FTJoe

I don't feel guilty about not putting a flag out, just not my barometer for patriotism. Props to your Dad though.

Thanx - will have to give a whirl though being lazy I ordered some from cignot. But they are so expensive, if it works, I'll do homemade.

I was just getting used to the ADM...let me go back and read up how to do it. Wasn't there two methods, shredded or rolled? I think the cignot ones were rolled?

I would actually vote!!!

Ahhh - the big three, sex religion and politics. How to get people warring!!!! ;-)

That would be a shame, but I just don't see it happening. But I've been wrong before, many many times. ;-)

I think perhaps you shouldn't have posted if you will interpret argument as an attack and non-agreement as being uneducated. I believe I have been to that site before and I do not agree with their basic premise. That is my educated opinion...it just means I disagree with the basic premise.

And the solution to this is what? Money backed by gold?

I believe the Fed is necessary, but shouldn't be allowed to make and execute policy. Needs oversight (not another congressional committee, but a GSE of some kind). I have to disagree as well that terrorism is a hoax. I will view the link, at work now so it will have to wait. Obviously based on my past posts I believe Washington is a joke, Wall Street runs the country. I will agree with you there. I've always thought to some extent our country was based on the ideal expressed by Voltaire... "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it". Everyone should be allowed to express their opinion, else we have fascism/oligarchy/etc. Remember my warning - Apathy then anarchy!!! I truly believe changing things now is next to impossible.

And every vote counts. I respectfully disagree. I'll use the freedom I have here to choose not to vote. I can not in good conscience vote for someone I know is lying in regards to what they are promising, or even vote because I don't like the person that's in office. I've regretted that sometimes, Ron Paul I believe has convictions. The day the right to bitc- is tied to voting for these scum I'll proudly leave. I believe me paying taxes gives me the right to bitc-, not voting. If they say I can stop paying, I'll stop complaining. ;-) All a two party system does is relegate independents to one minute of air time on the network news. Forces us to have one of only two people elected that are members of a political machine and by definition are not independent. That sounds yukky to me. Talk about lesser of two evils, how many people typically vote not for a candidate, but against a candidate the other party put up? Anyway, two party made sense in the horse and buggy days, electoral college made sense when communications was weeks away with other states. If you're going to force me to vote for one of two people, why can't I decide which democratic candidate AND which republican candidate I'll be voting for later on. I've heard interesting scenarios where you end up with only two candidates, maybe two dems, or one indy and one repub. You get the idea. I thought the biggest joke through this whole thing was the fact that so much money was being given to these investment banks without a single question or requirement, yet when the car companies, a huge employer of people, came asking for some relatively small amounts of cash they were made to jump through hoops, show their business plans and had to go under anyway. These banks are not banks, they used to be partnerships, then became publicly held, which means the stockholders have the risk, and the "executives" still reap the rewards. They hire very few people and do not stimulate the economy because they basically cater to the rich. Is there some trickle down argument to be made, perhaps in a normal economy, but not now. Flashback, a decision had to be made to "save" us from the edge. These companies came to our representatives, asked for help and the representatives decided in order to save main street we had to save wall street. After all, credit was now frozen so the small and medium size businesses had no credit. I'll use GS as the best example, because they really aren't a bank. So they were about to go under, and got a lot of money and the government had the accounting rules re-written so toxic assets didn't have to be put on the balance sheet. Did they start lending? No, I'm not even sure they lend to anyone at all (why were they converted to a bank again?). Did GS start investing the money, yes. They've made more money in the last few months one year after almost going under. Quite a little turnaround. Of course many argue, that's our money if they were investing what they were lent. Did we find out they had placed bets that the whole thing would go south, yes, this is the payment from AIG (our money) to GS. IMHO, is IBM evil, no, is GS yes. They control the market, our economy and our government, of that I have no doubt and I make fun of people who are conspiracy nuts. One of the best sources for information is Mike Taibbi a reporter for the Rolling Stone. Some of his best work is on GS and what happened last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi#Selected_articles_by_Taibbi The bubble machine article is excellent, Taibbi basically attempts to demonstrate how GS has actually engineered every bubble since the Great Depression. I started reading him when he wrote the Big Takeover article, explains what happened more than a year ago. Rest of the articles are excellent as well. If you want to see how the real banks are doing, the ones the FDIC lords over, the ones that lend to local businesses, etc., not the bogus banks, look here: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html You'll see until 2008, a couple failed per year if at all. Now about 4-5 a week are failing. One concern is the FDIC is overworked or simply waiting to step in, this means the amount the FDIC has to pony up for each bacnk is pretty huge. Remember, they are the insurer...

