Category: Randomosity…

During normal lapses of insanity…


My take on the election.

My Clinton and Trump dump is finally here, and before you read further…no…this is not heavily thought out and to be honest I am out of practice in making my rants attractive, appealing, or even remotely warm and fuzzy. Read at your own risk.

So yes, we have a new president, and to be honest after this short rant, I am done bitching about the candidates. I have always stated clearly that I am an equal opportunity hater when it comes to our political parties and election system.

…and now the election is over. (YAY!)

But somehow, this has caused people to think that it is now time to wreck some shit because their candidate didn’t get elected. Y’all need to work something out if you seriously think you need violence and vandalism to make a change. Protests definitely have a role, but rioting, vandalism, and violence only serve to feed the argument against whatever you’re rooting for.

It pretty simple for me, in candidates, I always first ask myself if the candidates can be trusted with their finger on “the button.” Because of all the crazy things that can happen in the world, our ability not only to develop WMD’s is surpassed only by our idiotic sense that they are somehow necessary in a conflict. Our ability to instantly destroy that which we have no right to even consider, rests solely in this person’s moral scope of viable options.

Clinton in this election proved that she could be the only candidate to represent a broad scope of human rights necessities and social progress, while simultaneously shitting on our country’s national security and judicial system, and scaring the hell out of everyone in the world by promising to escalate every foreign conflict via embargo and military action rather than negotiation. All this said, Clinton would push the button, and blame someone else for the choice like it was some sort of scandal. She failed my “Button Finger” test immediately.

Trump has managed to become elected by boasting so many outrageous platforms and agendas completely outside the scope of the president’s power, inciting violence, and giving the public an excuse to become apologists for damn near everything a majority of us in the US stand wholeheartedly against, and still be the only candidate that might be capable of keeping the world from shutting us down economically, and fixing our deplorable foreign trade agenda…and maybe, just maybe, being able to amend a certain healthcare act that is putting damn near everyone I know into debt…just to have healthcare. Trump is a misogynist child in an old mans body that loves getting what he wants. His values are not anywhere remotely in the human liberties, freedoms, and rights. I am always given the impression that he would not only hit “the button,” he would do so for financial gain, and just like Clinton, pawn off the use on some scandal.

Johnson was the low-key candidate I wanted, but I saw some indifference in him on certain subjects that made me cringe. I suspect that his agenda was relatively closed to only deal with what he though the government should deal with, and thereby leaving the rest of the popular platform items by the wayside. The funny part, this guy, who was distant and slightly uninformed, came off as the only guy that wasn’t trying to start wars and dig our nation into an early grave (remember, we’re still a young nation by comparison.) Most importantly, he doesn’t present as a man who would allow himself to hit the button…I would only have to sacrifice all of my other moral, ethical, diplomatic, and economic concerns.

So yeah…voting this election for me was painful, too. I think it was like that for everyone. But…you don’t see me running around breaking shit over the results.

Of course…I would like to thank everyone who voted, and think everyone who did vote should pat themselves on the back for taking the time to show enough interest in the directions and policies our country is adopting. The system might be screwed up, but ambivalence, indifference, and reticence with regard to our elections will never solve this country’s problems.

That said, I think some people need to get their head out of their asses learn more about not only the election process but the greatest problems facing our elections, read up on the awesome people that run, but get no voice, while still trying to make our country better, and take a day or two to work an election/campaign and see how the process really works before they resign to temper tantrums against innocents and property in response to the election results…don’t be surprised when your vote doesn’t have the effect you expect when half the country doesn’t care enough to vote. Don’t shit on people that didn’t see the changes they are hoping for. There is your missing majority, there lies the greatest threat to our country…indifference.

I have been watching people get angry about the results and protest…and get violent. Look, we all want a better country to live in, and while we obviously aren’t getting the presidential candidate material we all wish for, protesting is your right. But Violence is definitely not. Turn that crap off. If you think it is your right to commit violence and destroy property, this isn’t the country that stands for it, and any movement, ideal, or group that advocates it will never get the support it needs to succeed. Plus, violence makes you an asshole.

In case you are wondering how I feel. not altogether unlike this guy.




5 Minute Fixes and 2 Dollar Steaks

tonytow tony hunt gets angsty

Some things just absolutely tick me off.

