Thomas Jefferson

I received an email with a quote wrongly attributed to Thomas Jefferson saying; "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. " it turned out President Ford said this in 1974. While researching this I did run across a lot of good quotes by Jefferson. After reading some of Jefferson's writings, I wonder how someone could question the intent of the Right To Bear Arms in the constitution. Jefferson specifically states that the main reason the people must retain their right to bear arms is to protect themselves from Tyranny in government. He confirms his belief in God while he also cautions the public to be religiously tolerant because of historical abuses by the church.

* No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands].
o Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776) This quote often appears with the parenthetical omitted and with the spurious extension, "The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government".

* Whensoever hostile aggressions...require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.
o Letter to Andrew Jackson (December 3, 1806).

* Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
o Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807).

* And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
o Letter to William Stevens Smith (November 13, 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy

Power Corrupts

There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government. Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power. In doing so we can only assure that we will eventually be totally subject to it. When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled.

• Ronald Reagan
• Column published in Guns and Ammo (1975-09-01)

Useful VBScript pages

These scripts are links to the ActiveXperts Network Manager support pages. (I know nothing about their product but the scripts on their support site are superb!)

Scripts to manage Text Files

Checking the Size of a File Before Reading It
Creating and Naming a Text File
Creating a Text File
Generating a File Name
Reading a Text File Character by Character
Reading a Text File into an Array
Reading a Text File from the Bottom Up
Writing Data to a Text File

Plain Text Scripting

Read a Comma Separated Values Log
Read a Fixed Width Column Log

Event Log Scripting

Add WMI Data to an Event Log Entry
Back Up and Clear an Event Log
Back Up and Clear Large Event Logs
Create a Custom Event Log
Copy Event Log Events to a Database
Copy the Previous Day’s Event Log Events to a Database
Create Unique File Names for Event Log Backups
List All Events from an Event Log
List All Stop Events
List Events For a Specific Day From An Event Log
List Events From a Specific Event Log
List Event Log Properties
List Events Using an Asynchronous Query
List Specific Events from an Event Log
List System Event Log Properties
List Security Log Properties
Modify Event Log Properties
Monitor Event Logs in Real Time
Write to a Custom Event Log Using EventCreate
Write Events to the Local Event Log
Write Events to a Remote Event Log

10 Silver Stars in 1 Battle

Good story about US Special Forces battling it out with Afghani rebels. It is a little sad that the reporter felt the need to put in the story that the soldiers used the lifeless body of an orphan as cover from bullets.

Beer For My Horses

I just watched the CMT movie "Beer For My Horses", it was pretty entertaining. This movie will not win any awards, but if you enjoy the comedy of Rodney Carrington and the stories told through the music of Toby Keith then you will enjoy the movie. It is worth watching just to see some of the characters played by some great musicians like Ted Nugent, Willie Nelson, Mac Davis, Mel Tellis and David Allen Coe. Then they have a lot of grade A actors like Barry Corbin and Tom Skeret.

This is a "B" grade movie but definitely worth the time, if for nothing more than the blooper reels, make sure you watch the bloopers. With the exception of the bathroom choir the bloopers are funnier than any scene in the movie.

Tim Tebow

Like him or not, you have to respect him. Much to my dismay I sat and watched him single handidly beat my beloved Crimson Tide Saturday afternoon.

There are rumors of him getting a second Heisman Trophy this year, and I believe he deserves it. Without Tebow Florida would not have had a chance against Bama or Georgia or many of the others. He is possibly the single best College Football player I have ever seen play the game. Over the past several years I grew to dislike him, because of all the press and how people worshipped him.

In the recent months I started paying more attention to him, and quickly realized there is a lot to this young athelete. Initially he had stated he was going to forgoe the NFL for life as a missionary. I was thinking WOW, now there is a man with strong religous beliefs! I then thought, you know if he went on to play and be successful in the NFL he could do more to spread the word of the Lord there than he could in some wilderness. I also thought that if he didn't want the money, then he could still live a life of poverty and donate his proceeds to the needy. I read today that his coaches believed much as I do and he is now announcing he will make himself available for the NFL draft, stating that with the publicity and money that comes with an NFL carreer would allow him to do more for the church and his community than he could as missionary.

After reading that article I respect him now as a person as well as an athelete. Hats off to you Tebow! I hope you get the Heisman again and go on the have a great carreer in the NFL.

New York Work

Upcoming Work in New York

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Custom topo maps

This is a link to a custom topo map I created for an area where I do some nature photography. Great site!
http://www.mytopo.com/review.cfm?mytopoid=28507567BD

If GM Falls

I am not a big fan of government intervention into business, but after reviewing the repercussions of GM falling, I think that something needs to be done to prop this industry up.

