Rawr

I did absolutely nothing this weekend.

Well, not quite. I went to a gun show on Saturday and that was fun. I've decided that I like gun shows, and if I were rich, I would go all the time. Sunday I did homework for about half an hour at the most and then...yeah that was it. Plus it was a NICE weekend and it was my Dad's birthday weekend!

Today. *sigh* Back to school. I went to Curves, which has changed. They added new contests, etc. Pretty cool, but I didn't have time to really check everything out. I was in a rush to get to school. For my first class which lasted 30 minutes and could very well have been skipped because we literally did nothing. >.< So then I sat around, doing various other homework-y things and some wasting time things until my afternoon class at 3.

And here I am!

Things I'm looking forward to: Richmond Tax Day Tea Party protest on April 15 and Empty Holster Protest Week April 20-24. Check 'em out, get involved!

I like nice people

I don't really have anything of importance to say.

Mostly I was just thinking how much I like nice people, the ones who don't get offended/stop talking to you just because you don't think the same way they do. I like it when I can feel free to talk to someone who totally disagrees with me and not have them hate me for it. I know too few people like that, so it's always nice when I meet a new person like that.

So, if you are a nice person, thank you for being nice.

And if you are NOT a nice person, that is very sad.

That's all.

^_^

More on diversity...

Because of a comment from Etenesh, I decided to write more and try to clarify my diversity rant a bit. I hope that neither Etenesh nor anyone else takes offense from what I write. I am merely expressing my opinion, which is the purpose of my blog, and I totally understand and respect that many do not agree with me. That's totally fine. We don't have to agree with each other on everything, as long as we can disagree and discuss with maturity and civility.

Now that I'm done with THAT rant...

I'm going to use a really simply example of race. I don't think about what race someone is unless it's pointed out to me. I don't think about it in my personal life, my professional life, or my school life - including when I am writing news stories/interviewing people. I have grown up believing that the race of a person is not an issue. People are people to me. Period.

My teachers like to belabor the point that when we interview and write, we need to be sure we include people of different races (etc.) to have diversity in our stories. So basically, they are telling us TO take notice of someone's race and that race IS an issue.

I'm sorry?

So, if I understand this correctly, when I'm writing, I am supposed to take into account a person's race. To me, interviewing or not interviewing someone based on their race is MORE racist than just not even thinking about it. If I specifically look for someone black to interview because of the fact that they are black, that, to me, is blatant racism. All my life I've been told not to treat people differently because of their race, but now all of a sudden that's different. I have to seek out black people to interview because they are a different color than I am.

This goes against everything I believe and everything I've been taught.

In my opinion, giving ANYONE special treatment because of their race equals racism - whether that person is black, white, brown, yellow...doesn't matter. And that is why I don't like my teachers harping on diversity all the time. I am not opposed to diversity - in fact, I think diversity is a great thing. But I get really sick my teachers assuming that everyone in the class is racist/sexist/anti-whatever.

I refuse to give anyone special treatment because of their color/gender/whatever. Just like I don't want special treatment because of MY color/gender/whatever.

(This also goes along with affirmative action. But that's a later rant for a later time.)

If I haven't explained myself clearly, please let me know. I don't want to offend anyone and I definitely want to make sure I'm not misunderstood.

Diversity...stop pressing the issue

I really think my school needs to let up on the diversity thing a bit. I HEAR IT EVERYWHERE and it makes me want to pull my hair out.

In my broadcast journalism class, my teacher just handed out this questionnaire thing for us to answer - just for ourselves - with regard to diversity in the media. It's true/false. Here are some of the questions....

Whites are generally portrayed in a more positive light than are minorities, i.e., as officials or experts.

(There is no opposite question like "Non-whites are generally portrayed positively...")

I think religious issues are generally treated in a balanced way on the news.

If I were Muslim, I would feel that my beliefs and viewpoints are treated in a balanced way on the news.


(There is no opposite question like "If I were Christian/Jewish/Buddhist/Mormon/etc....")

