Doing More With Less Since 1972

Author: Scott (Page 46 of 80)

Some Linkage for Lookage

Ironman – The Inner Revolt and Busting Out – I think there’s even more to this. Part of it is convincing yourself that you are as tough as you’ve convinced everyone else you are.

An Even Tougher Deficit Plan – Sounds good to me, except for the VAT

Dr. Drew on Obamacare: ‘You will see a massive flight of physicians from the field’ – But he only plays a doctor on TV, right?

Stay Worried – “One way or another, it was worth having Microsoft Word with the expectation that the zillionaire Bill Gates’ shower is still no hotter than ours, and his private jet goes not much faster than our own cut-rate Southwest Airlines flights. All that seems simple enough — until now.”

The Parallels between Today and the Great Depression – To quote the great Jackie Martin Jr., “You all know the rules, they’re very much like Pyramid, but different.”

Word Group Hunt

Chick Pea loves to play hide and seek, so we made up a fun game to help her with her word groups. Right now we’re working with the “-at” words (cat, hat, mat, rat, etc.). The game is pretty easy–make up cards with the words on them and put them in various places around the house. Next, we go to “base” and look at a group of pictures that represent the various words. For each picture, we send her off “hunting” for the word that goes with the picture.

The words don’t really need to be hidden. In fact, it’s probably better if they can see the several different words as they are looking for a single word, just to become familiar with the differences. It’s also a memory exercise since they can spot words they aren’t looking find them quickly when the appropriate picture shows up.

If you have a group of kids, you can make it a contest–send them all out hunting and see who can find a word first. It’s a great game for outdoors as well!

Jailhouse Movies Are Torture?

This poor Brevard County inmate thinks so.

“Like the old Chinese water torture, the inescapable sounds of these movies over and over works on nerves and psyche.”

I’ve watched Smoky and the Bandit and Swingers too many times to count, so I can say from experience that kicking back on the couch memorizing dialog isn’t exactly the toughest thing someone can force you into. Maybe this guy should become more familiar with the business end of a shovel to help ease his nerves and psyche. You know…when the body suffers the spirit flowers.

Of course, this has nothing to do with torture or legitimate complaints. It’s really just an attempt by this guy to further extend his stay at Hotel Taxpayer.

Poulin was arrested by Palm Bay police in January 2007 for allegedly driving and crashing his car while intoxicated, an accident that killed his female passenger.

There have been 14 motions for continuances in his case and six federal lawsuits against the jail, all of which have been dismissed

Great. Just great.

 

My Next Great Idea – The USPS Stimulus Package

After reading this article on the USPS losing $8.5 B (yes, that’s $500 million AFTER THE DECIMAL PLACE!). With all the hyperbole over evil corporations, at least their management has to answer to shareholders…at least they have to answer to someone. I was talking about it with a couple of people on Twitter:

[blackbirdpie id=”3124711739363328″]

[blackbirdpie id=”3116082235711488″]

 

Obviously, they aren’t huge fans. Come on…what’s a few billion amongst friends? But then I saw these articles about the Swedes storing emails and texts and our own government  getting ready to grace us with an Internet Czar and a light bulb went off…

USPS Stimulus package!

Just set up (yet another) federal agency to track and log every single piece of electronic communication. This will have the (un)intended consequence of forcing…err…encouraging people to go back to sending coded messages through the USPS and hoping they are delivered within a few days. Think of how many USPS jobs this could save or create!

Pillar Of A 3rd Party Platform?

Just go back to the tried and true playbook and start calling federal employees “Fat Cats”.

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis

Maybe the Wall Street Fat Cats, Healthcare Fat Cats, Big Oil and Energy Fat Cats, Big Media Fat Cats, Legal Fat Cats, Agriculture Fat Cats, Literary Fat Cats, Landscaping Fat Cats, DotCom Fat Cats and all the other Fat Cats (did you ever notice the Fat Cats usually have some occupation other than the one of the person calling them “Fat Cats”?) can band together to fight this scurge. We just don’t have room for any new groups of Fat Cats.

