Interesting twist, I knew it would be up in the air considering the hurricane, but I wasn’t quite sure McCain had it in him to actually go just short of canceling the convention, what will be real interesting is to see if he goes down south and actually helps out, or if not what he’s doing in place. I’m guessing that him and Obama may attempt a joint PR campaign to try to show how they’re both willing to work across party lines by both meeting up probably in New Orleans and helping out down there together. Though, who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see.

“Don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment, while keeping AK-47’s out of the hands of Criminals!” Hm who said that? Ah yes, Senator Barack Obama, 8/28/2008. About 10:48 Eastern in his speech accepting his nomination as the Democrats presidential candidate. Here’s a few facts.

Fact: It’s illegal to use a firearm in a crime.

Fact: Most people already convicted of a crime, can’t legally own a firearm.

Fact: The AK-47 is no more deadly then most other hunting rifles.

Fact: Firearms used by career criminals aren’t legally purchesed by said criminals.

So with that in mind, this is how I interpret that statement. “We can’t allow people to own AK-47’s or other scary looking assault rifle style guns, because if they have them, they must be criminals!” Heres the thing, plenty of people own AK-47 type guns, I say type, because they aren’t capable of fully automatic fire, the vast majority of the people in this country couldn’t afford a fully automatic weapon if they tried. Now, with all of the above in mind, I ask, why can’t we crack down on the black market providing these guns to criminals? Why can’t we prosecute criminals using firearms in a crime to the fullest extent of the law? Why can’t we make the penalties for their use so bad that a criminal is too afraid of using a gun in a crime that short of a psycho serial killer, no ones got the guts to try it? Why do we need to restrict what guns a law abiding citizen can own? Think about it, if you’re a law abiding citizen, you aren’t going to use a gun in a crime, but if you’re a criminal, you’re not going to care if the law says you can or can’t own a certain type of gun, because you’re already a criminal that breaks the law. Yet the key way most (not all, I know not all of any group thinks the same) democrats choose to keep people ’safe’ from gun violence, is by making it illegal for the law abiding citizens to OWN guns. Making it harder for a law abiding citizen to defend themselves with a gun if their life is at risk.

Ah well….I just hope Obama doesn’t get into the White House, or if he does, he somehow doesn’t manage to actually get laws passed limiting the guns I can own, at least anymore then my state foolishly already does.

Alright, while this is political, it’s also a bit of a rant. First, lets be clear the rant part isn’t direct at just the democrats, its every politician I’ve ever heard speak.

Lets start with the non-rant part. It’s official, democrats have chosen a black person at their official candidate for the presidency. Why does his skin color matter anyways? I’ve seen news stories all over making it such a big deal…alright, I’ll admit, sure, first time for a non white man to be chosen to run, but hey, maybe I was brought up more accepting of people of other cultures then most, but I just don’t see it as a large milestone really, heck, even if we had a black woman president that was Muslim, I’d just shrug it off. But ah well, that parts done, now we can stop the useless speculating on that, and move onto the useless speculating about McCains VP choice, and who’s going to win the white house for the next 4 years of hell.

Holding off the rant part for a bit more, so shortly before I made this post, I saw that it was leaked McCain finally decided on a VP candidate, it’s…oh wait we don’t know, we only know he’s set to announce a name of Friday. Heh, and I’ve been told I’m a procrastinator. Should be interesting regardless to see who he chose, won’t really change my vote or oppinion one way or the other though.

Alright. Now the rant. First, let’s start with something I noticed in so many of the speeches at the DNC, why is it that all the speeches seem to follow this format:

Step 1: Greeting, suck up to the group you’re talking to.

Step 2: Compliment the chosen candidate/candidate choice and point out strengths in character/stance.

Step 3: Point out opponent attacking candidate/candidate choice

Step 4: Attack opponent of candidate/candidate choice, and become a complete hypocrite.

Step 5: Close on more sucking up.

