Just a heads-up,

If you're flying to or from Denver this spring, check out Southwest - if you purchase your ticket for January or February (or the first week of March) before 12/12/08, the tickets are half off!

I caught the Buffalo, NY 50% off sale and got $38 tickets each way from and to Denver.

Linky link.

Check it out here.

We just called to extend the warranty on our laptop. We have to call back later because HP's computers are down.

I wonder if they have warranties on their computers so they can get them fixed.

There are 700 foster children cleared for adoption in Colorado. There are 3,310 churches.

The Bible is crystal clear on God's heart for orphans, why are there any in Colorado? If every church in Colorado had 1 family that obey God's call to adoption of just 1 child, we would adopt all of Colorado's orphans, as well as all the free-for-adoption foster kids in New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska. [src]

If we were to really be following God's heart - and his commands about taking care of orphans, wouldn't we be adopting these children?

Are we engaged in corporate disobedience as a church?

In no particular order:

1. Aurora Borealis
   
   
2. Disney World
   
   
3. The Great Wall of China
   
   
4. Beaver Dams
   
5. The U.S. Constitution
   
   
6. The Himalayas
   
   

Israel and Palestine celebrated McCain's concession speech by breaking their peace-fire launching missiles at each other. [source]

San Fransisco has neither legalized prostitution nor re-named their state of the art water treatment facility the "George W Bush Sewage Plant."

At the time of this writing, 49% of California votes have been counted and it looks like they will get a narrow majority to amend the constitution to define marriage traditionally and require parental notification (though not permission) for abortion. A few other states are also amending their constitutions to retain the definition of marriage. [source, source]

The depressed and cloud covered Washington is approving doctor assisted suicide. [source]

Locally here in Colorado, we're still waiting on the rest of the votes to be counted about some of the very important ballot initiatives.

In response to an article posted by a friend on Facebook here.

Basically every argument comes down to abandoning our personal responsibility to follow God's commands, saying the government should do it so we don't have to. I think that's unbiblical. God is foremost concerned with how you live. Nationalizing or socializing every personal command from God and every principle of the Christian life just reveals what I think is a very ignorant understanding of the Bible.

1. "The environment is an important cause for me."
   
   In this election the Republicans are more environmentally friendly, wanting to try every possible option on how to protect the environment. Of course the Democrats have been spending years trying to make you afraid and tell you only they can cure the guilt and fear they've built up on you.
   
   
2. "The care of the poor is important to me too. Not because of my politics but because of the Bible. Caring for the poor is not an option for anyone who takes a serious reading of the Bible—it is a demand and even a test of whether I am really a Christian."
   
   Republican job creation helps the poor much more than the Democrat welfare-state.
   
   
3. "As for health care I believe deeply in some sort of a nationalized system that considers justice and compassion over the medical cartel’s profits. When a nation finds people beaten and bleeding by the road I think they can’t respond with, “Take responsibility for your own problems” or “Too bad—doesn’t your employer have insurance.” A real Good Samaritan pays the bill. So would a “Christian nation.” "
   
   It's the law in the United States that any ER or doctors office has to accept a needy patient. I've had individual health coverage that was cheaper than my employer paid insurance. We also have Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the old.
   
   "I find even many Democrats wrong on this issue too and hope we will bring a system something like that of Canada to this country.. I know all Americans say Canadians and Europeans hate their system but it simply isn’t true. I’ve met plenty who praise it..."
   
   Sure, the healthy ones. As a Canadian immigrant, I'm convinced my grandparents would have lived longer if they had the free market health care system. "I've met some Canadians who have never had serious medical needs and they like their health care" is not a valid argument. When Canadians are in serious medical condition, they come to the United States for treatment if they can afford it. A few years back the Canadian government experimented with a way to lower their cost of medical treatment for the homeless who got injured while hung-over... could the government save money by just keeping the homeless drunk until they died? The socialized health care puts a price tag on everyone's head. If your productivity to the economy does not outweigh the cost of your chemotherapy, it's just worthwhile to let you die. That's no "Christian" healthcare.
   
   
4. "I’m with the Democrats on feminism too—though most Republicans now pretend they’ve been there all the time. I think women should not be denied their rights because they are women."
   
   Name one Republican in elected office who thinks women should not have their civil rights? their voting rights? their legal rights? their rights to justice if they are being discriminated by their employer?
   
   When Democrats talk about women's rights, they usualy only mean abortion. That's not a virtue.
   
   
5. I’m with the Democrats on minimum wage too...But its not [mostly middle class] college kids I care most about—it is the poor workers that serve my hamburgers. They have no hope of making a living without college.
   
   There are plenty of wealthy Americans without a college education. Mechanics, plumbers, even computer programmers. Here's a fact: If 100% of working Americans had a college degree, someone will be serving hamburgers and will be poor. They'll just be poor with a college degree. We don't live in medieval Europe. Many of the wealthiest Americans are immigrants of the children of immigrants who came here poor and worked their way up through hard work.
   
   You want to adjust minimum wage for inflation, but minimum wage increases are the cause of inflation.
   
   
6. I oppose handguns and think they should be illegal for citizens to tote around. I see no reason why a Christian would want to promote the use of handguns—what possible good is it to let handguns proliferate? ... If God’s “will was done on earth as it is in heaven” there’d be no handguns.
   
   Remember there was a time when Jesus told his disciples it was ok for they to carry swords!
   
   You can be a good Christian and be against gun rights. You just can't be a good American. "what possible good is it to let handguns proliferate?" You're kidding right? Have you ever read the constitution? America with all it's freedoms would have never existed if the corrupt government rule were not overthrown, and that came down to using guns. We are allowed guns by the constitution to protect our inalienable God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit.
   
   
7. I generally favor increased taxation of citizens who are better off I can’t see how one would have any other position and be true to the Bible... I wish people did it personally. It is a nice idea. But, have you seen this happening much?
   
   Yes, but by-and-large only among Republicans your Democrats don't.
   
   If we did away with all taxes would you give your taxes to the poor?
   
   Yes. But again, really only among Republicans.
   
   Really?
   
   Yes. You must only hang out with Democrats who don't give money.
   
   Since churches are not taxed do you see the church giving generously to the poor?
   
   Yes.
   
   Really?
   
   Yes. What kind of church do you go to that doesn't help the poor? On top of the regular partnerships we have with inner city ministries we have special offerings for this, we give food to food banks, we tutor and volunteer in other ways at the inner-city outreaches. You really do none of this? Why? How do you get away with so abandoning the teachings of Christ?
   
   Jesus never taught me about what the government should do, he taught me about what I should do. My responsibility is to live as a follower of Christ, not to force other people to live as if their followers of Christ, forcing them to give my government their money so I can do with it as I see fit.
   
   
8. I do not believe the government should write school prayers—students should say their own prayers.
   
   Who argues that the government should write school prayers? The Democrats and their pals in the ACLU are trying to take away students rights to pray at all, even silently!
   
   
9. I think excessive nationalistic military spending is sinful for any nation...But war-making is sin—even if we have to do it...
   
   "Excessive" is completely relative, so it's hard to see any meaning in what you wrote.
   
