Dan Mayer's Blog

All my friends and family in the future doctor business seriously is stabbing someone the best way we can come up with to deliver medicine? I am helping you but I am hurting you. I was all sore from skiing and I had to get two shots today... It hasn't started yet but my right arm is going to hurt something horribly, I can feel it getting more sore already...

You know it is love when you willingly get stabbed in the arm to go see someone.

While the weather may not agree,
this week feels much better for me.

Anyways, it was a mildly crazy stressful week last week at work. Then a mildly crazy weekend. I had my car battery die on me when I was running late (stupid auto dome light), which just seemed to top off my anger and frustration. Luckily a good friend always willing to help hopped out of a bar, walked home, grabbed his car (only 1 beer were good), came and gave me a jump. So to the friend, I want to give one big hell of a shout out, glory be to all things Inappropriate Dave. Seriously I am glad to have you as a friend.

So after some fun, a good workday, and some relaxing, everything seems back on track and going much better. So while I haven't gotten a chance to write about my various thoughts and reflections over the last few weeks many things have passed through my mind. In time perhaps I will find a moment to spill some of my mind onto these electronic pages for my friends, family, and spies to pick through and ponder on. Until then stay tuned for the same Bat time on the same Bat channel...

I need time to paint or work on some drawings... who wants to lend me a day?

I said I would be writing to explain why Kerry lost, even though it seems that Bush was disliked by the majority of the public.... So here is my best description with out trying to go into the specifics of this particular election and just saying that the religious right and ultra conservatives have put them selves in a win win position of dominating power....

Despite whether there is any balance of conservatives and liberals, it is irrelevant. Currently the system is much more highly favorable to highly conservative views. I will explain why that, even thought the majority of the population doesn't agree with the highly right winged conservative views they are dominated the political actions and views. I will also explain why it will be much more favorable to the more highly conservative portion of the population for a long time in the foreseeable future. There may be ways to effect or change the voting system, but that is not an issue I will be discussing. I will only be pointing out what is currently the problem that leads to the unheard fight of the countries more liberal voters.

To read the whole article follow,

Staying Permanently Conservative, Liberals Lost Voice (word Document)

Staying Permanently Conservative, Liberals Lost Voice (web page)

add comments send me any additional supporting facts...

I just watched Mr. Smith goes to washington. I think it is a really good movie. For people of my generation you have seen spoofs of it and other references to it so sometime you should go rent the original. It is worth the watch...

What I found really amusing was that was made sometime way back like the 50 or 60s and they thought politics were completely corrupted and destroyed back then. Think about how corrupt and compromised everything must be by now.

I mean when bills aren't about single issues and anything can be tacked onto a bill. A bill for food relief can carry bridges road repair and all sorts of other irrelevant amendments. How about limiting the size and scope of a bill so that nothing may be added in that isnt directly related to the original intention. Then you can actually vote on whether something is right or wrong... Now how many bad things you must compromise to let slide through in order to get something nessary passed through.

Anyways i guess it is just all the election stuff being around me all the time I am getting to political lately. Well soon that will be over and I am sure I will get back on to ranting on other things.

Until next time. adios.

Liz "c-word" Hoffmann begins to cry when asked about her remarks on the use of C-word. Says she was pushed into it by a lawyer. I say she shouldn't have been protecting the asses of all sorts of athletic officals at a cost of millions of dollars to CU students. Now that I know it is ok, if i ever get a chance to speak to Liz, I will know what to call her.

Yeah, I am so ready to be done with CU.

Also if you have a good idea about something wrong going on, like many "un patriotic" americans have in the last few years, it is likely what you saw now wil get you hated and booed, and months from now it will be considered the popular belief as the facts come out. As with micheal moores booed off oscar speech and Hunter Thompsons critizism of Bush for leading america with similiar propaganda tactics of hitler. It is scary how many lies have been told to the public... Then only if found to be false, were considered a mix up.

Our laws are not set up to defend people or make things just. Most of them are set up to defend money. Keep money in the hands of the rich. Recently there was over 2 billion in tax cuts for gas and electric companies. 2 billion corporations don't have to pay, and I am sure they are loosing money, but paying their administration MILLIONS! anywas the most recent thing to bring my outrage is this: RIAA has man court ordered to pay $4,000 for downloading 5 songs on the internet. The entire music industry was caught in price fixing, to extort millions apon millions from its costumers. It paid out a few million for getting caught. The eventual settlement was about $10 for each person that sent in info for the class action suit. This man was ordered to pay $750 for each of the copyrighted songs violations. So wait if a person breaks the law and takes a song they can pay $750 a song (about 700x the value of the song). If a coporations breaks the law they pay $10 (about 2/3 the cost of a new CD.) Realize the CD cost about 6 cents to make so even after paying you $10s back they still made 5 dollars off of your for a single CD you purchased (let alone the fact that you most likely purchased more than one CD.) Can ANYONE tell me why in the hell a person can be sued for 700x the value of a stolen object and a company can only be sued for 2/3 the cost of an item. This is our laws in action. This is our government. This is corporate lobbying and control. This is money and greeds influence.

