Posted 3:02 AM by robert d

At Most There Are 1,000 al Qaeda

The Unites States is in the process of a National Election. All kinds of things are being debated. Everything said is very vague. There are no hard numbers to look at. One study says this and another study says that.

I am disappointed that at no time either in the past or now during the election has the question been raised - How many al Qaeda are there?

I did a Goggle search on this once and was shocked to find out that everything I could find suggests that there is at most, and this is being generous, 1,000 al Qaeda.

Here is a Google search example.

I am not saying that the article above is a "reliable" source. But find anything, anything that suggest that the number of al Qaeda is much bigger.

This finding is almost beyond belief.

Every school child in grades 3-6 should be required to write 100 times - At most there are 1,000 al Qaeda.

Now if you are running around doing all kinds of important national security things and making good money and having a great time you can find al Qaeda everywhere.

I pretty sure there are some al Qaeda training in my back yard.

The American people should get a report every month - How many al Qaeda are there?

It is like Romney's tax returns, if there is nothing to hide how can it hurt?

Every school child in grades 3-6 should be required to write 100 times - At most there are 1,000 al Qaeda.

Posted 6:00 AM by robert d

Snaps Wins

I took advantage of the opportunity to vote early last Thursday. It was a uplifting experience. Kudos to everyone working at the polling place.

I voted knowing my vote would have no consequence. I live in Georgia and voted for Obamba.

I should have voted for Gary Johnson, The Libertarian Candidate for President but I had promised my Mother that I would vote for Obamba. This brought a little joy into her life and I was glad to do it.

If my only choices had been Obamba or Willard, I would have voted for Obamba anyway.

I am not that enamored with Obamba. He really is just too polite to get things done. Also he is part of the everyone is equal group. I have some respect for everyone should receive the same treatment with respect to The Law. However, I do not interpret that to mean that Laws should be inacted to make everyone equal when they are not.

Obamba may be too polite and too socialistically inclined, but he is a decent man.

Truth – anyone but Willard.

Won’t show tax returns. It is not that they are difficult to find or were done a long time ago when records weren’t kept as well. Amazingly his father was one of the first to provide tax records for a considerable amount of time when he ran for public office. The shame he must now feel for his son.

Mitt's best work is at Bain where he was The Gordon Gekko of his time. At Bain they didn’t make anything, they didn’t produce anything. Bain looked for distressed smaller companies with well funded pension plans. At these companies the creed was – no matter how bad things get you do not touch the pension fund. That is for our people’s retirement. These were the good old days where a company was really like a family.

It is a lot easier to steal from someone you don’t know.

At Bain they would gain control of these companies. Inflate the value of the pension plans, then saying they were too big. Issue a stock dividends of the pension plan’s overfunding. And then run the company into the ground by spending all kinds of money. Ending up in bankrupting the company.

Thousands lost their pension.

Some greed is natural. But to let this emotion reign unfettered is sin.

They bragged about what they did at Bain. They were proud of their work. To sin and brag puts you in the camp of The Devil.

$100 million dollars in IRA. IRA’s can be considered a welfare program. A Government program to assist those that might need a little extra money to retire with dignity.

It won’t make that much difference but if you want to move towards balancing the budget let’s take away Romney’s IRA.

Romney is a spirit with soul black.

But he will have to live with that and in old age when he reflects back on the merits of his life he will feel great shame – he will pay.

My main concern about Romney is his hawkishness. Where have trillions of dollars in debt gone – wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do we have to show for it? Less than nothing.

But enough boo. I actually had fun voting. I voted for myself for several positions. Everyone has the ability to enter in write in candidates. For several office’s, where the candidate was running unopposed, I voted for me.

Posted 5:10 PM by robert d

Hello Dave

Computers don't worry.

Most will pass over this comment without much reflection. But there is merit in appreciating that computers don't worry. It pertains to the concept of consciousness.

With computers becoming faster and faster and having access to larger and larger data sets many have wondered if there is a point at which computers become "human".

I postulate that it is not speed or size of data available that will achieve this triumph.

I have a clue but I will keep it to myself. Why spoil the fun for others?

As an aside - computers don't make mistakes or lie either.

Posted 8:49 AM by robert d

iPhone 5

Like Adam in The Garden, I have been seduced and taken the bite.

Initial impression – iPhone 5 works.

The thing I like most about it is Siri. I have only done a few things with Siri but it has done them well and amazingly quick.

But there ares some disappointments. Here is a company, Apple, with $100 billion dollars in cash on their balance sheet.

**Note – I actually thought that Apple has $100 billion dollars in cash. I looked up their balance sheet. From an investor's point of view it is probably the most beautiful balance sheet out there. Apple has no long term debt. Apple is not pulling an HP with tens of billions of dollars in Goodwill. However, Apple only has about $26 billion in quick cash (cash and short term investments).

Where the $100 billion is coming from is if you take all of Apple’s assets and subtract all of Apple’s liabilities it has over $100 billion left over – net tangible assets.**

Whatever, they have a lot of money they don’t know what to do with. They have spent money on everything they could possibly think of and they still have a shit load of cash left. (been getting into shit lately – not sure why).

The skinny here is that Apple has lots of cash and is supposed to be a super smart company.

That being said –

1. iPhone 5 comes with – finally – new ear buds . Still crap. Plastic. Doesn’t have a snug fit after use. Cord too short.

No wow factor. I want to hold the Apple ear buds in my hand, before I even try them in my ear, and go Wow! Then I want to use them and not believe how good they are.

Apple should buy a company like SkullCandy and give us something better.

2. My iPhone 5 has trouble picking up Wi-Fi downstairs. Every other device I have picks up Wi-Fi great. Even outside. So Apple is smart, just not that smart.

