Neoconservative quiz

Neocon quiz results

Based on your answers, you are most likely a liberal. Read below to learn more about each foreign policy perspective.

Laffo.

I want one now.

Michael Moore Simultaneously On Voter Rolls In New York, Michigan.

I really think he's got that Chicago voting thing down pat.

A few things:

1) Housekeeping: I added Reinvigorate's site traffic/stats info on the page so I have an idea of where people are visiting from. It's better than Blogger's stats program, because that doesn't like to resolve or provide up to date info.

2) 2 more days until I'm off call. Then I can sleep.

3) Self abuse is rather fun. 5-6 nights a week at the gym, 90 minutes at a stretch and all cardio. It's rather weird to summon up self hatred and just abuse your body. Sydney's the mental goal - gotta look decent if I decide to lie on the beach with a book on Bondi Beach.

4) I still miss Philly girl. You'd think that after - wow, two months - that feelings would have subsided and that I would have been able to try to gain some closure and move on but I'm still at the level of hurt from Day + 1.

Hotel Tips:

If you're still at the stage where sleeping on a friend's couch is perfectly acceptable and you can't justify the outlay for a really nice hotel, you're not alone. Personally, I can't swallow $119 per night for a 3 star hotel in a crap area when I travel, so I stick with Priceline for hotel bidding. I don't trust them for anything else, but hotels I swear by them. I love them for hotels - even more than I love taffy, and I'm a man who loves his taffy.

The question becomes "Where am I staying?" and "How much do I bid?" - both perfectly good questions. BiddingForTravel.com is the source of truth for not only what hotels you'll end up at, but sort of a running baseline of what to pay for hotels. My current dilemma is that I'm looking at 8 nights in Sydney and I'd like to stay at a nice hotel. US$183 a night without tax to stay at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney versus US$88 with Priceline, using BFT as the baseline total.

I'm sure that my philosophy goes against the grain, but I'm spending my own money, not my company's money. I want to stretch my dollar as much as possible, and have a vacation where the money I save upfront can go to hedonism, having fun and chotchkis for people at home.

Other useless hotel tips:
1) Be prepared to lie. If you get an unsatisfactory room (crap view, noisy, just looks plain hideous), what you can do is dishevel the bed and the bathroom, then call the front desk and say the room wasn't cleaned and you'll get another room. This falls under the "Nick's bastardry travel tips", but if your room truly does suck, then by all means. Use this sparingly.
2) Avoid hotel bars. They're either filled with businessmen, boring couples or escorts. And the drinks generally suck and are overpriced. This is a good thing when you're somewhere where the local drinks are 1/4th the price of what you normally pay, yet your hotel charges you street prices at home.
3) Better yet, avoid food service altogether at the hotel. When you travel, you might want to consider having fun and experience something other than the hotel restaurant. Ask for a local bar/pub/restaurant (ask the concierge, never the front desk staff because they'll just refer you back to the hotel bar/restaurant). Get out and meet the locals.
4) Try not to order hotel porno. *They* know at the front desk and will likely make fun of you upon checkout. Bring your own porn.
5) The minibar. Beware the RFID minibars that mistakenly charge you for opening the door for $40 worth of Kit-Kats and wine. If you "have to have it now", then make sure it's something you can easily replace with by purchasing the same item at a local convience store/Walgreens/News Agent. Better yet, remember to grocery shop.

I found an auction on eBay for a Real Time Machine for Time Travel

The time coil headband sends the vibrational energy of that time into your third eye.

Insert gay joke here...

I am officially a loser for spending my 4th of July doing a Mileage Run.

ORD-DFW-LAX-SFO-ORD. 4383 status miles for $153.90. The good news is that I will most likely be bumped up to first class for all except for the LAX-SFO segment. I will probably just rent a lot of movies from Blockbuster and watch movies for the day. And drink, of course. If I gun champagne the entire way, the trip practically pays for itself.

This effectively means I need to fly 39343 miles by years end for under $1588.40 to meet my own financial goal. I'll probably fail, but still, it's worth trying. Hope those cheap Asia fares pop up soon... real soon.

Big fucking deal. Jack Ryan wanted to have freaky sex with Jeri Ryan. Good for him. He's not alone and with the legions of Trek fans, he could become a cult icon.

A few things:

1) You know Michael Moore sucks when Christopher Hitchens dogs his ass out. You have to like this comment:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.

2) The high energy over Sydney has come crashing down, and like most of my trips, I won't start planning until August. I have no idea what I want to do there. I figure I'll worry about it later, and just remember to bring home a shitload of boomerangs for people. It's just another place.

3) It struck me tonight that I'll always be "the friend" when I meet women. I'll never be that guy who is an object of pursuit or obsession. It's a little depressing and you start to wonder, gee, maybe I would be liked more if I read and thought less and worried about Reality TV and the Cubs instead. Or maybe I'd be liked more if I listened less and stared at a woman's chest instead of her eyes when talking. Or maybe I'll be loved instead of being used as a stable center to lean against if I worried about fashion and trendy music instead of world affairs and doing the right thing. My conflict is that I can't change who I am, so I'm stuck in a cycle. Meet nice person, court nice person, then am told that I'm "just a friend". Repeat. I just wish I could find someone who respects those things like integrity and the fact that I will always do what I feel to be the right thing. But I probably won't.

