Life on Earth as witnessed by me

Exit Security Out-Swinging Door Bar

2011-09-28T10:40:00.002-06:00

New product added to our website today.

Available for doors 36", 42", 48" & 72" wide. Provides protection from break-ins on out-swinging doors. Easy to install and use. Complies with most local, regional and national fire & life safety codes. Can be padlocked in the locked or unlocked position with an optional padlock.

Kaba E-Plex E5066 Electronic Mortise Lock

2011-05-20T11:57:00.002-06:00

We now have the Kaba E-Plex E5066 B WL 626 41.

This is a mortise lock with a 2-3/4" backset and inside/outside trims. The outside trim has a 10 digit electronic keypad that's capable of up to 100 user codes and 3000 audit events. Battery operated so no wiring is required. Add/Edit/Remove users at the keypad or get the optional software to perform the same in addition to retrieving audit trails from the lock. The software also allows up to 300 users and 9000 audit events total.

For more information and to purchase at an extremely low price, visit our website here:
http://www.jmlock.com/kaba-eplex-5066-electronic-access-control-ic-mortise-lock.aspx

We also have the E-Plex E5010 B WL 626 41. This is the same type of access control lock but compatible with exit devices from companies like Von Duprin, Arrow and Corbin, to name a few. If you would like more information or to order, please call or email us. Visit our website for contact information:
http://www.jmlock.com

2010-06-09T20:50:00.002-06:00

Featured Products for the month of June 2010

Abus File Cabinet Locking Bar

Available for vertical file cabinets with 1 to 5 drawers. Mounts to the front left or right of your file cabinet and swings out of the way when unlocked to allow access to all drawers. Locks with a padlock, sold separately. Works on lateral file cabinets only when 2 are used, one on each side. Mounts to metal or wood cabinets. Requires at least 1/2" on the front next to the drawers to operate properly.

Aiphone JA Series Pan/Tilt Color Video Door Intercom

Add a color video door intercom to your primary entrance so you can see and hear who is ringing your bell. Hands-free voice activated communication from the door to the inside unit. Door release button for use with electric strikes or other electrified locks, sold separately. Camera can be moved left and right as well as up and down so you can get a wider view just in case someone isn't in view.

Alarm Lock Trilogy Lock

This lock features a privacy function. Perfect for commercial restrooms, dressing rooms, darkrooms, hospitals or wherever you want to control access without wanting to keep track of a key. This Trilogy also has a passage function so you can enter a code to unlock it and it will remain unlocked until another proper code is entered. Weatherproof and mounts on standard doors with 2-3/4" backsets.

AMSEC 20" Home Security Safe

Formerly known as a Smith & Wesson safe, this 20" x 20" x 20" fire safe will protect your valuables from up to 350 degrees inside temperature. A Group 2 commercial dial lock with 4 large chrome plated locking bolts will prevent most people from getting in. Truck Shipment Only.

CompX Chicago ACE II Vending Machine Lock

Designed for use on vending machines that have a threaded rod style lock. The use of a tubular ACE II key makes it harder to pick or drill and obtaining key copies can only be done by qualified locksmiths enabling you to have better key control. You can cut the 5/16" - 18 threaded rod to fit your vending machine. Includes 2 keys.

Detex Value Series Exit Alarm

Inexpensive yet very valuable to your business, an exit alarm deters people from exiting through a door that you'd prefer they not use, except in an emergency. Battery operated and armed/disarmed with a key (lock and key not included but available separately). The 100 decibel alarm makes sure you and many others will hear when the device is depressed. Large white lettering on a red background is easy to see.

Kwikset Grade 1 Deadbolt

Yes that does say Grade 1 - being the highest grade available for locks. Grade 1 locks are designed for use on institutions, heavy commercial other applications that require a heavy duty, long-lasting lock. Don't let the Kwikset name fool you, these are heavy duty locks made of quality materials and designed to withstand the abuse Grade 1 locks are meant for. If installed properly, the door should give out before the lock does.

Lockstate Mechanical Keyless Lock

A heavy duty mechanical pushbutton lock with full size levers that is designed for use on homes, businesses or areas where a keyless option is preferred. Operates in passage mode - unlocked all the time - if needed.

Pacific Lock 2" Solid Steel Body Padlock

Compare any Pacific Lock padlock to Master Lock or American Lock and you'll see that not only are they less expensive & assembled in the USA but they are also available in a variety of options without the 2 month wait required for the major brands. This padlock is manufactured of high quality solid steel, machined to exacting specifications and assembled in California by a family-owned and operated business. Ball bearing locking means it can't be shimmed like other brands. Pacific Lock Padlocks can be personalized for your business whether it's in real estate management, self storage, trucking or military. Contact us for custom options.

Corbin Russwin Rim Exit Device

Manufactured by Corbin/Russwin, packaged in US Lock packaging. US Lock is a leading distributor of locks and security products based in New York. This device can be mounted on standard doors and is non-handed.

Lastly, we would like to take this time to ask for feedback. If you would like to see other things on this blog, have a comment about it or would like to let us know you actually read this, please post a comment. We have had issues with the blog and aren't sure if it's worth us keeping it up, and yes, some of the blogs pertain to issues other than our business but that is changing.

By the way, as always, ALL of the safes we stock ship FREE to most areas.

WARNING: Contains TRUTHS - Don't read if you are brain washed

2010-02-09T20:39:00.004-07:00

Would someone please explain to me why it's extremely bad if a Democrat calls liberals retards, so much so that the idiotic Palin demands that person's resignation, but when Rush Limbaugh says it, it's satire? I mean I didn't go to no smart college like mostaya so eye cant understand evyting soya may havta speel it out fourme.

Then there is also the fact that Palin dramatizes the fact that Obama uses telprompters yet fails to mention that she has notes written on the palm of her left hand. I guess deceiving the public into thinking that you have a better memory than the president is better than just using a teleprompter which keeps you from complaining about anyone else using them. Idiot!

And another thing, let's rehire Dubya as President so the economy, unemployment, housing crisis, repayment of the tarp loans, repayment of the other tax money and everything else will suddenly and miraculously be fixed and/or done...at least according to Dubya and his peeps. Oh yeah, we gave him 8 FKN YEARS AND ALL HE DID WAS FK IT UP MORE!!!! He and his peeps are the reason we have this mess in the first place. Here's an idea, why don't you all non-believer's, including the entire FOX WE DON'T REPORT NEWS channel move to Mexico, Canada or what the hell, just move to Texas and secede from America and just be the the Republic of Texas or the Republic of Dubya then you can come back with your guns drawn and just try to take over MY America you bone headed, ignorant, gullible, brain-washed freaks!

One more little thing: Why can Americans and people of other countries come together and give millions upon millions to help a country that normally nobody would have anything to do with just because of a natural disaster? I'm not saying it's wrong, I just want to know why the hell those same people that gave and gave give nothing when there's people in their own country, in their own state, crap in their own neighborhood that are needy and could use a helping hand. It may only be a week worth of groceries, a utility payment, a tank of gas or a ride to the doctor's office but every little bit helps. It's not like you can write it off on your taxes so that must be the reason the giving that we see before us with Haiti is so great and the help needed at home is nil. No wonder some people believe everything that leaves the mouths of idiots just because they are on national television. They were already scared. I mean after 8 years of a failing economy, a rise in unemployment and a larger national debt I too would be scared and believe those morons but I'M SMARTER than that.

You should be too.

New Products

2009-11-28T23:13:00.013-07:00

We have added new products!

Schlage B60 Grade 1 Single Cylinder Deadbolt
Starting at $34.83
Pick and bump resistant single cylinder deadbolt.
We also have double cylinder versions of this deadbolt. Both versions available in Polished Brass, Satin Nickel or Aged Bronze finishes.

American Lock 1-3/4" Brass Body Interchangeable Core Padlock
Starting at $16.99
The American Lock 1-3/4" wide solid brass body padlock features a hardened 5/16" diameter hardened steel shackle and accepts any Small Format Interchangeable Core (SFIC) such as Best, Arrow, Falcon, Eagle, KSP & Lockwood.

Read more about padlocks.

Master Lock Combination Nightwatch Single Cylinder Deadbolt
Starting at $46.96
Unlock the deadbolt with a simple 3 digit code, just like a combination padlock. When Nightwatch is engaged, the outside assembly cannot be used to unlock the deadbolt, not by your regular key, by any copied key or by the combination thus preventing anyone from entering your home through that door while you are there even if they have a key or know the combination. The inside thumbturn can be turned to lock or unlock the deadbolt. Exceeds ANSI Grade 2 standards.

Kaba E-Plex 5700 Electrical PIN / Proximity Audit Trail Lock
Your Cost: $959.04
Allows up to 3,000 users per lock with over 100 million possible code combinations for increased security. The E-Plex 5731 records the last 30,000 events, including the use of the Schlage SC1 key override so you can find out which code was used and when, or when a key was used instead of a code.

www.jmlock.com has free shipping

2009-10-28T09:44:00.002-06:00

Until December 31, 2009, J&M Lock, Inc - www.jmlock.com - is offering free shipping on every item in stock. There are over 200,000 part numbers in stock so you certain to find the item you need. Since everything ships within 48 hours, you can expect to get it quick too!

We haven't raised our prices either.

In addition, we are now taking orders from & shipping to Canadian residents.

Be sure to check out the site to find what you are looking for.

www.jmlock.com

Stick this in your cushion

2009-09-22T21:57:00.005-06:00

If what I see on TV or the Internet isn't always true then why are there so many people angrily protesting exactly what they see on TV and the Internet?

Let me be clear: The recent 'tea party' in Washington DC contained hundreds of people with signs and shouting that our President is a communist, socialist, racist, nazi, etc. Where do they get those ideas? Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and every Republican and right-wing conservative website. I simply don't understand. Well I do understand why those sources brainwash people into thinking that their word is truth but I don't understand why people are so gullible; so blind.

