Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

Another year is gone and another year is starting. Can you look back over the last year and conclude that you spent your time in a worthwhile manner? If you can’t, now is the time to plan your new year. I will be so bold as to offer suggestions: TELL the people you love that you love them. You think they know but make sure they know. Take the time to explain something to a child. The key here is take the time, we are all busy but childhood is short. Don’t miss it. Do something that may help someone else. Do it without looking for a reward of any type. Just do it! Make family your top priority! If we all take care of our own, then they won’t be dependent on the charity of others which may not exist. Practice tolerance, whether you recognize your own prejudices or not, be tolerant of others. Instead of emulating the demagogues who rant and rave on TV and radio, have pity on them for their narrow point of view. Have enough sense to know that advice unask...

As mentioned in a previous post, I would love to have a Droid but can’t quite justify going with the $30/month charge for connection. I have to admit that I am impressed with what I have seen. I sat in my grandson’s Christmas pageant and saw the little dot on the map to show where I was. BTW this was before it started, I am geeky but I wouldn’t be phone playing while my grandson was singing. Anyway, I am weakening. I really liked the real time map feature and the screen is very bright and legible. I have avoided looking at available aps since I don’t want to increase my envy depression. The ability to scan bar codes while in a store and compare brick and mortar prices would drive me stark raving mad as a retailer but as a consumer, wow! What a nice feature. Only 18% of the cell phone population currently has a smart phone. What an open market for the vendors. I am going to try and hold off to see what the Google Phone will do. It is reputed to out do their own pr...

I’m detecting a pattern in some of my posts. A certain disgruntlement seems to permeate my normally cheerful demeanor. It may be the holiday season and it may be age. I do my best to say what I mean, do what I say I will do and to honor my word. I tried to do that the entire time I owned my businesses. Sometimes it appears that is not the case nor the interest of many current businesses. When I discover that is the case, I try and write about it so that someone else doesn’t repeat my mistakes. I admit, sometimes I would like to see people make the same mistakes as I do so I won’t feel like the only village idiot. I try not to be that person. I still feel most people are decent human beings. I have noted that the customer service people in the recent “rants” were pleasant and courteous and powerless. I don’t feel everyone is out to get me(thank you Frank Burns of Mash). I don’t think the nation of Italy is morally bankrupt due to the ludicrous conviction, with...

I don’t know if referring to someone else’s blog is still blogging or just being a traffic cop. I read an interesting article on the impending demise of optical storage. It is on zdnet and by Robin Harris. His article pointed out that hard drive storage capacity is growing and is still considerably faster than optical storage as well as cheaper. He cites the historic precedents of punch cards, tape, small capacity floppy drives and escalating changes. He ends by asking hard drive manufactures to come up with archive quality hard drives. I enjoyed the article and agreed with much of what he said. I do heartily agree that there is a need for archive quality hard drives. Until a hard drive exists of that quality, I will continue archiving on optical disks, both CD and DVD. I haven’t moved into blu-ray and don’t anticipate doing so. By the time I finish burning the major stack of optical media I have, there will be some better alternative.

I have Verizon for my cellular carrier. I was going to upgrade my phone to the new LG enV Touch. I have the LG Dare which I really like but I liked the idea that I could load documents into the enV and read them. Thusly I would be able to stick a couple of books into my phone for those long Drs office waits, traffic jams etc. where you wish you had a book. I went into the Verizon site to upgrade, added in the stuff I wanted and got to the review portion of the order. It showed a $9.99 per month data package. I didn’t want a data package. If I was going with a data package, I would go with the new Droid. So I hit edit and tried to take the data package off. After many frustrating minutes, I called customer service. It turns out that you can’t get that phone unless you get the data package. It is interesting that the only time you clearly see that requirement is when you are ready to finalize the upgrade. If you aren’t careful and don’t thoroughly read the upgrade...