Look at some of the outcomes of just one of the big 3 falling:

• Car dealers, already crippled by the credit crisis that has sapped their customers as well as their showroom, would be forced to close. Surviving dealers could convert to imports, which are expected to recover more quickly than the domestic chains. In total, the center estimates nearly 975,000 supplier and auto-related jobs would be lost in the first year.
• On a local level, families and businesses in factory towns across the Midwest and elsewhere would be crushed, as revenues and customers disappear. The center estimates that 1.7 million non-industry jobs would be lost due to the impact on auto industry incomes.
• Tax revenues would suffer as employees lose their incomes. The center estimates the shutdown of all three Detroit automakers would reduce U.S. personal income by over $150.7 billion in just the first year, costing $60.1 billion in funds for police departments, parks, highways and other government services.
  

(Source: Center for Automotive Research)

If we lose $60.1 billion in tax revenue, then taxes will be forced on to us at an even more alarming rate than it already is and Obama is already planning to up our taxes, this would give him the justification to do that. Not to mention, that those of us in the non-auto industries will be forced to take the brunt of the taxes to prop up the rest of the economy as it is.

Not to mention the cars in the US would start to look like the cars in Cuba, none of want that.

Verizon Speeds (again)

Interesting connection speeds. I was connected "With National Access" speeds which max out @ 128Kbs (not much better than dial-up) unplugged my wireless adapter from my "Cradlepoint MBR1000 router",  plugged the wireless card it into my laptop and started the VZaccess access client and went into the setup (ctrl-d passwd daigvzw) and set it to HDR (High Data Rate) only mode and reconnected it to my MBR and boom I am now back to broadband speeds or close to it anyway Downloads are still faster on my Satellite connection, but VPN and SSL is unreal slow there.

Protect Your Rights!

If you care about your personal rights keep up with the topics!

I have never been a political activist, but as the times are starting to change we are going to have to watch the issues more closely and as important issues come up get other people involved to contact congressman and senators to let them know how the public truly feels. With one party having such a majority in both the house and the senate as well as the presidency, the checks and balances are no longer as strong as they once were.


So much for "I support the Second Amendment"

Media reports say Barack Obama has selected Eric Holder as his Attorney General, and that Holder may already have accepted the offer.  Holder, as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno during the Clinton Administration, said that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right, but instead protects the right to have a firearm when serving with a militia. After leaving office, Holder stuck to that assertion when he signed Janet Reno's brief to the Supreme Court in the Heller case, which stated, "The Second Amendment does not protect firearms possession or use that is unrelated to participation in a well-regulated militia."
Remember the first thing to completely controlling a populace is the disarming of the citizens. Also remember two of the many reasons we had a revolution in this country, the unfair government taxes and England's attempt to disarm the public by taking their firearms. Obama supports both of those initiatives. The assault against our rights are already starting and not only stopping with the 2nd amendment. But also the 4th. It doesn't stop with the Democrats; Since 9/11 Bush completely ignored much of the constitution (much as Abe Lincoln did prior to the Civil War)  There is an assualt against the 4th amendment taking place right now in Washington, D.C. (The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.) As unusual as this sounds the ACLU and the NRA; usually staunch opponents of each other; are on the same sides of this issue.

Washington, D.C. is attempting, even as the ACLU of all people are taking a stand against it. Maybe they figure they have to do this before the Supreme Court decides it is against the Constitution to ban hand guns, but they are planning on searching and seizing all hand guns in the DC area. They say it is strictly voluntary, and those being searched are under immunity from prosecution, so long as they do not find a gun in your possession! (what the hell is the immunity for then?)

Look at what some people are having to say about this topic.
Johnny Barnes of the ACLU:

"If the founding fathers were not concerned with the British troops coming into their homes, we would not have the Fourth Amendment. That is why we have it. And they condition passage of the Constitutuion on passage of the Bill of Rights. This is not something to be taken lightly." (The same thing can be said of the 2nd ammendment)

Bill Tucker of CNN:

"Critics don't want constitutional rights sacrificed for some quick fix as they call the police plan."

Ronald Hampton, National Black Police Association:

We shouldn't be letting the police in. I served there (Washington, D.C.) for a quarter of a century. I wouldn't let the police in my house.

Lou Dobbs of CNN:

Well you know how I hate to take a position, but what idiot came up with this direct assault on constitutional rights? I mean, what — the people of Washington, D.C. ought to be telling somebody to stick it big time.
...
Who in Washington got this idea? The mayor? Who is this? The chief of police? (The answer was the chief of police, who was in the interview at the time)
....
The chief of police — these are the people who don't trust the people of Washington, D.C. to have a gun to protect themselves in their own homes.
....
Yes, well — I'll tell you what the chief and whoever is with the chief on this — go read the Constitution of the United States. You are out of your mind. Cut it out. This shouldn't even be a matter to take up with the ACLU or anyone else. How about that simple decency, intelligence and common sense? How about just the absolute enrapture that you might have with American values?

