The Pnebleu Blog

If you’ve read the sidebar, you should be aware that I’m a junior at Texas A&M University.  TAMU is full of traditions.  Greeting passersby with a “howdy” is one of the most recognizable traditions practiced on- and off-campus.  Every year there is a cyclical decline of the use of “howdy.”  High in August and decline through December.  There is a low spike in January, then it declines to it’s lowest in May.  I’ve notice over the pass three years an overall decline in “howdy’s” use.

I attribute the iPod as a leading reason for the decline in “howdy’s” that I hear.  The popularity of the Apple iPod and other mp3 players lead to people wearing headphones to and from class on campus.  Listening to music, Aggies are less likely to spout a brief “howdy” to the person walk by, and if you walk by someone wearing headphones/earbuds you are less likely to say “howdy,” as not to disturb them.

This is a sad trend here in Aggieland.  I hope the new classes admitted will push to bring back “howdy” to the levels it once was.  I’ll do my part and say “howdy” to everyone I pass.

Spring break is overrated. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the reprieve from school for a week, but it has become this massive conception. The two words bring to mind college students partying in Mexico or skiing in Colorado. Well, not for me; I worked from 10AM to 7PM Tuesday through Friday. I don’t remember very many spring breaks that I actually took a vacation. Oh well, it let me work 36 hours this week; 15 more than normal.

As this week has come to a close, I’ve been thinking more about what I’m going to do after I graduate next year. I really don’t know. I think I’d really like to do technology consulting for small to medium businesses, but I don’t want to travel much. I just heard on a podcast about the digital information archival field; it has really piqued my interest, I’m going to have to do some research on it. So, I’m stressing about what I’m going to do in the future. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to get ready, the real world is about to be here. Well, I’d like to tell everyone, the real world is already here. I’m already in the real world. I never was anywhere but in the real world. If juggling college, work, and daily chores isn’t in the real world, I don’t know what is.

Where did personal responsibility go? How did we even get to the point as a nation of considering nationalized healthcare? Why do we have individuals and family units living for years on welfare? Why don’t people stand up and take responsibility for their actions, criminal or morally wrong? Why do people fresh out of high school seem to go wild and crazy after they move out? Why is blame always shifted to someone else or to some external force? Most problems and issues can be narrowed down to a root cause of personal responsibility or lack thereof.

The growing trend for citizens to keep relying on the government for more and more is quite disturbing. FEMA, Social Security, welfare, and universal healthcare are programs where an individual’s responsibilities have been taken or moved over to the government to manage, as if it could manage it better. People need to step up and take charge. The government doesn’t need to do everything for you. It wasn’t designed to do that. If we are going to live in a nanny state, why would anyone want to work and provide for themselves? The incentive would be to take the government handouts and do nothing in return. This is completely wrong. It’s immoral, unproductive, and un-American. We are called to be the best we can be, both by God and by the capitalist system. If you live in America you have been give so many blessing by God, working your hardest is the least you can do in appreciation. In the capitalist system, rewards are give to success; leaching off of the success of others hurts the economy and reduces the incentives for hard workers (because they’re rewards will be taken by the government and redistributed to the undeserving “failures” in capitalism).

Let me make this clear, I do not think pure capitalism is the way we need to go. Welfare is very important and I’m not saying it should be abolished. However, I think it should be run by the states and should have a time period or some limit. This limitation would prevent people from staying on government welfare their entire lives. Private charity would play an even larger part than it does today, if you removed national welfare, the tax burden that causes, and the current state welfare systems and replaced them with a limited welfare program by the states.

National universal healthcare is appalling to me. It removes my right to have no healthcare plan and just pay for expenses as they come. Setting up a system like this removes everyone’s responsibilities. They’re saying you’re too stupid to go out an choose you method of paying for healthcare, so we are going to step in and make that decision for you. Look, you even get to choose a level of service! The supporters are going to say that the program is for the poor and underprivileged, so they can get health insurance. This may seem harsh, but it’s not the government’s job to bail out the “failures” of the capitalist system. By providing them with free or cheap healthcare when they cannot afford to attain it without government assistance, what incentives to work harder and move up in “class” does this procure?

Back down on the personal level, people always seem to find someone or something else to blame. Grow up! Be a mature individual and take responsibilities for any of your actions, right and wrong. If you make poor grades in school, don’t blame the professor or the test. Take responsibility for doing poorly and study harder next time. At work, mistakes happen, confess if you’ve done something incorrectly.

Financial responsibility has disappear with the arrival of the credit card. The amount of debt in this country is astounding! You people out there need to stop buying stuff you can’t afford! Be responsible and buy only what you need if you are in debt. Don’t purchase items on credit, save up until you can afford it. If you do finance something, pay each payment out fully or more. Don’t let the interest grow! Hard work and a tight wallets lead to prosperous lives. Be a responsible consumer.

