Hows that bailout?

Well, I thought I had seen it all and then all of a sudden my congress passes a $700billion bailout for the bunch of thieves in AIG and Fanny Mae with absolutely no accountability.  The bailout amount isn’t really known, what is known is that the $700 billion amount is for the distressed assets.  Some of these assets produce profits, but the entire portfolio will still lose money.  Good lord.  Talk about bailing out the wrong people.  I guess this bailout means that the people that couldn’t pay their loans get away scott free and those struggling to make their loans and do it honestly get screwed.  I swear, this makes me want to be a freeloader so bad.  I have $117,000 left on my house loan, $72,000 in student loans, and a couple of credit cards.  A chunk of that would really help.

According tot he US Census Bureau the population of the US is 305,000,000 U.S. citizens.   Yes, that figure is only legal citizens, not the convicts that come over here illegally.  Doing some simple math; $700 billion could give every legal citizen $2,295,081.95 in their pockets.  The government could tax that about before it goes to each person.  Let’s say they impose a 45% tax on it.  This would leave $1,262,295 in every legal U.S. citizens pocket.  Keep in mind that this is every legal citizen regardless of age.

According to the US census beaureau 75.4% of the population is over 18 years of age.  That in and of itself is very scary, but lets look at it in ralation to this bailout and $700 billion.  This means that of 305 million people 230 million people are over the age of 18.  Lets take out the 38,000,000 or 12.4% 65 years or older since our working class is considered to be between the ages of 18 and 65.  This leaves 192,000,000 people in our working class.  Lets give them the $700 billion with a 45% tax.  Based on the U.S. census beaureau and doing a little math using the bailout figure that is known, and a 45% tax we could give every man and woman within the working class range $1,640,624.

What could legal U.S. citizens do with $1.6 million a piece?  Pay off bills?  Pay off loans?  Get out of debt?  Buy things in stores?  Afford things?  Spark the economy?  Quite personally, I think the money is being used in the wrong place and most of the money will probably be sent overseas.  There will be no one held accountable, no investigation…no controls on it.  I have to admit.  I am really let down.  Congress, our senators, could have helped every man, woman and child but instead they decided to help a bunch of fat cats with deep wallets.  I will be looking at who voted yes on this and they will not recieve a vote from me.  They didn’t listen to the people.

I know there are some problems with my line of thought, such as those on welfare and don’t want to work.  Naturally, they should not be a part of it but because of the type of guy I am I would give them at least 1% of what was given to everyone else that does want to work.

I don’t know though.  It just seems like common sense to help the people because that is where the problem is.  Not holding anyone accountable and helping out the business that caused the problem will just enable them to continue to cause the problem.  It’s a bandaid fix, and a plan to make a LOT of people rich, or should I say richer.  It’s not designed to help anyone except those approving it.

Epic Fail Domino’s Pizza Old Shell Rd Mobile Al

I remember a day when domino’s pizza was a class A pizza pie establishment.  What has happened to it?  I ordered a pie for my son and I tonight and, to make a long story short.  My son rather eat a peanut butter sandwich than to eat the pizza that was delivered to us.  I ate it because I was starved, but now I think I am going to regret it.  I’m writing this blog post so quickly after just in case I die from eating it.

The pepperoni didn’t taste like pepperoni.  They had a sweet rotten taste and the smell was just as bad.   The crust  was thin and appeared  to be either a small or a medium crust  slapped out to be a large.  It couldn’t even hold it’s shape.  There was maybe a teaspoon of sauce on the damn thing, so little that I was eating greasy cheese dough.

Okay so what made this worse?  I tried to order the pizza from online, but the location for my area couldn’t do online orders.  This should have been tip #1 that this was a bad place.  This is 2008 in the 21st century, get with the program.  Next, I stupidly called them on my cell phone and listened to their specials menu.  At the very end, I heard the one I wanted.  I got ’special 25′ which was the Cloaked Batman Large pepperoni pizza with cinnamon sticks.  I pressed 0 and got to the order taker.  “Special 25″ I say with great enthusiasm…..silence….”Thats the large pie with batman on it.”  “Oh, you want the Batman pizza”  the order taker says (Tip #2 not knowing the menu).  “Yes, that’s the one” I said with a bit of self satisfaction.  It’s not often that I make myself clear to people, but this time I did.  I communicated.  The order taker tells me the price will be $14.29.  I thought that wasn’t too bad for a pie with 50% more pepperoni, and cinnamon sticks.

Me and my son wait 30 minutes. The delivery driver knocks on my door.  I greet him with much enthusiasm because I was hungry, and I really wanted those cinnamon sticks.  The delivery driver hands me the pizza, I then reach out to get the cinnamon sticks, but instead, he hands me a piece of paper.  “Sign this” he says.  I sign it, and hand it back with a $3 tip and wait patiently for him to reach back into his steaming hot sack for my cinnamon sticks.  He turned to leave…..”Ahem, where are my cinnamon sticks?” I asked.  Dumbfounded, the delivery driver looks at his stomach where some orders were stuck.  “You didn’t have any” he said in a dull murmur, “but I will check when I get back” he continued.

