Apple Apple Inc.
It took me long enough but I finally fixed the categories stuff I broke when I was trying to get youtube videos embedded into my posts. Eventually I’ll come back to that and get it working but for now… one step at a time.
My brother came home last week from his LDS mission in South Africa, and he would continually remark that we(being people living in the US) don’t know how well we have it. Which to some degree I agree with him. However, not everyone in this country would agree. I’m not trying to downplay the situations that people live in in South Africa, or any other 3rd world country for that matter. I’m sure its not something I would like to live with either, and I am grateful for the thing with which I am privileged to. This however does not mean I should just take what I have and be “happy”. Wanting more, wanting things to be better is a very worthwhile cause. My brother had made the claim that I shouldn’t be so hard and critical of our government and our current leadership, because I don’t have to put bars on my windows and worry about someone shooting through my windows. I *very* much disagree. As I said, yes I understand that South Africa, in most parts, is very much a 3rd world country, and here I am “living the dream” in the U.S. of A.. The current self proclaimed leader in this world of ours. Heres where I’m comming from, comparing the US, to South Africa is like comparing apples and oranges, they are NOT the same thing. Because of the history surrounding each country and the forms of government in place and the like… the two countries are *VERY* different. In order to make any kind of fair comparisons, you need to look at countries where there are more things that are alike than are different. The so called “1st world countries”. This is how they gain these labels in the first place. And when ranking 1st world countries, guess where the US falls, in all the areas that should matter? Dead LAST. Sure, we still top the charts in military power and expertise, but this is also coming into question and China is the up and coming star in this arena. But we are still the only 1st world nation that does not give Health Care to every citizen of this country. Our public education system is failing miserably and lieing about it to cover up this fact. And something I’m more inclined to follow, we are also falling way behind in Broadband connections for our citizens as well. America isn’t much for being the land of the free like it used to be. No instead we want to keep people from entering this country, we want to hold people indefinitely and without charging them with any crime, and then torture them so we can charge them with a crime. We want to award multi-billion dollar government contracts to companies that our Vice President has a stock in. We want to have wiretaps and listen in on phone calls without warrants. All of this is *against our constitution*. The foundation of this country! And the american people just blindly accept this, because we feel we need protection… from what? Yes, 9/11 was a tragedy. It resulted from what I can tell, was our leadership asleep at the helm. Now, they’re asking us to give up our freedoms that this country was founded on, for some pseudo safety. Our elected officials are running away with billions and our freedoms, and all the American people seem to care about is who’s the real father of Anna Nicole’s baby! *WTF!*
I’m refering to a post about a school thats banning the game of “tag” and other contact games children might like to play during recess the story is linked up on slashdot. I mean really… what is this world comming to? Well, not really the world, but the US… and from what I’ve heard… England. We both seem to be responding to this notion that these things are bad for children. I, however, believe that this will screw them up even more, and be bad for the economy as a whole. “Playing it safe” is not a mantra that should be followed in all circumstances. This stifles creativity, individuality, and ingenuity. In order to advance as an individual, and as a society, you need people that are free thinkers, you need people that will “think outside the box”, they need to challenge the system. How are they supposed to do this when adults have pre-thought their paths for them every step they make? I understand that they are only trying to protect them from getting hurt, but that is all part of life. There is pain in life, and if you protect them from making the little mistakes here and there preventing them from having to deal with minor consequences of those mistakes, what happens when the big ones come along? Or it then becomes their responcibility to govern others? (such as they themselves becoming parents)
Anything that stops or tries to prevent these problems, inhibits free thinking which will become a very bad thing. Staying aware and growing with the world around you is the only thing that will keep us alive. We need to change and adapt to the changing world around us, or become extinct. It is the way the world is, and the way it always has been.
Questioning, and challenging the world around me, the “norms” so to speak. Growing and changing as I learn more about the world around me, not immediately trusting anything until I’ve looked into it enough to make a decision about it. I don’t know of any other way to really live to be honest. Doing anything less makes you a lemming, with no right to complain and no right to offer guidance, and not much of a life in the first place.
Life· News· School· Thoughts — No Comments
I’m a Porsche 911!
You have a classic style, but you’re up-to-date with the latest technology. You’re ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you’re one of the elite,and you know it.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
It also happens to be that:
I’m a Talent!
You’re a risk-taker, and you follow your passions. You’re determined to take on the world and succeed on your own terms. Whether in the arts, science, engineering, business, or politics, you fearlessly express your own vision of the world. You’re not afraid of a fight, and you’re not afraid to bet your future on your own abilities. If you find a job boring or stifling, you’re already preparing your resume. You believe in doing what you love, and you’re not willing to settle for an ordinary life.
Talent: 49%
Lifer: 49%
Mandarin: 46%
Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.
Sorry for the personality quizes, but I thought they were amusing 
Cars· Funny· News — No Comments
Not sure if anyone has noticed yet, since they haven’t worked for a year or so… but I do have working comments again. So please feel free to leave a message if you choose.
