Financial Crisis Explanation

My good friend Matt over at Standalone Sysadmin brought this video to my attention today. We both thought it was a very good overview of what has caused a lot of the financial trouble we are in. Plus the guy draws pictures :)

Take a look when you get time and let me know what you think. Lasts just over six minutes.

Emma Puppies Update

Puppies are doing really well. They've almost doubled in size since born eleven days ago.

A particular teacher's view of Linux in our schools

I was quickly looking through some of my daily readers and found an interesting tidbit of a letter written from a teacher to the founder of Helios on Slashdot .


"Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."

Here is a direct link to the original blog on Helios

Not at all surprising, but definitely sad. I agree that the child doesn't need to be handing out the CD's in fashion that might disrupt class. But this teacher needs to catch up a bit on things in this world.

I don't believe every teacher needs to know how to use Linux at this point. But I do believe that if a teacher doesn't know much about it they prob. need to leave it up to someone that does to explain it to them before they go off the handle like that.

Pics of Emma with full litter

Thought I'd throw some pics up of the whole crew together :)

Emma's New Puppies!

Well I got an exciting call today at work after just hanging up with an angry customer. Emma had started having her puppies! By the time I got home at about 17:00 after leaving work early and stopping at the store she had four puppies and unfortunately lost one of them. Below is a pic:










It is 18:36 right now and she is on her way of having her 5th one so I'd better get back to my fatherly duties of watching Toni do all the work and I sit and drink a beer while petting Emma :)

>Update 22:47: Well the 5th one came out fine. Toni believes there are more though and it's been a couple hours since the last one. We called the 24x7 vet line and since there has been no after-birth it looks like we'll be taking Emma to the vet tomorrow to induce labor if needed.

>Update 00:15: She has had a 6th pup that is healthy.

>Update: 07:30: Emma is doing well and so are the pups. But she appears to still have at least one more in her and she has not had it yet. We called the 24x7 vet line early in the morning and they recommended we go ahead and bring her in to induce labor on her to get the last one out and to check her over. I'll be leaving work at about 9:30 and Toni and I will be taking her over to the vet.

>Update - 11:25: All was good at the vets office. What we think is that there was still some afterbirth inside of her so he gave Emma a shot to help pass that. Other then that we have a great mom in good health with five pups all in good health. Now the next adventure of caring for all these puppies as they get bigger :) I'll post up some more pics this evening.

"The Shield" comes to an end

I wanted to throw out a quick tribute to one of my favorite TV shows coming to an end named "The Shield" from FX. I have truly enjoyed the last 7 seasons of the show and it was sad to see it come to an end.

The season finale was awesome (just finished watching it). Had a little trouble at the very end understanding what Vic's next intention was when he finally decided to walk away from him desk with his gun again.

For all that haven't gotten to see the show it was pretty darn awesome and if you get the opportunity to catch some of the re-runs I think you'd enjoy it. But it is one of those shows where you really need to watch it from the beginning. Any of you locals near me that I know that want to borrow a season just let me know.

New Star Trek Trailer

Sorry all for not keeping up better on my posts. And I really don't have tonight to get into a whole lot either so I thought I'd throw a link on to the new Star Trek trailer in 480p H.D.

http://movies.apple.com/movies/paramount/star_trek/startrek-tlr2_h480p.mov

Here it is in 1080p H.D.
http://movies.apple.com/movies/paramount/star_trek/startrek-tlr2_h1080p.mov

It was supposed to have been released to the public today but for some reason the web-site for the movie rescheduled it for tomorrow but thanks to a post on:

http://star-trek--trailer.blogspot.com/

We were able to get an early copy.

Thought I'd go ahead and throw these on as well :)



And this is the new TV Spot:

Toni's New Car

I wanted to throw another post on before I head to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a couple days. Below is a pic of Toni's new car we got.



















