BrianShelledy.com

Well, what a political race it’s been so far… I thought it’s about time that I weigh in on what I think about what’s going on here.  This is probably the least excited I’ve ever been about an election, not that I’ve been able to participate in that many.  However, looking at this from a conservative point of view, I don’t really see a big win in either candidate.  However, I sill have to vote for McCain I think, because I am frankly scared of what could happen if Obama gets elected. 

As it stands, there are a number of problems with him as a Candidate.  First off, he has no experience.  He has not produced any significant legislation.  As we’ve seen him come up through the ranks of the Democratic party, I think that it’s easy to see how everyone was so easily swayed.  He definitely has a charisma that we haven’t really had much of for a while.  I’ll admit, though Bush does have a few highlights, his speeches are more ridiculed then any president in my lifetime.  However, if you see Obama speaking without a prepared speech and teleprompter, then you might be surprised to find his speaking skills are not what they’ve been said to be.  Read more »

One of the big issues currently on the Democratic Campaign trail is weather or not the votes in the Florida and Michigan state primaries should be counted towards the presidential nomination.  Right now there is a lot of press going back and forth on the issue.  Some people don’t want them to count because the votes were not taken seriously, and in Michigan’s case, Senator Obama was not even on the ballot.  The other side of the ticket is that we shouldn’t disenfranchise Florida and Michigan voters by not counting them. 

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I haven’t been able to update in a while, and I just wanted to let everyone know I am still alive.  I have been busy with school, the semester is winding down and that means everything is due.  This weekend was kindof a relax weekend for me because some of my major projects were due last week.  This week shouldn’t be nearly as bad, and I only have one more project to really worry about before finals in three weeks. 

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I have really been wanting to finish another part of Impulse that I’ve been working on and write a blog article about the whole “disenfranchising” of Florida and Michigan, but I just haven’t had time to do so.  But, I just want to let you know that there is still plenty to think about in my head, so while I’ve been down, I am not out. 

In all honesty, I probably could have written some of the stuff I wanted to if it weren’t for Facebook apps taking all my clicks.  Never fear, when I can do more then mindless clicking in my free time I’ll be back.

I recently upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 and everything is looking good.  Sorry if you tried to access within the last 24 hours and things didn’t work out like you thought.  I have finished the upgrade process now, though, so it should be good to go. 

In other news, school is taking up alot of my time lately, so that’s why you haven’t seen me update in a while.  I will update more soon though, I promise!  Also, IPower claims that they have done some work on the MySQL servers that my website runs off of, so hopefully we’ll see some performance gains soon.  Thanks for your patience as the performance issues get resolved.

It seems like some of the SQL issues I’ve been having are being resolved, though it still is a bit tempramental.  I hope that it continues to do well, so that it is easier for me to update more.  I have updated Impulse, though, with a post called Words to Live By.  Hopefully you can enjoy it. 

Sorry for all of you who are trying to access my website, and thanks for being dilligent enough to make it this far.  I am experiencing some SQL issues currently.  Please have patience, I am working with my web host to get them resolved.  I have turned on caching to help improve performance, but it can only go so far.  So, please have patience as I work with iPower to get this resolved.

I just finished doing a radio inteview on the Steve Douglas show, an AM radio show that broadcasts in 38 states and 3 countries!  If you’re a visitor from Steve’s page, welcome.  If you’re interested in hearing me on the radio, check out the podcast of the show from his webpage, The Douglas Diaries.  I was really nervous having never been on the radio before, and generally I’m a better writer then talker (my favorite thing about writing is the BACKSPACE key).  However, I think it went really well, and hopefully I have the opportunity to do things like this more.  Also a word of encouragement to any aspiring bloggers out there, I urge you to keep exercising your freedom of speech! We might not all agree on everything, but that’s what makes America great - we also have the freedom to disagree. 

More to come later, hopefully everyone has lots of interesting comments to share.  For now, I’m going to bed.  I’ve been moving house this weekend, and I’m bushed.  Have a great start to a new week, it’s spring break for me.  Now I get to organize all this crap I moved! Some spring break…

OK, so recently, someone contacted me about an article I wrote a couple years ago called Gas Prices in America, which outlined some information about why gas prices are so high.  I follow up today with this article to bring some of the thoughts I had up to date. 

Many people in America, especially on the political left, will lash out at corporations when gas prices are high.  People will use terms like price gouging and make corporations out to be evil profit mongers.  In reality, there are 4 major factors that effect the price of gas.  Let’s take a look at what major influences there are.

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I’ve been on a bit of a block this week, but there is more comming.  Some of the things I’m looking at include a few page ideas for the Impulse section, as well as a new, updated post on an old article.

For a quick update on what’s going on:  I voted yesterday, casting for Ron Paul in the Republican Primary.  On the democrats’ side, Hillary won both Texas and Ohio, which has me worried.  I know I haven’t really talked about my political opinion on the site much, but some of the things that Hillary has planned for the future scare me, as they should scare you if you are a capitalist. 

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Tonight I was browsing the internet and came across a blog article that was promoting the ban of bottled water on a particular campus, and felt compelled to respond.  Here’s the text of my comment, in case he decides to delete it from his blog.  We’ll see what he does.  I encourage you to read the article before my response, as it will make more sense that way.  

Edit: He allowed my comment to be heard, and we’ve started a dialog in the comments.  Feel free to chime in for either side, you won’t be censored unless you are obviously an idiot or over the top.

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