So there's a law in Indiana that requires voters to present a photo ID when you vote... Just like you do when buying M-Rated games... Just like you do when buying alcoholic beverages... Just like you do when enrolling at college... Just like you do a lot of far less important things than voting for leaders of your country. Acceptable photo IDs for voting in Indiana comprise of the usual sources: driver's license, identification card, passport or military ID. The four major methods of identification that most American citizens over the age of 18 will obviously own. (Seriously... What 18 year old wouldn't have a driver's license, eh? Or even a learner's permit?)

Of course, there's always a tiny minority of people who whine and complain because they say it's too troublesome for people to present a photo ID when you vote. They say it's too much money, and that they don't have the time or resources to get a photo ID. They give all these symptoms, but never an example! Let me address each one of the concerns listed in the article:

"In crafting this law, the legislature failed to acknowledge that not all Indiana citizens have a printed birth certificate or the transportation to travel to various government agencies to gather documents or the funds to purchase the documents required to get the necessary documentation," said Joanne Evers, president of the state chapter of the League of Women Voters.

BZZT! Wrong, wrong, wrong! All completely wrong. You know, let's even assume that you can't drive for some reason, okay? You have no driver's license, so you need some form of identification and, for some reason known only between you and God, you have no printed birth certificate. Do you know how much it costs you to get a printed birth certificate? 10 bucks, man. 10 dollars... You could pass on that box of Mountain Dew, or that extra-large meal deal from Wendy's, or that blockbuster movie you just HAVE to see. Allow me to introduce you to the PDF you have to print to acquire your birth certificate. You might have to make a trip to the State department, but it looks like you can just send this in through the post office. Note that they ask for a photo identification, though. Hmm, looks like we're stuck...

Wrong again! You can acquire your birth certificate by presenting an identification card. (Otherwise known as a regular "photo ID".) Thankfully, the State allows you to acquire a photo ID without a birth certificate, that you can then use to GET your birth certificate and make things a whole heck of a lot easier in the future. Behold! The instructions for acquiring an identification card WITHOUT a birth certificate! Plenty of ways to get an accurate reading of your identification without a birth certificate. Do you want a complete list? Well, even if you said no, here's the link. It is so vastly comprehensive that I'm going to say that if you don't have any of these documents on hand, you are either incredibly short-sighted when you threw them away, or you're so young that you have no business voting in the first place, or you're an illegal immigrant and you, once again, have no business boting in the first place. You've got the major forms of ID... birth certificate and IDs and stuff... Then there's secondary documents: Student transcripts, student ID card, gun permits, insurance cards, employee photo IDs, military ID, marriage or divorce decrees... There's plenty of stuff to prove your identification.

So what you do now is lug your fat, lazy butt to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles with enough documents to prove your identity. (Did I mention social security numbers?) Here's where the cry for transportation flares up. What if you can't get to this agency? Well, uhm... I'm going to assume that you manage to get into town to buy groceries somehow? Maybe someone drops them off for you, but you manage to get your food in one way or another, don't you. Well, chances are, that town you go to for food has a DMV of it's very own. In fact, I'm willing to bet on it. If you want to be sure, you can use this handy little page to find a DMV near you! Now, once you get there, and you wait in the famous DMV lines (because we all know how efficient the government is, and we all know how it could make a single exception for national social health care) you present your documents and a grand total of anywhere from 5 to 15 dollars. Better bring a 20, just to be sure...

But before you make a huge fuss about 20 dollars (uh oh, might have to stop eating out for one more meal), let me show you something! The IN.gov FAQs. Search for "identification cost" and you'll get a hit called "How do I get an identification card?" Click that and read the entire answer and you'll see this little gem:

To obtain a free identification card for voting purposes, you must visit a license branch with sufficient documentation and state that you need a free identification card for voting purposes.

Woah... Hmm. Guess that blows the cost factor completely out of the water, doesn't it? I would, however, encourage you to actually buy a photo ID, because then you can get a printed copy of your birth certificate, because, remember, that's what is causing the whole problem to begin with! Of course, we all know how much you all want the "quick fix", so you could always take the voter ID and get on with your life and then come back and complain when something throws you a curveball.

It's a bit complicated, but not at all difficult to get a form of primary ID that you can use to vote! Voting is the single most important thing you can do in this country, and some people (can you guess which party?) think it's their right to be able to waltz up to the ballot box without ANYONE making sure they're even an American citizen, drop in their vote and then, if they're feeling especially evil that day, go to the neighboring state and do the same thing. It has happened before... It's called Voter Fraud.