That did not make me happy.  So me and my son started eating the pizza.  My son was like “YUCK!, make me a peanut butter sandwich daddy.”  He asked in an almost apologetic way.  I did….the pizza was absolutely horrid (note above).  While we are eating, I get a phone call from Domino’s to ‘verify’ my order.  I told the lady I wanted ’special 25′ and she replied “I thought you just wanted the pizza.”  “No no i wanted special 25″ I explain.  The lady puts me on hold….me and my cell phone on hold….minutes are ticking by.  The lady comes on and says that I didn’t pay for the combo.  I say, “But it was $14.29.”  She informs me that the price was from taxes and for delivery.  The pie itself was only $9.99, so an extra $5.30 for taxes and delivery.  Wow, just wow.  I gave the driver a $3 tip, so I paid an extra $8.30 plus my cell minutes for a $9.99 pizza.

Anyhow, I digress, after being held on hold and having to wait, I kind of expected the store eat the charge and send me the damn cinnamon sticks, but no.  That’s not how it went at all.  The lady came back on the phone and said “We will send you out the cinnamon sticks if you pay the difference.”

ZOUNDS!  I couldn’t believe it.  The pie sucked, I didn’t get the cinnamon sticks, and by my estimation from the cell phone minutes with the extra money for taxes and delivery, I spent a whopping $26.32 for a $9.99 pie.

I decided to try something else other than Papa Johns…I have seen the error of my ways.  I won’t be giving domino’s my money ever again.  Now excuse me while I go throw up.

Run an inexpensive computer

I’ve been asked by friends how they can run an inexpensive computer without need of buying a bunch of over priced commercial programs. My first response is always - open source. Unfortunately, there is a mindset that states “If it’s free, then it has to suck.” I say balderdash! Open source software is as good or better than high-end bought stuff.

The first thing I do to a new computer is to remove the corporate installation of the operating system. I remove all the junk the vendor thinks a person would ever need….usually it’s nothing more than evaluation software, nagware, and the occasional virus diguised as a useable piece of software (e.g.; MacAfee Anti-virus) Once I reimage a machine to it’s most minimal installation I start the procedure of setting it up for my needs.

So what do I use most of the time while I am computing? Here it is. For simplicity and commonality, this is based mainly off what I run on my MS Windows XP computers and touching a little bit of my Linux computers.

I use Linux as an operating system on most of my computers, and just recently made a gui move to Ubuntu. It’s top rate, and extremely well put together. There is a significant learning curve for a person born and raised on Windows like me. Here is the link to ubuntu, and I highly recommend it to any Windows user looking for a change.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Now Linux isn’t for everyone, but if you do decide to take the plunge there is an excellent application that will allow you to emulate windows and be able to run windows free applications while on linux. The application is called WINE (WINdoze Emulator). If you are on Ubuntu, you can install it from the command line with apt-get.

http://www.winehq.org/

It will allow you to run most windows applications. The latest version is top notch.

Alternatively, there is a linux distribution that you can run natively on windows called CoLinux and it works fairly descent. With this, you can run linux apps on your Windows machine

http://www.colinux.org/

For web development, I use either Notepad++ or Aptana. Typically, I have them both open. They are both excellent programming interfaces.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
http://www.aptana.com/

For ftp, I use Filezilla for both client and server

http://filezilla-project.org/

For telnet and secure shell, I use Putty

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

For web browser, I use Firefox, and email I use thunderbird

http://www.mozilla.com

For Word Processing and other office style applications I use OpenOffice which will allow me to open word documents, excel documents, etc. It also spports saving in pdf. This is a complete office suite like MS Office, but without the price.

http://www.openoffice.org/

A good free pdf printer is PrimoPDF

http://www.primopdf.com/

I use GIMP for picture processing, and Adobe has released their free online PhotoShop express.

http://www.gimp.org/

To make dvd movies I use an excellent lightweight dvd maker called SoThink Movie DVD Maker

http://www.sothinkmedia.com/movie-dvd-maker/

To view and edit image exif information I use a program called PhotoMe which I think is simply the best.

http://www.photome.de/

For virus scan I use AVG. I tried Avast but since Grisoft has sold, their program updates are becoming top shelf once again.

http://free.grisoft.com/

For zipping things up I use 7-Zip

http://www.7-zip.org/

Stardock Objectdock is an excellent organizational menu…it’s very cool and gives you a Mac feel

http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

For voice recording and mp3 transfers I use Audacity and AudioGrabber

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

For burning iso’s I use Burn At Once

http://www.burnatonce.net/

Lets see now. For fun things, like running virtual servers I enjoy VirtualBox. It is simply the best virtual machine software out there. This is where you can build as many computers as you want using as many different operating systems that you want. What ever I fancy at the time I can run. Currently, my Mudd is running on Linux….

http://www.virtualbox.org/

I think that’s it. If there is a need for an application, then the chances are there is a really good open source software out there. A good place to start your first look into the open source world is Open Source Windows.

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/