Yes there are more important problems going on in the world. They are harder to show the direct problems iwth our goverment. The underlying problem with most of our issues is greed, corporate corruption, and lobbyist control. This is bullshit and I think the entire recording industry should be put our of business. Any business person that has ever profitted from it should have their entire savings stripped from them.

Also since I am dumb I set my alarm for 8 am when I have no reason to wake before 8:40 am. Apparently I enjoy having a lack of sleep. I was so mad to wake up cause I had the hottest wife in my dream.

I need to be aware an study alot yesterday so I had a redbull. I study a bunch had a good understanding and just hung out. I helped Dom with homework and Scott with some video. At some point I looked at a clock and it was past 2 am how did that happen? Stupid redbull kept me going so i never got tired.

Seriously i am sick of the big media companies. The MPAA and RIAA and the companies that support them are crap. The music industry makes way to much money. They are pissed because they can't keep their insane profit growth that they have managed to maintain for like 20 years (growth before that was small). I think companies have to recognize that in large growth industries eventually you run out of room to grow. After making 40 billion a year the music industry is looking at how to suck 45 billion out of the people during a slow economy. They can suck it and to bad for them to not realize the new digital distribution. To bad they never payed attention to internet radio instead they are trying to kill it off with huge royalties. If they would have had $.65 or .99 cent songs for download and free internet radio that was good, they wouldn't have to worry about all the trading and stealing so much.

This is really a continuation of a rant i started over on Wasted Brains. So read that as well to get the whole picture.

The movie industry learned a little bit from the music industries problem. They have responded a little faster and before digital movies have really taken hold. They are still ignorant when it comes to profit margins. Let me explain. You can rent a brand new DVD at block buster for 5 bucks. This is probably the most expensive to rent but closest to you (grocery stores are like 2 or 3 bucks). This gives you the movie for a day or two in the highest quality format available really. The online solution from the major movie studios is movielink. Movie link provides highly compressed (lower quality) downloads that you can watch from your computer that take about 2 hours to download (compared to a 5 maybe 10 min drive to Blockbuster). The cost 6 dollars.

what wait a minute? Does it cost more? Yes with a lower quality video, 2 hour wait, and no cost for the medium (Packaging, shipping, DVD) this method of rental costs more. The movie industry is brilliant charge higher prices for an entirely lower quality experience. While their at it I think i should just send them my monthly paycheck and have them slowly posion me to death... Well i guess at least their not the tobacco industry... hehe

Seriously make music and movies make sense and you will get my money. I buy used DVDs for 10 bucks a pop cause it is so expensive to rent now. Give me 2 or 3 dollar online movie rentals 99 cents a song or 9 bucks a albulm downloads and your going to get my cash.

well i mean it is scary to run out off the locals. everyone has plans everyone is busy. It is great to know that no matter how late no mater how wierd somone is there for you. That is why you call around sometimes. So now i feel more secure.

my server is up and it gets net but routing is down. must do net stuff on phone...

it is really scary to me to realize that we still had segregation in the 1970's. I mean really how long did it take to see blacks were equal? It should really only take about a 5 minute conversation.

Recently i saw a statistic that about 90% of websites are unread or unknown. That is kind of saddening to me. When i first started building websites when i was about 15 or so the amazment to me was the ability to reach the entire world with thoughts and ideas. I had the ultimate power to place my views out where anyone and everyone could find them. As I have grown up i have made many sites and promoted many thoughts and ideas and useless babble and fun on the interenet. I have become parts of online communities where i participate in discussions and more. I have been able to maintain a voice through joining communities and focusing on those websites. My own personal sites and attempts at being vocal on the web have become more and more silenced. My first site as a child was far more popular than the site i have today. Although i would argue that the site i have now has far mroe to offer. The sites in the past were dominated by personal sites with a loose inner connection to one another. Now with the community dynamics on any one site people have moved away from the slow difficulties of maintaining a personal site, to working within a community site. This could be a good thing. I guess it allows people ith a specific intrest to get feedback and have more discussion than before. It does kill off many of the sites that were static and un maintained from being viewed. I think the problem with this is that smaller opinions now are falling more into community and corporate goals. Many larger sites are corporate sites. This can skew the views. There isn't so much of a cult following between little sites that shared an obsession of some topic. It is now just find the one community on that topic and discuss there. The competition of having the newest and best information about something has moved from a dedicated fan to a news posting site. The recognition only going to a nickname with perhaps an e-mail link. I don't know if this is considered good or bad, but i still will have to say it is sad to see everything moving in a direction that self publication is a unheard medium. I still want to have the feeling i did when younger that i can scream to the world and someone will hear. Maybe I am just not screaming loud enough anymore. hehe

