Suddenly it all makes sense. And it’s brilliant!
He’s a plant.
His sole purpose in getting involved is to make Sarah Palin look like an reasonable and viable candidate.
I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice lady, but this guy is just a circus act.
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Wait…let me get this straight. Using this approach, if a person is facing extreme debt with collectors calling, cars and houses on the verge of being repo’d and foreclosed, and maxed out credit cards, these are the steps they should take to fix the problem:
- Ask for higher limits on their cards
- Demand a raise from their employer (at gunpoint if necessary)
- Create a plan to spend the extra money from the raise and the newly available credit to raise their kids’ allowances, trade-in for a new car that gets better gas mileage (no need for cost analysis, right?), and buy some new clothes to interview for jobs that pay a much higher salary. They’ll get these interviews by leveraging the great references the current employer they just held up at gunpoint gave them.
Sounds like a solid plan.
I went downstairs for a cup of coffee this morning and saw Ana playing a new game with Pea. This one combines sight words with fitness (i.e. “energy release”). How lucky are we that she’s able to make up stuff like this on the spot?!?!
Pea is a very “high energy” kid. Sometimes when she’s really revved up we go out in the yard and do shuttle runs to help her release some tension and empty the tank. You may have done shuttle runs if you ever played basketball, soccer, rugby, etc. The basic concept is that you run to one point, touch the ground, run back to the starting point, touch the ground, and repeat until you are gassed. We don’t make her do this–she loves it on her own.
The game Ana came up with today was to put several slips of paper with sight words (“and”, “or”, “the”, “she”, etc.) written on them into a hat. That’s the starting point. The game is to take a word out of the hat and read it by sight, not by sounding it out. When she reads the word correctly, she gets to run all the way down the hallway to pick up an item out of a bucket. Use whatever motivates your child–marshmallows, pennies, small toys–for them to retrieve and bring back.
I could not believe how much she loved this game. The best part is that it’s very easy to add more and more words to change the difficulty level. And for a bonus, Bug was following her the whole time. She loved chasing her sister up and down the hall and repeating the words!
Here’s another mind dump of thoughts on a few of the link worthy things I’ve read lately…enjoy!
Now you can buy a Kindle for $114! The gotcha here is that you have to be willing to look at ads and special offers. Still, I’m glad to see the price coming down one way or another. I still think the magic price for this device is $99. At least, that’s the price at which I’d bite.
5 Common Remote Work Misconceptions – Word!
Roth IRA: Time to retire Roth IRAs – Could not be more wrong. This guy needs to run the numbers, although I doubt he’d know where to start to do that. Roth IRAs and Traditional IRAs generate the exact same tax revenue if you make the assumption that the tax rate doesn’t change. But for the gov’ment, they get to have their candy now instead of waiting for you to retire. The upside for the account holder only comes if they end up in a higher tax bracket or tax rates rise across the board. Look where people have placed their bets.
Gov Shutdown’s Impact – Great argument by @newscoma for keeping $ in state instead of sending it to D.C. 🙂
IKEA desktop – <3 IKEA. This is pretty cool.
Portugal, Illinois and Caterpillar – “The Portugese have decided to protest against mathematics….” That’s pretty much all you need to know. Of course, as Dave Ramsey likes to point out, if they’d been doing math they wouldn’t be in this mess.
I watched a few of the Khan videos a while back and thought they were great by themselves. But there’s a lot more going on at Khan Academy now. Hopefully this will get people thinking about some different and better directions for education. Here’s a TED talk…he explains it much better than I do.
Local boy does (not so) good…allegedly. And worse, he’s a Robertson County Commissioner.
There are now as many as 40 people who say they are owed millions, and a criminal investigation is under way. Robertson County Commissioner Shannon Polen already faces three civil suits.
I went to high school with Shannon, and it would be fair to say we were friends on some level. I mean, we didn’t hang out at each other’s houses or anything, but we were teammates on a couple of 2-8 football teams and laughed at a lot of the same stuff in classes we had together. Lot’s of laughing in those classes–not much learning.
I would run into him every now and then in college too. I remember bumping into him and another guy we both knew at a basketball game once. We ended up sitting a couple of rows behind Andy Kelly, whom he was heckling just loud enough to not be heard.
I’m sure the Vols lost that night, but I can’t blame that on Shannon with a clear conscious. Â While I remember him having a biting sense of humor and being a master heckler, the ability to affect the outcome of sporting events doesn’t stand out in my mind as one of his strengths (see the 2-8 football teams) .
But seriously, how do you heckle Andy Kelly when Wade Houston is in the same room?
Time and malt beverages have ravaged a fair percentage of my memories, but there are a few interesting facts I can tell you about Mr. Polen. Digest them at your leisure and make of them what you will…
- He once went as Brian Bosworth for Halloween.
- When our Algebra II teacher* had us research a great mathematician, the subject of his research was…our Algebra II teacher.
- When busting someone’s chops, he often liked to incorporate a song. He used Steve Miller’s “The Joker” on one friend, but for other people he made up songs. One involved a rat’s nest on a guy’s head, while another was simply a refrain of the words, “Do Wrong”.
- He was my weight lifting partner for a year, and I didn’t get much stronger. I’m not saying he was robbing me of my strength, but I can’t say for sure that he wasn’t either.
In all sincerity, this doesn’t smell like a simple misunderstanding, and I hope the people who have lost their savings and faith in elected officials are at least able to get their money back.
UPDATE: Michael Silence has a point.
Sometimes you just have to wonder if stupidity shouldn’t be a felony.
*NOTE: I like to play fast and loose with the word “teacher”
Here’s a quick and easy twist on a game your kids already play that can help them work on their phonemic awareness. You are probably all too familiar with I Spy With My Little Eye, where your child guesses which object you see based on the color you tell them. For example, you may say, “I spy with my little eye something…yellow.” And your child will guess all the yellow things she sees until she chooses the banana you were spying.
