I'm getting closer to finding out what I need to be happy. 5 things :-

1) A job I enjoy doing.
2) A book I enjoy reading.
3) Music I enjoy listening to.
4) A game I enjoy playing.
5) To be healthy enough that I can enjoy myself.

Dear Diary,

Today was a perfect day. If I could have more days that went like today did, I'd be a happy man.

Keenan

Current Music: DJ Shadow - Midnight... (Gab Mix)

It's about love.
It's not about the demonization of gays and lesbians.
It's not about the demonization of the Mormon church.
It goes beyond being gay or straight.
It goes beyond marriage.
It even goes beyond equality.
It's about love.

That's why I'll be proudly marching tomorrow.

For those who don’t know what Prop 8 refers to, I’ll direct you to the Wikipedia article. Basically, it was a proposition in California to explicitly eliminate gay marriages in that state, and annul marriages that had already been processed. The proposition passed by a margin of 52% to 48%. In particular, the Mormon church funded much of the ‘Yes on Prop 8’ campaign, and as a result of this proposition passing, many gay people have been demonstrating and protesting against the Mormon church. I’ve been invited to quite a few of these protests. However, I don’t think any of that is really going to be that effective. Over 6 million people voted for the proposition, and that is who we should be targeting.

What we really need to do is grab the hearts and minds of straight people, and the only way to do that is by becoming a visible minority, instead of being the invisible minority we have been for far too long. On the Wikipedia article, there’s a nice map of which way each county voted on the proposition: as is typical for liberal movements, the urban centres were for gay rights, and the rural areas were against them. The urban centres are converted already, so all those protests, etc. are preaching to the choir. It’s easy to be gay on Broadway. It’s up to those, like me, who grew up in small towns to be openly gay, by wearing something obvious, a rainbow coloured bracelet, for example, year round. By being openly gay when you go back home for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or whenever, you then become an ambassador for the gay community, and not just during Pride.

It’s not going to be easy, but I personally am going to be wearing a rainbow coloured necklace made by my friend Marcus. I’ll be wearing it when I go to my church in my home town, wearing it around my family at Christmas. If enough people did that, I’m pretty sure it would tip the scales.

The wireless functionality of my Qwest router has pretty much died. It's so bad that 3G is more reliable and faster for my iPhone than my wireless at home now. To replace it, I'm looking into getting a separate wireless access point. Anyone have any familiarity with these? I was looking at newegg and saw http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122013 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122064. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

As unlikely as it may seem, I'm worried that Obama might lose Washington state. (I'm really not trusting the reliability of polls anymore.) If you don't want to see this happen, you can take a volunteer shift at http://gotv.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/getoutthevoteevent/gprx28.

I know this blog has become overly political lately: I didn't mean it to be, but I really don't want to see Republicans in the White House for another 4 years. They royally screwed up the world these last 8 years and I don't want to see any more of it.

In my prior post, I was asked whether I was going to donate towards the No campaign in Prop 8 in California, something I would normally consider doing. I have decided not to. I am fully against Prop 8; however, I have already directed a decent amount of money towards Obama's campaign and feel I have donated enough money towards American politics this election.

Here are the reasons why I've only donated to Obama

I don't trust close polls.

Anything could happen to boost McCain in the next couple of weeks: a terrorist attack, for example.

Having a Democrat in the White House affects non-profits across the entire country. Look at the rise and fall of GayCity as an example of what happens when gay non-profits lose funding. I also have seen this myself while being treasurer of a gay non-profit.

Gallup polls show that the world overwhelmingly wants a Democrat in the White House: Canadians are 67% in support of Obama, for example. Having both a British and Canadian passport, I choose to represent the world in what little way I can.

Ad infinitum.


If I wasn't in my current state, I would be severely tempted to cross a mental barrier and call people in swing states: that's how important I think the presidential election is.

For those not in the loop: a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (Type 1) after a manic high and a sudden crash that left me in the hospital for about ten days over the Christmas holidays and off work for around five months.

After another high and crash -- though not nearly as bad as last time and much more bouncing has been involved -- I've been off work on another disability leave for around 4 weeks now. My time sense is really skewed so I don't really know exactly what happened when: there was so much going on at the same time; between my car getting stolen and returned, a bad review at Microsoft (but luckily not as bad as it could have been), a short-lived relationship with a great guy I met at CAMP, along with getting a bit overwhelmed at CAMP itself, a lot happened to me in September to trigger me past my red-line. I had hoped to be off work for only 2 weeks, but it was not meant to be; I'm now on *four* medications again, and I *hate* being on medication, but this is what it's currently taking to keep me stable. I'm also currently looking into alternative methods to get healthy so I can get back to work as soon as possible. In particular, meditation, exercise, and simply keeping busy seem to be working quite well.

I'm glad I'm finally able to focus enough to get an entry out. In the past few weeks, I've generally been responding to new e-mail via the phone. I've started reading The Hobbit again to chill. I'm still not totally comfortable in groups, so if you don't see me at parties for the next little while, please don't be surprised. I've also been paying very little attention to current events -- I'm stressed out enough as it is.

The one thing I do consistently have though is the piano. I've been able to play it pretty much every day throughout this time. It helps soothe me and balance me. In fact, I did something I've always wanted to do: play the piano for strangers. I discovered Thursday night that there was a grand piano at the Tully's downtown where a friend of mine works, and I played for about an hour there Friday afternoon, getting over my initial nervousness and unfamiliarity with the feel of the piano there. I got quite a few compliments and even some tips. (There weren't many people there, as I'd hoped: I'm not sure I could have kept focused during the morning business rush; sometimes the sound of the coffee machines was quite distracting.) I totally miss playing for church back in high school and university, and it was quite a step playing for strangers. However, playing again late yesterday morning was not as enjoyable: I was tired and not at my best form and did not get much attention at all (which is what I really desire and need to play well). I appreciate the life of a starting musician much more now. In a word, it's hard, and I don't think it's something I'm up for, especially since I don't play well with others. ;-)

After giving it much thought, I decided to make my third and final donation to Obama this morning. The Obama campaign is making its final decisions as to which states to target monetarily, so the next couple of days are crucial for online donations, if you happen to support him.

Using trial and error is essential when testing overly complex code: you simply can't rely on automation itself because any good automation would have to rival the original code itself in terms of complexity. Seems like an obvious concept, but it also seems like a lot of people forget that. Having someone assigned to quality assurance is essential and that person needs to be different from the original developer; otherwise, you miss a whole bunch of corner cases and customers will complain, and your software's reputation, performance & stability goes down. Quick ship cycles are all fine and dandy as long as QA is involved throughout the whole process as equal partners in the development process. That's one of the fundamental problems I see in software development today: too much focus on the development itself, and not on the other parts, including design, testing and usability.

I just voted, and all I'll give away is that I voted differently than I ever have before (and I've always voted the same in every previous Canadian federal election). The cool thing about Canadian elections is that I can say that and not give away who I voted for: there are 3 different parties I could mean, and each one has its positives and negatives (some moreso than others).