Recently I started watching CBS Sunday Morning again, after a short stint of not watching it. This show is like a PBS version of the important, informative news that Fox News, Rush and the afore mentioned websites forgot to tell anyone about or simply decided that the real news is whatever their psycotic minds made it to be. I bring up this show because this past Sunday they had a story about the 'tea party' and spoke with some of the people and all I could see were people with blinders implanted on their faces by those that weren't happy that the elephants lost control of the government.

They are scared and they should be. They are about to lose their cushion - you know, the one they sit on when they plant their butts down at a table to eat fresh lobster and drink fine wine with their friends, who aren't really friends but just acquaintances, and talk about how much money they make, how many cars they have, how large their beach house is and how many mistresses they have. Man, life is great when you have control. It really sucks when you lose it.

Now your lobster is a hamburger, the wine is iced tea, the 'friends' no longer talk to you, the salary you bragged about is now cut in half, you drive a used domestic sedan, your beach house washed away in the last hurricane and your insurance won't cover it. To top it off, the only cushion you have is the fat ass that develops after only a week of eating fast food and your mistresses told your wife about your affair. Now you're homeless, jobless, broke and nobody loves you.

I too would be scared if I were dumb enough to be a part of any party where the topic of the year is to put everyone in the country in the same mindset as you are in just because you don't want to be left alone without your things. If the donkeys were truely in control of this government, anyone caught brainwashing would be tried and convicted as a felon and spend the rest of their lives in a prison, not a retreat like some white-collar convicts get, a real prison.

You shouldn't be scared. You should be happy that the Democrats feel so sad for you that they are not persuing charging anyone with a crime for the past 8-1/2 crappy years that we have all endured, including Bush & Cheney but especially Rush, Glenn and everyone else at Fox News.

Stop pushing your fears onto the American public. You are going to create a civil war, of course that's what you want.

Just remember that we are already involved in 2 wars, that we know about. Another one would just take more of your cushion so you'd be no better off than you are now. You'd be like the rest of us poor and middle-class hard-working Americans, stuck in a war you can't win.

Life has ended

2009-08-19T10:35:00.002-06:00

Facebook has died.

Our lives will never be the same.

What will we now do when life become boring? How will we share our thoughts with friends and family? How will we know when anything happens?

Oh, twitter is still working. Never used it but maybe I should tweet.

2009-08-11T13:50:00.003-06:00

I'm beginning to think that the differences between the two major political parties in this country are going to start a civil war. On the one side you have people claiming that the current administration is doing everything in their power to destroy freedom, liberty and all other rights, turning the country into a socialist one then on the other side you have people saying that those claiming the first actions are trying to create mayhem and panic.

I wonder how many people actually read bills that are put through the house and senate, not just those we elect but everyone else. How many of you actually know what you are talking about when you say that the health care reform bill before us now is what you hear it is? What makes you think your source is better than the one I use, or your neighbor uses? Yes I know, like most bills in our government the reading is an undertaking, spanning 1100 or more pages and who really wants to read that anyway. We should just take what we hear and see from unreliable sources as God's word, fact.

There are times, many lately, where I'd just love for God to show up and slap everyone across the face and tell us all to shut up. I mean do we really feel that the government would pass a law to let them decide when we should die, let alone let such wording make it into any bill? Do you think that anyone should make that choice but your God?

What about the information you may have heard regarding the outrage at local town hall meetings? In 2005, straight from his own mouth, I saw Bill O'Reilly say to the effect that the Democrats are acting like Nazis at town hall meetings. Disrupting speakers and just generally causing a ruckus. Then in July a GOP memo was sent out telling all who would listen to do the exact same thing at town hall meetings on the health care reform bill. Now we see Fox News and their replicas reporting that these meetings are becoming disruptive, well duh, you told them to and they follow just like ants.

I recently saw a post in a local paper online where someone posted the promises President Obama made before being elected and the current result of those promises. These were in the comments section of an article related to the President visiting the local area in the next week or so.
"
WHY would anyone trust what Obama says? Here is a partial list of Obamas broken promises (so far).

I will have transparency-generals must sign secrecy Oath........Broken
I will cut the deficit in half by doubling spendingsay what.......Broken
I will change the Washington culture of corruption.......................Broken
I will reach across the isle (Im ready to fight Republicans)....Broken
I will have no earmarks in stimulus, there are 9000..................Broken
I will have transparency in White House emails except mine....Broken
I will demand human rights for China and Tibet..............................Broken
I will put legislation on Internet for all to read before votes....Broken
I will have honest advisers, except those who take free rent......Broken

I will have my administration pay their fair share of taxes........Broken
I will eliminate rendition of terrorist combatants..........................Broken
I will have a transparent admin. with the media.............................Breaking
I will bring charges against Bush admin. war crimes.....................Broken
I will have new blood in admin. but names Panetta to CIA..........Broken
I will have a transparent government..................................................Broken
I quite smoking (admits to bumming cigarettes)...........................Broken
I will apply windfall taxes on big oil companies.................................Broken
I will change US Foreign Policy, appoints Hillary Sec. State......Broken
I will change the defense department, YET keeps Gates............Broken
I will close Guantanamo............................................................................Breaking
I will sit down with dictators with no pre-conditions....................Broken
I will stop waterboarding and CIA interrogation techniques......Breaking
I will use federal campaign funds..........................................................Broken
I will get US troops out of Iraq in 16 month....................................Broken
I will change Washington with new faces............................................Broken
I will not hire lobbyists, hires lobbyist Daschle (he's out but here are the others)....Broken
"
Let me make some corrections.
1. Transparency: http://www.recovery.gov/ - learn to read.
2. Deficit: Can anyone take a business that's so in debt and cut that in half in only 7 months? Not possible so give it some time before you decide.
3. DC culture: That's been that way for so long that it's hard to fight the pipe smoking, back room talking, money hungry corporations, so again give it time.
4. Reaching across the isle: Where were you the last 7 months?
5. Earmarks: What exactly do you not understand about the government? Earmarks are a part of life so until item 3 is fixed, you can't expect this one to be.
6. You repeated yourself because this is transparency again.
7. Human rights: Again it's only bee 7 months.
8. Again you repeated yourself. Check #1.
9. That doesn't make sense.
10. Who said the administration isn't paying taxes? Where's the proof?
11. No comment.
12. Again read #1.
13. So even though you are on Bush's side you are appalled that charges weren't filed? Besides which, there are more important things to deal with than that guy.
14. Why change what is working?
15. Dang, you like to repeat yourself don't you.
16. Can you quit smoking in 7 months after having to deal with the mess left for you by your predecessor? Give it time. I've been trying to quit for 20 years and I don't have anywhere near the stress as Obama does.
17. One thing at a time.
18. Changing the foreign policy: Hiring Hillary to do it? You make no sense.
19. The defense department is all screwed up, much like your friends on foxnews.
20. Um, gitmo is closing, read the paper.
21. I'm fairly certain he has done this.
22. That has stopped.
23. ?
24. Can you count? It's been 7 months. That's not 16.
25. Didn't you already bring this up?
26. I don't know about this one nor can I find documentation on it.

I'm really scared that more and more people are getting their news from unreliable sources and believing it as God's word. I fear we may be headed into another civil war if this doesn't stop soon. Maybe you should hear what you are told but then research it before you believe it. There is this thing called the internet (internets for Bush people) and you can find tons of information that you can get from many sources, reliable ones that aren't hiding an agenda.

And I'd suggest that you avoid town hall meetings because regardless of which side you are on, you may get a shoe thrown at you.

The Chicken or the Egg?

2009-07-07T15:01:00.002-06:00

An old life question of which came first has just been solved. Last night I figured it out. I don't know why or what brought it to mind but in any case the first mystery of life is solved.

The chicken.

Why?

Because if the egg came first, what or whom would be there to care for it? Incubate it? Feed it? Teach it? Love it? Miss it when it's gone?

If God made the egg first then why not make the baby first? God is smarter than that so making the adult, or in this case the chicken, first made the best sense.

If there is no God and things evolved, the answer is still the chicken but I can't imagine what would the predecessor of a chicken look like.

Or what it would taste like.

Stupid TV Executives

2009-05-31T13:36:00.002-06:00

I'm starting a campaign to boycott all TV networks that cancel shows that actually make sense to keep like Life, Reaper, Smallville & The Unusuals, among others. While some have had years on the air and the writing has become senseless, boring and predictable they overall plot can still have a chance if only they'd get new writers instead of just canceling the shows. It's almost like they are using a focus group of 3 year olds that are being trained to become replacement moronic TV executives. There have been too many shows that have remained on the air despite being stupid, mainly because the majority of viewers are also stupid. Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor, and any other 'reality' shows that are as far from real as one can be should have all never been made let alone remained. This country is becoming so dependent on watching other people do stupid things that we ourselves become stupid and blinded by the hoopla that is force-fed down our throats. Yes there is more to life than watching TV but damn it I'm tired of the networks starting a show, hooking me on it then ripping it from my grasp only to replace it with some ignorant 'reality' show or something like Supernatural that started out okay but then, much like Smallville, turns to crap. At least Eureka isn't dead and better not be any time soon. At least the writing there is interesting enough but I bet they'll rip the barbed hook out of my mouth sooner or later.

I have nothing to say

2009-05-27T13:28:00.002-06:00

Or do I?

I should always have something to say but sometimes I don't. It'd be nice if former vice presidents didn't have anything to say, much like they did while in office but I'd be dreaming if I expected that.