Now that I've given you a step by step method of acquiring an ID card for voting, let me postulate another question to the masses. The group who's suing the State for being unconstitutional in forcing photo IDs is the "League of Women Voters of Indiana". Okay? Big ol' organization, no doubt. Enough money to fund a lawsuit, eh? Now, why can't this organization help its members by doling out just enough money to help everyone get these "expensive" photo IDs? Why can't they provide insight and guidance for those who might not know exactly how to get a photo ID? Indiana's Secretary of State agrees:

"Those who continue to be concerned that a handful of voters will have trouble complying with the requirement should instead mirror our efforts to inform Hoosiers of this common-sense requirement and the myriad ways they can comply with it on Election Day."

Seriously... And when the whiners say something like this:

"The law hinders and discourages Indiana voters from participating in our representative government of checks and balances."

I can't help but snort at their inexhaustable laziness. This is nearing the end of June, so everyone has July, August, September, October and a tiny bit of November to get out there and get their photo IDs! This isn't rocket science, people... This is something you KNOW has to be done before you vote, so you need to take initiative and get that done before voting time comes! We all know the story of the nuns who showed up at an Indiana voting booth and were turned away because they didn't have photo IDs... All I can say is: "Yes, it would make me mad, too, but they have nobody to blame but themselves." It's not like Indiana up and suddenly said, the day before election, that we're going to have to provide photo IDs. We've have MONTHS to prepare for this and the only people who complain are those lazy liberals who kept putting off what they knew needed to be done. And their response? Sue the State.

Under the state's constitution, voters must be 18, residents of the state and U.S. citizens. An amendment added in the 1800s requires voters to register, but there is no requirement to show a photo ID, Celestino-Horseman said.

There was a comment on the article that amused me. They said that DUH, of course an amendment made in the 1800s wouldn't require a photo ID! Cameras were KIND OF SCARCE back then, wouldn't you agree? Not only that, but this is the entire basis of the unconstitutional bit of the lawsuit. I have to point out that while the constitution might specifically require registration, it does not specifically deny the idea of using photo IDs, so it's NOT unconstitutional. Being unconstitutional is when a law goes against what's written in a constitution, but since photo IDs aren't mentioned at all, there's nothing to be unconstitutional over. Get it? The Indiana Constitution (and the US Constitution) does not explicitly allow or deny the use of photo IDs in the use of voting, so it is perfectly safe and legal for lower level laws to define what we can and can't do in regard to using photo IDs in the voting process. Now, if the amendment (written before cameras were used) had said "don't use cameras", then that'd be another story entirely... But it doesn't.

Let's also not forget that the opposition to the Indiana voter ID laws paraded an elderly woman as an example of how the law would hurt people... When it turns out that she was registered to vote in two states. Oops. An accident, it seems, but this is EXACTLY what photo IDs prevent. Why is this bad? I don't think the opposition can ever give you a convincing argument that photo IDs for voting is a bad idea. They just don't like the inconvenience... I daresay some don't like the idea of getting caught voting twice.

I hate this... Here I am in the middle of plans to finally build myself a decent gaming system. The new nVidia cards came out and I'm pretty much settled on the devices I'm going to get. But I can never seem to actually GET OUT AND WORK! The first time I went to work, I got about half a week done before I realized that my certification exams were just around the corner, and I took a week and a half to get that all done... Then, once that was out of the way, I started working for another half a week and then I got sick because nobody knows how to isolate themselves for the good of the family. Then, I get well and I work for about half a week and then my leg acts up and does it's crappy stupid thing it's been doing for the past two years, and I can't stand up for longer than 10 minutes or so.

I am severely ticked off... I have absolutely nothing to do with my time. This is why working this summer was going to work out so well! I barely talk with any of my online friends anymore (save Capella), so there's no random Skype sessions or projects or games that anyone wants to draw me into. (Not that anyone ever takes me up on the offers if I ask.) I pretty much sit around all day and browse SLIZone and watch Deep Space Nine... So I've been working, instead. But I can never get going long enough to amass a healthy amount of money.

