Testing FaceBook and Blog Integration

This is just a test.

America’s Further Decline – The New Police State

Hard to believe that this can happen in America, let alone in St. Louis Missouri at Lambert -St. Louis International Airport.

Sebelius Pays $7,000 in Back Taxes

Obama’s choice for the Health and Human Services position is another tax cheat.  This gets better and better…

The Beastie Boys had it right back in ‘89 when they wrote “all the wife beaters and all the tax cheaters are sitting in the white house pulling their peters.”

Keep up the good work Obama.  Your gaffes in cabinet/administration choices keep me chuckling in a time I might otherwise be crying…

1/20/2013 – The End of an Error: Change I Can Believe In

60 days in folks.  60 days in and what do we have to show for it?  Well, we are rapidly accelerating down the slope of the worst financial crisis to hit in our lifetime.  We are propping up our banking and financial institutions on the back of the U.S. Government to the tune of a trillion dollar plus deficit each year.  A deficit that will be 80% of the GDP instead of the traditional 40% or less.  You don’t have to be a genius to figure out the end game.

Other things to ponder:

1)  The revival of the Fairness Doctrine:  First off, the “Fairness Doctrine” is anything but.  This is legislated book burning except the “books” this time around are radio talk-show hosts.  Just because no one wants to listent to vapid, air-headed liberal talk radio doesn’t mean the rest of us need to be punished for it.  Censorship is bad folks.  Where does it end?

2)  President Obama made a suggestion that perhaps it would be good to make the military pay for their own medical benefits instead of providing them through the VA.  Hmm…Anyone out there think this is a good idea?  I mean, anyone who doesn’t hold a deep hatred for the military?  These people put their lives on the lines every day to protect our interests and freedoms and we want to take away their medical benefits?  This disgusts me on several levels, but it does illustrate the deep seated hatred and disdain for the military we so often see in the liberal left.

3)  The deployment of american troops on american soil in Alabama.  A direct violation of the posse comitatus act.  Hopefully they will find out who is responsible and put them in the brig for two years.  If it was President Obama or the White House, I suggest a vote of no confidence in the Commander in Chief.

4)  Too big to fail.  My ass.  Nothing is too big to fail.  Failure is GOOD people.  Failure teaches important lessons.  You don’t give a huge amount of taxpayer money to the same damn people that ran their company into the ground while they took a shit all over their books and employees.  At the minimum, you let the company fail and they exit stage left with tail between legs, utter failures.  In the worst cases, if laws were broken, you bring these people to trial and make them PAY for what they did.  What you don’t do is let the punch-drunk captain that ran the ship aground back onto the bridge for another whack at it.  This is common sense folks.  There should be rioting in the streets.  I am not even going to comment on the government as an investor in auto manufacturers.  Sweden was doing the right thing when they recently stated that Saab can fail because the Swedish government had no business being in the car business.  Kudos to Sweden.

5)  5 Day Waiting Period Before Signing Bills.  Yeah, right!  We got about 48 hours for the “stimulus” bill.  Maybe its the “new math”.

6)  Vetting of Administration and Cabinet Members.  Woo hoo!  This one is a good one.  It has brought many a joyful tear to my eyes from laughter as appointee after appointee comes forward as a tax fraud, or criminal in some other way.  What better way to affect change in America than fill the highest administration positions with tax cheats and liars.  It drives home the “do as I say, not as I do” methodology of leadership that this administration is firmly propped up on.

7)  Potential ban on automatic weapons:  What’s the matter there folks?  Got something you are afraid of?  Looks like you are more afraid of the American people than you are of global terrorists.  What are you doing to disarm those terrorists?  Nevermind, that was a rhetorical question.  I will keep my weapons and use them accordingly to protect mine and my own.

Bush might have lied and people died, but it is beginning to look like Obama lied and America died.  Obama looks like just the same old political garbage we have seen time and again, only with a new coat of paint and a younger face.  We need real change and we need it now.  It is going to have to come from the people because we certainly do NOT have proper representation at this time.

Anger is a gift folks and if the stuff above doesn’t make you angry and want to do something, well, my friend, it may be just a little too late for you and yours.

Happy Birthday Apple Macintosh!