It's a 2007 Toyota Rav4, Sport Edition, 4wd. It's a very nice ride & it's what she's been wanting for a long time & worked very hard for. I don't get to drive it to often....for some reason it's always gone ;)

It's very nice to have a reliable vehicle again that can carry four people easily. The truck is great but I can't wait to take some trips in the Rav.

My New Dog "Emma"

Sorry for the long delay in posting any new updates around here. I got sick for a good week or so and could barely find the energy to get to work never mind doing the hundred other things I'm constantly keeping myself busy with.

I have many new updates that have occurred lately in my life. Most of them revolving around my birthday that my wife and my great friends made so awesome.

But to start off with Toni and I finally got a new dog about a week and a half ago. She is a Saint Bernard named "Emma". She is about two years old and pretty small compared to most Saint Bernard's I've seen but she still weighs in at a healthy 90 pounds or so.

She was constantly being kept outside by her previous owners and it didn't appear that anyone had been spending much time with her. But Toni and I (mostly Toni) got her all cleaned up and she's done great in the house. She's good at telling us when she needs to go out (no accidents yet) and she's just very lovable.










I have many more updates to throw out here since it's been so long since I posted so I'm going to try and throw one out a day.

Peasants Quest

Well not a huge response on the old school video games of my younger days but was glad to see a couple people vote on what your favorite was during that period. I suppose I'm just an old man now, constantly day dreaming about old games :)

Anyways, I've been and still am not feeling to well. Got back from a wedding in Indianapolis and started feeling cold symptoms and it's been progessively getting worse. So, in case any of you have been wondering "What happened to that AJ guy?" I've been going to work then hiding.

But to keep in the spirit of cool & old school games, and because I don't have it in me to write much, and last because I'm taking a quick break at work I wanted to put out this link for....PEASANTS QUEST

Any of you that aren't familiar, it's from the great people at Videlectrix and found on the homestarrunner website. If you liked any of the old school quest games in my last blog then I think you'll at least find this ammusing.










Well I'd better get back to things but let me know what you think about this game.

Tay Zonday

Ok, during "The Office" last night the "Chocolate Rain" song came up and my good friend Jason shared with me some of the clips of this dude singing. So today I decided to look around some more here is another song he's done named "Explode" & I've got to say that his voice is pretty impressive:

Time at Work vs Time at Home

Well, just got done working another 12+hr work day. Been getting more of those lately. One thing that I've noticed in life is that we seem to spend more and more time at work as we get older, mostly because our share of responsibilities is growing as we grow with companies.

As I am sure many of you have heard me preaching in the past, is it really a good thing that we spend so much time at work, just to come home at the end of the day and be disgusted with how the day was spent. Now I know we all don't dislike our jobs, but at least in my case I am happy to have the job in the area that I live in, but that being said there are too many wrongs compared to the rights.

So, I decided to do some quick, basic math. Below is what I've come up with:

• 10hr work days 5x a week = 50hrs a week
• 50hrs a week = 200hrs a month
• 200hrs a month = 2400hrs a year
• Take away for let's say 5 weeks of vacation a year = 200hrs
• You end up with = 2200hrs
  
• Then add in those random times called in or called when at home we'll say approx. = 100hrs
• Total = 2300 hrs spent at work a year.
  

Now, let's look at time spent at home/doing something other then our career/work and not sleeping:

• 6hrs a night after work 5 work days = 30hrs a week.
• 16hrs a day for the weekend x2 days = 32hrs a week.
• 30hrs a week + 32hrs on weekends = 62hrs a week.
• 62hrs a week = 248hrs a month
• 248hrs a month = 2976hrs a year doing something other then being at our place of business.

So I finish us up with:

• We have a total of 5,176 hours for one year.
  
• 2200 hours at work / 5,176 total hours = 42.5%
  
• 2976 hours at home / 5176 total hours = 57.5%

First off, yes I know, this is a very rough display and is not at all completely accurate at least in my case I am sure I spend more time@work then I put on this example. And it doesn't include holidays but this does at least give us ball park figures to work with.

