I picked out one I really liked at RacksandStands.com. I've never used this online company before and I was a little hesitant because they are a part of a 'chain' of online stores that are operated by one entity. However I read good reviews and they had a good sale going on at the time, so I ordered it. I also got $30 back from using Live Cashback to sweeten the deal. I ordered it on a Monday or Tuesday before they started work on the basement because on their website they stated the delivery time would be approximately 2-3 weeks. Well it ended up getting here on that Friday - so shipping was insanely fast and free to boot.

It was really heavy to lug down the stairs, but it took us about an hour or two to assemble it. A lot of it is not particle or MDF boards, but is a hardwood so it seems really durable. Here's a look at it before assembly:

Here's some more pictures of the speaker and ethernet installations:

We also got the couch moved downstairs and it is freshly vacuumed as well :) We're still fighting with the vinyl wallbase that won't stick to the walls. Matt got some more heavy-duty adhesive to try out, I'm hoping that will work. We also found a solution for finishing our cable pulls to the tv. We couldn't use the regular wall plates that came with speaker and ethernet jacks because of the concrete that was directly 1" behind the drywall. So we picked up some 'riser' boxes that are used with raceway installation that we'll use to give us some more room to work. They'll stick out a little from the wall, but the tv stand will cover that up.

Since the basement was almost complete we spent the rest of the weekend cleaning the house in preparation for guests. It really, really needed a thorough cleaning! I also got to rake leaves in the snow! Fun times when the NWS calls for light flurries and it turns to be an inch or so of fluffy snow. The outside of the house looks almost as nice as the inside now. The snow melted off completely on Sunday.

Now we're on a definite time crunch as there is still a lot of minor stuff to take care of in the basement as well as the rest of the house -inside and out. I went ahead and pulled 2 speaker wires to the back so we can mount the in-wall speakers in the soffits. Last night I got the 4 runs of ethernet pulled to the front of the room. I also pulled the coax back into that area too. The only problem is clearance - since there is concrete behind the wall.

Time is ticking away so I think I'm going to forgo pulling 2 more sets of speaker wire to the back of the room. I originally planned to do this in preparation for doing 7.1 surround sound, however I think I only have enough speaker wire to do 1 more pull. I didn't estimate needing more than 250 feet, but I had to do a lot of wire manipulation and detours in the ceiling. I also did the terminated the jacks for the CAT6 ethernet done.

So I think the plan for tonight and Friday is to finish the vinyl baseboards (the ones that are pulling away from the wall) and to start moving stuff back into the basement. I still need to clean the walls and some other minor-but-time-consuming cleanup and organization. I'm hoping Matt will be well enough to help me move the couch and tv sometime soon. On top of that I also need to prepare for Turkey day. The upstairs is a wreck since I haven't cleaned it in weeks and I need to rake leaves and take them to the dump this weekend.

The good news is that I'm an experienced hand at doing Thanksgiving - this will be my third year for hosting. I have my schedule set and my recipes all picked out, I only need to implement the plan. Matt's folks are bringing down a huge turkey so at least I won't have to wrestle with that until next Wednesday. I'll also have an extra couple of helpers in my in-laws - mwahahaha!

I'm now pondering why didn't I take off work all of next week....

Matt is still sick and had to take frequent breaks so it makes it slow going for getting stuff done. The carpet guys finished up on Friday morning and the carpet looks and feels really great. I like running up and down the stairs without worrying about sticking my toes on the tack strips. After they were done I went down and rolled around on the carpet with Aerith for a few minutes - it felt good.

I got the baseboards in the living room cleaned, patched the holes, and installed yesterday afternoon. We used an adhesive to reattach the baseboards since we didn't have a brad nailer - makes a big difference to have those on. Tonight I'll touch up the paint on the trim so we can start moving furniture back in. We're also going to finish pulling the speaker wire so we can get that done and over with.

On Saturday we installed the toilet in the bathroom. The instructions were written by retarded monkeys or something because most of the instructions didn't match up to the parts that came with it. So we had to kind of wing it. However it does work and is all nice and sealed.