On a similar note, I've noticed some people on TV have misstated President Obama's name. It seems that those that say it incorrectly are those that have yet to see the light, or have blinders on and just plain can't see it, either that or they are just plain rude. It's PRESIDENT OBAMA not Mr. Obama. Show some respect people!!! You had your chance with the last guy and he screws all of us so get your head out of your ass and learn to live with the choice that the real Americans have chosen. If you don't like it, I hear there's plenty of room in Mexico seeing how a lot of people have moved here.

And what's with the government getting involved with a teenager's decision to not have poison pushed through his body? Since when does any branch of government in this country have the right to tell parents that they must use this treatment or face prison? The family cited religous reasons for not letting the doctors give chemotherapy to their son yet went through with it because the courts said they must. It's my understanding that in the past those that have religous reasons for not seeking medical support have been left alone. Somehow the court in this case is as blinded as those calling President Obama by his pre-chief executive name.

On a lighter note my wife and I are about done hanging drywall and should beging the tedious process of taping and mudding the 50-60 sheets which I'm not looking forward to. Although when that is done it'll be time for paint then I can install the flooring and get my office moved downstairs which will be awesome!

Other than that I have nothing to say.

Blinded by the Snow

2009-03-06T14:33:00.002-07:00

In the few years I've been a visitor on this planet I've noticed one important detail about most people: THEY ARE COMPLETE MORONS!

It's March. It's snowing outside (of course because snow inside would be just plain silly). Cars and trucks and roads and ditches and guard rails and weeds are covered in snow. A great percentage of cars on the road that I've seen, hopefully with a driver of some sort behind the wheel, cause me to cringe. Why you may ask? I can't see the driver through the thick blanket of snow covering every window of their vehicle!!

If I happened to catch a glimpse through the tiny spot in the middle of the windshield on the driver's side would I see a child driving? Did they quickly clean off one spot to see through just before sneaking the car from home without mom and dad knowing or is it in fact more likely that it's mom and/or dad in the car? How is it that these people survive on this planet anyway? They go through life in a huge hurry, not a worry on their mind, except getting there fast regardless of the danger they've put everyone, including themselves in.

Earlier this week I happened to leave the house; it's rare but yes I did leave to get some things done that had to be done. Whilst sitting in the vehicle awaiting the return of my beautiful bride from behind the sliding glass doors of a small grocery store to obtain a succulent treat called chocolate my eyes captured a glimpse of a white beast zooming through the parking lot without a care in the world, except to get wherever quickly. I then noticed a dark spot. Could it have been a skin lesion on the bright white skin of this beast? Should I call out to this beast and yell 'hey you should see a doctor about that' or should I let it alone? The latter was my choice as I noticed the beast had black tires which told me this was no beast, it was a car that some MORON swiped a spot in the vast white snow cover on the windshield to see directly in front of them but of course no where else. I hoped the approaching train would notice the idiot and stop before plowing into them and luckily for the driver of the beast, I mean car, the driver turned the other direction avoiding the train altogether. I wonder now if that same driver is the one that lost control of their vehicle, crossed the median going 65MPH and plowed into 2 vehicles, of which I can only hope they were smart enough to clear the snow from their deadly weapons unlike the beast's driver did. Probably not one in the same but very likely.

Isn't it bad enough that this planet decides when to give us snow, when to melt it, when to freeze it and when to evaporate it and there are people dumb enough to drive in conditions that any sane person would at least clean their entire car off so that when they lost control doing 80MPH they wouldn't have to say that they couldn't see? Get it together people of this planet before my people all arrive and take over to show you how much of a moron you all are.

Or am I the moron thinking people can change...

$45.2 billion profit

2009-01-30T08:13:00.002-07:00

The economy is in the toilet. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. People have killed themselves and their families due to financial losses. Tens of thousands have lost their homes. Unemployment claims have risen past 4 million. The cost of food has risen. The cost to heat homes has risen. Consumer spending is down.

The good news is that Exxon Mobil has shown a $45.2 BILLION profit in 2008! That's $45,200,000,000. I've never seen so many zeros. Now if they start laying off workers the economy will truly be bad.

Now wait just a minute. Diesel and gas prices have risen dramatically since 2007 yet American jobs have been lost, people have lost their homes and some have lost their lives and this country still allows a company like Exxon Mobil to turn record profits? Something is very wrong with this picture. The big car companies had to borrow money from the government to stay afloat. Insurance companies like AIG and others had to do the same. Financial institutions also had to borrow money to keep from laying off or firing workers. The government did nothing to prevent this. They did nothing to stop Exxon Mobil from price gouging which is exactly what they were doing.

Back in January 2007 there was an ice storm that knocked out power for most of the city I lived in for 2 weeks. Hotels charged double the normal rates. Gas stations increased prices by $0.50/gallon or so. After the storm passed and the ice melted, the state Attorney General fined those companies for price gouging which is exactly what Exxon Mobil has done. They know that we all need gas to get to and from work, school or the grocery store and that we don't have a choice to buy cheaper gas since everyone has the same price and we don't have a choice to not drive unless we live in a large city with public transportation or a town that we can ride our bicycles to get where we need to go, without having to breathe in the exhaust fumes from drivers that can afford a gallon of gas.

We do have a choice not to buy the 60" LCD TV, the $100 shoes, the $40k gas-guzzler, the Playstation 3 or the Godiva chocolates but we can't choose not to buy gas unless we own an electric or hybrid vehicle or can take public transportation or can ride our bikes.

This economy has turned sour because gas prices rose beyond our budgets so we had to make a choice: Eat, pay the mortgage or starve and be homeless just so we can have that one thing that will make our lives happy even just for a second. That may be the LCD, the shoes, the PS3 or the Hummer but in any case, the lack of consumer spending has caused all of these companies to close, layoff workers, cut pay or to borrow taxpayer's money to stay in business. We haven't spent because we can't afford gas and everything else.

The Bush administration is to blame for this mess. If GW had his hands in the pockets of Sony, Nike, Catepiller or some other company besides Exxon and the like, we wouldn't be in this trap. He did nothing because it would affect his retirement money. That $45.2 billion profit that Exxon Mobil shows for 2008: part of that is going to Bush and it can't be denied because why else would, at the end of an 8 year reign, Bush do nothing to curb this downfall of the American Way yet when an outsider attacks our people he declares war?

We have been attacked by someone on the inside yet he just goes about his business as if nothing is wrong and that by doing nothing, he did nothing wrong.

Exxon Mobil should be fined for price gouging, as should any other oil company, or any company that Bush had stock in, that shows higher than normal profits for the last 8 years.

Price gouging is a crime and so is being a Bush.

2008-10-29T12:24:00.002-06:00

Something is wrong with Americans. They believe everything they hear and see regardless of where it comes from. They don't account for the fact that some places they obtain information from are bias and only tell them what they want them to know, or think, not what is actual fact.

I recently heard some McCain supporters state that they were afraid that if Obama was elected that this country wouldn't be the same as we have come to know; that he would put on a turban and sit around with his Muslim friends at the White House; that he would 'spread the wealth' among the middle class; that America would be in bed with terrorists. I also heard Palin and McCain state that Obama's plan would put us in a Socialism state.

Statement #1:
Why would you want the same America? The idea of getting away from Bush ideals is to make this country better. We are in this economic crisis because of the Republican ways of doing business. If someone has a better idea of how to get us out of this mess then let them. Apparently the trillion dollars the government has given to banks and financial institutions hasn't done any good for the rest of this country - only the people that run those places have.

Statement #2:
Obama isn't Muslim and he has stated that fact numerous times so I don't understand why people still insist on pulling that lie out of their ass and saying something that isn't and never was true. He doesn't wear a turban except for that one time when he dressed up. I can't remember the exact reason but I remember he explained it very well.

Statement #3:
Spreading the wealth is exactly what this country needs. The reason we are in this mess is because the rich kept getting richer by taking advantage of the poor and middle class. An officer of any corporation generally makes 5 times or more than any employee of that same company. Why is that? Isn't the reason the officer has the ability to make that kind of money the people they employ and pay way too little to? If those same people gave their employees a higher wage they would perform even better, making the company more money and giving the officers of that company the opportunity to give bonuses to themselves AND to those that made it possible in the first place. If Obama wants to cut taxes to the lower and middle class and raise it on the rich, that is the way it should be. If you make $500k / year you are stealing from Americans. If you make even $250k / year you are stealing from Americans. Most people that make that much every year can afford tax attorneys to find loopholes in the system to help them save even more money. Those loopholes need to be closed. It isn't fair that the rich get better tax rates than the poor. The poor and middle class are the only ones paying to keep social security around, the only ones that pay doctors and hospitals more money because they can't afford insurance, the only ones that are contributing to the economy - no wonder the market fell.

Statement #4:
Obama doesn't associate with terrorists. Bush wanted to bring down Hussein because he harbored terrorists but the truth is Hussein kept them out of Iraq with an iron fist. Once Hussein was captured and removed from power the terrorists moved back in and have remained there despite the Bush White House saying "mission accomplished" (over 2 years ago by the way).

Statement #5:
Socialism may be the label applied to what Obama wants to accomplish once in office but the idea is the same: tax the rich because they are too greedy and that is why this country's economy is in the crapper.

If people are truly scared of Obama being elected, move to Canada. You'll get free health care and you can move your business out of the US and hire foreign workers at lower wages and make even more money that you can write off, or does Canada even have an income tax? Either way, go away and take your KKK, skinheads, racists and bigot friends with you. They are too stupid to realize that they aren't true Americans. True Americans are only those that have always been here - Indians. We all come from another country, some by choice some by force. Don't show your stupidity. Get off your high horse and shut up.

Is it just me or have we gone nuts?

2008-10-13T18:50:00.005-06:00

This is an email that I just sent to my state governor in the hope of getting someone to understand that what the US Senate and House have done recently will destroy our country.

I understand there is another bill trying to be put through the House and Senate regarding bailing out the US banks and corporations.