I have no idea what it is... It feels like a pinched nerve in my left upper-leg. It's on the inside, not on the back, like that infamous sciatic nerve, or on the front or on the outside... Everything below my knee feels absolutely great, and I can move my foot around and bend my knee to my heart's content, but when I start moving my upper leg around, this piercing pain flares up. I can't move it, I can't stand on it. It can move with help (like grabbing it with hands and lifting it), so I don't think it's the muscles themselves. When I'm sitting or laying down, it just aches and throbs with every heart beat... I can't move my leg, so the longer I have this condition, the more stiff my entire body gets and it progressively gets a whole heck of a lot worse before it starts getting better. I've been taking calcium-magnesium supplements every day, with a pair of acetaminophen every night at supper to knock out residual pain for the rest of the night... Until I actually get to bed, because by then, it's worn off and it starts aching again. When I wake up the next day, I'll learn that I've twisted the wrong way in my sleep last night and I've gone and hurt something, plus... It's stiff as all heck, and it takes me 10 minutes to whip into shape enough to get out of bed.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions... No doctors. That's a suggestion I've heard plenty of, so I already know that's an option. By the time I ever think it's bad enough to actually go to a doctor, it's gone. To be honest, I haven't had this for almost exactly an entire year. The last time I had it was for a couple weeks during my semester before last... In the fall, when I had to drive to math class. Been perfectly fine ever since. I thought it might have been my laying and sitting around all day that cramped something up back then, but I've been standing and working for the last several days, so I'm not sure what it is anymore. It all started back several years ago when we were moving out an incredibly heavy corn-burning stove. I think I lifted the wrong way, and I had my first attack a few days later. Then off and on the rest of my life.

When it gets better, I'm going to start working and exercizing... I keep trying to do that periodically, but it never sticks because there's nothing wrong with me at the time. (And we all know how humans tend to forget the bad things that've happened to them in the past.) So... I don't know. I'm open to suggestions on what to do. Maybe there's some vitamin supplement or herbal tea or something to help relax muscles? I need to get this over with so I CAN WORK! This is driving me nuts... Everyone on the forums is getting new computers and here I am, stuck with the perfect plan, but I can't actually do anything because I can never work for longer than 4 days at a time... UGH! At this rate, it'll be another freakin' year before I have enough to buy a computer...

So I finally get around to actually upgrading to Firefox 3. Contrary to popular opinion (that seems to enjoy calling me a brain-dead furry), I don't dislike Firefox, but I do so enjoy pointing out irony, and this image is about as ironic as it gets. Much like how iTunes wants to restart after it's upgraded:

Why? WHY? Why does a web browser need to reboot? Vista can install video drivers and activate them properly without rebooting... Vista shouldn't ever have to reboot unless core files are changed and need reloaded. So either Firefox is manipulating core files that need reloaded or... What? Is it trying to start a service? Apache2Triad is an open-source project that can install and automatically start services, so it's not that. It boggles the mind how these music players and web browsers suddenly need to be rebooted. (Internet Explorer rebooting I can completely understand since it used to be an integral part of Windows Explorer.) But Firefox? Okay... Talk about inconvenient. If Opera can install without rebooting, certainly Firefox can.

So I wondered WHY IN THE HECK I was getting so many comments about Firefox. I've never had to deal with so many comments in so short a time... It was exhilarating! And a bit annoying. Got a lot of comments full of trash talk. Typical. My posts bring those attitudes out a lot, it seems... The people who actually realize what I'm saying don't care one way or the other(I mean, honestly, copying user interfaces don't matter, but it's the principle that people expect one group to NOT copy and give another group a free pass), but those who are suddenly blinded by rage want to lash out. Anyway! To cut to the chase... I now realize why I'm getting so much horrified people posting here.

Someone decided to post my article to 4chan!! I am warning you... 4chan is known for... Shall we say... Allowing anyone to say and do anything without repercussion? It's a very rough site, full of nasty images and vulgar language, so you visit at your own risk. Currently, the thread is full of nothing more than angry Firefox fanboys who are bursting blood vessels at what I said, but that could change at any moment.

