Ok, so I have an opinion on this. After hearing all the facts and weighing it I have to disagree with the direction that Obama wants to take this. His goal is to close Guantanamo Bay and move the prisoners around. Have we ever asked why? I haven’t heard a solid reason as to why. We spent hundreds of millions building the facility. It is perfectly good and usable. Keep the detainees there.
The real problem is that they are detainees! They are not prisoners, they have not even been tried in court or convicted of anything at all. They are suspected terrorists. This is exactly like the Minority Report. We are keeping people imprisoned for crimes they may or may have not committed and for possible future crimes.
We, as a sovereign, fair nation need to do what is right. Just as Obama has commented in the past, do the right thing even if it isn’t the easiest thing. These detainees need to be convicted of something, tried, and sentenced. If they are found guilty of crimes they already have a prison for them at Guantanamo. If we can not charge them with anything, we need to release them and cross our fingers and hope for the best that we didn’t piss them off so much that they will terrorize us in the future. I think Obama is scared that since we screwed them over so much, that we can’t release them for fear of retaliation.
I know a lot of people will disagree with me and tell me that these are dangerous people and they should be locked up. No doubt, I am sure most people there are dangerous people. But unless we can find them guilty of a crime they do not belong in prison. Just as our forefathers fought for the democracy and freedom we enjoy today we are obligated to uphold those values even if it isn’t easy or doesn’t seem in our best interests.
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Kraft sends me a magazine every so often with meals for the season. In it was the best grilled cheese I have ever had. I honestly had 5 of them yesterday throughout the day. Besides having cheese it has a slice of tomato, basil and a little dressing… it is heavenly! Without further ado here is a link to the recipe.
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One more post about bicycling… I mentioned in my last post that I would be riding my bicycle in and that was incorrect. I am going to be using one of the B-cycle bikes of Humana to do this.
As a Humana employee we can enter into a bike sharing program that is free to use. They supply a helmet and you can check out a bicycle from a kiosk. What is awesome about this is that you can ride the bike and it will track your progress. Once you return it you will be able to see statistics like your total ride time, distance, average speed, etc. This should be very beneficial to see if I am getting faster and see how many miles I have travelled. Here is the B-Cycle page for those interested. Right now it is Humana employees only but it may be expanding to everyone soon.
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So this weekend I am going to bike it into work and back. I used to ride my bike a lot on the weekends so this will be nothing new to me. What will be new is trying different roads and routes out. This is a test to see what it will be like to bike it to/from work. I am interested in biking to work during the summer months. From my calculations it shouldn’t take any longer than riding the bus home, as riding my bicycle should be a more direct route and with less traffic (hopefully). Here is the map of my route I will be taking Saturday:
The route should be about 16 miles. I know that the average bike speed for a commute runs about 15 mph so that should get me to work in about an hour. Leaving my house to arriving at work on the bus is right at an hour as well… so I shouldn’t lose any time and at the same time get in better shape and maybe see a little bit more of the city. Wish me luck! I will be posting back the results this weekend.
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First things first, if I was a catholic attending Notre Dame I would fully support Barack Obama giving the commencement speech. Secondly, what do I believe in?
I think that the media and the protesters at Notre Dame are getting it totally wrong. Barack Obama has stated that abortion is a moral travesty. He is not a supporter of abortion, does not like abortion, and wants to reduce the number of abortions. I think that lines right up with Catholic beliefs.
What Barack Obama also believes in is personal responsibility and choice. It is not the states purpose to ban sin and dictate to people what choices they make. That is up to the individual to do. I do not believe in pushing my beliefs on others, that usually only turns them away. I think showing true Christian compassion and understand towards women who are unexpectant mothers is the right way to compel them against abortion.
As a protestant I probably have even more conservative views than Catholics do, but that does not mean that I expect others to believe as I do. Having Barack Obama at your school should invite intelligent discussion and debate, not fear and close-mindedness.
I could go on and on, but I think people need to understand that not everyone is going to believe the way that they do, but as Barack Obama has mentioned in the past… we should not let our differences tear us apart but let our common values bring us together for a greater good.
