Update on My Life

It's been a while since I've posted here, but I guess I'll talk about how my life's been going so far.

Since the last post I made about school, unfortunately, nothing's really changed in my life. No school, no job, etc. (although I did take the SAT in May). That's really my fault because I'm just so incredibly unmotivated. I want to get many of my personal projects done, but I can't seem to find the strength to concentrate and work on them. Also, I am a bit afraid about when I'm finished with my projects. When the time actually does come to do things like find a job and go to college, I fear things won't work out well, and I fear having to talk to people all the time. Maybe it's because I've become so introverted that I don't want to talk to virtually anyone unless it's over the internet. I never thought I used to be quite this bad - maybe I've just become that way. But whatever the case, I know that I've been doing nothing long enough and that I've got to move on.

My website is now on my friend's server, so it will not be on GeoCities anymore. It's just as well, as GeoCities is closing in just a few days. I think it's a shame, but oh well.

I got a dog named Buffy on February 6th, and she's a white/cream colored Pit Bull Terrier. She is nice, but she is very wild and hyper and can be a lot of trouble.

In May, I started working on some vlogs on YouTube regarding life after high school and age and life after death. I plan to do more vlogs soon once I get some of my other projects under control.

Other than that, I'm ashamed to say that not much else is going on with me. I really need to get my act together.

I Really Miss High School

...or any type of school for that matter. Sigh...I'm just feeling really nostalgic and sentimental right now. I was just viewing some YouTube videos from my old high school, and although I hated going to school back then, I now don't realize how lucky I was. I now realize that when in school, you really need to live it up 'cause you'll never relive those experiences again. Even if you come back to visit the school or come back to work at the school, it's just not the same. In my last year of high school, I was slightly more social than I'd been for about a year or so, but even so, I had a lot more work to do, and I seemed clueless and seemed to take the fact lightly that a big change was going to occur in my life - when I'd leave school and never go back (at least for a while). Sure, I plan (and hope) to go to college, and I sure hope I go, as it'll be the next best thing to reliving old high school years as I can get, but even then, it won't be the same. Things'll be more adult, and more time will be spent on schoolwork rather than coasting through school on mediocre grades and having crazy parties, goofy times, etc. Sigh...I really miss high school.

My life sucks now - I got virtually no friends (at least not many that I contact often in person) except for my good friend Daniel, and I rarely get out of the house or go anywhere or do anything. Ever since graduating high school, I planned to make the most of my time off - get a job, find some hobbies, live it up, etc., and I planned to take only a few days (or a week) off to decompress (as George Costanza did on Seinfeld). I was going to kick back, play some Warcraft II, listen to some oldies music, and do nothing, and maybe catch up on some old projects. Well guess what? It's over seven months...going on eight...since I graduated from high school...and I'm still virtually no better off. I'M STILL DECOMPOSING...ahem...DECOMPRESSING! Sure, I've gotten some things done, but not as much as I hoped and certainly not within a short time period. I've still got TONS of goals from 2008 that I still haven't completed. Will it ever end? Will I ever break free from the prison that is my hermit life? Can I finally be social once again and actually talk to people and have a real life? I haven't had a girlfriend in almost a year - and the last one I had was the same one I'd known for years prior - I've only had two girlfriends over the course of my life, and one of them didn't even amount to much. Now that I'm out of school, my chances of getting a girlfriend are very slim, and getting one in high school was slim enough. I "envy" my friend Daniel a little bit who's enjoying his final months in high school. Ah to be in his place again...it seems like just yesterday I was in his place...and it was a year ago! I remember I had my final classes...the one class in particular I liked was Drama, and I was the only senior in a class full of freshmen (and some sophomores). There was a small snow one year ago today (although it didn't amount to much), and I took the next two days off from school just for the heck of it (since they didn't give us a snow day off). It seems like just yesterday, but a year has passed since then.

Have I really done so little with my life that time just blazes by me in a heartbeat? I remember things from three years ago that still seem like things I just did. It's a little scary actually. I had the same worries around that time when I was worried about the afterlife and that I'd be a fully grown adult before I knew it and that I'd be in a nursing home before I knew it. Time passes fast, and the only way to make it seem like you've accomplished a lot is to actually do a lot...which I haven't. I waste precious time, and I have so many things I could be doing with my time. I miss my old social life (if I ever had one). Eleventh grade was no doubt the best year in high school for me - I had a pretty good number of friends and even took my girlfriend to the Homecoming Dance. Now, more than two years later, I've got nothing. Things are so damn boring around here! I can't stand it! I've got to get a life soon - I hate the misery of being alone with nothing to do. I'm tired of wasting time and not doing anything. I miss the good ole days of high school when I was surrounded by tons of people my own age. It doesn't even feel like I really graduated...I feel like I'm still a student at my school, but yet, I'm not. I'm all done with it, and I can't go back. It's really sad, but yet when I graduated, I felt little emotion and thought almost nothing of it. I've got to go back to school (as in college). Maybe then things'll finally rev up for me. Otherwise, I can find other ways to improve my life. One way or another, I've got to do it - I'm sick of wasting my life. Let's let the good times roll again!