I do not support any government assistance for any company that caused this issue in the first place. If a lender loaned money to someone with sketchy credit, no job or low income and couldn't afford what they were buying, that is the responsibility of the lender, not the taxpayer. If you give or loan money to any bank, business or corporation as a government, you are using taxpayer money and I do not want my tax money going to organizations that can't run a business properly. If they have to learn the hard way by going out of business, so be it. Let them work at McDonald's to learn how to count money. Just don't let them count the money I pay every month to the state and to the IRS.

I know that as governor you don't have the same power in Washington as Max Baucus, Jon Tester or Denny Rehberg regarding bills but you can help put a stop to this nonsense. Make sure that our voted leaders know how me and many other Montana voters feel about helping out companies that don't deserve to give their CEO's millions in bonuses then ask the government for help or companies that take $400 million of taxpayer money that was meant to help them stay in business but instead blow it on some spa retreat.

The way things have been going in Washington in the past few weeks makes me wonder if I should ask the government for help with my struggling business but I know that since I don't have million dollar salaried employees or the hands of lobbyists in my pockets then I don't stand a chance. Neither should irresponsible bankers and CEOs.

Why is it when the economy gets bad the idiots in Washington give money to other idiots? How stupid do you have to be to beg for help then take part of that help and spend a weekend with your fellow workers at a spa getting massaged and having facials? Let's take an example of someone that's on welfare:
1. 5 kids and counting;
2. No job and no intention of getting one;
3. Living in an apartment managed by the government with no prospects of every buying their own home;
4. Taking their child support and spending it on lotto tickets, booze and cigarettes;
5. Taking their welfare and spending it on having their hair and nails done or buying fancy clothes that will likely get stolen or ruined but buying them just to say they did.

Tell me that doesn't happen in this country and I'll take it back with my sincerest apologies.

Now you've got multi-billion dollar companies taking their 'welfare' and doing the exact same thing. They don't want to help their business or their employees, they just want to help themselves before they can't any more.

"Hey, let's tell our pals in the Senate that we are in debt, thousands may lose their jobs because of it and we need some financial help. They are our buddies so I know they'll help us."

I'm not saying that's an actual quote from some idiotic CEO but I'm not saying it wasn't either. I'm sure someone, somewhere at least thought the same thing when this all started. Loan money to people on welfare with no job, 5 kids and no intention of every getting a job or furthering their education but I'm sure that some mortgage company out there decided to give them a chance and loan them money for a house that they knew they'd have to foreclose on but at least they made some money on the deal at closing, oh and after the government said "oh we're so sad to see you, as a huge contributor of our campaign, fail to get paid those mortgage payments you were promised, even though it was a dumb thing to loan money to them in the first place, this country can't afford for you to go out of business because who'd load money to the idiots then so we'll just give, I mean loan (wink) you some money to help you stay in business. Its taxpayer money anyway, so it's no skin off my back. Here's $2 million, have fun with it."

Oh My God! Can someone please tell me what's in the water in Washington these days? Did a terrorist make it through the hours of checkpoints at the airport and interview with a low-paid government employee (TSA) and pick up a cab in NYC then have them drive to DC all while holding a bottle of stupid serum then pour it into the water source for the Senate and House?

Now they want to 'help' them again because the first time didn't take. If the government was a loan shark and the banks and corporations borrowed money from them and then the loan shark found out that the morons spent the money on drugs then didn't pay them back (which we all know the companies will do) then the loan shark would have his guys breaking some legs, which is what the government should do. What we can hold prisoners in Gitmo for no reason other than suspicion of terrorism but we can't break the legs of complete idiots who begged for help then blew the money on a spa retreat? Get real. The C executives at corporations don't deserve million dollar salaries or bonuses unless they can run the business in the black. If that were the case here, the US government wouldn't need to be loaning them money to bail them out. If you are a C executive and see that your salary is putting your company at risk of bankruptcy, shouldn't you figure out that it's probably your outrageous salary that's caused the issue in the first place so you shouldn't beg for help then take your friends to some vacation weekend. NO that wasn't a question. Get it through your thick skulls: I'm not here to pay for you to blow my money on stupid idiotic weekends with your buds. I haven't worked hard these past 10 years getting my business to this point just to have your stupid butt come in and take the money that find missing from my bank account because the government overstayed its welcome and still requires me to pay taxes on what I should rightfully get to keep since I'm the one that made it, not the government and taxes were supposed to be a short-term solution to WWI. Then again this is the same idiotic government that put GW in office even though the majority of the country was as much in shock as I was when he 'won'.

I think it's about time we get some 'guys' and start breaking some legs, or at least cracking some nuts.

Politics, Of Course

2008-09-05T13:11:00.003-06:00

It never amazes me but sometimes I'm surprised that some people still believe that the Republicans can actually help make our lives better.

Here are some minor points:
1. GW Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol
From wikipedia "The United States o f America is the only developed country to have signed but not ratified the Kyoto Protocol". The Kyoto Protocol would have made us reduce greenhouse gasses and made our air cleaner and our dependence on oil much less.

2. GW Bush wants to drill for oil off the shores of the United States to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
This is a technical term so I hope you understand "BULL". He wants to get this passed so they can drill offshore so after he's out of office he can still make money. We all know he's got both of his hands deep in black gold. He's from Texas and that's what people with money do in Texas - drill for oil. That is unless you are a multi-millionaire and realize that wind is the new oil. (see previous blog). There is no economic reason to drill offshore. Allowing offshore drilling won't reduce the price of gas for at least 3 years, and that's only if they actually find oil. Since the oil companies already have access to millions of acres of untapped possible oil resources but haven't touched them, they don't need to drill offshore and in my opinion they don't need to drill anywhere. Oil is not everlasting and while some say we have many years of it left, there is no reason not to investigate and improve alternatives to oil.

3. Every term that a Republican is in office the people that actually work for a living (as opposed to those that already have money and don't actually do work of any kind) make less money, lose more benefits, pay more taxes and sometimes, like recently, lose their home that they worked very hard to get in the first place. More jobs are lost while a Republican is in office. More Republicans complain about paying too much taxes when a Republican is in office so the taxes on the wealthy go down. To make up for the loss, those lower on the totem pay more therefore have less to buy food for their families, fill up the tank with gas, pay their mortgage or even pay the co-pay on any health insurance that they happen to have.

4. In 1861 Republican Abraham Lincoln took office. Later that year the Civil War started. In 1898, while Republican William McKinley was in office, the Spanish-American War started. The Vietnam War started while Republican Dwight D Eisenhower was in office. Grenada and Panama were interviened or invaded while Ronald Reagan was in office. George Bush was in office when the Persian Gulf War started. In 2001 his son George W Bush initiated the Invasion of Afghanastan. Yes I admit that there were some wars that the United States started involvement in while a Democrat was in office: WWI, WWII (both of which were not initiated by the US), Mexican-American War, Korean War and a few more. Think about the types of wars the ones started by Republicans were - wars to push the views of the party into other countries or people. Yes, Lincoln was in office at the start of the Civil War but he did put a stop to it. In my opinion Lincoln was the best president this country has ever seen. While he was a Republican with Republican views, I applaud him for his efforts to bring this country together. There was no reason for slavery other than to improve the lives of people with money (DUH! Now that's Republican if I've ever seen it).

5. The people of the Republican Party seem to always intiate negative ads to their Democratic counterparts while the Democrats do their best to ignore it because it's a bully tactic. I suppose the Republicans still think they are in high school.

Why is it that people can't see the real truth about any political canidate? Why can't people see that one day a Republican will say one thing then months later they will change their views because someone they want in office feels differently than that person said previously?

One day you have a governor saying that if she were in the White House that she would ban abortion yet when her own child gets pregnant and tells the public "it's up to her." Now I'm confused, if the decision is hers, yet if you were in office and could make the change, there would be no choice for any woman. Makes sense, after all it's a Republican.

Then you have a guy that's married to a woman half his age, or so it appears, and was once married to another woman that he left while she was sick and dying, or so I hear. Yes he was a prisoner and held captive but that doesn't mean I want to be held captive in my own country by a government that's run by idiots!

I work hard for my family. Sometimes I work 12 hours a day and sometimes that's 7 days a week. When April 15th comes around all of that hard work I did goes directly to the IRS to add to the enormous pot they have set aside for people that already have money. You then have people that are on welfare just because it's easier than getting and keeping a job. Those same people have 10 kids and keep popping them out because they can get a bigger check from the government every month to pay for the crappy food in the crappy government housing they force their familes to live in. On top of that, those kids get free health care while working families have to get second mortgages just to pay for a hospital visit for thier own child.

If the US Government was run like a business, as it should be, it would have declared bankrputcy many, many years ago, but them I'm sure it would have bailed itself out much like it's done to Fanny Mae and Fanny Mac and big 'for profit' corporations - they only bailed them out because they too had their hands in deep, much like Bush does now in oil.

We didn't need this war. We don't want this war. Our families don't need to keep losing their children in some far away land in a war that only benefits the Republicans. It's not to protect our country from attack, it's to protect the Republican's investment from attack.

If you vote a Republican into the office of President of the United States of America, it won't be united much longer.

Power for the Future

2008-04-19T21:45:00.005-06:00

Conquering Global Warming

I saw an article yesterday about a Texas billionaire that's going to spend probably billions buying land from Texas north to Nebraska or further then installing several thousand wind turbines on the properties. He's doing this to make money as well as to help with global warming and the constant use of oil as a fuel, even though he's a billionaire because of oil. To me it makes sense that someone who's become rich and powerful such as him to seek new alternative ways to make money, how else would he stay rich? It's too bad that every billionaire like Bill Gates or those hundreds or thousands of others we hear about don't focus more on this huge issue we have confronting us. Yes we also have starving and sick people all over the world that need help but we also have the immediate need of this planet. If we don't stop destroying it, it will eventually kill us all anyway so why not use our resources to fight ourselves?

