Mobil's Jipzee Cab

SPAM CATCHER!

2010-07-03T12:06:00.004-04:00

PUT YOUR STUPIC SPAM COMMENTS HERE AND QUIT SPOILING MY GRANCHILD'S PICTURES..

Gibson Les Paul Studio

2010-03-12T10:47:00.019-05:00

Gibson Les Paul Studio 2008

Hoorah!! Reid Jameson Smith

2009-10-20T11:47:00.003-04:00

Photo by A. Curtis Blair

*************************************************************************************

"Pollywog"!

2009-07-14T17:26:00.004-04:00

Grady Roux Stubbs (1996 - 2009)

2009-07-10T10:19:00.004-04:00

Goodbye dear friend...

..

Varnum Holland's Laps For Babies

2009-05-06T11:46:00.008-04:00

Join Varnum Holland for his fundraising Swim Event - "Laps for Babies" - for the March of Dimes on Friday, May 8th from 5:00-6:00 PM. He will be swimming as many lengths of the pool as he can in one hour. He is asking that his fans and friends sponsor him by going to his March of Dimes sponsor website and making a donation at http://marchforbabies.com/varnum. Sponsors can donate one flat donation, or they can wait until after the swim and sponsor him per length of the pool he swims in that hour. The total approximate laps he will be able to swim will be around 97. He is also inviting any and all friends and fans to come cheer him on at the event as well.

Friday, May 8, 2009
5:00pm - 6:00pm

The Woodlands Foundation - Indoor Pool
134 Shenot Rd
Wexford, PA

BE THERE!

Renegade Hockey Team 2009 Champions

2009-05-05T05:37:00.002-04:00

The Mask...

2009-03-22T06:05:00.004-04:00

Two views of my favorite hockey goalie's new mask:

Sixty-Three...

2009-03-11T06:48:00.000-04:00

Pirate's Krewe...

2009-02-28T06:00:00.004-05:00

Good Looking Krewe!

Congratulations!

2009-02-05T08:31:00.002-05:00

..........Charlie's Brownbelt Night!

Here We Go!

2009-02-01T12:01:00.006-05:00

.....................Here We Go!......

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2008-12-25T09:16:00.002-05:00

In Other News...

2008-06-14T08:59:00.011-04:00

The sudden death of TV journalist Tim Russert completely dominated yesterday's news cycle. The television wall to wall coverage has pretty much pushed other news onto a back burner as well it should. I cannot remember my mother being as moved by the death of a public figure since JFK's assassination. Clearly Tim Russert had made a lasting positive impression on most of our lives.

Here are some other stories which you may not have heard about from yesterday, any one of which might normally be the lead story of the day.

Downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa is under 6 feet of flood water from the recent storms which have hit the Midwest.

In Afghanistan Taliban militants staged a successful surprise attack on a prison near Kandahar freeing nearly 400 Taliban prisoners.

Iraqi President al-Maliki has suggested that the US might be asked to leave by his government
when the UN Mandate for the US to be in Iraq runs out at the end of this year.

Northern Japan has been hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

It was revealed yesterday that Senators Christopher Dodd(D)of Connecticut and Kent Conrad(D) of South Dakota received "sweetheart" mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial Corporation. Dodd is Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Conrad is Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

PA Primary Retrospective...

2008-04-24T09:26:00.006-04:00

The Big Pennsylvania Delegate primary has come and gone. Six weeks of political focus on the Keystone State not seen since the days of the American Revolution.
Hillary won this contest..right... with the double digit lead (10 %) all the political pundits and Clinton spinmeisters said she would need. Most Americans believe Hillary walked away with all the Pennsylvania Democrat delegates and that Barack Obama wasted all that money he spent on his media blitz.
Did you know that the PA delegate split after the results were in was Clinton 82 -- Obama 73. Yeah..she got 9 more delegates than he did for her last 6 weeks of work. She lowered his delegate lead over her from 139 - 130. Do you know how much she reduced his overall delegate advantage on Tuesday toward the nomination? Almost exactly 1/2 of 1%.
She is not expected to do as well in the remaining contests which have received little notice until now.
The only chance she has of winning the Democrat Presidential Nomination will have to involve the type of political chicanery that will leave a large percentage of the Democrat Party's voters so disgusted they will withhold support in November.

Sixty-two...!

2008-03-11T09:26:00.001-04:00

E-L-I-O-T...

2008-03-10T16:09:00.005-04:00

..........................."E-L-I-O-T!!"........................................
.
.
.

Cereal as a Snack...

2008-02-28T20:41:00.005-05:00

Cereal as a snack is certainly not an original idea. Most children home from school in the afternoon discovered it long ago. Individual cereal bits have been turning up in "potpourri" type snack mixes for decades.
The other night while looking for a snack food I happened upon a product called "Quaker SnackMix, a lone bag of it some grocery customer had dropped on some other snack product's shelf space (the one that starts with a "G"). Since I hadn't seen this one before I purchased it.
At home I tried the new snack mix and found it unremarkable except for one thing. There were these wonderful tasting little rectangular cereal morsels appearing to be like a shredded wheat product but much denser in composition. Reading the ingredients of the snack I learned these were called "Quaker Oatmeal Squares". I resolved to purchase a box of that cereal if it existed.
This morning I found some in the cereal section of the Shop-n-save. It's expensive though ($ 5.00 for a 16 oz box).
Anyway, I'm happily sitting here chewing on this stuff as I write..

You've Got to be Kidding!

2008-02-07T11:59:00.000-05:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has clearly lost his mind. He has suggested that introducing Sharia Law into the British legal system would help with "social cohesion."
I can't begin to express my revulsion at this idea, especially with the case of the two Texas girls allegedly being murdered by their father in what "Sharia Law" calls an "honor killing" fresh in our minds.
Much of our legal system comes from an ancient British origin. Why would the modern day UK even consider adopting such a regressive system that would take away all the womens' rights that have been won over the centuries.
If Islamic immigrants can't abide by the laws in the countries they have chosen to live in they should go back to where they came from.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister who appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury should begin a process of looking for his replacement.

Bobby Fischer (1943 - 2008)

2008-01-18T13:30:00.000-05:00

Former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has died in Reykjavik, Iceland at age 64.
He was an enormously gifted and talented individual whose life was eclipsed by his inner demons.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2007-12-25T05:49:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Good to Go!

2007-12-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

This morning I went to see the man who plans to cut me up someday.
Whatever I'm doing must be working....

He says I'm good to go for another year..!

Evel Knievel (1938 - 2007)

2007-11-30T18:42:00.000-05:00

Could one person have provided more fun for us all?

I don't think so..

Thanks Evel..

Evel Knievel
1938-2007

Penguins to Ottawa...

2007-11-22T04:28:00.000-05:00

The Penguins will be playing this Thanksgiving evening in Ottawa.
Sidney Crosby is in fourth place in NHL scoring with 30 points.
Evgeni Malkin is tied for fifth place with 28 points.

Happy Thanksgiving...

2007-11-22T04:27:00.001-05:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

2007-11-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

TOMMY'S GIRL!!

Nieces' Halloween!

2007-10-31T21:16:00.000-04:00

Sputnik and Korolev...

2007-10-04T21:40:00.000-04:00

Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of "Sputnik," the opening event of the 20th century's "space race" between the former Soviet Union and the US.
Unknown at that time was the name of the person known as the "Chief Designer", a Ukranian/Russian scientist who was responsible for the creation and successful launch of the satellite.
Sergey Korolev was openly honored after his death in 1966 as the rocket scientist whose name had been a state secret. He spent most of his adult life learning, building and teaching about rockets except for 8 years which he spent in a Siberian Gulag for having angered Josef Stalin.

Technical Upgrade...

2007-09-30T09:39:00.000-04:00

We did some technical upgrading this past week. Some voluntary, some we hadn’t planned on but we’re pleased with the result.Now one of my laptops has VISTA Home Premium Edition installed. Unfortunately my old unreliable since Comcast came RCA wireless modem/router refused to recognize the “VISTAized computer.
I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a new cable modem and router.

After setting up a new secure wireless network I added a “sling box” and now have full cable tv in both laptops, meaning I can take my cable service with me anywhere I can connect to a wireless broadband hotspot.

The new modem and router also nearly tripled my measured download speed, meaning I’m no longer plugging along at a rate slower than the average Japanese school kid as I had been since Comcast took over Adelphia.
I hope to be writing more than I have in recent months now that I’ve made the computer fun again.

Award Winning Good Cooking...

2007-09-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

Chuck Stubbs, my son-in-law, and his Waterdog Outdoor Grill Team placed second in the Capital City BBQ contest this past weekend in Tallahassee, Florida.

Chuck and his teammates Martin Schaefer and Bill Avery took second place prizes for chicken and pork in the Backyard Division of the cook off.
The contest was a Florida Bar-B-Que Association approved event.

Congratulations!

HAPPY 25th Anniversary!

2007-09-14T07:26:00.001-04:00

Elvis's What....?

2007-08-10T09:46:00.000-04:00

As you probably all know and I have recently become aware, after you bid successfully on E-bay for an item you begin to receive communications from them on a periodic basis. One could declare such messages SPAM I suppose but since they only come about once a week I’m putting up with them.Today came the opportunity to bid on “Elvis’s Piano”. The white baby grand appeared next to “the Boss’s upright” something possibly more affordable.Yep, looks like all the keys are there!
I’m checking to see if I have the requisite quarter $million sitting around to participate in this special auction. Nope, not after yesterday’s Wall Street bloodbath….
Ah shucks, I wouldn’t have had a place to put it anyway.
Thank-ooh-very-much!

Bike Rescue...

2007-08-04T20:01:00.000-04:00

On Thursday evening I was riding my bike on an isolated section of the Panhandle Trail when I blew out the rear tire.
Gerry Gillman of UPMC who I ride with on weekends came out and rescued me from my predicament.
Thanks Gerry!

Profit Taking at Alcoa...

