Earlier tonight, I found a new article written by Ron Paul on monetary policy, specifically inflation. One of the reasons I like Paul so much is the attention he’s bringing to monetary policy in the presidential race. Yes, it’s not nearly as exciting as things like the Iraq war and what not, but we as a nation really, really need to take a look at whether our current setup with fiat currency is serving the interests of the citizens.
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
Yes, I’ve been trying to do the unthinkable … cut down on my Coke consumption. Those of you who know me well may find this hard to believe, but I haven’t had any Coke at the house here since at least before the end of September.
Actually, my goal isn’t to cut down on Coke per se … nor do I mean that I haven’t had any coke in the last six weeks. In reality, I’ve had Coke probably once a week in that time. But, it’s a serious reduction from the nearly-every-day habit that I’ve nursed along for years.
What I’m really trying to do, though, is avoid soft drinks (and foods) that use high fructuse corn syrup as a sweetener. To that end, I’ve started drinking more water (and sometimes lemonade) when I’m eating out … and at the house, I’ve only been bringing in soft drinks that have natural sweeteners.
One cool thing I’ve found (thanks to my brother) is Reed’s Ginger Brew. The Bi-Lo right up the road carries their “standard” ginger brew, as well as their spiced apple brew. Both are pretty good.
They also have an “extra” version of the ginger brew that has about 50% more ginger root, which I’m itching to try. I found out that Greenlife here in town carries Reed’s, so I’m hoping they have it.
Then, when I’m really ready for something strong, I need to have my cousin Mike import some Stoney from Kenya for me. I’ve heard it’s pretty rough stuff. 
Yes, I can’t sleep. Maybe because I slept from about 9:00 p.m. to midnight Sunday night. Anyway … I realized that I hadn’t received a sales & use tax filing form for the previous month … and the taxes are due tomorrow (Tuesday). So, I got out of bed, and went in search of a tax form on the TN Department of Revenue’s web site. Well, whaddya know … you can file the blasted thing online. Now why didn’t the DoR people tell me about that when I first got started with this mess in January?
Earlier this year I wrote about my attempt to combine work and exercise by using my recumbent bike while working. While that ultimately didn’t work out (the seating position and distance from the keyboard ended up causing back pain), I’m apparently not the only person who thought it was a good idea to come up with some sort of exercise equipment that could be used in the office:
New exercise machine targets office workers
I might just have to give one of those a try when I have a spare $200 laying around …
This afternoon, as I was driving out to Hamilton Place, I overheard a caller to a talk radio show describe something as being “as phony as a two dollar bill.” Ooops …
For the last two weeks, I’ve been going back and forth in my mind about whether to stay with Verizon for my cell service or not. Mind you, I’ve still got about six months left in my contract, but I’m seriously tempted to leave them.
You see, my trusty RAZR V3C has been acting flaky recently. It doesn’t let me answer calls sometimes. It doesn’t always notify me of new voicemail messages or text messages. On occasion some (or all) of the keys refuse to work. Etc., etc., etc.
It has been long enough, though, that I can take advantage of their offer to let you get a $100 discount on a phone if you sign your soul over to Satan and extend your contract by one or two years. So, earlier this month I started looking to see if there was something I wanted to replace ye olde RAZR with.
Well, first of all, you can’t get a new RAZR from Verizon any more. Not that I would have been especially happy with that, given the RAZR’s amazing ability to deactivate its ringer after any random object in my pocket bumps the buttons on the outside. I’ve missed countless calls from my wife (and business calls too) because of that little issue.
Next problem … I do want a phone that supports Bluetooth, because I bought a Bluetooth headset, and it’s quite handy at times. That rules out about half the phones.
Of the remaining phones, the majority look like some martian tricorder off of a bad Star Trek ripoff. No thank you.
There are some nice phones in the “smart phone” category, but they are expensive (not to mention, I just panned smartphones a couple of months ago and got myself a separate PDA). Oh yeah … and they are a bit more expensive.
If I went that route, I could get a Blackberry … but I just bought a couple of Win Mobile apps (plus Missing Sync for Win Mobile so I could sync the blasted thing with my Mac), so I’d be throwing that stuff away more or less.
There are some Palm phones, but I’m not going there. Sorry Palm, you lost. Give me a ring when you get your act together … assuming you ever do.
Then there are the Windows Mobile phones. I could get a cheaper one with Win Mobile 5, but I’ve heard that it’s approximately as stable as Win 95 Rev A. Nope. Don’t want that.
