Southern Kind of Life

If you want to vote in the November presidential (and local, of course) election you need to make sure you are registered to vote before the deadline this Friday.  After Friday, the only way for you to be able to vote in NC will be to go through One Stop Early Voting where you can register & vote at the same time.  However, even if you think you are registered, you should double check to make sure you haven’t accidentally been purged from the voter rolls.  While I definitely think Durham BOE Director Mike Ashe would not knowingly purge valid voters from the rolls, mistakes are possible.  That’s why it is important for everyone to check their voter registration status.  You can check your own registration status at the Durham County Board of Elections website.  Besides that, a group called Project Vote 2008 has lists of voters recently purged from voting rolls around the country including Durham County.  You can check their online Google spreadsheet for a list of voters recently purged from the Durham County voter rolls and if you see yourself you can fix things.  Or, if you see a friend on the list let them know to go check their registration.  This is something you definitely want to do soon since if you show up on election day and are not registered you won’t be able to vote normally.  You can almost certainly vote provisionally, however, if you aren’t registered the chances that vote will be counted are slim.  So, act now before time runs out.

Again, the deadline for registering to vote is this Friday, October 10, 2008.  Information on how to register can be found here.

Update: As my friend Lisa mentions, my voter registration lookup link only works in Durham County.  You can look up your NC voter registration information for any county in North Carolina at the State Board of Elections website.

The Durham Board of Elections is once again seeking people to act as election officials, this time for the November 4 election.  From their recruiting ad:

“Join a team of committed community members who help maintain the integrity of the election process. This is a non-partisan sport.”

“Along with celebrity status, you will receive full training and compensation.”

“Registered voters and qualified high school students are eligible to serve.”

“Half-day shifts available.”

“Democracy Loves Help”

“Priceless Info Found 4 Ways…”
Call: 919-560-0690
Visit: 706 W. Corporation St.
Search: www.durhamcountync.gov/departments/elec/
Email: wmay@durhamcountync.gov

Here’s the full PDF with all the information:

Durham Pollworker Recruiting Ad

Having worked as an election official in the 2006 election and then as an election judge in the 2008 primary and runoff I can definitely recommend it.  Last I heard they were expecting record crowds for this election so people are definitely needed.  So, if you are at all interested, give the Durham BOE a call or send them an e-mail and sign up today!

October 4 is this year’s IMBA International Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day.  We had a lot of fun at this last year (my attempting to learn how to “pedal surge” to make it over large logs and instead flipping my bike over and landing on my back notwithstanding) when the local event was held down at Harris Lake park.  This year the local event will be held at Lake Crabtree County Park in conjuction with the Triangle Fat Tire Festival.  It is being put on by TORC and Trips For Kids Triangle.  I’m not sure yet if I’ll be helping out as a member of the mountain bike patrol but at the very least my son and I plan to be there for the event and if you have kids too I’d recommend you bring them out!

Here’s pictures from last year’s festival:

I just got this in my e-mail.  Apparently, there is a “Drop-in meeting” on the I-40 pedestrian bridge for the American Tobacco Trail on Wednesday, September 17 from 5-7pm.  I won’t be able to go, unfortunately, but it looks like it doesn’t really matter as they’ve provided all the information in the letter.  It looks like the really cool “cable stayed bridge” is going to lose out because they are afraid of trying something new (my opinion).  In either case, it looks like they’re aiming to have the “Bid Phase” complete by December 2009 and construction complete by December 2010.  So, there’s still 2 more years to go before we’ll be able to use this.

Anyway, here’s the link to the letter (in PDF format): ATT Meeting Summary

For those of you who think the United States has a huge problem with the size of the federal debt (and I do) there is a movie tonight being shown in select theaters around the country called I.O.U.S.A. From the trailer, it looks good.  I’d love to go see it but I’ve unfortunately already got plans tonight.  It’s at the North Hills Stadium 14 in Raleigh, NC at 8pm and after the movie there will apparently be a live panel discussion with Warren Buffett and other financial leaders.  The movie in the theaters is apparently a one night only thing (update: apparently it has a limited 12 city run starting Friday, but the premiere tonight will be in 358 theaters, so your best chance to see it in the theaters is tonight) but the movie will hopefully be on regular TV in a few months.