Of course, someone *cough*Republicans*cough* will surely try to co-opt any such message as their own.

Oh, and here are the Deficit Commission recommendations released today. I’ll believe it when I see it.

IKEA Homemade is Best Cookbook

What does IKEA mean to you? To me, it means flat packaging, easy to follow assembly instructions with pictures instead of words, and stuff that is so cool and affordable that I usually end up buying something I hadn’t planned on.

Check out IKEA’s “Homemade is Best” baking book.

  • Flat? check
  • Easy instructions with no words, with beautiful photos by Carl Kleiner? Check
  • So cool and (presumably) affordable that I’ll definitely be buying one on my next trip to IKEA, even though I hadn’t planned on buying a cookbook for the rest of my life? Check

The Facts and Science of QEII

The newly announced monetization of debt…ERRRRR…devaluation of the currency…ERRRRR…quantitative easing announced by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday has many Americans confused and baffled. What does this really mean for us? After all “facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day” with the collection of hilljacks that is the American people.

Maybe what we really need is an easy to understand analogy to explain in terms that we can relate to.

Let’s say the money supply is a big pile of rich, high-grade manure we are using to to fertilize our gardens. Now, imagine that a big stud horse (the Fed) comes along and, with increasing frequency and volume, adds to our supply of manure. I guess the theory is that we’ll respond by just planting more crops. But how long would it take for us to stop calling this big stinking pile of crap “fertilizer” and start calling it “a big stinking pile of crap”?

Over time, the manure’s value to us would be greatly diminished, and we’ll be lucky if we can load a bunch of it up in wheel barrow and trade it for a loaf of bread from our neighbor. Meanwhile, no one knows who owns the damned horse that keeps adding crap to the pile.

Oversimplified? Maybe so. But it’s pushing the limit of what our government educated brains can handle. Best to leave it to the horse to decide what is best.

Mexican Standoff In Congress?

There’s a possibility we could be looking at two years scripted by Quentin Tarantino. Maybe the standard finger pointing that we’re used to seeing is about to be replaced by something far more complicated.

Democrats have lost a lot of their Blue Dog numbers. I’ve actually read some people spinning this as the people in their districts were frustrated that they weren’t taking a “progressive enough” stance. If you really believe that, go pop some popcorn and enjoy what’s about to happen amongst Democrats as their leadership tries to pull them even further to the left. That would be disastrous for the Left and good for the country, so I’m not going to discourage it at all.

And, unless they get co-opted by the “Trent-Lott-Carl-Rove” Republicans, we’re probably going to see some infighting on that side of the aisle too. Again, probably bad for Republicans, but good for the country. Marco Rubio’s speech was dead on–last night wasn’t an embrace of the Republican Party, just a second chance.

If things don’t change, we could *gulp* be looking at a serious third party next time around. And if the establishment Democrats and Republicans aren’t careful, they may actually be that third party–on the outside looking in.

I’m generally happiest with a federal government that’s not doing much of anything. The less they try to create jobs (that’s a function of government?), bail people out, spend our money on our behalf, impose morality (love the irony), prop up favored industries, etc. the better off we all are. This usually happens when we are lucky enough to have opposing parties in the executive and legislative branches. Maybe now we’ll have so much debate of ideas going on that only the really good ones that have been properly vetted can float to the top.

“Yolanda, it’s cool baby. It’s cool! We’re still just talkin’. Come on point the gun at me. Point the gun at me.”

Stuff You Should See– October 13th through October 28th

‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween – "We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too."

Amazing Beans: Black Lentils/Kidney/Garbanzo – Giving this a shot soon.

YOU are Superman – Mamapedia™ Voices – “If eight park moms and one visionary principal could pull our little neighborhood school out of its twenty-five year nose-dive, surely others could do the same thing. If Waiting for Superman could spark a national grassroots school reform movement that would pull us all out of the giant mess we’re in, now wouldn’t that be something?”