   If war is necessary, how can it be sinful? You really believe that sometimes it's necessary to sin, to go against God's will? Was it sin to stop Hitler? Was it a sin for us to help the poor and oppressed who were being slaughtered?
   
   
10. I believe national self-interest is selfishness and thus sinful
    
    The Republican Bush has increased financial humanitarian aid to Africa with little or no national self-interest, and Democrats argue against it because of this.
    
    How can you say the Democrats are less self-interested? They never came close to the humanitarian aid that Bush has done, they don't care about the employment of the poor in other countries, they want to punish companies for giving jobs to the poor overseas. (Those would be the minimum wage jobs that you said don't help anyone in America.)
    
    
11. I believe that God wants capital punishment banished from the earth...I’d still be against it as a Biblical value even if we were killing all rich white men.
    
    I'm not sure why you think killing all the rich, or all the whites, or all men seems to be preferable to killing criminals.
    
    God himself instituted capital punishment in Genesis 9 as a law for all human descendants of the only survivors of the flood. If you're a human, this applies. (No, this wasn't a law just for the Israelites leaving Egypt. This was a law for all humans well before Abraham.)
    
    
12. Democrats often like centralized governments and weaker “states rights.” So do I. I can’t pin this one on my theology or the Bible
    
    Then it's completely irrelevant as to how a Christian could vote Democrat. You wrote that a constitutional argument was no good for arguing for the right to bear arms because it wasn't a Biblical argument, then you go on to make a series of non-Biblical arguments starting here.
    
    
13. On the size of government I reject the argument, “that the government which governs best governs least” ... But I can’t say this is due to my theology or the Bible either.
    
    Then it's completely irrelevant as to how a Christian could vote Democrat.
    
    
14. I believe the tobacco and alcohol industries should pay restitution for their evils... Since I can’t make them illegal in this country I’d like to regulate them out of existence.
    
    You believe the role the government is to punish behavior that you see as "evil" even if you can't argue that it should be illegal? I don't think the role of the government is to be moral police. If something is truly evil, it should be illegal. I think it's an abuse of power to tell someone that something is legal, then when they do it to punish them "out of existence."
    
    
15. I believe corporations who have paid less and less of the tax burden over the last three decades should pay far more until they are paying their fair share. Yes, I know that merely “raises the price of the product” to the consumers. But buying their product is my choice so I don’t need to buy it if I don’t want to...
    
    Logically, if you increase taxes on all corporations, the prices of all goods will go up. How can you have a choice to not buy if you "don't want to" - most of us aren't in a place where we can go without buying anything if that's our choice.
    
    
16. I think we ought to have more strict emissions standards because we should be stewards of the air God has given us.
    
    I think the Republican candidate agrees with you on this.
    
    
17. I think we need strong OSHA rules because the rich are bound by God to care for their workers.
    
    This is a really minor issue I'm not sure it's worth addressing. I haven't heard anyone arguing to get rid of OSHA, least of all among the candidates up for election right now. If your employer doesn't provide a safe environment, they'll lose employees and will have to fix the situation to stay in business.
    
    
18. "I think we need massive initiatives in education because the Bible calls us to bring up the next generation. I’d even be satisfied if we’d put 10% of the money we’ve been squandering in Iraq...into grants for college students. And, another 10% into public elementary and secondary education. Where’d we get the idea that a Christian should be for low taxes and against education?"
    
    I've never heard anyone arguing against education. Ever. (With the exception of Pink Floyd.) The debate is about government monopolized education, where only the rich like Obama can afford private schooling. It's a matter of social justice to allow everyone right to choice in education, and the Democrats are opposed to equal rights for education.
    
    We're squandering money in Iraq, but we're not squandering money on education? The United States spends more per student on public school education than any other country in the world, yet our test scores are not improving (per CNN here). This isn't a matter of funding. It's a matter of poorly run schools.
    

So... how could a Christian vote Democrat?

By not understanding the Bible, and not thinking critically.

Slingbox Pro HD:

Pro:

• Digital cable tuner: this means HD digital channels can be streamed to 1 remote viewer while I watch different channels on a tv at home.
  
• Tech Support: Very responsive and helpful tech support over chat. They can also remotely connect to control your computer and see what the problem is. They didn't always get the problem right, and tried to say I had to do something and contact them again later. But I argued each time and they helped.
• Quality: Because it's got the digital tuner, HD channels are streamed within my home network at what looks like DVD quality.
  

Cons:

• There's frequently missed frames or entire seconds of a show, so watching the news I've missed some key words and phrases, so the news story doesn't always make sense.
• Only 1 person can connect at a time, whether at home or across the great waters.
• The Program Guide doesn't work with digital cable, and the channel numbers are screwed up. On the TV I have channels like 2,3,4,9,50, etc. In slingplayer I have channels like .247, 9.1, 50.1 and 50.2. No clue what each station is unless I change channels, no clue what is on each channel. They say they're working on it. I wouldn't bet on it.
• The remote control is lousy. Because they don't utilize the information about my service, they give me a stupid remote that I can use to press channel up and down.
  
• Changing channels takes about 5 seconds.
• Slinglinks (ethernet power adapter) don't work well. I have to use an outlet on the other side of the room and lay out an extension cord to get it to work.
  

Hava Wireless HD:

Pros:

• Multiple people can watch at one time.
• You can record live tv.
  

Cons:

• Tuner is only good for analog cable, not digital, so our HD channels can't be controlled by Hava, so no HD unless you want to let Hava control your cable box, which would mean you have to watch the same thing on tv as is being broadcast over Hava
• Lousy lousy lousy tech support. No chat option, you have to call and talk to someone who speaks softly and with a very strong Indian accent. They'll say something like you need to hardwire your computer to the router instead of using wireless, and they won't help you until you do that. With a desktop on a different floor from the router this isn't going to happen. Nor was it even possibly related to the problem of Windows Media Center freezing.
• Windows Media Center freezes or says I have no tv signal.

For me slingbox wins. There's no tv guide but I can watch and control the digital cable through the slingbox. If I didn't mind having to watch the same thing on the tv as on the slingbox this wouldn't be a problem, but it's a deal breaker.

For now I'm willing to live with having no channel guide. I can watch the channels in HD, and I'll just have to type up a list of what channel is what.

In my previous post, Hava and Slingbox were tied with the following:

• nice packaging
• easy set-up instructions that don't work
• mysteriously start and stop working
  
• lousy customer service

I've got both up and running now, and I've been able to view both.

hava:

Hava is connected wirelessly to my router, and I can view the tv and control the channels on both computers (laptop and desktop both running Vista). Unfortunately, there's no channel list and no program guide.

Luckily, hava is built to work on Windows Media Center. I got this working one time, and it actually loaded a program guide so I could scroll and click and it would change the channel to whatever program I saw was on at that time.

But that was once. Since then, neither computer's Windows Media Center (WMC) can view it. WMC just freezes on the laptop, and says there's no tv tuner on the desktop. So for now, I can't tell what channel is what or what is on each station without changing to every channel.

