will get it. Anyways I really am loving my time here in Seattle. I love the University of Washington and I love my ward. They are awesome, I am not that social but they are and I am trying to change. I am excited to keep learning about Information Assurance and really excited to keep learning about it. This semester should be fun because I am working on one assignment that is fun and another in a group that is fun which always makes things better. Well I will try and write more later. If anyone knows of any part-time jobs in Seattle either leave a comment or get in contact with me. I would love to have a better job in the Field of either Information Assurance/Information Security or Information Technology. Good luck everyone and I will post more later

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

2008-12-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

It’s better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you’re stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. — Mark Twain

So today was one of the hardest days of my life, and one of the best. As most of the know I have a daughter who is a little over four months old at the age of two months and four months to get their first shots. Now growing up getting shots was always a traumatic experience, but it was nothing compared to holding my four months old get hers. She had her second doctor's appointments today at a place that would best be described as one step away from a vacant building and probably should be. Now those of you that have had any interactions with me you know that I am a very quiet person (I am writing this using a dictation program and when my wife heard me say that she laughed. I don't know why :) ) Jen assured me after we have checked in that the doctor and nurses were very much worth it. I had my doubts. We were soon escorted into the room, where it turns out that despite the fact that Emma doesn't sleep and even doesn't eat that long according to the nurse of she now ways 12 pounds 16 ounces, up from 11 lbs 7 ounces 6 weeks ago. Now math hasn't always been my best subject but isn't that the same as 13 pounds? If not please inform me of where what exactly is. Anyways, that wasn't exactly a great way to start off the appointment when I was ready to leave after I saw the office. It turns out though that the nurse, doctor and lady that gave the shot, sorry forgot what her title actually is, were excellent and much better then the doctor's in Rexburg. When it came time to give Emma her shot I held her and I have to say I about cried when I saw the needles. I had my doubts about whether they would actually stay in her leg and not go all the way through, those things were LONG!! Emma actually took it like a trouper and only cried for a little under 5 minutes. Jen assured me she cried worse her first time she got shots, which I missed because of classes. I don't know if I believe her or not but I will take her word for it. Just joking Jen, calm down.

Now on to the best day of my life. I got onto one of my favorite sites Hulu. For those of you that haven't heard of it, where have YOU been? hehehe. But anyways it is a site the legally hosts different movies and tv shows for people to watch without having to pay. But when I got home to see if the new Heroes was up I saw that they just added one of the best TV Shows ever, Masters of the Universe or Heman to normal people!!! I was so excited. Now for those of you that think I am a horrible person for leaving my daughter, who just had shots, to cry with Jenny, she was asleep so I had time to myself. So I thought I would get on and inform you all you have to go on Hulu and watch Heman. Its the best. I will write more about the longest job application later.

Is it over yet?

2008-11-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

"I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

Thomas Jefferson

So I really think that it is a bad thing that I am in my first semester of my graduate degree and already I am partially burned out. Now I am not saying I don't want to continue, I just want this semester to be over. Yeah yeah yeah I know it isn't the best thing but hey lets be serious, I hate quarters with a passion. Well I guess hating quarters isn't the beset way to put it, I really hate it when teachers decide that their class is the only one that matters so they put all sorts of extra things into your final project right before it is due and one person leave a week before thanksgiving because "They want to be with their family longer" taking away one person from two of your group projects!!! Grr.... needless to say the brunt of a group project which should be done with at least 4 people is now done by two. We got cut down to three people in one of my groups because of a story that is WAY to long, well not long but just points out that some people may be old enough to go to Grad school but they really need to learn to voice their frustrations and not expecting us to know through ESP. But yeah.

Aside from the frustrations at school everything is going very well, Mrs. Mime and Gummy bear are doing great. Gummy Bear is growing up so much I can't believe it. I can't believe that Gummy Bear is almost 4 months old!! Thanksgiving was yesterday and we spent it with my family. It was good to see everyone again. Now I have to go home and finish two group projects before Tuesday. Fun, Fun I will post more actively if I survive this week.