5 degrees? LOL. No one in a civilized society should ever have to put up with that!!! MOVE!!!!! Just kidding, I knew people from Rochester Minnesota. Badge of honor. Made fun of the people from the NE. Would move there and keep the house temp at 72. Walk outside at -20 and pass right out. Hopefully someone would run across them before they froze to death. Anyway, I know this ain't the lounge, but couldn't resist. Sorry WVFem.

Sorry - Platinum Mega Titan betteries from TW. Very nice looking except for the LED. Kind of putting a damper on stealth vaping I do at work...

I hate the bright LED, wife called me names and I cried. When I pull off the plastic cover I see the LED over a little circuit board. Shall I plop a piece of electrical on it, does it just "pull out" or should I crush it? Also went for the 5 pack deal, one bad so not a great deal now. Not really dead though, won't charge but I see the led glowing very faintly. Dangerous? Was hoping to let it wind down a little and then try charging again.

Cool test, bookmarked...I'm still UBUNTU. Gave up text based OSs a long time ago being totally lazy at heart. Edited to add still what I'm going to use on the netbook, I've only seen it in passing. OSX slipped right on, looking up how to triple boot right now but I'm still trying to revive my home server, hard drive failed miserably running XP (can't tell you the number of errors I had). No backup that works, trying to repair but that never works out real good. Sorry for the apparent thread hijack but smokin' said to update...

Did you try the autodrip, PTB is better in your opinion? Refilling the autodrip is a pain though. I actually got some PTB carts now I can't remember where. Though we like the whistle tip for the 510 carts not sure those are out there.

Here's proof I know how to rant, and it gets way worse than this after a few vodkas. Don't even get me started on all the Goldman Sachs alum that have positioned themselves all throughout our government and the GS bootlickers like Timmy Geithner. Funny how as NY Fed chief Timmy negotiated payment to GS at 100 cents on the dollar from AIG when everyone else was getting 15-30 cents, nice money if you can get it, 13 billion dollars of taxpayer money AIG handed over to GS and more to foreign banks. Wow a rant preceding my rant...deep breaths ;-) ... Real rant follows...I always point out that, in my humble opinion, I believe the founding fathers would simply ask for a do-over if they were here now to witness what is going on. IMHO - started in the early 30s, post crash. Social programs are fine, but have been out of control for decades as they are used to garner votes and no one seems to care. Seems like the middle class (loose definition) takes the brunt of the failure of the programs as they don't seem to be able to partake, yet pay quite a bit for them. I guess I wouldn't mind so much if I thought the people running the show had a clue, I believe they do not. Even the current bunch of libs crying about getting the rich to pay more seemed to go pretty far out of their way to make sure the Wall Street banks not only survived, but made incredible amounts of money for themselves over the last year as unemployment climbed. They made it by investing the taxpayer money lent to them. I think the big O isn't complicit, just has surrounded himself with what amounts to banksters instead of economists. Check out his number one guy, Larry Summers, granted he is an economist but makes millions doing it, dude blew up Harvard with a bad investment on derivatives, was instrumental under Clinton in repealing the Glass Steagall act that in large part led to this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers Excerpts: Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said.[14] "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."[14] Many critics, including President Barack Obama, have suggested the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis was caused by the partial repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.[15] Indeed, as a member of President Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets, Summers, along with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt, Fed Chairman Greenspan, and Secretary Rubin, torpedoed an effort to regulate the derivatives that many blame for bringing the financial market down in Fall 2008.[16] During Summers' presidency at Harvard, the University entered into a series totalling US$3.52 billion of interest rate swaps, financial derivatives that can be used for either hedging or speculation.[29] By late 2008, those positions had lost approximately $1 billion in value. This forced Harvard to borrow significant sums in distressed market conditions to meet margin calls on the swaps.[30] The decision to enter into the swap positions has been attributed to Summers and has been termed a "massive interest-rate gamble" that ended badly.[31] Summers sparked international outrage by speculating at an economics conference that innate differences between men and women might be one of the reasons women lag behind in science and math careers. As a result, on February 21, 2006, Summers announced his intention to step down at the end of the school year effective June 30, 2006. On October 19, 2006, he became a part-time managing director of the investment and technology development firm D. E. Shaw & Co. He was paid $5.2 million in his second of two years working there, while being physically present in the office just one day a week.[35] In January 2009, as the Obama Administration tried to pass an economic stimulus spending bill, Oregon Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio criticized Summers, saying that he thought that President Barack Obama is "ill-advised by Larry Summers. Larry Summers hates infrastructure."[41] DeFazio, along with liberal economists including Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, has argued that more of the stimulus should be spent on infrastructure,[42] while Summers has supported tax cuts.[citation needed] Summers has recently come under fire for accepting perks from Citigroup, including free rides on its corporate jet in 2008.[43] According to the Wall Street Journal, Larry Summers called Chris Dodd asking him to remove caps on executive pay at firms which have received stimulus money, including Citigroup.[44] On April 3, 2009 Summers came under renewed criticism after it was disclosed that he was paid millions of dollars the previous year by companies which he now has influence over as a public servant. He earned $5 million from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw, and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money.[45]