I also did the baseboard in the bathroom and the ham shack on Saturday. In some of the pictures you may see the baseboard peeling away from the walls, this seems to be a common issue with these baseboards. The wall base we selected has a self-stick backing that you peel off that comes in rolls. That part works easy but once you get to the end of the roll it doesn't like to stick. Since I have leftover adhesive from the living baseboards I'll try to stick down the offending parts of the self stick stuff in the laundry, ham shack, and bathroom

I also did some touch up paint in the ham shack, laundry room and living room. The carpet guys kind of scuffed up the new paint job in the ham shack so I had to go over that again with a paintbrush. The living room took a little longer as there were a couple of cracks and gouges made by the tiling guys. I also painted the access panel so it wouldn't stand out so much.

You might notice that in a lot of the living room shots the walls seem to be blurry or dusty - well that's because they are. Before the carpet was installed I wiped down all the walls hoping to remove all that dust and junk, it didn't work. Instead it spread little dirt particles all over the wall. I tried to clean it again yesterday but it is still stuck. I think I will try to go over the walls with a fine bristled brush to knock of the little particles. I think they get stuck in the nooks of the texture on the walls, which makes it impossible to wipe away.

Oh and I installed some new bathroom hardware. Matt and I have been really impressed by the transformation in the bathroom. We think it is the most surprising and welcome change after this whole ordeal.

Things left to do:
- Install speaker and ethernet cable
- Install patch panel in utility room
- Move furniture and stuff back downstairs
- Construct new tv stand
- Touch up paint on stairway
- Vacuum and more cleaning

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

It will be nice to come home to nice fluffy carpet instead of cold hard concrete.

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

Another productive weekend from last week. Thanks to Justin who graciously offered his home improvement skills, we were able to lay in the new vinyl floors in the laundry room and bathroom. We started Saturday afternoon and it took quite a bit of prep work to ready the floor for the vinyl. Also took a few trips to Lowe's to get everything we needed. The official count for the number of Lowe's trips is up to 5.

Justin's truck came in handy for hauling the floor and new toilet from Lowe's. We had to remove the leftover adhesive from the old floor in both rooms as well as fill cement holes, bleach and mop the floor, and thoroughly dry and vacuum the floor. We didn't actually get around to putting the floor in and finishing the job until Sunday afternoon. Take a look for yourself:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

Saturday night we started prepping for pulling ethernet into my office upstairs and the room off to the kitchen upstairs. Since everything is a mess we figured it would be a good time to pull cable. It was too bad that my cable didn't get here in time for the weekend, but we wouldn't have had enough time to install it anyway. I ordered new speakers, ethernet cable, speaker wire, a patch panel, face plates and jacks from Monoprice.com. This is the first time I've used them, but their prices can't be beat and customer service and shipping was fast.

Sunday we finished installing the floors by cutting, fitting, and adhering the vinyl. Of course the most nerve wracking part is the cutting. Overall I would say the process of installing the flooring really wasn't that bad. I don't think I would do a glued floor, as the large pieces of vinyl are really hard to maneuver around.

The glueless installation is the way to go as all we had to do was tape near doorways and under the washer and dryer. It is also a very economical choice. For approximately $200 (15 linear feet) we had new flooring in 2 rooms. Easy grocery list for materials too - floor, vinyl tape, cleaning supplies, and cement filler (optional). I would not recommend it for a large area or high traffic area since it is basically a floating floor. It would also be very hard to put a seam in since it does shift and will pull up with a vacuum cleaner.