2007-07-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

Alcoa, Inc shareholders probably would have liked to have known that two key Executives sold large quantities of their personal shares in the aluminum giant in the middle of last week.
Today it was revealed that Alain Belda, Chairman and CEO sold 1,873,917 shares for between $45.19 and $46.48 apiece last Wednesday July 18. He had exercised options for those shares earlier that morning for between $36.51 and $41.51.
Can we say quick profit of around $10,800,000 after capital gains taxes..?
Of course he could claim he was only following the sterling example of Alcoa CFO Charles McLane, Jr. who sold 37,132 shares for between $46.69 and $46.77 the previous day (Tuesday July 17). He had exercised options on those shares that morning for between $22.56 and $29.31 each. We didn’t find out about that until last Friday (the same day Belda filed his report with the SEC).
I wouldn’t presume to suggest that either of these fine businessmen were aware that BHP wasn’t really going to buy Alcoa which along with the news that Alcoa was no longer bidding for ALCAN had driven the cost of the shares up.
I don’t own any shares of Alcoa and haven’t for several years. If I did I might be a little troubled by all this since today on an “up” day in the market Alcoa was selling at one point for $41.34 which is less than the option price Belda paid for some of the shares he sold.

Urban Legend: Day Trading at the Public Library...

2007-07-16T11:51:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting talk with a fellow on Saturday. He was an engineer by trade and we mostly talked about riding our bikes however the discussion began when he asked me about the current state of Bally Total Fitness, the health club we both belong to.
I began following BTF* closely about a year ago by setting a google news alert on it so I’m pretty up-to-date on most of the corporate machinations which have been going on about the preplanned bankruptcy and its opposition. I mentioned that the stock was worth about 54 cents a share and he thought that it might be a good investment, an idea which I discouraged pointing out that in a bankruptcy the stock gets canceled and the equity holders lose everything.
He then asked me if I’d heard about “these guys that were day trading using the computers at the public library”. He then pointed out that he’d heard that they each were making about $200 a day. I expressed my skepticism at this suggesting that all you need is one really bad day when the market is getting beat up to lose everything.Here are some of my other thoughts on the subject:
I’ve heard news journal reports that the vast majority of those who try to both formally and informally “day trade” lose their shirts.
I don’t day trade but I do engage in “trade timing” when I am selling and buying. ( I don’t have any real secrets here but I have discovered that I am able to buy stock cheaper than the visible current ticker prices, enough usually to cover the fees of both buying and selling). One thing I am doing at that moment is I have multiple browsers open. Have you ever used even the “modern broadband access computers” in a public library? To someone like me they are really about what you can’t do. You’re limited to one browser at a time and it is cumbersome and unfriendly. You have a default search engine (usually MSN because of its affiliation with “explorer”) which resists any attempt to "googlize" or "yahooize" it. Other than to do a check of my portfolio I’ve found the public library’s computers to be worthless for activities which require internet agility.
The other thing is the limit on time. At my public library you may only use the computers for 120 minutes a day.If you were making $ 200.00 a day why would you even be using the computers at the public library?
In short I believe that if anyone is successfully day trading at the Public Library they are doing it there for a very short time.

* not the stock symbol which is “BFTH”

Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson: 1912 - 2007

2007-07-16T02:41:00.000-04:00

I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

..................................Lady Bird Johnson..........................

Thanks... We haven't all forgotten...

Off with their heads...

2007-07-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

The ugly side of China has reemerged this week with news of the execution of Zheng Xiaoyu, the former Drug and Food Minister of the People’s Republic.
Zheng had been convicted of taking $800,000 + worth of bribes during his tenure in office from 1998 to 2005. It represents the government’s attempt to minimize the problem as of late of various unhealthy substances finding their way into products the Chinese sell worldwide. By eliminating the person at the top of that area of the culture the problem is instantly solved, so their thinking goes. Normally someone in China having committed public bribery on that scale would be denounced, forced to make restitution and given a two year prison sentence.China has been trying for the last decade to fashion it’s own brand of capitalism, something somewhere between the “Singapore economic model” and a Marxist command economy. The opportunity to show itself to the world through the 2008 Olympics is a matter of immense pride to its leaders. Now a rush is on to bring off that event with a minimal amount of dysfunction, as the report of the execution was accompanied by the proclamation that the food to be served at the Olympics would be contamination free.There are plenty of other problems to be solved in the next 12 months, traffic, air pollution in the host city and the logistics of properly providing hospitality to its Olympic guests. Let’s hope that no more people will be killed in the name of putting China’s best foot forward.

Happy Fourth!

2007-07-04T20:31:00.000-04:00

Chinese Engineering...

2007-06-28T01:46:00.000-04:00

The Chinese Government continues to astound the world with its 21st Century engineering projects.
Completed today was a 22 mile long bridge across Hangzhou Bay linking Shanghai with the industrial city of Ningbo. This bridge over the open sea is expected to open a year from now and will shorten the road distance between the two cities from 250 miles to 50.If that doesn’t sound impressive to you consider this. The distance the new bridge covers is more than the distance across the English Channel between the UK and France.
A year ago the Chinese completed and opened a railroad between Qinghai Province and Lhasa, Tibet. This 2040 kilometer project was constructed mostly at an altitude between 4000 and 5000 meters ABOVE sea level. The average height of this railroad is 2.8 times higher than the city of Denver!
The Chinese also have announced plans to build a blacktopped highway up the side of Mt. Everest to the 16,699 foot elevation of the Tibetan base camp which potential mountain climbers operate from by the opening of the Olympics next summer. The stated purpose is so that the Olympic Torch Relay will have a Mt. Everest component.............View from the Everest end of the proposed highway

It is unclear exactly how they intend to do this to but they are expected to follow a preexisting traditional Tibetan path. The project according to the China News Agency will take 4 months.
No wonder the Russians want to build a 64 mile tunnel to Alaska..

Ruel Alden Smith...

2007-06-12T20:38:00.001-04:00

Ruel Alden Smith
..
..

Special Delivery..!

2007-06-10T21:07:00.000-04:00

A package was delivered earlier than expected to Tampa late this afternoon.

His name is Alden and he weighed 5 lbs 9 ounces!

Congratulations to Amy and the Pirate!

What Happened to AccuWeather..?

2007-05-31T21:21:00.000-04:00

Today was one of those hot humid miserable type days we’ve come to expect during the spring/summer months in Western PA.
I remember looking at the AccuWeather forecast for my town about 2:00 PM this afternoon hoping there would be some late afternoon rain relief, maybe in the form of a “pop up” storm. The weather prediction showed none.About 4:45 PM relief came anyway in the form of a really nasty 90 minute long severe thunderstorm. After about an hour of flashing and banging and periodic downpours I decided to check AccuWeather again. Believe it or not there was no acknowledgement of any sort that the storm was occurring. I looked at my local weather radar and the storm seemed to be centered right over where we live!
Today the famed computerized weather forecasting giant let us all down.

A Note About Immigration...

2007-05-30T14:47:00.000-04:00

I’ve made no secret about my support for immigration in general. I realize that one of the reasons America is the great country it is because of the blending of various immigrant groups throughout our history and the individual achievements by first and second generation immigrants.
As opposed to many of my countrymen I am not offended when I hear people talking in the language from where they came. I find Spanish to be a beautiful lyrical language with a fascinating cultural background. I love to listen to it and wish I could speak it fluently.Without immigration and lots of it there won’t be enough working people to keep the economy rolling in the next 5 - 20 years as all the baby boomers retire.
Advocates on both sides of the immigration issue hate the 900 + page compromise that has been fashioned in the US Senate and endorsed by the Administration.
All that said let’s reduce that immigration package to what it really is... an attempt to make this issue go away for another 20 years…and from my perspective that might be a good thing.

Communique...

2007-05-17T13:07:00.000-04:00

Earth to Paul Wolfowitz...

You are an absolute dope for taking a job where your girlfriend worked in the first place.

Then you make the mistake of getting involved in her compensation.

There is NO vindication for your stupidity in the 21st Century. You obviously do not have the clear judgment to run ANYTHING of consequence.

Quit trying to shift part of the blame to others.

Accept the fact that there are consequences for your actions and GET OUT!

Turning Lead Into Gold...

2007-05-12T17:18:00.000-04:00

Lately I’ve devoted an inordinate amount of my time into the thousand year old practice of trying to turn lead into gold. It’s the same pursuit that got many a budding chemist started. Why I even heard that an atomic chemist actually pulled it off about 27 years ago using a process called "transmutation" at a cost of about 20 times what the small amount of gold produced was worth and with the accompanying problem that the precious metal was too radioactive to be handled. How did I get into this madness you might ask? A little over two years ago after listening to the advice of a financial advisor I decided to try to turn copper into gold. If you listen to financial experts long enough you will soon learn that gold itself even in its current favorable environment is a lousy long term investment. The price of an ounce has barely doubled in the past 25 years while most equity markets have quadrupled in value.
In early 2005 I invested in a company called Phelps Dodge which was considered the major American player in the copper business. What resulted for me was nearly two years of 11 % annual dividends and tremendous growth. The amount I invested in Phelps Dodge is worth 3.28 times what I spent just 26 months ago or what investors would like to call a 150 % annualized return.
What I heard recently was that LEAD is the new “copper” and is expected to be for the next several years.
Here’s a few of the reasons:
1. Because of the global warming issue countries are turning away from coal fired plants to produce energy and moving toward nuclear energy…lots of lead will be needed for protection.2. As the huge populous economies of India and China are expanding so are their middle classes. People who used to ride bicycles are purchasing motorbikes and automobiles which need BATTERIES as well as the hybrid vehicles which are now available.3. There are “spot” shortages in the industry. One of the largest mines producing lead in the world is shut down for the next 2 years while it is being “modernized”.
4. At the moment there is not enough lead to meet demand and the price is rising.I have posted the above picture as my desktop background while pondering how to do this investment. It is a picture of a mine in which lead is being extracted.
The thing about lead is that there aren’t lead mines per se. Most lead is a byproduct of mining for something else, mainly zinc, silver or gold but it exists side by side with other metals in most ore as well. The world’s largest producer is a company called BHP Billiton, Ltd which is located in Australia and has various metal mines around the world. BHP, Ltd is currently attempting to merge with one of its biggest competitors a London based Australian company called Rio Tinto and there is a report as I write this that the merger is going to be accomplished.
Not even aware of the merger talk I was considering purchasing some Rio Tinto this past Tuesday and my main hesitation was that it was selling for nearly $290 a share (maybe a little too big for my blood). While I was thinking about it the merger talk started and it jumped $ 36 a share..(nice stuff for a day trader but not my cup of tea).
Anyway, I plan to watch BHP for the next few days and if it drops in price like the dominant company in a merger usually does I may purchase some.

