The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I'm still having problems with some of my hardware in Vista x64.  My sound card randomly drops out.  Usually its after several hours of use.  Today, it happened while playing World of Warcraft.  Its rather difficult to play without sound.  You don't know 3 people are attacking you!

Creative has not fixed the Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer driver.  (well they don't call it Gamer since they don't explicitly list it anymore)  Funny is that it works perfectly in linux, MidnightBSD, FreeBSD, Windows XP, and even Solaris (with OpenSound driver).  Perhaps creative should hire the open sound guys to fix their driver?  Actually, in all fairness the driver does not work well in amd64 versions of MidnightBSD or FreeBSD as it tends to get distorted over time during sound playback. 

NVIDIA released another beta driver for the 8800 series which also supports many older cards.  An older version of this driver fixed my many OpenGL issues.  I'm hoping the new version improves performance a little. 

There are days I think about going back to XP. 

Winter Semester ends next week with finals.  I'm getting near the end.  This has been the worst semester of my college career other than my semester at U of M Flint.  Between getting sick for two weeks, making the fatal mistake of signing up for two math classes plus a CS course, and spending a little more time than I should have on MBSD, I've really blown it. 

As far as grades go, I have no idea what I'll get in math.  It strongly depends on my final exam grade.  My computer science grade is probably in the D/E range which is the first time ever in any CS course for me.  I should have dropped it the first day when everyone except me was retaking it.  That should have been a sign.  She made distinctions between graduate and undergraduate work on homework assignments, but not on in class work or tests.  That seems a bit unfair.  There is no curving either.  I'm not happy about that. I'm just hoping to pass it even though I find it likely i have to retake it.

As for my English course, I honestly have no idea what grade I'll get.  I did very well on the first three assignments.  (As)  The final is a bitch.  Its take home with 3 short essay (1 page) and 2 long essay (3 page) due next Wednesday.   The forth assignment I didn't get done. 

I submitted my financial aid paperwork for spring and summer today.  I still need to register.  I don't know what classes to register for yet.  I have a few ideas for fall, but not a clue for summer.  I haven't declared a minor officially, but I think I know what I want to do.  Its too late to get an advising appointment to declare it with the fall/winter person.  I'll need to do that in the fall. 

I feel like writing a little more.  Its a nice day.  The sun is out.  The birds are chirping.  The cats are batting at the screens trying to kill the birds.  So peaceful. 

I think the air force is going to town or something.  There is a rediculous number of aircraft in the skies today.  It sounds like a world war II film. 

Caryn's at work.  I'm hoping she gets to leave soon.  She's worked a lot this week. 

As long as there are no surprises this weekend, we'll be OK.  I don't think Caryn's mother can have us come move more shit from her house.  That is a good thing. 

I tried to play WoW earlier, but the sound thing finished that adventure. 

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/seeing-through-walls.html

Ouch.  This means that LCD displays are just as "easy" to see as CRT displays.  I had a professor at WMU who had a CRT spying aparatus set up.  And I didn't even get a chance to get an LCD display yet!

The upcomming presidential election next year will be a mess. I now have absolutely no canidates I wish to vote for. Up to this point, I was hoping for Clinton. This news article has changed my mind.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18233111/

Clinton supports the Imus firing and takes support from "al". I completely agree that Imus should not have made the remarks he did, however I don't think they were racist. They were certainly mean, but not racist. Growing up in a poor, white town, the word Ho was used often. It is also used in lyrics to many songs. The description of their hair was also often used for skank white girls hair when I grew up. It is not specific to one group. Again, its mean but not racist.

If the world wishes to set a new standard for tolerance, then it must apply to all groups. No one should use these offensive words. I equate cracker to the "N" word. In fact, cracker should now be the "C" word. Well, perhaps "CR" since "C" is used for another word.

Aren't there any good or at least good at lying politicians left? So far all of them have managed to piss me off and its still quite early. I really don't care which party at this point.. just someone who doesn't side with an extreme would be a good start. McCain supports all of Bush's actions now so he's in that 30% who like the President camp. Obama seems to let his people campaign in nasty ways and I am suspicious of his opinion of women. Guiliani i don't think I have to talk about... he's the best Republican running but something just bothers me. The other candidates aren't even worth mentioning.

I suppose some people who stumble across this entry will try to label me a republican or democrat. Please don't try. 8 years ago, I considered myself a moderate conservative. Today, republicans consider me a democrat. I didn't get more liberal, they just moved to the right.

I must say that I was starting to agree with national healthcare for people who couldn't get real healthcare. I saw a republican congressmen discuss problems with medicare plans on cspan the other day. He made a few good points about letting the government manage healthcare. The VA came up a few times too. His central argument with prescription plans was that the US government is not the largest customer of pharmeseuticals. The bargining power is therefore limited on price. You can only not agree to pay for some drugs limiting choices. There is some sense in that. I'm really not sure what to think about it now. This is one issue in the upcoming race.

We also have Iraq hanging in the wind. No one has had a good plan for Iraq. McCain made a joke about attacking Iran. I'm not very happy about that little incidident either.

Oddly, the first positive thing I've seen the President do recently was state that this isn't the time to debate gun control laws. (after VT) You know, I bet vermont hates that abbreviation for the virginia tech massacare.

Perhaps I should just go back to my no politics rule. After all, if I write nothing my mother in law can keep thinking I'm a flaming liberal.