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This little tidbit caught my eye.
...when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. "Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says a senior Administration official. "It was like something out of 1984."
If Putin thinks that Bush fired the CBS execs, he is without a clue as to how this country runs. I'm sure there are time when Bush wishes he could fire some news executives.
The market did OK for me today. May portfolio was up 1.2% today, but the Big Picture in Investor Business Daily paints a less than enthusiastic picture. Here's my current holdings and how they're doing.
FRO +14.8%
OMM +4.9%
OSG +6.9%
SE +3.2%
UPDATE:
In an effort to protect my profits and reduce my losses, I have moved up my stop loss points to as follows:
FRO $56.00
OMM $20.50
OSG $63.70
SE $24.70
Syria has thrown Saddam’s half-brother under the bus. The good eye-doctor that is Syria’s dictator appears to be feeling some pressure. It seems the Syrians arrested Saddam’s half-brother and some 30 of his associates and then turned them over to the Iraqis.
I would not call that a sign of strength. George Bush’s “Freedom Offensive†seems to be having an effect.
Even Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak is talking about having freer presidential elections – as opposed to a yes or no vote.
Iraq has suddenly gone from a quagmire to a beacon of light for many oppressed people of the world.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot of hard slogging and dying left to do. Evil does not give up easily and without a fight.
But evil persists when good men fail to act.
There has been some experimental work done in transmitting internet signals over power lines. This technology needs a repeater every 1,500 feet, but the internet speed really smokes.
Now I read that Consumers Power is going to roll out a trail phase in Grand Ledge, Michigan. That’s only about 20 miles from where my parents live. Alas for them, they are condemned to dial-up access.
I wonder if they might expand that out to Lake Odessa.
According to what I read, all you have to do is have a device that plugs into your electrical wall outlet.
The only downside I’ve read about is the power companies don’t seem too interested in providing the service. I guess its pretty small potatoes to their main line of business.
I’m liking the Copernic Desktop Search Engine more and more. I’m finding it particularly useful for searching my emails. My Outlook.pst file is over 500 MB and if I use the Outlook search, it takes forever.
I have about 20 subfolders I route my email to and Copernic allows me to specific a specific folder for searching. Some folders have over four years of emails and the Copernic finds things very quickly.
I have one folder for all the tech support incidents I have had with Microsoft. If I need an answer to a question that I seem to remember Microsoft previously answered, I can quickly search this folder and find my answer. Now that Microsoft charges me for answers, it beats asking a second time.
As they say, it is very cool.
If you’d like to try it, just click here. The Desktop Search Engine is a free download.
The snow did not last long today. The sun just gets too high in the sky for snow to last long. There is still snow on my lawn, but the streets are clear and dry.
Perhaps I’ll be able to get a photo of Crocuses poking through the snow. That should make for a nice flower blogging shot.
I had another nice day in the market today. My portfolio was up almost 2.8%. I had my stop loss point just a smidgeon too tight on two positions – EAGL and MTEX.
EAGL I just screwed up on. MTEX was stopped out by $0.07. Had I put my stop loss point eight cents lower I would still own the stock tonight. I may yet put a buy order back on it.
As of tonight, I’m sitting on just three trades with the following results.
FRO – up 11.1%, up 5.4% today
OMM – up 4.4%, up 4.7% today
OSG – up 6.4%, up 3.0% today
This is the Vorlon wife’s Siberian Squill. It is one of the first flowers we see in the spring. Unfortunately, this little guy had his back to me, when I took his or her or its picture.
The good news is, spring is nearly at hand and I should be able to supply current photos for my weekly Friday Flowerblogging series.
I also have some photos of early Crocuses from the back yard, but we’ll see those next week – unless something better comes along.
The storm’s over and the sun is brightly shining this morning. It looks like we got a total of maybe three to four inches. I don’t have time to post a photo this morning.
I’m just going to the office the morning, but the Vorlon wife has a job for Manpower and she will be driving halfway across South Jersey. At least she has a front-wheel drive car.
I had a nice day in the market today. In the last couple of days, I’ve had seven buy orders kick in and two trades stopped out. My current holdings with their gain/loss are…
EAGL up/down +1.5%
FRO up/down +5.4%
MTEX up/down +9.1%
OMM up/down -0.3%
OSG up/down +3.3%
Whenever I’m up a bit, I always feel an urge to liquidate everything. But my discipline keeps me in the market.