Let's start with South Dakota. Nothing against the residents it's just that I recently spent several days and nights there and I realized something: IT'S WINDY!

I've done some research and found out that the two cities that I recently stayed overnight in (Mitchell and Rapid City) have higher than average wind speeds all year long (compared to the rest of the United States). Mitchell, South Dakota has a LOW average of 10MPH with a high of 13MPH. Rapid City, South Dakota has a LOW average of 10MPH as well as a high of 13MPH. Mitchell has a low average of 50% sunshine during the winter with 75% during the summer. Rapid City is about the same. Both cities have high averages of sunny days. I don't want to leave out Pierre, Murdo or Sioux Falls with a low average wind speeds similar to both Mitchell and Rapid City and sunshine along the same lines.

Given this data one could ask why there aren't wind turbines and solar panels lining Interstate 90 from Sioux Falls to Spearfish. In fact, let's ask. With South Dakota being 46th in population with about 800,000 people in the state one may say that there isn't the need for carbon free electricity production and we should focus more on New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles or Dallas but why not start where more coal is used for producing electricity. That makes the most sense to me. New York gets power from dams, biomass, solar and wind, according to Consolidated Edison's website. Chicago uses a 352 MW power station (SE Chicago Energy Project) that burns natural gas which is definitely not good; their Mid-Atlantic facility uses hydroelectric plants to produce 1621MW; they are also buying power from a 153MW wind farm in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Los Angeles has started a Green Power program which uses solar, wind and water to produce electricity. While all of these cities, and many more, have started using renewable sources to produce electricity there are still many others that aren't.

Most people know that electricity will be lost on extended runs of power lines. The insulation surrounding the conduit just can't hold it so it leaks out. This is why installing wind farms is a bad idea. More and more people are installing tankless water heaters because they are more efficient. The reason for the efficiency is because they only heat the water when it's needed AND they are generally installed near the common places that hot water is needed. Why set up a wind farm in Oklahoma and send the power to Denver? That doesn't make sense. Set up wind turbines in different areas around the country where it's normally windy but where people live. It's not like they are coal fired power plants that are mostly installed just outside of cities then the wind causes the spoils to blow into the city and cause us all to get sick from the carbon emissions. Don't be scared of the wind turbines. Install them in the middle of the city if your city has enough wind on average to make it worth while. Even if every house and business in any city installed a wind turbine it wouldn't cause any permanent damage to the planet and the amount of wind passing over or through each turbine wouldn't slow down just because 10 others down wind got it first. Yes a turbine on every street corner may look obtrusive but compared to the alternatives I'd rather look at a wind turbine. Every time I did I'd know it was helping to make this planet a cleaner place and be much easier to look at that the thousands of cellular towers I see any time I go anywhere, or look out my office window for that matter.

Back to South Dakota for a minute. While sitting in the passenger seat of my vehicle as my wife drove west on Interstate 90 from Sioux Falls to Mitchell I noticed how much the wind was blowing us around and how bare the land is around us. Yes it was the beginning of spring so there weren't any crops growing but I still noticed the many cellular towers planted in many fields, most likely giving the farmer an extra source of income (the land they are on is usually leased to the cellular companies, if not they should be). Those towers are an eyesore, even though I, like most Americans, use them all the time. Why not use the existing towers as a place to mount an efficient wind turbine? All of those power lines I saw while trying to take pictures outside my window that block the views are also an eyesore. If wind turbines and solar cells were installed close to where the power was needed, say in the middle of where 10 farms are located in remote areas such as some parts of South Dakota, most of those power lines could be removed balancing out the eyesore that a wind turbine may cause to some (idiotic) people.

Why stop with South Dakota. Consider Montana, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, heck every state - even Alaska. Puerto Rico may be a good place for solar panels while wind turbines in Fairbanks, Alaska may be the best option there.

I've found a company that manufacturers wind turbines that can produce up to 10 kilowatts and have a start up speed as low as 3MPH.

The larger 10akw turbine needs 6MPH to start while the lower 5kw model needs 3MPH. None have a cut off speed like standard turbines do and none of these models need to face the wind since they are vertical which means regardless of the number of times the wind changes direction, the turbine always turns which is more efficient than the larger ones. While these models aren't enough to power even a small city, they can be stacked or can be installed at many locations throughout a city or town. The more you use renewable sources the less coal or natural gas is burned the less carbon is released into the atmosphere the sooner the planet can recover.

I once contacted the utility company where I lived and inquired about solar and wind power and whether or not they were planning or were using either. I was told that the area we lived in didn't have enough wind or sun to produce enough electricity to make it worth while. They said that they would need one turbine for every home they fed in order to produce enough but even then they couldn't do it since the wind wasn't blowing enough of the time. I suggested that they offer the businesses in the area an incentive to install solar panels on their roofs since most large buildings have acres of empty unused space up there, much like the utility company's brains. I argued that if every business had solar panels they could produce enough power to reduce the need for coal fired power, which the power company relied on 100%. Of course not only were my ideas shot down, they were sat on, smothered then dismissed. On top of that, the power company convinced everyone in that area that in order to keep up with demand, they had to build an additional coal fired plant! I've since moved to a more friendly state with the hopes that one day I can buy some property that has no covenants to prevent me from installing 10 wind turbines and a massive solar array so I can provide power to my new neighbors, most likely for free AND be able to get a check every month from the power company because I'm certain I could produce more power than even 10 homes would need so the excess would feed back into the grid reducing some of the strain of the coal fired plants that feed us every second of every day just so we can turn on our computers and spend an hour writing a blog that probably wasted enough power to run a television for a day.

And just so you are aware, I'm going to buy a server so I can turn off my computer when I'm not using it since it will use less energy than my PC but for now it has to stay running but I do turn my monitors off instead of waiting for the power save feature to do it for me. I may run into the door on the way out of here and stub my toe but I will be back to complain about more stuff another time, even if I have to limp in here.

THINK GREEN

DON'T FAX IT - EMAIL IT

IF IT'S YELLOW LET IT MELLOW - IF IT'S BROWN SEND IT DOWN

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WHEN YOU AREN'T IN THE ROOM

TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER AND MONITORS WHEN NOT IN USE

USE MOTION SENSOR LIGHTS OUTSIDE & INSIDE YOUR HOME AND BUSINESS

TURN OFF THE SURGE PROTECTOR WHEN YOU DON'T NEED THE EQUIPMENT TO BE ON

INSTALL AN ELECTRONIC THERMOSTAT ON YOUR HVAC SYSTEM AND SET IT TO REDUCE USAGE WHEN YOU AREN'T HOME

INSTALL TANKLESS WATER HEATERS AND RECYCLE YOUR OLD TANK

INSTALL LOW FLOW TOILETS

RECYCLE AND REUSE WHENEVER POSSIBLE

CAPTURE YOUR RAINWATER AND USE IT TO WATER THE LAWN WHEN IT ISN'T RAINING

THE PLANET HAS A COLD. IT'S TURNING INTO PNEUMONIA. DON'T LET IT DIE

Spam & Hagz

2008-01-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

An open letter to all spammers.

Take your spam and shove it.

You heard me. Shove it. I don't want you spam. I don't need your spam. I don't even want to think about your spam. I have no use for spam. I have no need to even know why you are sending me spam.

Ok why do you think I need a larger 'thing'? Did someone post that picture of me online somewhere again? I should sue. Wait, could it be that I'm part of some plan to take over the world? Didn't think so. What makes you think that I would even consider buying even a piece of thread from anyone that sent me spam? Are you as naive as the people at PayPal? So what if some men want a larger device to use on their girlfriends. Good for them. They can go to the RX and get whatever crap they want without you telling them to buy from some moron in Canada. Sure we 'need' the FDA approval to take medicine but the FDA is as dumb as PayPal AND the spammers put together. You don't need to know why right now, just trust me. So if we need FDA approval but we can buy from those hags in Canada, we have bypassed the FDA, thus bypassed any federal, local or state tax which then helps who? That's right, Canada. Sure they have free health care but their taxes are higher than most places in the US in order to pay for that 'free' health care. See now you got me off track.

Let's experiment: Give me your address and I'll have 10 people show up to try to sell you something that I think you need. After those 10 are done, 20 more will show up selling the same thing. The next day, 100 different people selling the same thing. This will continue until, well, you die or change your address but then I'll find you again and we'll start over. I don't care if you buy something or not. In fact. buy something and I'll send more people since I now know you are gullible and will buy anything. Don't buy and that just means you aren't yet convinced. Better yet, give me your address, phone number, social security number, date of birth and 10 names of people you know and I'll make you all rich! Oh yeah, I'll need $2000 from each of them, including you, first so I can invest it in a pool to make you even more money. Of course I'll deposit the money into my secret account then I'll move and you'll still be getting hundreds of people trying to sell you something at your front door. Would it help if they were all Girl Scouts? I bet I could get you to buy some cookies.

Maybe you now see my point, maybe not. What good does it do for you to pay some idiot to send out thousands of emails that are going to end up in the spam folder anyway and never get read, and most likely deleted bringing you no more customers than you had anyway. No that wasn't a question. Oh my! You are gullible.

Hey I just got a notice from your bank and your account has been suspended. Send me your account information and I'll fix it for you. No charge. Seriously.

I get over 200 spam emails every single day, even on Christmas - that's low. They all end up in my spam folder and I laugh as I scan them over. I know that I'd much rather have them in an email than at my house and I'm sure you would to. Don't be a spammer. Be something meaningful. Try telemarketing.

Oh wait. That's a form of spam too. Hmm. What could someone with your apparently totally awesome skillz do to make a living...

You could work for Stephen Colbert. He needs writers and you are sooo grate at rigting! I'm shure pinmanship dont count neway.