I don't understand what is wrong with the digital video world. I mean i had a 700mhz 512 mb machine that would never ever drop a frame on my older JVC camcorder. That camcorder broke and after months of sending it off for repairs i finally got the company to replace it with a new camera since it was still under warranty. So now i have a brand new sony miniDV camera. I figured my problems would be over. It had both firewire and usb 2.0. So what could possibly go wrong. Well My version of Adobe Premiere doesn't synch using the USB 2 so i used good old firewire. Now while my camera was broken and being repaired and broke i finally bought a new pc. It is a 2.2 ghz machine. This should scream on digital video compared to my old machine right? Well wrong... maybe when i get to the point of editing. I can't seem to record more than 30 or forty seconds of video now without dropping frames. I am loosing them all over. Now this makes no sense everything i have is now faster and better. What is going wrong. Who knows... I can record in another program with usb 2 without dropping frames but it only records at 640 by 480 while my other programs recorded at 720 by 480... So i am trying to figure out how to finish a video i started editing over a year ago when all the video stuff and formats are changing. This is just unexceptable. I have all new equiptment but i am getting worse results than i was a year ago. So come on companies... Show me some progress... Show me how much easier it is to record and capture video. Show me how much simpler it has gotten.... Grrr should i just start all over editing it on the new recording format and with a new editor. I swear every time i start a movie project i need a new editor because the one i had used a few months ago is out of date and doesn't support the features i want. Screw digita video i am going to go play on a skateboard... Something that hasn't change much for like 10 years.

I am amazed now at what makes someone a geek or nerd. I mean the definition used to be the AV guy... Now i have a friend that claims playing Halo makes you a nerd. Or playing any computer game makes you a nerd. Still others your not a geek or a nerd unless you can install, run, and maintain a linux computer. Then their are those so insane that your not a "Real Geek" unless you use VI because e-macs and anything not command line is for the week. Well I don't think i try to draw such a huge line as some do. I am a geek because i think i am a geek. I love computers and i would rather talk about technology any day over sports. Hell at least a geek can do something with their overly wasted knowledge of technology. What does a sports freak do with it, impress their friends with statistics of running yards. Anyways i think everyone spends so much time trying to label everyone something for no reason. Oh no i am a geek because i call it a blog not a journal. So be what you want and say what you will, but the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself at the end of the day and what you accomplish in your life. My goal is to really touch and effect those around me and hopefully do something to help improve the world. If i do that through technology so be it. If i do that through music, great. Just as long as you have a passion for something, and put that passion to use. You will always be a great geek, nerd, hero, leader, amazing, or whatever kind of person you want to think of yourself as.

The world we live in is damn crazy. Today in class while discussing classical career routes and deviant career routes, it made it sounds like i have already gone through the peak of my career. I am still a student in college. The problem is the tech industry is so down right now that i will probably be making less an hour than i was when i designed sites for people in highschool. Also, the tech industry is notorious for firing out the older programmers and hiring bright young kids right out of college. Good thing i am getting out of coding and going to be running my own company. I doubt i will have to program after our first project reaches its first release. Once this happens i will be good to go. Anyways with tech turning over and job rates so down my professor is talking like we would be better off dropping out of school and working somewhere like walmart because after you put in many years there the pay isn't bad and the vacations and benefits are great. So what the hell is up when a world is trying to move intellegent people into blue collar jobs.
Is there no need to develop anything new. Since so many of the pasts great inventions are still running nad ruling are life. Think about it, Cars are so dominant even if better methods of transportation were invented, it wouldn't be worth changing the entire highway and road system over to the newer device. There would be claims it is to hard to control, the common man couldn't use it.... Blah blah blah change is hard and no one wants to make changes anymore. So is it truely a time when great innovations are avoided because they are to hard to implement. Do we look for little simple improvments that can adapt to an already lucrative market? Not all inovation is dead medicine will always be worth more the more it can do. But ther systems my be so entrenched in society that they are here to stay. Anyways i read this quote that i don't know who it is from and i think it is a hilarious illustration of how wacky the world currently is.

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named "Bush", "Dick", and "Colon."

this is just a test... This doesnt mean anything at all... It should never be read by anyone if you read this your a dork. I like dorks.
Mathieu Krsnik