It’s Almost as Good as Hearing …

With the Fifth Pick the New York Jets select Mark Sanchez.  Those were the golden words from this pass draft.  Now Zorn is saying the Redskins are not interested in Michael Vick, at this juncture.  True it does leave some possibility that the Skins may try and get him later but thankfully for Jason Campbell and the team Vick will not be at training camp.  From what I hear Vick has just made some boneheaded decisions.  Is it really wise and responsible to allow him to continue making those type of mistakes playing football while earning a football type salary?  Not sure why the Ravens are inquiring.  They do have Joe Flacco.

That’s REALLY Big …

First, we have the announcement that Verizon FIOS customers, that includes us, will now have access to free Wi-Fi hotspots!  Pretty cool.  That is once I figure out why their setup is what it is.  So far they want me to reactivate my FIOS to get some other account.  Yeah.  Not going to be doing that.  Gotta figure this out at some point.

They finally finished making (well a few months ago I guess) the life size Gundam in Japan.  18-meters tall.

That’s Why We Need Our Own Al Sharpton …

Did anyone else hear about this?  California Apologizes to Chinese Americans on July 22nd?  Do we even care?  I mean we have better things to do like better ourselves, extra math homework and improve the world than whine about things of the past and our non-existent race card.

And for a brief second between the cloud cover we saw the space shuttle and the International Space Station last night.

WOW! …

The words I failed to say a few days ago much to Chewy’s dismay.  Earlier this month my brother gave me a pack of ShamWow’s and until a few days ago never had an opportunity to use them.  That opportunity involved me knocking over a full glass of water that was ill-placed on the floor.  The ShamWow really did suck up the water pretty fast and even made the carpet feel pretty dry after patting it against the carpet.  While cleaning up the spill Chewy kept on saying, “You’re not shouting ShamWow!  You’re not shouting ShamWow!” 

18-months.  That’s how long those particular Metro circuits were failing on the Red Line.  Sorta scary and amazing that it took 18-months before the failure actually caused an accident.  I guess when you don’t have dedicated funding you start to hedge your bets and start hoping nothing bad happens.  If Metro did fail this area’s road and highway infrastructure would not be able to support those who couldn’t take Metro anymore.  Hopefully our local politicians are figuring this out as well.  D.C. metropolitan area could really shutdown if Metro does fail.  Which IMO is on the verge of doing so.

40 Percent.  With the reprieve in the U.S. about swine flu I hope the planners are not sleeping on the job.  To have 40% of the U.S. affected with the swine flu could really hinder the country.  Schools closed.  Companies closed.  Transit closed.  Hospitals closed.  Knowing how sick I typically get odds are the 40% include me. 

It’s been interesting reading about the Cambridge Professor who called “racism” on the cop who was called to look into a possible breakin at the professors home.  Why is the “race” card always played?  Obama didn’t help the situation when he blurted out his statement during his recent address.  It’s good that he’s trying to bring the side together but still.  Not a good move especially when you don’t have the facts.  Just saying you don’t have all the facts don’t excuse you considering the type of influence you have over the nation.  Figuring two sides to the story I feel for the Professor because he was in his own home.  I’d be irate and wondering why there were cops in my house.  On the cops side, it really is hard to be a cop.  Everyone dislikes you.  You gotta go into hostile situations where you have little facts and try and sort them out.  You typically have people yelling and screaming at you and potentially trying to kill you.  If anything, they should be angry at the neighbor for trying to be nice and report a possible break-in.    Right now, I’m on the cops side since it seems like the race card was just thrown out there for no apparent reason.  That in itself is making matters worse.

SDCC should be ending soon.  So far I haven’t seen that much in terms of coverage mostly because the friends that I know who normally go didn’t go this year because they’re expecting.  I did however see that Mattel had an exclusive Buzz Lightyear figure in his spaceship blister like in the Toy Story movie!  There was also an Egon Spengler and Slimer figure from Ghostbusters as well as a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man bank.

Metro Russian Roulette …

I think this quote basically sums it up:

Those are not good odds if you like to play with statistics. Plus it’s nice to know that their operation center can determine where a train is at any particular time.  As a co-worker said it’s not like they’re going through wormholes or anything like that.  Cuz if they did that actually would be cool.  This is not.

A tad old but my one of my favorite Republicans spoke out against Obama.  You either like or hate Michael Steele.  Unfortunately, I think he’s a tad late, even as I’m late with my opinion, on blasting the “rush” to get a bill passed in less than two weeks.  I would rather him talk about how to actually improve the health care.  It’s obviously broken but nothing is being proposed, whether by Democrats or Republican, that will really help the system. 

And if you think Canadian’s health care is better here’s one view of it from a Canadian doctor.  Sorta eye opening.

With health care being whacked, at least for $3.99 you can get a cool iPhone app called Pocket First Aid & CPR.

Why Is It So Uncommon? …

I was reading this article about how Michael Jackson’s father, Joe Jackson denied abusing his son on Larry King Live.  It wasn’t really the article that sorta grabbed me but the fact that Joe Jackson was wearing a pendant of Africa around his neck.  So I get why people wear this particular style of pendant but what I didn’t get was why I don’t see people wearing pendants of other continents? 

