Here I Am

Sen. David Vitter, R.-La, supporting a federal ban on gay marriage:

"It's often said, but it's very, very true,
and it is worth repeating -- marriage is truly
the most fundamental social institution in
human history."

OK so if it's that great, why would you employ the services of an escort???

Also, ironically, the quote above could easily be attributed to someone who is for gay marriage. Strange how the same phrase can be used to justify both sides of the argument.

The iPhone comes out in a week, and with the anticipation also comes alot of doubts.

Apple announced that the screen will be made of optical glass, rather than the very easily scratched ipod material. Won't this be a problem though when the metal encased phone is dropped. Instead of just knicking the shock absorbent plastic, users will end up with unusable broken glass screens.

And I'm sure the interface is fabulous, but having used a touchscreen phone for a while, there are drawbacks. On my phone I have a full keyboard. I use it to text ALOT, as well as send emails, chat on AIM, etc. There is an onscreen keyboard: the buttons are too small and it takes up too much space on the screen. I can use it with a stylus, but to use my finger to control items on screen leaves it greasy and covered in fingerprints. Not to mention that holding the phone to my ear on a hot day can result in a layer of grime across the touchscreen. All I'm saying is that I'm glad I have the keyboard... with actual keys...

Another thing that I didn't realize when I switched from a flip phone to my 8125 was that it is not at all a one handed phone. I used to text and drive, or text at the bar... Don't think you're gonna take your iPhone to the club and hold a drink, smoke a cigarette and send a text message at the same time... You'll end up dropping it... see above for info on that one. lol

Also I think it's kind of bizarre that the iPhone doesn't have GPS technology built in. I have an external BlueTooth GPS reciever that works great. In the TV advertisements for the iPhone, they show Google Maps, and it locates seafood restaurants that are nearby... It doesn't show that you will have to first locate yourself on the map by using a zip code or address. Strange.

Dutch students develop powdered alcohol

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros (70 pence-1 pound).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-coloured and -flavoured drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

"We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks," 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

Van Elderen and four classmates at Helicon Vocational Institute, about an hour's drive from Amsterdam, came up with the idea as part of their final-year project.

"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

In Germany, alcopops -- sweet drinks containing alcohol and in powder form -- caused quite a stir when launched on to the market. Alcohol powder, classified as a flavouring, was sold in the United States three years ago.

The students said companies interested in making the product commercially could avoid taxes because the alcohol was in powder form. A number of companies are interested, they said.

So I watched the Democratic Candidates debate last night on CNN and a couple things stood out and I thought were worth mentioning. First of all, I was impressed that there was a discussion about universal healthcare for Americans. I'm not sure that we're really ready for a Canadian Style healthcare system, but I was just surprised that it was being talked about at all by the mainstream candidates.

Secondly, I was surprised that Hillary made a comment about the military dismissing arabic linguists because they were gay. While discussing the Don't ask, don't tell policy, all candidates raised their hand in favor of repealing the policy. Bill Richardson, added that he supports equal rights for gays and lesbians. Now, I was 'watching' the debate, which really meant I was listening to it while I was making dinner. I had to go rewind to see who had said it. I was actually pretty shocked by his statement. So I visited Richardson's website and read more about his platform on Iraq, healthcare, equal rights, etc.

Also, he has a pretty funny commercial out right now that you can view here: http://action.richardsonforpresident.com/page/s/jobinterview

Yesterday, the Great Decider justified his veto of the spending bill by saying that it would lead to a "cauldron of chaos" in the middle east.

• The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a report last week that described a "rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis" in Iraq and a "breakdown in law and order."

• A report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said that seven out of eight reconstruction projects declared successful by the United States were actually failures, with widespread corruption among Iraqi officials a major factor.

• The State Department reported that terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 were up by 28.5 percent over '05, with 14,338 attacks claiming 20,500 lives, most of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The month of April was the sixth-deadliest of the four-year-long war for U.S. forces, with 104 combat deaths. That was the fifth consecutive month in which the U.S. casualty toll exceeded 80.

• An active-duty Army office issued a scathing critique of his superior officers' handling of the war, an almost unprecedented show of opposition that reflects what the majority of Americans believe. 

May 1st, 2003

If you have a Cingular 8125, aka, HTC Wizard, or the Cingular 8525, Sprint PPC6700, or any Pocket PC running Windows Mobile, these are some programs you should definitely check out. I have the 8125, so any observations are based on that model. I can't guarantee that these will work on every PPC.

