Digital Television Transition – starts today

Today is February 17th 2009… up until a few week ago when President Barack Obama signed into law the “DTV Delay Act” officially making the new date June 12th because the government ran out of money for coupons to offset the cost of converter boxes.

Regardless, in many communities some television stations will end their analog transmissions and begin digital-only.

I’m all for digital content as the quality is obviously better, but from my background in communications it’ll likely be impaired more by foul weather and not have the range of the analog stations in the past… oh, well!

REFERENCES:

Cheers!

Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day.

As a former submarine sailor, and son of a career Navy “Chief”, I’ve got first hand experience as to the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.  Please take the time to thank them for their service to the country, not just today…. but every day.

If you’re a vet, please consider joining one of these or the many other organizations that support you:

If you’re a civilian, please consider contributing to one of these organizations or their respective causes.

I salute you all.

Open Source Office Suite

I am surprised that I have failed to neglect this topic for such a long time.

Some of the most common business applications in use are in the Microsoft Office suite, notably Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you’ve ever had to purchase this package at retail prices, you were probably amazed at just how expensive this package is, particularly when you only use a small portion of the functionality that they each provide.

The alternative is to use compatible software; originally this meant that you relied on one of many packages that were available in the free-domain. Sun has it’s StarOffice suite which was later released as OpenOffice which over several releases has become the Gold Standard for office suites. It is available on most platforms and is regularly updated. Many features even outperform the Microsoft offerings, my favorite of which is to save just about any document in PDF format.

Cheers

Chiropractic Care

Like most ‘nerds’, I’ve had my share of back and neck pain. As I’ve aged, I’ve also experienced some severe lower-back pains. I’ve found that main stream doctors simply prescribe medicine, typically pain killers to mask or hide the pain, but never seem to actually resolved the core problem. In an effort to live a less ‘medicated’ and pain-free life I’ve turned to chiropractic care with great success.

Let me be clear here, I was on a jury several years ago where chiropractors were essentially labeled as quacks, and their services amount to massage. I’ve even had a personal doctor (that I no longer see) that treated me like I had seen a witch-doctor when i said that I’d gone to a chiropractor after an emergency room visit for severe pain that I thought was a kidney-stone. This is clearly not the case as I’ve seen numerous almost immediate benefit after very brief visits to a chiropractor where I’ve taken medications for months with no change in a problem.

Here are a few doctors that I’ve used and recommend:

Cheers!

G.I. Bill 2008

On June 30th, 2008, President Bush signed the new GI Bill into law, marking the end of a year and a half long struggle to ensure today’s veterans get the benefits they have earned.

Being a veteran of the first Gulf War, my benefits were much smaller. To compare, here are the benefits I received:

  • $1200 buy in, this amounted to $100/month for the first 12 months of my enlistment in the Navy. (As an E-1 or E-2, this was a fairly large amount of the monthly paycheck).

In 1995-1998 while I was in college, I received the following:

  • 10 years to use benefits from time of separation from service.
  • 36 months receiving $340-430/month as a check (it raised each year as “Cost of Living” increases, the most significant only 2 months before completing school).
  • No Housing Allowance, though rent in Chicago area was apx. $700/month
  • No additional amount for books.
  • No ability to transfer unused benefits to spouse and siblings. (especially as I used every cent).

The new bill represents a significant change in benefits, I applaud all groups and individuals that made it happen, I’m only saddened that I could not take advantage of this new plan as school left me with lots of debt that took years to repay.

Cheers!

WINE Is Not an Emulator

I post a lot about open source applications, WINE is another notable contender as it gives users an option to run many mainstream Window applications on a Linux (even Apple’s OS/X variant) platform by providing access to the Windows API’s to those host operating systems.

http://www.winehq.org/
http://appdb.winehq.org/ – List of applications supported

Ah, for those of you still running IBM’s OS/2 platform, you too can run Win32 applications with Odin:
http://odin.netlabs.org/

Cheers!

Closed on the sale of the ‘old’ house!

On Friday March 28th “we” no longer have two households. It’s been a long and arduous journey, involving three separate realtors (long story), re-painting and lots of other work, but the house is finally sold after almost 10 months in this market.

Thanks goes to the following, of which I recommend for your future needs…

Selling agents:
John & Pat LaDeur of Stark Realty in Bloomingdale, IL

Attorney:
Michael A. Galason

We’ll miss the old home in Carol Stream as we’d been there almost 8 full years, but new adventures and memories are already being formed in the new house.

whew!

Happy Leap Day

Ah,  we have an extra day this year.   Each time it reminds me of just how many people assume that these happen every four years, completely disregarding the rule or reason for these.

  1. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year,
  2. of those years, if it is divisible by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless
  3. the year is divisible by 400, in which case it IS a leap year.

The year 2000 was a leap year for this reason, as you can see… unless you apply all of the rules, your programatic date calculations may be incorrect in these cases.

While on the topic, there’s also the little known concept as a ‘leap second’, unless you are involved in communications or scientific applications you are probably not aware of this.   Back when I was involved in submarine communications, we used to have to update our atomic (cesium beam) clocks to accomodate this irregularly planned change.

References:

By the way, Happy Birthday to you ‘young ones’ born today!

Immigration Reform?

Last year I witnessed first hand the numerous protests in Chicago for immigration reform.   This email from a friend of mine (Annette) echoes most of my feelings on the topic.

“Let’s say I break into your house” 

A lady wrote the best letter in the Editorials in ages!!! It explains things better than all the baloney you hear on TV.

Her point:
Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand
the thinking behind these protests.
Let’s say I break into your house.
Let’s say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, “I’ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I’ve done all the things you don’t like to do. I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).”

According to the protesters:

You are Required to let me stay in your house
You are Required to add me to your family’s insurance plan
You are Required to Educate my kids
You are Required to Provide other benefits to me and to my family
(my husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.
It’s only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I’m a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.
And oh yeah, I get a free education, where you have to pay your own way through college.(TEEHEE)
And what a deal it is for me!!!

I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me. And don’t forget to make sure your forms are in MY language – I need to understand them…

Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America!

If you agree, pass it on ( in English ).
Share it if you see the value of it.
If not blow it off……… along with your future Social Security funds, and a lot of other things.

In closing, we’re all immigrants to this country, it’s even been scientifically proven that Native American (Indians) migrated across the Siberia-Alaska “land-bridge”.
My simple point here is that past generations of immigrants came to this country and had to survive on their own merits and hard-work, they were not given a free ticket as the current Liberal movement in this country insists on providing.

Water fountains in the desert, so that the illegals don’t die of dehydration…. Please!”   How many European immigrants died on their way to their America?  And they were, generally immigrating via legal means!

Good Day!