Sword's Tavern

It appears that politicians from all sides came to enough of a collective bargain as to pass a budget finally.  I mean, it’s only seven months late after all.  With the president refusing to allow any more extensions, not even a one week extension proposed by one side and then the other, folks were forced to come to common ground or let the whole Federal system grind to a halt.

I am not saying that Hussein Obama was right or wrong in vetoing extensions for more negotiation time, only time will tell on that one, but in all the rush, fuss, mess and turmoil, what got missed or shoved through without enough forethought?  The figure has come in at something like $38 billion dollars[1] they cut from the budget, to expand to $500 billion over the next few years.  Does anyone outside of those few politicians, who were no doubt serving their own self interest, actually know what all those cuts mean?  There is absolutely no way that our so called president could have gotten a handle on what all was in there that fast, no way in hell.

Top that off with Nancy Pelosi, Grand Witch of the Democrats claiming that despite legislation that cuts FCC rules and powers, they will continue to operate in the same way regardless[2].  Tell me, how does that work?  Can some people just ignore the law and just do what they want despite it being illegal, just because they are a politician?  I know, dumb question.  This is ridiculous, and is just another example of how broken and corrupt our government is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and it’s still the best that I have seen compared to most anything else out there, but it is blatantly obvious that it’s not about we the people anymore.  Today’s government is about the pockets of the politicians, and how they can get them lined even more than before.

Just a couple new stories that I found and thus found interesting about the War in Libya … I mean the “KINETIC MILITARY ACTION” which is what we have been told to call it instead of a war.  *Sheesh*  Is Charlie Sheen writing for the Whitehouse Staff now??

Anyway, that’s for a different post maybe, the articles I specifically wanted to share with you are more edicts or decisions that have come forth from the Almighty Obama, and then what looks like reality stepping in to do its thang.

First we have President Obama stating firmly that as far as the KINETIC MILITARY ACTION in Libya is concerned, the United States would send “No ground troops, no matter what happens “.  Seems like a pretty final statement to me except that second, we have another news report shows us that there are “about 2,200 Marines off the shore of Libya right now.”  Let me see now, if my math isn’t too rusty that about 4,400 boots on the ground.  How’s all that working out for ya Mr. Pres?

You want to know one of the things that really draws my ire?  I mean really makes me want to uninstall your pathetic excuse for a piece of software, remove any remnants or traces of it having ever been near my machine in the first place, destroy the CD it came on with fire called down from the heavens and send ravenous zombie hordes to your home office?  It’s when some developer douche bag decides that he knows what I want more than I do.

I don’t mind if you ask me, give me a choice, but not every damn program out there needs to put one or more items into my system tray to load there every time the computer starts and slow down my startup time, eating away at memory and CPU power.  Normally this is under the guise of “speeding up the application”.  Well, I say that if you need all of those pre-loaders to make your application function acceptably, maybe you should go back to Fortran 101 and learn to write good code in the first place!

What’s worse, are the damn services that get installed and started that we don’t even know about.  Why does a simple media player need a web server?  Why does my GPS management app want or need to check out my hard drive at night?  Have all developers taken refuge at the throne of Bill Gates and Lenovo or something?

“We have a right to look at the user’s private information because they bought our crap.”  or “We don’t need to worry about writing tight, efficient bug free code, we’ll just tell the customer to by a new computer and get more kick backs from Intel.”

Not to mention the shift away from ownership to leasing.  Now when you “buy” software, you really are only “buying” a license that allows you to use it for a period of time.  Screw that noise, man.  If I am interested in a certain product and see that kind of license, ffft it’s gone and I am looking at something else.

This is just one reason why Open Source software is so damn good and popular.  Microsoft and the other behemoths of the commercial software industry want to come out and tell everyone that free software isn’t really free, it costs you more than the expensive slop that they sell.  The thing is, they don’t get it.  We don’t mean free as in dollars, we mean free as in spirit and ethics.  You get some open source code and you may spend a few bucks to implement it or get some support, or you may not, either way it is completely open.  All of the source code is there so you can make damn sure no one is spying on you or stealing information from you.  You can make a change to the app if you feel like it so that it fits better to your needs, instead of only getting “good enough”.  It’s free like the wind and water cascading down the mountain, and brothers and sisters, that’s a great place to be.