Renovating Joe's (Joey's) Website Again

Almost a year has passed since Joe's Website was reopened with a new style. It was very refreshing from the old, dull style that I introduced a year before. I really enjoyed the new style, as it used a template, which organized things very nicely and had a much better color scheme than anything I could have done myself. I still had some work to do to get the website completely up and running, but for the time being, the website looked nice.

In March 2008, I started to get back to work on Joe's Website and started to edit information on my interests and opinions and other such things. However, I got discouraged from working on the site when a picture I uploaded didn't appear and when the template didn't look exactly the same from one page to the other. I would have liked to use the template as a frame - so that I can go from the home page to the opinions page, etc. without having to make multiple copies of the template. Unfortunately, I do not know much programming, and I have heard some bad things about frames anyway, so right now, I am in the middle of trying to take the formatting mess that is now my website and shape it into an appealing, organized website. I don't know what I am going to do now exactly - I have looked through several free templates but can't find one that I like a whole lot. I really like the style of the template I'm using now, but as I said, I don't like how I have to copy it to multiple pages. I wish I could edit that one template so that if I change something on the template on one page, I don't have to go back to all the other pages and change it there.

Oh, and I put "Joey's" in parentheses because as of today, I am renaming Joe's Website as Joey's Website.

The Upcoming Election: McCain or Obama?

Well, on November 4th, 2008, the big Presidential election is scheduled to take place, and I am quite excited. I am planning to vote for the one man I never thought I'd vote for in a million years: Barack Obama. Honestly, I can't stand the guy for the most part, but I despise McCain because if he gets elected, we're never going to get out of Iraq, and our economy is going to continue to deteriorate. I would much rather vote for a third party candidate, but people have been telling me that I'd be wasting a vote, so I figure what the heck. My friend persuaded me to vote for McCain at one point about a month ago. He said he didn't like him either, but it was better than putting Obama - the potential Anti-Christ, in office. I agreed with him to some extent, but only a few weeks later, I had second thoughts. I couldn't bear the thought of having McCain in office. His presidency would mean just more of the same: a crumbling economy, an ongoing war, and so many more problems. Even though I hate Obama, I feel that he needs to be in office right now.

Ever since the beginning of this year when I took Government and when I registered to vote, I have been eager to vote for whom I thought would best represent our country. However, when I finally decided on somebody that I liked the best, it turned out to be none of the main contenders. The man that I wanted for President was none other than Ron Paul.

I hated a lot of the other candidates. Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani, and many other Republicans supported the ongoing and disasterous war, while candidates like Clinton and Obama had certain quirks about them that I didn't like. Obama in particular I hated greatly. I didn't understand why everybody was so cukoo over him. He got elected to the Senate in '04, big deal, but guess what? I remember seeing on TV how there was this HUGE celebration about it. When I first heard of him, I never really hated him, although as I said, I didn't understand why everyone was clamoring over him. People seemed to think of him as some god or something, but I didn't see how he was any different than most politicians and how he compared to some of our country's "heroic" ones (i.e. Ronald Reagan, Abe Lincoln, etc.) As time passed, I began to dislike him.

When I took Government earlier in the year, we were to research the candidates and learn about their viewpoints on key issues. When I looked through Obama's viewpoints, I found that not many of them particularly stood out from other politicians. However, one of his stances I found absolutely appalling. On one site, he was reported to have said regarding abortion that if one of his children got an unplanned pregnancy, he would not want them to bear a child as punishment. I couldn't believe my eyes - that was just plain sickening! The man didn't just support a woman's right to get an abortion - he actually supported abortion itself it seemed! Don't get me wrong, I 100% support the woman's right to have abortions, but I feel that they are still quite gruesome and in a sense disrespectful to life and should be prevented as much as possible. Many abortions appear to come about as a result of irresponsibility. Hillary Clinton said that she wanted to make sure that abortions were legal, safe, and RARE in the next century. THAT'S the kind of attitude we need - not, "Oh, I got pregnant as a result of irresponsibility, I'm just gonna kill a potential sweet, loving child" - primarily in regard to late term abortions. The earlier abortions I don't think are as bad because the fetus has not really formed into a complete human yet, but one has to agree without a shadow of a doubt that a baby in the third trimester is pretty much a human on its way out. Anyway, I couldn't believe what Obama said. It wasn't just that, but I thought of him as a possible Anti-Christ. Rumors circulated about him being a terrorist and a Muslim, and while I didn't exactly believe those things, I still felt that Obama could betray us. To me, he also seemed arrogant. The guy was in Atlanta a few months back, and he charged about $10,000 for a picture with him - for his fundraiser! Come on! The guy has got TONS of support - he does not need to charge $10,000!

