Thank God it's not Michael Bay...

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the trailer for Oliver Stone's World Trade Center starring Nicolas Cage and a handful of other actors you've seen but don't know their names. You'll have to have QuickTime to view it.

I haven't come to a decision on this one yet. It falls in to that same category as Flight 93 (which I haven't seen, but have heard good things). My only question is, is it time yet? I'm going to give this one the benefit of the doubt since they kept Michael Bay's grubby little hands off of it. The LAST thing we need is another Pearl Harbor movie. (Man that was just a filmmaking disgrace.) Oliver Stone is a weirdo, but out of all of the directors in Hollywood, I would have picked him or Steven Spielberg and the Saving Private Ryan crew for this.

When am I gonna get to see the sailboat?

Take a moment and check this out. Nothing is going to jump out and scare you, I promise.

Below is a picture of Delaware's Canal Bridge. Clearly it is black and white. Mouse over the picture until it inverts and stare at the dot for 30 seconds.

When you move your mouse off the image the black and white will return in full color.

Like I said, it doesn't take much... (Bonus points if you recognized the quote from the title of this post.)

Half-life

I typically expect any vehicle I own to last 100,000 miles. At the 100K mark, the vehicle doesn't owe me anything. Any repairs, I can gladly accept at that point. I've only owned 1 vehicle in my life that past the 100K mark.

In my younger days, I had a '91 Ford Explorer Sport that I traded in with 150,000 miles on it. I saw it running around town many months later.

Isn't it a weird feeling when you see one of your old vehicles driving around town? You think of all the fun times you had in that car. All the places you've traveled to.

Anyway, to my point. Today I reached the half-life of my Jeep. As you can see I rolled the landmark 50K point.

Well, let's see. A typical 5 year loan for a car. I've only owed the Jeep for 13 months. In a year or two at my current travel rate, I'll hit 100K miles before I'm even close to paying this thing off. Nothing like a little negative equity to look forward to.

I can see it now as the salesmen's jaw hits the floor once I tell him I have 500,000 miles on my trade in. But it has power windows?!?!

I've been drafted (the annual political post)

I don't know whether to be offended or confused. It would seem that The Delawarean blog has been drafted by the Delaware GOP. (then scroll down to blogs)

Hmm. I really don't know what to think about this. Having my blog listed on that site would tend to infer a few things which may not be entirely accurate.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I try and keep politics out of postings and general conversations. Why? Well, because I've only found that a select group of people can actually debate both sides without either offending/being offended, losing their temper, or maintaining the mutual respect for each others opinions once the conversation is over.

This is also why, in my job, I never bring up politics in the presence of clients. It's just not a safe topic.

But today, I will make an exception and set the record straight. And much like that girl you met at the bar last night at 3am, I hope you'll respect me in the morning.

So let's get started shall we? Let's get the "things I'm not proud of" out of the way first. If any of you have small children around, now would be a good time to cover their ears.

I am currently a registered Republican. I voted for George W. Bush. Twice.

Anyone still reading? Good, let's move on.

I am very patriotic. I have the utmost respect for military personnel, past or present. Whether or not I believe in a certain war is completely irrelevant. Those people are doing their jobs. I am able to write this post because they do their jobs so well. I never understood people who throw things, spit, etc at military personnel. They are doing what they're told to do. That's their job. Try spitting on a soldier in North Korea and see what happens. But I digress.

I grew up hearing mostly about conservative issues, and as an impressionable child those values sunk in. When I hit college I took more of an interest in politics and I wanted to learn more. I was determined to make sure I took in all aspects, not just conservative values. I left college considering myself to be an independent; able to discuss any topic and calming hearing everyone's perspective. This same ideology held true for religion. I just wanted the facts. I was here to learn.

Now back to the Bush thing.

In the 2000 election, I listened to both side's issues and as always there are things I liked and didn't like about both. (As an aside, I strongly believe that most of what is wrong with our system is that there are only 2 major political parties.) So at the time I felt I agreed slightly more with the Republicans. GWB got my vote.

As time progressed, we entered a war, then another. I had mixed feelings about the second. I was living on my own now for a while and managed to visit home about once a year. Apparently, during my time in college and after, my parents had morphed in to religious uber Christian conservatives. This baffled me. They were no longer the tolerant, normal, sane people I had left before college.