Seriously, is it just everyone there is too enthused to realize the persons becoming a complete hypocrite? Do they just not care? I know they’re following the candidate pretty dang closely if they’re there, but come on, how can no one notice? Like I said before, this isn’t limited to one party, this is on both sides, it’s really sickening.

Rant, part 2. Alright, that out of the way, let me explain my presidency choice. I’m voting McCain, calm down, relax, I know; “How could you?!” “Four more years of the same!” “Don’t you care about our troops?!”. I’m sure I missed some, but let me cover those three. How could I? Simple, I’m an American citizen, age 18 or older, that’s registered to vote, and has every right to make my own decision on how I wan’t to vote. I have no intention on voting how someone else want’s me to, only how I want to. If you have a problem with that, well frankly I don’t care. It’s my choice.

Four years of the same: Not really, if congress remains democrat, then it wont be. I also fail to see how anyone can trust Obama to follow through on the same promises that were made by Senators and Representatives from his party, who then dropped the ball, and had to submit to Bush’s vetos instead of rallying support. Also, McCain is not Bush, regardless of similarities, and the fact he’s the same political party. I’ll grant, theres a large majority of his positions that I disagree on, but that’s good, because there’s a large majority of stances I disagree with the Dems on too, and none really seem to overlap. This means that I can hope that the president and congress actual maintain a good check and balance system if the controlling parties are different, since everything fights an uphill battle to get in no matter which side it starts on, theres a good chance nothing overly stupid gets through on either end.

Dont you care about our troops?! Of course I do! I’m completly opposed to the war in Iraq! However, I think if the dems in congress get off their lazy rears and actually try, they can get the troops home with McCain as president or not, frankly, I think they’re just not trying and claiming it’s the republicans fault just so they can help get Obama in the white house. However, if he doesn’t get in, they won’t be able to use that excuse four years from now and democrats won’t get elected in as high of numbers, so odds are with McCain in office, they’d have to actually try, and bring our troops home.

Last part of the rant, I promise, this one on the electoral college system. Alright, I can understand some of the reasoning due to communication and such when the EC system was first put into place, but why, in a generation where someone in the US can speak to someone in any country with internet instantaneously, where phones are normal, as are computers in most homes, and where transmitting the actual popular vote numbers from anywhere in the US to any central location taking only moments after the counts are finished, do we need people to decide FOR us on how our votes are applied? I’ll grant, most of the time, the EC does line up with the PV choice, however, if I remember correctly, in 2000, Al Gore got the popular vote, and Bush still won the EC. I’m not sure how Gore would have done as a president, but that’s moot, point is, he should have BEEN the president, I don’t care if he won by a single vote, point is, if the majority of the people in the US vote for you, or at least more for you then anyone else, then you should be the victor, not, each states winner is determined, and ALL of that states votes go to the victor rather then split amongst those voted for. It gives the impression very strongly, that you only really need enough people to cast a vote for each party thats running, and then one more to choose which wins, not that every single vote counts. If every vote counted, then I would bet voter turnout would surge. Ah well, my rantings most likely wont change any systems in the US, but hey, maybe if enough people read them, and they agree, and they start ranting, then eventually the system will be changed. One can hope anyways.

Signing off for the night, N003K,

Alright, if you read any post you should already know I’m a moderator, so heres a bit about what I do. When I get on at any time to moderate, I get online, go to the same forums as anyone else, and log in with my moderator account, the same way anyone else logs on. The first difference is that when I log in I have some extra buttons, and access to areas of the forums that regular users don’t. The next thing I do is check my private messages. If this is my first time on for the day, odds are theres at least a hundred private messages. No, people don’t just send me hate messages. Most of them are reports, you see whenever someone clicks to report a post and submits the report, it gets sent to all the moderators as a private message. It has Message Reported: before the thread name for the title of the PM, so it’s easy to tell them apart from actual messages. Inside the PM/Report is the reporters forum name,  any message they submitted when reporting it, what is contained in the reported post, and a link to the reported post.