New and exciting things learned.

2008-10-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

"We now find ourselves in the last days of this earth’s temporal history. In a coming day, our Father’s Son will return to the earth from which He was rejected and reclaim it as His own. In that day, He will subdue Satan and his legions and usher in a thousand years of peace and righteousness. In anticipation of that day, God has restored His kingdom to the earth one last time. That kingdom is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" James J Hamula October 4th 2008.

You know how you have certain days where everything just clicks? I am not talking about the days where you can't do anything wrong and you win a million dollars, (don't even think about commenting on that statement Scully or Mrs. Mime.) but the days when things just make since? Today was one of those days for me.

To be honest with you besides the fact that my wife was gone all last week the last week has been like that for me. Things have just clicked. It started with General Conference on the 4th and 5th of October. General Conference is a time where all the members of my church get together either in SLC or by Satellite to listen to the leaders of our church speak. On the Saturday night there is always a conference for just the men over the age of 12. While some of you may think its sexist to exclude women from that, in my opinion we have that meeting because we need more help then the girls do. Anyways one of the talks from that session gave the quote above which I absolutely love.

From there the week was pretty good until last night. Last night I got to bed around 10:30pm or 11:00pm and as I went to bed I noticed it was getting a little loud downstairs. Usually I wouldn't even be able to tell that we have neighbors but the girls below us were having some big party. I didn't really think anything of it until about 1:00am when Mrs. Mime and I were awakened to a very Loud, very Drunk guy, who I will call Mr. Pansy, really ticked off at another guy, who I will call Mr. Safe, who he was going to beat up if he Girlfriend didn't stop him. The funny part was I think Mr. Safe didn't have to worry to much because Mr. Pansy would go from yelling and hitting the wall to Crying uncontrollably while his girlfriend tried to console him. If it didn't keep me up I would have found it hilarious.

So between Mr. Pansy crying and the other noise I pretty much was awake from 12:00 until 3 when my daughter decided she wanted to be up and kept wiggling for the rest of the night. Needless to say I really didn't want to go to church but Mrs. Mime being the good person she was decided that it would be better if we did. I am glad we did because I learned something at church that I had not really thought of before.

During Sunday School the teacher was talking about the Law of Moses and how it was fulfilled when Christ gave his life on the cross. I have always wondered what the reason for the change in rules was. I understand that Christ gave them a high law and that it was the more complete way for them to return to live the him and his father again but the question that always bothered me was why. Why not give it to them earlier? I realized as the Teacher was talking that the whole reason for it was the Holy Ghost. When Christ left after his mortal ministry he left people with the Holy Ghost. As the bible explains for people to have the Holy Ghost they have to live by a higher code. In order to give us a chance to keep the Holy Ghost with us at all times the Lord told gave us a higher law that will help us keep the Holy Ghost with us at all times.

This whole blog is about the fact that one of the reasons the Lord "Raised the bar" for us when he was on Earth is so that we can have his guide with us. If we have his guide, the Holy Ghost, with us at all times we will return to live with him and as Moses 1:39 says "This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

Fatherhood, the best thing there ever!

2008-09-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

“Fatherhood is not a matter of station or wealth, It is a matter of desire, diligence, and determination to see one’s family exalted in the celestial kingdom. If that prize is lost, nothing else really matters” (Ezra Taft Beson, Ensign, May 1981, p. 36)

If I were asked what the best times in my life would be I would have to say that there are 4. The first one was two years long and encompasses my whole mission, the second is when I started dating my wife, the third when I proposed and the fourth is when I got married. With each one of these moments I didn’t think that I could ever be happier but again I was proven wrong. On August 8th Jen and I had a little girl. I was about to say on August 8th we gave birth to a little girl but the truth is I just sat there and tried not to see what was happening with the fear that if I actually saw what was happening I would pass out. I always thought I was pretty good around blood but after that, no not really.

