Chris Erwin

So it’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog. I know all zero of you readers have been frantically refreshing my site looking for a hint of the next posting. Here, have this.

New Apartment

In December I moved into a new apartment.  At about 900 square feet, it is on the ground floor of a former textile factory that has been renovated into apartments.  Sadly the owners drywalled over the brick and carpeted the floors, but I do have the benefit of 10.5 foot ceilings.  I’m located on the corner of the building; I have windows along the South and East sides of my apartment, overlooking the intersection of two very quiet streets.

I plan on taking some pictures once I get the lighting right.

The Switch to Linux

I recently built a new computer (c2d 6750) as mine was starting to show its age (p4 2.8ghz) and I couldn’t, as a fan of the first three, resist Call of Duty 4.  I had purchased Vista shortly after it came out (nerd alert) so I was all set to build a nice Windows gaming machine.  I didn’t want to waste this p4 with 3 gigs of ram, so I decided to separate gaming from the rest of my computing tasks and make the switch to Linux.  I’d been using Ubuntu for a while on an old second computer as well as a secondary work laptop.  I had also set up an Ubuntu LAMP server at the firehouse for inventory purposes, so I was familiar with Ubuntu/Debian and wasn’t afraid of the command line.

I installed Ubuntu Studio on the p4 and haven’t looked back.  The addition of the sound editing software included in the distro has allowed me to dick around quite a bit.  My M-Audio Midi controller was recognized without a hitch and JACK is pure awesome.  I can use all of my sound fonts without issue and Ardour is going to be sweet once I get used to it.  I haven’t played much with the other media creation tools, such as InkScape, GIMP, and the video editing stuff, but one of these days I’ll find the time.

I have found Firefox to be pretty slow at times, especially on JavaScript- and Flash-heavy pages.  Most of my googling has tried to blame Compiz Fusion (which my 6800GT handles beautifully on my 23″ 1920×1200 monitor), but turning it off didn’t improve the situation.  I’m thinking the realtime kernel might have to do with it, but I haven’t had the time to experiment.

The other disappointment is the fact that Picasa runs like a dog.  I fell in love with the program on Windows as I have a buttload of pictures, but it runs in Wine and runs pretty terribly.  Perhaps my gaming computer will become my gaming and pictures computer.

The Switch to Hope

…fucking chads…

It’s that time again.  A time when America divides angrily against itself and chooses a new president through a mixture of misrepresentation and voter fraud.  The last time the presidential election was this important to me was a whole four years ago, when I still had the crazy idea that the voting public would not re-elect somebody like George W. Bush.  Those silly neocons and their blind faith.

I’m a conservative sympathizer in that I see some benefit in restricting federal government, but ultimately I’m a non-rich, pro choice, pro church/state separation, pro evolution, pro gay marriage, anti- Iraq war, latte sipping dirty hippie LIEberal bastard, so my choice this time around was clear…sort of.

Turns out the democrats had 8 choices for me.  Hmm.  Well, let’s look at their platforms.  John Edwards is a pretty good choice, but I don’t know if I could listen to that damned southern drawl for 8 years.  Yeesh.  Mike Gravel meshes well with my political views, but he’s insane.  Kucinich had his chance.  Biden really needs to stop.  Richardson wasn’t bad, but it was clear that he wasn’t going anywhere soon.  Clinton was going to win it anyway, and I figured I could get behind her policies.  Socialized healthcare worries me a bit, but so do a lot of conservative policies.  Hmm, Obama?  Wasn’t he that keynote speaker at the 04 convention.  “There is not a Liberal America and a Conservative America.  There is the United States of America.”  Yeaaaahhh.  I could listen to that guy talk all day.

Bad Motherfucker.

So I looked into his policies.  Lo and behold, they mostly matched my ideals.  His ‘universal healthcare’ wasn’t quite so radical, either.  Not to mention he looks damn good in a suit.  But would America elect a black president?  Hey, it worked in Blazing Saddles.

“One voice can change a room, and if it can change a room, it can change a city.  And if it can change a city, it can change a state.  And if it can change a state, it can change a nation.  And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.  Your voice can change the world!”  Yes!  bottom-up politics.  There were 55 guys in Philadelphia one summer that kind of had something like that in mind.  That’s the WHOLE POINT of representative federal republic.  This is how the system is supposed to work.  Ok, Barry, I’m listening.

Living in Pennsylvania allowed me to sit back and watch the primaries unfold under the assumption that everything would be settled before the PA democratic primary.  I really liked Obama now, but I figured Clinton would win and Barack would just have made a name for himself.  Then super Tuesday happened.  Holy shit.

I Hope for syrup.

For the first time in my life, I found myself handing over some of my hard earned cash monies to a political campaign.  This guy was exactly what this country needed, and dammit he had a shot.  The morale of the country was just depressing and America needed somebody to make us feel good again.  Somebody to make us believe that politics CAN work from the bottom-up.

Some people vote on the issues. Some don’t. They’re called idiots.

Everybody knows the rest of the details, but suffice it to say that I changed my affiliation from independant to Democrat so that I could go push that big OBAMA button :unsmith:  He lost Pennsylvania (god dammit people) but now Hillary has suspended and backed Obama and everything is right in the world.  I admire Clinton, I really do, but Obama is just right.  I just hope her die-hard supporters realize this.

I’m still aprehensive about the general election because, as we saw in ’04, the voting public are fucking retards, but McCain seems to be a very weak candidate.  We shall see.

Speak softly…

idk my bff george