I am trying to keep up with all of the idiotic partisian crap flying around the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and I certainly expect most of the mainstream press to slant their stories to favor the Democrats (in fairness, I expect Fox to slant things a little to the Republican side of the house).  Today I came across a Time-Blog.com posting from Karen Tumulty.

John McCain’s campaign has begun lambasting Barrack Obama over his choice of advisers, in the ad Tumulty references, they are going after Frank Raines (Former Fannie Mae chief).  In Tumulty’s “report”, Tumulty alleges that the McCain ad is displaying ” Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.”

Tumulty uses the image of a smiling Barrack Obama and a somewhat sinister picture of Raines as evidence that the McCains ad  “Plays the race card”.  What a bunch of political bullsh*t.  Go figure that Time-Blog.com is “In partnership with CNN”.  I am more balanced in my own made up blog than this idiot is.

(read the rest…)

Tags: karen tumulty, mccain, obama, press

I have read MANY advertisements for Cyberpowerpc.com, though I have never paid much attention to them.  I generally buy high-end Dell PC’s, or I build my own.  I read MaximumPC magazine religously and I was surprised to see the high marks they gave the CyberPower Gamer Ultimate SLI QUAD.  I currently have an aging home built dual core E6700 oc’d to 3.06Ghz with an NVidia 8800Ultra.  One of the biggest issues I run into is drive performance, since I am running dual 400GB drives in a RAID-1 configuration.  My ASUS mobo basically sucks and the RAID performance really sucks.  I am going to turn this box into my new sever at home.

Back to my CyberpowerPC.com story.  I spent the last few weeks pricing out rigs and looking at many PC manufactures, I also looked at parts to build my own.  I came to the conclusion that I could buy a system from CyberpowerPC.com cheaper than I could build one, plus I get VIsta (I already have XP for a new PC if I need it) and some nice freebies. (read the rest…)

Tags: computers, cyberpowerpc, review

My wife is pretty smart.  When we were watching Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, she looked at me and said “She looks just like Tina Fey, Tina should play her on Saturday Night Live”.  While Tina does look a little bit like Sarah Palin, I mostly dismissed the idea as interesting if it happens.

This Saturday Night, we were watching SNL, the opening clip was Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) and Hilary Clinton (Amy Poehler).  If you have not watched this clip GO HERE now!  Let me tell you, Tina Fey was so incredible at playing Sarah Palin, I was not immediately sure it wasn’t Sarah Palin (and I knew it was Tina Fey!!).

So, barring anything other reason to vote Palin (and old what’s his face), it would be for 4 more years of Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on SNL!

On a side note, everything else in this episode of SNL pretty much sucked as usual. (sigh)

Tags: amy poehler, palin, snl, tina fey

I have really enjoyed my blogging experience to date.  I have installed WordPress many times in the past, but someone else set the site up.  When my friend Matt built my hockey team website (tnt-hockey.com) with WordPress, I figured it was time to learn how to USE  WordPress (You know this if you have been following the site for more than 9 days!).

Today I was chatting with Matt and he was complaining about how Godaddy’s web hosting service kind of sucked for WordPress.  Things like ftp uploads did not set permissions correctly on his files and permalink redirects taking 3+ hours to change.

I have a GoDaddy virtual server running CentOS (which effectively is my own Linux server on the Internet).  I offered to let Matt use my server for his blog.  I did this because he is a friend; it will not cost me anything; he turned me on to WordPress; and he did build a pretty awesome hockey site. (read the rest…)

Tags: godaddy.com, muelface.com, wordpress

On June 12th, I received one of MANY emails from Hockey Giant, advertising clearance hockey gear.  I ordered a couple of nice Minnesota Wild shirts for $25.98.  I decided to pay with PayPal.  Now Hockey Giant has a totally screwed up way to pay them via PayPal.  You have to place your order with Hockey Giant, receive a Hockey Giant order number, then go to PayPal and initiate a payment to Hockey Giant, inputting the order number into a Payment you make directly from PayPal (Hockey Giants web site does not link directly to PayPal).

Now, I admit, seeing what a crap job Hockey Giant did of integrating to PayPal, I should have pulled out my trusty Visa card.  But, I thought, “What could go wrong, it is only $25 dollars and PayPal protects up to $200″. (Boy was I wrong). (read the rest…)

Tags: fraud, hockey giant, paypal, sports giant

I just finished watching the Tennessee Titans beat the Jaguars in a defensive struggle.  However, Titans 3rd year QB Vince Young seemed to be having more of the struggle than anything Jacksonville’s defense did.  Young never looked good and without the surprisingly good Chris Johnson, the Titans looked destined to lose this game.  Late in the 4th quarter, Young went down with an injured left knee. (Which followed a one play series where Young threw one of the ugliest interceptions I have ever seen).

