BSODmyself

Today I wanted to blog for the first time in about a week. But after getting all my errands done, I found out that my Internet and cable was down. And since I use Internet phone technologies instead of traditional landlines, I wasn’t able to call the cable company. I wondered what I would do when that happened. This was the first time in a long while that the cable was out and I knew it wasn’t a billing problem.

Once I got to a location with Internet, I started chatting online with a Time Warner representative, having the following exchange:

Michael Smith: Thank you for choosing Time Warner Cable’s Online Chat, My name is Michael. Please hold as I pull up your account information.

Michael Smith: You are in an area that is experiencing an outage. We are aware of the problem and technicians are working to correct the issue as quickly as possible.

Johnny: Thank you. Is there an ETA on restoration of service.

Michael Smith: The technician are working on its earliest resolution.

Johnny: Thank you. Have a nice day.

I was about to ask again if he knew *when* service would be restored. Just as long as it was up before I had to telecommute the next morning, I would have been totally cool with whatever he said. Of course, I probably threw him off, since ETA wasn’t what I was asking for, since ETA is “Estimated Time of Arrival”, which had nothing to do with service restoration, and everything to do with getting somewhere on an airplane.

Anyway, the total outage was four or five hours. Not a big deal, in the end, I guess.

My favorite news article from today was this summary and analysis of alternative party candidates and their stances on economic issues at the “Amateur Economists” website. While I disagree that people’s McCain and Obama dissatisfactions stem from their lack of economic knowledge (since most people don’t really understand economics anyway), I do agree that economics is important enough to do a little extra research to make an informed decision.

After reading this article, I’m still in the Barr camp. I agree that it would be great for more emphasis on Fed policy and oversight. I think that indicates a deeper knowledge of economic theory and application to include the Fed in any economic considerations. I’m sure most (but definitely not all) Libertarians are fine with his economic views. His slightly more conservative social views are another issue, however.

One of my favorite political horserace sites is Electoral-Vote.com. In addition to a daily run down of new polls and current projected candidate electoral counts, there’s usually an interesting commentary from the Votemaster. Today’s commentary mentioned the fight over political party platforms. On this the Votemaster stated:

Nobody ever reads the party platforms anyway, but activists are willing to draw blood to get them their way. It is probably the only aspect of American politics where ideas dominate.

He’s probably right considering that his site generally only recognizes Democratic and Republican candidates. However, when considering alternative political parties, he’s not quite right. As a Libertarian, I know that platforms occassionally are considered sources of ideas for negative attacks. And activists do their darnedest to make the platform represent the philosophy. Usually, alternative political parties and their candidates even express these ideas (often to their electoral deaths). I would say that this is the other place where ideas dominate in politics. But the general reluctance of people to vote for these idea-filled candidates gives us an insight to the American’s regard for the concept of ideas in politics.