Illegal Immigrants
(Author Unknown)

I cross ocean, poor and broke,
Take bus, see employment folk.

Nice man treat me good in there,
Say I need go see Welfare.
Welfare say, "You come no more,
We send cash right to your door."
Welfare checks, they make you wealthy,
Medicaid it keep you healthy!
By and by, Got plenty money,
Thanks to you, TAXPAYER dummy.

Write to friends in motherland,
Tell them 'come, fast as you can'
They come in turbans and Ford trucks,
I buy big house with welfare bucks.
They come here, we live together,
More welfare checks, it gets better!
Fourteen families, they moving in,
But neighbor's patience wearing thin.
Finally, white guy moves away, ..

I buy his house, and then I say,
"Find more aliens for house to rent."
In my yard I put a tent.
Send for family they just trash,...
But they, too, draw welfare cash!
Everything is very good,
Soon we own whole neighborhood.

We have hobby it called breeding,
Welfare pay for baby feeding.
Kids need dentist? Wife need pills?
We get free! We got no bills!
TAXPAYER crazy! He pay all year,
To keep welfare running here.

We think America darn good place!
Too darn good for white man race.
If they no like us, they can scram,
Got lots of room in Pakistan.

The Important Things: War in Iraq, Iran building nukes, genoside at Darfur, and immagration strikes across America. Important, you bet. But the big story of the day isn't that, it is that the mighty Tennessee Titans drafted Vince Young today! Whoo Hoo!!

Hyphenated-Americans: There are plans on May 1, 2006 (coinciding with communism’s biggest celebration day of the year) for illegal aliens to protest across the country. Their goal is to shut down our country, showing how important that they are. As a business owner I can say categorically that if any of my employees were to not show up to work because they wanted to protest that they would be looking for a new job on Tuesday. However, if they came to me and asked for the day off ahead of time I would have no problem. [however, everyone has completed the required I-9 form clarifying their legal status as a US citizen.]

I think that the biggest problem in all of this is that we (Americans) allow others (media, non-Americans) to define the terms. We are told that we are politically incorrect to call those who have crossed into our country without permission as “illegal”. In fact, some in our country’s leadership have stated publicly that they are not illegal. I scratch my head at that. If I cross into another country without their permission, and it is against the law, how is it not illegal. But I digress.

The biggest step in all of this is that we have allowed some to segregate us. They don’t see everyone who is a citizen of this great country as Americans. We are instead told that we are African-Americans, Anglo-Americans, Latin-Americans (or sometimes Hispanic-Americans), etc. Why can’t we just be Americans? So now that we have identified our heritage as a part of our name, why not add our religious preference. We could have Catholic-Latin-Americans, Protestant-Latin-Americans, Muslim-Latin-Americans. But that really doesn’t tell us anything about their political ideology, so we need to add that. Now we have Liberal-Catholic-Latin- Americans, Conservative-Catholic-Latin-Americans, etc. Where does this end. Well with me it ends with the hyphenation. I am American. Does it matter to you my race, my political slant, my faith, my heritage? It matter only to those who are close to me. I would hope that the world wouldn’t discount my photography, my art, my writing, etc, because I don’t line up 100% with their little pigeon-holed labels. I happen to have very strong feelings personally about a lot of issues, but my top choice for president of the United States for the next election is someone who is 180° opposed to the issue that matters to me the most. I am hoping for a running mate who is not of my faith, gender, or race (but don’t think she’ll run).

Its time for all American’s to stand together. Let’s through off all labels except for American. And if you are not “American” you are either a tourist, a visitor (with visa), or you are illegal.

Welcome to the Rest of Your Life: Today I was sitting in Cracker Barrell shoving down a few biscuits and looked around and made a startling revelation: I am no longer young. I was listening to Mary and LaVelda drone on about places that they lived, things that had happened etc. LaVelda was recounting an experience with her father that happened 40 years ago. I realized that anyone who can retain memories from 40 years prior is not any longer priveldged to call themselves young. I can't remember back 40 years very well, but I do a fairly good job with 39 years back, and it just gets worse going forward. I know, some of you more seasoned citizens will tell me that I I should be grateful for any memory at all, but it was just one of those moments. I looked and saw a few younger families trying to get their young ones settled in, but the place was mostly seniors, and us.

I am not complaining mind you, I don't mind being older. I have a lady at church who tells me that I need cream for my wrinkles (I don't see them, but guess they are there). A guy remarks about the hair club that he is in and that I need to join. Look, I am happy with what I have. If I am going bald that is God's concern not mine. As for the wrinkles, they just show that I laugh a lot (or squint in the sun, which I understand is a good thing). Six more years I start getting a discount at McDonalds, and the long awaited first issue of Modern Maturity by AARP. So getting older has some.....