In comes Kerry Collins, seasoned veteran and sometimes NFL headcase.  Collins preceded to march the team down the field for an apparently easy touchdown.  Now I am still a Vikings fan, but living in Nashville I follow and pull for the Titans.  My questions, is it already time for a quarterback controversy in the Music City?

I say no.  Collins is at the point in his career that the bench and selected backup duty is probably his best role.  Young is the “future” of the Titans, however, if he does not impress in the first 6-7 games, i truly believe the Titans may go to the free agent market.

The Titans defense looks impressive, but a Vince Young run Titans offense fails to impress thus far.

PS.  Go Vikings!

Tags: collins, football, jaguars, titans, vikings, young

I admit it, I am a phone geek.  I love my phone and the accessibility a well designed phone gives me and the productivity lifts I enjoy from said phone.  I have been using an AT&T Tilt aka: 8925 aka: HTC Kaiser.  The stock windows mobile 6.0 ROM is really quite terrible, but with a custom cooked WM 6.1ROM, the phone is quite excellent.  It does just about everything I need it to do.  With the new Opera Mobile Browser, the browsing functionality is more akin to the Iphone.

6 Weeks ago, my boss decided he needed a new phone.  While he was happy with his Samsung Blackjack, he wanted an Iphone.  I ordered him one and went ahead and ordered one for myself.  My IT guys support everyone else, but my boss views me as his own personal IT person, so I figured I might as well be familiar with the device and I thought it would be nice to eliminate the need to carry my trusty Ipod Nano.  Here is what I found:

Pros:

• The web browser is totally AWESOME!  Opera is nice, but I never have experienced such seamless web browsing from a mobile device.
• The new Exchange plug-in is pretty, reading email and displaying attachments is pretty darned slick.
• Once you get the hang of the layout, it is fairly easy to navigate the phone.

Cons:

• You MUST have Itunes to activate your Iphone (We have a corporate account, so we did not need to go to an AT&T or Apple store).  This is a pain in the butt in a corporate environment.  There really are no management tools for Itunes, so I doubt these phone will make it across our corporation.
• No wonder there is a program called “jail break”.  I felt like I was in jail using this phone!  There are limited applications (most a not free), you can not edit Word documents, Excel files, etc. etc.
• Notes do not sync with Outlook, that totally sucks
• The phone crashes more often than my Windows Based phone (WOW!!)
• The Ipod functionality IMHO sucks, I prefer the interface of the wheel over the touch interface.
• I could find no functional voice dialing option.  I love Microsoft Voice Command, it works in conjunction with my Motorola H700 Bluetooth head set seamlessly (until the H700 died last week!)
• You cannot add attendees to a meeting you set up on your Iphone (total suck)

All and all, I liked the Iphone, but not enough to keep it.  If you want a read only device that displays thinks beautifully and you do not need a mobile computing platform, the Iphone is the bomb.  If you need a mobile computing platform, the Tilt with a custom ROM is AWESOME. I can recommend a ROM if you want!

Tags: at&t, iphone, review, tech, tilt

I admit it, after hearing all of the political rhetoric flying around about Sarah Palin, her apparent lack of qualifications, her 4 month old baby with Downs Syndrome, her inexperience as an executive, all lead me to feel like the GOP missed the mark with their nomination of Sarah Palin.

As with most Americans, I was interested in hearing her speak last night.  WOW! Color me impressed!  If Sarah Palin can be remotely as eloquent and charming as she was last night in non-prepared speeches, she is going to give the Dems a good run for their money. (Rumor has it she did half the speech from memory due to a screwed up teleprompter)

I believe this election year will bring us the most interesting and exciting campaign season in a very long time.  I find the stance the republicans taking on working mothers quite intriguing.  The crazy right wing “Mothers should stay at home” crowd is being forced to bite their tongues while the more moderate republicans are defending working mothers!  Wow, what a change of pace.

It is also very interesting to me that most of the “women first” organizations have either come out against Sarah Palin, or have remained silent.  I thought the National Organization for Women was for Women, not for Women whose politics they agree with!  Sarah Palin is the first legitimate female Vice Presidential Candidate in the history of this country, female gender activists should be jumping to her side in droves, but she is conservative and pro-life, so let’s remain silent.  I sometimes abhor politics for the two-faced antics that go on (on both sides).

No matter who wins the presidential seat this November, both the campaign season and the next presidency promise to be very interesting.  We will either have the first black President of the United States of America, or the first female Vice President of the United States of America.  Either way we will be shaking up the establishment!

All in all I am more engaged in this campaign than I have been since 1988!

Tags: obama, palin