The idea you would knock on a man or woman's home, on their door, unbelievable. These — what are these people — what are they doing? They are not going to just let this stand, surely.
....
Who is the one person with this idea? There's always one person. I'd like to know who the hell that fool is. So to speak.

If the ACLU, National Black Police Association, CNN and the NRA are all on the same boat; thinking the same thing about the illegal seizure of weapons being a problem, (if I am agreeing with the ACLU) there are bigger problems on the horizon! Keep informed on the issues, not just these but everything that defines us as Americans!

Health monitoring in ASP.Net

Another good article from Mads, wish I would have known about this years ago!

Health monitoring in ASP.NET 2.0

ASP.net Performance Tuning

Here are a couple of tips on ASP.net performance tuning from an excellent article on the MSDN site

• Tip 8—Run IIS 6.0 (If Only for Kernel Caching)

If you're not running IIS 6.0 (Windows Server™ 2003), you're missing out on some great performance enhancements in the Microsoft Web server. In Tip 7, I talked about output caching. In IIS 5.0, a request comes through IIS and then to ASP.NET. When caching is involved, an HttpModule in ASP.NET receives the request, and returns the contents from the Cache.

If you're using IIS 6.0, there is a nice little feature called kernel caching that doesn't require any code changes to ASP.NET. When a request is output-cached by ASP.NET, the IIS kernel cache receives a copy of the cached data. When a request comes from the network driver, a kernel-level driver (no context switch to user mode) receives the request, and if cached, flushes the cached data to the response, and completes execution. This means that when you use kernel-mode caching with IIS and ASP.NET output caching, you'll see unbelievable performance results. At one point during the Visual Studio 2005 development of ASP.NET, I was the program manager responsible for ASP.NET performance. The developers did the magic, but I saw all the reports on a daily basis. The kernel mode caching results were always the most interesting. The common characteristic was network saturation by requests/responses and IIS running at about five percent CPU utilization. It was amazing! There are certainly other reasons for using IIS 6.0, but kernel mode caching is an obvious one.

• Tip 9—Use Gzip Compression

While not necessarily a server performance tip (since you might see CPU utilization go up), using gzip compression can decrease the number of bytes sent by your server. This gives the perception of faster pages and also cuts down on bandwidth usage. Depending on the data sent, how well it can be compressed, and whether the client browsers support it (IIS will only send gzip compressed content to clients that support gzip compression, such as Internet Explorer 6.0 and Firefox), your server can serve more requests per second. In fact, just about any time you can decrease the amount of data returned, you will increase requests per second.

The good news is that gzip compression is built into IIS 6.0 and is much better than the gzip compression used in IIS 5.0. Unfortunately, when attempting to turn on gzip compression in IIS 6.0, you may not be able to locate the setting on the properties dialog in IIS. The IIS team built awesome gzip capabilities into the server, but neglected to include an administrative UI for enabling it. To enable gzip compression, you have to spelunk into the innards of the XML configuration settings of IIS 6.0 (which isn't for the faint of heart). By the way, the credit goes to Scott Forsyth of OrcsWeb who helped me figure this out for the www.asp.net severs hosted by OrcsWeb.

Rather than include the procedure in this article, just read the article by Brad Wilson at IIS6 Compression. There's also a Knowledge Base article on enabling compression for ASPX, available at Enable ASPX Compression in IIS. It should be noted, however, that dynamic compression and kernel caching are mutually exclusive on IIS 6.0 due to some implementation details.

Visual Basic Functions in C#

Visual Basic functions in C# 2.0

by Mads Kristensen

Yet another great and useful article from Mads


If you used to be a VB developer, but for some reason are writing C# now, you probably miss a couple of functions. I remember being a little frustrated when I did the conversion from VB.NET to C#. It was March 2005 and I made the shift on the .NET 2.0 beta platform. I couldn’t understand why C# didn’t have some of the simplest functions like IsNumeric() and IsDate(). Also Left(), Right() and Middle() were missing. You could add a reference to the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, but that seemed like overkill for a few simple methods.
So I decided to make my own static class in C# 2.0 called VBFunctions that would implement exactly the four methods I was missing so much. This seems pretty basic and it is. But I use these functions again and again and now I have a single place to find them.

Prepare for growing projects

Another excellent article from one of my favorite bloggers! This article discusses items that are often missed from the start and makes our code a mess to keep up with!
Prepare for growing projects

Before I went into business for myself this would have been me!

