Morning Groggieness

Here's a question I'm just throwing out into the internet to see if someone (You!) happen to answer...
How long are you groggy or mush-minded after you wake up in the morning?
Are you the kind of person who upon opening your eyes puts his/her feet on the ground, and starts the day off with a bang - or - are you the type of person who has to stay in bed for at least a half hour until you can muster some sort of energy just to open one eyelid halfway.
Then once you are up, are you immediately into morning rituals (ie: shower, breakfast, etc...) or does it take a while to 'spin up' and get moving?

Me? I'm the later. I have such a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. I need usually an hour from the moment I'm "conscious" until the moment my feet hit the floor, then I'm still groggy for about 30 minutes after that.

I'm trying to understand why after a full nights sleep of about 8 hours, can a person feel tired when they wake? And - is it normal to feel that way?

Comments are welcome.

Vote yardsign

I forget where on the web I stumbled upon this image, but it made me laugh. (No this does NOT represent my Bro-in-law's views ;)

In other political news...
Did ya hear? Sen Biden is Obama's Vice Presidential candidate. It was only on the cable news channels ALL DAY long yesterday.
I have not made up my mind about his choice yet. I don't know much about Sen. Biden. I have one faint memory of Sen Biden appearing on "the Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, and being impressed at how funny he was. (here's one clip, where Jon kinda nailed him for his controversial comments about Barack being "articulate, and clean", here's pt. 2 of that clip. Here's one from 2004 where he talks about the war).
I get the feeling, Biden is a straight shooter. He says what's on his mind... and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing, we'll have to see.
The part I do like about all this... I'm glad Barack picked someone who has more "experience" in the senate. This may help him with those who were concerned over this.
One final note: In watching the above clips of Biden, I became aware that he does one of the things that I have a pet peeve over... He uses two phrases, to answer almost every question... He'll start off with either "Look..." or "the fact of the matter is..." I don't know who started this trend (pat robertson?) but it drives me crazy!


Ok, sorry... THIS will be my last comment... So I get an email today, from Barack's campaign, offering me a T-shirt if I make a $3o donation. It's the first T-shirt that shows Biden's name (I was surprised at the designer's decision, to make his name smaller, and a lighter shade of color than Baracks). So it simply said "Obama Biden" - I couldn't help but notice the similarity of letters to "Osama" and "Bi -nla - den". I predict within 24 hours or less, we'll see a T-shirt or poster from the Right wing exploiting this odd coincidence.

e voting machines

So the electronic voting machine stories are starting to roll in already. Here's a short one on slashdot about the difficulty some states are having at just ditching these $3500 to $5000 machines! The last line floors me though, that election workers were (I guess some still are) allowed to take the machines home the night before an election. What?!
I guess I should start getting my signs made to welcome McCain into the white house. ugh.

Oh, and I should mention... since in the past, Diebold caught so much flack for their machine, what's a company to do? Change their name of course. Say hello to "Premier Election Solutions" (wiki).

Here are just two mind boggling quotes from the wiki I linked to above. Why is no one upset over this!? This should be a public outcry!?
Quote 1:

Together, ES&S and Premier Election Solutions are (as of 2004) responsible for tallying approximately 80% of the votes cast in the United States

Quote 2:

Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years

been a while

Yep. I've been slacking off on this ol' blog. But twitter has been a good outlet for me, to get quick thoughts outta my head and into some other cyber-dimension. If you found this blog, I'd encourage you to follow me on twitter (and unless you're a spammer, I'll follow you back).
So whats new?


Olympics>
Can honestly say I'm not following them at all. With apologies to family who are HUGE sports fans and Olympics fans, It's just not my cup-o-tea. See... right there, I used a tea analogy to describe somthing sport related. People who watch the Olympics wouldn't do that. :)
I did happen to see the opening cermonies (was over at family's house), and I actually did enjoy that. I had a real sense of awe. And the geek in me, loved to see all the uses of the technology.
But the idea of people gathering to "celebrate" in a country known for human rights violation bothers me. And a country who is also known for Human Rights violations (US) trying to critisize another country for their HRV's is the pot calling the kettle black.
Then to see two world leaders shaking hands at the opening cermonies, while the one is preparing an attack on another nation just turned my stomach. Putin is out enjoying himself, while his country members are back home planning on how they can kill people.
My last rant over these olympics - It's all supposed to be about putting politics and our differences aside right? But every news broadcast I see, talks about which country has the most gold medals. It's just bragging rights with a hint of "we're better than they are". Which is not the right mentality to have when putting differences aside.
Ok, I'm done. Sry family.

