Turn on your lights night?

Earth Hour US - Earth Hour 2008

Online Photo Editing from Adobe

Adobe Photoshop Express - Made You Look.

I have a laptop I use for surfing while watching TV. All it has on it is Windows XP and Firefox. Every time I boot it up it takes about 5 minutes to check for virus updates, windows updates and other updates to installed programs. It seems like an awful lot of overhead to just want to find out who starred in the movie I'm watching on IMDB.com

There are now so many powerful tools that are online that I think I will switch the laptop over to Ubuntu. From within Firefox I can now run programs like

Adobe Photoshop Express
Picassa Photo Gallery
Google Docs (support excel, word and powerpoint like programs)
Google Calendar (now supports links to Blackberry!)
Gmail (and a bunch of other very good online email programs.)

So I could surf, email, write a letter, create a financial spreadsheet, or a presentation, look at and edit photos while throwing away anti-virus and weekly Microsoft updates.

Not to mention that the Ubuntu download includes OpenOffice which is a completely free competitor of Microsoft office and creates files that can be opened by MS Office.

The movie the UN wants banned

LiveLeak.com - Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran (English)

Provides an overview of the world's most dangerous and evil religion and how its acts of depravity relate directly to the Koran.

What makes this video so powerful is its lack of editorial. It simply compiles statements from the Koran and its followers.

[Update:] Due to death threats against LiveLeak.com they have stopped hosting the Wilders' video. You will have to search YouTube and then log in to see it.

Tracfone | Prepaid Cell Phone

Tracfone | Prepaid Cell Phone

Eric's Tracfone mobile was about to expire so I had to add another year's service to it. One year plus 400 minutes (units) of time is $100 or $8.33 per month. He doesn't use his phone much yet, so he still had over 1,000 units on his plan. When I went to purchase the extension a coupon popped up for an additional free 200 units. Then when I went to check out another offer popped up to add a second year for only $50 more.

$150 bought two years of service and 600 minutes. That is $6.25 per month, no contract, and he currently has 1,670 minutes to use up before buying anymore airtime.

That's a pretty good deal for a kids cell phone.

8:35 PM Twin Sonic Booms rattle our house hard

NASA - Welcome to NASA's STS-123 Landing Blog

Yes, the shuttle is landing. According to the landing blog, the twin sonic boom is heard at KSC two minutes later. We are about 60 miles from KSC.

Home Resales Rose 2.9% Last Month As Median Price Dropped 8.2%

Home Resales Rose 2.9% Last Month As Median Price Dropped 8.2% - WSJ.com

First time number of sales has increased since last July.

Down 24% from Feb 2007

Median home price of $195,900 dropped 8.2% from Feb 2007. Median home price was $199,700 in Jan 2008.

NAR economist Lawrence Yun was encouraged by the 2.9% sales gain. "We're not expecting a notable gain in existing-home sales until the second half of this year, but the improvement is another sign that the market is stabilizing," Mr. Yun said.

Inventories of homes decreased 3.0% at the end of February to 4.03 million available for sale, which represented a 9.6-month supply at the current sales pace.

There was a 10.2-month supply at the end of January, revised from a previously estimated 10.3 months.

Regionally, existing-home sales in February rose 2.5% in the Midwest, 11.3% in the Northeast, and 2.1% in the South. Demand fell 1.1% in the West.

Choices, Choices

Are the Democrats capable of finding a (would-be) presidential candidate who doesn't lie as a first resort? Gore meets the Internet, Kerry the War Hero, now Hillary the bullet dodger.

Hillary's Balkan Adventures, Part II - Fact Checker

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."
--Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Here is the picture of Hillary ducking and running after landing:



A comedian named "Sinbad" disputed her account. Clinton dismissed him as "a comedian."

His retort to that is:

"What kind of president would say 'Hey man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you."

Not to mention taking the daughter along for the photo op.

We Interupt Our Daily Obama Bash..

Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

I wooted for the first time today! Now I will be able to Skype while wireless.

Angry White Woman Responds to Obama

Geraldine Ferraro resents being lumped in with the Rev. Wright in Obama speech - The Daily Breeze:

"'To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,' Ferraro said today. 'He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.'"

Ferraro said she had "no clue" why Obama would include her in his speech, and said Obama's association with Wright raises serious questions about his judgment.

"What this man is doing is he is spewing that stuff out to young people, and to younger people than Obama, and putting it in their heads that it's OK to say `Goddamn America' and it's OK to beat up on white people," she said. "You don't preach that from the pulpit."

Ferraro also said she could not understand why Obama had called out his own white grandmother for using racial stereotypes that had made him cringe.

"I could not believe that," she said. "That's my mother's generation."

