Blog of Josh Hall

Wow, I’m down.  wasting away.  malnourished.  lethargic.  tired.  bored.  unmotivated.  lost.  a perfect time for a personal update entry…

work is slow.  money is slim.  someone is breaking into the estate and stealing copper and other crap.  rachel went back to cleveland.  no inspiration to play or write music.  no real aspirations to do anything right now.

nothing exciting happening this week or next.  Deirdre turns 19 saturday.  we’re all working at the estate this weekend to take out a whole bunch of stuff so people quit breaking in.

I’ve been working on a relaunch of legend of the green dragon.  we’ll see if i can get it back to where it once was with 1500 players from around the world.  that was fun.  I walked away from it in Feb 2006 once I got a new job and it just slowly died off due to internal drama.

I got a slot on the pa rock show, an internet radio show.  I’ll be playing friday, february 8th around 7:30pm.  I’ll send out a newsletter closer to the date.  I’d like to get a good CD mix before I play so i can get some regular rotation.  We’ll see.

No more school.  Might go for my MBA in the fall or next spring.  We’ll see what’s going on then.  I’d like to go to pitt i think.

back to wallowing in self pity and low self-esteem.  wallow, wallow, wallow.

I hate politics.  I always have and always will.  The bigger the politics, the worse they are, and in my opinion, the less effect they have but they get the most attention.  To quote the movie waking life, "Do you want the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right?"

I’m getting sick of all the Mitt romney, obama, ron paul, blah blah blah blog posts i’m seeing.  I DON’T CARE and YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING IN THE LONG RUN.  Politcal opinion blogs is the filthy blogosphere haze that covers Los Angeles.  Name one thing that Bush did that affects me.

•  Patriot act?  I’ve never given the FBI reason to tap my lines, that I’m aware of.  I don’t use pay phones.
•  RFID chip in passports? – Bush didn’t do it.  I got mine before they went into effect.
• "War" (any of them, real, imaginery, or media hyped)?  I’m a conspiracy theorist at heart, check out loose change, zeitgeist, michael moore movies, and/or alex jones and tell me you don’t think differently afterward.  They all have their extemist curves, but let the facts filter through, and you’ve got some eye opening stuff.
• Gas prices?  HA!  Exxon reported the highest profits in Q4 2006.  It’s all money motivated, and it makes me sick.  I walk to work anyway.

My point is with the check and balance system, the election of a single president pretty much means crap.  The majority of those elected have to be corrupt to have any effect.  I think that’s why we saw so many resignations after Bush was re-elected.  Throw in the electoral college, and YOUR vote is worthless.  You do not have final say.

The only time people have the power to do anything is in local government because it’s much easier to slip under the cracks, and no one takes it seriously enough.  When I moved school districts in highschool and still wanted to go to California, all it took was going to the school board and saying "can i stay?"  and they said "Josh is cool, let’s change the policy so Josh can come."  You can do whatever you want in local government because no one cares and you are the law.

The facts:

• People are not going to move because they don’t like the president.
• I’m pretty sure an "Enslave america" Act won’t pass the popular vote.  America is too large to enforce any life changing laws at the federal level.
• TV and national news outlets bring the political drama to the masses readily because it’s topical and people will argue about it all day.  Don’t let it waste your time any further.

and for the record, I’m only bitter because Bob Dole didn’t win in ’96.  There, I said it.

Remember when the residents of Pittsburgh’s Hill District burned their own homes and community to the ground in the 60s?  I wasn’t there to remember it, but the people who burned the Luke Ravenstahl’s proposed plan for redevelopment were, but it seems like forgot.  These people are going ego-tripping, power-hungry, and ostentacious.  They’re stuck on the terms of the plan having no defined promises, only concepts, and vague at that.  They’re right.  The problem is though they think they’re owed that.  The Hill District doesn’t need special treatment with it’s own development comittee.  No other district in the area has one.  The One Hill Group needs to stop riling up people in protest and start working with what the politicians are giving them.  Even Councilperson, Tonya Payne stated she thought the terms were good, but she would like One Hill ring in on their own.

I’m a land-owning resident of the Hill District.  I have been to these One Hill meetings and they all end up the same.  a few topics get barely covered and at least one person stands up, rants, raves, and hollers, turns to the rest of the group to rile support, and then all diplomacy and Robert’s rules of order and decorum is lost.

"this is what i figure: the higher your activity on facebook OR myspace, the more unhappy you are."

I’m a fan of large landscaping.  I just went to Phipps conservatory and there are these huge leaved palm trees that are about 7 feet high and they’re totally awesome.  I’m not sure on whether i want the the house to be tucked away secretly in the woods or just have a big clearing in the woods for the house.  I don’t think the palm trees would fit in well if they were right next to a big pine tree.  I also like ivy walls, or some sort of ivy crawling unevenly along the exterior walls.  One idea I have with the glass circular entryway is to make it a glass crescent foyer/green house, and I could put all kinds of different plants like the palm trees in there.  It will be more expensive since there will be a lot more glass and such, but it might work out better aesthetically and maybe even energy efficient.  I’ll have to wait until it’s time to design it to decide the best route I guess.

I also want the roof to be completely green, either with just turf or gardens.  One of my complaints with my life right now is that grocery shopping is very inconvenient for me so I only go once a month.  The fresh fruit and vegies I get have to be eaten in that first week or so, and it’s hard to do that as a single man.  I would love to have a huge garden that I could just go up and pick a pepper or something for eggs in the morning.  Having the garden on the roof would keep some insects and small animals from eating from the garden as well as earning green building credits.

Took me a while to convert reading a text file to reading from the database, but the highscores for all the games are now fixed!  Tetris, Packman, Snake, and Space Invaders are all keeping high scores now!