I know: Run for president. I'm sure you'd win.

The Cost of Doing Business Online

2008-01-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

I decided that it was time for an upgrade to my old laptop (Dell Insipron 1100) which gave me many good years of use. In addition I had about 200 items from my business that I no longer needed since I quit doing service calls. I figured it was about time to post everything on eBay to get them out of here (they were only taking up space and probably costing me more money in heating bills since I'm certain they were all sucking up the heat in my 2nd floor office which stays cold).

After about 3 weeks or so of going through every single last product I had in countless boxes stuffed into my office closet I finally had a complete list. I created my little spreadsheet file and hoped that by doing it this way it would save me a ton of time, which it may have but who can know for sure. I painstakingly went through each column and row, item by item, to make sure I had adequate descriptions, photos and part numbers so I could easily copy it from there to the eBay auction form. I also had a place for my cost and list price, just in case I needed them.

I also, during that 3 weeks, spent days on making a HTML page that mimicked my website layout to make my eBay auction look more professional only to find out that eBay has a character limit on saved templates so my 3 days of coding had to be modified. Of course during this time I lost the file once so I had to start over from scratch (a 5000 character code file is not fun to redo). Maybe trimming the page was for the best since I'm sure eBay would have an issue with me using links on my auction pages that went directly to my website.

So I finished my code and my spreadsheet and after 3 days of adding auction after auction I finally had everything listed, including my trusty laptop (which I spent 2 days formatting and reinstalling the necessary programs and updating XP). I knew I wouldn't get much for most of the items I was selling since everyone on eBay is looking to buy a bar of gold with a bag of river rock (river rock is small smooth rocks that are generally found in or around rivers for those that don't know). Since the items weren't making me any money by just sitting in the closet, any amount was better than nothing I guess.

Days later I watched as $200 items (what I paid for them) sold for $0.99 each and items I paid $40.00 sold for a mere $1.25. I knew it would happen. I was happy to see my laptop go for over $300, until I get an email from the buyer telling me I sent it to the wrong address and now her daughter wouldn't get the one thing she wanted for Christmas. I sent it to the confirmed PayPal address she had (she used PP to pay so I have to follow their rules) which was a PO Box but she had moved 4 hours away and had forgotten to update her account before completing the transaction. Now she was mad at me for ruining her daughter's Christmas. I can't win.

So the New Year passes and guess what: the post office returned the laptop to me. Only God knows why since she (the buyer) told me she submitted change of address forms so it should have been forwarded but no, they had to make this whole experience much more delightful for me! :P

We finally got the issue resolved, cost me more money, but her daughter got the computer she wanted. She's 12! I didn't have a Sit-n-Spin when I was 6, why should she get a computer at 12... We used lead-lined pencils and asbestos coated lined paper when I was 12 and we were happy to have it. Kids these days...

So now it's January 2, 2008 (not right now but in my story, get with it people) and I finally decided to buy a new notebook (they used to call them laptops back in the day - 2 years ago). After surfing a few sites and looking at countless reviews I decided on a MacBook Pro 17" but then I find out there have been major issues with them so that was out (plus it would cost me about $500 extra to get the programs I must have for work to be able to use them on there). So I then browse the Dell site and find a couple that seem promising, until the grand total exceeds $3000 then I'm thinking 'why not just spend $3000 on an Alienware since they are just about the best?'. I almost got one of those new Dell notebooks that's almost like a portable desktop since they are so big but decided I didn't need that so I found and configured an Alienware - something I've been wanting for about 3 or 4 years. I've heard so many good things about their computers and even though I had used a Dell for a while and knew they weren't too bad I really wanted an Alienware so I contacted PayPal because I had enough balance to pay for an Alienware using it but I've been having issues with my address.

I live in a town of about 1500 people. The postal service doesn't want to spend more money on mail carriers so everyone in town has to use a PO Box. Because of this I can only accept mail at my PO Box and I can only accept other shipments at my house address. Since the postal service doesn't deliver to my house, my address doesn't show up in any database used by UPS or the like so this becomes an issue. I called PayPal because I had a confirmed address - my PO Box. For those that don't use PP or aren't sure why a confirmed address matters, I'll tell you: PayPal has a 'seller protection policy' which protects the seller of any merchandise or services that were paid using a PP account if the seller ships the merchandise to the confirmed address of the buyer. This policy prevents someone from stealing or hacking into someone's PP account, using the confirmed address as the billing address and then putting another address as the shipping address while the actual owner of the account has no idea. As a merchant myself I can completely understand this policy but as a seller it causes me nothing but pain. I called PP to get this fixed before I ordered my new notebook. Their customer service department told me to delete my physical address then add it as a 'gift' address then select that as my shipping address when I used my PP account to buy something. My PP account would never let me confirm my street address and I still don't know why - I should have known this would be an issue.

I did what they said and ordered a new Alienware notebook using my PP account and selecting my 'gift' address to ship to since they ship either UPS or FedEx so it has to be a physical address. 2 days pass and I check my order status : payment confirmed, order is in picking status. I figured it was taken care of and they were building my computer. Then I get an email from them telling me that they canceled my order because of a shipping address problem!

So I call them and they tell me that my shipping address has caused an inconsistency in the order, or something like that and that I needed to contact PP to fix this problem. They were more than happy to take a credit card over the phone to fix this immediately but that was it. Of course I couldn't use my CC for reasons I won't mention (because they're none of your business) so I called PP.

OMG!

Those people are the dumbest customer service people I've ever had to deal with. I had to repeat myself several times and every question I had they had to ask their supervisor - THINK! JUST PUT YOUR SUPERVISOR ON THE PHONE SINCE YOU DON'T KNOW!!!!!!

I finally just asked to speak to the supervisor, who, of course was like 12 years old and told me the same thing the other person did and still couldn't tell me why my PP account wouldn't let me verify my street address. He also couldn't tell me why last week someone else told me to change my address to a gift address instead of trying to confirm it then so I wouldn't have this stupid issue which I knew would happen which is why I called them in the first place.

I can't take it so I'm going to delete every email address I have, close my website, cancel my credit cards and my PP account, unplug my phone, turn off my computer and go hide in one of the nearby national forests so I don't have to deal with idiots anymore.

I guess that's the cost of doing business online.

The Oil Wars

2007-09-20T11:31:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note about the war in Iraq:

Like most (sane) people, I support our troops. They signed up to go to college or to get trained in a career, not to spend years in a desert 'protecting' the rights of Iraqis. They agreed to defend our country but they aren't doing that in Iraq. Right now there is no reason those troops need to be there.

In actuality our troops are there protecting the oil that the oil compaines say we need. Our government is forcing oil upon us by regulating the flow of oil from wherever it's drilled out of the ground to the refineries in the US. Our government is full of people that only want one thing: more money in their already fat pockets.

One day the oil well will run dry. One day people will realize that Texans, oil barons, politicians, military generals, car companies & oil companies will die. They will die from suffocating in the oil that they forced upon us.

We don't need oil. We don't need war.

We need our troops home.

Buying a house in Montana

2007-09-20T10:57:00.000-06:00

People complain every day. There's always something wrong in their life that they didn't cause. They don't make enough money at their job. They hate their job because of the people they work with or work for. They hate having to drive so far to go to work or go to the store. They won't drive an electric or hybrid car because there's no way they can bling it up. They don't care about the environment because once they're dead, they won't have to deal with it. They live in a quiet community and want it to stay that way yet all these people from everywhere else keep moving in.

I figured something out last night about that last line.

I live in a small town of about 1500 people. In the surrounding communities there is more building of homes, apartments, townhouses, shopping malls, office buildings and more going on every day than there has been in years. The houses, both in the town I live in and those that surround it, are expensive, at least to me. You can't find a house in this area (I'd say about a 20 mile diameter area) for less than $175,000. Those that you do find for that price are small older homes that need a lot of work.

I recently read an article in one of the local papers from a police chief asking voters to approve a bill that would give the police more money for personnel. They are asking for this money because of the increase of population and the additional housing developments that are being constructed and saying that more police are needed to help patrol these new areas and support the growing community. One thing that this police chief said was something to the order of "this extra money will cost homeowners $8.61 a month more on a $120,000 home. A home that would sell for $320,000 is actually worth only $120,000." (again it's not an exact quote).

One thing I've been hearing for a long time around here from those that grew up in this area is that they don't like these Californians moving here because they make the property values go up, they get their friends to elect them to local government and it's more crowded.

If people anywhere, not just here, don't want people moving in and building homes that raise property values of their own homes, why are so many people selling there homes for so much more than they are actually worth? Some say it's not the home that's worth so much, it's the land. If that's the case, don't sell your land to a developer that's going to build a home on every 1/2 or 1/4 acre and sell those homes for $350,000 when they could sell them for $150,000 and still make a profit. Don't sell your land. Period. You want to keep away those that increase the value of your property which raises your property tax yet you make it so easy for them to do so.

If a homeowner in California (since those apparantly are the ones causing this problem) sells their 1200 sq. ft home on 1/4 acre for $500,000, they can buy 20 acres in Montana and still have enough left over to build a $200,000 or more home.

On the other hand if a homeowner, or renter, in almost any other state, moves here, they can only afford a $150,000 home which would mean a home built before 1930 that really needs about $200,000 (or more) in work that has little or no insulation, old wiring that could cause a fire, a heating system that may or may not work, double-hung non-insulated windows with storm windows that have to be removed in the summer and replaced in the fall, a lot that's probably only 1/4 acre and in a part of a community where all of the other houses are falling apart. That's assuming that the person or family has $20,000 for a down payment and $1100 to $1500 a month for the mortgage, $2,000 to $5,000 a year for property taxes, $1,000 or more a year for insurance - plus the cost of water, sewer and gas as well as groceries, clothing, gas for their cars, insurance for their cars, school books for their kids, and so much more.