Summary: works in hava player but not windows media center, so there's no program guide or channel identification (where's the discovery channel - do I really have to flip through 100 channels to find it?)

slingbox:

I had the slingbox working when I had an ethernet cable stretched down the stairs and around the corner to the router. Now I'm uisng the slinglinks with no luck. Slinklinks are ethernet power adapters - one plugs into the router, the other into the slingbox, and they send the internet signal over the power line.

The "power," "link," and "network" lights were all lit on both slinglinks, but there was no connection. I tried a different outlet, then a third. I know it's working because:

1. I can connect to the internet with my laptop through the slinglink
2. I can connect to the internet with hava through the slinglink
3. The slingbox connects when I open the slingplayer on windows.
   

After it connects, however, no channel list is loaded into the program guide, and the screen is blank except for the message: "Weak or no video signal detected"

Summary: Can work, I've seen it work, but not working now.

Slingbox and Hava both connect to your television service and your internet so you can watch your tv service on a computer at home or around the world.

There was very little information online comparing the two - the last comparative review I read was from over 2 years ago.

So I ordered both so I could compare them.

They were both delivered yesterday and they have the following in common:

• nice packaging
• easy set-up instructions that don't work
• mysteriously start and stop working
  
• lousy customer service

I'm going to try to get them working again today, I'll let you know what I find out.

From the official voter guide in favor of raising property taxes again for more and more money for the Jefferson County, Colorado schools:

This tax increase furthers the goals of our teacher unions. It is consistent with a presidential candidate's promise for change, and hope for progress toward the Socialist utopia through education.

Really?

Please don't vote for 3-A.

It's soooo much fun to blame the President for mortgage companies failing. Yippee!

But what really caused this mess?

People got scared because the Indymac bank failed, so lots of people stated taking their money from their banks. The bank failures go back to Indymac. What caused Indymac to fail?

Democrat Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer.





In a public letter to the FDIC, for everyone to read, he said that Indymac was about to fail. It wasn't. But his public letter scared Indymac customers and investors. There was a run on the bank. Everywone withdrew their money so fast, the value of the bank plummeted.

That's what led to the banks failing. A Democrat senator.

Bad news for the economy is good news for 2 other Democrat senators, Obama and Biden. The worse the economy is, the better chance they have of winning the election. Uh-oh. Now there's a bail-out package. Things might get better. The stock market has stabilized.

So what happens?

Another Democrat Senator, this time Harry Reid, said that one of the country's premier insurance companies was about to go bankrupt [source].

He wouldn't say what company, so tocks of all insurance companies started to plummet.

Democrat Senators are intent on destroying the economy, ruining your investments, and taking away people's life savings to win the election. yay obama.

Dear Programmer,

Thank you for using our service.

I was able to find the answer to your programming question in a matter of seconds via our new online Solution Center.

We have granted you access to this new Solution Center for your convenience so you don't need to email us several times every day with these questions.

You can find this Solution Center at http://www.google.com

Thank you.

Look! I can do it too. I think my wife is smart and pretty. She's Prart! Woohoo! I coined a new word! Look at me!

What people mean by their new terminology is something that everybody already knew and understood how to communicate. Why create new words when everyone already has words to say what you mean?

Possible answers:

• because you don't know how to use the English language to express yourself
• because you want others to think you're cool for being brave enough to combine two words into one

No offense to the guy who recently took great pride in telling others he created the world 'glocal' to mean both global and local, but I just think coining words like this is dumb - at least if you tell other people about them.

Then again, you're not just telling, but also sharing. More of a 'Tearing' if you will. And it's not just..

This is in response to Don Miller's blog post and the comments it has received today here, in which he asserts that the 'culture war' our parents scared us about doesn't really exist, it's just a fabrication of the media. 'Culture war', Miller says, goes back to the basic meaning of 'war' - to kill.

It's deceptively simplistic to try to boil this all down to a straight metaphor of 'war' - killing, peace negotiations, the analogy doesn't fit. 'War' is used in all kinds of ways that don't fit with Don's definition of killing (until complete annihilation or surrender) like the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on crime' and the 'war on poverty' - no one is suggesting (I hope) that we kill all the poor people until the problem is solved.

In this discussion of 'culture wars', we've left culture undefined. This all seems to be an attempt to say "there can't be a culture war because there is no mass killing going on."

"Culture" does not mean politics, nor political parties, nor sets of laws.

A culture is like an ogre - or an onion. It has layers. Three of the most important from inside out are 1) shared beliefs that lead to 2) shared values that lead to 3) common behavior. We (as a group) behave in certain ways because of what we (as a group) value, which flows out of what we (as a group) believe. We often get so caught up in behavior we never ask what values are behind the behavior, and what our values reveal about our even deeper beliefs. For example:

An example (click on my name for my full example):

1) Belief: That people have a Creator (see footnote).
2) Value: Human rights not endowed by a government, but by God, superior to any government
3) Behavior: We fight for human rights (often even outside our own borders)

or

1) Belief: God created perfect humanity in a man and a woman and blessed their union.
2) Value: Marriage (and the subsequent family) is important and foundational to society.
3) Behavior: We have a special term (marriage), a ceremony, official recognition, and even rewards and incentives for marriage.

Under attack? All of the above.

There are many in significant positions of power and influence (the leaders of political parties, university professors, politicians) who are trying to rid the American culture of all of the above shared beliefs, values, and behaviors. Once they aren't shared anymore, the culture has changed, and only fringe groups share these beliefs.

True, Jesus didn't get involved in politics. He wasn't here be to a community organizer or a senator or a governor. He was here to die.

Paul, on the other hand, went to Rome to appeal to Ceaser to make Christianity a politically acceptable alternative religion. Judaism was legal, but now that non-Jews were becoming Christians, they were breaking the law, and Paul set out to change that on a political level.

Early Christians by their lives changed culture by saving lives of babies born alive and left outside city gates to die, and adopting them. Christianity has always brought about changes in culture, where some shared beliefs and values and behaviors die and others take their place. That's why cultures influenced most heavily by Christianity have some shared cultural values, even if the religious beliefs aren't there - values on human rights, and helping the sick and poor and orphans. Because of Christianity's influence, despite saying that we believe that we're all just random lumps of chaotic chance - the belief that humans are unique and valuable is still (for now) deeper and stronger (see the same footnote).

I think those of us who deny the existence of a war over the culture, while sounding cool and progressive, don't understand what 'culture' means, or we choose to ignore what 'culture' means and talk about political bickering instead.

Other short thoughts:

- When we change from one thing to another, whether political perspectives, religious affiliations, etc., we tend to become extremely critical of where we came from and very uncritical of where we are now.

- No media has ever been without bias, nor should we expect them to. We should use our brains and the discernment that God gave us and think critically. It's foolish to think you get unbiased news. They can only keep doing what they're doing if they keep their viewership/readership, so they make everything extreme, from vilifying the current president to only covering Iraq when it's bloody, to highlighting the stupid things that current candidates say. This holds true for tv, radio, and yes - even blogs.


Oooh, that footnote:
At some point we'll change our values and behavior because we no longer hold to the belief that God created humans unique. At that point human rights will suffer, and it won't just be those on the fringe of our culture who believe that two chickens are more valuable than one human.

Jott is a web service I've blogged on before. It provided free speech-to-text messaging and it would email you the message.