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The damn thing didn’t work for me no matter what I tried at first. Yeah, I may not have the latest and greatest, coolest phone but it does have WM6. I own a T-mobile Shadow and according to the download page it should work for my phone… so what did I do? I downloaded it, installed it, and ran it. I input my login credentials and waited… and waited.. even turned on Wi-fi… did that work? Nope…
So today I started looking around. I went to the Facebook page for the application and it had links to the download on microsoft.com and also to the Windows Moble blog. I hadn’t been to the blog in a long time so I thought maybe they may have something. And what do you know? The blog says this:
“You’ll want to uninstall the old application and then make sure that the facebook.vol and fbmail.vol files are deleted from your root directory before reinstalling.”
Well how come no one told me that? It isn’t instructed on any of the official pages but only on the blog, unless I missed it. So, off I went to delete the files and started up Facebook for Windows Mobile. It WORKED!!!!
Now for the review. The app overall is pretty solid. As you figured above I tried a previous beta version and it worked ok before. There were several rough edges. Right off the bat the Facebook for Windows Mobile app was SLLOOOWWWW. I do not know if it is just going around updating all my content or what. It has everything that you expect from Facebook.. mail, status updates, your Facebook phonebook, etc. In addition to the usual it also lets you upload photos and videos to Facebook. Definitely a bonus, but is that lone feature enough to install the application? I do not think so. The mobile Facebook site is a pleasure to use. It is laid out simply, beautifully and allows access to all the features of Facebook that you typically use, and all the features that are here except for the photo and video upload. I do not need the ability to upload photos though. I have ping.fm tied to my Facebook account. All I do is fire off an email with a picture attached to my ping.fm account and it automatically uploads to Facebook, skipping an application interface all together. At first the application seemed snappy once it downloaded what it needed to, but then when I moved to the mail tab that it hadn’t downloaded content for the Windows Mobile hourglass popped up and the app became unresponsive. After finally downloading the mail it was back to being quick again.
I am going to have to play with it for a few more days to give a good definitive answer on whether this app is needed on my phone. As I have said the mobile Facebook is simple and effective. Time will tell if I need the ability to upload photos and videos, the one redeeming quality of the application. This is NOTHING like the iphone version of the application.
All in all, the app is good looking for a Windows Mobile application, but that isn’t saying much. It gives all the functionality you would expect, but misses a few things. It could have a Today screen plugin so you could see how many messages you have or maybe a friend feed. This would make it immensely useful and a sure install, but til that happens, I have to give it 3 stars out of 4. It would score four if it had a Today screen plugin… I will be sure to follow up on this review with a thumbs-up/down.
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Ever wonder why when using SQL Query Designer that it always puts TOP 100 PERCENT at the beginning of your query? Well, I wondered too and I researched and found out. It was beginning to annoy me. I would go through other people’s code and see it all over the place. When you see TOP 100 PERCENT in peoples stored procedures you can automatically assume they are not proficient at SQL. TOP 100 PERCENT is useless in most cases.
The reason that TOP 100 PERCENT is used in Query Designer is that it is a limitation of views. When you are designing a query in Query Designer it assumes the query is going to be designed for a view. A view can not be ordered using the ORDER BY clause. If you put TOP 100 PERCENT at the top of your view it will then order! So that is a tip if you are trying to order your view. One thing to note, if you are ordering a view, please ensure that you have the latest service pack installed on your SQL Server. There was a bug in both SQL Server 2005 and 2008 that caused the TOP 100 PERCENT statement to not work. Applying the latest service pack fixes it.
Back to Query Designer… There is no reason to keep the TOP 100 PERCENT in your query. It has no performance benefits. Only keep it if you are creating a view.