Toys-R-Us was advertising Lego bargains. Buy one at regular price and get the second one at 50% off. Anyone who has purchased Lego knows that they seldom are on sale. I was pumped to nail down my Christmas shopping in one fell swoop. Ha! Even when the item said it was in stock, it was lying. You added the item to the cart and a message would come up stating that the below number was how many they really had and there was no number shown below. After trying all the combinations of items that I could conceivably guess might be acceptable as gifts for my grandchildren I realized that there was no inventory of Lego. I called and got a delightful young lass who told me the web site often wasn’t up to date on inventory. She checked a few of the items I had hoped to purchase and confirmed they were not in stock. I asked if there was any possibility they would be back in stock prior to Christmas. She had no idea but I should keep coming back to the website and try to bu...

I sit here listening to Christmas music and printing out photos for my Christmas tree photo ornaments. I enjoy using the photo ornaments for stuffing stuffers. Of course I enjoy giving the grandkids ones of me in Santa hats or other silly poses. Sure it is cheesy, but the kids laugh and give me a hard time and we all enjoy it. Yesterday my granddaughter and I found a great Disney site that allowed her to dress Cinderella and then print out the finished product. We also had to print out new princess photos for her “house” decorations. Being the ever doting grandparent, I use photo paper and quality setting. Needless to say, those full 8.5x11” printouts go through ink like there is no tomorrow. I use dramatically more ink on the days I baby sit and the holiday season seems to just suck the life right out of the ink cartridges. If you go through as much ink as I do and you are in the UK, you may want to consider checking out Cartridge Save . They have printer cartridg...

Christmas comes once a year at least the last time I checked. I have gotten my annual calendar printed at Staples for years. Last year I used their on-line creator and it worked well. This year on December 4th I tried to use their on-line service and it was dismal. It wouldn’t upload my photos so I tried to call customer support. That was a waste to time and finally I hung up on the elevator music and looked for other vendors. I ended up at VistaPrint. I find their site annoying due to the constant badgering to add more to your cart. However their calendar creating software worked smoothly and all 13 of my images uploaded in substantially less time than I had been able to get on photo up on the Staples site. I have not seen the end product but I have ordered from VistaPrint in the past and the products have been acceptable. So if you plan on doing a calendar as a gift, I recommend looking at VistaPrint. I received no remunerations whatsoever for this recommendat...

My last post posed hypothetically that anti-Americanism may have played a part in Amanda Knox’s ludicrous conviction. After doing a web search, it appears that I am not the only one that questions the basis of the conviction. It appears that this young woman is being a scapegoat to the rabid anti-American feelings in a very conservative Italian community. The more I read, the more I am outraged. Here is a link to a site that summarizes the case. Don’t just read this article look at others and make up your mind. If you are as outraged as I am, email or call your congressman and senator, perhaps official pressure may help. I have found a website that claims to be the Amanda Knox defense fund. I have emailed the Associated Press and asked if their reporter, Gene Johnson who has done many stories on the Amanda Knox case, can verify if the website is legitimate. If it is legitimate, I am going to donate, that family is taking an emotional and financial beating.

If you don’t know who Amanda Knox is, you are probably living in a cave. I am sure I don’t know enough to rant about the jury’s verdict but I do have to question how it was reached. If the news reports are accurate, there was no, repeat NO forensic evidence to show that Miss Knox was ever in the room where the murder took place. Somehow that seems to indicate reasonable doubt. Of course reasonable doubt is part of the judicial process in the good old US of A. It doesn’t appear that is the case for the Italian judicial process. One hesitates to suggest that the seeming mindless pursuit of a guilty plea regardless of evidence may be indicative of the European dislike of Americans in general. It would truly be a tragic miscarriage of justice if a young woman is sentenced to 26 years in prison primarily due to her nationality.

I’m a novice author. I am self published because at my age I don’t want to grow old and die waiting on a publisher to “discover” me. If my books sell then I did something write (I know, cute!). Since my first book is selling I am going to rashly suggest I am an author. One of the things I have discovered is that the on-demand printers who cater to the self publishing world still have the mind set of corporate publishing. LightningSource who I suspect I will use at some point seems to be a reasonably priced, full service print house. Now I am getting to the part about software compatibility. LightningSource will only accept my books if they are formatted under specific software. Oddly enough I have older versions of the software but they only support more recent versions. I am supposed to fork out $500.00 for the latest version of Adobe or Quark so I can submit my manuscript to LightningSource. Now I am not beating up on LightningSource, as I said, I plan on using th...

