So the idiots that are Florida residents passed on Tuesday an amendment that will save the average home owner about $240 on their property taxes and allow them to bring their save the homes cap with them when they move. Talk about unfair systems. If I buy a house right now, I will see not of these benefits. I could end up paying 10,000 in property taxes and my neighbor with the same house could only be paying 2,000 What a world of haves and have nots. This is the biggest load of crap I have ever seen. How out of touch is our government. More correctly, how selfish and out of touch are Florida residents that they think this is a fix. Why not vote the amendment down and make your government actually do something. Oh wait, then you wouldn’t save $240 dollars. My question is, why am I being punished for 1) not buying a home when I was 5, 2) why are people punishing the schools and other social programs for $240 and 3) why do old people get to vote. Seriously, the elderly is this state are so out of touch. They do not have kids so they argue they should not have to pay high property taxes, well you did not put anything into social security when were young compared to what i am putting in, so why am I footing the bill for a system that will no longer exist when I need it. Call me an ageist, but that is a common theme in Florida with the retires. So bravo Florida you really are ahead of the times. I will go rent my apartment now.

So i went with the wife to a George Strait concert last night. Yes I went and I understand that certain individuals will now make fun of me. That person should remember he went to a Brooks and Dunn concert and went with a bunch of buddies and not someone he loves. So there. Anyways, obviously i was bit taken back prior to going. I have not listened to country since I was 12 and working in the hay field with my sister. Oh and the occasional pit parties with red necks. My wife loves George Strait and found tickets so we were off. I must say I had a great time.

I am starting to believe in the power of good music. There is so much crap out there today that it should not be considered music. It was nice to sit back and listen to people that 1. can actually sing, 2. can actually write music, 3. do not sing about bitches, money, shooting people or how crunk they are, 4. did not dance more than sing and 5. degrade a whole generation of individuals without them caring.

Seriously can someone tell me the appeal of this music (Rap). And if you say it is something you can dance to you are an idiot. What has happened to this genre of music I will never know. It used to have purpose and meaning and now it is a complete farce. This is coming from someone that listened to this music from 1996-2001, so you cannot say I am a rock biased individual. Anyways there is my two cents. Oh and watch out for red necks on country concerts they are everywhere.

I think with all of the debates going on and the races starting to heat up, the candidates need to start discussing real issues. Issues like clean code, valid XHTML, usability, and coolness. Each candidate has rather up to date websites, in terms of look and standards. All are filled with ads, flashy galleries, sign-up forms every where, videos from YouTube. For me, my vote is going to come down to who has the cleanest XHTML, great use of standards and usability, because a candidate that cares about their site, cares about the people.

Worst Code
Taking a look underneath the hood of each site, you’ll be able to see just how well these sites are groomed. While all of them are up to date with certain 2.0 trends, there are a few that missed the boat. John McCain takes the Worst Code award. Very disorganized and bloated with inline JavaScript. Sorry but I just can’t look a candidate in the eye and believe what they are saying when they have coding practices like this. Coming in a close second is Mitt Romney. Full inline CSS style sheet just isn’t very 2008.

Most Like a Billboard
The winner of this category goes to Hill-Dawg. This site is piled high with ads or announcements that look like ads. I wonder if she has those tied into Google Adwords and just gets paid by herself for serving them, bold strategy. The rest don’t have a huge amount of advertising and actually cram a lot of content in the correct places.. so points to everyone else cept Hill-Dawg on this one.

Best Logo Design
Obama has by far the best logo of the bunch. It’s intuitive and fitting, really presents him the best. Others have various renditions of the flag or else there’s McCain who just has a standard Photoshop shape of a star as his logo. Minus 5 points for McCain again. I think a lot of thought went into creating Obama’s logo and it definitely shows in the end results. Obama 10 everyone else 2, except McCain who’s sitting at negative 10.

Best Color Scheme
This is a tough one to judge because it’s a little hard to waiver from the red, white, and blue.. but I think Obama shows the best use of a great palette. The vibrant blues and reds show off well with glowing accents and other effects throughout the site. A few others use a rather dull and boring palette, but McCain once again scores at the bottom with his use of heavy black tones. Trust me it’s nothing personal against McCain, I just don’t like him.

Overall Design Concepts
Huckabee’s is probably the most bloggish looking site, but with Chuck Norris on his back I don’t really want to go any further on that one. Guiliani I think, has the best integrated video player. Almost every other candidate went the easy route and just embedded some other video source. Best rotating feature pane goes to Obama, surprise surprise. It flows very well with the rest of the site and doesn’t look like every other rotating pane.