Try it this way the next time you’re playing–“I spy with my little eye something that begins with the ‘b’ sound.” Now, instead of colors, your child with look for objects that begin with a sound. Recognizing the sound and matching it up with an object is a phonemic awareness exercise. Don’t be afraid to explore other sounds like the ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds.
You can even make it a phonics game by saying, “I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter ‘B’.” This will require your child to match up the letter with the sound it makes.
Android as Google’s Moat – I like this take on Android as a defensive product for Google. I also like what that implies for us as consumers–costs keep decreasing while functionality keeps increasing. Can you believe someone wanted to charge for a web browser at one time? Now there are several free browsers, and they are still trying to out-do each other in features and speed!
The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” – Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Are We Better Off Today? – Definitely. I think the problem is that we have a skewed idea of "comfortable". If I have food in my belly and shoes (hopefully some $1 Old Navy flip-flops) on my feet and I'm not bleeding, chances are I'd say I'm comfortable.
6 Common E-Mail Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make – Read the bold points as a checklist before you hit send.
Integration Of Google Voice and Sprint – A daddy of an announcement. Now…do I have to pick one number or the other to have seamless integration? I like having both.
"Red" rocker Sammy Hagar says abducted by aliens – Still trying to "Out-Dave" DRL. You sir, are no David Lee Roth
NYT’s DIgital Pricing Plan Discriminates By Device – Alternate Headline: Requiem to an Ass Biter.
Good news from the WSJ! The author of “Where the Wild Things Are
This sounds like a pretty funny book, all about about a kid (pig) who celebrates his birthday for the first time when he turns 9. Â Admittedly, there are some pretty high expectations already set, but it sounds like “Bumble-Ardy” won’t disappoint! Amazon is already taking (discounted)Â pre-orders
…this video is boring.
For the rest of us, it’s 100% nuts. Make sure you watch it in full screen.
You’re going to be holding your breath most of the way through it, but try to remember to breathe. Your body is going to need air in order to keep saying, “OMG! OMG! OMG!”
VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.
I was just checking out the speech to text feature in Chrome’s v11 beta, and I have to say, it’s pretty good. Even if you sound like you have a mouth full of marbles like I do, it does a decent job…at least a good enough job that you could speak long documents and go back to edit by hand later. I bought some software not too long ago to do this, and it was a lot more expensive than the “free” Google is charging.
Added bonus, this is part of HTML5…Google doesn’t own it, they are just taking advantage of it.
If you like this kind of stuff, it’s worth checking out. I am a little curious why Google hasn’t thrown a little microphone up onto their main search page so we can use it there. Seems like an obvious way to get people to use it immediately.
It’s a simple four step process:
Step 1: Do some stuff that makes your opponents really mad.
Step 2: Put your junk in that box.
Step 3: Do things that make many of the people who defended you in Step 1 really mad.
Step 4: Figure out a way to piss off the people who will blindly support you no matter what.
That last step is pretty tough to accomplish, but he has a year and a half to find a way to do it. Remember, we elected this guy because of his unbelievable intellectual prowess, so he’ll surely be able to stratergize a plan of action.
Don’t give up Hope.
Digital Will – I could do a whole series of posts on this. Maybe I should. Maybe I will (no pun intended).
Just try to cut off Netflix’s content supply – Can’t wait until the cable companies are skipped entirely and we can buy directly from the producers and/or networks. Win-win-win-lose. The “lose” is for the cable companies. The market will find a way.
Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs for Killed Music – I say Jon Bon Jovi has done more harm to music than Steve Jobs ever could.
Top 20 Obnoxious People At The Gym – I’m #5, @svandyke is #8, and we are both “The Guy Who Sits on the Sofa and Drinks Coffee For 2 Hours and Leaves Without Even Working Out”.
iPad 2 for Distributed Teams – Interesting. Can you RDP with an iPad?
Twitter Drops The Ecosystem Hammer – Then, uh, Twitter…how’s about giving me a UI that’s even half as good as TweetDeck? Are those crickets or birds chirping?
iPad 2 could lead to glut of rival tablets – Oversupplied means under-priced. I’ll wait it out.
Man Trains For Marathon While Eating McDonald’s-Only Diet – HT @DustyOverby I did the same thing with Little Debbie snack cakes and Petro’s chili.
Stricter Limits on Debit Cards Coming? – No worries…they’ll be happy to issue you a credit card to cover larger purchases. Of course, the interest rate on that card will be about 10-20 times the amount of interest they are paying you on the MONEY YOU ALREADY HAVE BUT CAN’T SPEND BECAUSE THEY SET SUCH LOW LIMITS. Better not be late with that payment. Big banks suck.
Charity Watch has a ratings list of charities mobilized in the Pacific to help guide you get the most bang for your donation buck.
Mandatory DNA sampling threatens constitutional liberties – Check out my boy BCM in the Washington Examiner.
Spotlight-Chasing Candidates of 2012 – Some of these things are not like the others. Mr. Will focuses on two of the three spotlight-chasers. Thankfully, he doesn't even give the third a passing mention.
Make a Local Backup Of Your Gmail Account – Was just telling someone how awesome the cloud is…and how you need to have every bit of it backed up locally.
Triathlon as a means of birth control – I'm only one case study, but I can't recommend this method. One thing they didn't discuss is what happens to testosterone levels when training is cut back (post "big" race). That may explain a lot in my case.
The changing face of fame – Based on the "stars without makeup" photos I've seen, I credit improvements in makeup and lighting mostly. I have a feeling Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn didn't look too shabby in sweats at the grocery store.