I think I can generally tell the race and often the sexual orientation of a person when talking to him or her on the phone.

I believe that judging a person's race or sexual orientation based on the sound of his or her voice always leads to bias.

......and so on......If you want the rest of the questions posted, I can.

Anyone who knows me, knows that this would DRIVE ME NUTS. It really annoys me. Makes me angry. I really think my ears are turning red because I'm so irritated.

GIVE IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you stop making it a big deal, it won't be a big deal anymore.

GAH.

I don't even know what to say to express my annoyance.

Oh yes. I remember now.

Told you I would remember as soon as I hit publish.

CLICK ON MY ADS! I NEED MONEY.

Just a hint. ^_^

By the way...

I also wanted to say that I cannot for the life of me find a Blogger template that I like that looks good with my setup and works the way I want it to! I mean, a template that was NOT designed by Blogger. It makes me very sad. Maybe I am just too picky? Anyway, if you find any, let me know. It has to be one of the new Blogger format kind, though, not the old one!

AND...there was something else. What was it?

*thinking*

Alas, I can't remember. I probably will as soon as I hit "publish post".

I'm such a slacker

I haven't done anything with Blogger in so long.

FAIL.

I was reading (definitely just typed readying) my friends' blogs and I realized that even Chris has updated since I last wrote. That was an indicator that I really needed to hurry up and add to my blog.

Not that there's much to say.

Still school. Still work. Still no money.

I'm on spring break this week, which is lovely, except that it means the second half of the semester is coming up on Monday. Workload doubles, big projects are due, studying for finals, and dealing with big, scary cameras in my TV production class.

Which reminds me, I need to buy a VHS tape. DON'T FORGET.

This week I worked in the garden a bit, worked at work a bit, applied for a few different jobs, got my van inspected...

Oh there's a story. If you remember, I wrecked my parents' van in January - ran into a tree because of slipper roads. It wasn't TOO bad, as in, it could still be driven. My dad got pieces and mostly fixed it, but he couldn't get the headlight adjusted back the right way. So I got it inspected on Monday and it was a definitely fail because of the headlight. I had to go to a bodyshop to get it fixed, and I was afraid it was going to cost like $1000 or more. BUT!!!!!! Mom and I managed to find a bodyshop that fixed it for us; they said it was a really simple fix and they weren't going to even charge us anything! We gave them some money anyway. And then got the van reinspected and it passed.

w00t w00t!

So the plan is for me to buy the van from mom and dad, and I'll be selling my old one. It's sad because I really did like my old van, but I can't afford a new transmission for it and it's been having all sorts of problems that in a way I'll be glad to be rid of it.

So yes.

Also, I have Twitter which I like very much so look me up - notashamed87.

Not that anyone actually reads this blog.

*sigh*

So, yay!

I got a new layout for my blog.

Yay!

I just have to figure out how to make the title of my blog smaller to fit right. Maybe I'll figure it out at some point. Or maybe not. Or maybe I'll get a new layout. Because I like this one, but there were some other pretty ones, too. Since I needed an XML layout, BlogSkins wasn't working for me. I'd used that site before and love some of the layouts (thanks for the suggestion Etenesh!). But it took me like half an hour to figure out why it wasn't working. >.<

Anywho, I went to Blogger-Templates and found this layout and some other really nice ones.

Right now I'm in class - Broadcast Journalism. We are listening to everyone present their radio projects. I think we all did really well. A lot of people had nicer ones than mine, but I still feel happy with the one I did. Maybe I can figure out a way to upload it on here so you can hear it. ^_^

I applied for a maintenance office position at Kings Dominion and even went in for an interview on Wednesday, but I haven't heard from them. I was going to call them today, but I didn't have the number, so I'll probably call tomorrow.

At some point I need to make an appointment at the eye doctor. I constantly have a headache lately, and I really think it's my eyes. The last doctor I went to gave me a lower prescription than the one I went to before and it hasn't seemed right since. Grr.

So yeah. Umm....

That's all for now?