To address a few things I've seen:

1. You miss my point. I couldn't care less that Firefox copies Internet Explorer. I couldn't care less that Microsoft copies Apple or that Apple copies Microsoft. My point is that so many people complain about Microsoft copying Apple when they give a free pass to Firefox. (As with the release candidate debacle.)
2. As for "non-standard version number", I have repeatedly made fun of Firefox's (and iTunes') knack of having long version numbers: 2.0.0.14 and 7.6.2.9, respectively. Most of my other applications (games, mostly) are simply 1.2 or 2.33 or something like that. Major release-minor release vs what appears to be something like major-minor-patch-hotfix, but nobody answered that post.
3. As for the problem of downloading Firefox, I had no trouble accessing the page, either, but PCWorld said there was a problem accessing the page and I linked to it. If you read my post instead of what some anonymous person posted on 4chan, you would know this!
4. FurAffinity really isn't my art site of choice. Sure, I enjoy looking at wolf art, but I usually do that on DeviantArt and lately only for "okami", through which I discovered this little gem, and then subsequently purchased when the artist was selling the original. But yet, my persona is a cute little wolfdog and my name in many, many places is "GermanShepherd".
5. Yes, I play Neopets. Not all the time, but sometimes!
6. I'm glad that you enjoy my DeviantArt gallery. That's what it's there for! I hope you realize that the intention of Dalek Goes Rawr was... You know... To be funny. My apologies if your comment was sincere, but in the midst of all the other raging sarcastic comments, it's hard to tell if you're being mean or honest!

I think that's it so far... People have mentioned some of my political posts, which could prove interesting. I've already got a few flaming comments on my article about how the NAACP thinks that animal shelter was racist to put black-furred pets on sale. Had someone point out my post saying that I wasn't going to support Shyamalan's new movie because it was entrenched in global warming. Someone also called me a Mac person after quoting my phrase about Vista being dead... I guess they couldn't tell I was being sarcastic. I mean, I use Vista and love it (and have had it since beta)... That should be readily apparent if they would bother to read some of my other posts.

Oh well... It's been awesome! A comment every 10 minutes or so. I'm famous!

Much overly hyped, like all open-source projects, Firefox 3's grand "download day" got to a rocky start. Why yes, I find that to be really funny... You'd think they'd be prepared for the "onslaught", wouldn't you? Looks like their precious Linux servers couldn't keep up. But that's only part of what I want to show you. You know how everyone is always getting on Microsoft's case for copying features? Especially user interfaces. Well, I want to show you something I noticed immediately after visiting the Firefox site. (To see if it was up, not to download.)

But first. Some background. Meet Firefox 2.0.0.14 (complete with non-standard version number):

Notice the clunky user interface. The blocky back and forward buttons to be precise. Now, I wish to introduce you to Internet Explorer 7:

Notice the sleek bubbly blue back and forward buttons. Blue, with a white glow along the bottom, with a bright white arrow pointing the way. Well, it seems that Mozilla couldn't bear this comeuppance and with Firefox 3, they set about remedying the situation:

This is from a screenshot on their own page. Notice the bubbly blue button with the white glow along the bottom, with a bright white arrow pointing the way. Er... Waitaminute! This is Internet Explorer's style! Copying Microsoft's interface, are we? Hm... You would think that they would practice what they preach, but we all know what the open-source community thinks of themselves.

Oh, of course it's nothing important to point out... But I found it terribly ironic, nevertheless. I also find it really funny that their primary screenshot was from Windows Vista. I thought nobody used Vista. I thought it was a complete and utter failure! I thought Linux was the bright and shining future of computer technology! Apparently, someone forgot that they're supposed to show off their Linux desktops.

Yes, I'm done laughing at them now.

Tomorrow, the new flagship video cards by nVidia will be released to much expectation... Too much, it seems. Today, the NDA has apparently been lifted on the specifications and performance of these new cards and benchmark articles are cropping up all over the place. (Here, here and here, to name three.) The results? It is definitely faster than all single-GPU cards out there, but when it comes to the 9800GX2 (a two-in-one card) and SLI setups, it's... Less than stunning.

Let me be the first to say that it's pretty incredible that nVidia has squeezed the power of two cards into one. That is nothing less than amazing and will do wonders for the future, when the price of the cards go down and the driver maturity goes up. Two GT280s in SLI far overpowers any two previous cards... Except, of course, two 9800GX2s, because that's technically four cards.

Mostly, this post is for myself. I'm organizing some thoughts here, for my new PC. (While I'm bed-ridden because of a bum leg... Ouch.) I budgeted $600 for a single new GT280. Expensive, yes... Ghastly expensive, actually. But I'm aiming for performance, and when you figure that two 9800GTXs in SLI is going to be around $550, an extra 50 isn't going to be too bad, especially when the GT280 is on par with the two cards. But now that the GT280 is more or less out now, the price is a little higher than we all expected: $650. That's REALLY expensive.

