Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in TJ's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
1:50 pm	Its one thing to see a discussion taking place in an echo-chamber, but i'm really beginning to lose faith that anyone is learning/being taught any persuasive discourse skills... :( (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
2:52 pm	Cartalk Wednesday For anyone keeping track, to date I've had a few modifications to my car. Exhaust Up-pipe Exhaust down-pipe high flow cat high flow muffler Accessport ECU re-flashed Transmission cooler upgrade-sized intercooler and thats about it st this point. Nothing screaming just yet, and I'm approaching 180,000 miles. But since the Intercooler was installed before Kawaii-kon, the car has some kind of boost leak and its whining like a beaten piggy whenever the turbo-boost hits. :( (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
2:38 pm	Cartalk Wednesday The Detroit auto show is going on right now, Chevy is enjoying raves of the new Sonic small car being competitive in the market. The Volt gets a clean bill of health from the federal safety inspections, and GM managed to take back #1 seller of cars in the world title from Toyota last year. Well, I crossed the threshold of 170,000 miles a few weeks ago. Still going strong, but it needs work. The seal on the power steering pump is leaking pretty bad, and they dont make re-build kits for the pump, you just have to replace the whole thing. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 9th, 2012
9:04 pm	Monday Update Been a while since I had access enough to even put together one of these... Kawaii-kon has moved up to March, so after just finishing Anime Crossroads which did well, there was right at 3 months left to prep for Hawaii. Brother In Law is an Airtran pilot who just found out what the Southwest merger is going to do, since he's a 717 pilot... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
10:23 pm	Well, Bachman's out. Can't say I'm surprised. She got dragged off message after dropping off the radar from her announcement. Its a strange show going on... (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
1:51 am	chillin at work, i guess. Getting ready to wrap up. Just noticing how much the world has changed in just 10 years as far as socially. I will be driving home shortly. In my younger days, my sister and I would be a 2 house Christmas kids with the divorced family. We'd have Christmas eve with dad, and drive home around 2:00am in the morning for Christmas, exhausted. Strangely, I liked the -long- drive home just because it was truly fascinating to see the world still, empty, devoid of other cars. I've been doing this weird late shift at work for the last 4 years now, and every time I've flipped Christmas, the roads are no longer empty. Just a strange commentary on the flow of time. Merry Christmas~ (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
10:30 pm	whelp, that didn't take long... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/world/middleeast/iraqi-leader-threatens-to-abandon-power-sharing.html Its not like the military wasn't warning us this would happen, but we basically left Iraq this year because we only made a passing attempt to stay and keep a presence, and when the current Iraqi government rebuffed us, we made no effort to further the discussion. The Kurds were right to be wary of this government, and its Shiite extremism support. But despite the distrust of the Sunnis that enjoyed power when Saddam's Baath party was around, they've been somewhat accepting of the Sunnis who now find themselves under the gun. (Comment on this)
5:15 pm	so it appears that one of two things has happened: 1: my job has changed the filters standards for blocked sites or 2: didn't renew its Websense liscence. So I can see Livejournal once again. Merry Christmas to me~ (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
4:18 pm	so i'm watching the new thundercats... .... and i like it... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 11th, 2011
4:57 am	well, i suppose its a fact of the world that its an inevitability these days, but last night, someone used my credit card at the Kroger out in Duluth, (which strangely, i have been to probably 6 months ago) and charged 41.50 8 times in 15 minutes. I learned about it when the CC company shut my account down and I couldn't pay the phone bill. :/ Edit:i should say the cc number was used, i still have the card... Current Mood: peeved (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 4th, 2011
9:07 pm	this whole 'only able to post on a mobile phone' thing with lj is getting bothersome. At work, its filtered, but at home, i have some undiagnosed network issue i need help with.... (Comment on this)
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
2:09 pm	thats some news to get after finish up kawaii-kon. holy cow... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
4:59 pm	transitions back from MTAC where the weather was far favourable to last year... edit: as you can see, i'm still having issues with LJ. anyways. getting ready for Hawaii trip. Most loose ends are tightening, and when I get a breath, I'll chat more about MTAC, and the fun times I had with pwrmacjedi, and the drive up with uzukisaru when I can catch my breath. For now, i have something or a ritual when I go outs of the south. The last Chic Fil A meal~ (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
5:23 pm	late Tuesday Views (anyone else having trouble with posting to lj lately?) So Donald Trump is running his mouth about Obama's birth certificate. I think Trump will be important to the upcoming primaries because he'll steer the economic discussion in the direction it needs to go. Trump feels very strongly about the inequity of labor being distributed to other nations and is rightly critical of all the policies, both foreign and domestic, that cause this to be true. But beyond that, he's more of a spectacle at this point than a serious political potential. Anyways, on the birth certificate thing. ( Here's the deal: ) --- So lets discuss something more relevant. Obama and others want to raise the debt ceiling. What does that mean, anyways? Well, as I've ranted about before, the federal government spends so much more money than it takes in with taxes that it sells treasury bonds. Basically, a bond is like buying $5000 slip from the US Treasury, and in 10 years you can bring it back and get $5750 for your investment. So the government sells bonds to get cash to spend on government. But when that 10 years is up, and they spent the money, where do they get the money to pay it back to the bond holder, plus interest? They literally print more US money to pay it back. This makes the US dollar less valuable when they do that, and adds to the national debt. And so the 'debt ceiling' is a legal limit