Conclusion
Adding up the points, looks like Obama wins with a score of 124 while the next closest, Ron Paul comes in at 34. This rating system is based solely on the time of day and how many cups of coffee I have had at that time. Other notables are Hill-Dawg with 8 points, and John McCain comes in at -17 points. So looks like based on these issues, which every true American should weigh, Obama is the clear favorite in 2008.

Seriously this may be the greatest device ever. Now I am not a big tech guy. I instead choose to be friends with a guy who is a huge tech guy and I just sit back and reep the external benefits from him purchasing the latest and greatest. I have no idea why this guy is friends with me. Seriously what do I bring to the table. I am now lost when my computer will not work. Anyways, I got the iPhone before he did and he was so disturbed by the idea of my having the new toy before him that he went out and bought one. Yes Brett I know that is the only reason you did. No denying it.

The only reason I got one is because I have the greatest boss in the world. Well since getting it, I cannot put the thing down. Everything you want, it can do. I never understood why someone would need it until I got one. I think if i find the right button it might wipe my butt for me. I will keep you updated. Anyways, if you are thinking of buying an iphone do it. Well worth the money.

So I go to pay my Best Buy bill this month.. and this is my first payment, just got the card. I noticed on their website that if your are 2 days early on your bill, it won’t process in time so it would be late. BUT! You can do the speed processing but that’s an extra 15 dollar service fee. How is this even legal? Charging someone for making making a payment on the day it’s due.. Not sure it costs the company anymore money to have the payment authorized that much faster.

Credit Cards are the biggest joke.. the only reason I have any are to buy things then just pay them off the next day.. in hopes to build up some credit. Not sure if that works exactly but oh well. I probably shouldn’t have a Best Buy card anyways.

So I will admit that I was a little excited to sit down and watch the debut of American Gladiators last night. I remember watching them all the time as a kid and thought the look and previews of the new show would be pretty sweet. Man was I wrong. I don’t even know where to begin with how horrible it was to watch. First there was probably 20 minutes total of actual challenges in a 2 hour segment. Then the Gladiators were probably the biggest tools I’ve seen. They act like a 3rd stringer that makes a tackle on special teams in the 4th quarter when their team is down by 40 points. Pretty pathetic.

Not saying I could hold my own against the Gladiators but the contestants made them look like fools more often then they made the contestants look like fools. One instance was during the joust, the Gladiator lost both times because his roided up body couldn’t balance and he stepped over on the other platform both times. The last time the contestant was cheering because he one and the douche bag just pushed the contestant into the water, then talked trash. I seriously think they just went to the local Lifestyles Fitness Gym and gathered up all the dudes they saw staring in the mirror calling themselves pussy’s. (Sorry for the vulgar language, but it’s based on a true story. Leeks has my back on that one.)

I used to be a big fan of the old school Gladiators but I doubt I’ll be wasting another hour of my life watching that.

I have been looking for posters to put up in the office for awhile. I was specifically interested in the ISO50 posters and was looking around for them for awhile. The other day I was dropping Tommy off at this detailing shop when right next door I notice these posters. They had boxes and boxes full of them, the exact same ones I was looking for. I immediately got out of the truck and took a look. Apparently, tucked away between a detailing shop and a auto repair shop is a place called Merchline.

Merchline specializes in online store fronts for bands, artists, etc.. They had all of the ISO50 prints right there. They also had hundreds and hundreds of t-shirts, stickers, hats, cds.. anything and everything. We talked for the guys running the place and they were awesome. There are only three of them that do all of the online orders, packaging, shipping, inventory, updating.. everything for the sites. They have a huge list of clients. I definitely recommend checking them out.

I just posted some photos to my Flickr Account.. They are picture taken on our little trip up to Orlando to check out the Ikea store. We walked out with a bunch of stuff for the house and saved a butt load too. I can’t believe how inexpensive that store was. It was kind of a pain to have to put everything together but it was really easy. I also got a couple new monitors this past weekend. I finally upgraded to a 23″ monitor to help out with all of the design work that has been flowing in. When I first got it, it had a dead pixel right in the middle of the screen. Luckily the people at the Apple store were awesome enough to swap it out for me. Gotta love great customer service.

Anyways hope you enjoy the pictures. More will come. Well don’t count on that though cause the time between this batch and the last one was around 6 months.. so don’t get your hopes up.