What was I talking about?

Latest Toy: Those who have been following my posts over the years know that this is the time of year that I tend to start hammering the need for emergency preparedness. Around here it is thunderstorms every other day (which also cause blackouts at times) and down south they will hit hurricane season in the next few weeks. Well this week I got a "faraday flashlight". These things are amaz-a-zing! They never need batteries. You just shake the thing for a minute and it produces all the light you would ever need from an intense LED. Without shaking the thing I have been using it for over an hour so far. We want to let it go down and then see how much light it produces with just 10 shakes. Pretty cool!

Update: We went to town for a few hours and came back and it was still on. I now have a practical use for this thing. Tie a bunch of them to every phone poll in California. When they have their next earth quake everyone will be able to see where they are going at night even if the power is cut! Okay, stupid idea, back the drawing board.

Update 2: Midnight, light is still going bright. This thing is incredible!
Update 3: Noon next day, still going.

Political Irony: The President of China is making his first trip to America. Where did he have dinner his first night here? Home of Bill Gates. That's a hoot! Probably the only home in America with better security than the White House, and probably larger. Plus, Jintao had to explain all that conterfeiting that goes on over there. Don't you just wonder what they ate? I would make a horrible host on a deal like that. I would have been "Hey, Hu, how you? Want to go play some pong?" Look, if the guy represents a country that steals more technology than anyone on the globe, the closest he is going to see of my stuff is a TV set playing an Atari.

Oh, maybe that has a little to do with why I am living in a 2,000 square foot home and not the Palace on Lake Washington!

The New Currency: As the world moves more and more to online there are a few things that I have noticed. First, the new currency. No, I am not talking about PayPal (but will later), I am talking about eBay Positive Feedback. We currently enjoy a fairly high (~30) positive feedback, with no neutral or negative feedback. That's certainly not as high as the professional eBayers, but a lot better than most of the people that we trade with. The feedback is significant because it allows you to know the type of person that you are dealing with. This is especially important in purchasing. You don't want to deal with an individual who has one out of ten people sharing that they ripped them off. So you build your positive feedback buy buying things, paying quick. You build on the selling side by sending the product quickly. Pretty simple.

Then there is Paypal. What a concept. They aren't a currency at all but really a monetary pipeline, helping push money from one account to another in a somewhat safe manner. I say "somewhat" because nothing is totally safe, although I have never had a bad experience and don't know of anyone that has. But, it is really cool. I can initiate a transfer by just logging in and sending, or I can send a request for money. They take a small fee for the trouble, and sit there in their San Jose offices just smiling. At $25b in transactions I would smile too.

Political Diatribe: I am not a Bush basher, nor am I his biggest fan. I wish that he displayed some of the qualities that could make me be a fan, but I am becoming a little disheartened by the leadership that I have seen in the White house for the past 14 years. In fact, I want to see a real leader emerge and take the stage.

Let me set the stage, I am a Republican. I have always voted Republican in the national elections since I was first allowed to vote, and that was the election for Ronald Reagan, someone I still consider the best president in my life time.

But I really haven’t had a lot to select from:

• John F. Kennedy: Shot shortly after I was born, his politics were troubling. He was dynamic, charismatic, and probably a philanderer.
• Lydon Johnson: Well he gave us Social Security and got us into Vietnam. Thank goodness he didn’t see a second term!
• Richard Nixon: Good, his work with China, bad – Watergate.
• Gerald Ford: He was a ridiculous choice for VP, and he proved it as president. Yuck!
• Jimmy Carter: The man could smile, but had no clue how to manage. Now that he is out of office he is traveling the globe telling the world how evil America is (the Gore/Clinton traveling roadshow)
• Ronald Reagan. A great leader, orator, and leader. His detractors will point to his last years when his Alzheimer’s started kicking in, but I still think that he was a great leader.
• George HW Bush: Nice guy, easily forgotten. Iran Contra Scandal is the only thing that comes to mind except the first gulf war.
• Bill Clinton: I still hold that Clinton will go down in history as the most memorable president in history, but not necessarily in a good way. There were 7 women who claimed to have been molested by Clinton, and of course the most blatant was that after the first charges came out he blamed it on the Republican’s as a conspiracy.
• George W. Bush: If his presidency were to end today it would cover the spiraling cost of fuel, Gulf War II (and our inability to end it), out of control spending, and probably warrantless detentions (although several other presidents allowed for this, but none ever did it to this degree).

