I did not hear about McCain’s pick for VP until Friday afternoon when I was having lunch with a friend, and she told me who he picked. I had seen earlier that morning that some governor, Sarah Palin, was a good possibility…but nothing had been confirmed then. As my friend told me about Gov. Palin, I was intrigued and read up on her when I got back later that afternoon.

Late in that afternoon, I noticed that my good friend from college, Aaron Blake Huddleston, wrote up a great article detailing strengths and weaknesses regarding McCain’s pick of Gov. Sarah Palin for VP on a note on Facebook. He did a great job on the research and explaining a few not easily understood topics. With his permission, I am posting it here on my blog for anyone who is interested, or not interested since it should not be confined to those on Facebook. Give it a read, even if you don’t really care.

I think that Gov. Sarah Palin was an excellent choice for Senator McCain. (True, I would have preferred he choose Huckabee, but that’s beside the point.)

Strengths

Gov. Palin is a woman which will help Senator McCain go after some of the swing votes who liked Senator Clinton but don’t like Senator Obama. This is not to suggest that Hillary supporters would vote for anything in a skirt, but simply that (in some cases) the fact that she is a woman will help get their attention so they’ll hear what McCain/Palin have to say.

Gov. Palin is a TRUE conservative. Sen. McCain needs to earn the trust of right wingers. He’s a self-described Maverick. He’s considered moderate, and slightly left of where most conservative voters are comfortable placing their votes. Having a TRUE conservative on the ticket with him will help bring him back into favor with those who were concerned about this (and about his ability to appoint the right kind of justices).

Gov. Palin is STRONGLY pro-life. She is a part of the group Feminists for Life. This will help Sen. McCain secure the pro-life vote (a large group who were on the fence about him because of some of the people on his VP short-list).

Gov. Palin is a bit of a maverick herself. While staying true to conservative values and platform, Gov. Palin has spent her time in office digging out corruption, throwing out old policy (set in place by republicans) that just wasn’t working, and “cleaning house” of appointed officials who were either corrupt or just not doing their jobs well. This will take the wind out of the sails of Sen. Obama’s “Agent of Change” campaign. Sen. Obama has no record to support his claims to be an agent of change, and his VP pick CERTAINLY is not an agent of change. Meanwhile, Sen. McCain has proven he can go against President Bush’s policies and incite change where it is needed (the Surge, for example), and Gov. Palin’s entire time in office has been about changing what was wrong with the previous administration.

More on Gov. Palin’s maverickhood….This will also help Sen. McCain fight the attacks from Sen. Obama that he will be “a third term for Bush.” By pointing out Gov. Palin’s history of digging out what was wrong with the previous republican administration and fixing it, Sen. McCain can argue that he intends to do the same with the White House.

Gov. Palin can win votes and trust. Gov. Palin’s approval rating has never been under 80%, and, in fact, has been over 90% for much of her time in office. This shows that she is able to win people over, that she is good at what she does, and that she will be able to help secure votes.

She’s a surprise! Weird that it’s a strength, but it is. Nobody had even considered her an option until they found out that it WAS her. People were surprised, almost shocked, when they heard. This is good for the campaign because it keeps it in the news. She’s such a surprise and such a shock, that the media will want to pay a lot of attention to her in the coming weeks and months (especially because they missed her in the coverage leading up to her selection when they were focussed on Gov. Romney and Gov. Ridge). This continued media coverage will help the McCain campaign get face time in what has (thus far) been dominated by Sen. Obama.

Weaknesses

Inexperience. Sen. Obama’s campaign has tried to argue that Gov. Palin doesn’t have enough experience to be “a heartbeat away from the presidency.” However, Gov. Palin’s experience makes Sen. Obama look like a school boy in some ways. While she is only a 1-term governor of a smaller state, her time there has done well to prepare her for this office. She is one of few governors who can boast foreign policy experience. Because of Alaska’s location, she has had to work out foreign policy with both Canada and Russia. Being governor has given her administrative and executive experience. She has accomplished more for the state in her 1 term as governor than Sen. Obama has done in his time as a Senator from Illinois. (Where he passed no legislation, and missed most of his votes).