Each visit was like lecture on why everyone else in the world was wrong on religion, on politics, on everything. And all it did was start arguments and push me away. Their intolerance made me sick. Their unwillingness to communicate normally was repulsive. To put this in perspective, they are in fact, good friends with Jerry Falwell and attend his cult church religiously. Yeah, it's like that.

In 2004 we were presented with "the best of what's left" for presidential candidates. Seriously. You have to admit, it was pretty bad. I didn't like GWB, but I didn't like John Kerry even more. GWB got my vote again, with MUCH hesitation.

Since 2004, I have been ashamed to even tell people that. I have to sit back and just shake my head. Have the Republicans gone fucking crazy?

Gay marriage bans in the constitution? Are you kidding me? I don't care whether you agree with it or not, THIS ISSUE DOES NOT BELONG IN THE CONSTITUTION. That's not what this document was written for.

One indictment after another. National debt? Never ending war, which will soon spread to Iran. Don't shake your head, you know it's going to. It's just a matter of time. I mean, come on, "if you're not with us, then you are against us"? Only dictators deal in absolutes. Don't get me started on gas prices and oil company subsidies.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things I agree with them on. I happen to agree with the Patriot Act. I have nothing to hide and if they need to look at my information to stop some crazy terrorist from getting on a plane with me, freakin go for it. I believe we need to maintain a strong military, just not in wars all over the world. I think we need a strong foreign policy, but I think we need to walk softly and carry that big stick.

I don't like it when Republicans thank or blame God for everything that happens (due to my parents), but if individuals want to do that, it is their right. Just don't try and push it on me. Keep it to yourself. I believe in the separation of church and state, but at the same time we need to use common freakin sense. You don't have to go altering the damn currency to remove "God" or editing the pledge of allegiance. I hate when people (democrats mostly) claim things offend them and we must alter history, or landmarks because of it.

The confederate flag is a piece of history. It is also a symbol of a period of time when slavery existed. IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW IT'S DISPLAYED. If a redneck wearing a hood is waving it in his front yard, chances are he needs to be educated and locked up. If it's flying over the Capitol of Georgia, it's not because Georgia is planning on starting a civil war to bring back slavery.

Naturally my political views range much broader than what I've wrtten about here, but it would take all day to discuss everything. I'm a busy guy.

A little common sense is all I ask for in my government. And unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it lately from any political party. I'm frustrated with politics as a whole and I fear it's only going to get worse.

I now have so much distrust in this administration and lack of confidence of the democratic party to provide anyone better, I'm thinking we should just write some computer software to run things for a while. But even at that, you'd have to program in values for platforms and here we go again...

Ok. Not funny.

So I come across this "Death Calculator Clock" while I'm browsing one of my Jeep forums and everyone's posting their results.

http://evil.berzerker.net/death_predictions.php

I enter my information and this is what I get:

"Del: At age 40, you will die lonely and alone from morbid obesity. "

So. Not. Funny.

Send Del, he's single...

I'll give you three guesses where my next trip is going.

I'm told that I need to hurry up and qualify for solo parachute jumps because they don't even have an airport there. Then, like a Navy Seal, I have to find my objective, do my business, and navigate my way to the closest civilized point where I will be extracted via some guy on a donkey named Gus.

What lottery did I when to get this lucky opportunity you may ask? Well, that answer my friends, is in the title of this post.

I was at a recent conference here in DE (in fact Mike has a good post on it here) and I was talking to a client about workload and travel. The conversation continued by him saying something along the lines of "take advantage of it now, before you have a family and kids, because you can't once that happens." Then we went on to joke about how that'll never happen because I have to pencil in any dates like three months in advance.

Go out? Sure, I've got July 24th of '07 open. *Click* Hello?

I told him (jokingly) that it's not funny when it's true.

All kidding aside, I do think about it. Am I wasting my wonder years? I'm completely frightened that I'll look back years from now and shake my head in shame that I didn't just stop and take the time. One of my biggest fears is regret. This is being reinforced by the fact that I'm starring down the big 3-0. (352 days, 7 hours, and 49 minutes - not that I'm counting)

I shouldn't let it bother me so much. In reality, I'll probably get eaten by a moose with rabies trekking through Montana anyway.