Why Am I Not Voting in the Upcoming Primary for Virginia

     I guess it's time for a rant.  Well, maybe NOT a rant.  More of an reason for a position I am taking.  Regardless, here it goes.
     Virginia will be holding its statewide primaries this coming Tuesday (2018 June 12).  I do not plan to vote in the primaries.  Why would I give up my right to vote.  Well, I'll explain.
     First, these are party primaries.  For Senate, the Democratic candidate (Tim Kaine, D-Va) is running unopposed.  There are three candidates running in the Republican primary, and a Libertarian is on the ballot.  For the House of Representatives, we have one Democrat and one Republican in each party's primaries.  That's the whole election.  No ballot measures, no local elections.  That's it.
     So why am I not voting?  Because I am a registered Independent and as far as I know it is not my place to vote in a party primary election.  Virginia is weird.  It isn't an open primary state like California or Louisiana where everyone is thrown on the ballot and the top two or three are selected to go to the general election regardless of party.  If you're a registered Republican you vote in the Republican primary.  If you're a Democrat, you vote in the Democratic primary.  If you're an Independent, you have to choose one or the other.  I guess you would also be allowed to choose to vote Libertarian as well.
     But where is the sense in that?  There's a reason the primary is a "party primary" which is for the party constituency to vote for the party's nominee for the general election.  Throwing in people outside the party ranks would negatively skew the results.
     Worse, what if the polling places can't verify a voter's party affiliation?  Then you have could have one party voting in the other party's primary, which could be a real mess.  The party could then have an "outlier" being the party's nominee in the general election.  That someone could completely be completely unacceptable but the party would be forced to endorse and support the wild card's candidacy.
     So as an Independent it would be wrong of me to vote in a party primary election.  My party (if there were such a thing) does not have a candidate running so I have no one for whom to vote.  But I really don't have a whole lot of really good choices anyway AND as soon as it is done we'll be inundated with negative attack ads until 2018 November 6.  I've already been hit by the campaign robocalls for the Republican primary this week.

Wow, Has It REALLY Been a While since I Posted?

Wow, when I thought I'd be sporadic, I wasn't kidding, was I?  It HAS been a while since I wrote on this Blog.  A long, long, LONG time it seems.

I seem to get this way sometimes.  Sometimes I'll get into something like a new game, book series, or new gadget.  I'll look at said item and decided I need to get or do a bunch of the bells and whistles associated with the thing.  But then I'll start getting bored with it and the obsession subsides.  I'm pretty sure its nothing related to any sort of manic depression or some other mental illness.  It's just me.

Look at one example.  Say its the end of my phone contract and I get a new phone.  Of course, I have to get a decent new phone case (especially since the leading mobile phone companies and the companies that make the accessories always conspire to make the NEW phones that come out don't fit into the OLD cases) that will protect my phone like its Fort Knox.  Then I need to get a new wireless charger since the phone does the Qi wireless charging.  Maybe a second so I can add it to my travel kit so I don't have to remember to unplug and take it with me when I travel (you know, I think I might need to actually DO that...).  And of course, since the phone has one of those new curved phone screens and the phone case doesn't come with a screen protector, I'll need to get that screen protector.  And...

You see what I mean?  It's a vicious cycle!  However, after a week or two, the mania subsides and I lose interest.  I'll move onto something else.

That's what happened with this blog.  I was doing great there for a little while then blammo, I lost interest.  For THREE WHOLE YEARS if you can believe that!  It's not that I forgot I had this blog.  I just wasn't interested in updating it.

I guess it's because I come from the generation that is probably the "bridge" generation between the "baby boomers" and the Gen Xers and later.  I've never felt the need to shout at the world "Look at me!  Pay attention to ME!" like a lot of the later generations seem to be transfixed on doing now.  I get the technology and even play with it (I AM in an I.T. career) and see the benefits of the uses.  I just don't have the obsessive need to use it for everything there is.

Maybe that's why I got into fountain pens when I did.  Definitely an institution on the wane since the advent of the computer revolution.  Why should anyone write anything on paper when you could type it into a word processing program, save it, and print it out in a legible font?  Oh, I agree in a lot of cases.  You should see how my handwriting skills have atrophied since leaving college.  I get writer's cramp quite quickly these days and have a bad habit of pressing the point of a pen (or nib of the fountain pen) too hard to control.  Even a tremble pops in sometimes causing a stray line to go off in an unplanned direction.

But in recent years I realized that in some cases I always learned better when I wrote something down.  When it was in my handwriting I would go back and see my own thoughts and knew what it meant.  And I would remember that item better because I added it to memory.

I also worry that if we lost the skills of handwriting we'll have a major problem if for some reason our society falls apart.  We lose an important method of communications and documentation of information and skills for future generations.  We lose crucial and vital facts that could be important for our very survival!  We can't do that.

Well, looks like my ramble is starting to wobble off into the great unknown again.  As usual, you'll have to forgive me, especially after all this time.  Thank you for your patience and your time.