Since the bathroom was such a scene of 'carnage' from the flooding issues we've had, I made it my mission this week to get it cleaned up. When we tore up the floor in the bathroom on Sunday it was still damp and icky underneath. The walls also were very dirty. When we installed the bathroom vinyl we bleached and cleaned the floor so that was nice and clean. On Monday I cleaned the walls with bleach and elbow grease and painted. I also had to cut, prime, and paint a piece of foam board to fit behind the toilet. The look is complete - tada!:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

I wasn't planning on painting this room, however like everything else we've done in the basement it came under the 'Hey, while we're at it clause.' When Matt and I got off work on Monday we drove straight to Lowe's (trip #5) to pick out paint. I originally was going to paint it a really brilliant shade of green, but I chickened out at the last minute and went with a deep taupe/chocolate. I really like how it looks since it makes the bathroom look like a real room in the house rather than the basement room we shoved a toilet and sink in.

Matt has been coming down with a cold all week and has spent the last 2 days at home getting over it. Great timing of course so I've been trying to get the last bits done on my own. I didn't have enough time to install the baseboard in the bathroom since the carpet people were coming soon. Yesterday I got everything out of Matt's office into the bathroom and the remaining stuff from the living room into the furnace and laundry rooms. I also washed all the walls down in the living room and stairwell since they were coated with dust and lots of spider webs. This was the only room in the basement I didn't repaint since I like the color and let's face it I'm tired of painting! I'll retouch the paint once some the carpet is installed.

Today we had marked on our calendar as the installation day for the carpet, however I entered it in the calendar wrong and the actual install date is tomorrow. So tonight Matt and I will install the new rear in-wall speakers and ethernet.

You may be asking why we are installing all this cable in house - why aren't you doing everything wireless? Well not everything runs wireless networking in the house. Our Dish Network box requires network access to update channel listings and the DVD player uses ethernet to do firmware updates. We also need it for the PS2 and for our future PS3. Matt and I also have desktop computers that don't have wireless cards. IN the near future we will be switching our landline phone to a VoIP solution like Vonage. Also we get increased network performance from running 1 GB Cat 6 than our 54 Mbps wireless AP. That and its cool - that's a very important reason!

When thinking about our home theater setup I wanted a better system for our speaker wire. Before we had speaker wire going around the baseboards and up the walls to the rear speakers. This looked really ugly and was prone to getting knocked around from the vacuum. So using the 'Hey, while we're at it clause' we decided to do an in-wall installation that will look clean and professional. It will also last us a very long time and could potentially add value to our house. The same can be said for running ethernet - Network access in every room of the house and home theater built-ins can add tremendous value in this day and age.

Next week we'll start moving stuff back to the basement and complete finishing touches such as installing the toilet and baseboards and paint touch up.

At this point I'd say that we are approximately 80% complete with our renovation and after next week we will be about 90-95% done. I say that because we will not have Matt's desk or the laundry room cabinets in before Thanksgiving. It is really great that we're so near completion on this - it really feels nice to have a level of our house that is fresh, clean, and pretty even! Of course the rest of the house needs a makeover since its been essentially abandoned for 3 weeks. I will be a cleaning fiend until Thanksgiving arrives!

So then we drove down to Ankeny to check out Home Depot and Menards for some more options for paint, flooring, toilets, and supplies. We were more looking for flooring options since our Lowes in Ames seemed to be very short of vinyl flooring the last time we were there. We decided that we should work on painting and wallpaper removal for the weekend since that could be done easily before the carpet installation happens next week.

So here's what we did on Sunday to the laundry room.

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

Yes it is very purple. I was trying to go for a grayish-purple shade but it kind of came out more purple. But we both like it - it really makes the white cabinets pop and it has a sheen to it. Whereas the old yellow paint (ick) was flat so it washed everything out. I can't wait to get our cabinets installed. Here's what I had in mind:

They are from IKEA and are sold as kitchen cabinets. However I think they will fit our needs well, plus they are relatively inexpensive. We probably won't be able to pick them up until after Thanksgiving, since the nearest IKEA store is in Minneapolis.

