A Quote from the President of the United States of America

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

Why can't we have President's like that anymore?

Quarter to Date Reached!!! - Okay, Breaking News for all of you out there praying for my new business. I hit my 1Q2006 goal today (actually probably hit it last Monday, just got the report). That means a nice fat bonus for me, and a HUGE gorilla off my back. I am at about 40% above target for the year, and it looks like I will blow away 2Q2006 if a couple of major accounts perform near expectations. Still have a half a million that I have to figure out where it is going to come from for the end of the year, but God is great so I know it will happen.

I Love Microsoft (don't read if you are biased towards flightless birds): Ask me about my OS and I will look at you as though you were sleeping in a cave (something quite popular around the digital ranch). With the exception of my father (who would never deny his hatred for all things MS), and Mike (who for some strange reason has become a Mac fan in recent years), I know of no person who doesn't use Microsoft products. Although, I also don't know of anyone who uses as much of it as I do. I drive around with my laptop open using MapPoint which I use at night to build some pretty fun stuff. It wasn't cheap, but it has become an essential tool. Mary wanted an org chart for some school thing and I was able to show her how to use Visio, which she didn't even know I had on her laptop. I publish my web site with Frontpage. I do my mail with Outlook. I chat with Messenger, and I am developing a training session with NetMeeting (albeit an older version). I do my business presentations in PowerPoint (and I rock with that!), I work on my latest novel in Word. I track my activity with my clients in Excel. I own a Samsung i730 because I wanted a Pocket PC instead of one of those stupid Palm OS things. I use MS Reader to read books on it. I live the Microsoft life!

But, this post isn't just about how the digital guy spends his time, but why I love Microsoft. This blog is part of that equation. Look down the page at the post on Friday, March 10 entitled "IE7 Bug". I wasn't' really bashing the boys from Redmond, simply making a comment that the new browser wouldn't let me post on Blogger. Well, low and behold (love that expression - its so Kentuckian) I get an e-mail last night from a guy named Dean with a "Windows.Microsoft.com" telling me that I need to download the latest update on IE7 (March release). Well Dean, I did and this is the result. Awesome!

Can you imagine if everyone had customer service like this? Had I called I might have expected that kind of response, but for a company to be so proactive as to seek out those who had problems and suggest a fix is beyond the imagination. I am not sure if Dean was actually looking for web sites with fantastic photography and stumbled across mine, looking to steal great domain names, such as TheDigitalLife.net, or if he goggled "IE7 Bug Blogger" and found me at #12. It really doesn't matter (but the photography one would kind of be nice). Maybe Bill Gates said, "Hey, I remember this kid who used to hang out near my place at the Boys Club downtown. Word is that he is a real Microsoft nut. Dean, see if you can help him. Team, let's rebuild this thing so Rick and post on Blogger." Okay, probably the Google thing is the most logical.

Well Dean, thanks a ton, it is working perfectly. Tell Bill I am still sorry about that illegally copied version of DOS 4.11, didn't realize that it was wrong at the time. If you are ever in the need for some great cave exploring, look me up.

Does MS offer supplemental insurance for its employees? Had to ask.

Strike one: I tried tonight, unsuccessfully, to get an RSS feed on the site. I wanted it for the blog portion as well as possibly for the pictures. Frontpage has an XML composer but it didn't work too well. I really need to get my arms around this. I know that I really missing the boat with this RSS thing. I don't use it, but I know that millions of people do. Frustrating!

Playing Doctor: I suppose that everyone likes to feel smart, I had a couple of opportunities this week to look really smart. The problem was that I really didn't do anything spectacular.

