Your "Ideal" Presidential Candidate -- Update

So it turns out that the website I used in my previous post to determine my "ideal" presidential candidate wasn't the same one that Glenn Beck used on his radio show. Not that it really matters. Anyway, after reading Glenn's email newsletter and seeing the address of the website he actually used on air, I figured I give that site a try as well for comparison purposes. It doesn't ask exactly the same questions as the first site, so I figured there would be some discrepancies with my previous results. And there were.

So...survey says:

1. Mike Huckabee (R) - 98.98%
2. Mitt Romney (R) - 93.88%
3. Fred Thompson (R) - 90.82%
4. Duncan Hunter (R) - 83.67%
5. John Cox (R) - 81.63%
6. Tom Tancredo (R) - 81.63%
7. Rudy Giuliani (R) - 76.53%
8. Sam Brownback (R) - 74.49%
9. John McCain (R) - 71.43%
10. Bill Richardson (D) - 53.06%
11. John Edwards (D) - 51.02%
12. Ron Paul (R) - 50.00%
13. Joseph Biden (D) - 46.94%
14. Hillary Clinton (D) - 46.94%
15. Barack Obama (D) - 42.86%
16. Christopher Dodd (D) - 38.78%
17. Mike Gravel (D) - 25.51%
18. Dennis Kucinich (D) - 18.37%

Another surprise top place finisher, with even more surprising percentages. Wow...Mike Huckabee and I are like long lost brothers, I guess.

Now, let's put all this into perspective, shall we?

How well do these things really work, anyway? Well, Glenn Beck put this particular site to a pretty good test the other day by having one of the Republican candidates take the survey, and it just so happens that the candidate in question was the one on top of my list -- Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

So who is Huckabee's ideal presidential candidate according to the "Candidate Calculator"? Take a guess.

No, actually...it's not himself. It's Mitt Romney.

What?

Another interesting piece of information is that, according to the results of his survey, he only agrees with himself 71% of the time.

Huh?

So...that either means Mr. Huckabee can't make up his mind about the issues, or this website has some of its facts wrong. Hmmm...

Oh well. No one is saying that you should go straight to the polls and vote based on the results of these online surveys. I view them more as a quick and dirty gauge of the candidates that makes you think about more than just the front runners. I know it's done that for me.

What the...?

Apparently, this bear was scared by on-coming traffic into jumping over the bridge railing, and managed to hang on for dear life and climb up to safety on the concrete arch. It is being reported that the bear slept there overnight until rescuers were able to get the equipment necessary to safely get it down off the bridge the next day. Wow.

Your "Ideal" Presidential Candidate?

So I was listening to Glenn Beck on the radio today, and he mentioned an interesting website where you answer a series of questions about major political issues, and it spits out a list of the presidential candidates and how well they align with your political views. Supposidly, the candidate's stance on topics (and subsequently the results of the questionaire) are based on a plethora of voting history, public remarks, press releases, candidate questionaires, etc. in an effort to best represent their views. I thought it would be interesting to see who I most aligned with according to this site, so I went ahead and took the questionaire. My results are below.

1. Alan Keyes (89%)
2. Tom Tancredo (85%)
3. Mitt Romney (81%)
4. Duncan Hunter (78%)
5. Sam Brownback (73%)
6. Chuck Hagel (not running) (71%)
7. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (70%)
8. John McCain (66%)
9. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (66%)
10. Fred Thompson (60%)
11. Mike Huckabee (58%)
12. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (57%)
13. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn) (54%)
14. Ron Paul (52%)
15. Rudolph Giuliani (52%)
16. Bill Richardson (32%)
17. Joseph Biden (29%)
18. Hillary Clinton (29%)
19. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (28%)
20. John Edwards (27%)
21. Al Gore (not announced) (26%)
22. Mike Gravel (24%)
23. Christopher Dodd (24%)
24. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (19%)
25. Dennis Kucinich (18%)
26. Barack Obama (17%)
27. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (10%)
28. Elaine Brown (3%)

Obviously, I'm a conservative republican (hey, I'm an engineer, we're conservative by trade). That wasn't anything I didn't know about myself already. But I was a little surprised by the rankings. Probably because I don't really know a lot about most of the "second tier" candidates. The chances of most of these candidates getting their party's nomination are slim-to-none, but it makes me want to learn more about their views regardless. Would I ever really vote for Alan Keyes? Hmmmm...

Anyway, give it a try for yourself. I think it could have some benefit for you whether you've already got a candidate in mind or have absolutely no clue. Perhaps it will encourage you to look beyond the top tier candidates (D or R), see who else is out there, and educate yourself about their viewpoints.

Cross your fingers...

Well, we finally did it. Tonight is the first night Ashlyn is sleeping in a regular bed. Her crib is one of those convertible jobbies, so we converted it after work tonight and re-arranged her room quite a bit. So far, so good. Cross your fingers...

PreSonus Inspire GT

So, I purchased a PreSonus Inspire GT firewire recording box to mess around with a few days ago, and I must say that I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far. I'm still learning how to use the multi-track recroding software that it comes with, Cubase, but it seems to be a pretty good software package. The Inspire ships with Cubase LE, so it's got some restrictions as compared to the full-blown version, but it seems to do what I want for the most part. It also comes with a multitude of guitar effect plugins and a few drum machine apps that are fun. I'm really looking forward to finally recording some of the guitar riffs that I've been messing around with for years!

Here's one of the first riffs I recorded: (Audio clip removed. If you really want to hear it, just ask.)

Not sure if it will ever become a full-fledged song, or just stay a quick little doodle -- I'm just glad it finally got recorded before it disappeared into the ether. :-)

Quite a dancer

Here's a sample of our little dancer:



I foresee dance classes in the not-to-distant future...

The Accident -- Part 2

Actually, it's been so long since I posted the first part to this story I kind of forgot where I was planning on going with the second part. :-P
But, since the title of the first post implies there being at least a second, I thought I'd go ahead and post a few pictures.

Scott's "head zipper"
















What I look like on the inside:



















You can even see the screw in my left shoulder from the rotator cuff surgery I had in high school. Neato.

And no, I don't have an abnormally curved spine. It only appears that way because I have severely limited mobility in my left shoulder due to the previously mentioned surgery, and I had to raise my arms above my head for the X-Ray and CT scan. In order to do so without causing extreme discomfort, I had to slightly twist my torso.

I should really make up a t-shirt with the X-Ray image on it, and some text saying: "I was in a car accident, and all I got was this lowsy t-shirt." Yeah, that would be cool...