Obama's Daughters

The Corner on National Review Online

Obama's response on Don Imus' idiotic comments calling the Rutgers women's basketball team a "bunch of nappy headed ho's":

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus. But I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude. ... He didn't just cross the line. He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women — who I hope will be athletes — that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It's one that I'm not interested in supporting." (October 2007)

Obama's response to Rev. Wright accusing white America of creating AIDS as a means of African genocide courtesy of the U.S. of KKKA:

Well of course, he bring's his daughters to Wright's church every Sunday.

Makes you wonder why his poll numbers are dropping.

Test Your Awareness

One Way to Thank a Soldier

The Gratitude Campaign
A simple way to say thanks as you pass a soldier as you walk through an airport or wherever you see a soldier in uniform passing by.

The sign we are using is intended to communicate "thank you from the bottom of my heart. "

To make the sign simply place your hand on your heart as though you're saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Then pull your hand down and out, bending at the elbow (not the wrist), stopping for a moment at about the belly button with your hand flat, palm up, angled toward the person you're thanking.

Things Obama will do (and not do) to get elected President

Will Do:

1. Call his living grandmother who helped raise him a racist.
2. Accuse white people of not spending enough on schools.
3. Declare all Americans are victimized by corporations.

Won't Do:
1. Put his hand over his heart when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Wear an American Flag lapel.
3. Leave (or remove his daughters from) a church that preaches:

'God damn America.'
'US government created Aids, supplied drugs to our community.'
'US of KKKA.'
'What we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing.'

4. Admonish a wife who says:

'Until now, I was never proud of my country.'

The Corner on National Review Online

Two corollaries always follow the Obama victimology: moral equivalence and the subtle suggestion that any who question his thesis of despair are themselves suspect.

So we hear of poor Barack’s grandmother’s private fears in the same breath as Wright’s public hatred. Geraldine Ferraro is understood in the same context as Reverend Wright. The Reagan Coalition and talk radio are identical to Reverend Wright — albeit without similar contexts for their own purported racism. Your own pastor, priest, or rabbi are analogous to Rev. Wright.

And then, of course, your own motives are suspect if you question any of this sophistry. For Michelle it is always “they” who raised new obstacles against this deprived Ivy League couple and their quest for the Presidency; for Barack it is those who play “snippets”, or the system of “corporate culture” that has made Wright the object of anger to similarly victimized poor white pawns.

The message? Wright’s motives for espousing hatred are complex and misunderstood; your motives for worrying about Obama and his Pastor are simple and suspect.

Yep, I am now in total agreement with this sentiment:

Red Diaper Kid [John Derbyshire]

... I am now going to come out of the closet and declare clearly and firmly that I don't like Barack Obama one little bit.

What kind of person would traduce his grandmother (who is still alive) to score a political point? Yesterday's speech, read through in the clear light of dawn, is worse than I thought: an ugly mish-mash of ancient socialist clichés and Gen-X spoiled-brat self-congratulation, all enveloped in clouds of flatulent Oprahnian rhetoric. Ugh!

Obama's just a red-diaper baby with a nice smile. I actually like Jeremiah Wright better than I like Obama. At least you know where you are with Wright. Obama, I wouldn't trust to mail a letter.

NASA - Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars

NASA - Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars

Earth and Moon as photographed from Mars.

The Change Candidate

ABC News: Obama's Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

It falls right in line with his wife not being proud of America and him refusing to wear a U.S. flag on his lapel while running for President of the United States.

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial."

In related news, playwright David Mamet announces "Why I am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'"

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Clearly this is something for Obama to think about.

CustomizeGoogle :: Firefox Add-ons

CustomizeGoogle :: Firefox Add-ons

Has the function to make accessing Gmail, Google Calendar and Google docs more secure.

tips and downloads for getting things done

Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done:

"Windows only: If there's only a few things most Microsoft Vista upgraders and nay-sayers can agree upon, one likely talking point is that Vista's fonts are generally clean, smooth, and a step up from XP. Getting the newer fonts in XP doesn't have to involve illegal downloads and system tweaking, however—as the gHacks tech blog points out, simply installing Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer 2007 installs a bundle of Vista fonts in XP that you can use as your system defaults. Once installed, head to your display properties, then hit the Appearance tab to select a system-wide font. You'll also want to enable ClearType, which, luckily, we've covered before. PowerPoint Viewer 2007 is a free download for Windows only.

PowerPoint Viewer 2007 [Microsoft via gHacks]"

But here's a simple trick to download the Vista fonts for free and legally without buying a Vista license:

Download either the free Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Viewer or the Microsoft Office Compatibility pack - both the software include the new Windows Vista fonts.

Once you install the above Microsoft programs, the Vista Fonts also become available for use on your Windows XP system. The fonts are Candara, Consolas, Calibri, Cambria, Constantia and Corbel.