I'm a gamer, but I'm also very... obsessive-compulsive. My laptop runs at a resolution of 1920x1200. It's enough room for everything I like to do, and it's perfect for viewing 1080p (1920x1080). As such, I'm not interested in playing games at the astronomical resolutions of 2560x1600. Not only that, but you need a (massive) monitor to display those numbers. I want a simple (small and cheap) monitor that quite conveniently displays 1920x1200. I'm happy with that! Now, based on the benchmarks from AnandTech, the GT280 is SLOWER at those resolutions. It really shines at 2560x1600, but only because the older cards choke on the sheer colossal amounts of information. That link shows Crysis, and be sure to check the second image and look for GeForce 8800 GT SLI. 37.4 frames per second against the GT280's 34.3 FPS. The GT280 has a lot of extra features such as CUDA (which allows you to actually use the GPUs for applications like encoding and folding) and PhysX processing (which allows programs to calculate physics math far quicker), but both of those are absolutely brand new and nothing uses them yet, except for a few demo applications. According to NewEgg, I can get a 8800 GT for about $180. Multiply by two for SLI and that's merely $360. HALF the cost of a GT280 and BETTER graphics performance. (I could even operate Tri-SLI 8800 GTs at $540, and that's still $100 less than a GT280... With far better performance. But I don't want Tri-SLI, yet, because that's generally considered to also be absolutely brand new, and the performance doesn't scale by 3x like regular SLI does 2x on most games.)

Oblivion is the game I really want to play at full throttle. My laptop, the most powerful computer I have at the moment, only plays Oblivion on LOWEST SETTINGS at 640x480 to get a stable frame rate. That's positively dismal. But again, AnandTech's review puts 8800 GT SLI at 56.2 FPS at 1920x1200 and it puts the GT280 at 51.1 FPS at the same resolution. Not MUCH worse, and I still think there's great potential for power here, seeing as how a single GT280 can be neck-to-neck with two 8800 GTs, but... For twice the cost, I don't think it's a wise decision to go for a GT280, especially since I don't plan on playing games higher than 1920x1200, which is where more RAM and power usually shines. Sub-2560x1600? Yesterday's cards perform just fine.

However, there's the deal of what's called "micro-stuttering" that comes with SLI cards. I'm not familiar with it entirely, and it doesn't seem to be a huge deal, because there's a MASSIVE SLI user base, but it seems to rise from two cards trying to work in tandem and they can't quite get the FPS in sync and you get little stutters every now and then... I'm just going by a comment I've heard. One comment. Not really much to go on, but I've heard about stuttering when it comes to the 9800GX2s, because they have FAR less RAM to work with, and when you run it at higher resolutions, the RAM fills up and the card bogs down for a split second. I haven't heard of this occurring on other cards before. Because of that, I'm not interested in a 9800GX2, but also because they're almost as expensive as a GT280. Then again, this stuttering might also stem from people playing at 2560x1600, which, once again, I don't plan on doing this time around, so that's not an issue for me.

So after much deliberation, I may settle on 2 EVGA GeForce 8800 GT in SLI for a lowly $360... Or 2 EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS in SLI for $488? Maybe 2 EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX in SLI for $538... Yes, I've been looking at more charts since I wrote the first sentence. I was looking at power consumption charts and those cards sure do enjoy sucking the energy even when they're not DOING anything. The GT280 has advanced power management that reduces power to 25 watts when it's idly drawing the Windows desktop. I don't know... I'll have to do more research... The price of the GT280 might even drop by the time I need to buy a card and all this thought and preparation will be for naught. (I have, after all, budgeted $600 for the card, so it's really not completely out of the question.)

So, every top of the hour during my shop work, I take a break... Partly because moving cabinets around so much is tiring work and partly because my feet are flat and I can't stand in one place very long without them hurting, so... I take a 5 minute break every hour. During this time, I whip out my iPod and play the only game worth playing on it: Solitaire. (Actually, the random music game is pretty fun, too, but it interferes with the music I have playing for real, so I don't use it.) So there I was... Playing a good game and suddenly, something caught my eye. It was, to be quite honest, the most appalling and shocking thing I've ever seen in my life:

Do you see that? Well, DO YOU? Can you believe that? Three kings... Of course, they CLAIM it's a randomly generated deck of virtual cards, but how can you be sure? This proves that Apple's Solitaire code is nothing short of racist... The nerve! There it is, as plain as day: KKK. In fact, if you look really hard and stretch your imagination a little bit, you can just make out the black king is surrounded by the red kings. Clearly, this means that the black king is constantly oppressed by the red kinds.

Someone better let the NAACP know, eh?