Reboot

In some ways, The Long Road marks my attempt to relaunch this site after pulling myself back from the depths of despair. It is my first shot at building a real corner of the internet for trustworthiness I value so much in real life. It is up to you to decide whether or not I am worthy of your trust.

The failure to recall scott walker hurt pretty badly, I was ready to load up my minivan and flee to Canada that night. Yes it was personal, more on that later, but it said so much about my neighbors. Whatever their reasons, voting for a man who is the absolute epitome of deceit, a consumate con artist, and the real harm he has inflicted through his decisions has shaken my faith in mankind. Yes, I worked very hard to get an education and get somewhere that I can pass on all the things I have learned. So the budget cuts and attacks on teachers, and loss of income and respect for public servants hurts me and my family personally. But I would still be upset at the scapegoating and punishment meted out to good people even if I did not count myself among them. It is a simple issue of fairness and justice. It also is not partisan, the republicans could have chosen another candidate who had some integrity and I could have accepted the outcome. But walker is about the most dispicable human being yet to hold office. He and his supporters are the enemies that must be marginalized if Wisconsin is to be something to "believe in again." Their behavior of divide and conquer is worthy of scorn and should rightly be stigmatized.

Putting that to rest I feel the need to justify or rationalize the ads on this site. I have subscribed to audible for years now and feel they are a business worth supporting. They provide a product I want at a fair price and have never conned me, that is why I fly their banner and hope that you will give them a try. As I have mentioned before audiobooks are a great way to pass travel time or work time and learn something in the process, or simply be entertained while doing something that requires your eyes. Reading, whether in print or online, is something that is difficult to multitask and needs your full attention. I hope the ads are not too much of a distraction if you are not interested.

The same goes for amazon, they may not always have the best price but they haven't driven all competition out of business either. Often in grad school they had the books and editions I needed for research and shipped them at a reasonable cost and time. You can get a heck of a lot more than books there too, I once got a pressure washer that was great for cleaning gutters and washing my car from them. The only ad I haven't personally used (because I didn't know about them while in school) was textbooks. The idea is sound, rent books for school for less than  the net cost of buying them and then selling them back for pennies at the end of the semester. I would have loved to do that for classes outside my major that had some really expensive books I did not plan to keep. So yeah, I'm kind of acting like a salesman for them and I hope it does not breech an ethical boundary. I want to be honest about it. It would be nice if the effort I put into this blog generated some income, even I can't get away from the need to pay bills and eat on occasion. But that is secondary to the real purpose here.