Anyway, when it finally came down to McCain, Obama, or Hillary, who did I choose? None of the above. I chose Mr. Ron Paul, as I really felt he was exactly the kind of guy we needed in the White House. His political viewpoints were almost exactly like mine. He was against the Iraq War and abortion, yet he supported gay rights for the most part and small government. He had a strong moral fiber that I really liked, and he seemed like a warm, caring man. The drawback to Ron Paul, though, was that although he was running as a Republican, he was more or less like a third party candidate. Ron Paul did not carry nearly enough delegates to be the nominee unfortunately.

For a great portion of the year, I still supported Ron Paul for President despite the fact that he had little support in the main polls and he dropped out of the race sometime in March. Around August or September, however, after my friend "ridiculed" me for planning to write in somebody who wasn't even running, I decided to vote for someone who was running and for someone who had a much better chance of getting elected than Ron Paul: Ralph Nader. I don't agree with Nader on issues like gun control and abortion, but I set those differences in opinions aside. The thing I like about Nader is that he seems like the kind of guy that would get things done in office and not play politics - just the kind of guy we need. However, my friend kept insisting that Nader wouldn't get elected and said I shouldn't waste my vote. To me, however, it wasn't a matter of voting for the winner - it was voting for the person that I felt would best represent the country.

Nonetheless, I decided against voting for third party candidates a few weeks later, and my friend convinced me to vote for McCain. However, only a few weeks passed, and I was having second thoughts about planning to vote for McCain. Finally, I decided enough was enough - I was going to vote for Obama - despite how much I hate him and how much I don't understand why the guy is so popular. As I've said before, it's either elect a man who's surely going to put us through the same misery as Bush or elect somebody who's at least got a shot at making things better. As one of my friends said, even if Obama screws us over, our country's already in Hell, so it wouldn't matter anyway. As much as I hate to say it, I feel that our country needs Barack Obama, so that is why I plan to vote for him in the upcoming election.

Ignore the Previous Post

On July 15th, I voted in the primaries, and my voting information turned up. After writing a letter explaining the situation with my voter's registration, I was finally mailed a card with my name on it. Later, I checked the internet, and as it turned out, there apparently was a record of my registration that had been entered. I guess in that case all it took was a simple letter to straighten things out. I can be quite crazy at times.

You can't do anything in this country anymore

I registered to vote on January 29th, and since then, I never got a voter registration/precinct card. Last Friday, I called the voter's office, and they said they'd send me a new card. So today, I found a card in the mail, but unfortunately, it was not my card. I decided to go online and check to see if my state had a search feature that would allow me to see if I was registered to vote. Fortunately, they did. I typed in my information, but nothing turned up!!!

The search site said that voter information was updated monthly, so if your information doesn't turn up, it could be because you just recently registered. I registered to vote over two months ago, and I am still not listed in the database! I swear, you can't do anything in this country anymore. You can't even do something as simple as register to vote!

2008 Presidential Election

Since about late 2007, I have been a supporter of Ron Paul, primarily because some of my online friends liked him, which influenced me to support him as well. I thought Ron Paul seemed like a very nice, warm man who would hopefully do many good things for our country. I liked his conservative nature, and I liked how he considered himself a true conservative as opposed to neocons like George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, I found out yesterday that Ron Paul had "dropped out" of the race. I figured it would happen eventually. Although Ron Paul was popular online, he didn't seem to have much support elsewhere. About a week ago, I decided that I would probably just vote for John McCain anyway because I really would not like Obama to be president. I just can't believe how popular Obama is. He seems to have very little experience, and he seems very untrustworthy. I think he very well could be one of the anti-Christs we will see in the future. He is very popular, which is frightening, considering that he hasn't really done much to get so popular. I first heard about him in 2004 when he became a senator for Illinois. People were making such a huge deal over him, and afterwards, people were talking about him becoming president. I was baffled because I didn't know much about him and why people were making so much of a big deal over him. I think Obama could possibly trying to lure people into supporting him, and then, once he becomes president, he may turn on America and not fulfill his promises. But then again, it may not happen, and Obama could turn out to be a great president. Even so, I am not going to vote for Obama, and I feel safer casting my vote for McCain.