In spite of spending hours on end at the keyboard I still periodically find a site or search engine that I am unaware of. Google Patents is a search engine especially for patents. If you are bored at the office or anywhere else you can search for patents. You can see if someone you know has a patent. You can also discover some of the strange things that are patented. The baby diaper that announces the child is wet by changes in conductivity of a charge running though the diaper and sets off an alarm. I am sure that the people who make Huggies are going to jump right on that. Just one more way that the Internet is enhancing our lives.

May you have a wonderful, fun filled, happy day!

Those two words are supposed to illustrate a firm conviction against propagation of societal ills. Zero tolerance on weapons in school. Zero tolerance against sexual harassment ad nauseam. What have those two noble sounding words led to in our society and our schools? Those two words have led to two more powerful words, Astounding Intolerance! A six year old who is threatened with 45 days of reform school for his cub scout eating utensils is the height of absurdity. A kindergartener who kisses another kindergartener is expelled for sexual harassment. It would be hysterical for its ludicrousness if it wasn’t so sad. Political correctness has run amuck and our children and grandchildren are paying the price. If one looks at the salaries we are paying our teachers and educational administrators, one would think we could depend on them to make rational decisions in regards to flexibility and zero tolerance. Except zero tolerance means no flexibility and consequently a th...

Read on, there really are some money saving tips and some are even technical in the following post.   I am a self published author. I have self published for a variety of reasons. My primary reason is time. I have no interest in spending my days trying to find an agent, who will then try and find a publisher. I have been told this can take years. Although I have a resilient ego, I have no interest in facing a wealth of rejection. Again, I have been told by published authors and read author interviews that document myriad rejections. Some successful manuscripts were rejected for years before finding a publisher who saw the value of the work. I’m a retired guy who always wanted to write something and have it published. If what I wrote actually appealed to anyone and it sold, then all for the better. Since that is currently occurring I have created a self fulfilling prophecy regarding how brilliant I am for seeing that self publishing would work for me.LOL Now...

I am in no way, shape or form recommending you jump right into Windows 7 regardless of the Microsoft commercials. My 25 years of microcomputer experience has clearly demonstrated that you never want to be the initial installed base of a new operating system. Frankly Windows ME was discontinued before I ever installed it. I don’t think we sold one copy of it and were thankful that we didn’t. However if you are bound and determined to be on the sharp point of implementation, you really don’t have to pay full retail. I found a great article on ZDnet.com that details multiple, legitimate ways to move to Windows 7. Rather than repeating the article, here is the LINK .

Every year, 20 million babies are born too soon, too small and very sick ― half a million of them in the United States. November 17 is when we fight. Do you know a baby that was born too soon, too small, unable to suck, unable to breathe on his own? Premature birth is a health crisis that jeopardizes the lives and health of nearly half-million babies each year. It is the #1 killer of newborns and can lead to lifelong disabilities. Worse: the number has increased 31 percent since 1981. It can happen without warning and for no known reason. Until we have more answers, anyone’s baby, could be born too soon. Medical advances give even the tiniest babies a chance of survival, yet for many babies premature birth is still a life or death condition. It’s the #1 cause of death during the first month of life. And babies who survive face serious health challenges and risk lifelong disabilities. The rate of premature birth has never been higher. In half the cases, we simply don’t understand...

One of the ZDnet bloggers posed a question as to why so many people are still using “obsolete” Windows software. This may be another case of standing in the trees and not seeing the forest. Most of the people in the computer industry make rash assumptions as to the level of expertise and fervor the average user has. The bulk of the studies or surveys are done by contacting corporate users. This makes sense, you can get a great number of responses easily but you are dipping your toe into a limited pool. Seldom is there any attempt to find out what the small business or home user wants, let alone needs. I’m retired, I just want my computers to run. Admittedly after spending 25 years in the industry I have a little more expertise than the average user. I also have a network. I have no interest in upgrading the OS of my machines. In 25 years I have seen nothing but incremental increases in ease of use or reliability in operating systems. I have seen MS automatic updates t...