Cut your loses short and let your profits run.
South Jersey doesn’t get much snow. So when it DOES snow, it’s a big deal. In the photo above you can see there isn’t too much there.
It started snowing this morning about 09:30. As of tonight it looks like about two or three inches has accumulated.
For the most part the streets are just wet. Its 27 degrees right now so salt is effective at keeping the streets open.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
Translation software that develops an understanding of languages by scanning through thousands of previously translated documents has been released by US researchers.The translated documents used to teach the translation algorithms can be electronic, on paper, or even audio files. Knight says the system is not only faster than other methods, but also better suited to tackling less common languages and the unusual vocabulary found in specialized or technical texts.
Why program different languages, when the software can just learn. My Antispam software, SpamBayes, does that. I tell it which emails are good and which ones aren't and it figures out which one to filter out. Out of 300 plus spams I get a day, I actually see about three.
Is George W. Bush destined to go down in history as one of the great Presidents of the last 100 years? Events could be coalescing into a pattern for history to make that judgment.
First Iraq was invaded. This took a chink out of the wall that keeps the Middle East in turmoil.
The Iraqi invasion inspired Moammar Qadafi to get out the WMD business. In the process, we discovered he was much further along in the development of nuclear weapons that we had previously supposed.
Another piece of the wall fell.
The one of the kings of terror, Yassar Arafat died. Although Bush, likely had no hand in this, it was another chink in the wall that fell to the ground.
Then the Syrians or Iranians assassinated Rafiq al Hariri in Lebanon. The result has be large demonstrations against the 15,000 Syrians that occupy Lebanon. Another very small piece fell from that wall.
Today Walid Jumblatt, no Bush supporter says,
“It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Another pebble falls from the wall.
If a critical mass assembles, despotism could be swept from the Middle East and the wall would cease to exist – and who would be blame for the turn of events?
George W. Bush.
He is the one that has been like Lincoln during the Civil War. Completely unwavering in the face of withering criticism.
Say what you will about stubbornness, but it can also be called leadership and history might define it as greatness.
Or events could collapse upon themselves like a house of cards and we could all be in deep doo doo.
At the moment, I’m not making any bets, but I am hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.
Two buy orders kicked in today and the market sank away from them. I bought COGN at $43.99 and COGT at 33.71. I have put tight stop loss orders on both trades - COGN at $43.55 and COGT at $32.00.
The market got whacked pretty good today and I’m taking no chances.
Spring is not to be denied. It is actually a bit late this year, but the Vorlon wife as some flowers starting to poke there heads about the winter rubble.
The Vorlon wife and I spent some time last Saturday raking out the debris left over from the winter. There’s still more to clean out, but I think we have the critical stuff.
This Friday you’ll see some fresh photos that are current of what’s going on in the Vorlon wife’s flowerbeds.
I placed the following buy orders tonight.
AIT at $30.15
COGN at $44.00
COGT at $33.85
EAGL at $32.10
FRO at $50.20
FS at $82.50
MLI at $32.30
MTEX at $22.80
OMM at $19.80
OSG at $60.85
TIBX at $12.20
I place buy orders such that I buy the stock if it moves ABOVE my buy point. Fidelity calls these types of buys, "stop loss" orders. I’m looking for stocks that are on their way up – at least for a bit.
Remember those bogus Texas Air National Guard memos CBS tried to pawn off on the public as genuine, it seems a Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has a theory.
He recently accused that evil genius, Karl Rove, of putting the fake TANG memos out there. That way, when some media outlet picked them up, they could be shown to be forgeries and Bush’s TANG service would be out of the campaign.
Now the “good†congressman has not evidence at all. When challenged on this he responded, “I think it’s very important to make charges like that. I think it’s very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I’m willing — and most people are not — to step forward in situations like this and take risks.â€
Hat tip to Little Green Footballs on this. He even has a MP3 file you can download and listen to the exchange yourself. I highly recommend you listen to it. It is hilarious.
I said in the title that the Democrats are going insane. Perhaps they’ve already gone there.
I have no doubt Bush and his master, Karl Rove, mean to do the Democrats in. But people like Hinchey are making it a lot easier than normal.
Those that can’t see reality cannot make rational decisions.
The reason the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years is they had to wait for the current leadership to die off. Then with new leaders they could make the decisions that God wanted them to.