We had a lot of discussions regarding flooring for the bathroom and laundry room. If you recall we weren't planning on redoing the laundry room right away, but since they had to rip out the middle of the floor for more tiling we have to do it now. So now we will replace both rooms' floors with vinyl flooring. At first we had huge sticker shock at Home Depot. They wanted almost $3.00 per square foot for glueless vinyl flooring from Armstrong. That would be about $400 for flooring - which would really strain our budget. So we pressed on to Menards and found the same type of flooring (different brand) for about $1.20 per square foot. On our way back we realized we forgot some stuff that we needed at Home Depot, so we stopped at Lowes in Ames. Turns out they had more Armstrong flooring (the exact same thing they had at Home Depot) for about $1.00 - $1.30 per square foot. So here's some flooring that we're considering:

From Basement Renovation Project

The two on the left are the samples we got from Lowe's. I'm leaning more towards the sample in the upper left since it is darker. I would prefer a darker color since it will hide the dirt better. The glueless type of flooring is really nice because it is thicker than typical vinyl flooring. It has kind of a foam backing, so its really comfortable to stand on. Plus you don't have to worry about the gluing the whole thing, just glue where large appliances will be and near doors, then cut and place.

When we got back on Saturday we started prepping Matt's office. This was the only room in the house with wallpaper. The wallpaper had started pulling off the wall, no doubt due to the high humidity of the water seepage earlier this year. Matt didn't like it anyway, so we purchased some wallpaper adhesive remover and took it off. Only problem is that it ripped some of the backing so I got to spend all day yesterday patching and sanding it. I really hate wallpaper with a passion now.

From Basement Renovation Project

It was still a little damp from patching, so we weren't able to prime it. Since the walls aren't textured we got some wall texture in a can to spray the walls with.

From Basement Renovation Project

So sometime this week we hope to prime the walls, spray the texture, prime again and then finally paint with Matt's choice of color. I'm sure it will be a big shock to most of you :D

From Basement Renovation Project

So that will keep us busy this week. Next weekend we plan on installing the flooring, the toilet in the bathroom, some heating duct work into the office and living room, and pulling ethernet and speaker cable. Should be a fun week I'm sure.

From Basement Renovation Project

An example of the plastic tubing that they bury that channels the water to the sump pump.

From Basement Renovation Project

The finished result:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

What's next? Well we are definitely going to have to replace the floor in the laundry room now. We were going to replace the vinyl floor in the half bath, so we will probably get a roll of vinyl floor and put the same flooring in the bathroom and laundry room.

We would like to paint the laundry room and ham shack before installing the floor. Of course we want to do this before the carpet gets installed in a few weeks. We also need to clean the walls and floors since its very dusty down there right now. And we also have to retouch some of the paint in the living room since it had a couple of nicks in it.

Overall we'll be busy until Thanksgiving at the very least. Over the next few days I'll post some samples of flooring and paint that we're looking at. Can you guess which colors we're choosing? Post your ideas in the comments!

April 2007:
Mother Nature blesses us with 2 days of non stop rain. Matt discovers squishy carpet. We spend the next week vacuuming the hell out of the Matt's office and bathroom. Also had the help of our friends Branden and Elise (we love you guys).

April 2007 to May 2008:
Both of lay awake on nights with large amounts of rain and stress about it. On some days we wake up with a little bit of seepage in ham shack. Try to dream to make it go away. Lalalala *ponies* YAY feel better now!

Late May 2008 to June 2008:
Maybe you didn't hear about the epic flooding in Iowa, we receive more than a foot of rain in a week. Matt is in Utah with Mars Rover team, while I'm at home vacuuming day and night.

June - July 2008:
Stop dreaming and commit to solving this water problem once and for all and start calling people. *bye bye ponies*!

July 2008 - now:
Set dates up for basement tiling and remove carpet from basement. Remove stuff from basement. Remove baseboards and nasty moldy cabinets from laundry room. Cover remaining in plastic.

So that brings you up to speed. Here's some Before pictures:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

Two weekends ago Justin came down and helped us remove the laundry base cabinets, baseboards, and couch from the basement. Thanks Justin!

Last Thursday the carpet installers ripped the carpet and padding out of the living area and Matt's office.