The first came when we were trying to get our database software at the office to print benefits statements for the City of Bowling Green, something that apparently we do every year. Courtlann and Susan were fusing with the thing, trying to get it to print on one of our little portable printers. These things, the Canon i80, print about 25 pages and then need a new ink cartridge, at about $10 a pop. We have to do 425 benefits statements, do the math. I looked at that and realized that we were going to need about $170 in ink to print these. So, I brought out an older but much faster Lexmark that I use in my office. But, then we couldn’t get it to print at all (the print on the i80 was half size, tiny print, and it wouldn’t do either). Courtlann had a meeting, Susan had lunch, I said that I would work on it while they were gone. Went to Lexmark, downloaded the print driver for XP and it printed perfectly. The database that they were using was “pr_simplified” and Courtlann couldn’t figure out how to get Paul Revere off the statements. I changed the database setup from pr_simplified (thinking that PR meant Paul Revere, a company that we own) to just “simplified”. Amazing, that was it! Well the ladies came back and thought that I was all that because I had produced a perfect statement. Then Susan commented that she was going to spend the rest of the day printing statements. I changed the print settings to “fast” and they were printing as fast as we could stack the paper (and used less ink). So cool to be able to figure stuff out.

This morning Mary woke me up (Saturday) early to tell me that her laptop wouldn’t boot up. I was a tad nervous as I had the virus problem with it earlier in the week and thought that the last thing that she had done on the laptop was run her virus program. But, I had another idea. If the laptop wasn’t booting then it was likely just a power issue. Sure enough, I walked out and plugged in the adapter, it had wiggled loose. Another crisis resolved!

New Digital Toys: Well the digital ranch is back into full swing recently. After I unsuccessfully tried to load a virus on my wife's computer she got a great new library program called Readerware. This thing is incredible! You can use a small barcode reader (yup, got that on eBay) on the back of a book and it automatically goes out on the net and gets all of the information on that book, complete with a picture of the cover. Amazing! So, Mary is now busy entering all of the books that we have in our library. We need a bigger house.


I loaded up an old friend yesterday, the Aquarium screen saver. This thing is so cool.

Digital Barf: Not that I am going to spew bytes at anyone who reads this, or disgust you with juicy chunks of verbal veggies. I am talkng about the trash out there that makes the web so unenjoyable at times. There are so many things that I love about the digital life, but a couple of days ago we became digitally sick here at the Digital Ranch. How did we become sick? A digital flu bug, a virus. In the real world you shouldn't eat food unless you know where it comes from or how it is prepared. It might look the same as other food, but you really don't know. This was the case for me. I downloaded a file from a site that has always been fine in the past (granted it is a site of hacks, but it hasn't been a problem in the past). I copied the files to a CD and then decided to surprise my beloved with the new program. Boy was she surprised! In fact, she has been working for almost 48 hours straight (allowing for 5 hours of sleep) in removing the virus(s). The nasty little critter was the most loathsome virus that we have ever encountered. Unlike other virii such as Happy, Beagle, or Sober, there didn't seem to be a "remove" ype tool online. But, after a couple of days my beloved has loaded a ton of new "anti" stuff on her laptop and all seems to be well again.

Recidivism Revised: An article at CNN.com chronicles the story of a man who had been tried and convicted of the rape of a 12 year old girl in 1991 and served 9 years and released. He had been considered for the state's violent sexual preditor program but was rejected during the screening process and released in 2000. Today there is a manhunt for the man because he kidnapped and raped two girls in a hidden dungeon behind his home.

This just begs the question as to levels of recidivism among predators. When a person is convicted of a crime of violence, especially those against children, why do they get a second chance? It seems that if we stepped up our punishment guidelines on this issue we would be a lot better off as a society. What we need is a predators prison. In the old days they would send you to debtors prison, why not make one just for the predators? Let's give the good people of the North Slope, Alaska a few hundred million dollars to build a state of the art facility with a thousand individual cells. If they want to go out in the exercise yard, let them (currently the temperature is seventeen below, but they are expecting a warming trend to take it to 5 degrees). If they want visitors, they can have their lawyers make the trip as many times as they want. Too extreme? Then let's buy up a few thousand acres on the south Texas border and do it there. In fact, lets give any state that wants to house these people the opportunity, but lets just do it! If you are convicted of sexually assaulting a child with violence you get a free trip for the rest of your life.