See the trailer below:

After picking up Big-B from school today and having supper at Elmo’s we stopped by the Parkwood library.  We’ve been meaning to go for a few days now and I didn’t remember if they stayed open late on Wednesdays but we figured we’d go by and see.  Luckily, they were open.  Their schedule says they are supposed to be open until 9pm but I found out that they’ve been having some trouble lately with the parking lot lights.  I haven’t checked all of this out, but it appears that the Church that was in the plaza, where people used to vote, went out of business a while back (hence why voting moved over to the Parkwood Fire Department).  Unfortunately, they own the entire complex and as a result, it seems they have not been paying the electricity bills.  Eventually the piper (or in this case the electric company) must be paid or else he stops providing his service, in this case electricity.  So, after the sun goes down, the parking lot is completely dark.  Because of that, the Parkwood library has been closing early at 8pm when the sun sets.  Now, this isn’t as big of a deal now, when the sun sets at almost 8:30pm, but what’s going to happen when it gets to the time of year when the sun sets at 5pm.  Will the library be closing at 4:30pm then?!?  I realize this is a fairly bad situation for everyone involved, but there’s got to be something that can be done.  I’d welcome any suggestions.

It always seems like there’s way too much stuff happening. The big thing, though, is that Big-B started back to school last week. He’s in 2nd grade this year and likes it so far, so hopefully he’ll have a really good year. The first couple of weeks, though, are a bit rough as my wife is still in West Virginia at the summer camp where she works each summer. So, Big-B and I have been on our own. He’s been going to the afterschool program and seems ok with that. However, I’m not able to pick him up until 5:30pm at the earliest and his bedtime is normally 7:30 which leaves almost no time at all to eat supper, get ready for bed, and do anything else we might want to do (library, grocery store, Tour de France, etc…). But, things seem to be working ok. Thankfully, my wife gets back Thursday evening. I really have a newfound respect, though, for single parents.

Today has been fairly challenging as I managed to catch some sort of bug that has me keeping fairly close to the porcelin throne.  I haven’t eaten hardly anything since lunch yesterday and don’t really have any desire to.  I’m really hoping that things will feel much better tomorrow and this will just have been a 24 hour virus or something like that.

I got back into home last night after being away for most of last week and previously most of the previous week before that.  I had spent the last few days in WV in the middle of the National Radio Quiet Zone visiting the camp where my wife is working for the summer.  Cell phones don’t work there and it’s impossible to get cable or DSL internet so they use WildBlue satellite service.  Unfortunately, they had managed to transfer more data than WildBlue allowed so they had been throttled down to a 128Kbps down/10 Kbps up connection.  For 150 people.  Yeah, so, not so good.

So, I was looking forward to getting home to a good cable internet connection, watching some of the Tour de France on our DVR and figuring out what I needed to do at home for the next few days.  The reality, however, turned out not quite so good.  Apparently, while I was gone, Time Warner Cable decided to go belly up at my house and not only did my digital cable & internet not work, the upper analog channels are fuzzy and nothing was recorded as far as the Tour de France was concerned.  (Not that it would have mattered, the TWC DVR won’t let me watch any recorded programs because it cannot get a signal from the mothership.)  So, after calling TWC, waiting on hold for a full 30 minutes (!!!) they started to tell me that they could send a tech out this morning.  However, someone had swooped in and grabbed that timeslot so they had to call over to “dispatch” and after doing that they came back and said there were “service disruptions” in my area and wouldn’t schedule a service call for me.  They said everything should be fine by the morning and if not to call and someone could come out today.

Well, fast forward to this morning and sure enough, nothing works.  So, I call and the first thing I’m greeted with is the computer saying “you have a service call scheduled for … Thursday”!!! W! T! F!  So, after getting an operator they transfer me to the “local office” who after a while finally tells me they’ve scheduled someone to come out sometime today and that they will call me 30 minutes before they come (since my wife & son are in WV, there is no one to let them in during the day so I have to come back home in south Durham from my job in south Cary).  We’ll see if they actually call.  If they don’t, I’m calling the BBB and possibly whatever government body that oversees the cable companies to complain.

I’m just about to head to bed so I can get up and be at the precinct at 6am for tomorrow’s runoff election.  While I know there are only 2 races on the ballot in Durham county, I still encourage everyone to go out and vote.  It won’t take that long and you’ll have your say in who will be on the school board and who will be the NC Commissioner of Labor.  If we really want a democracy, then we need to work at it.  After all, we wouldn’t want to end up like Zimbabwe is right now where the opposition candidate has pulled out of a runoff election and is in hiding in the Dutch embassy!  So, please come out and vote tomorrow.