Friday night I went to the Lubbock Corn Maze with some friends. I have never been to a corn maze so it was an interesting experience. If you get a chance to visit a corn maze I say go for it.

I helped a friend’s mom move on Saturday, which was a decent half of a day but it was fun and I had a good time doing it.

I really like some of these new Ted Nugent commercials. I am not a huge Nugent fan but his commercials are the first ones I have seen that encourage people to vote their hearts and not let others influence their vote. I have seen other commercials like this with other stars but these other stars make their political affiliation very clear and I do not appreciate that.

I was able to catch a little bit of the last total lunar eclipse till 2007 tonight. The moon had a weird red haze to it. CNN had a good article about the eclipse.

Hope you all were able to see it.

In other news, the Boston Red Sox have broken the 80yr. curse and won the 2004 World Series. They deserved it!

I decided I would keep writing about this subject as it has somewhat sparked some people’s interests.

For some reason there was a discussion yesterday that involved the question, “Do we know the true nature of people?”. I had to think about it a while but ended up deciding that right when you think you know someone, they change. Maybe for better, maybe for worse. People are changing all of the time, that is what keeps us interesting. But it also makes others confused and angry at times.

You think you know someone extremely well, then they turn and do something that is completely unexpected. Does that mean that you like them less? It could. But if the person changes for the better it could also push you away. Maybe you become jealous or untrusting because they are not the same person you used to know.

I think the thing that makes me the most frustrated is that people as a whole use excuses to cover up their own mistakes/wrong doing or their own conscience. We all do it. Why? Because excuses are easier than facing the facts. No one wants to be told that they are a slow worker or that they do understand something, so they make up an excuse.

How do we get around excuses? More on that next time….

My database professor decided to try and throw a weird/hard problem at me but after some playing with Oracle I was able to figure it out.

Basically, I have a table of customers, each customer has a name and an annual revenue. What my professor wanted was to select the customers who’s annual revenue was higher than the average of all of the annual revenues of all customers less themselves. Sounds somewhat difficult. Not really.

SELECT cust_name, cust_annual_rev

FROM customer c

WHERE cust_annual_rev >

   (SELECT AVG(cust_annual_rev)

    FROM customer

    WHERE cust_id <> c.cust_id);

Wasn’t too difficult… Maybe I’ll get some extra credit or something.

A couple of things struck me today and I was taken back a little by them. I have always known that people, in general, cannot be trusted. People do not stick to their word and for the most part people do not even try to. But as I meet new people and talk to them I find that picking out the lip service that people give is a lot easier than it used to be. The ability to think about something that someone says and realize that they do not mean it or that they will not stick by it is, to me at least, a gift. Well, it is a gift that can also be a burden to say the least.

As I move through school and encounter new situations I think that I learn a lot about people. Some of it is good things, while the majority is things I would much rather ignore or not even know about in the first place. People are fake when they want to be and when it suits their needs. However, when it suits their needs those same people become as real as possible. Is every person guilty of that? No. But I do think a majority of us do it on some level or another. Whether we are trying to make someone mad, frustrate someone, make them happy, or ignore them, we all tend to lean toward not being ourselves to accomplish our “goals”.

We say things that we do not really mean or the exact opposite, we say things that we mean but turn around and deny that. I truly believe that people will, no matter what the consequences are upon others, say or do things that fit their wants and there is no real way to get around it. Is it a learned behavior? I do not know but I think that it stems from people’s own personal self-interest

Apple announced their iPod Photo product today and I think the consensus among all Apple enthusiasts is, “wow”.

There are two models for the iPod Photo, a 40GB and a 60GB. Both have the ability to organize photos downloaded from your Mac or PC and also (now here’s the cool part) give you the ability to download the album art for your music to the iPod.

The color screen looks really cool and from what I’ve read it doesn’t eat up much more battery than the regular iPods.

Now I am really interested in getting an iPod and/or a PowerBook.