Where are the people with the Asia pendants?  Or the North American pendants?  You figure so many people are worried about the polar ice caps melting that they would wear pendants with Antarctica on them.  Now that would be a statement worth wearing!!!

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions …

Not in any particular order but do I …

• go running
• work on this weeks Bible study
• watch the Orioles play the Yankees
• work on next months prayer calendar
• play a few levels of Lego: Indiana Jones

Maybe I’ll just take a nap

Oh yeah, Happy 40th Anniversary Moon landing!

Time Just Flies By …

On Friday I was able to have lunch with a few old co-workers and it was nice to see how their lives had changed over the years of separation.  As we talked about the time we all spent at our work place I was somewhat taken back when they mentioned it had been 11+ years since they had left.  Eleven years.  ELEVEN YEARS!  I’m not amazed at how long they’ve been gone but that I’ve been at the same place for 13+ years. 

They say change is good.  At what point does one actually realize that and then actually goes about enacting change?  Do we sometimes just get into a routine and believe that anything outside the routine is just bad?  I know I’m a creature of habit but how does one enforce this idea that “change is good”?  I’m not sure being spontaneous counts for something as I can be HEY LOOK LEFT!!!! spontaneous with other things such as my thoughts or writing.  Is this what we have to look forward to from this point forward until some other major event happens in our lives?  Just wondering.

If you have an old car and were thinking about purchasing a new one keep in mind the “Cash for Clunkers” program.  It’s another handout program to help the auto industry and those who bought SUVs and apparently some other cars.  In theory it sounds nice.  But the reality is that it should be called “Cash for fools” because of the inability to think forward.  Here’s to keeping more folks in debt.

Modern Day Robin Hood …

I’ve been trying to follow this whole Health Care reform bill that the Big O and the Democrats are pushing around.  I’m all for affordable health care, good health care service and benefits for everyone.  It just doesn’t seem like what’s being proposed really does that.  It maybe a start but when looking at the costs it seems like what happens now may help us but negatively impact many future generations.  Oh wait, it’s about US not anyone else so I guess it’s all good and dandy.

The other disturbing part to all of the health care stuff is where they immediately say the money will come from: taxing the wealthy.  Most Americans I’m sure would be happy with this since they probably don’t consider themselves wealthy.  Unfortunately the current census just lumps anyone making over $100k into one category so I’m not too sure what percentage of Americans are making over $280k or $350 combined. 

My question in all of this is how does this alter the “American Dream”?  If prosperity means more taxes is it then prosperity?  Should parents be encouraging better and higher education or hard work when when the first thing one could hear is there’s actually a penalty for succeeding?  Isn’t it better to teach our future generation that no matter what happens, slack off, be uneducated and lazy but live a free and immoral life because those who actually spent the time to work hard and improve themselves will bail you out?  I always thought the saying was “Give a man a fish, he’s fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’s fed for a lifetime.”  I guess what we’re really doing is just holding people back.

Folks wonder why jobs are going overseas and yet they don’t realize is that those people have the education, skills or training to do what those here don’t want to do.  People here just want to be paid a ton of money for as little work as possible.  I’m all for that!  The American dream has gone from something that encourages hard work and improvement to letting serve us.  Doesn’t it just seem like we’ve become lazy and fat?  That or are we just pushing our wealthy to just take their business else where?  Wait!  That means those who have the jobs would be taking the jobs and money outside of the U.S. but they can’t do that who will fund our programs?  Plus the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world.  Yep, good o’l American ignorance and self-centeredness. 

I’m not saying the wealthy should not pay their fare share of taxes.  They should be.  Just like everyone else.  If the Obama would just look at his own political friends and get them to pay their taxes I’m sure we would be in slightly better shape.  Right Richardson, Geithner,  Daschle, etc, etc.  Many the administration should be working on fixing the tax code instead of having all these loop holes for people.

Oh yeah, looks like Obama has been dissing the the given Blue state.

I Wonder If There Are Yelp Reviews For WMATA …

There actually are Yelp reviews of WMATA (aka Metro in the DC area).  I only bring it up because it looks like all of us who take Metro should be taking out extra life insurance or ask our employers for hazard pay for travel.  Then again the argument against would be we all know the dangers but continue to ride the metal tubes of impending doom.  In a time of trying to be GREEN and promoting mass transit, WMATA is not helping. 

Yelp on the other hand apparently has shady business practices.  Shady or not very neutral practices towards reviews and ratings.  I guess the economic times are tough and they gotta do what they gotta do.  Especially since most people use them for reference for places to eat which btw are having the same economic troubles.  hmmm chicken and egg problem, no?

Also an interesting move by M$ – M$ Office 2010 will have an online version to battle Google.  It really does make sense.  Let the casual people use it so they don’t pirated versions and then continue to have business or upgraded version for pay.  Then those will get pirated and M$ still looses money.   My co-worker doesn’t like the idea of online productivity software only because one would need an internet connection just to be productive.  Hello!  Dude you’re in the technology field AND it’s the 21st Century.  Why wouldn’t this be a good move?  The U.S. needs to push harder for better uptimes, connection speeds and provider competition.  Look at the UK, Japan, Korea and every other developed country out there.  They have options that we can only dream of.  Oh well, my folks still use dialup.