Tuesday, 26 October 2004, 14:24:33 EDT

You might recall that I said this post would be a "geeky" post. Well, it isn't. The post that I was going to write languished in writer's block for so long that I have forgotten what I wanted to write. So, instead, I am just going to babble for a bit because it has been so long since I have written anything. I think the reason I haven't been writing much lately is because of school. I am trying to focus more on school than anything else and it takes a lot of time. When I get done with school, a.k.a. not in class or doing homework, I just want to relax. Relaxing, as of late, means not doing anything remotely stimulating intellectually which is where I get most of my material to write about.

I suppose one could argue that today I truly matured as a citizen of the United States. I voted in the 2004 presidential election this morning before work. I really reccommend that you vote early; I got in line at 8:40AM and walked out of the voting room at 9:20AM. Not too bad but think about how it will be in one week.

There is one very big problem though — Henry county, along with most of the rest of Georgia's counties, uses the Diebold election machines. A simple Google search gives plenty of explanation why I do not like this. When I got in the voting room I looked around at how they have everything set up; it is pitiful. The machines are plugged straight in to regular wall outlets. Not even the pollster's machine was plugged in to an UPS. If a power outage were to occur then every single one of the machines in the room would crash which would mean a possible loss of every vote taken that day up to the point of the power outage. I didn't have any problems using the machine and it was actually fairly quick and easy. The problem is that I am worried my vote might get lost. The Diebold machines are probably the worst machines developed for electronic voting; well, according the everyone with half a brain they are. I do believe that the voting process needs to be quicker and easier to tabulate. There are way too many people for hand counting to be effective, or efficient, any more. But, I would prefer that the electronic method be more secure. I mean really, if monkeys can crack the system what is stopping a well paid poll worker from doing so?

In somewhat related matters, I was able to pick up my pre-ordered copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas yesterday evening. I played it for about three hours last night and I can assure you that this game lives up to the standards that have been set forth by the previous two games. I love this series because it is completely blatant in its content. They are not promising fluffy bunnies and roses. The game is a satirical representation of society during the time period in which the game is set. This iteration just happens to be set in a central L.A. environment in the early 1990s when gangland warfare was at its height. The language is harsh, the words "fuck" and "nigger" are used liberally, and the lead character is black. Evidently this has upset various people. I have read on some message boards where people wish the language was toned down so that their four year old could drive around the city with the audio on and others who have canceled their pre-order, or returned the game, because of the lead character's color. Neither of these groups of people should be allowed to breed. The first is likely to blame video games when their sheltered, unwatched, illiterate child can't make it in high school and either kills himself or someone else. Video games have a rating system because people like me who grew up playing games want games targetted towards adults. Children should not be playing adult oriented video games – period. The second group should be shot on grounds of stupidity alone. I have a hard time believing that there are still people so racist in this country that they would refuse to play a video game because they would be role playing a black man in the ghetto of 1990s era L.A.

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