My experiences with the paid anti-virus community have not been positive. I have had issues with Norton and McAfee conflicting with software I normally run. I currently use Avast Anti-Virus and both Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy. I suspect they are not top notch but by using them all, I have had pretty good protection. My innate cynicism kicks in when ever I read glowing reviews about different software packages. ZDnet.com has a good article rating the behavior of different anti-virus and malware solutions. Don’t be deluded into thinking that the ones marked free are really free. You will find them to be either trial versions or a version that tells you, “yes I have found much nasty stuff and if you will slip $50.00 in small unmarked bills underneath the un-welcome mat, I will then remove them for you”. Here is a LINK to go to the chart that rates the software, look at it with a jaundice eye and read the accompanying text. I didn’t find the chart all that use...

I read an article on Zdnet the other day on how a Dutch teenager sent out an unknown number of messages to iPhones explaining that they were hackable and for a small fee paid to his paypal account he would explain how to block people from doing what he was doing. He exploited a known security vulnerability and claimed he, himself, would do no harm but if he could hack their phone so could others. Regardless of his intent, his hacking resulted in a tsunami of outrage. He then apologized, posted a fix of the vulnerability and then my guess is he headed for the hills. The article did not detail what happened, if anything, to him. Once again truth is so much stranger than fiction.

I know another “be careful on the Internet” article. The Internet is somewhat like Las Vegas, it has beauty, glitz, shiny lights, fabulous shows and as long as you stay on the main drag in the well known places you are safe. If you wander off onto side streets, just like in any major city, you may find things you really didn’t want to see. You can caution older kids and revoke Internet privileges if they ignore your cautions. Pre-school and primary grade children are an entirely different situation. Older kids may wander into nefarious activity intentionally; the younger ones generally get into questionable areas quite unintentionally. This isn’t a new problem, an article in the NY Times six years ago pointed out that kids searching for something like Disney and misspelling it, ended up in places they shouldn’t have been. I point this out because these very young children seem quite adept on the computer. There are a wealth of sites that have mentally challenging g...

Bluetooth is being called out by Wi-Fi direct. This is a new specification that announced by the Wi-FiAlliance (the industry group that promotes Wi-Fi) that will allow wireless devices to connect to each other without needing a router. They claim it will work out to about 300 feet and have data rates compatible with current Wi-Fi technology. This could put a serious hurt to Bluetooth if widely adopted. The new peer-to-peer spec is expected to be published soon and the industry group plans on certifying devices in the coming year. It should be an interesting face off. If you want more detailed information, the article I read was on Cnet.

Periodically I get a request to write a review on a product and in return get some financial consideration. Being retired, if I can in good conscience write something without impugning by personal ethics, I am happy to accept. I did receive a fee for writing the following blog and that did not impact whatsoever my writing. For those of you that know me, that is easily accepted, for those of you who don’t, in some circles I am considered opinionated. I can’t imagine why? Sunbelt’s CounterSpy has some very nice characteristics. First, you should MOST DEFINATELY be using some product to protect you from spyware and malware. Since most of us resent anything that hogs our computer resources, you want to use a program that demands the least resources and yet provided maximum protection. Take a look at the charts at Sunbelt’s site and look at resource allocation; I think you may find some eye opening information. At $20.00, this program is a very good value. I know I spent ...

I just ran across an interesting site that evaluates On-Line Universities. It only evaluates accredited schools which, of course, is the only kind you want. The fake diploma game is too easy to expose with the ease of data search brought about by the Internet. Anyway there was an interesting post titled 75 Apps to Turn Your iPhone into the Ultimate Personal Library.   Of course having a boat load of books on my PDA, I am predisposed to the exciting concept of e-books.  I still prefer holding a book in my hand but there is something to be said for holding 75 books in the palm of my hand.   Click on the title if you want to read the blog.  Think of the bucks you can save downloading free books.  I found it interesting and if the IPhone ever becomes a good phone as well as an excellent PDA, I may get one.    BTW the bat graphic is apropos of Halloween not the iPhone.

