Last night was interesting for news coverage.

When I got home last night MSNBC was covering Hillary Clinton very heavily. Then out of nowhere Bloomberg announced he was leaving the GOP and it turned into wall-to-wall coverage of that event. Seriously Chris Matthews went into full speculation mode. He was so into it that he let out a swearword on air while he was, at least it looked like he was, badgering everyone in the studio saying things were moving too fast, the news was breaking and they were puting Sh%t on the air. Then he came back and apologized.

The funny thing about it? The breaking news was a guy leaving his party and the racing they were doing was to have as many people who seemed to have no idea what it actually meant running as fast as they could to speculate on the subject. Meanwhile today Bloomberg said, as he continually has, he is not a candidate, will serve out his term as mayor and “I think they are wasting their time. I am not a candidate”. But Matthews & MSNBC would have had you believing the man announced, dropped $500 million into a campaign and had lawn signs at the printer that very moment.

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I have been fighting off a nasty virus of some kind all week which has left me little time to get anything done. With that said, I am trying.

Right now I have a very specific to-do-list of things needed for the site which I thought I would share. I just got done updating the 2008 Presidential Money section. I now need to update ALL of the candidates bio pages with more detailed information about their Q! earnings. The end of Q2 is on its way so I need to get this done asap.

In addition I need to:
1) Update all the candidates bio pages and CREATE those that are missing. There are a lot of them and I need to get on that
2) Update the primary section of the 2008 President section to reflect recent changes and add more detailed information
3) Spend some time with the calendar system. I need to get to know how it works better than I currently do and figure out ways of integrating it into the site more efficiently
4) Finish building a polling tracker database and then plug in as much information as I possibly can. This is going to be a big project
5) Get myself on a more regular update schedule with things like the calendar, the blog etc.

I plan on having all of that worked out by the end of Summer. Then during the Winter I can focus on just updating information while building the Senate tracking section of the site. I don’t even know if I can efficiently get to following House races this election year. We will see.

There is so much information out there and so much to do! The only good thing is I have no shortage of content to put here, just a shortage of time to get it to you.

It is always interesting when you watch something like the debates last night. Everyone takes from the event a little something different. In my opinion Biden was the closest thing to a breakout performance, Obama seemed shaky and not ready for prime time on policy, Edwards was tough but wavered, Clinton was the winner who clearly knew her stuff and took command on behalf of the group, Richardson couldn’t stop reminding us he was a governor and it got old, quick, Kucinich came off crazy and Gravel was whiny and not very statesmanlike.

If you go out on the Internet though you find an ENTIRELY different arrangement of beliefs. Obviously those in favor of Obama thought he won, those in favor of Edwards the same and down the line. Even from independents though I heard Richardson’s name thrown out a lot as the breakout, I’ve heard people say Biden was too aggressive, Edwards wasn’t aggressive enough, Kucinich was the life of the party, you name it.

In the end existence is all relative but it goes to show there is no objective “consensus” out there on almost anything. Which is why I always find it so funny when candidates & congresspeople try and claim there to be.

One consensus in my brain (though again I am sure I will find others with differing views) is that Wordpress, the software program that powers this blog, just got a major feature boost that I don’t know how I lived without. Wordpress now has widgets!

I use widgets on my mac, I’ve seen them on Vista, Yahoo makes their own as well. This is the first time though they have appeared on Wordpress. Basically they are little plugins that can be arranged, rearranged, toyed with, made, deleted and pushed to the limit of a blogs sidebar. Where I used to have to go into the code to add or subtract a feature, I can now just login to my admin panel and drag and drop different features. I love it!

If you are a wordpress user and want to upgrade your template, check out this link.

Also no this is by no means a paid plug, just something I thought I would share. When I find something fun or usable I like to toss them out there for people. Also its an easy way for me to keep track of things I discover and then easily forget about. This way when I sit around saying “what was that thing, with the stuff on Wordpress I liked?” I make it easier for myself.

In Al Franken’s satiric book Why Not Me? he uses the issue of ATM fees as a means to launching his presidential bid. Yesterday I came up with an even more modern issue that a candidate could sell me on, restocking fees.

I had to buy a new camcorder yesterday because mine broke and a few months ago I had to buy a new battery for my iBook. Both have disclaimers about “restocking fees”. It isn’t so much that I don’t understand the need for them, but its the principal.

Rather than go with a trusted Apple replacement I went with a battery online from a third party manufacturer that was thirty dollars or so cheaper minus shipping. I read some reviews online, figured it would be a good deal and purchased. When it got here I followed all the instructions for the initial charge and then took the iBook to a coffee shop to hop on the free wifi. All was well for an hour.

Then the battery died.

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There was a time, not so long ago, when I kept a personal blog. Personal blogs are amazingly fun things that can easily go too far. You start throwing out some opinions, some little facts about your life and before you know it you’ve said something incredibly offensive about another person (or something that can be used against you or them in a court of law) and suddenly people are crying, your family treats you awkwardly at Christmas and the mayor won’t return your phone calls.

Now of course the mayor didn’t return your phone calls before but it just hurts more with all that other stuff going on.

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