3. Battery does seem to run down quick. Some phones have wireless charging. Now that is Wow!

4. Of course iPhone 5 does not come with a USB port for uploading and downloading. You have to do all that stuff through iTunes.

In the beginning everyone were Droids and had to do things the IBM way. Now everyone using Apple products are Droids and have to do things the Apple way. A critical mass is forming, especially among the young, that find having to do everything through Apple distasteful.

First Adam bit. Now Apple bites.

***While doing this entry,I code by hand, I rediscovered short cut keys. I code for spacing and there is some code I have to do over and over again. Have to spend a little time and figure out how to incorporate keyboard short cuts into things I do.***

Posted 3:56 PM by robert d

Windows 8 Will Bomb

It will take Microsoft a long time to sink but with Windows 8 they will be taking the finger.

If you want to play get an iPad or something and finger away. Serious work will continue to be done via keyboard and mouse.

It might have been ok to offer an alternative operating system and call it - you guessed it - Finger. But to make Windows 8 The OS on all new computers is too drastic a change.

Vista was a disaster. Win 8 will be Apocalypse.

Posted 2:24 PM by robert d

Bank's Are Your Buddy - Not/Naught/Knot

About once a month I get something, sometimes it even comes Fed-EX, from my bank telling me that because I am such a great guy, who is both smart and good looking - that they want to refi my home loan at a lower rate.

All I have to do is sign. No appraisal or income verification or anything. All kinds of fees are waiver.

I knew I was good but I didn't think I was that good.

So what's wrong with this picture.

You have to know something about amortization tables. The table contains a bunch of numbers that go on and on every month for 30 years or whatever the length of your loan.(I wonder if anyone has ever found an error in their amortization table? Yeah right like you are going to check it.)

If you look at your AT you will see that in the beginning almost every dollar of your mortgage payment goes to interest. Almost nothing goes against the principle.

The skinny - Mortgage companies make the most money on the front end of the loan.

Posted 11:31 AM by robert d

Windows 8 - A Prelude

Microsoft is always at work coming up with things to make everyone's life better. It is amazing how new and improved can come out about every year and half - but it does.

This is actually old news. It is about Word 10.

I got a new computer for Christmas,last, and it came with Office 2010. I had been using a bootlegged copy of Office 97 so I was big time ready for the new and improved.

New and improved to me is something I really need. Imagine a program that didn't have copy and paste and then a new version came out that did. This is an example of something you really need. This is an example of New and Improved.

Work hard and come up with something new that everyone needs. I like it.

When I started to use Word 2010 underwhelmed would have been an understatement.

The "default" setting in Word 2010 for spacing between sentences and paragraphs is 1.15 line spacing. It use to be just 1. So all line spacing is a bigger than before. Think spaced out.

There is suppose to be some secret about why 1.15 is better? Always better to be spaced out.

This is not an option. Being spaced out is the default. And it is difficult to maintain any other kind of setting.

Did Microsoft stop here with New and Improved. Oh no. I guess once you get spaced out everything looks different.

After completing a document you may want a hard copy of it. You will want to print it.

There are all kinds of options for doing a lot of feckless stuff on the, what I will call the home page, page where your document is viewed. With a flick of the wrist you can change - color,font size, style, ...

It took me a while to find it. If you actually want to print your document in Word 10 you have to go to the File tab at the top of the page and select Print from a drop down menu. The Print function is not on the main page. Again, the print function is not of the main page.

Posted 12:00 PM by robert d

I Feel Great

Lots of great stuff going on. Weather is perfect. All kinds of toys - new modem(fast computer), new iPhone, new Camera, crushing it on guitar. And my mind is a flame with wondrous thoughts.

In review, I see I linked my enthusiasm with have new things. The new has very little to do with it. I would be this way with just my thoughts.

I know that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. It is not their fault. They have yet to be touched.

Posted 8:29 PM by robert d

Phun

My mission for tomorrow is to have more fun. I had a lot of fun today so that is going to be rather difficult.

Posted 5:06 PM by robert d

Romney's First Name is Willard?
I had never encounter the first name Mitt. Mitt is a strange name. Upon hearing Mitt the mind quickly goes to twit, and it rhymes with other words. I wondered if it was short for something, like Bob is short for Robert?

Eureka. Mitt is Romney's middle name. Mitt Romney's first name, the one he uses on all those tax returns that he won't show anyone, is Willard.

Psychopathology

If one watches Romney with some detachment he seems frantic, a defense mechanism to hide something he does not want others to know about. I am sure that part of it is that he can't believe that he is running for President of the United States when everything he has ever done has been untoward. It is deeper seated - think adolescent experience.

Should I connect the dots? Why not.

It was interesting that when I did fast word association of Willard with some friends that the first word that popped into their mind was rat. Has something to do with some movie where a rat could fly or cook or something.

This isn't it.

Romney's affliction developed much earlier. Willard is a strange name in and of itself. I don't know if Mitt was named after a relative, but how cruel of his mother to name him Willard.

I can envision much ridicule as a child. How much? Enough so that he adopted the defensive strategy of calling himself by his middle name.

The icing on the cake. He didn't like Willard. He could have decided to call himself whatever he wanted. He picked Mitt.

Well at least he has more money in his IRA than any person ever - $100 million. This is like the lady who won the lottery still being on food stamps.

Mitt, Mitt, he's our Man
If he can't do it Willard can
Willard, Willard he's our Man
If he can't do it, shit happens

Posted 8:28 AM by robert d

Mate Less
I am playing chess against a computer here and getting my butt beat bad.

I am playing against a 1200 rank. Either my game has fallen completely apart or I have always played against wankers.

Probably both.

Posted 9:52 PM by robert d