So, if I am spending roughly 42.5% of a year at work. I sure as heck should be doing something to be sure that it's worth it. Yes, a paycheck is very important. No disputing that, but at what point of my life did I let go of the fact that there is more to life then just a job. I do try to spend the 57.5% of my free time having fun and doing things I enjoy doing. But as we all know that time is being gobbled up constantly as well doing home repairs, working on bills, etc.

I'm not ungrateful to have a job, and it's gotten me where I am today. But when I see the time spent doing my job...well I guess I want to look back when I am older and not just say that I spent all that time trying to just get by in life. I want to feel like I've really accomplished something. Not just at home or with a family, but accomplished something in my career because it is a huge part of my life. Of all of our lives. And how happy we are with our careers effects us in so many ways including our family, friends, and many other aspects of our personal lives.

I guess this is just something I've been thinking of but I would like to hear your thoughts as well. Let me know what your thinking on this subject.

Movie Watched This Weekend: Appaloosa

Toni & I went to the movies Sunday night and watched the new western that just came out called Appaloosa. The movie was so/so. I'm a huge fan of westerns and the directing done by Ed Harris was good and the acting by Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, and Jeremy Irons was good. But the story itself just lacked something...it's one of those movies that you leave from and you just don't feel that you got the full movie experience. Usually westerns it's pretty easy to follow the motives of the characters but in this movie I found it difficult to follow the motives behind the main character played by Ed Harris. Parts of the movie he was a "bad ass" then in other parts I just couldn't figure out what the heck he was thinking. It just made for a somewhat poor storyline.

I don't want to get into it too much because I don't like telling the story of these movies and ruining it for others but I will say that if you haven't seen the movie yet I would just wait till DVD. It's good enough to rent, not good enough to pay $8 or so to sit in crappy seats in our theatre here in P-Burg.

If you have seen it let me know what your thoughts of the movie were.

Upcoming Election

Don't have much time to get into much on here but after watching the VP debates last night I wanted to post a link that I've been going to just to get some general information that might help with any of you looking for basic info on the candidates.

http://www.votesmart.org/

Let me know what you think about the site. I think it does a good job just giving us some info to use in helping with our decisions coming up.

The New Knight Rider

Ok...this will be fairly short, blunt, and to the point. First off let me say that I am sorry to all the Knight Rider fans out there. Any of you who have caught the new series Knight Rider on television lately will probably agree with me that it is plain old crap. Now don't get me wrong, I love seeing beautiful women and exotic cars as much as the next guy, but that's all the show has. They dumped all of their money in the special effects for the car and were left with nothing else. Extremely bad acting, a horrible story line, and the show is a constant commercial for Ford since apparently KIT can now also transform into a Ford F150...

I had to give the show a shot...I loved the original. And yes, I know the original was cheesy but for it's time it was at least pretty good. It only began getting kind of crappy when they started the super pursuit deal. But this new show has started right off the bat with poop and apparently is going to keep displaying poop on my TV.

If it weren't for the fact that NBC actually put out good shows like Heroes or The Office I would probably never watch the channel.

It's just a real shame to see what could have been an awesome show turn into what it is.

Welcome Blog

Well, I just want to say right off the bat welcome to my blog. I am planning on keeping several blogs: things going on in my life, my home remodeling project, my mame cabinet remodeling, and my trial/error period with linux (which I've completely switched my desktop away from Windows and over to Linux Mint which has been a long time coming). I also have a Fedora server running along beside me at work which I have Apache running for a web-site I built for tech assistance and a SFTP server for upgrading pieces of equipment remotely throughout our network. Jason & I also have a wireless network setup between our two houses. Files that will be shared....well the word "evil" comes to mind...j/k.

I don't make any guarantee's on how often this info will get out. And it will be even more surprising to see if anybody even really wants to read about my stuff but please feel free to comment on anything you'd like and anything you might have questions about.

Will be working on getting some pics up very soon as well.