25 years have come and gone in a flash.  I remember using the very first models in 1984 and 1985 and how these machines made me want to work with computers for the rest of my life.  Here’s to another 25 Apple!  Thanks!!!

Okay, okay, I give up. You win.

Wednesday, you have officially kicked my ass.  I only got two hours of sleep last night due to allergy related breathing problems.  I finally got my ass out of bed and into the shower.  After letting the hot water hit me in the face for a few minutes I got out.  While getting dressed my better half reminded me to grab some cash out of her wallet for lunch.  I grabbed my laptops and went into the garage.  I tried to get some cash but the wife’s Yukon was parked too close to the garage wall on the passenger side and I couldn’t get to her purse on the passenger floorboard easily.  I was not in the mood to climb across the seat from the driver’s side.  I decided to leave and just use my debit card for lunch.

On the way to work I usually open the center console and grab my corporate id.  Today when I did this, I noticed that my wallet (and subsequently my debit card, driver’s license, etc.) was not in there.  Oh yeah, forgot about leaving that in the Yukon last night.  After I closed the console I then looked at the gas gauge and noticed that I had just enough gas to make it to work and make it back home.  Nothing like cutting it close.

Once at work, I found myself phasing in and out of focus on the tasks I was working on.  I decided that at lunch time I was going to go out to the car and sleep for an hour to regain some alertness for the afternoon.  I took my phone out to the car with me and set the alarm for 1 hour later.  I settled into the back seat, but within 20 minutes I was too cold to stay out there.  I unlocked the door and then realized that the childproof locks were engaged.  I needed to climb over the front seats and get out via one of the front doors.  I finally got my ass out of the car, head and hands first on the cold concrete of the parking lot.  During the exit I managed to break the heel straps on my comfy business crocs…

Now I am sitting here trying to drink coffee and stay focused on my work…

Son, You Will Be The Death Of Me Yet.

My two and three quarters year old, Tobie, has decided that it will be great fun to exploit all of daddy’s greatest safety fears.  He has also decided that he should do all of this as quickly as possible in order to maximize the creation of more gray hair on my already salt and pepper colored head.  So far we have couch jumping and razor blade juggling out of the way.  Neither one ended well.  Couch jumping cost us one full evening at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital where a plastic surgeon sewed up Tobie’s forehead.  We understand he should only have a very small permanent scar.  Razor blade juggling cost Tobie a large chunk of flesh out of his lip, but no trip to the hospital was required, just a lot of ice cream and sitting in daddy’s lap being comforted.

I wasn’t at home when he jumped off the couch and his forehead met the coffee table with great force.  I met the family at a local ER where they told us they do not sew up 2 year olds and that we needed to take him to St. Louis since the gash was so deep (you could see bone in the hole).  He was a champ getting sewn up, and they gave him Versed to calm him.  Calm him my ass.  Versed is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in pill format for a little child.  Tobie was a belligerent drunk for the next 24 hours or so.  At least we know he got that honestly (daddy cannot drink whiskey without becoming belligerent either).  It was cute in some ways, particularly when he tried to walk, but in others it was scary because you could tell the lights were on, but no one was home.   He spent the rest of the weekend in my lap.  

I was home when he decided to shave his lip off with a safety razor.  We were both in the bathroom and I was reading something on the screen of my phone.  Pretty normal activity for  early evening in our home.  Tobie sat on the edge of the tub to grab something, but I didn’t really see what since it was peripheral to what I was viewing.  In a second, Tobie said “daddy, look”  and I looked up at him.  I noticed that there what looked like blood on the razor, I said “watch out or you can really cut yourself with that, give it to me”  at that moment he burst into tears and I thought, hmm, how odd.  I looked at his face and it all fell into place, he had run it across his lip acting like he was shaving and was showing me how he did it, except he shaved a hole in his lip.  The blood came quickly and copiously.  Misty came and calmed him and we finally got the blood to stop flowing after about 15 minutes or so.  He fell asleep after that.

Today we are sweeping through the house and making sure we have it childproofed again.  We have never had a problem with the older two and this kind of stuff, but I guess Tobie is a little more curious than they are.