The Democrats would seem to be in a similar situation. But with modern healthcare technology, they may be forced to wander in the wilderness longer than 40 years.
The pastor’s sermon last Sunday was titled "Getting It Right." He used Colossians 1:13-23 as his biblical reference.
For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Here are my notes from his sermon. They may seem brief.
Lent is a time set aside for the church to prepare for Easter.
The pastor is concerned that we don't know how to worship correctly. The pastor believes it good to shout "Amen" or raise your hand or clap, but it is not required. The response should be for God.
He wants every service to have some meaning. The Lenten season should be for a purpose.
Why do we worship? More importantly, why do we worship Jesus?
Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Jesus came because we are all sinners.
That pastor said he thought that the image of Jesus throwing the sinner a life preserver is not a good analogy. If we are dead in our sins, dead people don't reach for life preservers.
[Editor’s note: The analogy I have heard is that of Christ dragging an unconscious man from the water and bringing him back to life by artificial respiration. In this model, Christ does all the work.)
Our philosophy in churches is that we need to be better people. We don't need to become better people we need to become new.
Jesus is not like God, he is not close to God, he IS God. He is the creator of all things. When Jesus was hung on the cross, Jesus is the one that created the seed that grew into the tree on which they crucified him.
We worship Jesus because...
-He rescued us
-He alone is worthy
-He fulfilled the plan of redemption
God is holy and just. God cannot avoid punishing the guilty and still be a just God. He has a dilemma. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.
Jesus became the sacrifice that washed away our sins. Because Jesus has made the sacrifice, we will be presented to God, when we die, as sinless. Washed clean.
If you don't know Jesus as your personal savior, then you are dead in your sins and are bound for eternal damnation in hell.
My office computer needed to have the OS completely reloaded – ouch! But what can you do. I had been using the Google Desktop search engine. Although it is nice, it had, for me, several drawbacks.
It let me find old email instantly. However, I have about 20 subfolders in my Outlook and I wanted to be able to restrict my search to a folder, but Google always searches the whole thing.
Secondly, Google would not search the files on my server. Everything but my email is on my server as it is backed up every night.
After getting my station back up and running, I decided to look for a better solution. Slate had run a test on various desktop search engines. They liked something called Copernic.
I downloaded and installed the Copernic desktop search engine. It answers my two objections to Google’s product.
I can restrict my search to a single folder when searching my emails or not. I can point it to my server and have it search the files on my server too.
It takes a while to index all the files, but when done it finds any file instantly. I can also preview the files like the preview screen in Outlook.
I recommend you download Copernic and try it. It is free and very cool.
Rush had this little exchange between Hillary Clinton and Rummy tonight. She was questioning the go ahead of our missile defense system. Rummy explained, patiently as if to a child, how one move ahead on challenging projects.
Hillary Clinton: It strikes me a little odd that we would deploy a system that hasn't succeeded and expect that to serve a deterrent value. So I don't understand the sequencing of this.Donald Rumsfeld: I think the word "deploying" needs to be calibrated. What's being done here is not a pure test and not a pure deployment, but deploying the pieces of the capability that will evolve into an early missile defense capability, and the way to do that, according to the people who are working on this -- and I agree and subscribe to the concept -- is to get it in the ground in a modest way, work the problems, keep testing, and as that capability evolves, you will begin to have the early stages of a missile defense capability. If you didn't do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn't do anything.
This is the way airplanes evolved. It's the way most -- it's certainly the way satellite systems evolved and it seems to me that they're proceeding on a measured, not a hell-bent-for-leather approach, but a measured approach to a complicated problem which, frankly, given what we read about Iran and what we read about North Korea, ought to be reassuring to us that we're doing what we're doing, and that we're at least on a track to have that capability in the period ahead, assuming we can continue to work out the kinks and the difficulties.
As a techie who has dealt, and continues to deal with, technological challenges, you always go forward with what can CAN do and know and learn as you go. As you learn you expand what you can do and what you know.
This photo was taken at the end of May of last year. I don’t know what these flowers are. We had a neighbor that gave these two us several years ago. His name was George. He just called them Italian flowers. He has since passed away.
They are a bright yellow color. Although they don’t last terribly wrong, they come up and flower every year.
The flowers live on as George’s legacy. We just call them George’s yellow flowers.
Back on January 18, this report came out.
