i was asked to write up my thoughts on the current political climate/process/presidential brouhaha by a friend, so that’s what i’m going to do.  now let me say i have a hard time really putting my feelings about politics in to words.  i generally go with my gut, as it were, in politics.  what feels right to me is what i tend to stand for and stick with.

lately i’ve been reading the agitator a lot, which i guess is technically a libertarian blog.  what i tend to like about it is the author (radley balko) covers government waste, police state, and general stupidity on both sides of the spectrum (dem and repub) pretty equally.  granted, it has more of a liberal slant because libertarianism is definitely more left than right on a lot of issues, especially social issues.

i’ve always identified myself as an economic conservative and a social liberal.  i tend to find value in government social programs but at the same time like the idea of lower taxes and less government intervention in business.  i don’t really know where this puts me, but generally i lean more left when voting.  in the recent primaries i voted republican, moreso because i thought the dems had a better handle on their candidates than the repbus.  (i wanted ron paul, for what it’s worth)

i’ll freely admit i’m not an obama freak.  i don’t see too much in his policy to scream out “OH MY GOD THIS MAN IS JESUS” like a lot of other people.  i like some of his ideas (a renewed interest in science and technology, especially related to alternative fuels) but really dislike his complete disregard for new oil drilling (yes, even in the ANWAR) and his stance on no new nuclear power.  as far as him as a person, i think he’s just like any other politician, albeit a much more polished and better orator than we’ve seen for quite some time.  he’s probably better than clinton (billy, not wifey) in the speech giving realm even.

mccain on the other hand…. well, i would’ve voted for him 8 years ago when he seemed like more of a maverick and less of a rank and file republican.  i don’t find his support of the iraq war very comforting, and his selection of sarah palin really screams desperation to me (although it seems to be working, based on the latest polls).  on the subject of sarah palin, i think she’s exactly what mccain says we don’t need in obama; inexperienced, shady, and overall just a weak leader.  granted, she’s pretty hot, so there’s that i guess.  beyond that, i find the republican view of less freedom = more security very scary and something that i think needs to be avoided completely if we are to really keep america great.  i don’t think i need to get into the recent republican love of religious conservatism and their staunch opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

so who am i going to vote for?  right now i’m leaning towards obama.  not because i feel so great about his candidacy, but rather because i feel not so great about mccain’s.  i’d rather give the democrats a few years to fuck it up in new ways than let the republicans continue their current course of fuckary.

but yeah, politics is like religion.  everyone has an opinion, and they always think their opinion is the only one that’s correct or matters.  i guess i’m no different, sadly…

…but still want to do something neat like update your exchange calendar?  well, i’ve figured out how, using the all powerfull GOOGLE and my POS lg rumor.  don’t take this as a recommendation for the rumor… b/c this phone fucking sucks and i want something else badly.

first off, some caveats about this whole thing.  for one, you have to keep the google calendar sync application running with outlook open on a pc somewhere.  if you work in any kind of enterprise/corporate environment, you most likely already leave your pc on, logged in (and hopefully LOCKED) at all times.  if you do, this will work great.  if not, you won’t get the full advantage of this little system, but it could still be useful for updating your work calendar on weekends, as it would sync anything new when you started up your pc the next time.  secondly, the google sms features of the calendar are only available to US customers (sorry canada! :P)

so with that said, here’s what you need to do.  first, sign up for a google calendar account at http://calendar.google.com (of course your gmail account will work!)  once you have that, download the google calendar sync app (double check that you have a version of outlook and windows that is supported) and install it.  make sure you set it up for two way updates (so anything you add in either google calendar or outlook will show up in each).

now open up your google calendar account and click the settings link in the upper right corner.  go to the mobile setup tab and enter your phone number and mobile provider.  be aware that by doing this you are going to use text messages, so if you don’t have unlimited texting this could end up costing you A LOT!  once you do that google will send you a special code to put into the verification box.

so now you have your google calendar ready to receive new events via text and it should be syncing to your pc and outlook.

now for the really cool part (IMO)!  you can now text your calendar by sending a message to 48368 (GVENT) and have it either reply to you with your current days events (text message of “day”) or the next days events (“nday”) OR, and this is the best, you can have it add a new event to your calendar by texting it in plain english!  what does that mean exactly?  say, for example, you want to add a new appointment for next tuesday at 3pm with someone.  all you have to do is text GVENT and in the message say “meeting with my mom at 3pm tuesday.”  the system will figure out what you mean and add the event (by default for one hour, but you can go ahead and tell it “meeting with my mom at 3pm tuesday for 2 hours” and it’ll make a 2 hour appointment instead).

i’ve played with this system and it is pretty smart, you can give it dates and times basically any way you want and it will figure it out.  i even had it set a full day appointment by telling it “all day.”  one thing that did not work however was giving it a fraction for the time, so saying “2.5 hours” will really have it make a 5 hour appointment with “2.” as part of the subject.

so there you go, no need to get a fancy windows mobile phone to view/update your exchange calendar! (i’ll still be getting rid of this goddamn piece of crap rumor ASAP tho)