Secure Borders: The recent hullabaloo over the stevedoring by the Untied Arab Emirates has caused many to consider what is permissable and what is not. Andrew McCarthy, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, rightly raises the question, what about the Bush Doctrine? That doctrine says that we will not support those who support terrorism. Hamas would be one of those organizations that would be considered terrorists by just about any definition (probably even their own!). The UAE is a major supporter of Hamas. So, when we allow them to own a business on US soil we are contributing, directly, to the efforts of terrorists. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Why didn't the President? He is now concerned that we will somehow offend them. They are a country known to actively be supporting terrorists, there is no quibbling over this matter. If we have a law then it should be enforced. President Bush has some 'splainin' to do.

IE7 Bug?: I have been using IE7 for a couple of days, and liking it more and more. I found a little bug though. I can't blog with it. When I go to Blogger (the wonderful free application that I use here to blog) it won't show the text. Odd problem, only happens here, and it has happened consistently.

As if that weren't enough Messenger locked up tonight. Not just for me, but for the three systems that we have on the network here. My daughter assumes me that it will be fine in the morning, not sure how she knows that.

Live Web Cam: This is one of those things that you just know is going to backfire on me somehow and get me in real trouble, but I now have a web cam on the laptop. I am not sure how much I will use it, but so far it hasn't been a problem. The one that I got advertised a built in book light, but I didn't realize that there wasn't a way to turn that off, so I now have this light shinning in my face all the time (except that I finally put a big rubber band over it).

I have had a few people see the image on my web site and figure out how to initiate a chat (double click the picture, duh). Mostly family, some guy that said I was gay for not chatting, and another user who needed first time help. The only good one so far was my sister who said that my lips move when I am typing. She's right, darn it!

Hypergraphia: I have enjoyed a little stretch of writing over the past week. Not sure what it is that set me off, but it is nice. Last night after Mary went to sleep I was able to whip off about 4,700 words. Not bad for a few hours of writing.

I look at things like that and wish that I was a terrific writer and that I could do it full time. I get so frustrated with authors that I like who are so slow to turn out great new novels. Steven King once said that he was going to stop writing because he didn't have another original idea in his head (his last book at that time was just a little too much like one of his first). Well, I see that he has written Cellular, so either he got over that or someone gave him a new idea.

Then there are guys like Tom Clancy. What a great writer. But it is years between novels and he has stretched himself into some of his non-fiction works on the military and a couple of franchise series. I would think that his publisher could prop him up with a bunch of good ghost writers and let him spin the plot and turn out some new things from time to time.

As for me, I am still a scratch writer, unpublished and mostly unread. I have committed to the kids that I will finish one of the books this year, although they are thinking that I am working on an older work that I started a couple of years ago. But, at my present rate of writing I might get this one done in a few weeks and still have plenty of time to finish Time Stone.

Old Friends: Well as I returned to some of my roots today with the loading of IE7 (little slow right now), I started looked at other products that I had on once used and loaded Adobe Pagemaker 7. I began using Aldus (previous owner) Pagemaker in 1987 and it still has a lot of the same looks and feel, unfortunately. It is amazing to me that after nearly 20 years this program really hasn't evolved that much. Sure there are some changes, but one would think that the pioneer in desktop publishing would have made some significant strides at staying ahead. They have not. It appears that this most recent revision will certainly be the last as they haven't added anything to justify the excessive prices they once commanded. Think that I will take a look at Adobe InDesign tomorrow, more to come!

IE7, Beta 2 Preview: I finally got to download IE7 today. Still taking a test drive, but I like what I see so far. There are a few bugs, but they are not significant. The new look has multi tabs like Firefox. One thing that is new (although I haven't messed with it yet) is an RSS index. I am looking foward to seeing how this will work as I haven't had any luck indexing my RSS feeds.