4) And an effort to make myself smile, here's The Gayest Link in the World.

Well, I got a head start on my birthday planning by purchasing airfare to Sydney. Pretty decent pricing, including the AA codeshare so I get all my miles like a good boy, plus I get treated nicely because of OneWorld Emerald - well, I hope.

Congrats to Jeff and his wife Amy on the birth of their second child.

Hailey Reagan Ready
June 19th, 5:22PST
20"/50.8cm
7lb 7oz/3.38kg

Jeff's a good Republican.

Rachael Yamagata's new CD is pretty good. Worth listening to a Chicago artist. It was a lot better than the PJ Harvey cd I bought.

A few things:

I hate condo boards more than I hate my job. Don't fuck with chihuahua owners, nor the elderly. What's the harm in having an 85 year old woman having a dog?

And the game America's Army is pissing me off. I got nailed for negative points because of an incident of hitting a friendly with frag from my grenade. That asshat jumped in the way, and deserved it, but for me it was negative points for violating the Rules of Engagement.

I had a bad little dream about the last night I spent with Philly girl in the hotel in Philly. A very quiet night, curled up in the bed with her being very sick and both of us in tears. It just came to me and I was unprepared for it. And it bothered me to the core. I would have thought that I would have been able to rebound quicker but I'm upset at myself for not being able to deal with it. Cicero said:

I remember the very thing that I do not wish to;
I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

What an asshole. He's right though.

And so I need to run. The additional stress of work is really starting to bother me with not being able to get a good night's sleep and proper motivation to do what I do best. I need to go away.

The problem is that unless some miracle airfare appears, I'll be stuck either sitting at home playing the guitar or blowing money on airfare for a long weekend. I mean, $985 to Santiago? It's a fun city, but not worth it, even for a Schop Dog chili dog and beer for 1000 Chilean Pesos ($1.54). I really don't want to go down to Panama for $600 - I'd rather go far away and put some distance between myself and home and the problems that sit in the US. It's either that, or I run to Tokyo and be stupid for 3 or 4 days.

I got a letter in the mail at work from The White House. I thought it was going to be a restraining order from all those drunken phone calls I've made to Barbara Bush professing my love, but it turns out it's just something on the USA Freedom Corps. Maybe it's because I'm the awesome Museum docent that I am. Whatever. It's just the 2003 annual report. Still, pretty cool.

What a useless day.

Paged x2 before 8am regarding some botched job. If my job is to ensure one task is right, I'll do that one task. I won't do the other 9 other associated tasks in that project OR take the blame for them not being done. Someone's poor planning shouldn't be my emergency.

The problem with being the guy who can do it all is that there's a large degree of reliance on your skills and time. This drain takes you off your game and those bigname projects you have to do get pushed by the wayside, so there's a propensity towards having to put in the extra hours. It's at the point where I'm content with explaining things once and letting things be.

Tonight will be a long time in the gym, watching The Jury (because Barry Levinson and the gang rock), watching Spartan and probably some sushi, since it's been a while. Just have to figure out how to balance it.

Hopefully I fixed the site statistics on this blog. Hopefully.

It'd be nice to see who's coming from where, etc.

Had a good day for once.

Got up early, went to Maxwell Street, bought 4 movies and Homicide Season 4 on dvd. And managed to buy a copy of Conquest of the Empire for $5 in decent condition. Surprised the hell out of me.

Then spent the afternoon with a good friend and saw Saved!, which was very good and brought back a lot of high school memories. I was pretty creeped out that the "bad girl" in the movie was Susan Sarandon's daughter.

4th of July:

The option for Costa Rica is on the table. Granted, another 3 day run, but no biggie. ~$300 for airfare, but the cpm/cpqm sucks. It'll be like Tim's bachelor party. And I will probably run out to Philadelphia or San Jose before the end of the month as well.

Or, I can wait for any last minute airfares to some random locale...

Sitting on a beach somewhere for 3 days and reading books wouldn't be that bad of a trip.

That's right, bitch.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
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Portugal police are going to allow English soccer hooligans to smoke pot instead of drinking a lot of beer and fighting.

Maybe this is something that Cubs fans should think about. It'd be fun to see "the cloud" in the bleachers.


Edit: Come On The England! is a good example of why they should smoke pot instead of drink.

We need US Hooligans.

Last night the few drinks I had and an inopportune IM had me a little bit upset and I wrote a very passionate and sappy post talking about the past. I woke up this morning at 0445 or thereabouts and realized, oops, it's probably not best to write stuff like that.

Don't drink and blog.

I snuck into the All Candy Expo at McCormick Place today. It was a nice little break from the office, and I got to wander around and see what new treats will be making me fatter throughout 2005. Brought back some for the coworkers, who I'm sure will act indifferent.

This asshat makes the rest of us who do this look bad. 10? Ok. 1150? Not ok.