The middle class has left the building - and apparantly Montana.

If the people of Montana really want to have more rich people living in their beautiful state, fine, otherwise something has to change or the only people left living here are going to be rich people from California (and elsewhere) that cause property values to rise, take over the city government just to get their way with everything and run off those that struggle every day just to be able to live here.

Now it's time for something completely different

2007-08-02T10:46:00.000-06:00

Okay so I took the title from Monty Python, so.

This past Sunday was our 15th wedding anniversary.

We have tried for 14 years to move back to Montana and we finally did it! Soon after the move was our anniversary so we decided to celebrate by going to a local restaurant/grill for dinner. Everyone has told us that they have the best steaks in Montana (Sir Scott's Oasis) and from other sites we looked at even people from other countries specifically travel here just to eat at this place. It's been in business for many years and surprisingly it sits in the middle of a very small town (population about 1400 - compared to the city of 150,000 + that we just moved away from). For a business in a small town to be open as long as this one, something must be worth it.

We arrived on time, couldn't be late, it's about a 4 minute walk from our house and I can see the place from my 2nd floor office. The greeter was on the phone taking a reservation (you need a reservation at this place because it's so popular). She finally got off the phone with one person only to answer another call. I was patient, I could tell she was busy and everyone else in the place that worked there apparently wasn't responsible for seating customers. I told her we had a reservation, she looked at her sheet, grabbed 2 menus and said follow me, then seated us in one of those 2 people only tables (I hate those). She wasn't very nice. Just the way she spoke to us and her body language wasn't what I'd expect from such a popular place.

Keep in mind that this place doesn't have a dress code (cowboy hats, spurs, shorts, flip-flops, boots or tuxes, they don't care - whatever you want to wear).

It wasn't that busy, yet, when we arrived at 6PM. A lady came over and took our drink order (I got my usual - Dr. Pepper - as did my wife). It kind of surprised me when she came back with two glasses of ice and two cans of Dr. Pepper. I guess they can't afford to spring for the soda dispensing machines that most other places have. Whatever...

A few minutes later another lady shows up to take our order. Now I've read that refusing the soup of the day is a mistake so I wasn't sure if there was going to be a brawl or if the owner was going to kick me out but I didn't want ground beef soup or whatever it was - sounded weired. Good news, she didn't flinch, didn't care. I was then concerned about ordering my steak well done...

For those that like their steak rare, medium or anywhere in between just keep in mind that the less you cook meat, the more it's like a LIVE animal. Are we still beasts and can't have the smarts to fully cook our food first? Try getting a chicken cooked medium rare and see how long it takes you to get to the hospital. I know some people that like sushi but they always seem to get sick afterwards, and still go back for more. Get real people, figure out that your body doesn't like it and stop ordering food that should only be eaten by bears, lions and other wild animals that actually have fangs that are designed for that sort of dining experience.

So anyway I ordered well and got, you guessed it, medium well. They seared the steak so it had those great grill juices, those that come from years of using the grill which seasons it beyond perfection. In fact, one side of the steak (NY strip, 16oz) was so done it was too hard to chew. I guess they didn't oil the grill first, who knows. I didn't fuss over it, in fact I expected it to me medium well. Most of the time the cooks, anywhere, don't know how to cook a steak well done without burning the outside so I'm used to medium well. I guess it's good that way, more flavor. Besides, this place prides themselves on 'on site aging' so I'd hate to waste all that time on burning the flavor out.

Don't forget that the dinners include a cracker basket with butter, veggie plate, soup and salad. The crackers are pre-packaged like TownHouse and all those others that I don't prefer. The veggies were cold which was nice. The butter was mostly fat, I think, but it was pretty good on my baked potato. The salad dressing (blue cheese) seemed more like buttermilk or Ranch than it should have and the salad was a bit small but I guess some places prefer to fill you up on crackers, veggies and the main course.

My 16oz steak was about 1-1/2" thick (my wife had the prime rib - with a bone which she found strange but I guess it was good). I guess about 4oz of mine was fat - I'm not used to a NY Strip having fat, nonetheless being so thick.

The biggest problems I had with this place was the following:
1. Service was a bit lacking. They did okay when they showed up but since they weren't that busy they should have been by our table more;
2. It was a bit warm in there;
3. The flies in the dining area are a nuisance;
4. The door to the kitchen should remain closed to keep the noise down;
5. A well done steak should be free of pink color - completely, and a place that advertises the bests steaks should know better;
6. Soda from a can in a restaurant? Come on!
7. Get a door closer for the outside door so people don't have to manually close it because they won't which allows the flies to come in;
8. Have you had a health inspection lately or are there any at all? Where I come from your business would be closed for a week for too many violations;
9. $44.00 for 2 meals in a hot restaurant with flies about, soda from a can and an undercooked steak with employees that seem to care more about the end of the rush than the current customers - you must be crazy!

But that's just my opinion.

Even though I seem to not like it, I think I'd go back. Everything deserves a second chance.

Now who's got me a steak? This is making my mouth water for more!

2008 Elections/Global Warming

2007-07-06T23:11:00.000-06:00

Former Vice-President Al Gore said on Larry King recently that he was no longer interested in politics. I guess that's a good thing since he seems to be the only one that is or was in politics that cared about our environment.

Today in Montana there were quite a few high temperature records broken. The last record for this day (July 6h) was 97 degrees Fahrenheit set many years ago. Today the high at the local airport was 106. Come on, we're in Montana, it's supposed to be cold, or at least cooler here than in most places. Of course Montana does have a few temperature-related records (greatest temperature drop in 24 hours; greatest temperature rise in 24 hours; most snowfall in 24 hours - I think...) but high heat at 4000+ feet elevation is just rediculous. The average is around 87 for this time of year. My neighbors say this heat is abnormal. Well yeeha! Maybe next year around July 6th it will be 40.

My theory is that Al Gore is right: global warming is affecting all of us RIGHT NOW! Don't wait until 2060 (when, according to Issac Newton, the world will end) to change the way we do things on this planet to save it for use by our offspring - START NOW! If Al Gore doesn't want to be our President, let's get someone else that we can trust to step in and start making real changes starting January 20, 2009 instead of all the other current canidates that, as usual, just are making promises they have no intention of keeping. Maybe we should all join Unity08.com and fight for our right to vote for a team we can count on. Then again, voting for someone we can count on AND them being a politician is kind of an oxymoron, unless you're Al Gore.

Last week in Chile (it's in South America for those that failed geography) scientist reported that a very, very old glacier is retreating at an alarming rate.

"The Patagonia Icefields of Chile and Argentina, the largest non-Antarctic ice masses in the Southern Hemisphere, are thinning at an accelerating pace and now account for nearly 10 percent of global sea-level change from mountain glaciers, according to a new study by NASA and Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos.

Results of the study, published in the journal Science, conclude that the Patagonia Icefields lost ice at a rate equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.04 millimeters (0.0016 inches) per year during the period 1975 through 2000. This is equal to nine percent of the total annual global sea-level rise from mountain glaciers, according to the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment.

From 1995 through 2000, however, that rate of ice loss from the icefields more than doubled, to an equivalent sea level rise of 0.1 millimeters (0.004 inches) per year."

This disturbs me, as too you should be disturbed. We should be concerned that not only are the temperatures rising on the planet which causes us to be irritable toward others as well as completely miserable during high heat but it's causing the glaciers to receed and melt away which rises sea levels around the globe which will keep rising when another part of a glacier falls away, melts or evaporates then, eventually, every coastal town of the US and countries like Guam, Puerto Rico, Phillipines and more will be nothing more than a sliver of land above the ocean. Where will those people that lived there go? We can't create more land, unless you're Japanese (they created a new island for their new airport facility several years ago) so what should we do?

Stop running your air conditioner at 65 degrees. Run it when the outside temps reach 80 but don't turn it off and open your windows at night! That just lets in more humidity and makes the unit work harder when you turn it back on the next morning. If you don't have an attic fan, install one and learn how to use it properly. Plant trees in your yard that provide more shade. Water your yard with effecient sprinklers but only during the morning. Watering during the day will only help the water evaporate quicker and could burn your grass. Install window film on the windows of your house that face south to keep out the hot day sun rays. If you have the means, install solar panels to power your house as well as a wind turbine, or just use one. Using solar energy consumes zero resources of the sun since the sun has already exhausted the energy before it reached this planet. Of course the solar panels and/or turbines used natural resources to create and install as well as the batteries required to store that energy, but using those resources yourself reduces the amount of power that the coal fired power plants need to produce since they don't store any energy. Coal fired power plants only burn coal when power is needed. If the demand drops, so will their use of coal therefore the emissions will drop. Buy a hybrid car and stop driving to the corner store for a pack of smokes or a soda - WALK! Better yet, sell every gasoline-powered engine you own, buy a bike, lose the weight you gained by drinking too much soda and smoking too much and driving everywhere and help us all to feel better and save our planet.

Now that I've wasted 20 minutes of coal-fired power (actually they use nuclear power where I live - I think), I'm going to turn off my computer as you should too. Leaving it on only wastes power and I'm tired of being hot.

That's why I left Misery, better known as Missouri.

Conspiracies and what not

2007-06-02T20:28:00.000-06:00

Fluoride
As everyone should know by now, fluoride is a poison so why would you want to put it into your mouth. (that wasn't a question)
"The main fluoride chemical added to water (hydrofluorosilicic acid) is an industrial by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry. Unlike the fluoride used in toothpaste, hydrofluorosilicic acid is not pharmaceutical-grade quality. It is an unpurified, industrial-grade, corrosive acid which has been linked, in several recent studies, to increased levels of lead in children’s blood." (from http://www.fluoridealert.org/)
Fluoride is a poison that is forced upon the public by greedy politicians that want to pad their pockets and it's possible that the use of fluoride in toothpaste and public water supplies was brought about by people that want us to need the care of a dentist more often than we really need to.