Speaking ability. This is a big one (and one of the reasons I would have preferred Huckabee). While the text of her speech today was good, her delivery left something to be desired. She didn’t know how to handle a crowd that big and often found herself stuttering and seeming very awkward whenever the crowd would erupt into cheers. With a weak public speaking ability like that, I fear she will not be able to hold her own against the very experienced Sen. Biden.

The controversy. Okay, it had to be mentioned (even though it’s pathetic)…There IS a slight controversy surrounding her in Alaska right now. It seems she fired the Public Safety Commissioner in Alaska. She says that she did this because there were State Trooper vacancies that were not being filled (in other words, he wasn’t doing his job). The former commissioner claimed that it was because he didn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband (a state trooper) who was engaged in a bitter custody battle with Gov. Palin’s sister. Apparently a member of Gov. Palin’s administration had contacted him to discuss the issue of firing this state trooper without Gov. Palin’s knowledge. When she found out, she placed this member of her administration on a 2 month suspension for acting outside of the scope of his authority. An investigation was later launched, which Gov. Palin welcomed, opening up her files and saying she had nothing to hide. Those conducting the investigation have not had to subpoena anything because she has given full cooperation, and they’ve come up with nothing on her. Also, before we get carried away with the man asking that this state trooper be fired, let’s look at why he was making the request. It was not because he had divorced Gov. Palin’s sister. It was because he had threatened to kill his father-in-law (yes, the Governor’s father, but that doesn’t matter…he threatened to kill an innocent civilian…), he had tasered his 11-year-old step-son (at the boy’s request, but it’s still not allowed), and he had broken gaming laws. To me, that’s 3 strikes you’re out. Those were the reasons that a member of the administration asked about firing the state trooper, it had nothing to do with the Governor’s sister, and it was done without Gov. Palen’s knowledge. All that said, as much BS as the controversy is, it is possible that Sen. Obama and his campaign will attempt to exploit it to deceive voters into thinking Gov. Palin is corrupt (although certainly voters are smart enough to see Sen. Biden’s corruption…).

She’s a surprise. Yes, I listed this as a strength as well. For all of those reasons it’s a good thing. But for this reason it’s a bad thing: Nobody knows much about her. All that I know I found out through researching her extensively today, but the average voter doesn’t know much about her. That’s bad on 2 levels. First of all, it’s bad because she doesn’t have a name recognition that will automatically bring some voters over…she’ll have to work hard for all the votes she gets. The second reason it’s bad is because, sadly, most voters aren’t as responsible as me. Rather than dig and search and do their own research on Gov. Palin, they will wait and listen to what sources like CNN and MSNBC have to say about her. Which means they will get all of their information about her from sources with a definite bias. This could definitely hurt the McCain/Palin campaign.

In all, I think she was a very wise choice, but they will have a few bullets to dodge. Hopefully Sen. McCain’s campaign advisors are up to the challenge. I just thank the Lord that Sen. McCain picked a true conservative running mate instead of somebody like Gov. Ridge…I wasn’t sure what I would do if he’d picked Gov. Ridge or Sen. Lieberman.

posted from http://www.new.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=38317098696&ref=mf

I knew most of the points that he made already, but Aaron did a great job summarizing them and showing how each point could go one way or the other.

Thanks Aaron for clearing up the “controversial” issue with Sarah Palin…The news tried to explain it, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t get “the controversy” totally until reading his post.

Yep, I agree, she’s not Huckabee, but she’s still a great choice.

P.S. I did think it was amuzing that a search for Sarah Palin on Facebook already results in precisely 480 groups (at this moment) dedicated to loving her, hating her, or hitting on her. Check it out.

Here are some pics of us doing circus, for anyone who is interested.

I have been teaching myself about AJAX, and learned the basics after going through O’Reilly’s Head First Ajax. Oh, that is all well and good you may say, but what does your plugin actually do?

Let me remind you of what this plugin does: For you Wordpress users, you might have found that Wordpress differentiates between Posts and Pages, and its not too easy to change one to the other when you accidentally forgot to hit the “Page” link right after going for the “Write” tab. Never fear, this plugin is here to save you from your miserable self resorting to copying and pasting an hours work of typing and thoughts.

p2pConverter makes it extremely easy to convert your Post to a Page, or vice versa.

And now, just introduced in the new version, as per a request and my own desire, this plugin now utilizes AJAX to send requests. It also incorporates and displays a nice interface thanks to Script.aculo.us. Also, I have restructured the code to function on a more Object Oriented Programming nature.