I got a stack of Lonely Planet books in the mail today, with more coming on Friday. Time to plan the Axis of Evil Tour for 2005. I figure, at the very least, I can work a book deal out of it. If the "Super Size Me" asshat can work out a deal, then I can do something.

I just have to figure it out and work a schedule to get to them all. I don't know if Iraq still qualifies as being part of the Axis of Evil, but who knows. Quite frankly, I'm probably safer going to Tehran than most places I want to go next.

The Ultimate War Sim was the funniest link of the day.

Then, I want a little cutscene to pop up to announce that photos of my prisoner interrogations have emerged, sparking international outrage because several prisoners were upset and humiliated and some even physically harmed.

The whole world is shocked. Because people were physically harmed.

In a war.

During a discussion of what we miss and the carnage of a Schoop's, Jeff and I concluded that we miss not only Schoop's, but high school pizza along with orange drink. Jeff e-mailed the school about pizza, and it looks like we're screwed until August to get some answers on how to make high school pizza. The orange drink, however, is the added bonus.

I think that I, as a prominent alumni, need to go back to my high school and talk about my travels around the globe and how much I rule.

On pizza day, of course.

It's been a while since I've written any worthwhile travel tips. So, I present to you the Top Ten things I've learned in the last 150,000 miles/18 months:

1. Airport Security/TSA - Yes, it's a joke. But it's a necessary evil. And some are power hungry - just deal with it. It's not worth the grief when you're going somewhere. If the screener is an asshat, write down their information and call when you get back. And learn to wear minimal metallic objects and remove them before you go through the x-ray machine.
2. Travel companions - Friends sometimes aren't the ones to take traveling. Petrarch was right when he said:

When I came to look about for a companion I found, strangely enough, that hardly one among my friends seemed suitable, so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics, even among those who are dearest to us. This one was too apathetic, that one over-anxious; this one too slow, that one too hasty; one was too sad, another over-cheerful; one more simple, another more sagacious, than I desired. I feared this one's taciturnity and that one's loquacity. The heavy deliberation of some repelled me as much as the lean incapacity of others. I rejected those who were likely to irritate me by a cold want of interest, as well as those who might weary me by their excessive enthusiasm. Such defects, however grave, could be borne with at home, for charity suffereth all things, and friendship accepts any burden; but it is quite otherwise on a journey, where every weakness becomes much more serious. So, as I was bent upon pleasure and anxious that my enjoyment should be unalloyed, I looked about me with unusual care, balanced against one another the various characteristics of my friends, and without committing any breach of friendship I silently condemned every trait which might prove disagreeable on the way.

3. Be nice to Flight Attendants - Learn those words of "please" and "thank you". Always bring cookies and share. And always write nice letters/emails to exceptional ones.
4. Hotel rooms - When you get a crappy one, quickly mess up the bathroom and turn up the bed and then say that your room was never cleaned.
5. Plan it out - A lot of upfront legwork saves you time and frustration. Put Google and your travel guides to work and always figure out how to get to the hotel from the airport and the way back. If there's still doubt, quarterback everything from the moment you land.
6. Don't panic - When you're in a foreign land and you don't speak the language, it's only natural to freak out and question what you've done.
7. You always forget to bring something - Nick's principle of "One More Thing". I always forget something on a trip. Sometimes it's been minor, other times it's been major. Accept it when you forget something, and just go from there.
8. Learn to love getting lost - It's ok to get off the beaten path and just go wander. You'll probably have more fun finding the non-touristy things to try.
9. Listen to your body - Slow and steady is preferrable to just hauling ass. It's ok to not see everything.
10. Be cool - If your entire trip goes to hell, then maintain a sense of cool. If you do, you should have some pretty cool stories to tell. Sometimes they're better than just a normal trip.

President Reagan is dead. I feel sad about it - I mean, he was the first real President I knew growing up (Carter doesn't really count). A sad moment.

Regardless of what you think of his politics, suffering a decade of Alzheimer's is perhaps the worst way to go - humiliating and undignifying. I hope he died without pain. He deserved that much.

Airfares are pissing me off.

I'm due for a South America run and an Asia run before Labor Day. It's either that or make a lot of unexpected trips to San Jose to visit the crew. By my fuzzy math, I have to do 17 r/t's to SJC to keep EXP next year. lol.

I started the Swiss Bank Account project, which involved me opening up an account with PostFinance and tossing some money in there. That way, I've got a "break glass in case of emergency" fund as well as a source of cash if I go to any of the Axis of Evil countries, such as Cuba since I'm sure the best way to get my ass fined is to get money from a USA bank.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be discussing illegal acts in a blog, whether or not I disagree with the asanine policy.

I need to find another job.

Don't get me wrong. I like what I do and I make decent money and I feel a skewed sense of loyalty towards the organization, but really, I need better challenges and less awful coworkers. I'm just worried that my organization is due for an Andersen-level scandal due to the cultural arrogance.

I'd take a paycut if work was fun.

It's June, and alas, I have no 4th of July plans. I need to go somewhere. Maybe Philly but I'm not sure as to the welcome I'd get. I wish my heart was inside of my head. The problem is that the airfares suck so anywhere fun is over $1000, which is outside the Nick budget. Fuck.