@cmiper Check out Anywhere.FM-...

@cmiper Check out Anywhere.FM--my music library is at http://anywhere.fm/thepete I think they make you sign up after a few songs.

OK, time to rinse the dye out ...

OK, time to rinse the dye out of my hair. Yep--it's that time of the month again!

Bush's Keen Eyes Notice Economy Getting Worse

Source for the above screen cap: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news

I meant to post about this a couple days ago when I first saw it. It's like Bush is paying attention to our failing economy in time-release caplet-form.

Seriously, everyone's talking about it already--some of us have been talking about it for years.

I don't think all the jobs in the world added will help when the US government borrows $1 trillion for wars. That kind of borrowing causes some major inflation--as in, it drives the value of the USD down. I don't see how giving more people low-valued dollars will help things.

So, now, with talk of the Fed dropping interest rates by another half-percent, one wonders if they're not just making it worse--especially since they've already dropped rates a startling 1.25% in the past couple weeks and that hasn't helped.

I think it might be time for America to stop spending money abroad, both in the form of wars and other expenditures, as well (like foreign aid to countries, sadly).

I think our economy is spread way too thin to continue to support itself. If some new solutions are tried I see things getting worse before they get better.

Of course, I'm just a guy with a blog. What do I know?

I'm just glad we have the eagle-eyes of our beloved leader, George W. Bush, on the job!
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Nobody Tell Me Macs Are Perfect

Because they're not--I love my Macs way more than I ever loved my PCs, but have a look at what OSX and/or Firefox does. The top browser popped into being above the menubar. On Macs, the only place you can drag windows from are the titlebars. Of course, if you can't reach the titlebars, the best you can do is force-quit (ctrl+alt+del for Windows folks) and restart the browser in hopes that it won't happen again. This isn't a huge deal these days--but in the days before session managers to remember your tabs, it really sucked. Nowadays it's just annoying as heck (not hell).

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Death Photo of Ernie Pyle: WW2 Embedded Reporter

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/…rticle.php

Sorry if anyone is offended by the above photo--I think as pictures of dead people go, this one's pretty tame. Plus many view him as an American hero, so I think it's important that we all see this picture.

See, I always thought that embedded reporting started with Iraq in 2003--but apparently, it goes way back, but wasn't called the same thing. Ernie Pyle was probably the most famous American embedded reporter of World War II. He was shot in the temple by Japanese soldiers and died immediately. It was 1945 and he was 44.

His intensely personal columns covering the frontlines of the war won a Pulitzer and the hearts of America. When he was killed, it made the headlines. Late last year I was visiting a friend of mine up in Burbank --we wandered into a used bookshop where they had an original newspaper reporting the death of Ernie Pyle.

Sadly, that was the first time I'd heard of the man. It sounds like he was an amazing individual. Sadly, the above picture has barely ever been seen and no negatives are known to exist, so I'm trying to put it in front of as many people as possible.

I feel like most Americans don't understand how important and how dangerous it is to be a reporter. Well, a *real* reporter. Not someone like Anderson Cooper or one of the idiots on Fox News, who have make-up and hair people standing by. Pyle was the real thing.
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We Shell Out and Shell Oil Rakes in Huge Profits

The above screencap comes from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/news.html

Haha, dig that pun in the title for this post!

Anyway, so the article is pretty self-explanatory as is the headline. Just because the price of oil goes up it doesn't mean their profits should go up as well. In fact, unless they're hiking up prices even more, their profits should be going *down* not up.

See, what is happening here is that Shell is charging us more for their product--but they've increased the price of gasoline at a rate that is not commensurate to the price-increase oil has gone through.

In other words, they're getting greedy.

One of the theories of the Free Market goes like this:

You can charge as much as you like for your product so long as the market will bear it.

Another way to put this is to say: As long as people are buying, your price isn't too high.

What the Free-Market-thing doesn't really take into consideration is that sometimes people will buy something they need even if they can't afford it.

Housing is a good example. Health care is another. So what happens when you can't afford to buy those things but you need to anyway? You take out a loan.

We know how that goes. The number one reason people declare bankruptcy these days is because of health care costs. Another popular reason? Housing loans. Perhaps you've heard of the recent sub-prime mortgage mess?

So, some of us (even those of us who don't drive SUVs) are paying in excess of $30-$40 (and even $50) to fill our tanks up. A friend of mine who does drive an SUV pays $350 a month on gasoline. That's a car payment or in some areas of the country a month's rent.

So, are we going to start taking out loans just to buy gas? I'm not suggesting that--I bet we're going to end up sacrificing other things instead. That new suit for work, or the new TiVo or better car insurance, health or life insurance, those nice things you want to buy your family and friends on birthdays, nights out with your significant other--that sort of thing.

There are a lot of "little" things we can all sacrifice so that companies like Shell can keep all that cash coming in.

And we'll have to sacrifice a lot of them just to keep our cars running. What choice do we have?

Of course, companies like Shell *could* reinvest their profits into diversifying their products. They could spend some of those gobs of cash on alternative fuels--solar, wind or hydro power for cars.

They could quite easily do that--What, you don't think $28 billion would go a long way to developing other power sources for cars?

What about the profits of the other oil companies? What about car companies? Shouldn't *all* cars be hybrids or better by now?

We consumers can't change things like this--only the oil and car companies can.

I guess they're not just greedy but lazy, too.

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In a weird mood. Not quite tir...

In a weird mood. Not quite tired enough to go to sleep early, not quite awake enough to be productive. Want to veg, but don't want to bother

ThePete.Cam: At Groundwork for TheSaturdaily

Me eating an onion, cheese and egg bagel before diving into my novel. Or rather trying to dive into it. It was a little hard today thanks to two people who insisted on using their outdoor voices. Grrr.

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In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

How did this movie do in the theater?

Did anyone see it? Anyone at all?
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Healthy WHAT?

A couple of nights ago I was walking through the supermarket and saw
this in my peripheral vision. It looked like something else was written
there. I think it was the word "corn" that actually covers part of the
"p" making it look like an "o".

I was hoping Fricka might chime in on this one as she's a graphic
designer--am I just being too sensitive--ready to see the worst? Or is
this as bad as it looks?
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