This country has become, or maybe always was, a sissy state. Both on the national and personal levels people are lacking in responsibility for themselves and their actions. This is a major problem. If everyone is telling the government to take care of them, then no one is left to to take care of anyone, because we are the government in this country. We have to stand up and take responsibility.

This afternoon I was traveling around the world. One thing I noticed from San Francisco, USA to Perth, Australia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were the suburbs. In each country they were plainly identifiable. Most certainly they had their differences, but they were overtly similar. Are the suburbs taking over the world?

I think they might be. Bill Vaughan said, “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” The problem with suburbs is that they constantly grow larger and larger, instead of growing up, or down. If suburbs continue to grow we will eventually run out of land suitable for construction. But before that, we will run out of land where a person can be completely alone in the wilderness.

Don’t get me wrong, I love developments and futuristic fantasies, such as Coruscant, but I also love the isolation created by the vast expanses of nature without any human feature or touch. No roads, power lines, radio or cellphone towers; the flawless creation of God. If we don’t examine our urban sprawl and look to developing a smarter growth solution, it might be a very gray world with a few, small perfectly-pruned and watered patches of green.

A quick Google search and you’ll find many organizations and articles fighting urban sprawl and promoting smart developing methods, yet I live in the exurbs, at the moment, and the signs of growth are still building. Do you want the world to look like this picture on every piece of stable ground? What can you or I do to promote smart development plans? I don’t know, but we need to do something before it’s too late; before we are looking at trees in a museum.

I’m starting to feel more and more like we are living in a police state. Especially, with recent events in the news; like the Los Angeles protest gone bad. But, what starked this feeling in me, are the numerous law enforcement offices on the roads. City cops, state troopers, bike cops, county sheriffs, and unmarked police patrols are all on the highways and streets looking for anyone they can give a ticket. The few officers I know personally are nice, wonderful people, but the system and policy that is developing in law enforcement should be given look over.

Just the other day on Texas A&M University’s campus, I was walking to my car when two bike cops pulled over two women on bicycles. I don’t know what for or what happened, but they did ask for a driver’s license. From the looks of the students, they were headed to the Rec Center to workout, so they might not have their id. Before the pull-over, the officers on bikes where just standing around waiting for something to happen. I’m not saying that the girls got a ticket, but if that is what happened, the officers where on a stake-out. Do two women on bikes pose such a danger to society that two officers should spend their time watching people and bike move by? Couldn’t they be doing something else more productive or at a level that requires their skills, like say, investigating a robbery or assault that happen frequently on the North Gate side of campus? (North Gate is a strip of dance halls and bars, that have had a few assaults aimed at foreigners and minorities in the past couple of years.) I think that instead of focusing on alternative revenue gaining, the police force should be doing their job: enforcing criminal laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws are written to increase revenue instead of protect the public wellbeing. A shift in law-making and a review of current laws would need to occur to make a difference.

This morning on my drive to class, I saw an unmarked car that had pulled over what from all indications was a speeder. That is a complete contradiction of the goal of speed limit enforcement. By driving an unmarked vehicle, the police officer blends into traffic, allowing individuals to drive as they would. When he/she pulls over one speeder, the government will get the ticket revenue, but for the majority of the other cars on the highway will continue to drive at higher speeds. It’s like a wolf in sheep’s wool. However, when an officer is driving a patrol vehicle, it stands out and traffic slows to the appropriate speed. This accomplishes the goal of speed limits (”safer” driving conditions), but does not boost the government revenue. There is a conflict of interests when the law enforcement adds to the government wallet. The officials will be encouraged to “enforce” more and the legislature will be encouraged to write more laws to be enforced, and judges would be more likely to find cases in more the way of the government.

I’m not saying we live in a country that is corrupt, but to prevent corruption takes a vigilant populous. We need to be the moderators of our government, not the other way around.

I finally broke the chains from Norton Internet Security. I replaced it with NOD32 for anti-virus and Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall as the firewall. So far I like them a lot. They don’t hog the system half as much as Norton did and I haven’t had problems with them freezing or anything. Norton was bloatware and if I happened to get infected, it would have immediately been turned off by the virus. I don’t have to pay as much either. It’s $10 dollars cheap than Norton. I had been having quite a few problems with Norton freezing up my system and slowing down the shutdown for several minutes. The firewall was also and enormous pain with it’s constant “What do you want to do? Block, Allow, Block Always, Allow Always.” The Allow Always never worked anyway! It drove me crazy; I couldn’t get anything done. That’s all over. I’m free! Free at last!

The other day, Mamaw, Carrie and I went whale watching in Puget Sound. There were so many little islands out there. It was so gorgeous. The sky was so clear, we could see the Cascades, Mt. Baker, and a few others. It was so wonderful! The Pacific Ocean is so beautiful. I took photos in the Puget Sound on our whale watching trip. The sunset is so gorgeous. I’ve got two really good pictures of the orcas spyhopping. It was spectacular. They are available at my Flickr account and my Facebook account.