Here's some shots of that:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

Next, we got to tear out the toilet and stack our stuff under plastic away from the perimeter walls:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

The hard core stuff started today with the removal of the old concrete and the installation of the tiling system. We were delayed this morning because the crew went to Kellogg, Iowa instead of Ames. Oops! So they started work about 10:00am.

Here's what it looks like now:

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

From Basement Renovation Project

They will be installing more tiling that goes from the laundry room through the living room to the sump pump. There is a dip behind the washer that they were a little suspicious about earlier, so that's why they're doing it. They will be back tomorrow morning to finish the job.

As you can imagine, the jackhammering and sawing makes quite the racket. I'm glad we're not the ones that have to do it.

Hopefully this will be the end of the demo and nasty work so we can get started on making the basement livable again. We have lots of ideas on the improvements such as painting, laundry room cabinets, and home theater upgrades. More updates are soon to come.

Like most things in life, it is still a work in progress. Click Here for a bigger size. I usually run my display at 1680 x 1050 on my hackintosh.

Ok, so I definitely needed a new computer. What OS do I want to run? Linux of course is awesome, but I haven't exactly found the perfect distribution for me. Windows? Bleh. Windows has its own set of issues besides I don't want to run Windows Vista exclusively. Mac OS X? I love my iMac at work, but I didn't think I could afford to buy real, honest-to-goodness Apple computer for its price premium.

While I honestly considered getting an iMac at least $1500 (EXPENSIVE!), I decided I would be a fun experiment to see if I could build my very own Mac using standard PC hardware. Enter the Hackintosh. The first place I started is where I first heard the term Hackintosh - Lifehacker.com - Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800.

Sweet, I could build a computer that could run Mac OS X for half the cost of a real Mac. And it had the added benefit of being able to run other operating systems too. The Lifehacker article was a good place to start, however the hardware list was kind of out of date. Like any good googler, I found a couple of really great forums to look at to get some more help with picking the right hardware. Some really good resources I found for this was the OSx86 project. Their wiki page includes some really great installation guides and a HCL (hardware compatibility list) that I was able to make some decisions about. The InsanelyMac Forums were also a great resource for tutorials and advice.

I had a few requirements for building my Hackintosh:
1.) Intel Core 2 Duo Processor. It seemed there was more support for OSx86 for the Intel side than the AMD side. Besides I had never built an Intel box before.
2.) The hardware had to closely match the HCL List on the Wiki. No digging around for obscure drivers or patches.
3.) The installation had to be easy, since I was a newbie.

With those requirements in mind, I browsed through a lot of forums and on the HCL wiki to see what was a consistently used motherboard - one that had been proven to work well. Once I had the motherboard picked out it was just a matter of finding components that fit my budget. I also had a few components that I could reuse from the old PVR box that I could use in the new hackintosh to save some money.

Old Components:
- Full ATX Case (used to be my old desktop case before I used the PVR box)

- 200 GB Western Digital Hard Drive (from PVR box)

- PNY nVidia 8600 GT / BFG Tech nVidia 7600 GT. The PNY card was originally Matt's, but needed to be RMA'd because it was flaky. The 7600 GT was in the PVR box and it worked pretty well. More on this later.

- SATA Sony DVD/CD Writer (from PVR box)

New Components:
- ($190) Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor. This is the at the price break between the low end Core2 Duos and the high end Core 2 duos and quads. I briefly considered the quad processor for $30 more, but decided even I didn't need that much power

- ($96) OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500). Highly rated by Newegg and relatively inexpensive. I was originally going to do 2 GB, but found there wasn't much cost savings by doing that. FYI, Windows XP can't natively support over 3 GB.

- ($100) SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-550HT 550W ATX12V. I've been using Antec products mainly for my builds in the past, but the power supply going out in the PVR box really peeved me off from Antec. This PS is steady as a rock, voltage swings are not nearly as bad the Antec.

- ($110) ASUS P5K PRO LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail. I've had good success with Asus in the past and it came highly recommended. Only thing I wish I could have done is gotten this board with the built in WiFi.

So for a grand total of $496, the Hackintosh I was going to build was going to have better performance than a $3000 Mac Pro. And even if Mac OS X didn't work - it was still going to be a pretty potent Linux or Windows machine.