But today, as I read the FEMA report on Katrina, I see that we have poor leadership in our government and have for many years. While I totally disagree with his social politics (pro-abortion) , I would love to see Rudy as a president, or at the very least the head of FEMA or Homeland Security. The man is a planner. We need that. Because whether we like to admit it or not, 9/11 was just the beginning for us in America. Now that Iran can make their own nukes, it is just a matter of time.

The Shape of Things to Come: I am so excited about a news release from ABC yesterday. They are going to rebroadcast some shows the day after they broadcast, for FREE! This is a business model that just makes sense. They will load the shows with commercials, so there really isn't a loss in revenue. In fact, with so many using TiVo these days with a hack to forward past the commercials, it just makes sense. The two shows that they are going to begin with (in May) are Desperately Horny Housewives and LOST. I certainly can't get excited about the housewife show but LOST will be cool. It will be interesting to see the quality. I would expect that a really good quality would be a huge download, and I am uncertain how that will fin into their model. But, I suspect that they will soon offer other shows for free and hopefully soon you can just click the games that I want to watch, live. Why not? Is there an advantage for people to see a game and commercials on TV or the web? I don't see it.

All of the sudden the 60 gigs of hard drive space on my laptop is looking mighty small.

A Digitally Pleasing Day: (warning, if you dislike digital blather, hop on out now) I decided to take the day at home to play Dr. Dad and take care of my family and work from the house. As the sun sets I am light headed and think that I have whatever it is.

But, it was a pretty cool day digitally. I loaded some new software on my Mary’s laptop, burned a DVD for the family, a CD for Carolina, and got the opportunity to spend a few moments with V2 and show him some tricks that he didn’t know in his web site developing skills.

One of the cool things was to evaluate a couple of web authoring programs that I hadn’t seen before. One was a little disappointing, Seamonkey from the good folks at Mozilla. It really is very little different from Netscrape Composer, and now Mozilla Composer. The only advantage that I was able to determine was publish button on the tool bar instead of it being a menu item. But then I got my hands on a neat little app called Nvu from the open source people at Linspire. Pretty cool program. It apparently is from the same engine as Composer except that it looks really sharp.

So then I started ruminating on why there is no longer a good free MS web authoring tool. They used to make FrontPage Express available, and you can still find it on the web, but it is old, they never really did much to support it. But that’s cool, Microsoft has a business model that includes making a profit, and I am all about making a profit where you can. So they put their energy back into the FrontPage 2003 model. Then I tugged on the whiskers on my chin (remember, spent the day home, no shaving!). Shouldn’t Microsoft be doing something to update their flagship authoring tool? So I started clicking away and found that Microsoft is about to make a significant launch of some new products that I think will really make a lot of people stand up and take notice. They have put together a suite of products called Microsoft Expressions and it is fantastic from the first look. In fact, I am downloading a beta of their web authoring piece and can’t wait to take it for a spin. Afraid that I will fall in love with it right when it expires.

They also have some other components that I can’t wait to try. Expressions Graphic Designer looks to bundle a PhotoShop like product with a vector based (Illustrator) product. The folks at MS would cringe at my simple definition, but that is what I made of it. Then there is Expressions Interactive Designer. Neat program, just not sure what it is supposed to do. Have to download that as well. And then of course is Expressions Web Designer which has some incredible features, far surpassing anything that it currently out there. I am particularly looking forward to playing with their CSS templates and RSS generation stuff. 88 megs down, only about 30 more megs to go until I can play!

Killer Rabbit!: This picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything digital, but just makes me laugh. Can you imagine seeing this thing in the backyard working its way through a veggie patch? We raised rabbits and my little 5 pound meat rabbits (oh, sorry to offend those of you who see these as cute little Easter pets) would just rip my arms with their claws when I removed them from the cages. This monster could eviscerate a guy with one swipe of its legs. Can you imagine how funny it would be to get a little bunny for a gift and then find out that it was going to turn into one of these? This guy weighs about 17 pounds and costs about $15 a week to feed. And you never have just one of these, you have 2, then 10, then 80, then 640. Now you are spending about $10,000 a week, but you have 10,880 pounds of rabbit stew! And lets not too quickly dismiss the value of a few huge rabbit pelts. One farm could furnish the fur industry in about 6 months. Oh, I am sure that PETA is going to be sitting outside my office in the morning with protest signs. Since all the illegal aliens (not politically correct, but accurate) are protesting across the country the poor folks at PETA are not getting the attention that they desire. I am sure that I am going to be a target now. But, at least I can invite them to join me for lunch. Wonder what kind of stew I might serve?