More News!

2007-04-27T23:14:00.000-04:00

Yes...this is important!

Click On:

THIS

..

Silver Anniversary!

2007-04-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

Today is the 25th Anniversary!

The Russians are Coming!

2007-04-21T10:17:00.000-04:00

While our nation has been in shock over the Virginia Tech shootings the Russians announced they plan to build a tunnel to North America. I’m not making this up.
Plans were put forth this past Wednesday to dig a 60+ mile long tunnel under the Bering Strait to link Russia’s East Siberian Coast with Alaska.
The tunnel will be built in three segments linking with two islands in the strait.The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System and pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according to a press release which was handed out at the Wednesday media briefing and bore the companies' logos.Associated with this project will be 2 huge 10 gigawatt electric plants on the Siberian Coast which will rely on tidal activity to generate energy.
The cost of the tunnel is projected between $ 50 billion and $65 billion. The money will come from profits being made by the invested partners listed above who currently are awash with funds because of oil and gas revenues. It is expected to take 15 to 20 years to construct.Czar Nicholas II in 1904 announced plans to do such a project but talk ceased due to a war with Japan.

Family News...

2007-04-20T22:15:00.000-04:00

THE

PASSED THE

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

....

The Wild Wild....

2007-04-03T10:12:00.000-04:00

Is it just me or does the purported Chinese “Moon Rover” look like a prop out of the old TV series “Wild Wild West” covered with gold tinfoil..?..

The Silly Season...

2007-04-02T14:59:00.000-04:00

The silly season has started for leading Presidential candidates even though the real election is still 19 months away.
I overheard these two rumors/stories while eating breakfast this morning in a local restaurant:
Barack Obama has had his political operatives kidnap his white grandmother and stash her in a closet somewhere. Supposedly this is because the Senator from Illinois doesn’t want the black community to know that he is half white.
Judith Giuliani, Rudy’s third wife used to kill puppies for a living when she was married to her first husband. This is the real reason she didn’t want you to know about her first marriage.
Expect to hear similar nonsense as other candidates jockey for their respective parties’ nominations.

Sniff This...

2007-03-13T23:41:00.000-04:00

Thinking of taking your cds, dvds, and other types of disc media on your next trip to Malaysia..
Think again.Chances are your return from Kuala Lumpur may be interrupted by this pair, Lucky and Flo, two black labs who have been trained to sniff out polycarbonate like western nations train dogs to detect explosives and drugs. It seems pirating copyrighted media has become such a big business in Malaysia that the authorities are making an attempt to curb some of the trade.
Anyone who has ever dealt with labs knows that they are about the sweetest dogs in the world but they are also very dedicated to pleasing their handlers and are quite capable of making a big fuss!This primitive technology unfortunately hasn’t advanced to the point where the labs can tell the difference between what is copyrighted intellectual property and what is bootlegged..

Sixty-One..!

2007-03-11T09:02:00.000-04:00

Emil Narick (1916-2007)

2007-03-05T11:15:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid I didn’t have a lot of heroes, mostly baseball players, Mickey Mantle, the Brave’s Eddie Matthews, the Pirates’ Frank Thomas and Bill Mazeroski. I remember being sad the day Frank Thomas was traded to the Reds, a transaction which wound up shaping the team that won the World Series in 1960.
Other heroes included Van Cliburn the pianist and Bobby Fischer, the chess master (boy what a head case he turned out to be).
One hero I've always remembered was an attorney who represented the United Steelworkers, Emil Narick. It wasn’t his day job that impressed me. On weekends he refereed college and NFL games!
The last thing I remember about Narick, about the time I was getting out of college was that he ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency of the United Steel Workers. I never knew about his short stint with the EEOC or his subsequent 15 year career as a Judge of both Common Pleas and Commonwealth Courts
Narick died Saturday. When I told my mom about his death she remembered him for his time on the Bench.
I will always think of him as a man who had two simultaneous careers and excelled at both.

Here We Go....

2007-02-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

I believe if I was a physician I would be extremely embarrassed if it became known that I had personally purchased wholesale $150,000 worth of steroid and human growth hormone pharmaceuticals with a retail value of $750,000 from a Florida online pharmacy which was raided the other day for its dubious sales practices.
After having been an outstanding high school athlete in the 60’s (Mt. Lebanon), and an Olympic silver medal winning platform diver at Munich in 1972 and decades later a staff physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers my shame would be almost unbearable.
Ah...but that's just me..(waiting for the other shoe to drop)..

The Thinking Blog...

2007-02-13T03:13:00.000-05:00

I’ve been tagged with the thinking blog meme by my good blogging friend Don . I’m required by this meme to write a post tagging five other bloggers who make me think with a brief explanation of why:

Before I tag anyone else I’d like to mention that if someone else had tagged me, one of the first I would have tagged would have been Don (dk, A Silent Cacaphony). More than anyone else I read Don reminds me why America is such a great country. Don is proud of his roots, knows who he is, what he has done, where he is going with his life and has a vision of America I admire. His writings reflect how our country’s leaders and society square with that vision, their shortcomings, failures, conduct and successes. I feel honored to have been tagged by Don.
I’m also required to link to
this post….
I am tagging:

1. Nicko McDave - Ohligarchy. A blog which recently celebrated it’s second anniversary, Ohligarchy has received positive acclaim in the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette and the Pittsburgh City Paper for its contributions to local conservative thought. Dave is as likely to tell fascinating anecdotes about his family as he is to criticize the local liberal press which he does early and often. I’ve always been envious of how well he writes. This blog also has strong ties to Minnesota where the author formerly lived and worked.

2. Nancy Drew- Cinderella and Me. This is a Canadian Blog. Nobody knows what Nancy Drew really does for a living when she isn’t solving mysteries (let’s face it some bloggers have told people where they work about their blogs and as a consequence got in BIG TROUBLE) but if you follow her on a regular basis you will learn a lot about office politics.What Nancy does more than anything is make me laugh. If I’ve sent you a joke by e-mail there is a really good possibility I heard it first from her. Oh, there’s a cat named Smoky involved..

3. Krishna Bhatt- Humour and Last Laugh. This is a blog posted from a cyber café in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal is a kingdom tucked away in the Himalayan Mountains between India and China.Krishna has bloggers all over the world communicating with him after he initiated contact. I’ve been corresponding with him for about eighteen months through both our blogs and e-mail. His eye opening essays and stories have a cultural perspective not found in most of the stuff which we normally read and a lot of diverse international opinion is to be found in his comment sections.
4. Bob Kelly- The Real Key West. Reading Bob’s blog keeps me up to date with what is going on the Island of Key West. Bob is a champion of the voices and interests in society who aren’t heard enough, and a lover of all kinds of good music. His essays and postings remind me constantly that the more things change in the Conch Republic the more they stay the same.

5. Rhiannon- Inner Journey Writings. The last time I was tagged for a meme it was done by this lady, Washington State artist Barbara King. Her blog consists of essays and poetry as well as current and past examples of her fine American Indian influenced works.

Have fun with this folks..

Science Fiction Writer...

2007-02-08T04:15:00.000-05:00

I ran across this one somewhere yesterday:

I am:

Robert A. Heinlein

Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I read a lot of Sci-Fi when I was a kid. My father had a huge collection, mostly paperbacks.
I read more Robert Heinlein than any other writer. Could he have influenced my outlook of the world in such a way that I would someday score as him on this test..?
That's a really scary thought!

Beta This!

2007-02-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

Google's Blogger evidently got tired of offering to upgrade me to "Beta" and today forced me to change if I wanted access my blog.
So this site has now been "beta-ized" and I am now entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof..
I may in the near future be making some changes to the site to take advantage of my new status.

Today's Big Loser...

2007-02-07T12:49:00.000-05:00

NASA is today’s big loser.
The saga of Astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak’s 900 mile journey over last weekend to confront/assault a fellow astronaut’s girlfriend has forever changed the space program.
This story is going to dominate our news cycle probably in a way we’ve not seen before except in the OJ mess. Think of how it has already changed our thinking. We now know our astronauts wear diapers, sometimes away from work..
We’ve already learned that Ms. Nowak had a tough time on her only space mission last year. She was ill for the first forty-eight hours, then discovered her mission duty of operating the space station’s robotic arm was a lot more difficult to do than her training had prepared her for.Has anyone else noticed from her mug shot that she returned to earth with a Forengi-ish forehead.
Traditionally a Democrat Congress has been hostile toward the space program considering it to be an extravagant frill when compared to the social programs that their party champions.
NASA is heading for a fiscal bruising.

Cold and Linked...

2007-02-05T02:56:00.000-05:00

It’s very cold around here. The temperature is expected to go below zero tonight with wind chill in the minus teens..
Payton has won his super bowl so now people can stop saying he can’t win the big one.My "best of" blog out trafficked my regular blog yesterday and today after a member of an “ez board" chat discussion group promoting Key West discovered my Gregory King letter and posted a link to it.

Ultimate Splash Screen...