Now heres where I have a bit of a rant, some people feel the need to report a chain of 4 posts, each seperate. What we do involves already going into the thread, if theres a quote pyramid we make sure none of the other ones have something wrong, if they do we get rid of them, then we go to the newest post, making sure no new posts quote or reference the removed post, so it just is pointless to report each individual message of a quote pyramid in a thread.

Now the second part of the rant, heres the thing, the moderators that are ussually seen around the forums are volunteers, we have no hours, we moderate whenever we get the chance, so theres a chance that it could be a few hours before something reported is taken care of, it’s not that we don’t care, that we dislike you, it’s just we aren’t on, or are busy with something else at that time on the forums, it will be taken care of if you reported it though. That said, when you report something, and put a snide remark in as the message to us, it annoys us. It may lead to us checking your post history and making sure YOU haven’t broken the rules, and if you have, we may not be inclined to let it slip for you this time like we may for someone else that was polite, or apologized. So heres a tip, be polite.

That all said, after we finish reports, we basically just wander around the forums, read random threads, and make sure any rules aren’t being broken, there’s no way for us to read EVERY thread, so don’t assume we’ll just stumble across a thread you’ve got something wrong with just because we do stumble across some, just to be sure submit a report. When we get tired, or distracted from moderating, we tend to get off then, and go about something else, and thats basically a segment of the day of a moderator, if we get back on it basically just repeats. Any question posters? If so, just throw me a comment with it.

Not much to say today, nothing to rant about, and nothing major going on online it seems. On the moderating front, it’s actually slowing down, one would almost think us mods are finally being effective and the trolls are giving up! I can only hope…or maybe I shouldn’t hope? If everyone starts behaving, I may end up losing my moderators position, hmm, heck of a position to be in.

On another note, heard Obama finally announced his running mate as Biden, nothing really to say about that personally, given my fondness for firearms, I tend not to agree with their Gun law stance, and tend to vote against them either way.

   Alright, throughout my time spent browsing the web and moderating the forums, I’ve seen quite a few things about the ‘Old Republic’ mmo. Lets get a few things straight. Everything I’ve seen linked to links to a single place for a source, and thats here. Lets examine the part of this article that gives everyone the idea that the MMO exists. “Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online?  “Yes,” he said.” I wonder…what did the writer actually ASK Riccitiello? Perhaps he asked ‘Do you mean the MMO rumored to be Knights of the Old Republic Online?’ Perhaps he asked ‘Do you mean the MMO everyone hopes is Knights of the Old Republic Online?’ Then to further it, the only response is a simple “Yes,” Nothing that goes more indepth to show what the question is. I’ll grant that MAYBE he was asked if it WAS a Knights of the Old Republic Online, however, I’ve yet to seen any solid confirmation that is 100% proof positive it is.

   The second part of this rant is, now I’m hearing people claim that KOTORO is due out in 2009. Let’s consider, there’s no confirmation of the MMO even being KOTORO. With this in mind, and the fact that we’re only giving a 16 month time frame for release if it comes out next year, and that the MMO wasn’t announced to be in production until March of 2006, then what could seriously convince someone that it would be released in 2009? Only 3 years of production, and probably less then a year after its announcement, also considering that the closed beta wouldn’t begin until months AFTER the official announcement was made.

   Seriously people, just stop, and think for a few minutes and take in all the facts before you jump to any conclusions, let alone multiple ones…

Finally got my blog completly set up on the root page of my site as opposed to only a sub-page, and now, I’m posting my first entry. Let’s start with who I am, my name is…not important. I go by a few names on various forums, but since I’ll be posting about various experiences as a mod on here, I won’t be telling you those either. So let’s leave it at, I’m N003k, and those who know me personally already know my real life name, and I probably gave them the link, so you don’t need that here. Let’s leave off with, Welcome to N003K.com, enjoy your stay.