gps>
I got a new toy! A new Gadget! I like toys and gadgets!
I got one of those road based gps navigation 'systems'.
I've wanted one for a while, just cause they are so cool! But couldn't justify getting one, because I generally don't travel anywhere. Work, home, friends house, family house, movie theatre, that's about it. But at the encouragement of others, I decided to spring for it. I hope to go somewhere now - cause afterall, I know how to get there now!
But all is not "sunshine and pumpkins" in the land of gps.
I've been running the unit through some tests between work and home. I've learned it def has some limitations. The first test, it sent me down a road that you could not make a left on, and told me to make a left. I had borrowed another gps unit and it too told me to do the same thing. So this is a fault of some bad data on their mapping systems, and not the fault of the individual unit. (why are they sharing the same mapping system?)
Then When I made it home, to my apartment complex the verbal directions told me to make a wrong turn, while the graphic map showed the right way. Grr. But, in it's defense, the roads are more of a parking lot, and not really roads. So they are very close together. Still, it bothered me.
After about a week... I've learned two things... the main purpose of this unit, is to get somewhere you don't know how to get to. Chances are, if you know how to get there, you already know the fastest way to get there, and the best roads to take.
All those negatives said - I'm still glad I got my new toy.
I hope to try it out soon on a trip somewhere.
One more "wag of the finger" at Amazon.com, where I purchase it... I learned the day that the unit was supposed to arrive, that it had been discontinued from the manufacturere! Amazon SHOULD have made that clear and posted that information. I did check the Garmin website and they still continue to support the model I got (the nuvi 350). So, I decided not to return it - but still.

Lets see... what else...
I think I'll stop here. This post is rather long now. More later...

Roxxor Beatbox

I don't know why this beatbox stuff fascinates me so. But when I hear a talented beatboxer I'm just in awe.

Pelosi and Impeachment

First - had a small problem signing into my blog today. Odd. But it looks like everything is ok now. There was a mention on the blogger homepage about accounts on Friday being mistakenly flagged as spam accounts. I wonder if my blog was one of those? I'd hate to loose all of my blog posts due to a glitch. I should look to see if there is any sort of backup options for this blog. If anyone knows of any, please leave a comment.

Ok, this will be short, but I wanted to put it out there...
A few nights ago (last Sunday I think) I watched an interview with Nancy Pelosi on Cspan. I should say upfront here - I'm not a fan of Nancy's.
During the interview one thing she said, raised a red flag with me... She said that she was a member of the "Gang of four" and had been brought in and secretly briefed in the reasons to go to war with Iraq. Hmm... that's odd. Then she went on to say how she was against it and that not all the evidence presented to her was convincing.
SO, I couldn't help but to wonder now... The main reason behind Dennis Kuncinich's plan for Impeaching President Bush is that he knowingly withheld certain information to the Congress on his request to go to war. So, now I learn that Nancy apparently knew about this info.
Is this why she has said in the past that "Impeachment is off the table"? Is she also protecting herself?
Apparently I'm not the only one who is wondering this... do a search on google for "pelosi gang of 4"

UFO near Needles CA

A UFO story popped into my google alerts this morning that caught my attention. With a "new report" that is on youtube. I don't know why, but a lot of this news report looks suspicious to me.
First lets state the obvious... could they have found two "witnesses" that look like real characters in a hollywood movie about UFO's?
Why is this news story being reported on when it happened back on May 14th? I can't see when the original broadcast aired, so perhaps it aired at an earlier time and just was posted to youtube on Aug 1st? It's not clear. (ok, a little more digging and I found this blog post (all about ufo's) that reprinted the story and they have the date of 7-31-08) I have to laugh too at the graphic used on the blog post that has nothing to do with the story being reported on.
Ah, this appears to be the original story that the news anchor George Knapp based his story on. (interesting you can see that George Knapp is known for his ufo stories on his wikipedia entry).
I wonder why Mr. Knapp only interviewed the two guys (who both work at the radio station) and didn't try to interview "bob" on his house boat?
The interview with Bob can be read on the website with the original story where "bob" wishes to remain anonymous. Bob's story certainly does sound interesting, but I have to wonder why was he out fishing at 3am!?

Other than a few questionable eye witness accounts, this story is interesting. It's sad though that none of it can be confirmed.

Oh, one more thing... the graphics for the news report on youtube were nicely done.