Sephy’s Platzish

Well, even though I didn’t do any calling for candidates, it doesn’t mean that I have been insulated from calls from their campaigns. This evening alone, there have been two calls for different candidates - one is (I believe) standing for Governor - the fact that he is the person that I intend to vote for doesn’t matter; the other call received tonight was from a candidate for the House who is running in a different district to the one I am in. Interestingly, this was the second time that someone called from a campaign that isn’t even close to where I live - the other one was for a state legislature district about 30 miles from here or so.

Even stranger than the calls for out-of-area candidates is the fact that the call or the gubernatorial candidate came up listed as a 213 area code number - which is Los Angeles (the ID was STH PRK HTL, which I would presume means “South Park Hotel”).

The good part is that this will all be over by Wednesday or so; depending on if there are any challenges to the election.

I’ve been, let’s call it, “tagged” to do this. So, without further ado here it is

Ten (mostly interesting) things about me

1. I’ve marched on the two major football stadiums in this state (Lambeau Field in Green Bay and Camp Randall in Madison [that was when it was still Astroturf and I almost took a nosedive in the endzone there]). The trip to Lambeau was on the Sunday that the Lewinski report came out from Congress and I remember it being passed around the coach being read by half of the band. After the game, a camera came into the bus while we were all changing; that was not appreciated.
2. A roll of pictures that I took is either rolling around the country inside a loungecar on a train or has been tossed out. It fell in somewhere west of Pittsburgh while we were on the way to Washington for my school’s band to participate in the Inaugural Parade for President Bush (I would have marched in the parade, but the directors and I agreed that it probably was for the best that I did not as there was no way to “get out” of the parade as it was under such tight security).
3. On said trip to Washington, I got warned by a guard in the US Senate for writing down the name of the Senator who was speaking at the time - Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Ironically, the pen I used to write the name was the same one that was given to everyone in my group as the result of having a lunch in one of the office buildings; I still have it - it’s a pen for the pro basketball team that one of our Senators owns.
4. I once went to a dance. I appeared on time (as it would be bad to be late to a social function as I had always thought); nobody was there and people got on my case for being on time. By the end of the night I was still alone and one of my so-called “friends” had gotten me pissed off because they wouldn’t talk to me.
5. My first year in college was spent in a dorm room with four other people - all of whom (if I’m remembering correctly) had a root in the room at one point or another in the year. Most of the time I’d have to sleep on the couch in the “main” room of the suite.
6. On the first day that I was up at college, my computer broke down. While I didn’t lose any data (fortunately), I ended up spending $45 on a new power supply that didn’t fix the problem. It wasn’t until over New Year’s that the problem was diagnosed to be a faulty Floppy Drive - that diagnosis was done at a computer shop down here; the one up in Minnesota said they’d do the analysis if I exchanged the new power supply for it.
7. I once ventured around the city of Saint Paul, MN in February wearing socks and sandals on my feet (I was using the bus, but had to wait a while to catch one). Just to clarify, I was fully clothed with a winter jacket on as well.
8. I’ve been banned from a chatroom for disagreeing with the owner’s philosophy. It was a political chatroom. Most of the people there (I believe) disagreed with me anyway, but the didn’t support my banning. And it wasn’t just a user has been banned from this room type ban - it was a server ban. So, I decided to open a new room on a different server that I knew wouldn’t ban me (it was a public server) and invited the people who were my main supporters to be part of it.
9. In that chatroom, a person posted a link to a page where a guy played around with a (as the author put it) “dumb Nigerian con-artist”. It was my first touch of baiting; I got hooked into it reading about how someone actually got money from them. I will say that I have never attempted to do that, but I did try to get funny pictures of them. Baiting for cash is something that I will never condone or do, and you shouldn’t do it either.
10. I used to hand-publish a blog on my ISP account; it was based on a blog that I had seen here which has now been taken down in place of single posts. In fact, I had made it so that it looked almost exactly like the page did. I probably still have the files for it as I am a packrat who hates getting rid of anything (I still have emails, on a CD, from 2000 and 2001; unfortunately I don’t think I still have any of the SMH/The Age AM Alerts that I used to receive in the late ’90s).

If you’re a new visitor to the site, I hope you keep coming back. I do my best to write something everyday, but I do miss a day or two at times.

One last tidbit - I wasn’t wanting to do it, but when I started to write the last ones, more good memories came back to me and I replaced the original number one which was that I’d never been on a date.

Others who’ve done it - I’m Not Craig, Tom Gara, Aly, Watershedd, Mrs Batville

I don’t talk about politics that much, mainly because I’m sick of it, and because I have my way of thinking, and that’s my business for the most part. I tend to lean to the right of centre, but I can see the point that others can make.

However, today a couple of things happened - first was a letter for a candidate for the local Sheriff arrived; I didn’t open it, but I’m sure it’s either a) a reminder to vote for the candidate or b) asking for money. Interestingly, the candidate in question came to our house to deliver a yard sign for us to put up (yes, we did ask for one).

The other thing that happened is that someone called from the party that I had actually volunteered to help out with a get-out-the-vote effort two years ago. When asked about if I’d be interested, I actually said (and considering how vocal I was about it two years ago) that I wasn’t terribly interested in it this time around. As it is, the candidates that they were barracking for probably are going to win my particular county, so I kinda fail to see the point