2007-02-02T02:55:00.000-05:00

I know very little about computers. What I do know I have mostly acquired from trial and error following some limited introductory training. I have learned my way around the original blogspot blog. I can do most of the basic functions to post and maintain a site.
I’ve taught myself among other things how to create links, put up some pictures and turn things on and off. I’ve also learned some other tricks from using a firefox browser which I won’t disclose I know.
Having said that I still don’t know a lot of the basics which most computer users take for granted. For instance I’m e-mail illiterate in that I don’t know how to do anything other than send a basic message.
I am, however, fascinated with what I will call “splash screens”. I discovered these about a year ago when I was trying to listen to an Australian radio station over the internet. After downloading a “Windows 10 media player” I found that while listening to this particular station a “visual kaleidoscope of light” was emitted from my computer screen to the accompaniment of the music. The colors and shapes changed and moved with the rhythm and tones of the sound. Now that changes the music in that it is no longer just an auditory experience.
Anyway, since then I have listened to various radio feeds in all types of musical genre from all over the world and experienced their “splash screens”. I thought they were all the same but I recently have discovered one that is so good it can be enjoyed even with the music turned off. For some unknown reason the colors and blending and movements are by far the best I’ve seen thus far. I don’t know what causes this. As far as I’m aware what one is really looking at are fluctuations in electronic waves created within ones own computer. However if anyone else out there has experienced “splash screens” and wants to check this one out go to:

here

Scroll down the chart to number nine which says: in big letters: CLASSIC FM NL which is from Naarden, NL (Netherlands). Go over to the windows media player box on the right and click on:

ClassicFM NL 96K
Stereo

Of course you need to have windows media player 9 or above to do this which you can usually download for free from one of these sites if you don’t have it.

Impulse Purchase (Sort Of)...

2007-01-26T00:49:00.000-05:00

The temperature has finally dropped bigtime around here.
I've been promising myself for years to buy a leather jacket.
Today using money I received from Grandma at Christmas I purchased this particular advertised jacket. No that isn't me in the picture.

Art Buchwald (1925 - 2007)

2007-01-18T22:18:00.000-05:00

Art Buchwald has finally succumbed to his kidney disease. He lasted nearly a year after making a decision to forego 3 times a week dialysis treatments.
In late January of 2006 Art checked himself into a Washington D.C. area hospice to spend his final days.
We wrote a tribute to Art in early March of last year.
In late May after the insurance benefits had run out Buchwald left the Hospice. Renal experts at the time speculated that the satirical writer’s kidneys "must have a small amount of function left".
Art opted to spend most of his summer at his traditional summer home on Martha’s Vinyard where he penned a final book “Too Soon To Say Goodbye” which included many of the eulogies friends had prepared.
In the fall he went back to occasionally writing his syndicated column.
He will be missed by all who enjoyed his writings.
Thanks Art…

Doctor Visit...

2007-01-17T16:32:00.000-05:00

Today I went for what passes as an annual checkup. I really hate to go to these because I already know what I’m paying for the Doctor to say.
I had previously done the blood test thing and the nurse had done her visit prep thing like an electrocardiagram (which for some reason had a dozen of those chest hair pulling tabs this time), blood pressure check etc. and I was sitting there waiting for my physician to come into the exam room.
The door finally opens to reveal that my late fortyish doctor has gone completely gray since last year, his mustache, beard, hair..everything.
So he does his thing with the stethoscope and all, checks my file and asks if I’ve had problems, questions, anything..
I decline the opportunity to brag about the fact that I’ve swum over 80,000 meters (50 miles) since I last came for a visit.
He finishes with the file comes toward me talking as he walks. “Well, blood pressure is good, cholesterol is good, heart is excellent.”
He swings around behind me and leans down inches from my right ear and whispers as if a hypnotic suggestion..
“Lose some weight!”

Do we want to do this?

2007-01-16T08:37:00.000-05:00

You know those news banner runners you see going across the bottom of TV stations.
Here's one I saw this morning on MSNBC:

"The ethics panel at a New York Hospital has approved uterus transplants. Donor to be removed after recipient gives birth."

What does this mean?

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ? ? ?

2007-01-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

NO ! ! !

HE HASN'T BEEN HAVING AN AFFAIR ! ! !

You may go back to your empty insignificant life now....

Cowher News Conference...

2007-01-05T00:07:00.000-05:00

The Pittsburgh Steelers announced this evening that a press conference will be held tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM concerning the future of Coach Bill Cowher.
The Steeler Coach is expected to announce his retirement at that time.
In a related story this site was deluged with 15 inquiries today concerning Coach Cowher's nonexistent infidelities. As you know we are considered the number 5 reference on that topic in the world.
There is no evidence that Coach Cowher has ever cheated on his wife!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2007-01-01T03:00:00.000-05:00

Jipzeecab Restored to his Former Place in History

2006-12-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

Several of you are aware that in real life my most prominent claim to fame (fifteen minutes) is associated with the 1982 mock secession of Key West from the United States of America creating the “Conch Republic”. I wrote about this briefly in a post on May 28, 2005 when I noted that I had discovered someone had written a book about the event which I would have to obtain.
Subsequently after reading the book it was apparent to me that the writer himself admittedly was missing key information about the event which I could have provided. As a result in the absence of my input others were creating scenarios which just weren’t factual at the time. Two key unanswered questions were:
1. Who thought up the idea originally? (in the book a Miami PR man tried to take credit for it)...and
2. What was the process with regard to the Founding Fathers that led to the Mock Secession? I knew the answer to both questions.
In July of 2005 I wrote a letter to the author of the book detailing my thoughts. Originally I was unable to get his attention by e-mail however I tried again this past July posting the letter on a blog I use to preserve writings and by e-mail calling his attention to it. He responded immediately to it and a brief exchange of e-mail between us took place. He promised that when and if a 4th printing of his book is done he would include the new information.
At Christmas my sister (“Tommy’s Girl”) gave me two books on Key West which piqued my interest in something about Key West. When googling the subject I ran across the “Official Conch Republic website” (a fellow there named Peter Anderson has copyrighted and trademarked anything to do with "The Conch Republic").Having explored his site several times before I noticed that he has recently revised his “Official History” in a way that I can tell reflects the input I gave Gregory King in my letter. Some of the changes are subtle (which only I am able to recognize) but the most obvious thing is that the list of “Founding Fathers” which used to be a copy of the list in the order they appeared in King’s book now has my name at the top and the subsequent order of names reflects the process I described in my letter.
I doubt very seriously if a 4th printing of King’s book is coming out anytime soon (they have to sell out the third printing first) but King apparently believes me to be credible and has passed on the new information to Mr. Anderson.
Thank you to all concerned..

Christmas at the Duchy...

2006-12-22T14:48:00.001-05:00

............... Duchessadele and her beautiful family..................

......................Charlie and Mary Harlan.......................

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

Cost of Living Increase...

2006-11-13T21:30:00.000-05:00

My mom has been complaining for years that the Social Security cost of living increase (COLA) is eaten up by Medicare associated increased expenses. The reason this happens is that health care costs have been expanding at a double digit percentage annually for quite some time.Recently I’ve had my first experience with this phenomenon. In late October the SSA announced the increase for this coming year would be 3.3%.
Yesterday having been informed what the new Medicare associated costs would be I was able to calculate the new amounts. The new Medicare associated costs for me take up 86% of the COLA.
WOW!

Throw the Bums Out!

2006-11-08T11:47:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts on the election:

Do you know who got more votes in Allegheny County than Rick Santorum besides Bob Casey?
Lynn Swann..the former Steeler got 22,718 more votes than the # 3 Republican Senator did, 40 % to 35 % in his loss to Governor Ed Rendell.

In this household we were happy to see a local “brown shirted” twerp who had yet to have a real job as an adult be defeated by a 59% to 40% margin for a seat in the General Assembly.
This 21 year old Santorum “clone” bombarded our mailbox with two or three pieces of glossy advertising every day for the past 6 weeks (and thus contributed to the destruction of approximately 50 acres of forest land) besides being responsible for the majority of those annoying political phone calls we had to endure leading up to the election.

Mike Veon, the Democrat from Beaver County who was the only one not to vote to repeal the “middle of the night pay raise” in the legislature, lost to Republican Jim Marshall 54% to 46% who ran a mostly low profile campaign. In one of the clearest examples of campaign advertising 'stupidity' I've ever seen, Veon went with an expensive TV campaign primarily using an ad which proffered his opponent’s name repeatedly to voters who were waiting for the opportunity to vote against him in the general election!

My Congressman Dr. Tim Murphy, one of the good guys in the House of Representatives, was reelected easily despite the Post Gazette‘s endorsement of his opponent.

Oh, the “spam” candidate mentioned in a previous post got a little less than 14 % of the vote in his head to head race with an incumbent Democratic legislator.

SPAM Candidate...

2006-10-20T16:29:00.000-04:00

My comment section was "spammed" last evening by the political campaign representing the candidate pictured here.
I'm surprised this hasn't happened before.
Said candidate has his own blog which doesn't allow comments.
He doesn't indicate any party affiliation although he is running against a well entrenched Democrat member of the State Assembly.
I've already deleted his comment as I do all SPAM when it appears...
As one who spent a few years deeply involved in local politics I would make the following suggestion to him.
If you want to get elected to this particular office... next time run against him in the Democratic Primary. Get out and knock on the door of EVERY residence in the district and ask those who answer to vote for you..a campaign tactic your opponent has probably long since forgotten the usefulness of. You will be surprised at the result.
That will do you a lot more good then sending spam to the comment section of blogs that aren't read by anyone who lives in your area.

Comcast Travails...