Total Commander CE

Similar to built in File Explorer, but with more advanced features. Edit registry values, access ftp folders, change file properties. This one's at the top for a reason. Install it first and it will make your life alot easier. If you plan on installing programs, you'll see that they come in 2 varieties. One kind, a cab or arm file, is downloaded to your pocket pc and installed directly. The other, an exe or msi file, is installed on your pc and then ActiveSync will transfer the cab file the next time you sync your phone. If you choose to install via a pc and ActiveSync, it will be very easy to reinstall should you have to delete the program, or perform a hard reset.

If you install using a cab file, you will find that after installation, the original file will be gone. So you won't be able to reinstall without downloading the cab file back to your phone or sd card. There are 2 ways to remedy this.

OK, so I have been using a program on my Cingular 8125 for chat. I commented about how well it worked in this post. It worked perfectly, quickly, and had all the features I use. Then, one day it asked me to update. I thought, oh, how cool, it updates automatically. So I updated.

After opening the program I notice a string of characters labeled 'customer id' at the bottom. Agile Messenger never worked right after that. It would log me into my different accounts, and though it said I was logged in, no one on google talk could message me, nor did any of my contacts show up.

Agile Messenger updated again, which enabled me to connect to google talk again, but now anytime I want to talk to someone who has IM forwarding on, and is chatting on their phone, I get unrecognizable text instead of their response.

Then, to kick it all off, Agile Messenger now pops up a window when I log in that counts down the hours until they shut off my access. Uh, they want me to pay for this shit???

No thanks.

On August 26th, I dropped off some photos at Walgreen's. I had never taken them there before, and I usually don't ever use regular film cameras. It was close to my house, so I figured I'd give it a shot. How bad could it be. The answer: bad.

I went back the next day to pick up my one hour photos. They weren't done. Strange. Their machine was broken, they offered me $5 off, which was fine. I then called the next day, and they told me the machine was fixed, only did one roll, and they would call me when my photos were ready. I proceeded to call every day on my lunch break until I went on vacation.

So I go to PA for a week and a half, get back and no one had called me. Still... So on Monday I went in and picked them up. I didn't look at them until I got back to my house, but was disappointed to see that they had printed all of my pictures as panoramas. None of them were supposed to be panoramic. It was Advanced Photo System film, which let's you choose the format of the printed picture.

The photo CD and index print were missing also. So on Tuesday I took the photos back. I simply wanted my money back. They had messed them up so bad, I just wanted to take them elsewhere. The gentleman assisting me in the photo department had no clue what he was talking about. I tried to explain to him about the 3 picture formats, and showed him how the tops and bottoms of most of my pictures were cut off. He just told me that they were supposed to be like that, and also told me that there was no way for them to make a photo CD using the APS machine.

I've never had problems like that anywhere trying to get film developed. Thank God for digital cameras, right. Anyways, I wouldn't recommend going to Walgreens to process film. If they can mess up what is an almost completely automatic process, then they don't need my business. haha

Anyways, so I took them to CVS, and they did a beautiful job. Yay!

So, I've had my new phone for a couple weeks now. I'm completely enamored by it.

For the most part, it does everything I want it to smoothly. The internet runs quickly and the chat program I downloaded works really well. My favorite feature of Agile Messenger is that you can use it to take a picture and send it to one of your online buddies. Or you can send a file from the phone's memory.

Memory is a slight issue though. I haven't yet received a 2GB miniSD card that I ordered from ebay. If you plan on installing games, videos, music, etc., plan on upgrading memory. I got a pretty good deal on the memory card. After conversion to GBP I believe it was around 60 USD. Not bad at all for a chip that's not even 1" x 1" and holds 2GB.

I had to, unfortunately, perform a hard reset on my device several days ago. While installing a program, something went wrong. Horribly wrong... My phone would no longer sync with any PC, nor would it let me install or remove any programs using Microsoft ActiveSync.

Resetting my phone to factory settings fixed the problem when nothing else would. Fortunately, everything was backed up... Except for my contacts. Yes, they were on the SIM card, but SIM cards only hold name/number combinations, not multiple phone numbers for contacts (home, work, cell, etc.), email addresses, pictures, etc. So I sent part of my contacts to myself via email as vcards (.vcf). This preserved everything except for the user picture.

I think in the future I'm going to export my contacts as vcards and store them in my ipod's contacts folder. I don't yet know of a program that will mass export an entire address book. It's kind of a pain to do these individually...

Also, I later found that on the HTC Wizard phone, the contacts, calendars, notes and tasks are stored in a file on the root of the file system called pim.vol. So copying that file before performing a hard reset would theoretically save your contact information. You need to rename the pim.vol file before you are able to move it. For some reason it allows you to rename it but not copy it from the phone to the PC...

The great decider...

This clip, from CNN, shows a discussion Bush and Tony Blair had while Bush stuffs his face and acts completely disinterested, then he adds that Syria needs to "get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit."

More on Bush Unplugged