First Sale Just saw my first copy of "Daddy Goes On A Trip" was sold on Amazon. WhooHoo! This is so much fun!

Nerds by Michael Buckley posted today at http://htxt.it/GZXY An amusing book on nerds by a self professed nerd, targeting middle school kids.

If you have followed this blog, you are aware that I periodically write a rant about not backing up. Backup of computers is the normal topic. Recently after reading about the Sidekick debacle, it occurred to me that people need to backup their phones too. We all have myriad phone numbers and addresses in our phone. Many of us have photos that are important to us. The more sophisticated phones and users have data, contacts, emails and more on their phones. As the Sidekick sideshow demonstrates, this is just a disaster waiting to happen. With the astounding drop in prices in the flash memory arena there is no excuse for not upgrading your phone memory card and storing your data on the card as opposed to the internal memory. Then it is a relatively simple procedure to periodically pull the card, pop it into your flash drive and save the info to your laptop. (which is, of course, backed up to your desktop, which has at least one external drive, and network connections to y...

Not long ago Microsoft introduced a plugin to FireFox without asking permission thusly most users of FireFox have this plugin without their knowledge or consent. As the ZDNet article said, ” Well, the code in that add-on has a serious code execution vulnerability that exposes Firefox users to the “browse and you’re owned” attacks that are typically used in drive-by malware downloads.” Due to the normal vulnerability lapses that Microsoft builds into their software I have accepted the need to do automatic updates when they send out the patches for the problem they created in the first place. I admit to a burning rage whenever they do an automatic update that isolates each computer on my network and I have to reconnect everything. I admit to the same rage when one of their updates negatively impacts another vendors software that I use regularly. I found ie8 so astoundingly slow that I finally moved to FireFox just to be able to surf the net without ie8’s plodding behavior. I...

On days like this a good book, a comfortable chair and a warm afghan seems so appropriate. That is a knitted type afghan as opposed to a newsworthy combatant.

Cheap Laptop For the Brave Get the details on Compaq's new cheap laptop with Windows 7 Are you brave enough to go the Windows 7 route? 

"Daddy Goes On A Trip" passed final edit. My 2nd book will be available for sale at Amazon, next week.

Although this sounds like something you might see in a Road Runner cartoon, it is a pretty cool tool. This isn’t a money saving tech tip or a philosophic musing, just a Wow, that is a cool device. The Mobile Plate Hunter-900 is license plate recognition software combined with a camera to enable cops to catch creeps. It has three cameras that record license plates and vehicle images. It can do up to 3,600 per minute and supposedly is not impacted by day, night or inclement weather. Not faulting the human eye or brain but I sincerely doubt most people could process that level of information in a timely manner. The captured images are automatically processed through the data base to determine if any of the plate numbers have been stolen or involved in a crime. It can even tell the officer the type of crime so they can be prepared for the type of perpetrator they will be pulling over. It isn’t cheap but for about $20,000 you have a tool that greatly enhances the ability of ...

This is not a paid blog and I have no relationship to SuperMedia besides being a customer. I have received no compensation whatsoever for this posting. That being said, I thought the prices on flash memory on this flyer were so good they deserved to be posted. I have purchased from SuperMediaStore.com for several years and have never been disappointed with their prices or product. I am not endorsing these products but the pricing appears to be very good.