V1 vs. V2: There are times when I look at my kids and wonder who their father really is. They do things that are just not like me at all. Oh sure, child #1 has a passion for practical jokes (to the point that his mother yells at him, just like she does me), #2 is a techno-geek to the extreme. #3 loves to write, and #4 just flat out looks like me and has a positive disposition almost all the time (unless he has to do the dishes - just like me in that regard too!). But there are those times when I just scratch my head.

Then something like this happens and I immediately reaffirm my parentage. I was walking by one of the computers Friday night and V2 (child #1) was sitting on the computer. I asked what he was doing and he replied "Working on some web site designs, listening to Norah Jones". My heart could hardly handle it. I know that there is a good looking redhead in his future!

Confessions of a Digital Bum: I got into personal computers in 1985 when I bought a Kaypro XT. A year or so later I got a job at a computer store selling PCs, later become the sales manager. Part of our sales promise was the training that came with the PC, for free. Three weeks into my job the guy that taught the classes quit and I was handed a three ring binder and told that my first DOS class was the following night. I was caught. I had been bluffing my way through the job until that point. I can sell anything, but when I was told that I had to teach how to use them I was in a bad way. I crammed and did a fairly good job. The second night of classes we took a break two hours into class and I asked if there were any questions over anything at all. One guy sheepishly asked how to turn the computer on. I realized then that some people need REALLY basic instructions. You have all read some of the help desk stuff out there and I can tell you it is not fiction. I have honestly had someone ask where the “Any” key was (“hit any key”) and my dear mother-in-law once complained that her keyboard didn’t have an escape key. I actually thought that somehow she was correct until I asked her to read what the key on the top right said. “E..S..C” a few minutes later we were on to another dilemma.

But, this isn’t about my escapades in teaching and coaching, but is about my own confessions. Let me just warn you, this is like Bob Russell sharing that he hadn’t been baptized, George Bush saying that he had never voted, or Tom Clancy telling the world that he had never read a book. It is one thing to teach or preach something, but it is something entirely different to sometimes do that thing. We all assume that they do that which they teach, but sometimes are very shocked.

So what is this earth shaking revelation from the digital guy? Twenty one years after getting into computers, I did something this weekend that I have never done before. I backed up my hard drive. “What?” you are asking, “You have never, ever, not even once done a backup?” Nope. I am telling you that in 20 years of working on computer I have never backed up. I have copied important files from time to time to some kind of stored media (recently DVDs), but I have never ever done a complete system backup. I am telling you that if I grab a virus tonight and lose it all I can restore it all tomorrow.

Now, to the few who regularly read this blog and know me, or have known me for more than a few years, you will know that I have indeed lost data before due to some hard drive failure or virus (just once). But, it hasn’t ever really been a problem for me. Only once in 20 years have I had a failure that caused permanent loss of data that I wanted. It consisted of a book that I had written (but have a hard copy), and some digital pictures. Every other time it hasn’t been such a bad deal. Over the past 3.5 years I have had 8 laptops. Six of them were Panasonic CF-48s that had screen problems. I just swapped the hard drive into the new unit and everything was back to normal. I had one that was infected. I got a new unit the next day that was fresh, but copied my “My Documents” directory that I had made into a CD the day before (total coincidence there!) and was back up. I had to just download some of the plug ins that I needed and some of my favorite software.

I now use a CD-51, a totally incredible small notebook. But, I was listening to my wife lament the virus problems that she has been having on her laptop and decided that I should back up. Man was it easy! Should have been doing this all along. With the back up drive that I am using (a Western Digital 120g external) it was as simple as plugging in the USB cable and clicking a few buttons). So now I am a new convert to that thing that I told people to do 20 years ago. Feels good!

New Feature: I have a "Monitor Changes" button on the side now. This button will redirect you to a site called Change Detection. There will be some who will opt not to sign up for this feature because of security concerns, and that is certainly your option. However, I have used this site for years and never saw any increased SPAM or other unwanted features. Doesn't mean that it won't happen, it just means in the years that I have used it that it hasn't happened.

This all started when my wife asked me to put this on the web site. I put it off and put it off (its my primary responsibility as the husband). Then all of the sudden my eldest daughter finds the site and signs up anyway. Too cool for her. Then Mary is all over me that if a 13 year old girl can figure it out I should be able to do the same. Please! I have to ask for help from Sinclair to rewire the house every time that I want to watch a DVD (they keep rewiring it for the XBOX).

Anyway, sign up if you want; take a pass if you want. You can get instant notification of my spell binding drivel, tantelizing minutiae, digital diatribes, and whatever suites my fancy.

By the way, I won't have a clue if you do sign up or don't, and I really don't care. Don't tell me! I don't get brownie points for having the most sign up. But, if you do want to do something cool that I would benefit from tremendously, read the next post.