Prescription Drugs
If you make drugs that will cure people of their diseases and sicknesses, you will go out of business. Instead if you make drugs that only help people deal with their problems you can sell them more of the drugs you make and end up with tons more money in your pocket.

That is my opinion on why the drug companies will not seek to find cures for things like cancer, AIDS or even the common cold. The longer they can keep you taking their drugs the more money they can make off of your illness. Isn't that the American way. (again, not a question)

Oil
Can we get more dependent on oil from not only other countries but our own? (that was a question)

I'm sure we can if we continue to think that the cars advertised lately that have an estimated 35MPG is "GOOD". What ever happened to 50MPG? What about the electric car? I know there's a group of people somewhere in the US (the big 3) that decided they wouldn't allow electric cars because they would have to shut down their businesses of making gas-guzzling cars. Then again if you really think about it, a 100% electric vehicle that requires you to plug it in every night or more daily will still require the use of fossil fuels to power up (coal-fired power plants), unless of course you live near a hydroelectric dam or nuclear power plant. But since most of the US is powered by coal, chances are that if the electric car were developed to where normal people (those not running the coal plants, the car manufacturing plants, the fluoride waste producing plants, the president and his 'people' and anyone else that makes more than $75,000 a year is NOT the majority of the citizens of this fine country we call home) could afford them, you would be powering your electric car from fossil fuels so you wouldn't really be helping anything.

Enter the hybrid. If they could only make a hybrid that got 100MPG or more & never needed charging from an outside source maybe we'd have something.

What about hydrogen powered cars? Why not make it so that the hydrogen that powers the car re-enters the fuel tank after turning into water then somehow (I'm no scientist so I have no idea how) turn the water into hydrogen. If you could, you'd have a car that could run, in theory, forever without refueling. Then again, how would the rich get richer...

I know, everyone sell your cars to the recycling center nearest you and buy a bicycle then ride everywhere you need to go. If you can't get there by bike, you don't need to go anyway so what's the problem. No more planes that use hundreds of gallons of highly volatile fuel every minute; no more 18 wheelers that get about 5MPG; no more SUVs that get 10-15MPG; no more trains that use diesel (hmm) to power electric motors; no more oil, I mean terrorist-created wars in countries most people don't even know about until they're on CNN; no more 19 year olds coming home missing limbs - or worse.

I won't hide it, the so-called war in Iraq was never about terrorists, it was about the terror of running out of oil the United States corporations could import all while stocking up on domestic oil reserves just to raise the price of gas to over $4/gallon. Don't deny it, the president, his family and his 'friends' wanted to pad their pockets and telling the American public that terrorists in Iraq were behind the 9/11 attacks led us to believe sending our troops was the right thing to do when in fact is was their way of covering up their own terrorist plot of robbing the citizens of this country blind.

Lock Bumping

2007-05-30T15:50:00.000-06:00

If you have standard mechanical locks on your home or business, you are at risk. Anyone with a little practice and the right tools (which can be found on many websites for hardly any cost) can break into your home or business without leaving any sign of forced entry, steal your belongings, vandalize the premises or worse, harm you or your family or workers.

To keep this from happening you have 3 options:
1. Remove all mechanical locks and replace them with pushbutton, biometric or card reading locks; or
2. Install high security bump-resistant locks such as Medeco or ASSA; or
3. Nail all of your doors shut and use the windows.

Lock bumping has become more popular in the United States after being shown how simple it was on some nationally-recognized video websites which were posted by people in the Netherlands.

Locks that have been opened using this technique have no scrapes or visible damage which would usually result in some evidence that could be used to find the culprits. Some insurance companies will refuse to pay claims when lock bumping was used because there is no sign of forced entry. Even a qualified forensic locksmith won't likely be able to find evidence of lock bumping.

Protect your investments, people you work with and your family by replacing your mechanical locks before you get a visit from a lock bumping burglar.

Instant Messaging Changes the World

2007-05-30T15:28:00.000-06:00

AOL Blamed for this Morning's Mishap

It appears that a man used AOL Instant Messenger on a constant basis throughout his childhood and into his early twenties. When text messaging over cellular networks became popular around 2005, he became so adept at texting (as it was called) that he could write 400 word per minute. He was so good at it, he didn't even realize that he began talking to people in public, at school and at work as if he were messaging them.

He went into speech therapy and seemed to be overcoming his reaction at spelling words in AIM-Speak. After a few years he graduated at MIT with a Masters in Rocket Science which helped him to start a career at NASA. After a few years he was promoted and was put in charge of the new NASA Sponsored flights to Mars for the general public.

This morning he received a text message on his phone that read: "shud we cont w 2day lanch evn tho ted tnks it bad?". Instinctively he replied: 'y'.
Too bad for you, the message should have read: "Should we continue with today's launch even though Ted thinks it's a bad idea?" Mike thought he meant 'lunch' so he was asking 'why', not saying 'yes'.

The launch went as scheduled, thankfully with noone aboard. As soon as the craft reached the outer atmosphere, it darted directly toward the sun where it richoched off a solar flare and was propelled at 10,000MPH toward our moon. When it hit the moon's surface it was approximately 20,000 degrees fahrenheit. This caused the craft to bore deep into the core of the moon where it exploded, causing pieced of the moon to be propelled into the universe, including into our atmosphere.
Unfortunately there was one chunk of the moon that was the size of Texas (we know because it hit directly on Texas). This impact caused catastrophic damage which spread all over the world in a matter of minutes. Buildings fell, oceans boiled and roaches partied.

It's a sad, sad day for all of mankind. We R DED!

Except for you since you can read this.

The Global impact of politics

2007-05-30T08:30:00.000-06:00

Al Gore for President (Stephen Colbert for vice-president)

Most people think that global warming is fake. I challenge everyone to take a look at the world around us and think about how much has changed over the past 50 years with our environment.

1. There is less water in the streams that when we were younger had flowing water all summer long;
2. The glaciers around the world are melting and most of them are at high enough altitudes that it shouldn't get warm enough to melt;
3. Many animals have vanished and some not due to human interference;
4. Hurricanes are more frequent;
5. Mountain snow (in the US) is not staying snow as long as it used to which can cause drought in the late summer for the valleys below;
6. There are over 6 billion people on the planet right now. More people means more strain on the planet from many things:
a. Less water to go around (the planet has a limited amount of water which cannot be replenished. People are made up of 80 to 90% water; the homes we live in have water pipes that sit there holding water until we need it; more people creates higher temperatures therefore we need more swimming pools which hold water until we drain it; our consumables have some percentage of water in them as do the containers they are packaged in);
b. less food to go around (less water means less crops that can be harvested);
c. more pollution from the waste of those people (more methane and other gases from landfills as well as that caused by people that refuse to recycle or reuse);
c. more pollution from things such as coal fired power plants to light up those people's homes and businesses;
d. more pollution from more cars that those people now drive (using a hybrid until 100% electric cars are readily available helps - of course plugging your electric car into your house only causes the coal fired power plants to throw some more coal in so that doesn't really help now does it, so use eco-friendly things like wind turbines or solar panels to power your electric cars);
e. more pollution from factories and other areas just to get those extra people the things they want and need as well as the extra food required.
7. Do you realize how much electricity we have all just wasted by taking the time to read this, not to mention how much I have used writing this.

My point, yes I have one, is that we need to change. Not just you or me but the whole world's concept of what we as humans need to have to survive. We don't need SUVs with 22" rims and 40 speakers blasting out sounds that can break the fragile bones of the elderly woman that may happen to be walking down the street as you pass by. We don't need 80" plasma TVs or video game consoles or those expensive clothes or caviar or $500 haircuts or a war on terror that is nothing but a lie.

What we need is a leader that can turn our ideas of 'the good life' into the reality of living. I'm no speech writer and I'm not implying that someone would say these exact words but we need someone that can step up and say "Our children, our fathers, our mothers, our brothers & sisters are dying for a cause which is not ours. We must remove them from harms way, bring them home so we can start renewing our planet. Let the people fighting the civil war in Iraq fight their own war. During the American Civil War, the war was ended by Lincoln. I'm here now to put an end to the civil war in Iraq and if I can't stop the war, at least I'll end our involvement. The war in Iraq was created and approved under lies and false hope. The war in Iraq isn't about terror, it's about controlling the oil market. If the US has 'control' over Iraq we gain some control over their oil but we don't need it anymore."

Once we have a person that is willing to take a chance, and we acknowledge our misguided ideas and make the immediate necessary changes, the whole world will benefit.

I encourage you to vote during the next presidential election and instead of punching the card for Hillary, Rudy, Obama or any of those others that you insist on writing in the name of Al Gore for president (and Stephen Colbert for vice-president).

Call me crazy but every time I see Mr. Gore on television he is welcomed to the camera by people yelling 'run for president' or "Gore for president". To me this means I'm not the only one that thinks Mr. Gore would make a perfect president for these United States during this time of crisis, both environmental and political.

Don't think of Mr. Gore as a democrat, think of him as the one person in the here-and-now that will make the changes necessary for this world to still be here for our grandchildren.

If the population of this planet continues at is current growth, in my opinion, there won't be room, water, food or oxygen for your grandchildren's children.

Maybe this is the start of how stars explode. Create life. Sustain it. Allow it to take over like a virus then kill you from the inside out until your heart can't take it then explode into a billion trillion pieces.

I'm done ranting for now. Please pass this along to everyone you know (the part about writing in Al Gore for president).

If you fail to pass this along to at least 10 people within the next 5 minutes, you will have a terrible day and lose $10 then your hair will fall out and people will laugh at you.

Okay that last part isn't true.