I got this email recently and checked out the website. It sounds interesting. I am not recommending it since I haven’t tried it. I am passing it along since it sounds pretty good but as always buyer beware and do your research. It doesn’t seem like a scam so I am posting it. Hi, I am submitting a money saving tech tip for your blog readers. ----------------- A New Life To Old Flash Drives Don't throw your old USB flash drive away. Instead, you can use an old flash drive as a laptop alarm to prevent your laptop from being stolen. Here is how. 1. Install free software on your laptop. www.lalarm.com/LaptopAlarm. (free for personal use) 2. Fasten a neck strap to your old USB flash drive. 3. Fasten the other end of the strap to a table. 4. Plug in the USB flash drive into a USB port of a laptop. 5. Lock the laptop by pressing the Windows logo key and L key together. When a thief removes the laptop from the table, the USB flash drive will be dis...

This falls under the philosophic musing heading. There are many claims that self publishing is becoming more popular. I think many people who feel a need for self expression have finally found a reasonably inexpensive way of doing it. The traditional publishing scenario where an author submits books to a publisher and spends years being rejected continues but now there is an alternative. Previously in most cases if you didn’t have an agent, you couldn’t get a publisher to even look at your manuscript with self publishing it is more dependent on your tenacity to get it published. Self publishing can be done for nothing on Amazon. Their publisher CreateSpace will allow you to put your book into published format and sell it on Amazon. If you want a proof to insure what you did online is what you really wanted to do, it costs $10.00. When you are satisfied, it goes up on Amazon and you are published. Now some people believe that until someone buys your work you really aren’t ...

Once more I am reminded of the complicated aspects of the personal computer.   Due to the RAM hungry demands of the ever popular MS automatic updates my wife's and my own computer have been slowing down.  I knew I needed pc2100 ddr RAM so I went shopping.   What was interesting was that I found that density is also important in RAM choice.  It appears that high density RAM is considerably less expensive than low density RAM  The only defining difference I could find was that low density RAM is 64X8 and high density is either 128x8 or 128x4.   What was frustrating was that neither motherboard manual said a darn thing about density on RAM but several articles I found said that high density RAM was only suitable for specific motherboards.  I did note that a couple of guys on eBay noted that their RAM was high or low and cautioned that many sellers didn't mention that and no returns for incompatibility.   After mixing and match...

My grandson and I took a trip recently. His DS and DSi accompanied us. If you are under 20 you can stop reading now because you know all of this. The DSi is the latest system from Nintendo and is a computer in so many ways. Of course you can game on it. The thing I find just astounding is the ease that it connects to wireless networks or other DS systems. At one point he and 5 of his cousins were all playing Mario Kart. An ad hoc network set up by 11 year olds. Listening to all the screaming, yelling and laughter, I had to wonder why so many out of touch parents are opposed to the idea of kids playing video games with each other. How is that less acceptable than sitting around and playing a board game? Certainly you need exercise and like anything else, excess is not a good thing. Too many people ignore the fact that it allows kids to communicate and play while simultaneously introducing them to the intricacies of networking. In addition to the ability to easily network locally, the DS...

I occasionally write a paid blog. It may be on something as strange as maternity clothes or police type shoes. You write a blog, put in a link and get paid for your trouble. Some really popular blogs with big followings can reap some serious money doing this. I am not in that category but wish I was. I have never written a paid blog that I didn’t believe what I was writing. For example the maternity clothes post sent those who clicked the link to a site that offered some very stylish and reasonably priced maternity clothes. I despair sometimes at how depressed the pregnant woman sometimes gets in regards to self image. My motivation for blogging was that everybody is happier if the expectant mother is happy. The impending Mom, the husband and anyone else in the family is happier if Mom is happy. Clothes can help the self image and if you have never been pregnant or married to someone pregnant or loved someone who is pregnant, you need to understand; sometimes they need help to feel goo...

The responsibility for this post rests securely on the head of 70steen of FuelMyBlog membership. She posted photos of herself over the last few decades. Her photos were much more interesting than mine but I found the concept entertaining. Therefore peruse at your own risk 5 decades of yours truly and how one can “progress” through life. The Photos

Ok, Free is always suspicious. I have a bluetooth headset so I don't need one. I got this from Buy.com and I have had good experiences there. Check it out, I am not recommending it, I am not getting paid to mention it, I just thought it might be of interest to someone who needs/wants a bluetooth headset. Here is the Link.