A new Canadian study has suggested that giving vitamin D supplements to men with rising rates of prostate tumour markers (PSA) seems to slow down the rate of tumour growth, Xinhua reports.It was a small study and this is very preliminary evidence, but doctors do see a connection between vitamin D levels and PSA levels, Canadian Television quoted the study as saying.
"The PSA levels seemed to reflect a seasonal variation in vitamin D levels," said Lawrence Klotz, a urologist at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.
Researchers followed 190 men for the study. They found that, overall, their PSA levels were flat during the summer but rose during autumn and winter at the rate of about one percent each month.
The doctors then gave the men 2,000 international units of vitamin D during those months.
The vitamin seemed to cut the rise in PSA rates by more than half. Without vitamin D, PSA rates rose by about five percent. With vitamin D, PSA rates only rose by two percent.
"As far as I know, there is no other nutrient studied that has shown a slowdown in the rate of rise of a PSA," said Reinhold Veith, a professor at the University of Toronto and a leading researcher in vitamin D research.
Now a new report was released.
A long-term study shows men who had more vitamin D in their blood were half as likely to get aggressive forms of prostate cancer than men with lesser amounts.Men in northern latitudes have higher cancer death rates, and vitamin D levels are lower in older men, who are most prone to prostate cancer.
Melanin, which gives skin its color, blocks ultraviolet light that spurs vitamin D production. Blacks, who have a lot of melanin, also have the highest rates of prostate cancer.
There are interesting things going on in Syria. There is this segment from PowerLine. It starts out talking about the battle in Fallujah.
This glorious victory is due in large part to the truly heroic performance of our armed forces, most recently in that great turning point, the battle of Fallujah. Our victory in Fallujah has had enormous consequences, first of all because the information we gathered there has made it possible to capture or kill considerable numbers of terrorists and their leaders. It also sent a chill through the spinal column of the terror network, because it exposed the lie at the heart of their global recruitment campaign. As captured terrorists have told the region on Iraqi television and radio, they signed up for jihad because they had been told that the anti-American crusade in Iraq was a great success, and they wanted to participate in the slaughter of the Jews, crusaders, and infidels. But when they got to Iraq — and discovered that the terrorist leaders immediately confiscated their travel documents so that they could not escape their terrible destiny — they saw that the opposite was true. The slaughter — of which Fallujah was the inescapable proof — was that of the jihadists at the hands of the joint coalition and Iraqi forces.
It then goes on to mention Syria.
Thirdly, the brilliant maneuvers of the Army and Marine forces in Fallujah produced strategic surprise. The terrorists expected an attack from the south, and when we suddenly smashed into the heart of the city from the north, they panicked and ran, leaving behind a treasure trove of information, subsequently augmented by newly cooperative would-be martyrs. Above all, the intelligence from Fallujah — and I have this from military people recently returned from the city — documented in enormous detail the massive involvement of the governments of Syria and Iran in the terror war in Iraq. And the high proportion of Saudi "recruits" among the jihadists leaves little doubt that the folks in Riyadh are, at a minimum, not doing much to stop the flow of fanatical Wahhabis from the south.
Then The Belmont Club has this little segment, which he quotes from New Sisyphus:
In a move that traditionally signals extreme displeasure with the host nation, the U.S. today recalled its ambassador to Syria to Washington for urgent consultations. ... This development is significant in two respects. First, it is a sign that worsening relations between Syria and the United States have left the "behind-the-scenes" stage and have moved squarely into the "active confrontation" stage. Second, it appears to us that USG believes that Syria was directly involved in the bombing, either as actor or facilitator.The Great Ophthalmologist has been gambling for months that he can bleed the U.S. in Iraq at little cost. To date, that gamble has paid off. With the Bush Administration facing domestic and international opposition to the Iraq War, Syria's government has apparently drawn the not entirely unreasonable conclusion that the U.S. either cannot or will not make Syria pay a cost for its more or less open support for terrorism in Iraq or for its occupation of Lebanon. (Note to the Left: there is an unjust, illegal "occupation" of land in the Middle East, and the name of that land is Lebanon).
We trust that the patience of President Bush is running to an end. No other act, except maybe for strikes on Iran, would signal our seriousness at changing the chess board in the Middle East than military strikes aimed at Syria's command and control infrastructure. The illusion of Syrian invulnerability must be broken if Syria is ever to have incentive to change its ways.
The Belmont Club later opines.