I’ve always prided myself on my dedication to being the best I can be in my arena. Don’t get me wrong, there are PLENTY of people that know more than I do regarding IT…but there aren’t so many that when we meet, that we don’t recognize the need to network. I only do pc support for locals, they visit, bring their machine, sometimes a bottle of wine, and I hack on their stuff in spare time…it keeps me on my game, it’s never the same, and it’s basically it’s great to meet locals.

Sometimes you think its only a 5-minute fix…

Humility licks in for me when you’re 3 tiers and over 100 hours into a technical issue with Dell’s best people helping, and the the guys got enough knowledge that we compare training and knowledge to see where we need to brush up, and immediately swap contact information so we can pick each others brains without red tape, and of course compliment the guy for being committed to the solution. There aren’t many of us around…it’s not an age thing, its the caliber of training and whether or not you actually applied it.

Hell, the guy before me that passed the buck we’re working on now wouldn’t even touch the work, he billed more than me, ran completely unnecessary diags (with dated diagnostics – I found the logs), and shrugged his shoulders and left. If he’d spend 5 minutes listening to the client, he’d have known the hard drive was dying and the laptop was still under warranty. But that wasn’t the real problem either, and now because the rest is proprietary, I’ll just say that it’s nice being at the top, and pretty fun knowing that those now 20+ year old skills are still more effective than the overpaid support monkey trying to act like they are competition.

Yes, I am working at 2am…because it needs to be done before tomorrow so I don’t have scheduling issues.

Yes, this kind of thing normally takes 5 minutes…but then, sometimes things are tougher than a two-dollar steak and you still have to eat it.

The competition wonders why people come to me over them…it’s because it’s 2am and I am working.

…and I have somehow learned to love a two-dollar steak.

–micdrop–




Sophomore Year in HS

After a nearly a thousand posts on my blog, I am republishing many of them out of posterity.

Some guy from my class (at LH) ran into my profile in MySpace and all of a sudden i remembered all this crazy stuff that happened that year.

I will just paste it…this should be fun for readers.

Hah! maybe this will help.

I was only at LH for my sophomore year. i spent a majority of my time in Ms Hogue’s art class or getting high and skipping. Because of a bad transcript error from my previous School District, I was forced to retake 4 classes I had already aced the year before, so I blew the school off for the most part and essentially tried to get the hell away from the school.

I lucked out in a few ways, as my deplorable actions in and out of school forced me to take another placement exam, which after the scores were released allowed me to threaten a lawsuit on the RISD and DISD for ruining my attempts at entering college early (and getting ahead on classes).

Now some interesting items…
A: I was in fact a total outcast in my sophomore year.
B: I was totally enamored with Tiffany Featherstone (definitely her name…as we traded hellos after I originally posted this) and never had the balls to tell her and stuck it out with my gf for the year before.
C: The highlight of my time at Lake Highlands was someone freaking out and telling everyone when he found out I did actually have a girlfriend and exactly how far we had gone in the sack on a regular basis.
D: During gym practice that year the cheerleaders decided it was cool to practice in the gymnastics area and totally distracted me, I planted totally wrong after an aerial on the rings and hyper-extended my knee in a very bad way. Since I had only a couple people in the school that i would even speak to willingly I ended up dragging myself to the nurses office instead of getting help. (You know…I was too proud to ask in front of LH’s finest 😉
E: Sometime that year, I got into a tangle with a guy three times my weight and twice my height in the courtyard over a stupid cigarette during lunch.

Anyhow, as far as people I knew…I talked to Hunter and Tiffany on a limited basis during art class, ate lunch with a group of like minded stoners on a regular basis, and generally kept to myself. My history teacher hated my guts because i rarely showed up at her class ( I was on B lunch). I wasn’t allowed in the computer lab after the staff found out I got in trouble with computers the year before on Skyline’s Mainframe. I only remember a few people’s names from that year.

Now, one might think I regret that school year, but if it hadn’t happened, I probably would have gone through the next couple of years learning what it was like to live it up.

Anyhow, nice to know someone else made it out of that school..;)

-Tony
{{{DISCLAIMER}}}
Picturing me as a grown version of the person described above would be a sore mistake. While in high school I totally blew it off because I found out how little it was going to matter once I hit College. I played hard and tried to live life like it was my last day. I was neither clean, nor was I entirely nice at LH. Again, it was a long time ago and I was a whole 13 years old when i started high school. I learned a lot about people that year, and wouldn’t trade it in for anything…err…well…okay…I would have tried hard to ask Tiffany out…but that’s it.