Instead of charging for new features as they come available, they've now declared that everyone using their services for the last few years have just been on a really long grace period, and now you have to pay or they'll severely limit what you can do.

Lots of companies do this - they try to get you hooked, telling you everything is 100% free, then their shareholders force the move that says "and now that you're using us, we'll disconnect you next week unless you pay us money."

Rather than doing this, why not just introduce amazing new features that are only available to paying customers? Don't take away what you said would be free, just offer new stuff that is valuable enough for me to want to pay.

Doing it this way just makes you look deceptive and stingy.

The high school student ministries we work with has a cafe for a few hours before events start on Wednesdays. We needed more varied music. Thanks to a discounted Creative Zen shuffle-equivalent and Spiral Frog, we're set.

• Creative Zen Stone (equivalent to an iPod shuffle) = $27
• 352 Songs from SpiralFrog = Free

To do this with an iPod it would have cost about $421 ( $69 for the iPod and $1 per song).

Spiralfrog is a subscription service, so it won't work on your iPod. Like other subscription services, your music expires in 30 days unless you renew. Luckily, the SpiralFrog website is ad-supported and the subscription is free. Not every artist I was looking for was there, but I've got 23 hours of music we'll be able to shuffle for quite some time.

Winning the lottery is contributing to and profiting from this system that manipulates people's weaknesses to their severe detriment. The same holds for casinos. They work to get people addicted to gambling, then they use that to rob the people blind.

But is all gambling/betting wrong?

If I invest in Google because I want them to use my money to build a better company, and get me a return on my money - that's not gambling. But if I invest in Google to buy-low-sell-high, then I am gambling on the market. Then I don't care what they do with my money, I just want to gamble on the market and pull some money out.

That's what happens with my IRA and your 401k every day.

What brought this up is the future markets at intrade.com . You can buy (you want shares to go up) or sell (you want shares to go down) on possibilities for the future. Today I could sell you a share of "Obama wins the election" for $6, and if he wins the election, you get $10 - a profit of $4 per share from me, or if he loses, I keep the $6 you paid me to buy the share. You can sell your shares at any time to try to make money or cut your losses.

Is that gambling? Seems to be. Is that wrong?

If it is wrong, doesn't that means it's wrong to have a retirement account that works the same way by trading stocks to try to make a profit?

Let me know what you think (comment form).

My previous post on Donald Miller was pretty negative. I wasn't trying to confront Miller, but the statement "Jesus is not a republican."

Donald Miller posted a very very funny series of emails between him and Barak Hussein Obama.

http://donmilleris.com/2008/08/27/donald-miller-barack-obama/

John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate on Friday in a startling selection on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Two senior campaign officials disclosed McCain's decision a few hours before the Republican presidential nominee-to-be and his newly-minted running mate appeared at a rally in swing-state Ohio. [Associated Presss]

Some facts from today's news about Palin:

• She and her husband have 5 children, the youngest of which is just 4 months old and has Down's Syndrome.
• She's tough - She returned to the office three days after giving birth.
• Her oldest son is 18, in the army, and is scheduled to go to Iraq this September.
  
• She is known for exposing corruption among other Republicans.
• She played basketball in high school so intensely she earned the nick name "Sarah Barracuda"
• Scholarships from winning beauty pageants got her through college.
• She used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska (but says she didn't like it)
• She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.

Politics:

• City Council from 1992 to 1996
• Became Mayor in 1996 , where "Palin kept her campaign promises, reducing her own salary, as well as reducing property taxes by 60%."
• Became Alaska's youngest and first female Governor in 2006, and in 2007 had an approval rating above 90%
• She sold the previous Governor's jet on eBay (it was seen as a waste of tax dollars, as it was a private jet purchased with state funds).
• She's 3 years younger than Obama but has more experience in the government, and as the Governer of Alaska, has served as an executive, which BHO never has.

I'm watching CSPAN online right now in Denver's Invesco Field where the Obama will speak tonight. His stage setup, built by the company that brought you Brittany Spears' latest set.

It's a greek temple.

I may watch Obama's speech tonight, but I feel under-dressed. I'm trying to make a toga now so I can join the toga party from home.

Oh brother. Al Gore is getting on stage right now as I write this. Well, let's see if he can scare and guilt America even more tonight.

It's a brilliant set up really. Here's some snapshots I just grabbed from CSPAN. Depending the the camera angle the speaker looks like he's either:

• In front of a Greek temple
  
  
• Outside a building in Washington DC
  
  
• Preaching at the altar of a megachurch
  

Watch CSPAN live here.

I have really enjoyed Donald Miller's writings. I've read 3 or his books (Blue Like Jazz is the most popular).

Don Miller spoke at the DNC. Well, ok, he wasn't a featured speaker, but he spoke the closing prayer on Monday night.

Now, if you're giving a chance to pray on live tv in front of millions of people, you'll probably take it. So this isn't a criticism of the guy praying at the DNC. His prayer (see the video below) was fine. Quite good a political correctness for the most part. And it got me thinking.

Miller was one of the many people who repeated this concept or maybe the very phrase that still seems catchy because it was too large to print onto one of those WWJD bracelets:

Jesus is not a Republican.

Jesus also is not a donor to Feed the Children. Jesus isn't an iPod user. The statement is such a anachronism.

Perhaps your point is that Jesus isn't "just like me" or "just like you" - but then why bring in politics?

Are you trying to say that just because a politician or policy is from the Republican party that doesn't mean he/she/it is good? Then you should say something worthwhile about the politician or policy.

If you're declaring who is and who isn't endorsed by the Messiah, you're presuming that you have been commissioned by Jesus to declare his political will to the world, which is just the attitude you're trying to confront!

I'm beginning to think the statement doesn't have any meaning at all.

Unless, of course, you're trying to say Jesus is a Democrat, or a Libertarian, or a Communist. But... Jesus isn't a Democrat, Libertarian or Communist. He's not even registered to vote.

If you want to be like Jesus you need to stop voting. And wear sandals. And stop using toilet paper.

"Obama is one of those rare political figures that seems to grow smaller the closer we get to him" - Some guy I heard on the radio the other day

I wrote some time ago that normally each candidate will receive two bounces in the polls that are almost guaranteed:

1. Choosing a vice presidential candidate
2. Having their party's convention, officially accepting the nomination.
   

Somehow, Obama chose a VP that got him no bounce at all. In fact, in the days since choosing his VP, he's dropped in the polls, and McCain has taken the lead on the Gallup Poll for the first time!

Here's a chart showing the history of the Gallop poll from 8/3/08 to today.




Theories:

• In Joe Biden, Obama picked the Democrat who shares certain characteristics the most with John McCain, after spending his campaign criticizing these characteristics in McCain. He's not going to win any McCain supporters, and will lose some of his own voters.
• The more we get to know Obama, the less likely we are to vote for him.
  
• McCain's continual advertising is being successful. He's got a few types of ads that are making the news:

1. Obama isn't a leader, he only has rock-star popularity.
2. While Hillary got more votes, Obama and the DNC made sure she was locked out of the race.
3. Obama's influences are nearly all negative: Slum lords, unrepentant terrorists, hate-America preachers, etc.