Blow Your Top

Are we about to witness the explosion of the YellowStone supervolcano?  If so, it will be a natural catastrophe unparalleled in our times.  Since last weekend there have been 235 earthquakes centered more or less in the same area of YellowStone.  The caldera, a rather large one at 34 miles by 45 miles, has been steadily rising in height at the alarming rate of three inches per year for the past 3 years.  This is more than 3 times the normal rate observed since measurements began being tracked in 1923.  The last time this supervolcano blew, about 640k years ago, the ash bed from the eruption extended as far south as Louisiana and well into the eastern Missouri area.

This type of volcano eruption COULD single-handedly kickstart a new ice age.

Welcome to 2009!

The Obligatory Application List

A lot of my friends and acquaintances are buying or have bought new Apple computers during the holiday season.  I have been hit with quite a few emails lately asking me what applications I use and/or recommend to others for use in OS X.  Instead of responding to each email individually, I decided to put together my latest favorites list and publish it here.  So, here are my favorite OS X applications, some are freeware but most are apps you need to pay for.  Almost all of the pay/shareware apps have a trial period where you can download and try them out for a while at no cost.

1)  Adium - In my opinion, the best multi-protocol chat client for OS X.  Handles AOL,  ICQ,  MobileMe (formerly .Mac), MSN, Jabber, Yahoo IM, Bonjour, MySpace IM, Lotus SameTime, Novell GroupWise, QQ and Gadu Gadu.  It is free!

2)  AppZapper – Best application removal tool for OS X I have used.  Will track down plist files and other supporting files owned by the application in addition to the application binary itself.  $12.95 with a free trial.

3)  BBEdit – The best text/HTML editor available for OS X.  Has some great features that I won’t go into here, but you can read about on the BareBones site.  A little pricey, but it has been around for a long time and has a rock solid feature set.  $125 with a free trial period.

4)  Coda – I have been slowly starting to use Coda in replacement of BBEdit because I like the idea of “one window web development”.  Pricewise it is a steal at $99 with a free trial period as well.

5)  MacFreelance – This is an invoice and billing software package for OS X.  It is the best one out there in my opinion and I compared them all.  The price is right at $39.99 and it also has a demo version.  I do all of my invoicing and billing with this software.

6)  MacTracker – This is a cool little application that tracks the history and detailed information about every Macintosh related product Apple has released since 1984.  It’s freeware.

7)  Onyx – A nice little system utility that ties together the features of several popular applications.  It is primarily for maintenance, optimization and personalization.  I use it to clean up caches and optimize my system.  Freeware.

8)  Parallels Desktop for Mac – This application is a virtual machine that allows you to run just about any version of Windows or any other operating system that can run on Intel based architecture (Solaris, Linux, etc…).  I use it to run a Windows XP Pro VM that I use for development purposes.  This is the only Windows machine I have  in my life at this point and it runs and performs just fine.  There are other options out there like VMWare’s Fusion product and Sun’s VirtualBox product.  I suggest doing a lot of research before you select a VM platform.  Parallels is $79.99 with a free trial period.

9)  Pixelmator – I am not a PhotoShop pro and I cannot justify paying for PhotoShop when I would use it so little.  Pixelmator is an image creation/editing tool for the rest of us.  It has all of the features I need and at a price I can justify and afford.  $59 and I think there was a trial period, but cannot remember.

10)  SpamSieve – Hands down the best spam filter for OS X that I have found.  It will work with Mail.app, Entourage, Eudora and many other mail clients.  It uses a training period and bayesian filtering to get rid of spam.  $30

11)  Transmit – The best FTP client I have found for OS X.  Again, looked at a lot of them, kept coming back to this one.  Nice clean interface and it just works.  $29.95 with a free trial demo.

12)  Versions – As a programmer/web developer, I found it necessary to provide version control of the code I am releasing.  I set up a SubVersion repository on my Mac, but quickly got tired of the command line interface.  Then, I found Versions.  It is by far the best Svn repository interface I have had the privilege of using on OS X so far.  Around $56 with a free demo period.

13)  Vienna – A free open source RSS/Atom newsreader for OS X.  ‘Nuff said about that.  Get it.

There are more apps I could add, but these tend to be the ones I use most frequently.  If you have any questions about these or other apps, please feel free to comment.

From The Mouths of Babes

I have it on good authority from my children that the following video is the funniest video in the entire world.