I have written many times over the past couple of years about declining customer service. I read this week on ZDNet.com an article about the “crapware” that pretends it is helpware and is stealing your data, corrupting your system and robbing you blind. (See my blog on spyware ) Comments on the article ranged widely but the one that caught my attention was a self proclaimed “IT Expert” working in computer support who thinks that the people he supports are stupid and deserve to have their computers trashed by spyware. Sadly this abysmal attitude seems to be rampant in customer support. Once again I am going to mention Diamond Case Designs, Inc. - 655 N. Shepard St. - Anaheim , CA 92806 - (800) 616-5354 - www.diamondcase.com . They epitomize what customer service should be. Their recent newsletter had this customer spotlight that I think defines what customer service needs to be. BTW I do not get any financial considerations of any type from Diamond Case and this i...

I’m sure the people at Acronis would rather I was writing about their latest release version 12 instead of version 11. However an indisputable source, my brother, told me that version 12 was fraught with peril. Since I dealt with enough peril when my BounceBack clone feature didn’t work, I decided to avoid more frustration and peril and go with version 11. In an earlier blog I expressed my dismay over BounceBack’s drive cloning feature. Drive cloning is making an exact duplicate of your hard drive including all hidden files and most importantly the OS. This feature is invaluable if and when or maybe just when your hard drive decides to head south, winter or not. BounceBack was doing a commendable job on daily backup and made file restoration quite easy. However on a limping hard drive BounceBack’s clone feature refused to work. I turned to me geek brother who is still working and who used to be my top tech and asked what he would recommend. He strongly recommended Acronis version 11. O...

What has provoked the hysteria over health care reform? Are the insurance giants who are reaping windfall profits bankrolling provocateurs? Is it the drug companies who may find their insane profits diminished? One has to suspect that there is some financial ax being ground that is trying to derail any progress on health care reform. I am amazed at the astounding ignorance of some of the enflamed opponents suggesting there will be death squads promoting the demise of senior citizens. Shouted admonishments of “keep the government’s hands off of my Medicare”, belie the fact that it is the government who is running Medicare. We need health care reform; I’m on a fixed income and under 65 years old. My health insurance premiums are roughly the same as my mortgage and I am lucky. I’m lucky because so far I have been able to pay both. I know too many people who aren’t so lucky. These people are not dead beats, welfare cheats or illegal immigrants; they are just regular people trying to make e...

The President of the United States wants to address the children of the nation. The President of the United States who was ELECTED to his office wants to address school children. GASP—Radical, immoral, obviously a brainwashing plot SCREAMS rabid, foaming at the mouth of radical CONSERVATIVES. Years ago when I supported Barry Goldwater I was proud of being a conservative. Today, conservative seems to be synonymous with nut-job. Republican Presidents have sent out addresses to the nation’s children and the kids survived. Of course perhaps there was some subliminal message that generated the current crop of nut-jobs, I mean radical Conservatives. The news has shown text of parents complaining they don’t want their children exposed to the words of their ELECTED President. Perhaps if they shared intelligent dialogue with their children they wouldn’t be so fearful of their kids hearing someone else speak. Take note world, President Obama is NOT the devil incarnate. I don’t agr...

I don’t normally review movies but this one demands a disappointed one. Taking advantage of the Woodstock anniversary, this movie sucked a lot of aging boomers into thinking they could get back their groove. The predominant color of hair (providing they had some) in the theatre was white, not platinum but just old white. Lot of reminiscing prior to the movie coming up, regarding who was doing what the summer of ’69. I can't come up with a good reason for the title. Story was ok, disjointed, couldn't decide if it was a coming out, coming out of the closet, coming of age or what. Woodstock was a backdrop as opposed to a theme. Music was non-existent. Acid trip was prolonged so long I thought perhaps I was on one. Confusing movie, could have been excellent if it stayed on focus, expanded the reaction of the locals to the influx of "hippies" and had some iconic music. Even as background, period music would have helped, overall the movie was very disappointing. REAL Woodst...