Political Commentary on Obama

3.18.08

Obama made a valiant effort to promote peace today. In my personal opinion, there is still plenty of racism in America today. Everyone has to straddle the fence everyday it seems in an effort for political correctness when it comes to living one's life in a way as to not promote or lead to offending others by accidentally saying something that is not PC. It feels like walking on eggshells at times. Honestly, most of the time, I try not to give it a second thought.

I understand how some people want everyone to be politically correct all the time so you don't hurt someone else's feelings but you know what? People should be stronger than that and have the common sense to know when someone is a racist and when someone is not.

I'm Asian, I make plenty of jokes about myself as well as others. People who know me usually enjoy my jokes and know that I mean nothing serious by them. People who don't know me sometimes cringe when I say something for the first time to them about how you can't wrestle money outta me because I am Chinese or how I'll eat almost anything. I make some jokes about Indian folk doing the impression of their accent but also do the same with Irish and Scottish as well, I was an improv actor in the past, what do you expect? I just love accents and the people who have them. It's not done out of malice at all but admiration. I make less jokes of the African American community just because they seem a little more touchy about it but my African American friends seem to want a relaxed society as well (to a point). As a person who pays attention to people though, interested in social issues and sociology as well, it's very interesting what Barack Obama had to do today.

Interesting but not surprising. That's right, he had to defend himself today over someone else's belief's and words. He did it well though. I for one think he got the word out that there is racism, there is reason for it, people have legitimate reasons for their views, and as individuals, we should all take and judge what people say in individual terms.

I think Obama understands why many people say and believe what they do, probably more than most of us do, but he had to make those of us who don't realize that come to our senses and do the same. We can't as people understand what others go through very easily as individuals and especially cannot if we come from different ethnicities. What he said today, if not now, will in time help us to understand each other better.

I for one do feel a bit disturbed that he had to defend himself and had to say what he said today but on the other hand, the things he said needed to be said and have not been said with such focus and clarity in such a long time. So it was an important speech, I wish we didn't need it, but also I think there was no one better in the United States today to say it.

I just want to also say that I don't intend to influence at all what people think on the upcoming election as far as who they plan to vote for, at this time I have not made my own mind up on who I will vote for, I do want to point though that people who remember and speak out about racism like nothing has ever changed just make the situation worse, perpetuating those views. Not only those who are still racist or who do nothing whom also make the situation worse. I think Obama, with what he said today, takes us back in a direction that we do want to move toward, talking about race relations reasonably and with an open mind, moving forward and making things better.

Rant: The Future

3.14.08

I saw some pictures of inventions and ideas for the future the other day and it started me thinking. Where are all those great things we were supposed to have by now that we all saw as we were growing up?

I remembered the Land of Tomorrow and rides talking about the future at Disneyworld and Epcot Center I saw when I was a kid. The future that was “supposed to be” we saw back then is our present day and we haven't as yet achieved those great inventions we were all anticipating.

Tell me, where are all those flying cars, where our our robot helpers, and where are those colonies we were supposed to have on our neighboring planets as well as the moon? Instead, we have high fuel prices, high food prices, most of our world population is struggling to get by, and our cars aren't even efficient much less able to leave the ground (unless you drive the General Lee).

I guess we should look on the bright side, there have been some advancements in the last 20 years. Computers have gotten smarter and smaller. There is a free wireless internet in the ether that is continuing to spread and hopefully will span the United States and perhaps the world in years to come. I'm typing on a 2 pound 7 inch laptop that doesn't even fit on my lap because it's too small! Appliances have become smarter too, phones now can go online, hold music and video, become an alarm clock that gets automatically set to your current time zone when you travel, not to mention it makes and recieves calls! That's pretty cool.

What about around the house? We've had advances to more efficient flourescent bulbs (if only people would use them), we have washing machines, dishwashers, and toilets that use less water to do what they gotta to do, even windows and insulation have gotten better to save everyone money and keep us all warm by conserving energy and heat on cold days and reflect heat when hot in the summertime.

If we just take a look around, I guess there have been a lot of advances. Technology never stands still, that's for sure. I still wouldn't mind having a flying car and a robot to do my dishes though.

What inventions are you still waiting for?

Refurbished with new life?

3.5.08

What do you think about refurbished items?

This question was posed to me last week by a colleague. I can say that I have never purchased a refurbished item. It's not that I have anything against them per se, I just never had the opportunity to purchase anything I wanted as a refurbished item. I've had friends purchase ipods, macs, tvs, and even pc's refurbished but I don't know if I would purchase high end equipment that way.

Refurbished just conjures up ideas of electronics who have spent much of their short life abused and then shipped away where electronics wizards spend their whole day putting these devices back together. Maybe that is not the reality of most refurbs but I can't change that vision from being one of my first that comes to mind. Folks have said that refurbished most likely means that these electronic devices were purchased and then because their owners didn't agree with them, they were returned but they couldn't just be restocked as open boxed so they ended up back at their factory of origin waiting to be shipped out again but that didn't happen. For the most part, nothing bad ever happened to them but because they were returned they needed to go through a check process where they were deeemed perfect or very close to it, that equals “refurbished.”

So would you get a refurbished mac? These machines run 1800 to 2000 dollars for well equipped models and actually refurbs don't go for much less. I guess if those who say nothing terribly wrong happens to refurbs and they go through a stringent checklist of quality control, that is not too bad. How realistic is that though? Most stores I would imagine try to resell their returns that are ok rather than paying for shipping costs to get the item back to the company. They probably make more by selling it to someone as an open box, it's better for them. So, if it actually gets returned to the company, something very detrimental must have happened to it. Perhaps it was returned a few times. Something was wrong where it “needed” to go back for “inside” or “body work.” Now that that work is done, it can go right back out to the market. With computers though, I would suspect that sometimes internal problems aren't even remedied before it goes out again.

So once again, I have never had the opportunity to purchase a refurbished item and I guess it would be just fine if it was a cheaper product or not high tech but I just have a very ill feeling when I think about putting my hard earned money down for something classified as refurbished. I guess that is unlikely to change.

I'm just curious, have you bought refurbished and what was that item? What was the quality and how long did it last? Maybe refurbished is the greatest thing next to brand new but I for one need to see the evidence. Also for high tech, don't you think that high tech should be half price at least? By the time it's for sale again after refurb, it may be outdated so just a 10% off price doesn't cut it for me.

Let me know, maybe I should be a believer in refurbishing but I need to see the evidence.