To give you some background I have been accepted to University of Washington Information School as a graduate student and I start school again at the end of September. When we tried to setup a time to move out of the apartment we are currently living in our Landlords told us that they really wanted us to move out at September 5th at the latest which meant that we have to get a place to live in Seattle by that time. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal but it ends up that our daughter was due on August 16th which meant that we would be traveling with a two week old if we had her by the due date and also taking into consideration that most first time pregnancies are late it wouldn’t be a good idea. We talked to the doctor in about May or June about the possibility of getting induced a week early. They said everything would be fine and it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I think it was in our first appointment in July that the induction date was set for August 8th giving us a whole extra week. Both doctors that are at the clinic said that would be fine and there wouldn’t be any complications with the pregnancy from going a week early. We were really excited and started to prepare for everything. A couple days before we were to be induced it turned out that Jen was barely dilated 1cm and they were worried that the induction might end up in a C-Section but we felt that everything would be okay. Jen’s mom came in about 2:00pm on Thursday August 7th and we hung out with her for about 6 hours until we had to go into the Hospital to get everything going with the induction. I had no clue going into it what that all entailed so I found it somewhat fasinating, gross and disturbing but fascinating. At about 9:00pm the doctor talked to Jenny and said that she still was only dilated about 1cm and that he didn’t think that we should go through with it because our babies lungs might not be developed. Umm… that would have been nice to know when we talked about it originally but no one ever mentioned it until he called the day we were suppose to start the induction. Remembering that my mom always said that even though doctors think they are always right if you want something done, tell them. If they don’t listen, make them listen. So Jen and I decided to go with the feeling we had before because we knew that despite what the doctor said everything would be alright. The doctor finally showed up to do the Foley Catheter around 10:00 and said that the nurse would take it out in 6 hours and he left. About 2 minutes after the Foley catheter went in Jen started getting really bad Contractions. This went on for about an hour before the nurse came in and decided to check the catheter to see how jen was progressing. Nancy, the nurse, barely tugged on the catheter and it fell out. She checked Jen and it turned out that in about 45 minutes Jen had dilated to about 3 cm which was suppose to take 6 hours. So the contractions continued for about another hour before Nancy came in and asked if Jen wanted the Epidural. So around midnight Jen got the epidural. Between the epidural and the sleeping pill Jen received she was out pretty quick. Around 4:00am she was started on Pitosin. At around 7:30 the doctor came in and checked Jen. She was about 7 cm dilated and said that probably around noon the pushing would begin. We got excited I called my dad and told him the update. But little did we know Emma didn’t want to wait that long. Around 9:00 even through the Epidural Jen started to feel the pain of the contractions. We called the nurse after about 15 to 20 minutes of this and the nurse said that she was going to call the Anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist came in after about 30 minutes and checked the hose and it ended up that there was a kink in the hose or something like that. The nurse left at around 10:00AM and told Jen that she would be back in about an hour to see how far along she was. Just as she left Jen looked at me and said one of the weirdest phrases I have ever heard. She looked at me and said “I feel like I have to poo really bad.” The best part was the face that she was making. I found it rather funny but I am not sure she found the humour in it. This continued in waves for about 15 minutes before she decided to page the nurse. Now on each of the beds there is an intercom type thing where you can push a button and it calls a phone out at the desk where you can talk to a nurse. When we have called the nurse in the past few hours a voice comes on and says “How can I help you?” Jen says whats wrong and the voice responds with “Okay the nurse will be in shortly.” This time however the conversation was entirely different.

The Voice: “How can I help you?”
Jen: “I feel like I really need to push.”
The Voice: “…” (the sound of her hanging up).