I'm thinking about doing a video blog - a vlog - on YouTube. My sisters and I already do one (sort of) called BLU!, but I'm thinking about starting one of my own.

We'll see.

My blog looks yucky...

My friend Tasya's blog looks awesome, so I was kind of trying to copy her. It isn't working out so well so far. But maybe if I had more time to work on it. And maybe if I had hi-speed internet at home.

Alas, you'll have to deal with the way my blog looks as-is for now.

This week has been...actually I'm not sure. I can't decide if it's been long or short or good or what. It's just been. School, homework, all the usual stuff. I went to Kings Dominion on Tuesday for an interview for maintenance office, but the maintenance lady wasn't there so someone else interviewed me and I'm supposedly going to hear back from them. Happy happy joy joy.

Um yeah.

School is over for the week!

I have work tomorrow and Saturday and homework to do, as usual.

Bye for now!

One follower!

I have one follower on my blog now! I am super excited. ^_^

I'm having fun with InDesign tonight. It's sweet. It's a program for designing publications. You can take stuff you've done in Photoshop and put it in InDesign and then format the whole page so it looks awesome. Here's what I did tonight...



Yay!

I went and visited WRVA today. That's the local conservative news talk radio show. I got to meet Doc Thompson. It was awesome. Maybe I will intern there someday and maybe I will work there someday, who knows. It was cool talking to him, though, he is super nice.

Now I am in class. Doing nothing at the moment because I've already finished what I was supposed to be doing. I'm hungry. I have two oatmeal cookies in the truck calling my name. I hear them shouting to me, even from this far away.

I'm coming, soon!

In case you hadn't heard - we are all socialist now

Read the article here if you can stomach it.

So has the media finally realized the truth? We are turning socialist and becoming more and more like Europe and "more French"?

It appears so.

But they try to gloss it over. The word socialist is still referred to as the "S-word" in the article and made to sound like a conservative scare tactic. Conservatives are almost mocked, or are mocked, throughout the whole article. They (Newsweek) try to blame Bush and Republicans for it all.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Republicans haven't had a hand, because they sure have. Republicans now are so liberal that they're not much different than Democrats. So yes, they have had a lot to do with it.

What I can't stand is the way the article continuously links "conservative" with "Republican." The media cannot understand - they cannot seem to grasp - that Republicans are not automatically conservative. True conservatives would never vote for more government.

So if we ARE all socialist now and becoming more and more like Europe and France, is that REALLY a good thing? Newsweek seems to think so. They "objectively" point out some of the negative sides of having bigger government, but they don't even seem to realize how serious those negative sides really are.

We should take a good, long look at the countries in Europe and see if that's really what we want to be. Remember, America started because of opposition to the way things were run. Do we really want to be like everyone else now?

Just joined HubPages and Google AdSense

I thought "why not?" and joined Hubpages. Along with that I joined AdSense and Amazon Associates. I doubt I'll make anything by doing it, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes. I guess I'm going to be focusing on politics in my Hubs, at least for now. As always, I feel like a fish out of water trying something new like that. I feel so dumb because I don't know what I'm doing. But at the very least it'll prompt me to write more. And I'm thinking about applying to join Suite 101, too.

We shall see.

Suddenly this past week I felt overwhelmed with homework. Seems like I have a TON all of a sudden. I guess it's just because I have four classes, four days of classes, and they are all relating to reporting so that makes it a lot of work anyway. In one class, everyone was put in teams for our assignments and stuff and I so intelligently volunteered myself to be team leader. I am so afraid I will wind up doing all the work. But there is one girl in my team who is in some other of my classes, and she's really nice. I guess it'll work out.

Tuesday we had snow and ice. I tried to go to school anyway because it didn't seem like it would be that bad, and I figured the main roads would be okay. They may have been, but I didn't make it to the main roads. I slid right off the road and ran into a tree. In my parents' van. So now I have that to think about on top of everything else.

I REALLY NEED ANOTHER JOB!

I know the Lord will provide and everything will work out. At least, I know it in my head and I'm really good at saying the words. Applying that to my life is the hard part. But He has promised never to let me down - He never has and He never will.