2006-10-18T00:11:00.000-04:00

I thought I’d update everyone on my technical problems.
I am back on the net using the COMCAST server. I’m just not happy with the current arrangement.
During the past 18 months I’ve been spoiled by the compatibility of Adelphia service with a wireless modem I purchased back in April of 2005.This modem has made it possible for me to work on the net both upstairs and downstairs using two different laptops one of which was hooked by Ethernet line and a newer one working wirelessly.
A Comcast contractor came out to the house on Tuesday a week ago and got me back on the net in about 10 minutes. At the time we tested both computers using the Ethernet feed and they both worked just fine.
After the contractor left I tried to use the newer laptop wirelessly and it wouldn’t work. Then I tried to use the older laptop with the Ethernet and it wouldn’t work either.
I discovered then that I could get the newer laptop to work with the Ethernet.
So I called Comcast’s 800 number hoping someone could remotely fix the problem. After about 45 minutes of trying to work on the problem with a remote technician we finally gave up.
Since then I’ve discovered I can make either computer work in either a tied Ethernet mode or a wireless mode but I can’t get them both to work at the same time. By “reinitializing” the modem I can get which ever one I want to use at the moment to work.
I’ve been fooling with this problem for a week now and I think I understand now why it won’t work the way I want it too…which of course I had figured out before..that being Comcast only allows my modem to recognize one computer at a time.
Cable companies are allowed to regulate the modems their customers use. When Comcast finally allowed my modem to use their server a week ago they changed its default configure setting from RG to CM. In the CM configuration file they control the access rules..noone for instance can set up a Wi Fi hotspot without their permission. In the RG configure setting the user can change settings within the modem. I spent four hours this evening trying to change internal modem settings to get it to accept the second computer to no avail. All it would do was switch to the other laptop when I tried to reset it.
So I’m going to talk to them one more time. They told me before that if I would just rent one of their wireless modems the problem would be fixed. This time if they can’t fix it I’m going to switch to FIOS..

Netless Again...

2006-10-06T18:19:00.000-04:00

In my bizarre world of Star Trekian cable mergers the Comcastians have finally overwhelmed the Adelphians and I am temporarily the worse off for it (Ohligarch who opted for Verizon DSL warned me this would happen someday).
Yesterday Adelphia customers were switched over to the Comcast server and the new server won’t recognize my combo wireless modem so I am without internet service until this coming Tuesday noon which is the earliest Comcast can get one of their service contractors out to fix it.So I’ve had to “take it to the streets”, this morning to get an urgent message out to my Nepal pen pal which was delayed 24 hours and this evening to generally get caught up on all the things I’ve come to depend on the internet for (like how my portfolio is doing). By taking it to the streets I mean hopping in the Malibu Maxx with my low tech laptop and sponging off some poor sap’s unsecured wireless Linxys system or setting up in a Brueggers or Borders until the battery runs down.
So I’m off to do that and put up this emergency post.
I’ll be getting a new Comcastian e-mail address soon..or so they say...

We Have Met Big Brother...

2006-09-25T10:57:00.000-04:00

An old sci-fi movie favorite of mine is “Outland” starring Sean Connery made back in 1981. Connery plays the new marshall in a mining colony on Io, a moon of Jupiter. The Marshall isn’t there for even a week when he begins to knock heads with the CEO of the mining corporation which really controls every phase of life on this remote outpost.
At issue is the easy availability of an illegal recreational amphetamine the miners are taking to prolong their work hours which is leading to an unusual number of deadly incidents on the settlement. When the Corporation discovers this cop can’t be intimidated into doing its will they import a team of futuristic hit men to eliminate him. With only two allies, a deputy and the colony’s medical officer Connery manages to prevail.
Corporate control of a local town is something some Americans are familiar with although the rest of us don’t always notice it until the company closes shop and a community sinks into economic depression.
We spend a lot of time nowadays worrying about privacy issues and government controlling our lives. Libertarians would rather let the marketplace and its forces determine what is important and leave the rest of us alone. I generally agree with that philosophy. This morning though while reading the newspaper I had a sudden revelation:
We have met “Big Brother” and he turns out to be..Now before you think I’ve gone completely off my rocker consider this. The major news story for the past seven days around here in Western Pennsylvania has been that a hillside in Kilbuck Township has collapsed and a major traffic artery route 65 northwest out of Pittsburgh has been blocked in the aftermath.. not only that but also the parallel Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks. The road and the rail aren’t expected to reopen until October 7 at the earliest. What caused the collapse? The alleged culprit is site preparation fill for a new Wal-Mart.My mom said to me a few days ago. “Do you know where they are taking the ‘fill’ they are cleaning off the road in Kilbuck?”
“Probably back to the top of the hill,” I replied. "They still need it for their shopping property."
What else was in the news in the last few days(?)…let’s see:
“Wal-Mart is organizing its 1.8 million employees into a political action force.”
“Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will begin selling all its generic drug prescriptions for $4.00 each,” first in the Florida area with plans to extend the program nationwide shortly thereafter. (This particular announcement caused a pharmaceutical stock I own to jump 31% in price on that day..why(?).. because it’s a relatively new company and none of its products has a generic equivalent.)
Today the major story on the front page of USA Today is about how “Wal-Mart is going green”. Wal-Mart haters are viewing this cynically as a political move to get the public to take their minds off the low pay and benefits Wal-Mart associates receive and the tens of thousands of small businesses that have closed when a nearby Wal-Mart opened and undercut their sales with discounted merchandise.
The real focus of the article, however, is about how Wal-Mart in recent years has adopted various energy saving measures which it claims are paying off in reduced costs when applied over its massive economies of scale.
The company also promotes and stocks conservation products that have yet to catch on with the general public.
Here is the part which makes me nervous. Wal-Mart is requiring its vendors to adopt and practice similar policies as a condition for doing continued business with the retail giant. Fish vendors are required in the next three years to provide only fish from fisheries certified as “sustainable” by the “Marine Stewardship Council”. Packaging of items must be made from corn based PLA, a biodegradable plastic.
All tree huggers are worried that the US hasn’t signed the Kyoto Treaty. It’ll happened when the Board of Directors in Bentonville, Arkansas decides it’s time.
Fred Krupp President of Environmental Defense is quoted as saying, “Wal-Mart has as much or more potential to change the way the world does business.
He’s probably right…

Pillow Talk...

2006-09-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

While the world is filled with gossip about the supposed romance between Condoleeza Rice and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay Washington insiders continue to claim that the Secretary of State’s real paramour is a 30 year old gym rattress who sat behind Condi during her Senate confirmation hearings for the top diplomatic job in the world (not that there’s anything wrong with that).Nonetheless, if the chief Canadian diplomat and America’s highest ranking gal really are sharing leisure time together do you suppose the subject of the unfortunate Mr. Maher Arar has come up?
Mr. Arar is a Canadian Muslim who has been the subject of a three year inquiry by the Canadian Authorities over his deportation to Syria by the US government which lead to him being beaten in Jordan and tortured in Syria in 2002/2003.
The mild mannered Canadian engineer had gone to visit his family in Tunisia in September of 2002. On his way back to Canada his plane had a stopover at JFK. American authorities acting on information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that Arar was an Islamic extremist with suspected links to al-Qaeda took Maher into custody and held and interrogated him in a detention center for twelve days.
When the US interrogators didn’t learn what the wanted from him Arar was shackled and deported to Syria (where he had lived before emigrating to Canada at age 17) by way of Jordan. After being beaten in Jordan Maher was driven to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured for 10 months finally being released by the Syrians after signing a false confession that he had been trained in Afghanistan. There is no evidence that he has ever been to Afghanistan.The most obvious question MacKay might ask Secretary Rice would be: Why wasn’t Arar sent on to Canada where he was a passport carrying citizen and for which he had paid passage when he was removed from the plane?
Ms. Rice might ask why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Mr. Ahar was an Islamist extremist with links to al-Qaeda when all the information they really had was that he had been seen briefly in the company of someone they were “shadowing”?
Something to talk about…

Bye Bye Buccos...

2006-09-13T12:19:00.000-04:00

KDKA Pittsburgh
On your dial at 1020

There’s always something happening on 1020 just for you
It’s the right stop
It’s the bright spot
It’s the pioneer station of the World

KDKA Pittsburgh

It seems silly to me to get nostalgic about a radio station. I’ve listened to this 50,000 watt broadcasting giant consciously for over 50 years. Because it has no other powerful radio stations on its frequency between sunset and sunrise it can be heard all over the northern hemisphere after dark. Why during the summer evenings in Florida one could often hear …PIRATES!
Not any more after October. Yesterday the Pittsburgh Pirates announced they had awarded their broadcast rights to a local station (WPGB FM 1047) which has been owned by Clear Channel Communications for about two years.
Business is business. Forget that KDKA was the first to broadcast a major league baseball game in 1921. Or that they’ve done all the Pirate games for the last 51 years. Those of you who still listen in distant parts of this land can get all the games if you’ll subscribe to xm satellite radio for about $14 a month although you’ll only get the Pirate announcers for home games.
I only have one other reason to listen to KDKA anymore. That would be a semi “infomercial show” heard on Sunday mornings between 9:00 and 11:00 AM called “Your Money and You”. Hosted by Hefren-Tillotson’s financial guru Jim Meredith it’s the best two hours of radio available anywhere for those who want to learn how to plan for the future and invest wisely while doing it.

There’s always something happening..

Labor Day Rant

2006-09-04T11:03:00.000-04:00

It’s Labor Day and out of habit I got up early and read a newspaper.
For those of you who were wondering when I was going to post something again I thought I’d rant this morning about some thoughts that were provoked by reading that paper, one I don’t usually read (the Pittsburgh Tribune Review) unless Ohligarch links to it.

Apprehended:

The Iraqi National Security Advisor Mouwafak al-Rubaie has announced that “the number two Al Qaida in charge in Iraq”, a terrorist known as “Hamid al-Saeedi” has been captured and arrested.
I suppose I wouldn’t be cynical about this if it weren’t for the DOZENS of times we’ve been informed that the “number two” Al Qaida guy has been killed or captured.
I guess one should surmise that the worse job in the World is to be the chief operating officer of Al Qaida unless your name is al-Zawahri who coincidentally released another one of his “professionally produced videos” this time featuring an American traitor Adam Gadahn (who like John Mark Karr couldn’t find fame as a rock star and thus embraced the dark side).
Of course we are constantly reminded that the number one Al Qaida and the number one Taliban are still at large.