About 10 seconds later our nurse comes in and checks jen and much to the nurses amazement jen is dilated about 9 1/2 cm. The nurse asks if we took any birthing classes to which we said no because we both thought they would be pointless and in my opinion they probably were considering everything turned out okay and the nurse gave us a crash course of them in about 1 minute. After explaining what Jen needed to do and what I had to do, which consisted of Jen holding her knees and pushing like there was no tomorrow and me counting to ten, she said that Jen should push with the next contraction which Jen did. This continued for about 3 contractions until the nurse said “Umm… You don’t push anymore until the doctor gets here. Do you want to feel the babies head?” Now in my opinion, ewww. As I had a court side seat to this horrific circus I thought that was a really stupid question. Do you want to feel the head of a small human protruding from your Bajanko? Jen answered with a “No that’s all right.” I found that a very calm response as I wasn’t doing anything that I first grader couldn’t do and I wanted to yell “Screw that, that’s disgusting.” Now the time frame for the last few seconds ended up being very short. The nurse came in at about 10:10, told Jen to start pushing at 10:15 and told her to stop at around 10:18. The doctor arrived a few minutes later and within 5 minutes Emma was out. THe only time I looked over the sheet was when he said “Ahh there she is.” I looked over the blanket covering Jens Bajanko and looked at my child. I think Bill Cosby described a new born best. When I looked at Emma the only thought that came to mind was the quote by Bill Cosby that said “Congratulations, you gave birth to a Lizard.” Now I love my daughter more then anything else in the world. I want you people to know that but for those of you who have seen a new child before they have been wiped off they are purple, slimy and frankly disgusting. Now she is the most beautiful person I have ever seen besides my wife. I wouldn’t have changed this experience for the whole world. I love my daughter and I know that I will do anything that I can to make sure she and her mother are safe and sound. It always bothers me when fathers default on their duties, it did before and it really does know. How any man can look at a beautiful little child and hurt them in any way is beyond me. As the scriptures say “It is better that a mill stone be hung around their neck and they be cast into the depths of the sea then they harm these my little ones.” Well, this is my version of my the events, if you want to read my wifes they can be found at her blog. I will be posting more about her as the time comes.

America is getting lazy.

2008-06-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.
Bill O'Reilly

America as a whole is getting lazy. I can hear everyone reading this now saying, no its always been lazy, but I would have to disagree. The average weight for men ages 20-74 was 166.3 pounds in 1960 and is now 191 pounds found here. Now I know that people have gotten taller but they have only gotten about an inch taller and have gained about 25 lbs. There is no way that the increase in weight is all explained by being an inch taller. Now the reason I started this post isn't to bag on peoples weight, because frankly I don't care how much you weigh. The reason for this post is because America is getting lazy.

As many of you know I am currently in college and I see people all around me trying do the least amount of work and get the most out of it. I was recently going over one of my teachers ratings on Rate My Professors when I found an astonishing trend. I have one teacher who yes is brilliant and yes can be confusing, but he expects you to *GASP* actually do work in his class. I know, it is an amazing thought that people would actually have to do work in a college class. Heaven for bid you spend an hour or two outside of class studying the material. This teacher really is confusing at times but if you ask him to either slow down or explain it again he is happy to accommodate. Now I really don't care if you like every person I do and I recognize that part of the reason that I was upset about this was because I like the teacher but then I started to think about how lazy we as a people have become.
Its not only learning. Right now gas prices are through the roof. In some parts of California gas prices are around $4.80 and people are complaining about how much they have to spend. Now there is an easy solution to spending that much money on gas. Walk whenever you can. I realize that there are times when you have to drive, aka work is far away, but overall I believe that we take automobiles for granted and have lost the ability or drive to walk or do things on our own. The biggest example of this is myself. Before I got married I didn't have a care so I did walk everywhere and I actually liked it. Now that I have a care I can barely get the mail without driving there. But after today I have decided that I want to walk. Frankly I know this blog won't be read by anyone but if one person reads it, please remember, anyone who is successful has had to work at it. No one got handed continued success, they had to work at it.

