WUMF: October 2012 Edition

Boo to you fellow surfers. Another month ends and that means it’s a roundup of what’s been going on lately.

Post Anemia
Work has been taking up a lot of my time and my post counts have been lower than I’d like. I am sort of trending in the wrong direction and I apologize to those four and half people that read this stuff. I will try to keep it going as much as I can.

I will say, that my posting on the Store blog has increased immensely. I’ve been putting out a post on each of my designs for the Westeros League.

It’s a group of designs centered around a fictional sports league for 14 teams from the world of Game of Thrones. There are specific sports attached to each but there are clear influences from real life professional sports teams among the NBA, NFL, and MLB.

Hurricane Sandy
First off, I want to give a shout out to all my friends on the East Coast and hope they stay safe and somewhat dry as Sandy becomes a bigger bitch to them through Halloween. However, apparently, Pittsburgh weather reporters felt it was necessary to scare the poop out of folks in Southwestern PA. Seriously? We’re getting some rain, but to nearly empty stores of milk, bread, and TP is ridiculous.

Will we get a lot of rain. I’m sure of it. Will we get snow? Eh, jury’s out. Depends on the wind. It could be a Noreaster come Halloween night. But, I do not believe it will be as bad as Snowmageddon was back in 2010.

In any case, we did catch a sigh of relief. The trick or treating in the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas was pushed back to Saturday, November 3rd at 6pm. Sucks having to get your kid out on a weeknight and then come home to go to bed before really getting a good start on their candy.

The Election
Whichever way you choose to vote is up to you. I am not here to sway you one way or the other. It has always been my opinion that elections are not about picking the person who will do the best job. It’s about picking the one who won’t be worse at it. Now, I also believe that I am not voting for a candidate but for an electoral vote. The electoral college can vote however they like regardless of who has more individual votes… and they have done it before.

Still, it’s your right and duty to vote. So, get out and vote…. And for those of us in PA, don’t listen to the ads that are still playing about Voter ID. The courts overturned it. The commercials are wrong. Don’t be intimidated by ads or people. VOTE people! And… make sure you just don’t vote straight party and not look. There are other issues, individual issues that need voted on, not just people. Pay attention to the machine or ballot and complete it all.


Missing the Point
Kids are precious. If anything ever happened to my daughter, I'd go into Liam Neeson mode... but I am not as good. I'm more like Peter Griffin in that sense. In any case, whenever a kid goes missing, I can sympathize. I think about my kid in that situation and try to instill in her the idea that strangers are bad, and even you know the person, if they do something that makes you uncomfortable, make sure you are heard. Scream yell, and run like hell.

However, when I see the various Facebook posts about missing kids, I tend to be a little less sympathetic. A lot of times, I see people passing around posts about missing children and they are not even in the same area of the country. If people would only take the time to check snopes or Google and see if it's a valid claim. Further still, when I see the pictures that these people use to promote the idea that a kid is missing, I hate when they use Facebook profile pics or dumb duck face shots from over their head. PEOPLE... if you want to legitimize your concern and get help, post a better picture. Do people not have school pics of their kids? Hell, take a photo of one of them and post that.

I was driving home today and there were two electronic billboards with a missing teen's picture offering $1000 reward and all I could think was, "Unless I see a kid that looks like Daffy Duck, I'll never know this girl if I see her. I know that sounds cruel, but you want to make sure you have a picture of what your kid will look like at any given moment, not something they post on Facebook for the sake of wanting people to like the picture.