What about issues? What about talking about positions on what is important? It's difficult to do with Obama insists on holding multiple opposing views at the same time.

Obama is against and for:

• offshore drilling
• faith-based funding
• withdrawing all troops from Iraq
• and the list goes on

Obama has been announcing and delaying his Vice Presidential pick like he's about to reveal the mystery band at this summer's concert.

In his movement for change he's chosen another congressman who's been in Washington for decades, Joe Biden. McCain's campaign was ready, and released an ad within hours showing Biden himself criticizing Obama and saying McCain would be good for the country. A few facts about Biden:

• Elected to congress when he was 29. He won by less than 4,000 votes. That was 36 years ago. Biden is the ultimate Washington insider.
• As a senator, he voted for the invasion of Iraq. (Obama had an opinion, but he didn't have the intellegence to back up that opinion - I mean the information from the US intellegence agencies)
  
• Biden ran for President 20 years ago (twenty!), but lost his chances after he plagiarised a speech. (Luckily, Obama's repeated plagiarism hasn't been a problem for him.) [here's one video showing one time BHO plagiarised]
• He said he'd be honored to run with or against McCain. Prediction: As the VP pick for Barak, you'll wonder how this attack dog said he'd be honored to run with McCain.
• He's strong with experience and foreign policy.
• He won the election by higher percentages in the vote until 1996. Since then it's declined. (50%,58%,60%,63%,60%,58%)
  

Barak Hussein Obama's choice is an admission that experience and foreign policy are his weak points.

I find it interesting that Obama picked another Senator with no executive experience in business or politics. Neither of them has had to be the decision maker. Picking a governor, a mayor of New York city, or a business executive would have been showing that he and the people ... behind him think that executive experience is important. I have to wonder if they see a difference between the Legislative and Executive branches of US government.

After all the criticism that Bush has received from the Left, that he was inexperienced and didn't know about foreign policy so Cheney must have been pulling the strings... Hasn't Obama's campaign put him in the same place. Isn't it beginning to look like Obama may be 4 more years of Bush?

Here's the McCain ad released hours after the announcement.

Russia, Georgia, and Gas Prices
Gas prices have been dropping because oil prices are based on speculation:

• Bush lifted the Presidential ban on offshore domestic drilling.
• Republicans in the House were fighting for lifting the parallel congressional ban, despite a Democrat-ordered media blackout.
• Iraq is opening up their oil fields for the first time in decades, which should increase daily oil supply.
• American gas consumption is down.

However, Russia makes lots of money by selling oil. When oil prices drop, Russia makes less money. So Russia invades Georgia (a country that was formerly part of the USSR), and now controls an oil pipeline that runs through Georgia. They're not pulling out. They're threatening the oil supply to make prices rise.

Given Russia is apparently planning a war against Western Europe. After the invasion of Georgia, Poland accepted the US Missile Defense Shield, which contains missiles without warheads that just intercept attacking missiles. Russia's response was to declare that by doing this Poland is now a target of Russian nuclear bombs by aligning with the West.

So we finally saved up to by a new (but cheap) flat-top stove. They're delivering it first thing Friday morning.

At 10:30pm Thursday I put a post on Craig's List that someone could pick up our old but working stove for free. We figured that instead of letting the delivery guys take it and sell it for parts we could serve some 'neighbor'* by giving away our stove to someone who needs it (or even if they want to sell it for parts as a small business).

It's now 11:20 and I've exchanged 4 emails with someone who will be picking it up tomorrow.

Love Craig's List! We gave away our old (but working) fridge and stove. I've also found several contracts and my current job on Craig's List.


* I still think neighbor should be spelled neighbour.

2008 colder than last 5 years
Global cooling is becoming more and more visible as global temperatures drop. This winter is projected to be extra cold. Proponents of the Hysteria of Global Warming say this is no indication that warming isn't happening.

Global warming = rising temperatures. But somehow "rising temperatures" is true, even if temperatures are dropping. Why are we expected to suspend common sense and basic logic for this? Doesn't this smack of propaganda?

McCain pulling ahead in the polls
There are lots of polls, and they ask different questions to different people and get different results. For example, when all registered voters are included, Obama is more likely to lead. But when people who are actually likely to vote, McCain is stronger. Obama's been ahead in almost every poll. One by one the polls are starting to show McCain with the national lead. If we see Obama behind, we'll quickly see him turn negative. [source]

Obama unveils Marxist class envy

Obama's latest ad says you should vote against McCain because he owns more property than you. Because... we want someone who has proven they cannot manage money? By the time I'm McCain's age, I'd love to be able to invest in Real Estate. Wouldn't you? Besides, Obama is no pauper.

Ok, a break from politics:

Pandora, our favorite free online radio, going under
The Copyright Review Board hiked royalties and is going to hike them again. Even though Pandora is projected to make $25 million in the next year, 70% of that will have to pay for royalties, which doesn't leave enough money to keep the services running. The Copyright Review Board seems to want to kill Internet radio.

I think this will just push it underground - Napster became more and more illegal because the copyright folks kept trying to shut it down, rather than trying to compromise. Now they've compromised and Napster and lots of other companies are legal. Why not try to compromise? People tend to be greedy and power-hungry. [source]

T-Mobile Android phone out this year
Android, Google's cell-phone Operating System (OS), is an Open-Source platform that should allow for cheaper and better cell-phones. The first one to come out in the US is going to be the HTC Dream phone (that's the hardware) with a full touch-screen and a slide-out keyboard, with T-Mobile later this year. Will I get it? I like the idea of a touch screen and a full keyboard, but this is the first phone (so subsequent phones will be better) and I'm already spoiled with a Blackberry. [source]

Obama a victim again
Sorry, back to some political news: Obama and McCain answered, separately (Obama still refuses to share a stage with McCain) answered the same questions from Rick Warren, pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life.

Obama gave long 'broader perspective' responses rather than direct answers, avoiding too many specifics and answering in big-picture, lets-work-together-regardless-of-what-we-believe (but I'm not telling you what I believe). McCain answered the questions directly and bluntly, in his straight-talk-express and let-me-tell-you-about-me-in-Vietnam style.

The Obama campaign said McCain did better, so he must have cheated and listed to the questions, calling McCain, his staff, and the secret service with them liars. But really? Just because you didn't get your way it means someone must have cheated? Obama said to Warren on live TV during the event that he "cheated" on the orphans issue and looked up information about it online. Obviously they were briefed as to the scope of the questions beforehand.

Obama's most embarrassing response was to the question of when human rights are applied and how that relates to abortion, and he said "that's above my pay grade." (Contrast that with McCain's response: "At the moment of conception.")

Really? You fumbed on the life & abortion issue - you've never been asked that before? You've never thought that through? Why do you have to claim to be a victim again? If you keep crying 'wolf' we won't believe you if the other side does cheat. [source]

If you missed it, here's a video that put together Obama and McCain's responses to the question. Please excuse the end where the person who created the video does annoying edits on Obama's response. Just stop the video after McCain is done.