Lets hear it for Open Source

2008-05-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

So, for one of my classes I have had to work with Oracle Express Edition, commonly referred to as Oracle XE. For those that don't know Oracle is one of the most powerful databases out there. XE is a version of the database that is a little smaller and in my opinion better to learn on. I am now in a class that uses 11g and yeah thats a whole different story. As I am trying to get into the field of Information Technology I am trying to learn all that I can. To say the least I didn't learn that much when I took the first database class at college as I just did the work to get the grade. As I am about to graduate I am realizing that I really do need to understand this stuff. So as I am also trying to get use to Ubuntu I am trying to do all that I can in Linux to be able to use that OS as well. To make a long story short I tried to install Oracle on my laptop in the Ubuntu partition and it wasn't very nice. Well to be truthful the installation was actually very easy and very straight forward, it was getting it to work after that that was a beast. So this post is a how to install oracle xe and get it working on your Ubuntu Machine. A few warnings. Just because this worked for me doesn't mean it will for other people. I will address all the problems that I have had and if you get any errors then just comment and I will see if I can fix them or point you in the right direction to fix them.

The first thing that you need to know is how big your swap space is. While there are a few ways to handle this I will address the one way I know how. The way I know how is in your terminal type the command swapon -s.
My output looks like this.
somename@laptop:~$ swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda4 partition 498004 0 -1

At first this wasn't big enough so I had to add more to it

Increasing Swap Space

If you don't have to increase your swap space then skip this section and go to the next section. These next few lines will increase the amount of swap space you have given that you want to put it in the "/" directory.

This creates an empty file that you will use as swap
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap.img bs=1024k count=512

This command formats that file you just created as a SWAP file

$ sudo mkswap /swap.img

This command adds it to your running Linux system.
$ sudo swapon /swap.img

Occasionaly you have to add it to your fstab file and that is what the next few commands do. I did just to be safe

$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add this line at the end of the fstab file
/swap.img none swap sw 0 0

Adding Oracle to your repositories

This part tell you how to add Oracle to your repositories. Your repositories are a list of places to look for programs when you try and install using synaptic package manager or the apt-get command. They are found at /etc/apt/sources.list This next part of the how to can be found at The Oracle Site. The commands to actually install oracle are

This command opens that sources.list so that you can edit them.

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line to your sources.list file

deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian unstable main non-free

After you have saved and added that line to your sources.list file run this command to make that repository actually work. To make sure this command works, you should have to sudo commands on the same line.

$ sudo wget http://oss.oracle.com/el4/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then update everything. If you haven't updated your computer in a while this might take a few minutes if it has to grab big updates

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-xe
'libaio' and 'bc' are in the repository, so dependancies will pull them in if the user doesn't have them.

Once this runs, which will probably take a while, it will tell you to run the command

$ sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

Once you get it installed you would think it would work but no.

The Last Steps to getting oracle to work

Once you get Oracle-xe installed you should be able to access the Web gui using the url that it gave you, but you can't access the command line because you haven't setup the variables. Its not that hard but as I am a semi-noob I can't figure out how to get them to stay so as of right now I will continue to try and figure out a permenant solution, but for now everytime you start your terminal run these commands.

$ export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
$ export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
$ export ORACLE_SID=XE

Now you should be able to login using these command

$ sqlplus system

put in the password you specified and the first thing you should do is create a user to do everything in. I will show you how but replace the word user with the desired username and password with the desired password.

SQL> create user user identified by password

This command lets you do just about anything you want in the sqlplus enviroment where user is the username you want.

SQL>grant DBA to user

To connect to that user either type the command
SQL> quit
Followed by (where user is your username)
$ sqlplus user

or you can connect by simply doing (where user is your username)
SQL> connect user

I hope that this helps you. If you have any questions just leave a comment. I can't promise I will know the answer but I will try.

Semi-Geek or Noob whatever works

2008-05-06T17:05:00.001-07:00

So as most know I am a Computer Information Technology major. This means that I am automatically put into the "Geek" category. While I somewhat relish this title I have to say that I don't think I can accept the title as full geek. I believe that it would be unfair to those true geeks of the world. In the computer world people new to a game or any other program/game/anything computer related are called Noobs.

Most of the time the term is only used to mock people, hence my hesitation in taking this term. But people mocking me isn't the reason that I don't want to take this title. I believe that I am in between the to titles. That is why I believe that I am a Semi-Geek. I like all things computer related. I can spend hours programming, even though I am not very good at it which probably explains the amount of time spent on it.