that congress has built into the federal government that its only allowed to go into national debt so far and has to stop no matter what. The level was set at $14,300,000,000,000. $14.3 trillion. When this level of debt is reached, no other money is legally allowed to be spent by the federal government. So what happens to those people we issued bonds to 10 years ago that have matured and come due? Good question. Since we're in debt, we can't pay it back with cash, we'd have to print more money to pay it as agreed. But we won't be able to because of the debt ceiling. And when do we reach this level? Sometime in May. So, despite all this spending, we're continuing to sell NEW US Treasury bonds! Even as we speed toward the ceiling. So what happens when we hit it? 1 of 2 immediate things has to happen: 1: The federal government will have to THAT DAY make extremely drastic cuts across the board until it reaches a budget level that allows them to continue paying back these bonds. (this is extremely unlikely to happen under the Obama administration). 2: The US Government fails to pay its bond. Basically the government defaults on its loan, the equivalence of the first stage of bankruptcy. This might not be such a big deal, right? Who buys these bonds anyways? We sell these bonds to other countries. They buy our bonds because our dollar and our economy is more stable than their own and offer secure rates of return. Well, how many of these did we sell? As of December, we have AT LEAST $3.7 trillion in bonds out there now, China alone has $1.1 trillion. Many other countries have more than $50 billion each. If we default on that kind of money even once, even for a little bit to catch our breath, the world financial market WILL take a devastating blow. Many countries tie their social welfare spending to the steady returns of investment coming from US bonds, many other free markets trade and manage debt using US bonds as a checkpoint to lever their own economy into action. So, much that it pains me to admit, because it is neigh impossible that President Obama and the Democrat run Senate will make the budget balancing cuts necessary to stay under the debt ceiling, the worldwide consequence is simply too great to risk by not raising it. But, we should all understand what got us here in the first place. Let me put this in context for you. There are still people in our country, people who -vote-, and they don't agree that we spend to much money. There are people who still believe our problems are just that the rich people aren't paying enough taxes. There are people who still don't understand how much MORE a problem spending is than taxes being collected is. So lets use an easy example. Lots of people like the buzzwords that go with cutting the defense budget. "More schools, less bombs." The Federal Defense budget is about 680 billion in total every year. Thats everything from soldier pay to bombs. We spend so much money that even if there were NO military at all, we'd still be in debt every year. By alot. THATS how much money the government is spending. That can't be covered by increasing anyone's taxes, it is a reflection of spending too much money by orders-of-magnitude more than it is about taxes. We can't blame the public that thinks this when politicians have been feeding them shit for decades. We have had an entire generation of politicians whom have grown up lived and now died in an era where governing from debt is an acceptable policy; where existing programs get built-in increases without review, where currently running programs NEVER just end or are cut-off and stopped, and where adding new programs as rapidly as possible is seen as a proof of job performance. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 17th, 2011
1:04 am	limits getting older in some ways means recognising your limits that you can see. i had attempted over the years to pick up guitar at least 3 times, only to be immensly discouraged by my lack of left hand articulation to put together chords on the neck. its tough for me especially because i trained martial arts when young instead of piano. the realisation that i won't be that guitar rocker dream star of adolesence ...so i bought a bass. =o Posted via m.livejournal.com. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 16th, 2011
8:45 pm	gettin on... whelp. the firewall at work is registered with Websense, truncating my access to livejournal. tho now i'm using an old kyocera Virginmobile prepaid that actually runs opera mini to write this. the phone is junk, but opera has breathed new life into it. =) Posted via m.livejournal.com. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 18th, 2011
3:51 am	Late Cartalk Wednesday The Tsunami and GM. How the domestics might get a boost from the disaster.( Read more... ) In other news, I passed 155,000 miles the other month. Got a power steering pump leak, and they don't make rebuild kits for my pump... so a new pump will be needed to the likely tune of $7~800. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 14th, 2011
5:45 am	the chatter on various boards i'm on, it still surprises me how ignorant people are about how electricity is generated that they use, both coal and nuclear. the latter of course is more important to recent events, and lots of people don't even know what 'meltdown' means. ...tho, of all the nations on Earth, Japan might be the only one better equipped than the US or France at mitigation of the current conditions. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
2:44 am	... ...thru some gyrations involving Comcast going to full encryption on their most basic services, and not having a CABLECARD enabled TV in the house, I called them up to negotiate a new deal, got half off, and got alot of the channels you might remember I complain about missing back. As well as HD tuner boxes. So i roll on enjoying some of the new content, but click over to Cartoon Network. Curious, of course, as I haven't had the network in something like 8 months now. ....holy shit its 2006 all over again. I haven't missed one goddamn thing. Family Guy, Aqua Teen, and King of the Hill is -still- rerunning, Tim & Eric for some reason is still on the air, and its wastewater predecessor Tom Goes To Mayor. They dragged Sealab back out, and any legacy of Harry Goz is airworthy, but... ...holy shit how starved for content this is. I mean. Are advertisers really paying for space on this network's time slot anymore? Current Mood: dissapoint (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 7th, 2011
12:03 am	Games I bought & havent yet played: Samurai Deeper Kyo (GBA) Lunar Eternal Blue (PSX) Suikoden 4 (ps2) Suikoden 5 (ps2) Radiant Historia (DS) Y's Collection (DS) Tales of Symphonia (GC) anime I own i havent watched: Nerima Daikon BRothers Solty Rei Key tweeny witches samurai 7 kiki's delivery (Comment on this)