Pauls Rants & Revelations

Its quite sad. 10 years ago we seemed to be quite a decent country. But nowadays more and more news articles come out describing events and happenings that I would not have believed possible in this country.

Heres a quick list just from today:

• 1000 people issue a citizens arrest on Pres. Bush
• A high school girl has her wrist broken by a security guard for dropping cake
• Bush caught lying about 9/11 (with video)
• Chicago cops are investigated for 5000 incidents of abuse
• High school student suspended for wearing John Edwards tshirt.
• Religious group get $100k to improve science with creationism views

The headlines were enough to make me gag, but actually reading the articles made me rather revolted. I am not even sure, from reading the articles among other sources, what the hell is even going on in this country. All I can see is a lot of our countries allies are pissed and our enemies are laughing. Our citizens are angered and our politicians are deaf.

About the only good thing to come out of the news today s a rather good article from the Consumerist about how to properly write to congress and say your piece.

I think I’ll do just that now. Here is the Consumerist article if you are interested.

-Cheers

I just don’t understand racism. I mean, there are people I don’t like, even whole groups of folks; but it’s not because their genetic disposition for skin pigmentation (its mostly because their assholes, pure and simple).

I heard on the radio this morning that a white supremacy group is having a concert here in Portland in the next week or so. They wanted to raise money for something or other related to their misguided goals so they decided to have a concert in a city populated with a large grouping of gays, lesbians, blacks, Indians, and who knows how many other types of people.

They basically proved, before they even got stated, just how dumb they are. Perhaps if they had it in a venue that caters to their beliefs it would make more of a message for them, but their choice of location proves how blindly idiotic they really are.

But on the whole, I still am not understanding why people are racist. It’s not like there are great genetic differences between those of varied colors. As far as genes go, their skin is the only thing different so really are people who are racist also just as superficial? Probably. The facts certainly point to this conclusion.

The whole thing just gets under my skin (no pun intended) but I just can not think of an argument to convince these folks that color is not a bad thing. Maybe if I pointed out that Jesus was dark skinned it would open their eye (hey, he lived in the desert, so he at least had a heck of a tan on him) but they’ll probably just go on thrashing about to their crappy, loud music with 3 notes and no rhythm.

I almost feel sad for them. Almost.

-Cheers

OK. I’ll admit it. I have no solid idea about how the US great depression came about. I think I was sleeping in economics or history (or both) and missed that bit. Sad? Definitely. Which is probably what lead to the current problems this country now faces with its failing economy.

Not me specifically, mind you. But most of the country doesn’t seem to know what the problem is with the Canadian dollar surpassing the value of an American dollar. I certainly am not too aware of the implications. All I know is that everyone is saying that the next great depression is right around the corner, but no one is saying whats causing it. So I had to go and look up the cause myself.

The links below are just some info I have found related to the current economic shit storm we are now in the full swing of. If you find them helpful, or think one should be added to the list, let me know.

Cause of the Great Depression

Cause of Deflation – Here and Here

Current Economic Troubles – Here and Here

As usual, if anyone has any light to shed on this info, please let me know.

-Cheers

I just came across this story on digg about an etch-a-sketch artist. At first I was like “how good could it be?” until I actually got to the site.

http://etchasketchist.blogspot.com

The first one I saw was an image of Bioshock which was better than a lot of people could do with paper and pencil. I think extra kudos should be given to him just for doing it on the tiny travel etch-a-sketch.

My fav so far is The Puzzler just for the nifty background in it. Second is scene from Star Wars.

-Cheers

Ever wanted to know if you readers prefer pics of you in a red shirt or a blue one? Well, perhaps not, but there are some uses for surveys other than raggin on your latest fashion faux pau. Which brings me to my latest find.

I came across a site offering online surveys and web surveys and thought “this is cool”, so I am sharing it with you (don’t you feel special now).

Vovici offers products for surveys, communities, feedback, and a couple of other things, but the surveys were what interested me the most as I am trying to implement a survey system on a clients site. The service is pretty easy to use and they even have handy import features for Word docs and a killer tracking system so you can see what the haps is on your survey in an instant.

You can do a lot more stuff with it (the list of features is 2 pages long at least) so you can just check out Vovici on your own.

Remember them if you ever have a poll asking which hair color looks best, blue or pink. The survey will be easy; the responses you may get, however, may sting a bit.

-Cheers

You ever have those days where its not exactly like you are depressed all day, but you just don’t have the will to do anything at all? You get up and do your stuff, of course, but your heart just isn’t in it?

Its been like that all day today. Maybe it was the rain but its just been a mopey kind of day for me. I hope it clears up with some sleep though as I can’t face work like this.

Perhaps some food. Yea, some chili sounds good. That’ll perk me up ( as well as drive my wife out of the room; she hates chili).

-Cheers

We just got a 3 disc set from Target of the Duck Tales cartoon. It was just in a random place on the shelf and my wife and I were almost racing to grab it once we saw it.

From our youths, and the youths of most late-20 somethings, Duck Tales was quite an enjoyable show what with the antics Scrooge and the gang get into. That and Tailspin I think did more to keep me sane through elementary school than the child shrinks I sometimes made nervous.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it in your local general purpose mega store, you can check it out on Amazon. Also while I was searching, I found DVDs for Tailspin, Chip n Dales Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck. Now all I need is a couple hundred buck to buy them all and I’ll be reliving my childhood till doomsday.

Besides, watching these is infinitely better than watching most of the stuff on Cartoon Network or Disney nowadays. With the exception of Foster Home for Imaginary Friends, both those creative companies have gone to shit in the last few years. I mean, come on, who would watch a show called “My Gym Partners A Monkey”? Who would name a show that?

Do yourself a favor if you are fan of the great brand of animation we grew up with; go out, get the DVDs, and kill the cable. Don’t let you kids be exposed to such poor quality.

Oh, and you can get Fosters through iTunes. That one is good for anyone of any age to watch.

-Cheers

No, I’m not referring to the recent posts on data recovery I’ve written. This is more towards workload. It seems I have reached my limit as I have absolutely no more room in my brain to keep track of all the projects I have to do. Its a bit more stressful as my boss is out for a few days, but what the heck? Every trapeze flier likes going without a net now and again.

At least things are not behind (terribly) and I will pretty much have everything back on track by the time the boss gets back. I just felt like venting about it a bit.

And boss? If you are reading this everything is A OK!

-Cheers

In the current technological station of the standard office, you will find a great many things common to all offices everywhere in the world.

Phone, fax, computer, cells, all of these things are standard scenery in a modern office. It all boils down to communication. That is the prime thing, numero uno must have for any business. With out it, you are sitting in a room with nothing to do (and certainly not making any money).

So since communication is such an integral part of work, why choose to live in the past? Of course I am reffering to VoIP technology such as Skype and GoogleTalk. Well there is another company offering small business phone systems all run over the internet.

Packet 8 Internet Phone Service offers a whole wide range of products for just about every size business. My personal favorite (and one I would implement had I the need) would be the extensible IVR system so I could have callers help themselves versus me being on the phone all day. And at about $50 a month, it would be a real steal of a deal (ok, that sounded way too salesman-ish).

They have far too many services to list out here, so just check out their site to get more details. Who knows, perhaps an answer to your communication problem awaits.

Thank You. Push 7 to leave a comment.

-Cheers

OK. My wife and I are a little crazy about a game called Peggle. All you do is shoot balls down a peg board and just clear all the orange ones. Thats it. But we really have fun playing it (and the kids do as well).

If you don’t believe me just check out Popcap or Game House for the free trial. The first 3 levels are guaranteed to get you hooked.

Game House

Popcap

-Cheers