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Did you know that if you are behind on child support, they can garnish your wages up to 65%? Not only is 65% ridiculously high, it is not based off of net income. Recently, Jefferson County has decided to go after delinquent child support. They have done an excellent job of getting people to get caught up, to the tune of $200,000. They have published a list of 3206 names of people who owe more than $10,000. These 3206 people are behind some $97 million. If you haven’t caught up you should.. and here is why:
They take 65% of your gross income minus any taxes that you pay. So that means any deductions that you have on your paycheck already are not taken into account. Take for example someone who is in the 25% tax bracket who makes $6000/month. Your net income (I am only taking into account federal taxes. Of course you have other taxes, but for this example I am keeping it simple). $6000 – 25% is $4500/month. Now take 65% of this… that is $2925 they can take of your pay every month… leaving you with only $1575 of the $4500 you were used to! Now, I know some people live outside of their means, but I don’t think anyone can take a hit like that… I know I can’t afford it! So a long story short, try to get caught up on your child support before they come after you to get caught up… You surely have a way of doing it better than taking 65% of your paycheck!
BTW, If your name isn’t on the list congrats… maybe you can show the other parent that you want to help and be caught up, and also maybe throw in that there are 3200 people just in Jefferson county alone that owe more than $10,000… you can always be a better dad, but it could also be a lot worse!
Some links to read:
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So a lot has been going on in recent times. Crystal and I parted ways. I am in a mad rush to pay my child support. I am looking for a car… so many things…
First, Crystal and I. Although I do not like talking about issues too private, especially if there is another person, this one will be brief and won’t divulge too many details. Basically we mutually agreed to end the relationship. Her and I still remain in contact and I hope we can continue to be friends. She has to be one of the sweetest, most caring persons I have ever met. I can find no fault in her… we just are looking for different things.
Secondly, and probably most importantly I have to pay my back child support in a hurry. My son's mother called me a few days ago telling me that she got a letter in the mail that she has to sign and return. The state of Kentucky is going after me for my back child support. I think they are doing this to most every person who owes money. I find no fault in that, I think we all should do our part to make sure our children are well taken care of and that we pay our child support on time. A couple months back I wrote a blog post that has since been deleted, but it gave some insight into why I was behind.. basically I had to find another job paying some 20k less per year… you do the math. Anyhow, times are much better now and once I got a few things squared away I was going to get caught up. This is just extra motivation. So, I owe about $2400 (stemming from not fully paying my child support during a course of a year). I should be able to pay this back completely at the end of the month, if not, then halfway through June. This works out perfectly as I will be receiving a letter from the child support office around that time informing me of their intentions to garnish my wages. The last thing I want is them garnishing my wages… so problem averted.
The one issue with getting caught up on child support is it puts a dent into my plans to get a car right away. Without the generosity of Crystal letting me use her car I need to now find a car. Once the child support is caught up, I should be able to get a new car come the first couple weeks of July, or sooner. So, I have been without a vehicle for over a year and I have had no real setbacks… but I have decided it is time to get one. I will rarely use it, but I do miss being able to go see my best friend, and attend events. My brother has moved quite close to me and I would love to have the opportunity to go see my niece. And… now that I am single, I will need a way to go to the lake on the weekends. That right there is reason enough to get a car. I will still use the bus every opportunity that I can, but unfortunately the bus does not go to Nolin Lake… haha
I promise to start updating this more. I have just been so busy with things.. I have some interesting things to talk about!
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I am going to be posting quick recipes for eating for one. This is to help others but it is mostly for my purposes. I find it hard to cook just for one, so I am going to be posting affordable meals for one. First off, egg salad sandwich. I look in my pantry and wonder what to eat, and egg salad never crosses my mind til i see it somewhere… then I think, I sooo want one. Hopefully since it is on my blog I will remember it!
Egg Salad Sandwich:
The rest is pretty self explanatory.
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Previous Posts
- Cupcake on G1
- Going carless has its financial gains
- Going green
- New T-Shirt design
- Couple of new pics of my son
- Jul 4th castration attempt LOL
- Maureen and I at the Waterfront and Backdoor on Ju...
- The problem with the detainees at Guantanamo
- Best grilled cheese ever
- B-Cycle