Starcraft II

Last night I went to sleep at 7:30. Why, you ask, would a 20-something be in bed at that pathetically early hour on a Friday night? I could play it safe and point to the long and exciting/tiring week...

It was Wednesday night, or I should say, Thursday morning. I am in the middle of an odd dream of what it would be like to shave my head. Let me just say, it was not a pretty picture. So as I go to make another pass with the electric razor I am suddenly jolted out of my slumber by a loud, screeching noise. I immediately hurled myself out of bed and lunge at the noise. The phone was ringing. I squinted, trying desperately to cut through the dark and make out the digits on my alarm clock that was now across the room. One o'clock. Now, at one in the morning, you know that any telephone call can only be bad news. No one ever calls to tell you that you've won a million dollars. I wait for the caller ID to display on the phone, hoping to catch it before the next ring so as to avoid waking anyone else up. "Incomplete Data". Figures... There are only a few possibilities. 1) Someone has been hurt or is dead, or 2) Something at work has gone horribly wrong (which is not mutually exclusive from possibility one). I brace myself.

"Hello?"

"Mike? This is Mark from work."

"What's up?"

"Um... I need to speak to Mike."

"It's me... what's going on?"

"You know the server that you just upgraded? It keeps shutting itself down. The local tech has been out twice to restart it, and I've got him headed out there again."

My mind races. What on earth could I have done that caused the machine to shut itself down? Well, two and a half hours later I had moved all critical systems to a remote site, meanwhile the computer has shut itself down yet again! Good enough though. I had put a band-aid on that problem and could go back to sleep. I enjoyed the tepid reprise of sleep, the entire hour before I had to get back up and go to work. In all I got four and half hours of sleep that night.

The next night, intending to make up for the previous night's lack of sleep, I retired early. I am on the verge of sleep, you know, that tricky line where you're not quite awake and not really asleep? My cell phone starts going off pack of fire crackers. I force myself from my stupor and read the incoming messages. "Houston scheduler failure." "You've got to be kidding me!" Not only is this the second night in a row, but this is an error that popped up a year ago to which we never could find the cause. The only permanent solution was to reinstall windows to wipe away whatever mysterious setting caused the problem in the first place. I put a band-aid on it and made the messages stop. "So much for a night to catch up on sleep..." It was now my normal bed time.

Then Friday night I was a mix of tired, bored, and alone. Tired from the previous week of work mayhem, bored because being tired I did not want to really do anything, and alone because everyone was gone for their own Memorial Day Weekend plans. "So blah, it's seven thirty and I'm going to bed."

When I woke up this morning an old friend has left me a single message:

"[20:42] SuX: did u see sc2?"

My heart skips a beat and my fingers type like the wind. Within moments I am greeted with a splash screen announcing that Blizzard has finally begun working on the sequel to the revolutionary and timeless classic Starcraft. I once did a rough calculation of the time I spent playing the previous installment. With part pride and a measure of shame I claim a minimum of over one thousand hours. And now, to my joy and dismay, for the long-awaited sequel, and for the lack of time I have to devote to a new game, I sit in exuberant glee that at last, Starcraft II will soon be a reality.

Amnesty Intranational

The US Senate is currently working on a bill that will offer illegal immigrants the opportunity to become US citizens by paying a $5,000 fine, returning to their native country, and applying for legal work visas in order to return. …Where to start? I know, how about we start with a little basic math.

There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in America. In Manhattan the average illegal earns about $12,000 a year. Anyone familiar with prices in Manhattan knows that twelve grand is abject poverty. Housing cannot even be found for that price, much less food, clothing, transportation, or healthcare, but I’ll return to this a little later. Let’s suppose that the average illegal makes double that, that we are 100% wrong. Okay, that puts us at $24,000 a year. This bill is asking that illegal immigrants pay a fine that equals 25% to 35% of their gross income! Let me put that into perspective. The average family income in America last year was $46,000. Imagine the government telling you that in order to keep your job you had to pay a $15,000 fine! Oh, and not only that, but you have to quit your job and leave the country to file for a work visa from your home country with no guarantee that your job will be waiting on you when you return. Let’s be honest shall we? The US government wants illegal immigrants to give up what they have worked for in America in order to return to the country from which they fled in the first place. Not only that, but they are supposed to put their faith in the US government who is known for their [sarcasm]efficiency and expediency[/sarcasm]. This bill is absolute rubbish. It is amnesty! Oh, but there is a $5,000 fine attached and they have to leave… NO ONE is going to leave! How are they going to enforce this? Hint Hint… THEY AREN’T! They have no intention of fixing this problem, on the right or the left. They are all corrupt, and you know what? I’m fed up! I’m sick of politicians whose only goal in their service is to maintain the status quo and their power.

Glenn Beck was on ABC this morning with Geraldo. When Beck brought up the point that the illegal immigrants were not going to be able to pay this fine, Geraldo, the over-the-top, bleeding heart liberal, said that he would start a charity in order to help these people out. Now obviously Geraldo can’t do forth-grade math. Five thousand dollars times 12 million people equals 60 billion dollars. Yeah, billion, with a ‘B’! That’s ten zeros people! Bill Gates has the largest private endowment in America and it’s only worth about 38 billion, and here Geraldo wants to create a charity to raise 60 BILLION dollars! There are 300 million people in America. If every American were to share the burden equally, then each person, man, woman and child, would have to pay $200, that’s $800 for the average four-person family! Imagine an $800 tax next year added to your 1040! Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that now it would not be a fine anymore, but rather an entitlement for people who are already breaking American law! They are felons!

If I commit tax fraud by falsifying my tax return, or God forbid, fail to even file one, the IRS is coming after me! Yet every year there are 12 million falsifications and yet they get a pass. Who is being racist now? Not me. I don’t care what color your skin is, what country you came from… as long as you are here legally! The government is endorsing state-sponsored reverse racism! Government is cashing the checks every week, and private businesses are raking it in on cheap labor.

Let’s look at that a little… By forcing illegal immigrants to work for substandard pay they are effectively isolating an entire group of people, creating a virtual slave army of cheap labor. Yeah, I said SLAVE! They are the permanent underclass, perpetual slave labor, with no hope of ever escaping. Hey Geraldo, now who’s the compassionate bleeding heart? These politicians are corrupt, every one of them. And you know what? Everyone cares (or at least has an opinion), but no one thinks they can do anything. We are so isolated from our politicians, so far from Washington, that we feel unimportant. The feeling of hopelessness is gut wrenching. I wonder which direction the country will go. Will apathy allow modern slavery to continue? In 2005 Washington DC had the fourth highest homicide rate in America¹. We’ve got to wake up! Our country is sick. There is a cancer that is eating us from the inside out, from the top down. We must stand up for the rule of law. We must stand up for freedom. We must stand up for the American way. We have the power to fix the problem, but no one wants to fix it, they just want to pander to the masses. Running this way and that and never accomplishing anything, but they sure stayed busy…

Close the border, build the fence.
Fine businesses who hire illegal immigrant labor.
Cut off healthcare, education and welfare for non-citizens.

Turn off the water before you try to fix the leak…

Slow and Steady

The past few weeks have been crammed as I slowly completed all my semester papers, readings, and studying. The old saying is true, slow and steady wins the race. Today, on the way home from church I ran into this "little" fellow.

By little, I mean stetched from head to tail he was easily eighteen inches long. He didn't get that way over night. He's been around a while. He never moves very fast, but he has endured.