Pluto Gets No Respect:

As you’ve probably heard already, at the big Prague astronomers’ conference mentioned in my last post those assembled reduced Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet” in a voice vote going against the recommendation of its own blue ribbon panel. One of the several cited reasons for the demotion was that Pluto (through its own gravitational pull) had failed to clear its own orbit of other celestial objects.
Now a group of American astronomers primarily based around the University of New Mexico (where Pluto was discovered) has seized upon this particular flaw to declare that by that definition the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune don’t qualify as planets either.

Unfortunately this group has failed to deal with the contention that Pluto (and its companion Charon) is just a big CHUNK of ICE something unobservable eighty some years ago.

SMART-1

Then there is the matter of SMART-1, something I’m not so sure means much.
Do you remember the scene near the end of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones where Count Dooku (played by Christopher Lee) hightails it out of town after his duel with Yoda? He escapes in what appears to be his own personal craft which once in space suddenly transforms itself into a solar sailer which carries him to his meeting with Darth Sidius on a distant planet.
The technology involved in Smart-I is a primitive form of that craft. Energy is collected by solar panels and then converted by an ion engine into thrust which propels a 27 cubic foot object (with solar arrays attached) through space.
Summarizing SMART-I’s space trip by analogy: Three years ago you sent a box about the size of a washing machine on a journey from your home. It travels around the earth by solar power about 2000 times and returns to crash into your detached garage going 4,475 mph (approximately mach 6)... What a mess!We won’t be seeing the original Smart-I in a space museum anytime soon. Yesterday, the European Space Agency scientists (French) who created it allowed it to crash into the moon where it instantly became just another piece of man made junk after it had traveled on a 62 million mile odyssey . The moon is only 250,000 miles from Earth.
Still, they showed that a solar powered engine would work.

Pluto: Planet or Something Else?

2006-08-13T22:59:00.000-04:00

When I was a child in the fifties I knew “Pluto” was different. What made it different then was its orbit. Even though it was recognized as the ninth planet, I was aware that some points of its orbit were closer to our Sun than the closest points of Neptune the eighth planet‘s, orbit. The explanation offered for this phenomenon at the time was that Pluto was a runaway moon of Neptune.There were limits to what could be observed back then. Electronic (called "radio" then) telescopes were just beginning to be constructed. Astronomers’ observations were restricted by the size of the mirrors on their telescopes and visual interference from our own atmosphere. We knew Pluto had a lot of ice from spectrum analysis. What we didn’t know was that it was smaller in diameter than the planet Mercury or our own Moon.Our ability through the use of the Hubble Telescope helping to determine the true size and makeup of Pluto along with the discovery of four other celestial objects further from the Sun have caused some scientists to question whether Pluto should continue to be called a planet. The group of these celestial objects of which scientists claim Pluto is part of is called the Kuiper Belt. One of the objects, “2003 UB313” nicknamed “Xena”, is about 25 % larger than Pluto. Should it officially be made a 10th planet?3000 scientists and astronomers are meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia tomorrow for 12 days to decide if Pluto will continue to be called a planet or to possibly determine if a new classification system of what is a planet is necessary.

Politicizing the Weather...

2006-08-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

In the late 1970’s I was extensively involved in politics and was a delegate to party state conventions on more than one occasion. I remember one late night bull session in Orlando in the fall of 1977. One participant was an attorney from the Miami area who became very prominent in the early eighties.
“We could always be in power if we could just find a way to politicize the weather,” he was saying.
The rest of us joked about the notion saying stuff like, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.” Boy were we wrong!
Not long after that the concept of global warming went from being a topic of interest for a handful of scientists to a belief of millions across the planet.
I thought about that this morning when I read an article in USA today entitled “Hurricane Season Defying Forecasts.” In the midst of a gargantuan heat wave the National Hurricane Center is informing us that now we are into August and the tropics this year have barely produced a good whiff of wind. Bear in mind that the meat of any hurricane season is yet to come in the weeks after Labor Day. Nonetheless, I’m reminded that several months ago a group of environmental activists demonstrated around NOAA demanding the National Hurricane Center fire Max Mayfield and acknowledge that global warming was causing an increasing number of more and more powerful hurricanes. The Miami based scientists declined then the opportunity to endorse that concept.
Yesterday Hurricane Researcher William Gray reduced his annual prediction of expected hurricanes from 9 to 7 and said a monster storm like Katrina was unlikely this year.
The endorsement of “global warming” by previously skeptical Conservatives is quickly approaching what political scientists call the “tipping point”, wherein everyone will take it as a common assumption or as a given fact. This in spite of the belief on the part of many environmental scientists that many of the claimed underlying “proofs” put forth by non scientists like Al Gore are just not scientifically accurate.
Like many of the notions we accept in everyday life the politicizing of the weather relies on us using our current “commonsense” (and believe me after four absolutely miserable days here in the North East, commonsense abounds). When we do that however we completely overlook the history of our planet that some of us once studied in Geology class.
Consider this: It is a generally accepted scientific notion (supported by carbon data studies of the fossilized strata of the earth) that the Dinosaurs roamed the Earth around 300 MILLION Years ago.
Did you know?:
That in the last 1 MILLION years of Earth's 2 BILLION year existence there have been 18 ICE AGES, the last one approximately 54,000 years ago. This suggests that the Earth heats and cools in cycles and always has. And the debate continues among serious scientists as to whether the Earth currently is heating or cooling. As soon as one side produces proof that it has gotten hotter in the last 10 years, the other side comes out and shows evidence that the Earth has been cooling since the 1940’s. While Al Gore runs around saying that the Polar Ice Sheets are melting and shows images at a certain location of parts falling off and forming icebergs, there are credible scientists saying what he is depicting is a natural process taking place there but that the majority of the Polar Ice Sheets are expanding in other areas.
The other part of this shortsightedness is that we’ve made great technological advances in the past 30 years. We now have satellite imagery to measure current conditions with and some short term readings to make comparisons. What we really don’t have is comparable historical records over a long term because the technology wasn’t there. We don't really know if there was or wasn't an ozone hole expanding or contracting over the Antarctic because we never considered the concept prior to 1940. We’ve only kept official temperature records here in the US for the past 120 years.
These are things I believe we should take into consideration when we allow non scientists to "politicize our weather" for us.
Now I’ve got to go and find myself something cold to drink..That front that came through last night didn’t cool things down as much as the man on the TV said it would,

Silly Little Blog Victories...

2006-08-02T09:50:00.000-04:00

Several acquaintances of mine are surprised that I "blog for fun"... Why not try to get yourself published?..Or why not put advertising like google ads on your site and get some income from it?
The short answer is that that would make it too much like work, something you have to do on a regular basis. Clearly I’m not disciplined about my blogging or there would be at least four times as much content as there is now.
When I do write I pick subjects which interest me and I hope will be interesting to my readers. Intuitively I recognize that this is not always the case. As a former educator I’m well aware that those that like history don’t always like science and those who really appreciate math may not care for English.
Many posts which I’ve put here I initially wrote very quickly once I had a feel for what I wanted to say. The initial writing was followed by a lot of editing much of it after it was originally posted. I always when rereading have found capitalization errors, verb tense problems, word redundancies and typos which still haven’t been corrected until the fifth or sixth editing.
It’s very nice when someone tells me they like my writing, but where I really get my kicks is from the ensuing search engine activity which brings out my small little victories in the world of cyberspace. I know I’ve written about this before but please bear with me while I recount some things which I am particularly proud of or I find amusing.
I am proud that:
1. No search engine has ever sent anyone to this site looking for “porn” (unless you insist on counting all that Cowher affair stuff).
2. Every week I get multiple “hits” from people looking for information on the “snap-on-smile”, something I dashed off in about ten minutes over a year ago. Until recently this site was the number 5 reference for this subject on yahoo.
3. About six weeks ago someone “asked Jeeves” (ask.com) “what broadway play were Don Knotts and Andy Griffith in?” and the search engine listed the tribute to Knotts I wrote within hours of his death last February as the # 1 source for the answer (ahead of Wikipedia even).
I mentioned to my son the “Redington Pirate” (soon to be the “South Tampa Pirate”) that every couple of weeks I get “hits” from people googling his fellow members of the Stetson Trial Team. Then I joked to him that no one has come to my site by googling him. He replied that that was because his real name has never appeared on my site which is true.
Here is something I find amusing. If you GOOGLE “Redington Pirate” or plug it into the Yahoo search engine the number # 1 reference is his law school's press release of November 2005 concerning the Stetson Trial Team’s winning of the National Criminal Trial Competition. Both search engines know the “Pirate” is in there somewhere although he is never mentioned. This site doesn’t get mentioned on Google until #’s 77 and 78.
I’ve run out of inspiration. I’ve got to go now and find some images to go with this post..
Stay cool everyone!

It's Too Darn Hot!

2006-08-01T19:00:00.000-04:00

Yes, it’s HOT!
Last night when I checked AccuWeather it was predicting 98 degrees at 4:00 PM today with a 106 degree heat index. It’s four and it’s only 94 with a 101 heat index and AccuWeather now says it will peak at 95 degrees at 5:00 PM.
The big storm system which is expected to bring relief is just beginning to enter the midwest and won’t be here until Thursday.
Over in the northeast someone has started a rumor that this is the year that a big hurricane will hit New York and Boston. Not necessarily so says Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center. During the 1950’s a lot of the tropical cyclones hit the northeast. In the Sixties and Seventies they hit the western Gulf of Mexico. In the 90’s they hit the southeast especially the Carolinas. A Storm which has been named Chris has formed east of Puerto Rico. It’s current projected path would bring it into the Bahamas on Saturday. We will update its direction daily.
Right now Grandma and I are drinking plenty of water and eating lots of rainbow sherbet while looking forward to Thursday.. Stay cool everyone!