As in, the name is …

Went to see the latest animated monster box office explosion Saturday with my family, and I have to tell you that it was awesome.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed Despicable Me and after that Mega Mind.  However, Rango was written on a much higher level while also on the lower kid level.  This was much like the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where kids and adults both loved them and thought they were funny, but for two very different reasons!

So, I say all of this to say, go see Rango if you have the opportunity, it’s a blast, I am sure you won’t regret it.  The whole theater was packed and everyone, even the kids, where belly laughing all over the place.

This is kind of funny, whether you like Glenn Beck or not this should be a wake up call for where our country is headed.  It seems that Radio and TV talk show host Glenn Beck made a comment comparing Reform Judaism to Radical Islam, and the comparison made a bunch of Jewish leaders mad.  Now, I read over what he said and I don’t get the big deal.  He basically compared the two and made an observation that Radical Islam and Reform Judaism were more about politics that religion.  That’s the man’s opinion, he wasn’t saying that one was bad or better than the other, just offering an observation.

So, naturally Glenn Beck apologized, and appeared to be every bit sincere and remorseful that he made a comparison that upset folk.  I mean, the guy expresses his opinion (which, last time I check, we were free to do in this country), people complain about it because basically they are going to complain about anything that isn’t glowing praise about their agenda they are pushing, and Beck basically comes back to say he was sorry, he didn’t mean to offend anyone.  Seems like a pretty normal exchange, I think we have all had something similar happen.  You say something and someone gets pissed, and you put your hands up like “Hey, didn’t mean anything man, sorry about what I said about your sister, my bad”.  After that you have another couple beers and all is good.

Not so with these guys, they came back from Beck’s apology and have said that “Anything short” of ending “Mr. Beck’s tenure at Fox News” by Rupert Murdoch “reflects an unwillingness to take seriously the harm Mr. Beck causes to many in our community and beyond”.

Wow.

No, really.  Wow.

These guys need some Prozac in a bad way.  Nice turning of the other cheek there.  Way to get along with your fellow man and all that.  The guy apologizes for not really doing anything wrong from what I can tell, and you want to pull an Imus on him.  Get a life and get a grip on reality you moonbat.  The folks ultimately behind all of this the “Jewish Funds for Justice” league need to re-evaluate the word justice.  You can read the whole article here if you like, it’s just as ludicrous.

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

Oops, I did it again … no, I didn’t write a really bad pop song.  What I did do was break the site again *sigh*  Oh well, sorry if anyone came by (yeah, both of you) and saw the site down, sometimes I get ahead of myself I guess.  I’ll try to be more careful, but hey, what’s life without a little adventure!

At least, that’s the way Wal-Mart sees it.  I can’t tell you how many freakin’ times I have been leaving the store, only to have that damned alarm go off telling me that I have activated their “Inventory Control” system.  It is literally bad enough that it goes off more than it doesn’t, and I am not stealing anything!  No, not only am I not stealing from Wal-Mart (though they steal from all of us, but that’s a story for another day), I am the sucker that turns around and walks back to the 90 year old door greater that has to do his TSA inspection of my bags in order to compare them to my receipt.  This gets harder when they don’t know what I bought, like technology items, and therefore have zero clue how to find them or figure it out.  Usually it ends in frustration with the old guy or gal just handing me my receipt back and saying that it’s “good enough”.

But what gets me the most riled up is the fact that I get stopped at all.  I stand there and wait in line, the cashier is the one that is supposed to do whatever voodoo that they do to clear them out of the system.  Naturally we all know that most of the cashiers/baggers at Wal-Mart couldn’t care less if they tried so it ends up sucking to be me.  Guilt until proven innocent, that’s me, and probably everyone else that shops at Mal-Wart.  Blech …

OK, for anyone that came by the site in the last few days and noticed that links weren’t working as they were supposed to, you aren’t going crazy … well, probably not anyway, it was my fault (the links, not your dementia).  I moved my site to another one of my servers, one that is newer and has more rocks in it’s pockets, and subsequently broke my permalinks in the process.  I didn’t notice until yesterday, so they are fixed now but were out of whack there for a bit.  Oh well, I just can’t stay mad at me, at least it’s back on track now

Here it is folks, what I am proclaiming to be the number 1 video of the year, if not all time.  It’s the video for the song Overlord from Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society.  This song comes off of their most recent Top 5 album The Order of the Black.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but this video is filled with awesomeness, you just won’t believe your eyes when you see it.  So, click on the link below and watch it right now!

Watch the video now!