A question from a reader:
Moveon.org - What do you know about it? -- Jen

First, a note: there is now an organized effort by pro-Obama groups (my guess is moveon.org) to silence disagreement, they scour the web and report blogs they disagree with as 'spam' or 'inappropriate' which results in all the anti-movon or anti-Obama blogs beings shut down automatically by google's system. So this blog may go off-line for a while soon as a result of this post.

Moveon.org is a liberal political organization. The name came when a few individuals did not want Clinton impeached for purgery under oath before the Supreme Court, and wanted to "move on."

George Soros (a multi-billionaire) and others now control moveon.org, and put millions and millions of dollars into it. Soros has given $5 Billion to the "Open Society Institute" which passes his money on to moveon.org and other even more radical organizations. Moveon only supports liberals and only attacks moderates and conservatives, but is a "non-partisan" group, thus able to collect unlimited funds and exhert unlimited influence on politicians. This is only possible through laws that passed due to Soros' lobbies.

When the democrat party got into trouble over the last few elections, moveon.org was there to bail them out with money and compaigning efforts. Moveon was more liberal than the democratic party at the time. But, with more money than the DNC, they essentially bought out the entire party. One democrat refused to move further to the left and survived, Joe Lieberman, who ran with Gore as the Democrat's VP candidate. He used to represent their values so much they wanted him to be the second most powerful person in the country. He hasn't changed. The Democrat party has.

When Lieberman was up for re-election, moveon and the DNC put millions of dollars into defeating Lieberman in the democrat primary for his senate seat. Yup, they turned on their own, because he refused to change his views under pressure to become more left, more socialist. This was the threat moveon (and thus the DNC) apparently put up against any democrat who didn't do what they told them to do. Today most Democrats on the national scene do what they're told resulting in very little disagreement and critical thinking among them. Just look at the news headlines, and what Obama, Pelosi, and others are saying - always exactly the same thing at the same time.

Lieberman lost the democrat primary but he won in the general election anyway, running as an "Independent Democrat."

The Democratic party now has very little in common with their historical hero JFK. JFK didn't promote Marx's and Obama's idea that government should be the solution to meet all of our needs: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Midway through his presidential term, JFK proposed a sweeping across-the-board tax cut. He also stood very strongly against cooperating with communist countries. Compare this to Obama's willingness to sit down and talk 'with no preconditions' with Americas greatest enemies.

Many consider the DNC to be a "wholly-owned subsidiary of moveon.org." This would essentially mean that half of the nations political force is run by George Soros, it's chief financial backer, who has set his life's goal to ruin elected officials who disagree with him "by any legal means necessary." Legal? He's also given over $10 million to two groups created to commit voter fraud, and also funds groups working toward a one-world government.

Is the democrat party wholly-owned by Soros?

Take as an example, moveon's full page ad when General Petraeus tetified before congress calling him "General Betray Us." It was hard to find a single Democrat who would criticize the ad, or anything that moveon.org has done. Hillary Clinton has said she lots due to Soros' organizations harassing her supporters so Obama would win, but she only said it at a private fund raiser.

Then again, would you criticise the group that keeps you in office, calls those it disagrees with traitors, and turns on its own who won't comply to try to force them out of politics?

Some argue that moveon.org isn't really that crazy. Perhaps not, but it's just one of many organizations that do Soros' bidding, leaving voter fraud and other illegal activities other organizations funded by him and his buddies.

A few links that document some of these facts:
http://www.thevanguard.org/thevanguard/columns/031128.shtml
http://ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275181103776079

Hillary?
Hillary never actually dropped out of the race for president. Nor did Obama get enough votes and delegates to lock in the nomination. The Democrat leaders have appointed themselves "super delegates" so if they disagree with the voters in the primary they can elect whoever they want, and outpower the voters. Enough "super delegates" said they'd vote for Obama, it didn't matter that Clinton won the popular vote.

So she "suspends" her campaign and endorses BHO (not HBO, Barak Hussein Obama). Lots of her supporters are understandably upset and plan on voting for McCain. Hillary's people and Barak's people worked out a deal yesterday.

Hillary will speak on Tuesday night of the convention. Bill Clinton will speak on Wednesday night of the convention. Hillary's name will be placed in officially as a nominee. My guess? The Clintons
(or people they officially don't know) leaks some incredibly negative news story to the media the day before Hillary speaks. Hillary appears extremely presidential in her speech, but defends Barak against the media's attack, and when the vote is taken at the convention, more people actually vote for Hillary and while she appears humble, her people are working behind the scenes to get the nomination, and kick Barak Obama out, maybe offering him the VP slot.

Colorado
Yesterday McCain took the lead in Colorado over Obama for the first time.

Future Poll Numbers
Barak will soon have a more significant lead over McCain because

• He'll get a boost from the Democrat's convention later this month.
• He'll get a boost from chosing his VP

But then McCain will have his convention and pick his VP, so he'll get a boost a few weeks after Obama, so going into the election it will likely all even out.

McCain (R) and Lieberman (D)?
A great article at Rasmussen mentions that McCain "is what Obama symbolizes – a person who rises above party, confronts the special interests, and wants to change the way Washington works. " Obama has never risen above politics, and never accomplished anything while in office, other than running for the Democrat's nomination. But McCain has no charisma, people don't see that so easily. In the senate, McCain has often worked with Joe Lieberman, the Democrat who ran as the Democrat VP with Al Gore.

Now it looks like Lieberman may be McCain's VP pick. If so, it will be the first cross-party ticket since Abraham Lincoln!

Olympics
One of the results of believing that the government can and should be the answer to all problems (like Obama), is that it can get to the point of the government cheating to preserve their image. China has been doing this a lot lately.

• The fireworks outside the stadium (out of sight) for the opening ceremony were computer-generated videos broadcast as live video.
• The little girl who "sang" the anthem was just lip-syncing. Another little girl sang, but she couldn't be seen because her teeth weren't straight, so they lied and presented a "perfect" but fake image.
• Their gymnastics winners are actually under-age. The Chinese government issued them new passports to say they were old enough.
  
  Here's a video from the onion about this.
  

For all of you my friends who aren't news junkies, and don't want to hear about politics, here's a daily update:

• Nancy Pelosi from San Fansisco (right) is the Democrat leader of the House of Representatives in DC. She dismissed the House for a 5 week vacation on 7/31/08 so she could go market her new book.
  
  Meanwhile, House Republicans stayed in DC to protest the vacation and demand Pelosi return the House from vacation to vote on the comprehensive energy bill which allows for offshore drilling so we can drill for oil in our ocean-spaces.
  
  Pelosi, as the Speaker of the House, ordered the lights turned off, the microphones disconnected, and CSPAN and all other video cameras off, but they're still there, refusing to leave until the energy bill gets voted on.
  
  
• Barak Obama went on his world tour and was even scheduled to visit wounded American soldiers in a Hospital in Germany. He cancelled that stop when he was told he wouldn't be able to have the film crews take video footage for campaign commercials.
  
