Back to Blackout

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to the first post of 2012.

Those of you wondering, break was ok, but way too long and although I'm back to in the swing of things once again, I sincerely don't want to start class. Today, was our first day and it went pretty smoothly. My schedule for this semester will be far more insane than expected so that should be fun.

As far as work goes, I've graduated to the 2nd Floor of the IC. I am now a higher rank, sort of, but its hard to tell because there has to be all of no one here to actually prove that. I don't understand why they have the IC open 24 hours the first week when no one would have enough work to actually have to pull an all nighter. Regardless, I am here once again protecting our glass castle from the treachery of destruction and inappropriateness, although now I'm doing it from a birds eye view. I'm technically the second line of defense after the first floor...sort of sad.

I look forward to continuing the Knight Shift this semester as we are all wandering down this road, that we call life. Is what we're doin'. It's good to know I have friends that will always stand by me...If you get that reference then I'm pretty sure that you are far beyond your years of wisdom. If not, look it up, and then continue to strive for excellence.

Tonight, is a special night as we head into the already wee hours of the morning on this fine day January 18th, 2012. I feel as if I've been blessed that these events have so sweetly fallen so close to my first posting of the new year. Those of you who don't pay attention to anything or anyone may not know about the anticipated Congress vote on the SOPA and PIPA Bills on Sunday. Websites like Wikipedia and Reddit have vowed a blackout protest today in their stance against these bills being passed. Don't worry though the saying, "Once you go black, you never go back" does not apply here, they will be back Thursday. (SOPA is apparently been benched like Community but not canceled, but PIPA is still on for Sunday...I think).

I'm not completely sure as to what exactly these bills mean, but I'm fairly positive many of our Congressmen do not either. From online protests, blog posts, and sites like Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit I have been informed that apparently our government is trying to put censors on our "open and free internet" ( The quotes aren't for sarcasm, those really aren't my words). From what I understand, this is their attempt at stoping piracy and other things dealing with copyright infringement.

I am one major fan of this country, as are many of you, but a government controlled internet does not seem like something I really want to get behind. You can go online right now and read about this if you want, and that,in so many ways, is the reason why the Internet is soo flippin' cool in the first place. It doesn't hold anything back, it is harsh, ridiculous, true, false, vulgar, insane, credible, stupid, smart, inappropriate, sexy, disgusting, sincere, sarcastic etc. all at the same time. It is not any one of these things because to define it as one would never do it justice, so we label it as free because it is open to all of these things and anything else that wants poke its freak little head into the circus that it is.

In our day and age, it is so much apart of us we can't help but feel completely lost without it. We can read things (like this blog :) ) at our will because we can write things at our will. It is a constant open forum of discussion and ideas that are constantly circling the web sparking more and more ideas and discussions to systematically make its way back to us. It keeps us connected on a global level, and always gives back way more than we can take.

I understand that these bills won't completely strip us of our online freedom, but what's to stop the another, more strict, bill from passing? As a citizen to the earth, nothing is ever good enough. Give us what we want, we want more. It is all shitty, and I don't think right now that the "internet problem" is really what our focus should be on... The world's gonna end in a year people. Shouldn't we be training a group of oil drillers to stop whatever is coming our way? Focusing more of our attention and resources towards that, because truth is the Internet is not gonna be all that great if we're all too dead to enjoy it.

They only had 18 days and a young Bruce Willis. Don't get me wrong, I know he's still got it, but I don't know for how much longer, so I think we could be bit ahead of the game if only we just realized it!!!

Anyway, I hope to God our government doesn't fail us, I hope that oil-drilling team full of rough necks and hillbillies can sober up long enough just before that clock hits zero, and even more so I hope this year is great for every single one of you.

It is good to be back.

Night, Nite, Knight,
Jarrad