Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Gmail Invites

I now have several Gmail invites of my own available. Post a comment here if interested. First come, first serve.

-Travis

Friday, September 03, 2004

Gmail Invite

UPDATE 02/19/2005 - YES, I have plenty of Gmail invites. Just post a message below with your email address and I'll send you one no questions asked

I opened my hotmail tonight and stumbled upon a little surprise. A Gmail invite from Paul Grave. Author of the Translate extension for Mozilla's Firefox browser. I had posted a couple of comments on his site the other day about the band A Perfect Circle and about the fact that I was interested in a Gmail invite as he mentioned he had a few. Well it turned out that he gave away the few that he had prior to my post. No biggie. I have enough email accounts anyway. I was just curious about Gmail because of all the hype surrounding it. Well that coupled with the fact that you can't just go sign up for it while it's in Beta. You have to get an invite from somewhere.

So, Paul was generous enough to share an invite with me after receiving yet more Gmail invites. I'm very grateful for his kindness in keeping me in mind. I signed up and to my astonishment my usual nickname was already taken. I have the name "Linuxevangelist" at every major site you can think of... Hotmail, Yahoo!, Netscape, AOL, Slashdot, etc. I even had the domain name, linuxevangelist.com for a few years. But for the first time I tried to sign up for something and that name was already taken. So I grabbed my backup name... Erufailo. Fair enough. Cheers to linuxevangelist@gmail.com whoever you are.

Of course the Gmail system is down tonight for whatever reason so I can't tell you if I like it or not. I'm not sure I can spill actual details about the service given the lengthy agreement I accepted when signing up - but I'm fairly certain I can offer an opinion on whether or not I like the service or not. I'll have to check the agreement to be sure of course, maybe they own my opinions as well :p

If I should come into any Gmail invites myself now that I've signed up I'll be sure to share with my friends who are interested. Send me a mail if you'd like one and I'll keep you in mind.

-Travis

Wednesday, September 01, 2004


Me. Posted by Hello

Republican National Convention

Well I watched a fair portion of the Republican National Convention tonight. It was kinda by accident. I was flipping channels and ran into it on my local PBS station. I had forgot that it started tonight. I didn't catch any of the Democratic National Convention so I'm a little unprepared to compare the two. I will say that overall I was a little impressed. I'm not big on the "my party is better than your party" rah-rah that always happens at the conventions but I was happy to pay attention to the parts in-between where the speakers actually talked about issues and not just pie-in-the-sky ideals and other useless drivel. The commentary by PBS was excellent I must say. It really seemed to be devoid of bias - at least to me. And that's very impressive. I get so tired of watching the major news networks anymore because they seem to just seeth with bias - be it for or against a particular candidate or party.

I really do hope that the candidates this year are able to actually address some issues and offer real-world solutions or at least ideas for solutions to solve them. I don't expect one man to fix all the problems of our country but I'd like to know what kinds of things they are thinking about and what kinds of ideas they're able to come up with. I'm probably more interested in how they think rather than where they stand on the issues. Because let's be honest, knowing where they stand on abortion is nice but I seriously doubt many abortion issues will affect the Presidency in the next few years. Instead I'd like to hear of any ideas they may have regarding healthcare, or economic issues, or foreign policy, or terrorists, etc. It gives me an idea of what to expect from them when they are confronted with things during their Presidency.

In the case of President Bush, I already have 4 years of experience with him so I already have some idea as how he reacts in certain situations and what kinds of decisions to expect from him in certain cases and at the very least a glimpse at the man's character. And to me, character is one of the most important things to know about a President.

I will have to pay close attention to Senator Kerry in the next couple of months before election day to get some kind of idea of his character and what kind of President he would be if elected. I feel I'm a little behind in that regard as the Presidential Race has been going on for some time now. But honestly the early stages of a race don't interest me so much. I really have little patience for all the partisanism that drenches elections nowadays. I just wanna cut through all that and see the person behind the image as much as I am able. THAT is what will lead my pencil on election day.

I don't rightly know if I'll see any more of the convention this week but now that the Olympics is over I suppose I'm probably likely to catch a couple more hours of it before it's over. I don't usually watch a whole lot of TV but I kinda got used to it this last two weeks watching the Olympics. I really enjoy watching the Olympics. I don't care what other people say about them. I love watching the triumph of the human spirit and hear the stories behind the athletes. It really takes you away from all the conflict and turmoil in the world for just a couple of weeks as these men and women from so many countries come to compete - without biggotry and without violence and for the most part, with great sportsmanship and character.

And so it's back to work for a bit before bed. And here's to hoping that whatever happens on election day, that we have the best man in place to lead this country through whatever befalls this nation in the next four years.

-Travis