Also, I’ve been making other minor changes to my CSS file and a few other things, so if things break for you… let me know. I don’t test anything with IE, so I don’t currently know how things look there. My reasoning: Download firefox! its better.
After 3 months of waiting, our landscaping is finally going to be finished by next week some time. I need to find out how much it will cost for the backyard, since only the front yard came with the purchase….
House· News — No Comments
I did some looking today for themes to see if I could find one I like. Well, I’ve got two that I think are “OK” this current theme being one of them. The other theme has some of the same problems. However they both implement some nice features as well… So I’ll be rotating the themes every now and then, and deciding which features I like between the two of them and I’ll then encorporate some of my old themes features (which is what I think these two are missing) and these two new themes.
Oh! comments work so give me a shout about what all might like and dislike… and I’ll start making a list as well in the comments for this post.
I’ve updated some pictures in the Album. I’ve uploaded some of the pics at what we finished up on the old house and how we left it when we sold it. I have also added some pictures of the new house.
Enjoy!
House· News· Pics — No Comments
For those that haven’t heard about the issue, at the heart of it, the Bells are wanting more money. Currently they don’t think they would be able to get more money of of Joe consumer without a huge outcry (and they would be correct), so they’re looking for other places. They are wanting to charge (for instance) Google, for “improved service” or since they view themselves as providing Googles customers, if they don’t want degraded service, they should pay up(ie: they’re threatening to purposely degrade their customers access to Google, if Google doesn’t pay up). Now, this is simply absurd… Google already pays their uplink providers (they have multiple), for an internet connection. You, the consumer, pay your internet connection fees… now why should you have to pay extra to connect to say Google? (I know, technically it would be Google paying… but believe me it all comes back around)
I know what your saying… you shouldn’t have to right? Right! you definately shouldn’t have to. The bells are making plenty of money (record profits from what I hear…) Oh and they’re not the only ones all for this Tier’d Internet, Cisco among others are all for it. And why wouldn’t they be? If the Bell’s have to upgrade network equipment to micromanage everyones bandwidth usage… Yeah thats right, it all comes down to money, but doesn’t everything?
Anyway, on to the purpose of why I’m writing. I came across a quick writeup from a group called “tele-truth” their mission is simply: “TeleTruth is a national, independent, customer advocacy group, dedicated to fixing the problems in telecommunications — from customer overcharging and harm to competitors, to the customer issues surrounding Broadband deployment and competition.” Their website can be found at: http://www.teletruth.org. They have written a book that looks awfully interesting and a quick Ad/summery for it can be found here: $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. Which poses some interesting questions… I would definately need to read more on the subject to know for sure, but at first sight I’m more apt to believe them. After seeing how hard Qwest fought against UTOPIA. When it was the hot topic here… And the rumors I hear of Qwest having lots of dark fiber laying in the ground. And nothing forbid Qwest from providing service on Utopia either… they just had to play on the same playing field as everyone else. Its sad really… All the more reason why I *hate* Qwest. So far, they haven’t gotten any money from me, and I’m going to keep it that way as long as I can.
I will start pushing for Utopia in South Jordan as thats where I will be living now, and Net Neutrality is in the best interests of the people and for the people! But don’t just believe what I say… do the research for yourself so you will know exactly why… but if you must just believe something… you can believe me, I won’t mind
Legal· Life· News· Technology — No Comments
I’ve been looking for a laptop recently… and I’m disappointed at the options to be honest. My preference is for one with an AMD proc (see previous posts for my reasons why), but its not my main preference. I want a “notebook”, a laptop that will fit on my lap. I don’t want one of the borderline desktop replacements that most people want. I currently have a Dell D800 from work… and its a tank frankly… Its way to big/bulky for me to comfortably carry around. My main grip with laptops, is I want one thats roughly the same size as a piece of paper (lenght and width… ~8.5×11) Now I’ve been really interested in the HP/Compaq V2000z. It fits both of my mentioned requirements, however, something that also came to my attention while looking at them is screen resolution… I do like to get as much screen realestate as possible. Being a widescreen laptop helps, but why are the resolutions still so small? Why isn’t there an option to upgrade the screen to one that can do a higher resolution? I know its possible… as the higher end laptops have the type of resolution that I would like… or did I just answer my own question? Performance wise I don’t demand much, just want at the very least 512MB RAM, and a 5400RPM hard drive (size isn’t of that much importance as I’ll sync and store stuff of my desktop’s 160GB drive…) so 60GB disk will be plenty. (since I will still be dual booting on it) and proc speed… anything recent will be fine. Its just the screen resolution… why oh why isn’t it an option in these “customizable” laptops? Because they don’t want people to know how much the screens cost? I don’t see how it would be that much more work to trouble shoot and warrantee two different screens than it is for multiple processors, ram or hard drives. If it was an option… I probably would have bought the laptop already…