The Win Mobile 6 phones are all on the pricier end.
Sigh.
Well, there is the new Verizon iClone Voyager, which actually looks pretty nifty, and will hit the market soon.
Yes, I did say that. Yes, I am a Mac user. Now, I highly doubt it’s as useful as the iPhone, but it would get the job done … and it does have one nifty feature … the full QWERTY keyboard and additional screen you get when you open the little booger up. But again … I lose the investment in the Win Mobile software.
Or … I could switch to AT&T. They still have the RAZR (I assume with its silly auto-off ringer “feature”), along with some cheaper smart phones with Win Mobile 6, and even a couple of nice looking cheaper phones with Bluetooth. Oh yeah, and they don’t cripple their bluetooth phones like the ignorant goons at Verizon.
And … I could use their rollover minutes in such a way as to effectively save myself about $40/month in fees. Right now I keep my Verizon contract at way more minutes than I usually use because every time I change it, my contract is extended by one year from the date I make the change … and about four months out of the year, I need almost all the minutes (or more) that I get in my current plan when I’m traveling.
Oooh … and once the iPhone becomes stable and established, and I lose my animosity towards smart phones (which may happen sooner than I expect) I could just switch to one.
On the down side, if I jump to AT&T now, I’d have to eat about $135 in early termination fees from Verizon. On the other hand, my RAZR might not live to see the new year, and I’d have to replace it if I stick with Verizon … which means buying one outright, or taking their “new every two” ripoff.
Or I could pawn the contract off on some unsuspecting person.
And … I have to admit, Verizon’s coverage really is great. It’s the one redeeming quality about the outfit.
Decisions, decisions …
Note: Even if I drop Verizon for my cell coverage, I’m going to keep their Broadband Access program. It really rocks. Now I can work from pretty much anywhere, with a workably fast net connection …
A few months back, I started to work on a project that I hoped would evolve into a cross-platform management application for a client project. The project in question stored data in the eXist XML database.
Since the app needed to be cross-platform (and I wanted it to be a GUI app) I decided to use REALbasic, which I’ve owned for about six years, despite only developing one (marginally) useful (and very simple) application (at least to completion, anyway). REALbasic is perfect for this, since I can write once and compile for OS X, Windows, and Linux.
There are several ways one can interact with the eXist database … XML-RPC, SOAP, or REST. I’ve not had much luck using REST to work with eXist, so I ruled that out. Of the other two … I’d used both XML-RPC and SOAP to interact with the data before, but REALbasic doesn’t have any sort of XML-RPC client classes that have been updated since Harding’s presidency. That left me with SOAP.
Lucky me, REALbasic has a built-in SOAP client class!
Well, not so lucky. I quickly discovered that their functionality left much to be desired, and that they set a new standard for “worst place.” No matter what I tried, my applications threw an exception with a cryptic error message (”ns1:Client.NoSOAPAction”). Furthermore, there was no way provided for me to access the actual XML data that was being exchanged, nor could I proxy the request and watch what was happening. I was at something of a dead end. Even attempts to get help via the RB mailing list and forum evoked only the sound of crickets in the night.
After much hand-wringing and lack of success with alternative methods of getting things done, I decided to bite the bullet and create my own improved SOAP classes. The result is iSOAP for REALbasic.
Once I’d gotten something working, I posted a response to my query on the RB forums and offered to share my success with anybody who needed it. This past week, I finally got a response, so I created a project site and released version 0.5 on the unsuspecting world.
Now I’ve got something to be proud of. I’ve worked with projects in Perl, PHP, Ruby, ASP, VB, and now REALbasic. Yay for me!
I found this in my inbox this morning:
Now you can get her love back
All kind of meds[linkredacted].com.
Best Quality
Please kindly erase the dot from the end of the link to use it
I’ve never received a spam message with instructions before. I suppose the fact that they felt it necessary to tell folks to remove the period says a lot about the intelligence level of the people who actually respond to this junk.
1. Decide you want to build a drag strip next to your NASCAR track
2. Have your request denied by the local government
3. Threaten to move your strip across the state line to South Carolina
4. Have the local government reverse course and let you build the drag strip after all, and get an “incentive package” from the state, county, and city governments to boot, just to make sure you don’t take your ball and go home
Officials Scramble to Keep N.C.’s Remaining NASCAR Races
At least my tax dollars aren’t paying for this nonsense any more.
Not that Tennessee is much better …
Taken from an account by Gustave Gilbert of a conversation he had with Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials:
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” [Gilbert] pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Reference: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp
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