I also have currently, about a year ago, started to get into Linux. Extremx, one of my friends at my college, got me started in Linux where my preferred distro is Ubuntu. I don't claim to know everything in the Ubuntu distribution but I know enough to have fun and if I can't figure something out I know how to use Google. Also I understand enough of the higher level concepts that I can figure out some of the problems on my own.

The whole point of this post is to set up some of the rest of my posts. As I have problems with my Ubuntu and figure things out I will put them here in case anyone wants or has some of the same problems. These things will be basic in nature but things that I think are either fun or important to know. Have fun and if you want to know anything then just comment and if I know how to do it I will post about it. Good luck.

The Real World

2008-04-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

“In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.”

Mark Twain

Mrs. Mime, Scully, My dad and I recently explored/visited Oz, the city that Mrs. Mime and I are going to visit. I have been there multiple times but I have never really looked around except to go to a baseball game or to roam the market with my family. Don't worry this isn't going to be a travel log I can't stand those for the most part and I wouldn't put you through that. If you do want to know how it went you can ask me latter. To catch you up I am starting my Masters of Science in Information Management with possible certificates in Digital Forensics and Computer Security. I will graduate with my Bachelors degree in Computer Information Technology in July of this year from a school that I affectionately call "The Bubble". I love this college but to say the least it is a small college town that shelters you from the real life. For example Mrs. Mime and I are currently paying around $500 in rent for a 2 bedroom 1 bath with all utilities paid for except electricity and gas. We even get cable and internet included in our rent.

For those of you that are currently in "The Real World", you can see the problem. Mrs. Mime and I started looking for housing and were blown away that we couldn't find an apartment for under $750 for a 2 bedroom apartment. Now if rent were the only thing that I had to get use to it wouldn't be that bad, but I realized how big Oz actually is. There are one way streets all over the place and people are packing the streets. I haven't lived in a big city for an extended amount of time since I was in Melbourne Australia for 2 years. My home town has about 16 -19,000 people at the most and in Oz I could have sworn that there were that many people on the streets alone. It was really interesting to think that I was going to be living here for at least 2 years and not only that I am going to be raising Gummy Bear here. Needless to say it was quite the wakeup call.

Now after saying this I am really excited to get started on my Graduate degree and move from The Bubble to Oz. I am excited for a variety of reasons but I am scared to enter the real world. Good luck and I guess it will be a trial by fire.

Why can't people think for themselves?

2008-02-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

I go to school at a University in Idaho that is, to say the least, extremely conservative. Now before I continue I want to say that being a conservative isn't a bad thing. I am someone who will vote for Democrat just because that is the party he is aligned with but I am also someone who will support someone just because everyone else around them isn't. For example at my school everyone has been obsessed with republican candidate Mitt Romney. Now when I say obsessed let me give you and example so that you know what I am talking about. I recently had a conversation with a fellow classmate about the presidential election which went something like this. I must preface this by saying this conversation occured before Super Tuesday
Student: So do you think Romney is going to win?
Me: I certainly hope not.
Student: Why don't you like him? Who do you want to win?
Me: I actually like Barack Obama, I agree with his tax idea's and his health care reforms.
Student: (stunned silence) Oh... umm... so you are a liberal?
The conversation continued to go down hill from there. Now I don't want people to think that I am hating Mitt Romney just because everyone else around me likes him. I agree with some of his stances and for most of the Republican Primary up until he dropped out I wanted him to win so if Barack didn't make it I wouldn't have to choose between two candidates I really can't stand.
The problem occurs when said student questioned why I was here and if I was a good member of my church because I wasn't a Republican. I don't mind people having a different opinion but I would like you to be able to back it up in a rational way. I was grownup with parents that encouraged me to think for myself. I also had a sister, Scully as she is called by her blog, who made me defend everything that I said. But to end this, before you choose someone to vote for, don't just vote for them because your mom/sister/dad/friend/TV Boyfriend, is but actually study the candidates and what they stand for. If you do then America will be a better place overall and to all my friends out there who are reading this yes I am still a member of the Church and I am very happy to be a Democrat.