A ‘Do-Over’ on the Mortgage Market? Project Mayhem Fallout – I won't even entertain the idea, but it's an entertaining read.

If Every Website Got A Dramatic Movie Adaptation – Damned clever.

3 Simple Ways You’re Missing Out On Mobile – Great post by my buddy Gavin!

Hell In A Cell – A Mick Foley Parenting Tip

Mick Foley penned a great guest post for GeekDad on “The Talk”:

Have a talk with your kids. Tell them about some of the unfortunate realities of life, and assure them that you’ll be there for them in good times and in bad, in sickness in health. Let them know that a parent’s love is indeed unconditional and that they can turn to you in any situation. Just don’t let them know that you’re taking parental advice from a pro-wrestler

While my M.O. up until now has been based on the question “WWDLRD?”, I think it may be time to reconsider and change strategies to “WWMFD?”. DLR isn’t quite as literate as Foley.

Have A Nice Day!

Moving America Forward, One Rasslin’ Promo At A Time

Was this filmed when Barack Obama was a community organizer? The abundance of gray hair makes me think it’s pretty recent, but the quality of the video makes me think it was shot in the hallway of a 3,000 seat arena somewhere in flyover country to promote the “big event, right out there at the fairgrounds on November 2…we couldn’t have it on October 26th ’cause the flea market is that week.”

Watch and learn. THIS is how you correctly do a rasslin’ promo:

Password Security and Complexity

Twister MC has some good advice on what to do about your passwords and protecting your accounts with multiple passwords, but…

Remembering multiple passwords suck, especially the harder they are, but it’s important that you take your security into your own hands.

There’s an easy way around that–come up with your own “password algorithm” and remember that instead of the actual passwords.

Here’s an example: Begin all of your passwords with the last 8 (or fewer) letters of the name of the street you live on spelled backwards with all vowels substituted with alternate symbols or letters (a=@, e=3, i=!, o=0, u=V), followed by the number of letters in the domain name you are creating the password for, followed by all of the vowels in the domain name. So if you live on Maple St.:

Google password = 3lp@M6ooe
Yahoo password = 3lp@M5aoo
Facebook password = 3lp@M8aeoo

Then, all you have to remember is the rule for creating passwords, not the passwords themselves, and they’ll be different for every site. This has kept me from having to go through the “Forgot My Password” process countless times!

You can come up with an infinite number of ways to structure your password algorithm that is easy for you to remember, and you can make them as simple or complex as you like. The only problem comes from some sites that don’t allow special characters (boo) or have a maximum password length that can’t handle your algorithm.

Microsoft and Facebook Need To Go One Step Further

Today’s event hosted by Microsoft and Facebook highlighted some changes coming to Bing that will factor in your social group opinions, Facebook “Likes”, into your search results. That’s great, and it’s definitely a step in the right direction, but…

Just because your FB friends like something doesn’t mean it’s something you would like. Being friends with someone doesn’t necessarily mean you respect their opinion on sushi or books. How about a option to tell FB whether or not you want an individuals opinions factored in to your search results? It sounds like they are going to algorithmically figure out who the experts are, but FB’s whole model with photos and groups is sort of built on the idea that humans can organize this data much better than a computer.

And don’t look now, but Facebook has just given all of those people who’ve been calling for a “Dislike” button for all these years a platform to stand on. The “Like” button is great for steering me towards products and services I should buy, but what about steering me away from products I should avoid? If I’m looking at a vacuum cleaner and one of my trusted friends bought one last year and hated it, shouldn’t that factor into my decision to purchase it as equally as the opinion of my friend who bought and loved it?

Again, a huge step in the right direction, so I’m not hating on what they are trying to do. This is going to push Google to really step it up. If Google Me (or whatever it is called) doesn’t catch on, Big G could be put on the ropes a little with this innovation.

Side note: I got a kick out of Zuck calling Microsoft the underdog. I’m sure Bill Gates appreciated that compliment.

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