I have some news to report to you but I'll tell you at the end. So let's get on with the rest of this blog entry.
Texas governor's election race
Well, it has been a week since the debate, and already we have seen some interesting news items going on. First, Democratic candidate Chris Bell makes a good showing in the debate (although I thought he was a little robotic), and then he turns around and inserts his foot into his mouth. First he asks Kinky Friedman to bow out of the race and support him, and when Kinky doesn't do that, he then says that he is going to have Kinky painted as a racist in an upcoming election commercial campaign (details of this sorry drama are in blog entries from earlier this week). This tells me that either Bell is impulsive or just not very smart – and possibly both. Had he thought this over a little more, he would have seen that he just made himself look like he was going to ally himself with someone that he regards as a racist.
In the meantime, Republican candidate Rick “Governor Goodhair” Perry and independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn are left wondering just what the heck is going on. Well, I'll fill them in: All that Bell has accomplished is to make himself look bad while giving Kinky free publicity, and more free publicity that he's already been getting. This was not a good week for Bell, despite the fact that he has a fresh infusion of cash. Perhaps that donor shouldn't have wasted his money. However, Bell gives bloggers such as myself stuff to write about -- not that we didn't already have enough to write about, but we appreciate it anyway. I will most certainly be keeping up with this, you can count on that. :-D
Surprise at the gas pump
Yesterday, I got a big surprise when I went to fill up my car yesterday: the price of gas had actually gone under two dollars. I know there are some conspiracy kooks out there who say that this drastic drop in gas prices is just an election-year ploy by Bush to get votes -- so let me ask you this: is this going to make you vote for Bush? Well, you can't vote for Bush, because he is not running for office! You ask me, this conspiracy theory idea is a rather desperate act. First, Bush was responsible for the rise in gas prices, and now he's responsible for the gas prices going down.
I tell you, the office of the President must really have some juice to be able to make gas prices fluctuate so much. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez must be green with envy. In the meantime, I managed to fill my tank with less than $30 this time. I don't remember the last time I was able to do that, but it didn't seem all that long ago that I actually complained when gas went up to two dollars a gallon. Boy, the times change pretty quickly.
The television show “Heroes”
I don't know how many of you folks are watching this show, but I am hooked. I'm still not quite sure what's going on in that show, but I already know that my favorite character is the Japanese guy Hiro, because he is such a comics nerd and not ashamed of it. In fact, if it wasn't for Hiro, the show would actually be a little boring. It's in its third episode, and the stories are still building up. I'm ready for the characters with superpowers to start interacting with each other.
As for the other characters, the cheerleader's power of fast healing is rather interesting, and it makes me wonder if she is actually immortal now, and perhaps eternally young. As for the brothers -- or should I say, the flying brothers -- I'm not quite sure where the writers are going with them. I guess we will just have to wait and see. The cop that can read minds can also be an interesting character. He seems to be a decent guy, but I wonder if he is strong enough to do the right thing when he needs to. Something else that will have to wait and see.
As for the stripper, I am not quite sure what her power is. She seems to have an alter ego that she sees whenever she looks into a reflective surface, and then at times the alter ego seems to take over and do terrible and violent things, and then the stripper suddenly “wakes up” and finds herself in the middle of damage and destruction that she doesn't remember causing. This sounds more to me like a psychological problem rather than a super power. So far, we haven't seen the stripper when her alter ego is in control. I'm curious to see how the alter ego will be portrayed once she's finally shown.
I'll say this for the show, “Heroes” -- I am watching it longer than I watched “Survivor” that had race-based tribes. I only watched “Survivor” for two episodes before I lost interest in it, and I hear that by the third show, they weren't even broken up into race tribes anymore. That pretty much ended the sociological experiment before it even really got off the ground. It sounds to me like the producers of that show lost their nerve before things really got interesting. I guess this shows us where we are at in race relations today; basically, that we are not there yet in regards to achieving total racial harmony. It's too bad that the producers lost their nerve so quickly, because producers want ratings and had they allowed this sociological experiment to continue, they would have gotten those ratings that they really want.
Interesting photographs
Check out these pictures I took yesterday while walking around. I came across this little caterpillar and I happened to have my digital camera. It took me a bit to set the camera to be able to zoom in close, but fortunately the caterpillar was going slow enough for me to make the settings, and it happened to be in bright sunlight where it would photograph very well. Sometimes I marvel at the things that we see in nature. While I might not be an outdoor person, it doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the wonders of nature.
Note on the Journey to Nerdville
Okay, now it's time to tell you my news: this whole blog entry was done by a voice recognition program in which this whole text was typed as I spoke. Right now, it's still learning to adjust to my voice, so I'm having to stop and start as it learns to understand what I am saying.
This also makes me enunciate my words more, so perhaps this will also have the side benefit of making me speak more clearly. I was told that it gets better the more I use it, because it will adjust to me more and more. But already, I can see the benefit of using this program. I also need to learn more about how to do some commands by voice instead of going back and forth to the keyboard to make corrections.
I think this will also help me to write better because I am concentrating on how my words sound to the ear as well as what I write. Whenever I write columns, I will type out what I say, then print it out and read it aloud to listen to how it sounds. This helps me to make my columns sound like a conversation rather than an essay. In turn, my columns will be more basic and to the point and understandable to my readers.
But with this new program, I can both speak and write at the same time so I am already hearing how my words sound as I type them, which might make me an even better writer -- and being an even better writer is exactly my goal. This is why I love our current day and age of all this marvelous technology.
The thing I do have to watch though, is that the program doesn't accidentally type something that I don't want it to type. After all, I don't want to be like Chris Bell and have something overheard that I didn't want to be heard. Hmm. Perhaps Chris Bell should look into getting one of these programs as well!
Have a great week, folks!
Okay, now to check the e-mails. Hmm. Boy, some of these e-mails that I get are really dumb. I wonder if they still write in crayon? Hehe. I didn’t know that people could type with their knuckles! Hey, the typing program's still running! No, don't write that! You weren't supposed to write all that - stop typing! Stop it! I said stop typing! Dang, where's the “off” button on this thing? Stop typing!! Ah, here's the “off” button. Whew!
Okay, now have a great week, folks!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment