Gee, Mr. Wagoner...

Thankful

I’m thankful for so much this holiday season.
Right now I’m thankful to be sitting here, coffee cup in hand, in my comfortable home, next to my wonderful wife…she orchestrated a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.
I’m thankful for the family and friends who were with us to enjoy that dinner.
I’m thankful for the aroma of the turkey stock boiling on the stove, for the dishes to be all washed and put away…thankful…

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

I've been decrying the public's blasé acceptance of corporate corruption and Wall Street greed for years and expected a popular uprising when the situation reached a critical mass.
I would expect that we are damn close to that critical point now. But that's not what I see happening. What I see is the expectation that the same crowd that created this mess will fix it! Is the generation who understood responsibility so far in our past?
For weeks now I have been trying to find the words to express my anger and frustration. I've failed.

What I did find was a great commentary by Thomas L. Freidman in the New York Times' Op-Ed page. He points out that there were some people, honest and articulate, trying to shed light on the mismanagement on Wall Street. He mentions Michael Lewis and Meredith Whitney and I'm sure there were others.
The Permalink to All Fall Down is on the side bar as well as the link below:

All Fall Down

Highway to Hell

l l l l

I added some YouTube video links in the side-bar the other day. Still needs some tweaking I think. The best results so far appear to be from single song selections rather than artists. Most of the popular songs from the same group are available after a video ends. Listing the artist resulted in a lot of dead links.

P.S. - I've always been intrigued by the possibility that the Highway title was inspired by the Stairway title.

Windows Vista & Stuff

I hear and read so many complaints about Windows Vista. Sure, it has some mildly annoying features but the complaints seem misplaced. OK, the constant second guessing of my choices could irritate some. But it's really rather funny and I always win the argument. (I'm rather contrary: I even like to wear my VVS Wick-Dry socks on the wrong foot!) But I digress.
Misplaced!! God is it misplaced. The real monstrosity is the Office 2007 system, officially the F.U.I. Which, I believe, stands for Flummoxed User Interface. I've been teaching MS Office applications for lots of years and frequently laud some of the greatest features like forward and backward compatability and seamless user transition from one version to another. Nothing short of throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes close to the abortion performed on MS Office! There is permanent scarring on some of my brain cells as a result of the first time I tried to use 2007 Word. I merely wanted to open an existing document and print it. Imagine my surprise, no familiar toolbars. In fact no toolbars of any kind. And what's this? A menu bar that's no longer a menu bar? WTF? OK, OK relax...use Ctrl+O...good, something familiar, an Open dialog box!...damn, never been more thankful in my life to see the Open dialog box...whew...there's my document...carefully click the Open button... ? ? ? ?...I need a what?...what?...I NEED TO DOWNLOAD A FUCKING TRANSLATOR...Is this some kind of a joke?...IS THERE A GOD DAMN COMPUTER AROUND HERE THAT WORKS?
That was the end of my experience with O-bortion 2007 for several months because I uninstalled it and replaced it with Office 2003.


Angry Pc Man(remix) - The most popular videos are a click away

Alternate method:

http://www.dansdata.com/sbs3.htm

Or would you rather have BAILOUT month?

?

November is RESPONSIBILITY Month!

Time we took some responsibility for our "Recession" bubble.
Responsibility and her sister, Honesty, have been banished from our daily lives for far too long.
Now we sit here. Stewing and waiting for OUR bailout. What is this type of economy called again? A Market economy? No that can't be right.

To be continued...

Another two-fer Week

Both in Alaska this week:

Which one looks happier?

1. Ted Stevens is convicted on all seven counts of making false statements on Senate financial documents concerning gifts received from contractor Bill Allen and oil services company VECO among others.

Story on Associated Press Article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081027/ap_on_go_co/stevens_charges_1





2. The federal government declared the Beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet endangered and protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Story on KTVA News http://www.ktva.com/news/ci_10767837


There is bound to be a lot of resistance from the Bush Administration because it will have some level of economic impact. Critical habitat will have to be designated and a recovery plan created. Alaska governor Palin has been fighting this listing and her Attorney General Colberg has already hinted at a legal challenge to the listing.

A Two-fer Week!

Our lame-duck (quack - quack) president's approval rating seems to be a boon for our environment.

Three cheers!

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is indicted on seven felony counts. Most stem from his cosy-oily connections with VECO Corporation, a oil services contractor.

Ted claims he is innocent.

Prosecutors from the Justice Department had a lot to choose from:
L.A. Times, in 2003 published accusations of influence peddling and insider trading.
He has been accused of doing favors for companies who employed his son.
His son had options to buy a share of a seafood company while Ted was working to supply millions of dollars of fish for the company.
The list goes on.
Source: SourceWatch - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ted_Stevens#Alaska_pork

Too bad he couldn't be indicted for his pro-logging work. He proposed clear-cutting more than 2 million acres of old-growth forest and building thousands of miles of logging roads at taxpayer expense.
Or indicted for his pertinacious efforts to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A lot will depend on the U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
One can only hope he doesn't follow the example set by District Judge William J. Martini. More on that another time.

Finally - A Victory for the Florida Everglades

A long fought battle - four years of litigation against the EPA and the State of Florida. I know there will probably be appeals, if for no other reason than to delay, delay, delay. But I'll celebrate anyway with a Smuttynose IPA and thumb my nose at the Bush administration's Environmental Prevention Agency.

Federal Judge Alan Gold today found against the EPA and Florida's Legislature in their attempt to again delay compliance with the Clean Water Act to reduce phosphorus pollution levels. A 1994 Florida law pushed out the deadline of 2002 to 2006. Then in 2003 Florida got approval from EPA to push the deadline out to 2016!

"Federal law does not authorize anything like a twenty-two year compliance schedule..."

Congratulations to the Miccosukee Tribe and the Friends of the Everglades!

Press release on their website here: http://www.everglades.org/pressrelease.html