For Part II I'll include some information on the build and the installation of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). That's for you Joe.

Taken from The Consumerist.

----

If this vending machine had been made by Apple, it would've been crafted in stunning clear Lucite with just the word "Coke" engraved subtly in a proportionally-spaced font.

There would only be one button to push on the machine. The machine would display a smile when you pressed it.

The bottle would be delivered silently, at the absolutely ideal temperature. Customers will have the uncontrollable urge to dance in silhouette when the buy one.

The machine would be immune to temperature changes, break-ins, and any attempt to modify it. Occasionally the electrical cord will catch on fire, but look cool while burning.

However you can only drink the soda while standing at their vending machine and you can not share it with anyone. The bottle will have a proprietary cap requiring you to purchase an iOpener ($29.95). People who drink this soda will think it tastes like Kool-Aid and will refuse to drink anything else, because they insist all other beverages are crap and wouldn't ever consider buying one even to extinguish the electrical fire.

I like monkeys.
The pet store was selling them for 5 cents a piece. I thought that odd since they were normally a couple thousand. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like monkeys.

I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept smacking themselves in the face. I laughed. Then they smacked my face. I stopped laughing.

I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech, hurl themselves off of the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall - although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour.

Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive: they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta dropped dead. Kinda like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Stupid cheap monkeys.

I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs.

I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and 199 dead, dry monkeys.

I tried pretending they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad.
I had to use the restroom, but there was a dead monkey in the toilet and I didn't want to call the plumber. I was embarrassed.

I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately, there was only enough room for two monkeys at a time so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't all go bad.

I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and 197 dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed. The odor wasn't improving.
I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my monkeys and to use the bathroom. I severely beat one of my monkeys. I felt better.

I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said that the city is not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him that I had a wet one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.

I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they liked them but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So, I smacked them in the face.

I like monkeys.

I don't do politics. I abhor politics - the endless discussions of who's right and wrong. Instead of the micro issues (Hillary - bitch? yes/no) why not larger issues? Why do we get so pent up about who's done wrong? I've said this before, I don't consider myself an active political participant - I do not ally myself with any party. I don't even have brand loyalty. As far as I'm concerned Charmin = Quilted Northern and Blu-Ray = HD-DVD. In the grand scheme I am nello.

So ok - you get it - you see that when I read the newspaper, I throw out the politics section along with the sports. Why am I making a blog post about the very topic when I haven't even written a informative post about what's up in my life? (Laziness is the answer to that, but I digress) Because this election year is polarizing almost every news media format. It is inescapable, people are excited about our government and are out going nuts in primaries and caucuses. This intrigues me as most of my life, nobody (other than party fanatics) has shown such interest in the direction and issues of our country. What the hell is so fantastic about this election, why are people so fired up? I think it is because people sense that this is *important.* When you get the lazy non-political people fired up, it makes for good discussions and for history. So there you go, I'm gonna talk about.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading about politics, I can only take so much and it has to be in a particular format. For the most part, I intentionally do not read articles that I know will be factually incorrect or that are slanted one way or another. It is very difficult in this day and age to find *real* news sources. In fact, the best alternative I can come up with is to read from all sorts of sources. Now this doesn't mean I subscribe or watch to Fox News (I actually watch zero network news) or read leftist newspapers. I don't drink the Ron Paul kool aid.

But I do read Dr. Paul's website to get a feel for what he is like. He is a nut, but he does agree with some of my ideologies regarding the role of government in our lives.

The great thing about this election is how the internet and technology is involved. I love being able to read RSS feeds from mostly innoculous news feeds (google, yahoo, etc.) and pull certain stories from them. From those articles, I can sometimes pluck up great new websites and I'll add them directly to my RSS feeds. Google Reader is my tree of information, from which I pick the fruits of funny animal pictures with captions, hot deals, informative blogs about finance and food, web comics, and lastly my news resources.

That's enough for now.