Well, I hope this new update works well for all of you and brings you joy. Especially since you might have need of it according to Lorielle. If you have found that this plugin has been very helpful to you, please be sure to Donate to the poor post-graduate that would be very appreciative.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, problems, or requests with the new version.

• p2pConverter 0.7

Soldier, prisoner, writer, and philosopher Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died Sunday evening, August 3rd, 2008. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he served as a decorated commander for the Red Army, yet he was arrested for an anti-Soviet comment made in a personal letter in early 1945. He was promptly placed in a labor camp called Ekibastuz, which gave him the foundational experiences to write One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a complete account of a real life day under Stalinist repression. Throughout the rest of his life, Alexandr continued to write, despite Soviet/Russian efforts to censor his works. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but had to wait to accept the award because he was unsure if the Soviet Union would allow him to return at that time. By 1974, he had been deported, and accepted the award at that time.

If you would like to learn more about his life and struggles, you can learn more about him, or read a speech he gave to Harvard classes in 1970.

Alexandr lived a full life, experiencing the depravity that exists, and the atrocities that are committed every day. He rightly states the reason for all of this, our rejection of God most high:

Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

Solzhenitsyn had a good head on his shoulders. He seems to have understood the essence of human nature, and how it can drive mad people to do heart wrenching things. He also understood that it wasn’t just certain people, like Stalin, or Hitler, or the Red Army soldiers who rape a Polish woman just because she looked German. No, he says it best in one of my favorite quotes:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? -Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

You will be missed, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Thank you for your legacy, your compassion, and your hard words courageously expressed amidst a fallen world.

Let me tell you my story about what happened today.

I signed a 2 year contract back in January ‘07, and bought a Razr. It had been working just fine until a month ago when I noticed it started randomly dropping calls (even when it reported having four bars in a densely populated area). I have about a month and a few days before I am eligible to upgrade to a new phone, and so I figured I could stick it out (sometimes it worked fine).Then this past week, the Razr would just randomly shut off on its own (even did this during one or two conversations). Finally today, it seemed to die…at least when it wasn’t on a charger. So I broke down and took it into my friendly local Verizon store.

After explaining the situation, and asking them to resolve the issue, the tech support guy told me that they do not fix phones (anymore), and that my phone was fried (he had tried to install a system update, but said that my onboard mini-USB was flaky, which prevented the update). My only options were to either purchase another Razr refurb for $50, or upgrade to a new phone….Then I got a bunch of mixed hoopla from him and another sales associate about how I would only get a $50 credit instead of the $100 credit that was written on the contract I originally signed towards an upgrade. This was either because of their new two tier plan ($50 credit for less than $79.99 per month plan, $100 for $79.99 or more), or because I was upgrading early ($50 new every year, $100 new every two years), I got both answers, but not any consistency. Frankly, the people I interacted with were pretty jerkish. I decided to walk out and try a different Verizon store across town.

My hunch was correct, I walked in and told them about my issue. I mentioned the fact that I had come from the other store, and told her what they had said. She immediately handed me off to the manager, Kenny. Kenny looked at my phone, and told me I had the two options the other store had first mentioned. I questioned him on the $50 upgrade credit, and he said it was the two-tier policy change that Verizon recently made, and I reasoned with him about what I signed in my original contract. I also mentioned the fact that the people at the other store had been jerks, and that I had heard that the people at this store would treat you right. He still did not budge, but he did take my old phone to see about an update. While I was waiting for the update to occur, he mentioned to me that he made a note on my file to go ahead and give me the $100 credit when I did come into upgrade (”since apparently you didn’t know about the new policy” were his words). A few minutes later, he let me know that they were unable to upgrade my phone, so they were going to give me a new refurb to last me the last month, for free, since I was having all this trouble. Just 10 more minutes of waiting, and downloading my contacts from Backup Assistant, and I was on my way. Thanks so much for the help Kenny! You are awesome!

My advice, if one store is harassing you, try another one. Be sure to tell them that the other store were jerks, and that you heard that the people at this store would treat you right. Be polite, firm, but realize that these are people too. And be sure to give them accolades when they do go out of their way to help you.

P.S. Users can also use this website to submit comments about what Verizon can do better: https://www.survey.verizonwireless.com/vzwsurvey/