Yesterday was not a good day in Texas Tech football. We suffered a very bad loss at the hands of the University of Texas. Their quarterback outscored Tech by himself, which, even if you do not follow football is horrible.

Well, after that loss I decided to go see Surviving Christmas (I guess I’m trying to get into the Christmas spirit early this year). Surprisingly the movie was actually really funny, something I do not expect from Ben Affleck. James Gandolfini was awesome (what’s new?)… So out of 10, ‘Surviving Christmas’ gets a 7.5.

Well, last night was going great as I watched the first few innings of the NLCS. The Astros were winning and things were looking up. I decided that I would go to church since things were looking good.

I got to church around 8pm and tried out my SprintPCS Vision phone to see how the internet functionality out. The service pulls live scores from ESPN. It also pulls the number of outs, who’s on base, what the last play was, and other little things. I was impressed. The one thing that I was dissappointed in was the fact that it did not auto-refresh to show me updated information.

Back to the baseball game…

As the night progressed the feeling became worse. It was not Clemens fault that we lost, it was the team as a whole. You cannot only get 3 hits and expect to beat anyone. It was a poor showing all around.

Oh well, next year we’ll get them.

Go Sox! ‘Reverse the Curse!’

I have seen a lot of sites with videos with different key Republican speakers mentioning September 11th in their remarks. The videos emphasize how much they use September 11 in their speeches. Ok, will someone explain to me what the Democrats actually want?!

You make fun of Bush and the Republican party by showing these videos but then you support Kerry for attacking Bush for “not doing enough”. I hate to break it to you all but Bush isn’t just talk (I guess you don’t pay much attention to current events). Bush actually took the initiative that others wouldn’t. So what if he mentions it in his speeches, it was a turning point in American history. I would love to know how many times Kerry used the words “security” and “September 11” as well. But then it wouldn’t be funny anymore, the Democrats would raise a fuss about Kerry trying to make changes and his words are showing that.

Just keep your mouth shut for a second… Since September 11 this country has not had a terrorist attack. No embassies have been bombed, no U.S. ships have had suicide bombers drive boats into them. Why? Because Bush took a stand. He didn’t turn around and expect the American public to forget the towers and the Pentagon and the people who died inside.

Don’t give me crap about Iraq. I know a lot of you would like to tell me that there are terrorists over there killing Americans and I’d agree, except for the fact that a majority of those over there either chose to be there or they chose to join the armed forces (and if you join the armed forces there’s a chance you are going to see combat, go figure). Am I saying those people’s deaths are acceptable? No, not by any means. I am saying that people need to understand the fighting and the fact that as of right now there is no easy solution to the problem except to fight it out. Kerry wants the American public to think that he has some super plan to take care of Iraq, I would really enjoy him trying to explain it. I think it would be something like “Well…. We’re going to be doing the same thing we’ve been doing, but better”.

Alright, I’ll step off of the stool for a while.

Very few things really get under my skin but one that digs deep is telling me someone sings something/wrote something and acting like that is the final answer when in all actuality it isn’t.

Take for example this evening… The radio was on and “Pinball Wizard” came on. It was the “The Who” version but the first thing my friend said was “Elton John sings this”. I rolled my eyes and said “No, this isn’t Elton John it’s ‘The Who'”. Before I had a chance to finish my statement she snaps back saying she knows it’s Elton John and she wants to bet me. Well, I know what she is thinking, she’s thinking about Tommy and it’s Broadway version. I know that Elton John made an appearance in the movie and had a single that was released on the album and in the U.K. but it is not the version that they play (for the most part) in the U.S. Most people don’t like Elton John’s version (myself included) and prefer the Pete Townshend version.

So my friend continues to argue with me even though the people we were with knew that she was wrong and were trying to tell her. It frustrates me that people take their one source as fact and don’t take the time to learn things for themselves (she was told it was Elton John by her dad so therefore it was set in stone fact).