How Hip is This?

2006-07-24T23:52:00.000-04:00

Here’s a story that bewilders me. How can Floyd Landis who just won one of the most grueling physical challenges known to man, The Tour De France, be going in the near future for surgery for a "full hip replacement"? Is this to be his martyrdom, and with a superior effort something he can come back overcoming like Lance Armstrong did cancer? If his hip is so bad how did he win? He’s not suggesting he pumped his way up all those hills for twenty-one straight days on one hip..is he?
Landis injured the hip in a bicycle accident last year.
About 15 years ago the career of dual sport athlete/superstar Bo Jackson ended because of weakness in one of his hip sockets. At the time there was no available surgical cure for his condition.
A 49 year old acquaintance of mine had a hip replacement a little over a year ago. While he is able to function with the new hip it has still not improved his lifestyle in the way he anticipated.
Let's hope our new tour champion has both a successful hip operation and a future cycling career.

Mobil's Jipzee Cab Reviewed! (sort of...)

2006-07-05T08:24:00.000-04:00

Hale McKay (the Pointmeister..”It Occurred to Me”) has turned his readers onto a site which prepares a “feel good” review of your blog for you…
Click on the title of this post and fill your URL into the box and hit "submit" for an instant review:Review of Mobil's Jipzee Cab

"I just saw "jipzeecab.blogspot.com". Of course, I expected the creator to do this well. It must have taken months to design the page. Seeing Mobil's Jipzee Cab, I'm simply stunned, completely stunned. Wonderful.
(...)
What a great page!
The color scheme is fantastic. This explains why I put up a link to this page. The HTML source is very structured. Gorgeous. There are 24,877 characters in the HTML, which is a great length for European users. The URL has 29 characters. Just the perfect length. If only my aunt would have an awesome page like that. The page contains 67 links, a very reasonable amount. The hippest site around."
-- Ann Allan, Learning HTML

Independence Day...

2006-07-05T01:45:00.000-04:00

Have a Happy Fourth of July! !

Soccer Post...

2006-07-01T21:28:00.000-04:00

For all my loyal readers who have been waiting breathlessly for me to do a “World Cup Post”....here it is:

It’s an all EURO SEMIFINALS!

Drug Pricing...

2006-06-21T18:26:00.000-04:00

It has suddenly come to the attention of the mainstream media that the infamous Medicare “Plan D” hasn’t put a cap on prescription drug prices…duhh!
This was predictable when the prescription drug bill was passed and would be adequate reason not to vote to reelect anyone currently serving in the US Congress.
When Medicare got itself into the pharmaceutical purchasing business it instantly made itself the number one purchaser of drugs in the US. This would have given our government the ability to negotiate across the board discounts on all pharmaceuticals on behalf of our senior and disabled consumers (I admit to being in the latter group). The marketplace could have been used to benefit all Americans.
This is what YOUR Congress did when they passed the bill.
They decreed that the Medicare establishment would purchase all drugs at the FULL RETAIL PRICE!
This in spite of the fact that Americans were already purchasing their meds from foreign sources who sold them at major discounts from what were available here in the good old US of A.
Congressional Representatives will reply to this criticism by saying “Well we had to make certain concessions to get the legislation passed…Now that we’ve established that Medicare can purchase drugs we can reform the legislation.” (this is known as the "camel getting his nose into the tent" approach to lawmaking.)
Meanwhile the program is paying much more for Plan D than would be necessary and the Drug companies are raising their prices even more.

Helmet Importance...

2006-06-12T19:16:00.000-04:00

Today marks the first anniversary of my bicycle accident on the Yough Trail near Perryopolis. The experience set my fitness program back big time last year because of injuries to my ribs, right elbow and left shoulder which also limited some of my swimming activities. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet at the time. Even then a rearview monocle mirror I had attached to the helmet was totally destroyed.
Not so with Steeler Quarterback Ben Roethlisburger who had an unfortunate motorcycle accident this morning in Pittsburgh. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, a subject of previous controversy.By all accounts the accident was caused by a motorist who made a left turn at the last moment in front of Ben who appeared to be on his way to the Steeler training facility on the Southside.
At last report Ben was still in surgery. He reportedly suffered:
A broken jaw
A broken nose
A sinus cavity fracture
An orbital fracture
A nine inch gash
Lost a number of teeth
Two sprained knees.
He was in serious but stable condition going into the surgery. The hospital has avoided making any statements about brain trauma such as concussions.
Our prayers are with him.

Bee Betting...

2006-06-01T10:25:00.000-04:00

More proof that our culture is going straight to hell:

Tonight the finals of the National Spelling Bee will be televised on ABC.
Did you know that you can place bets on the Spelling Bee which consists of children 9 to 14 years of age?
The following “prop bets” are available with the current corresponding odds:
Will the winner be male or female?
Male: 5/7 (a $7 bet wins you $5); Female: 5/4
Will the winner be listed as "homeschooled"?
No: 1/3; Yes: 5/2
Will the winner be wearing glasses?
No: 4/7; Yes: 3/2
Will the winner be from east/west of Mississippi River?
East: 2/3; West: 4/3
The championship word will contain how many letters?
Over 10.5: 2/3; Under 10.5: 4/3
Will the championship word contain an "e"?
Yes: 5/9; No: 8/5
Will the championship word have alternate pronunciations?
No: 2/7; Yes: 3/1
Will the champion have a name no one can pronounce?
Yes: 1/9.
There are odds on the kids available too, if you are a wagering insider..

Is there anything else we can do to ruin a good thing?

Leg Pressing Overrated...

2006-05-27T18:05:00.000-04:00

We’ve been hearing a lot about leg pressing in the news lately. Earlier this month Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State, made the news with the assertion that she can “leg press” 400 pounds.
Today we are informed that TV Evangelist Pat Robertson has “leg pressed” 2000 pounds. Persons who have seen the image evidence of Robertson’s feat say the weight he is working with only adds up to 1000 pounds. ..so some are clearly working with different definitions.
I used to do leg presses as part of my fitness workout in the mid eighties. The most I ever did was 800 pounds, but that was doing 8 to 12 reps, 3 sets. I never actually tried to see what the max I could do was.
You see leg presses are done in a levered piece of equipment. You are not setting 400 pounds on your shoulders and doing knee bends like Olympic weightlifters.
You sit at between a 35 to 55 degree angle (it varies by machine) and support, then draw down and push away the weight which is on a greased track. There is a mechanical advantage involved here where you are able to push more weight for a short distance. The machine is designed to safely support the weight when you aren’t doing the reps and probably absorbs some of the weight in its structure.
I see 110 lb women every day at the club I belong to leg pressing 400 - 600 pounds repeatedly.
It's not as difficult as it sounds!

Residential Housing...

2006-05-24T17:40:00.000-04:00

The big story in Western Pennsylvania today is that the "Capitol Police" have come to the Pittsburgh Suburb of Penn Hills to investigate "threatened harm allegations" involving
tresspassing on US Senator Rick Santorum's "home state residence house".
Some in the Pittsburgh area claim that Santorum's house is a sham, that it has only two bedrooms (the Santorums have six children), that the Senator hasn't lived in it since he was elected to the Senate and that Santorum's real residence is a million dollar home he owns in Leesburg, Virginia.
To some locals the house has always been a point of contention, Democrat Party activists have always made this complaint although I'm certain that many Dem Senators and Congressmen own residences in Virginia or Maryland where they really reside. My mom asserts that the Santorum "in laws" live in a large home on an adjacent Penn Hills property.
The property was also prominent in the news this past year when it was learned that 5 of the Santorum children were enrolled in a Pennsylvania Cyber School at Penn Hills School District taxpayer expense. Senator Santorum has since withdrawn his children from the cyber school.
Why "The Capitol Police"?
Created by Congress in 1828, the original duty of the United States Capitol Police was to provide security for the United States Capitol Building. Today their mission has expanded to provide the Congressional community and its visitors with the highest quality of a full range of police services. These services are provided through the use of a variety of specialty support units, a network of foot and vehicular patrols, and fixed posts.

Today's United States Capitol Police Officer has the primary responsibility for protecting life and property; preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal acts; and enforcing traffic regulations throughout a large complex of congressional buildings, parks, and thoroughfares. Additionally, the protection of Members of Congress, Officers of Congress, and their families is expanded by statute to the entire United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia.

So the Capitol Police serve a similar function for members of both houses of Congress as the Secret Service does for the President and visiting foreign leaders.
A local news report recently stated that a "Casey operative" had peered in the windows of the "residence" (and reported there were no curtains and no furniture) and that allegation is the basis of the investigation.
Bob Casey is the Democrat Candidate who will be opposing Santorum for the Senate in November. He has denied that any member of his campaign is involved in this matter.

Silver Sneakers...

2006-05-22T20:56:00.000-04:00

Many of you are aware that one of the things I do for exercise is swim. For the past few years I have done most of my swimming at a well known fitness club located near my home. I’ve not been totally satisfied with this arrangement primarily because of the condition of that particular pool. To be blunt the pool area has been rather dark, the water has a green tint to it and there has been “mustard algae” growing on the pool wall all this time. Now I understand the darkness was caused by the lack of lighting and the green tint is caused by the presence of manganese in the water, but having worked around pools I know the algae is the result of neglect on the part of the club‘s staff.
Recently because I have a medicare health advantage plan called “Highmark Freedom Blue” I was invited to participate in a program called “silver sneakers”. The program is essentially a free health club membership for people who have this particular insurance. Since I already have a paid up lifetime membership at this other club this membership is a bonus for me.
About 30 different clubs in Western Pennsylvania have “silver sneaker” arrangements in one form or another. My own club participates but on a limited basis. The silver sneaker membership there is restricted to certain hours on certain days (e.g. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday between 9 am and 4 pm).
The only other facility reasonably near to me with a pool is the JCC of the South Hills located in Scott Township. I had heard it had a really nice pool so I went there with my silver sneaker’s invitation. What they offered me was a full membership with no restrictions as long as I use the facility at least 3 times a month!
The pool is beautiful, about twice as wide as the one at my club, well lit, clean and the water is blue. There are four lanes set aside for lap swimming at all times and these are each about 30 % wider than you would normally find in an indoor short course pool so two people can comfortably swim parallel in each at the same time.
When I started swimming there I increased my workout from 40 lengths (1000 yards) to 44 lengths ( 1000 meters). 44 lengths actually works out to 1100 yards which is about 7 yards further than 1000 meters or a little less than the distance I go when I “push off the wall”.
So now I’m measuring my swimming distance in meters… thus far I’ve swam 9000 meters since I joined at the end of last month.
Since I joined the JCC my regular club improved its pool area lighting about 300% (not because of my complaints).
One other advantage I’ve yet to attempt is to combine the swim with a bike ride. This facility is on the way to one of my favorite bike rides, the seven mile panhandle trail from Walkers Mills to MacDonald in Washington County. I’ll probably try that next week when it’s a little warmer

Update...

