Gran Torino

It is official, Clint Eastwood has made two of the best films ever made.
1. The Outlaw Josey Wales
2. Gran Torino

Both movies are a testament to human behavior and how it is molded by tragedy, warfare, ethnic/cultural differences and trust in people that they thought they would never befriend. An entire thesis on social behavior could be written on either movie.

Both movies show an over the top white guy who everyone misjudges on the surface, who in the end, shows that everyone was wrong about him, he is hard to survive in the only way he knows, by the sword. Clint Eastwood has a way of finding stories that show the backbone of America and how things should be. Gran Torino is fabulous and Clint Eastwood is one of the only actors who could have pulled it off without the media blasting him.

Verizon Speeds are so wacky

I don't understand why sometimes I will get around 160Kbps download speeds from Verizon and then I get speeds like this. If I could consistently get these speeds I wouldn't complain about my access.



The connection speeds above are with a cellular direct connect Wilson amplifier. The only problem is the direct connect is subject to "interference" from other providers and occasionally will try to put me on the AT&T broadband and I will lose the connection all together. The speed posted below is with a repeater type amplifier, that is slower, but usually a little more stable. It is still faster than an ISDN line though.



I think I am finally going to break down and get the parabolic grid antenna that I keep talking about.

H.R. 197-- the "National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act."

H.R. 197 has been introduced that is a positive step forward to the rights of a citizen to travel with the protection they are granted by the constitution. The bill has 127 co-sponsors in the House. Not surprisingly all of the southern states are sponsoring the bill, but to my surprise the bill is also co-sponsored by Representatives from PA, NJ, IL, CA, IN, MI, ME, and OH.  Keep in mind that there are 435 members of the House of Representatives and not all representatives of each state are in support of the bill. This means that less than half of the House has agreed to support the bill and no major action has been taken on it since 2/9/09. Similar bills in the Senate are S.371, S.845 both have 22 co-sponsors and the latest action on them were on 4/21/09.

This bill would allow any person with a valid carry permit or license issued by a state, to carry a concealed firearm in any other state if the permit holder meets certain criteria. In states that issue permits, a state's laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. In states that do not issue carry permits, a federal standard would apply. The bill would not create a federal licensing system; it would simply require the states to recognize each other's carry permits, just as they recognize drivers' licenses.

For more information on H.R. 197, please click here.


To see if your Representative is a cosponsor of H.R. 197, please click here.

Lloyds Bank hit by Obama tax purge

In a struggling economy all we need is for foriegn banking establishments to be scared to accept clients with ties to the United States. The following excerpts from the article are the highlights from the UK Telegraph article:

This week American private client account-holders at Lloyds's received letters informing them of an "important change in policy regarding clients who are resident, domiciled or linked to the United States by property or asset holdings". They were told the bank had "no choice" but to "cease acting as your investment manager."

The Sunday Telegraph reported that British banks and stockbrokers were threatening to close down accounts held by American citizens due to concerns over new international tax proposals could make it too expensive for them to service the clients.

APCIMS, the trade body whose members manage £400bn of Britain's wealth and employ 25,000 people, sent a letter to the US Treasury's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaining that the "unfair'' proposals represent "no benefit but . . . significant cost'' to its members.

Joke???

From a June 3, 2009 NY Times interview
“We have a joke around the White House,” the president said. “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working — and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.”

Was this supposed to be funny? What do you do when it doesn't work? Lie? That sure seems to be the recipe for the attacks on gun ownership, one of the biggest examples of late are the reports on Mexican gun violence being a by product of US gun runners has been a lie. The numbers were directly disputed by reports from the FBI and those published by the Mexican authorities as well. I am not a fan of Bush's last term or his blatant disregard for the Constitiution, but if he would have made this statement the press would have blasted him and labeled him a liar; it would have been headlines across the country. Instead they use this to promote him as an honest President. Time is yet to tell; personally I distrust 99% of all politicians.

Verizon Speeds Again

 I can not determine why my Verizon connection speeds are so good at times but at other times they suck. Today was another good day.


I am surprised at how fast the upload speeds are. I still want to try the Parabolic Grid Antenna.

Virtualization for Dummies

In my job I have to read a lot of Vendor biased documentation, and occaisionally I run across a document that is actually useful for more than just understanding a certain vendors offering and can be applied across the board.

This article on virtualization, actually describes it pretty well and discusses why it is important. Keep in mind it does have a slant toward AMD processors and SUN, but nevertheless a good read of how different types of virtualization works specifically around x86 hardware. This document is mainly geared toward the SMB market and does not address the high end hardware virtualization methods of IBM, HP or even SUN. It is written by the authors of the "For Dummies" series of books so it is fairly easy to read, even if some of the content will make your head swim.