A mere 8 months ago this article would have been me. Since that time I have changed my ways, because I don't have the time to manage the consequences. Unlike the author in the article below my track record still stands!

http://blog.madskristensen.dk/post/Ie28099m-ashamed-e28093-very-ashamed.aspx

Determine If The Current Time Falls Within a Range

This code is useful if you need to determine if the current time falls between two other times, and then execute some code or processes based on the results. This implements a user-defined function named InRange().

Declarations:

'(None)

Code:

Public Function InRange(startTime As Date, endTime As Date) As Boolean

    Dim dtNow As Date

    dtNow = Now

    Select Case TimeValue(dtNow)
        Case Is > TimeValue(startTime)
            If TimeValue(endTime) > TimeValue(dtNow) Then
                InRange = True
            End If
        Case Is > TimeValue(startTime)
            If TimeValue(endTime) > TimeValue(dtNow) Then
                InRange = True
            Else
                InRange = False
            End If
        Case Is < TimeValue(startTime) And (TimeValue(endTime) > TimeValue(dtNow))
                InRange = True
        Case Else
            InRange = False
    End Select

End Function

Private Sub Form_Load()
     Debug.Print InRange(CDate("03:00:00"), CDate("18:00:00"))
End Sub

Testing Internet Connection State

This article describes an easy approach to building two controls used to monitor the status of an internet connection and provide the user with some indication of that status. Within the attached project, there are two controls, one shows the user what the connection type is and whether or not the machine is connected or offline, the other one is used to show some indication of the quality of the connection in terms of whether or not the connection is good, intermittent, or offline.

Collect User Information from Installations

This article-style submission describes an easy approach to keeping track of each installation of an application. The intent of the example is to demonstrate the use of a simple web service to collect and store information about each user and machine running the application. If the application has not been registered, it is disabled and the user is informed that registration is required.

The Dakota Fire Hole

Neat article on creating a fire and making it so others can't see it.

The Dakota Fire Hole

New FCC Review Committee

A recent article from DSL Reports could mean good or bad things for the future of broadband deployment. Obama has pegged two long term net nuetrality advocates to head up his FCC (Federal Communications Commision) Review Committee. Kevin Werbach a former FCC staffer and Susan Crawford a University of Michigan Law professor.  I cannot argue that the FCC needs to be over hauled, they have controlled the air waves like a tyrant for many, many years (in the future this may prove to be a good thing). They both have argued that broadband proliferation in the US has been dismal, making it too hard for some to get highspeed connectivity (I have to agree with this, as I have to use Satellite connectivity combined with a Verizon wireless card to get on the internet because I live 3 miles from the DSL termination point in my area).

What worries me is that they both push that internet connectivity should be classed as a utility not as a commercial service. This makes sense in some aspects, but with that governance, companies may move even slower to push services out to the rural areas in fear of loss of profits. This type of governance usually means additional taxes along with the utility (look at your phone bill for an example of that).   Government regulated utilities or services normally move slower than a free market service and at times make things more difficult for the consumer. A good example of how they have made things more difficult is as follows:

I live in an area where I cannot get cable tv. On a clear night I can receive 3 channels through an "over the air" antenna to get the free channels normally I only get 2 reliably. I opted for satellite TV from Dish Network, which offers the normally free Network channels through their service, but because of government regulations for utilities Dish Network has to get "permission" from the local Network providers to deliver the service to my location. Since I live in a certain radius of the local Network towers, even though I cannot reliably receive the signal from my antenna that is mounted 25 feet over my second story roof, the local networks will not give Dish Network permission to deliver the signal to my location.    

I can hope that the new committee will bring good things to me, because of my previous experiences with government regulated utilities I am not going to hold my breath.
.

Verizon Broadband Connection

Broadband speeds from Verizon is actually faster on download speeds than my hotel provided "highspeed" internet connection
Verizon:


Hotel Connection at Marriot Courtyard

Off to B'ham

Off to B'ham to finish off the latest Job. Hopefully I will be able to stop over in Sylacuaga to do some Sporting Clays on my way back tomorrow

Current Verizon Speeds

Current Speeds

Verizon EVDO settings

If you live in a "fringe" area of coverage sometimes you have a stronger "National Access" signal than "Broadband Rev A" signal. When this happens the VZW client swaps over to the slower connection, even if there is still sufficient EVDO signal to stay connected.  If you are using a security sensitive application like a VPN when this happens then you will be dropped and will have to reconnect.

There is an answer to this. With your card inserted in your laptop start your VZW client. Then hit ctl-d enter the super secret password of diagvzw click settings on the menu then choose HDR only.

Having problems exporting from DASblog

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/DasBlogML