In short, the reason Iraq cannot be delivered in a ribboned box to Teheran -- even assuming some Shi'ite candidates wanted to -- is because of the Kurds, and ironically enough, the Sunnis. Hence, having engineered a Mexican standoff at worst and a functioning democracy at best in Iraq, it may be possible that the Iraqi campaign is strategically over. If this proves true it may have been inherent in conception. Whether consciously or not, the choice of Iraq as a beach head into the mainland of Middle Eastern terror was a blow directed at a fault line in the Islamic world, just as generals of the previous century directed attacks at the command boundaries of enemy armies. If that strategy proved profitable, so would its sequel: Lebanon lies along another such fault line.
I really recommend you read the whole thing.
My computer woes seem to be subsiding. I got my home computer back this afternoon. The replaced the motherboard, the hard drive and the power supply. While they had it open, I had them replace the 2.4 GHz Celeron with a 3.0 GHz full-fledged Pentium 4.
The new power supply fan is rather noisy and the system has the smell of cooking off new paint. But it IS quicker. It boots faster and programs load and run faster. One big advantage of the P4 over the Celeron is my 1GB of RAM now runs at 400 MHz instead of 266 MHz. In addition, the front side bus goes from 400 MHz to 800 MHz.
Best of all, I didn’t have to reload ANY software. It booted right up with everything intact.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
Last week the computer in my office needed repair. My hardware guy had to completely reload Windows. I don’t have it back to what it was before the problem, but it is workable and, more importantly, I have all my Palm software re-installed.
This morning my home computer went down for the count. IF I am lucky, I’ll get it back tomorrow, but maybe by Wednesday.
When it rains, it really pours.
I took this photo in May of last year in one of our frequent trips to Ocean City, NJ. I just thought this array of stuffed animals and dolls made for a colorful photo. But I don’t claim to have a great eye for photography. I just shoot what interests me.
I love my digital camera.
Every year the Vorlon wife plants two flower boxes with bright yellow Begonias. I seem to be forever enthralled with their rich deep yellow color contrasted against the dark green crinkly leaves.
The large flower is a male and the two smaller ones are female.
This photo was taken back in April of 2004.
Released from captivity, I fired up Dasher-1 and launched from the remote firebase. I made good speed and had a personal best on my return journey – 2:16. The highway was dry, traffic was modest and I was able to maintain orbit velocity the whole way.
It’s good to be home and I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.
Later, Dude.
Alas, I am still in North Jersey. My scheduled departure has been pushed back until tomorrow. The client is still eager for my services. Billable hours are great, but I want to go home.
They're predicting snow for my return trip tomorrow.
Lord willing, I'll see you then.
This photo was taken last summer in the Vorlon wife’s flower garden. It is a New Jersey Box Turtle. How he got there, I don’t know. We live inside the city.
I was a little late on the picture. When the Vorlon wife first saw him, he had pink Impatience flower on his face. It seems he was eating the Vorlon wife’s impatience. However, by the time I got the camera out and made to the flowerbed, he was making his get-away (Ed – what do you mean he? How do you know it’s a he?).
You can see how his coloration blends magnificently with the vegetation.
This is another scanned slide. I took the photo back in 1965. It was taken from inside a barn. I thought the vertical lines in the barn siding with the vertical sunlight lines made for an interesting pattern.
What do you think?
This is a picture of my first car! Yes. It’s a Corvair. This is one of the slides I had scanned.
As I recall, it was a 1963 Corvair. It had a stick shift and I ADDED seat belts to it. Cars in that day had the mounting hardware, but they were an option. After purchasing the car used, I went out, bought seat belts, and installed them myself.
Was I ahead of my time or what?
There is a local left-wing blog that I used to read and torment with my comments. I would argue with them in my comments, but I always try to be polite and not make it personal.
Alas, I have dropped all my shortcuts to the blog. Although they make different posts, the message is always the same – “I hate Bush.â€
The final straw was the Iraqi elections. The Iraqi elections are one of the great events of our young century. Yet the blogger didn’t even mention it. Instead, he found something bad to say about Bush.
I have thought of making a goodbye comment but I remember some advice someone once gave me. “Never argue with a fool, bystanders won’t be able to which one is the fool.â€
This is Goldenrod. I took the photo down at Ocean City, New Jersey in October of last year. I have manipulated the photo with PaintShop Pro to make it look like it was painted. I rather like the effect. The background is just sand.
I am go for launch on my 5-day away mission. I’ll be at a remote firebase in North Jersey.
