Our Little Percussionist

Eric has been working hard getting ready for the All County Band performance
this Saturday night.

"I" x 132 = how many jobs?

Best line: "This is not about me."

Cartoon of the day from Don Surber

Cartoon of the day- Don Surber

POTUS bring TOTUS to 6th grade class speech

Photo from Getty Images

I really wish this were not true.

From Boing Boing

UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning

UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning - Times Online

They gave the panel a Nobel Peace Prize for this report:

The 2007 report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. It caused shock in Asia, where about two billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers for their fresh water supplies during the dry seasons.

It emerged last week that the prediction was based not on a consensus among climate change experts but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. That scientist, Syed Hasnain, has now told The Times that he never made such a specific forecast in his interview with the New Scientist magazine.

I guess the facts were just too damn good to check!

An Obama Voter Laments

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report who voted for The Won, had his magazine endorse him, now laments his support.

He's Done Everything Wrong

Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.

Better late than never for Zuckerman.

Playmobil Airport Security Checkpoint

Amazon.com: Playmobil Security Check Point: Toys & Games

Can't make this stuff up. Must read the comments.

Our Little Percussionist is off to All-State

Not Time's Man of the Year

Oh my.  In a vote more shocking than a Tampa Bay Buccaneer victory -- look who is not Time Magazines Man of the Year.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/why-time-passed-obama-by/article1415232/

A few choice quotes from the article:

It's an uncomfortable pivot from the audacity of hope to buyer's remorse. Very uncomfortable for those in the media who played the cheerleader for Mr. Obama, who skated by controversies that would have sunk other candidates or abandoned the ruthless investigations they would have pressed on less congenial candidates. 

The ferocity they applied to the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, in contrast with the timidity they brought to his campaign, will in time come to be seen as one of the most shameful episodes in American journalism. Not so much for what they did to Ms. Palin, but for what they neglected to do in examining the candidate for the office that really counted. In some curious way, the U.S. media's bulldogging of Ms. Palin was kind of an inverted compensation for what they weren't doing to him.

American Thinker

I added "American Thinker" to the blog list, and here is a link to a fun story about a woman going to church for the first time -- on Christmas Eve.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/power_to_the_conservative_peop.html

2009 Year in Review

Should You Buy an iPod Touch Today?

Gizmodo says wait!

Blog Updates

Updated the blog a bit.  Added links to Picassa photos among others.  The new version also allows followers, so you can stay up to date whenever we blog.

Larry asked for a list of blogs to follow for non MSM news.  I added a lot of links to the BlogList.  Larry, start with Instapundit on a daily basis.  Glen Reynolds is a law professor at University of Tennessee and mostly links to interesting stories on the web.  Drudge Report is a popular news aggregate.  Don Surber is a West Virginia columnist that is always worth a look.

Great Customer Service

Received this e-mail from Blinds.com who we used for our front pleated shades.  The blinds are great, and so is the company who sold them to us:


A Blinds.com coupon and a question . . .

---

CEO@blinds.com	Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 4:07 PM
To: xx@xx.com
David, we SINCERELY appreciate your purchase 30 days ago.  First a question . . . if there was one thing about our products or service (or whatever) you could change, what would that be? I'd appreciate your input and WILL read your email reply. Also, did you know that you can rate your blinds on the Blinds.com website? Use the link(s) below to help someone else with their buying decision by posting photos, reviews, and tips. Large National Name Brand: Close-Out Cellular Shades - Light Filtering Also, please do me a favor and tell your friends and neighbors about us.  Forward this email now (or mention us on Facebook or Twitter) and they can use the coupon below. Thanks again! Warm Regards, Jay Jay Steinfeld, CEO CEO@Blinds.com P.S. Forward this email with the coupon now (it expires in 30 days), before you forget! :) Use this coupon code REF733862-21 to take $10 off your next order of $150 or more. One per person, one per household, and must be presented at time of purchase. Minimum purchase of $150. Cannot be combined with any other offer. No limit on the number of people you refer. Offer expires 30 days from the date of this letter. P.P.S. Visit this page anytime to see special offers and find out what's on sale each month. Click here to remove your name from my address book.

---

PopSci: Best 100 Innovations of 2009

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/looking-back-100-best-innovations-2009

I like the power roller, and the home heat loss analyzer.

Christmas 2009

We had a fantastic Christmas weekend with the Lundeen and Brown families coming to Winter Park.

Christmas pictures are here



Santa brought a very nice photo printer that includes an easy to use scanner.  David is starting to look at the baskets of old photos.  The first few are posted here

And well worth looking at!

Oldy But A Goody - Merry Christmas

To all my Liberal Democrat friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To all my Conservative Republican and Independent friends:

Merry Christmas

And, Happy New Year!

Free Remote Control of PC

http://www.showmypc.com/

Great for remote troubleshooting and it's free. End-User simply downloads " Show My PC to Remote User v3010 " and shares the created password with the person troubleshooting remotely. The trouble-shooter then can grab control of the end-users machine to help with installations, driver support, or to show how to use a program.

Very powerful tool that we are using at work.

Pictures of Florida during Depresssion

http://www.floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection/photo_exhibits/migrant/dining.cfm

Microsoft Security Essentials

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Microsoft has officially released "Security Essentials" which replacing their very effective Windows Defender spyware protection and adds Anti-Virus protection.

It seems to be unobtrusive, and should be effective, with multiple updates per day. Absolutely Free.

We will be switching to this on all of our home machines, which, uhm, currently totals 5 machines running six Windows operating systems.

Is available for XP, Vista and Windows 7

Eric on the field

The Mae West President

The Mae West Presidency at Donald Sensing's blog

I think what we are witnessing is a combination of two factors:

• A Mae West personality coupled with,
• The return of the Peter Principle

We have here a Mae West presidency, which I illustrate with two quotes of the platinum blondeshell:

1. It's better to be looked over than overlooked.

2. There's no such thing as bad publicity.


...
At one's level of incompetence, the manager or leader occupies his time with tasks below the level necessary for the office and hopes that staffs can pull success's rabbit out of the hat. (This helps explains why Obama has so many czars.) Couple that with Obama's inherent inability to measure success by any standard other than getting personal attention from as broad a swath as possible, and you see that the Oval office is occupied by a weak, ineffectual leader unable to perform at the level required.

As others have exhaustively pointed out, there is nothing at all in Obama's resume that shows he ever made highly difficult decisions that depended, at the end, on his own personal reservoir of wisdom and experience. So he does not tackle the inbox because its contents are above his competence. (One is reminded of Obama telling Rick Warren that when an unborn child gets human rights is "above my pay grade.") He tends instead to lesser matters that match his lower level of competence and gratifyingly feed the ego. And so he flies to Copenhagen to deliver a speech of no significance on a matter of no consequence. Why? Because he can do that - simply standing in front of a crowd reading eloquently from a teleprompter he can handle quite well.

And it gets him front and center in the international media. It's a twofer.