2006-05-10T02:46:00.000-04:00

Since I haven’t posted much lately I thought I might give a general update on things I have previously discussed.
Art Buchwald is still alive and writing in a Washington Area Hospice long after his hospice benefits have run out.
A prominent renal specialist predicted in early March that 3 months was the longest a dialysis patient could live without treatment. Art stopped his dialysis on February 6.
Sean Casey who is making $ 8.5 million this year played in only 9 games for the Pirates this season before injuring his back in a fluke accident at first base. He was hitting .313 at the time. He is not expected back on the field until July.
No one has spotted an “ivory billed woodpecker” in
Arkansas since I wrote about the search last November 26. Since that excitement however the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has suggested one might be seen in their Okefenokee Swamp if one searched there. The last time a ivory billed was seen in Georgia was 1942.
Also the Government of Cuba is asserting that there might still be ivory billed woodpeckers on their island where they were observed in the last century.Exxon Mobil and Sunoco continue in their profit making ways. That subject is my number 1 hit reference followed still by Coach Cowher’s infidelities, the “snap on smile”, and Tiger Woods.
My laptop came back safely yesterday. The repair summary said it had a “defective hard drive” which was replaced. The whole process didn’t cost me a dime and the computer is working like new and better than it ever did. Of course I lost “everything”, but was prudent enough to save anything important to me before I sent it off. I don’t recommend this for anyone else but I saved my series of important links by posting them on this site using the “draft” instead of “publish” option.
Hang in there Art..

Louis Rukeyser: 1933 - 2006...

2006-05-03T09:48:00.000-04:00

Louis Rukeyser has died.
If that name isn’t familiar to you it is understandable. Rukeyser made his life’s greatest successes in the niche area of television financial reporting, a world in which he was an unquestioned pioneer.
I remember when Louis was a national financial correspondent for ABC News in the late 60’s. I wasn’t aware of a parallel career he had as a financial writer for Tribune Media Services.
In early 1970 Rukeyser was approached by Maryland Public Television (MPT) to develop and host a financial show for PBS. The result was the show “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser” which ran for 32 years on Friday evenings with him as its host. The only show ever running longer on national TV was CBS’s 60 minutes.
Like for many others my current interest in financial investments was kindled by watching Louis’s show in the mid 90’s. Rukeyser reportedly cautioned his guests to talk about “money” not economics. That formula worked for both the show and PBS which for many years relied on the strong contributions received from the show’s followers.
In 2002 Louis was dismissed by upstart management who thought he was too old. Two years after Rukeyser’s dismissal Wall Street Week was cancelled because its loyal watchers no longer tuned in.
Louis died of multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the bone marrow, yesterday in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 73.

Computer Madness...

2006-04-25T07:42:00.000-04:00

Those of you who have read this blog and comments for a while may be aware that I have two functioning laptops in my home, both of which are capable of doing anything technical this site has required. The newer of the computers I purchased a little over a year ago from Office Depot.
Lately I have been having problems with this newer laptop..a Toshiba Satellite A75. Besides being inconsistent with its audio performance it has recently taken to overheating and turning itself off. Fortunately none of these “shutdowns” has ever occurred while I was doing something important with it..
In my latest adventure in trying to get repairwork done I discovered some things:
1. There is ALWAYS a busy signal when you attempt to call an “800 help line.”
2. Anyone representing a warranty provider will try to get out of the responsibility of helping you.
3. Those things a service warranty says to get you to purchase it are BS.
e.g. “carry-in/drop-off service will be provided for notebooks. With thousands of service facilities nationwide reliable service is always nearby.” (It turns out that if something is really wrong with your laptop it is going out of town whether you like it or not).
Yesterday I finally got hold of someone at the 800 number. They informed me that they will be forwarding me a carton in which to send them the malfunctioning computer. In the meantime they advised that I do what I can to save anything important in the laptop in some other form because the nature of my problem suggests I will probably lose the hard drive if not the whole computer itself. So I may be getting a new computer several weeks from now…yeah right..I’ve since read a dozen horror stories of what happens after you ship the computer off to the service warranty provider.

Scott Crossfield: 1921 - 2006...

2006-04-21T10:58:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite movies is “The Right Stuff,” an 80’s classic based on Thomas Wolfe’s book of the same name about the relationship of 50’s era elite test pilots and the budding space astronaut program. Wolfe’s work thoroughly details that time when advanced jets were equipped with rocket motors at Edwards AFB and man first ventured into space.
A key figure in both the book and the movie was Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who chewed Beemans Gum while breaking the sound barrier for the first time. Many Americans only know of Yeager as a shill man for sparkplugs.
Another character, then in the book who was for cinematic expediency not portrayed in the movie was Scott Crossfield, the test pilot who was the first to successfully fly at Mach 2 or twice the speed of sound.
Crossfield was the most famous pilot of my youth, periodically flying various generations of rocket planes, the last one known as the X-15 at faster and faster supersonic speeds. He eventually flew the X-15 to an altitude of more than 88,000 feet, and a speed of 1,960 miles an hour, nearly three times the speed of sound.
The 84 year old Crossfield died on Wednesday when the single engine plane he was flying in bad weather crashed in mountains 50 miles northwest of Atlanta. At the time he was on a flight returning from Alabama to his home in Virginia. He was the only one on board the six passenger Cessna 210A located by the Georgia Civil Air Patrol yesterday.
He served with the US Navy as a fighter pilot and flight instructor during World War II.
According to NASA Scott was still flying approximately 200 hours a year in his eighties.

And now 'tis man who dares assault the sky . . .
And as we come to claim our promised place,
Aim only to repay the good you gave,
And warm with human love the chill of space.

Thomas G. Bergin

Spastic Tiger...

2006-04-13T00:02:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think the world is full of idiots.
Today Tiger Woods apologized for using the term "spaz" to describe his putting during the Masters, a remark that was criticized outside the United States as insensitive.
Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, said in a statement posted on Woods' Web site that the world's top-ranked golfer was "poking fun at himself and meant no disrespect to anyone."
Evidently in several countries, "spaz" is an offensive term for people with Cerebral Palsy. London-based Scope, formerly the Spastics Society, denounced Woods' remark as "appalling and insensitive," and international newspapers also criticized him.
In a televised interview after finishing third at the Masters on Sunday, Woods, 30, said he "putted atrociously. Once I got on the greens, I was a spaz."
I actually thought the word was inappropriate when Woods used it, but not because it was offensive. Most of the golfers during Saturday and Sunday rounds suffered on the wet greens at Augusta and had the unfortunate experience of having seemingly “perfect putting” going over and around the holes without the ball falling in.... everyone..well, except for Phil Michelson the winner.
When I was growing up the term “spaz” was known to all of us males. It meant when performing an activity sudden uncoordinated movement that interfered with performance, mostly in sports..
e.g. "When Mark turned 13 the youngster who had been the perfect little league player suddenly became a spaz in his awkward teenage years and never played the game again" …or …“I threw the basketball to Fred and instead of shooting it he became a spaz and threw it to the other team.”
None of us knew that the word had origins in foreign countries which were derogative toward people with Cerebral Palsy.,
I’m reminded of the opposite degree of political correctness when several years ago a Washington DC Mayor's Aide David Howard lost his job because he correctly described the stingy attitude of District’s city commission toward their budget as “niggardly”.

Tax Return Privacy...

2006-04-04T11:03:00.000-04:00

I got a rude awakening this morning. Sometimes I miss stuff that I shouldn’t and maybe this story has been around every year and I’ve just missed it. As a “quasi libertarian” I generally come down on the side of privacy rights in almost every instance unless you are planning to blow my neighbors and myself up. We take for granted a certain amount of personal privacy when we deal with our Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants and Financial Advisors. Why? Because those confidentiality considerations are built into the “ethical” obligations of those who practice those professions.
I’ve always done my own taxes. Partly because I am “cheap”. I don’t think tax law is that complicated for a lay person who isn’t seeking a bunch of unusual shelters or ways to hide your money from the government. (The two audits I’ve gone through in 40 + years of doing my own returns aside…that’s another story). Just like I pick by own stock equities I rely on myself to prepare my 1040’s.
This morning I discovered that those of you who use "professional tax preparers" like H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt Tax Service (the two largest) have been giving up the privacy of your tax returns. Not to the government but to other businesses who have an interest in examining your return and are willing to pay them for the privilege.
How can they do this? In 1974 the IRS adopted rules which allowed the tax preparers to share your information with “affiliates” or to sell it to third parties. When you sign documents for the tax preparer permission to share the information is buried in the fine print.
The IRS is holding a hearing today about complaints about the abuse on the part of the tax preparers. Proposed are new rules that require explicit consent forms to be signed before the preparers share such information from now on. Resisting the new consent forms are the lobbyists for the preparers including the two famous ones listed above. What a bunch of jerks who clearly don’t have the best interests of their clients at heart.