Apathy, then anarchy. Mark my words. No one even wants to hear my rants anymore about the gov, banks, the fed because the 401Ks are al coming back, everyone says things are fine so they must be. Hahaha, Goldman Sachs is large and in charge. I might even start voting just for the heck of it. I stopped when I realized they were all liars and I didn't like the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils and they really don't mean what they say. Guess how long ago that was. The two party system stinks. Hmmm, maybe this is a rant? ;-) The Guinness discussion is much more rewarding!!!!

I think the best advice I've seen on cleaning is every night (I never remember) place them batt side up, hole down and let the whatever juice is there drain away from the wick naturally...

I scored a bag of cra-... yippee. Came up a little early. Amazing off this horrible connection at work. And I had to do something so I tried real quick, then gave up, then went back a minute later and got right through, weird. Here's the product description: http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=10648 Now it will be delivered via smartpost. Yikes - takes forever. Still looking for some screaming monkees!!!

Reasoning is it's cool. Also I like to help folks with computer issues so would be nice having several OSs installed. But more than that, did I mention its cool??

Mmmmm - you mean the staff of life? Mother's milk?

Nothing wrong with using woot, I'm sure it started as a positive hail, just figured you knew about it as I never heard the word before until I found woot.com. Usually the site puts one thing up at midnight central time and lets it go until 24 hours later or if it sells out. Every few months they have a woot off, things go up pretty quick and sell out and everyone is waiting for a BOC (bag of cra-). It costs 3 bucks plus 5 shipping and sometimes is worth just that, i.e. a true bag of cra-, sometimes for some people they get much more than that. People go ape trying to get it when it comes up. Lots of fun if you have the time, it usually comes up on my way home so no joy. Sometimes I have my son bring up a tracker site, he disappointed me to no end when it came up but he wasn't there within 2 secs to get the order in. servers jam up, everything locks up. Sometimes I get home in time to my nice speedy machine downstairs and get in, of course that's the machine that's all over the floor right now being diagnosed, so there you go...no joy. These guys have made a fortune.

Woot off started yesterday morning (1AM EST). I thought I remembered Keenan doing a little woot salutation here and there. BOC usually doesn't come up until day 2, 5-7PM hour (EST). I use wooters.us, scored 2 BOCs off that, one off wootalyzer. No geek remarks from Gazoo either please. ;-)

LOL. Suffice it to say one of those cute little 10" netbooks will arrive tomorrow and I will play with it by installing the Apple operating system and the windows operating system, and a free operating system. These things make me happy. In between playing with that, I am trying to restore my main computer and the huge amount of that was attached to it. It's going a little better, but not as well as I had hoped and this makes me sad. So some manic depressive days coming up for me.

What is this 'nothing' you speak of? If I ain't playing I ain't breathing.