  
• John McCain has come out with a strong condemnation of Russia's attack on Georgia (the country, not the southern state). So strong of a condemnation, that he upstaged the Bush administration in addition to the vacationing Obama. Yes, Obama is on a week-long vacation in Hawaii
  
  
• Gas prices are down. Oil prices are decided by speculators, who buy and sell future estimates on oil prices (just think of it as a stock market on "futures," future estimates of things). When it looks like there will be higher supply or lower demand in the future, prices drop. When it looks like there will be lower supply or higher demand, prices rise. Reasons for the price drop:
  
  • At $4/gallon some of us drive less, and the poorest of us now can't drive at all to go to work or buy groceries, so we use less gas
  • With oil prices so high, it became worth it to start exploring and drilling for oil in parts of the world where it had previously been too expensive.
  • Bush removed the presidential ban on US offshore drilling.
  • The House Republicans are fighting to remove the parallel congressional ban. If that gets lifted, oil futures will drop immediately on the prospect of adding new oil resources to the market.
    
    
• McCain and Obama are virtually tied in the polls. Obama has had a 3-point average lead, but there's reasons that this may be a false lead that I'll get into another day.
  

It's incredibly simple to allow visitors to comment on your news stories. Some popular stories have tens of thousands of comments from visitors. So why don't all news sites allow comments?

Web comments and talk radio alike introduce this problem to the media. You can only sell your spin if shut down the readers' right to react.

This is only a problem, of course, when your motivation isn't to spur thought and discussion, but to push your agenda on your readers.

Take today's CBS article on Energy Policy, for example, which allows no comments and is just an Obama promotion,verses Reuter's article on Obama's attack on McCain.

The second article has (at the time of this writing) 95 comments. It's a much more responsible and balanced article. It has to be, or your visitors will correct you.

I rarely get stressed out by my work load. I've usually worked in an environment where many people look at the work load and quit, or just ignore it and do the work they want to, rather than the work that has to get done.

That doesn't stress me out. I want to know what has to be done, by when, then I'll figure out how to get it done.

But this afternoon I had series of emails and phone calls with people who were all very stressed out. That stresses me out.

Now I'm off to climb a 14er, forfeiting any time I could have been putting toward teaching high-schoolers on Sunday. I'm just not convinced that the 14 mile hike of climbing Long's Peak is the best place to prepare an attention-keeping presentation.

I was just repremanded by friends for not blogging more. I wonder why
I blog when I ever get comments, but I found out why no comments are
left:

1. "I will never comment on a blog. I comment in my head."

2. "I use Google Reader and I'm too lazy to click the "original post" link."

All that to say, you'll be seeing more posts on this blog.

:)

A friend from College and I were chatting online yesterday. We both expected to be living overseas, and now we're both in the US. He asked the question: "Do you feel God is calling you to stay where you are?"

God calls people to do things. God called Abraham in a special way and told him to leave his family, his country, and move to another place. Many people feel a prompting to go to another place, even another country to serve God.

But how often did God later give Abraham special callings saying "Just stay where you are."

God is really using us here and really blessing us here. I've always said that you should be open and sensitive to the Spirit's prompting, and if it's not prompting, keep doing the last thing it had you doing, and go by what you know is true for all believers.

Yesterday I got a new perspective.

I'm grateful for the times when I've sensed God wanting me to do something, go somewhere, or say something. But how selfish is it of me to want daily "Holy 'Atta Boys" of God telling me through some mystical experience that I'm still doing what he last led me to do?

The lesson I took from my youth was that God wanted me in a certain place geographically, so I seized that. I decided to pursue life overseas. I should have decided to pursue God's will wherever it might take me. Just because God uses you in one way, it doesn't mean he'll always use you that way.

Maybe you've gone on lots of missions trips in your youth and God will use you as a rock-star accountant. Or maybe you've just spent your youth playing video games, and God wants to use you to bring revival to Uganda.

I hear their ads all the time on the radio, and now my washer is broken. I signed up on the web page and got a call today scheduling a "free tour" visit for tomorrow evening. Then they found out that my wife wouldn't be able to make it and she canceled the appointment. It's required that we both be there.

What the....?

Sorry, I want to buy an appliance, not join a cult.

I just had two very nice young men from the Mormon church stop by. They gave me their little presentation, and I mentioned what happened last time Mormons came by.

We met with them for 7 weeks, so I could learn what their church teaches. Questions naturally came up based on our discussion, which they couldn't answer, like

• Do they believe God has a physical body? (They said one thing, the book of Mormon said the opposite)
• They say the best Mormons can reach the best level of heaven, and be the god-figure over a region in space, like God is here. Does that mean they teach that God was once a human-like being, born to a family on the planet of another Diety?

Today I was told again that they don't know.

Now, I'm agnostic about many issues in my faith, but not something so significant like this. the question is: is God just a territorial spirit, like dagon was to the philistines? is God the creator of all things, or is he just another created being?

Mormons and Christians (Ok, Mormons call themselves Christians... Chrisitans who do not accept the authority of the Mormon church) use the same words but mean completely different things.

Windows desktop wallpaper is boring. For a year or so I've had desktop earth, which shows the current sunlight on a satellite shot of the earth stretched across the desktop. It's alright.

Just now, and just in time to be a Friday Freebie, I thought - why not have a program that could display random photos of your friends' photos of Facebook or flickr? Thanks to google, I found John's Background Switcher - a free program that can display and rotate randomly (if you want) photos from

• your computer
• Facebook (yours, your friends, or your choice of which of your friends)
• Flickr
• Picasa
• ... and several more online sources.

It's free. Its fast, it's really simple to set up on Windows 98 through Vista. (Sorry mac users, you'll have to stick with that photo of Steve Jobs with a halo. )

Check out my current windows desktop. It's 1/2 family photos from Facebook and 1/2 random photos from other Facebook friends. It'll change every hour. I can't wait! I think I'll refresh it now to see some more photos.

Ok, this is too fun. Here's the next two after I refreshed (the background b&w photo is also random from a Facebook friend)

[Warning, this is a techy post]

Finally.

Got it.

2GB of email transferred from my personal gmail account of 3 years to my domain email at google hosted...

• All dates correct
• All lookitsme@gmail.com changed to my real email address, so now my emails show that everything (for the last 3 years) was sent to or from my domain email, rather than a gmail account
• All labels stuck

The process:

• Install ubuntu as a virtual machine. Just go with vmware, it's so much faster, and you can download a pre-built ubuntu already installed. Don't mess with microsoft virtual pc like I did.
• Use the Synaptic package manager and get imapsync and it's dependencies.
  
• Run imapsync with a command like the following (thanks to this blog post). You may need to escape out the @ symbols . I also had imapsync delete the emails when I was done so when I had to restart it, it would immediately look at new emails rather than going over what it already did:
  imapsync --host1 imap.gmail.com \
  --port1 993 --user1 user@gmail.com \
  --passfile1 ./passfile1 --ssl1 \
  --host2 imap.gmail.com \
  --port2 993 --user2 user@domain.com \
  --passfile2 ./passfile2 --ssl2 \
  --syncinternaldates --split1 100 --split2 100 \
  --authmech1 LOGIN --authmech2 LOGIN \
  --regexmess 's/Delivered-To: user@gmail.com/Delivered-To: user@domain.com/g' \
  --regexmess 's///g' \
  --regexmess 's/Subject:(\s*)\n/Subject: (no--subject)$1\n/g' \
  --regexmess 's/Subject: ([Rr][Ee]):(\s*)\n/Subject: $1: (no--subject)$2\n/g'
• After that did all it could, I set my new google hosted email to download fromthe old account via pop3, to catch a few (well, a few hundred) missed messages that imapsync didn't get.