(And if you feel like helping me out, click the Google ad on the right-hand bar under my info. Thanks!)

First post on a Mac

This is my first post from a Mac, in case you couldn't tell from the title.

Macs are pretty cool, I guess.

My class is Graphics for Journalism. It's lovely that she can take over all our computers at any given time, totally interrupting whatever I was doing. Don't like that very much, but whatever. Hey, it's a class, not free time, silly.

Not at all happy with AT&T right now. They randomly started charging us for internet used when we receive/send picture, video, or other multimedia messages, or do Instant Messaging (through the phone, not the internet). They aren't supposed to do this - all messaging is supposed to be included in our unlimited messaging plan. I've been spending about two months now trying to get it sorted out.

No one knows anything.

I've talked to countless people in customer service and hear something different from everyone.

(I think she's going to ta

ke my screen again, but I'll keep typing until then)

But yesterday I FINALLY talked to someone in the text messaging department, I guess, and she said that everything is definitely supposed to be included and she doesn't know why we got charged. Tomorrow I am going BACK to the AT&T store AGAIN and hopefully get this straightened out.

I browsed on the AT&T forums, too, and there are lots of other people having the same problem.

They'd better get it straightened out or they're going to have a lot of angry customers. Well, they do already. And some people, including me, are talking about switching to Verizon.

I'm hungry.

Don't feel like writing...

I don't feel like writing...

But I need to do something constructive.

I am sitting here in the student commons for...about 4 more hours before my next class.

I already emailed a person about interviewing them for my story that's due Wednesday (AHH!!!).

I could work on the team directory for my one class. But even that would only take about 2 seconds.

Why did I volunteer myself to be team leader???? ....Because no one else was.

I think I will go back out in the cold and go get my lunch out of the van. Then eat it.

Then I think I will work on BLU! which is not very useful, but at least it's doing something.

My head hurts.

You may have noticed my lack of profile picture...

I tried to upload THIS picture from the internet to be my new profile picture. For whatever reason, when I click "Save Changes" it erases the URL I post and gives me no new picture. That is mildly annoying, but whatever.

[the above only applies to my Blogger blog]

This semester is going to be long, I think, but it'll be okay. I have to go to VCU four days a week, and my classes are really spread out. I have a lot of free time between classes, but that just means I have lots of time to do homework. As soon as I get some.

I also get to drive home at rush hour two days a week, something I am (not) excited about. Last night I was stuck behind a woman who was testing the sensitivity of her brake and gas pedals and another woman whose car didn't HAVE a gas pedal. The joys of rush hour.

There's a girl sitting a little ways from me who has MARIO on her PHONE! I WANT IT.

Time flies...

My last post was from the last day of school...

This post is from the first day of school...

Ha!

So this semester's schedule is CRAZY and I don't like it. But it's only one semester and hopefully it'll all turn out okay. I'm in the middle of a ten minute class break right now - or actually, toward the end of the break.

I'll post more later....

Last day of regular school classes

Next week is finals. And then Christmas break.

Be sure to check out BLU! Episode 2.

This week is going by way too fast. Yesterday was nice. I finally got the website I've been working on for Robo's Detail Supplies up on the internet and working. It took a few days for me to get it to work, but I did it!

I also took a nap, which was kind of crazy. I almost never take naps. And I haven't taken one in a LONG time. Then my sisters and I worked on two more episodes of BLU!

Oh yeah, and I had to go pay for my van. Even though I decided not to get my transmission fixed, I had to pay for the work he had already done to it. He replaced the calipers and two tires, so I had to pay for that. *dies* No fun. I'm hoping I can sell my van now. I should put it on Craig's List - I have pictures of it somewhere. I get to drive it home this afternoon. Oh boy.

I created a new blog to post my resume and writing samples. I have so many blogs I've created or am part of now, some are for school.

A homeless guy just wandered through the student commons

That was kinda weird.

I realize I have been seriously neglecting my blog. My apologies.