Dasher-1 is fueled and ready to go. Tire pressures have been checked and they are within acceptable levels.
Blogging will be light, but I have posted several entries with one scheduled to post each evening. Several are some photo-blogging. So, Dear Reader, you may want to come back and see what I have planned for you.
Lord willing, I’ll see you on the 10th. Goodbyyyyyeeee!
Omar at Iraq the Model has a report on one of the suicide bombers during the Iraqi elections. The suicide bomber was a Down’s syndrome person. This is the kind of people we fight. People that will use other people as cannon fodder.
What a huge difference there is between those who kidnap and use the mentally handicapped to perform their murders in cold blood and between the brave Iraqis who sacrificed their lives to protect their brethren. one story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese id.Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today.
The pathetic terrorists are breaking one world record after another in cowardice and insanity and this tells how bankrupt they're getting.
I gather from this that the terrorists must be getting short of people willing to be suicide bombers.
I recommend you read Omar’s whole post.
I got the photo from StrategyPage.com. This is a Marine Sea Knight helicopter that has landed on a road in the middle of complete destruction from the tsunami.
You can see the helicopter at the top of the photo a little right of center. You can also see all the people going to the helicopter for help.
An Army Ranger was on vacation in the depths of Louisiana and he wanted a pair of genuine alligator shoes in the worst way, but was very reluctant to pay the high prices the local vendors were asking.
After becoming very frustrated with the "no haggle" attitude of one of the shopkeepers, the Ranger shouted, "maybe I'll just go out and get my own alligator so I can get a pair of shoes made at a reasonable price!"
The vendor said, "By all means, be my guest. Maybe you will run into a couple of Marines who were in here earlier saying the same thing."
So the Ranger headed into the bayou that same day and a few hours later came upon two men standing waist deep in the water. He thought, "those must be the two Marines the guy in town was talking about." Just then, the Ranger saw a tremendously long gator swimming rapidly underwater towards one of the Marines.
Just as the gator was about to attack, the Marine grabbed its neck with both hands and strangled it to death with very little effort. Then both Marines dragged it on shore and flipped it on its back. Laying nearby were several more of the creatures.
One of the Marines then exclaimed, "Damn, this one doesn't have any shoes either!"
Hat Tip: StrategyPage.com
My previous scheduled post worked. This is just another post to see if the previous test was just a fluke. I'm scheduling this to post on 2/3/05 at 10:30 am.
I sent some slides away to have them scanned. They came back today. I haven’t gone over them thoroughly, but the resolution looks pretty good. They’re about 5MP. I have some work ahead of me getting the color right and there appear to be dirt and water marks on some of them.
My only complaint so far is, the place was rather unresponsive to me queries. I sent the slides t them and then had to contact them to see if they had arrived and then it took a couple of queries to get them paid for and returned.
I may send them out to another place and compare the results.
It seems the Iraqi insurgents have taken a soldier action figure hostage (doll) and are threatening to behead it.
How lame can you get? It this what they’ve been reduced to? Taking a doll and pretending they’ve really captured a U.S. soldier?
Charles Johnson has an animated graphic showing evidence. This is worse than the bogus CBS memos.
They’re going to be laughed out of the jihad. Instead of looking threatening, they’re looking like idiots.
Tough guys, they can threaten a piece of plastic, but you don’t see them going toe-to-toe with U.S. troops. A person could get killed doing that.
This aught to tell you something. The terrorist have lost. It’s only a matter of time.
As professor Reynolds says so aptly, “Hehâ€
I'm going our of town on an away mission this Friday. Lord willing, I will return next Wednesday. I'm doing an upgrade on a client system and we will be doing this over the weekend so that he will suffer no down time.
Blogging may be light, while I'm away.
Business was good during January and February looks to be good too. After February, who knows? But for now, I'll enjoy it.
This is a test post. Movable Type 3.x has the ability to schedule posts to my blog in the future. If you're reading this, it worked.
I ran across this and thought I’d pass it on. It’s an article about how to be a computer consultant. I think it has some very good advice. I recommend if you are a consultant, that you read the whole thing.
Hat tip to Business Opportunities Weblog.
A blogger has started a new blog called Planet Movable Type. It’s an aggregator for all things Movable Type. I have immediately added him to my RSS feed. It’s nice that someone is doing this. Here’s the link to his site. Check it out for yourself.