I had to restart the process several times over several days. imap sometimes just decides to take a break. There also seemed to be emails that made it choke. I ended up adding to the imapsync command to do specific folders at a time so I could keep a better eye on the progress.

So there you have it, or you can run the Amazon EC2 if you know how to do that (I don't).. or you can pay me to do it :)

Now to import my contacts...

After using Firefox 3 you'll suddenly realize that using Microsoft's Internet Explorer is like trying to walk through 3-foot deep jello.

Microsoft is sure to counter with a new version of Internet Explorer with even fewer menus, and even slower web browsing.

What I like:

• Javascript and AJAX are faster. I program using AJAX a lot. So does google, so if you use gmail (which should include everyone who has a computer or a cell phone), you'll like this.
• You can search your bookmarks from the address bar - just start typing.
• Password saving. I don't want firefox to save my password unless I know I typed the right one. Now the "remember this password?" option just floats at the top of the screen, so you can see if you get logged into a website before having Firefox memorize the password.

What I don't like:

• Windows Media Player Plug-in doesn't seem to work with it yet. But that's Microsoft being a pain, not Mozilla.
• When uploading a file on a web form, there's no way to delete a filename. You can replace it by clicking "Browse" again, but you can't empty out that field unless you reload the page.

Only 1,837MB to go!

Even though gmail tells me it will send my email "from" my main address, sometimes people hit reply and they see a personal (unprofessional) gmail address.

I was excited when Google hosted services came out. You can allow them to manage some parts of your domain name, like email. Great - except there's no tool to convert your account. No tool to properly migrate your account.

• I want my labels to transfer correctly.
  
• I want the message dates to be correct for when I received the emails.
  
• I want the emails to say they were sent to my main address, rather than the gmail.

Finally after searching and searching, I found a solution. But, you have to be a complete techie-geek to do it.

Imapsync connects to 2 email accounts simultaneously and compares and transfers emails.

These are my steps:

Step 1: Search the web for hours trying to find the solitary blog post about it.
Step 2: Download imapsync's recommended software and ActivePerl that says you can use it on Windows.
Step 3: Try and try, and give up on running imapsync from Windows.
Step 4: Go back to the blog post and find the blogger has created an Amazon EC2 image that can run this.
Step 5: Spend hours trying to figure out how to connect to EC2 and run an image, SSH in so that you can SFTP in, download Putty, give up.
Step 6: Install Ubuntu Linux on Microsoft Virtual PC.
Step 7: Find out that Ubuntu won't load on Virtual PC. Spend hours trying to tweak the right settings, enter in command line values in different places as Ubuntu boots.
Step 8: In Ubuntu's terminal, run imapsync, and get the error about Date Manipulation
Step 9: Search the web for the fix to Date Manipulation, finally find it in the Synaptic Package manager.
Step 10: Run imapsync. Run it again every few hours when it stops. Hope it will eventually get them all.

I just finished watching the series premier of Leave it to Beaver on the Netflix website.

It's hilarious! I remember watching the reruns when growing up, but it's so much funnier now that I'm married and have a little boy.

After Beaver lied to his teacher saying that his father just got home from the hospital, flowers arrived at the Cleaver home with a note from the principal that she hoped to see him on his feet again.

Mrs. Cleaver: "Who is this woman, and when did she see you not on your feet?!"

Talk about pushing the envelope! Today's tv has nothing over the 50s.

Got to go, I just started episode two when Wally and Beaver mail-ordered a live baby alligator from Florida! (Why can't we do that today?)

... to my own website.

I want the flexibility to be able to do more than blogger lets me do, and also maybe make it (or a separate one) a blog that my lady can post to as well.

Any objections? Comment, let me know.

Comment. I dare you. I challenge you.

You may remember when I broke down last year and bought my first cell phone.

Last week I broke down and bought my first video game.

Don't get me wrong, I've played friends' Nintendo games, and have enjoyed my fast-paced thriller games of solitaire. But this is the first game I've ever paid for.

We've played Guitar Hero on my brother-in-law's XBox, and it's a blast. When I saw there is a mac/pc port, and that it was on sale, I bought it. I've got my XBox usb guitar controller plugged in, and I'm set.

Here's a quick review if you're thinking about buying it:

• pros: Super easy setup, plays just like GH3 for game systems, you can alt+tab and switch back to your work applications, so you can play this at work without your boss knowing. The guitar might be a bit obvious, so you can play with keyboard controls if you want.
• cons: Took a long long time to get the audio and video synced up. My video card isn't that great, so while it works, having the animated CG crowd was slowing the game down. I turned off the crowd and it works great.

So, I'm brushing up so that next time we go to my in-laws' I can surprise them with my mad skills. Luckily they're not blog readers, so they don't know yet. Shhhh!

Often, even with a widescreen monitor, my desktop is too unorganized. I've got way too many programs open, and it's annoying to switch back and forth to all of them, alt+tabbing through the list to find what I need. Enter VirtuaWin.

VirtuaWin allows you to have up to 9 virtual desktops with separate windows on them. Here's how I've got mine split up right now:

1. Background (never need to see, but want these windows open and running) - a Firefox window with online streaming radio
2. Programming - Eclipse, a program I use to program web applications, and Pidgin instant messenger
3. Web - Another Firefox window with tabs for what I'm working on.
   
4. Personal - some side programs that I have open that aren't related to work.

So I program on desktop 2, then flip over to 3 to reload Firefox for my web application - both able to be full-screen, and the switch is a 2-key combination and unlike Alt+Tab, I don't have to sort through all my programs to get to the one I want.

Totally free.

Download for your computer.

Download for your thumb drive.

Here's the latest scary quote from Barak Obama:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. [source]

My various reactions

1. I have never heard of another country being upset with the temperature inside American home.
2. Why would citizens of one country care what another country's government thought about their choice of cars or home thermostats? Why should I even care about my own president cares about what car I drive and how hot I keep my home?
3. What happened to the idea of freedom and being pro-choice? Barak doesn't want you to be able to choose to eat what you want to eat, to choose 72 degrees for your thermostat or to choose any car you want to drive.
   
4. Yes, Americans are getting enough to eat. This is a problem? I thought not getting enough to eat was the problem.
5. Let me guess Barak, the solution is higher taxes to pay for a bigger more invasive government to ration food, dictate what care we can own, and outlaw air conditioning?

What the crap!?

You say hello, I say say goodbye. Hello Obama. Goodbye freedom.

Prediction:
Just like every time to date where Obama has been caught saying something revealing how completely socialist he is, he'll respond in the following way when confronted about this:

• I misspoke, I should have used different words.
• Stop bringing up distractions, the American people don't want to spend time on this, they want to hear about [change of topic].
• Well, if John McCain merely quotes me, that's an attack, and I'm tired that crazy right wing attack machine. How dare they quote what I myself said!