What's been up in my life lately...? Let me think...

For starters, I am working at Ukrops in Mechanicsville now. Not sure whether I told you that already or not. I am a cashier and I really enjoy the work. But they are not giving me enough hours - usually 15 or less. I was told when I was hired that I would have 20-25. I talked to the supervisor/manager guy about it and he wasn't very promising. I think I have to find a second job, or just another completely different job. Actually, I KNOW I do, unless they miraculously start giving me enough hours.

The semester is almost over. Only one more day of classes, and then two days of finals and I will be done! Finished up and turned in my last assignments today. I still have to bring in my resume on Thursday, but since that's already all made, there's practically no work involved in getting that done. I'm not sure what's going to happen next semester. As it stands right now, I only have 10 credits and a screwy schedule. I've talked to an advisor about getting a few things straightened out, but I won't go into detail about that right now.

(A cute guy just sat down in the chair about six feet away from me. Why do the cute guys always appear when I'm feeling sick, and looking it, too? Blah.)

Anyway.

And my van is broken, so yay. Rick replaced the calipers (whatever those are, has something to do with the brakes) and two tires. THEN he found out I need a new transmission, which would cost me between $1,500 and $2,000. I don't have the money. So I'm almost positive I'm just going to forget about my stupid van. Good riddance. The thing has been a pain since I got it. I'm hoping I can sell it at least to recup the money I spent on the stinking calipers and tires. Then I'm just going to look for a new one. Hopefully a Honda, kinda like my first car. But I'll likely be without a car for a while and will have to work something out with my parents to borrow their van. That means that I will probably have to get up (REALLY) early to take my dad to work on days that I will need it. But it's all good, at least I have access to a car!

My Dad's car and the family Sidekick are also AWOL.

MONEY is stressing me out. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I were getting a good amount of hours at Ukrops and could depend on getting a fairly okay paycheck every week. But I really can't, so I'm kinda in ready-to-pull-my-hair-out mode. And I DO NOT want to get a loan. Period.

Oops, Sierra is out of class - time to go!

Until next time...

Good point...

I was listening to Doc Thompson earlier and he had a really good point.

He said that a lot of conservatives would have to be pulled back from the ledge today, after Obama won the election. They would have to be convinced that it's not as bad as it seems. The reason conservatives are so upset is because we can see the big picture, or at least some of it. We can get a glimpse of what this country is going to be like four years or eight years down the road with Obama as president.

But our lives didn't change at all TODAY, did they? No, we went on with our lives just like we normally do, doing the usual things.

And the things that are going to happen are not going to happen all at once. They will come along one at a time, and we conservatives will be able to take them one at a time. It's like walking - you just take one step at a time. It won't be fun, no, but at least we will be able to handle it.

It also reminded me of what the Bible says about God not giving us more than we can handle. It goes along those lines, at least for me. I know not all conservatives are Christians, but I am, and the point that Doc Thompson made today just seemed to go right along with that idea.

And, of course, I can always rest assured that God is in control, regardless of who is president. Or dictator.

.....

That was a joke.

For now.

Black Wednesday

So that's it then. It's all over. Two years of drama and scandal and all that dirt dug up on Obama, and in the end none of it mattered. People STILL voted for him.

*sigh*

I'm very close to being ashamed to be an American today. How did we become what we have become? How could we go, in a short two hundred years, from the land of the brave and the free to, basically, the United Socialist States of America?

Okay so we're not quite there yet, I guess, but we will be soon.

Those were also rhetorical questions. I KNOW how we got here. Sin. People are consumed by it, and it blinds them. People are selfish, greedy, and lazy. People don't want to do for themselves anymore (where has our pride gone??), they would rather lot the government, and ultimately other people, do the work for them.

Well congratulations, guys, you got what you asked for. Now let's see how it plays out. It will be interesting to see if everyone is still in love with Obama when they see just how socialist he is.

They will be, I already know it. Socialism, in the end, will matter to people just as much as truth, values, and integrity.

Which means it won't matter at all.