The Obama speech got me!

So there were two moments that really got me all emotional during the acceptance speech festivities. During President-elect Obama's speech when he started talking about the 106 year-old lady, reflecting on her plight and what she must've seen got me.

But the one that really got me was when the camera panned to the crowd and captured Jesse Jackson Sr.. Seeing him open up emotionally like that reminded me that he was so young during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's when he was very involved with the Rev. Dr. Marlin Luther King's peace movement. He was THERE for all that discrimination and, yet, still trudged on.

People will say what they will about Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. but what they cannot say is that he has not "been there or done that." After all, he took the early lumps of attempting to become the first African-American president. Which, imho, paved the way (somewhat) for President-elect Obama's victory.

ps. I'm glad I was wrong about the long lines.

Obama's President! Download a free remix

So today is the day (ya, shoulda posted this earlier) where Lars Behrenroth of Deeper Shades of House was going to release a FREE remix in honor of President Obama utilizing words from a speech he gave in Berlin addressing 200,000 people in July 2008. The free download link is only active until 11:59pm tonight so hurry up!

From the site:
In celebration of election day in the USA, you will be able to download the current Deeper Shades Recordings release 006 "Now Is The Time" by Matt Flores at no charge.

enjoy.

2008's Hanging Chad

So I've told a couple friends of my prediction for this year's "issue" at the voting booths & figured I should put my money (words?) where my mouth is & post it:

I predict this year's "hanging chad" issue to be the really long lines at the voting places.

I know, not much of a prediction w/the voting almost over but it's something I've been thinking about for a while.

Hopefully, there are no issues so that whichever candidate wins out doesn't have to answer to 4 years of questions regarding it. But something tells me there's going to be issues reported- if simply for the fact of all the reports touting how many new voters will be coming out to vote in force. For example, a leader of the A.C.O.R.N. organization was on CNN Sunday night speaking on how they'd gotten 400,000 new voters registered!

Personally, I'd prefer to be wrong about my prediction. :)

Progressive Voter Guide

So I've been traveling a lot the last few months- for work & otherwise. During my free time, I've been teaching myself some new things & working on some personal projects (Stay Tuned for more details on these later).

There's a really cool site I got turned onto & it would've been one of my "Sites of the Week" because it's VERY cool.
Courage Campaign is a website for Progressive California voters. It is supported by various progressive organizations & they have a full listing on their site.

What's really, really cool is that they have a Progressive Voter guide for Californians in 2008. I like because it does a good job of explaining & summarizing the Propositions on this year's ballot. What I'm suggesting to all my open-minded friends is for them to print out the 2-pager & take it with them to the voting booths, tomorrow.

Website of the Week

So I've been actively searching out either very cool or very conscious (social, eco, etc.) websites. Hence, the long hiatus. But never fear, I've stacked up several cool sites that are sure to get your inner Che "ooh'ing" & "ahh"ing."

This week's winner is:
In honor of this week's shaker here in Southern Cali... :)
Shakeout.org

LA Perl Mongers

So I recently joined the LA Perl Mongers group. It´s something I should´ve done a LONG time ago but, hey, better late than never right?

I´ll be attending my first meeting tomorrow night. In a weird coincidence, it just so happens that this meeting will be hosted by Ticketmaster. It´s a little-known fact that TM´s a big open source shop who´s made several contributions to the open source community. I might just run into some old, cool co-workers & look forward to learning about Log4perl. So, for me, it´ll be a win-win-win so I can´t wait!