Dear Hugo Chavez, you're an idiot.

You have placed yourself in the position of showing that you are either a paper tiger or to expose your military and your country to being invaded and taken over. The latter of which, you should already know that the Pentagon is really looking forward to your next moves.

Contrary to what you may think, it does not require American ground troops to wipe out your entire military infrastructure. Those B1B bombers are not in some far-distant land; they're in the heartland of America, ready to carpet or smart bomb your idiot butt off the face of the planet.

With all due respect, you're not Kim Jong-Il with an arsenal and ground force that could cause some hurt. No, you're militarily weak and speak with hyperbole as if there's no tomorrow. You should be so lucky that you have oil....actually, you should be concerned. If you don't comply with the International Court's ruling, you severely jeopardize your standing with the rest of the world, and place yourself directly in the cross hairs of American politics. The more you push, the better off America actually is - you see, Americans are more nationalistic than Europeans, and anytime you criticize America, you push the left and right closer to each other.

And you know, your bravado is only matched by the funny images of troops being moved to the border with buses, all in a row. You present your entire army as an easy target, just for the photo-op.

Real bright stuff there, Chavez.

The solution to illegal immigration

Let's face it, when we speak of illegal immigration, we're not talking about the Canadians sneaking into the US - why would they want to do that - no, we're talking mostly about Mexicans.

Reading partway through, "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, it occurred to me that sure, India has become the outsource capitol of American corporations, but it doesn't have to be that way. Mexico could become the outsource capitol of America, and would be geographically more feasible and sensible than either India or China.

The two step process to virtually ending illegal immigration:

• Education.
  
  
  
  • American universities need to set up satellite shops in Mexico, and allow cheap access to quality education in Mexico (heck, this might spur Americans to seek out their higher education in Mexico - how ironic would that be).
    
  • English must also become a second language to Mexican school children. By learning English, they can compete for higher earning jobs outside of the agricultural sector. More importantly, dual-language children will be able to interchangeably communicate with Hispanic immigrants in the US as well as English-speaking Americans.
    
  
  
• Outsourcing.
  
  
  
  • Having replicated what is currently going on in China and India, we need to remove the barriers of trade between Mexico and the USA so that data and traffic are not taxed or tarrifs placed on the exchange between the two nations.
    
  • Companies should only be taxed once, and be allowed to separate their domestic income from that which is earned over the border. Granted, companies shall not be allowed discretionary allocation of their income; we do after all need to ensure that companies do not try to divert their income to evade taxes. You need to pay once.
    
  
  

And that's it. Free market combined with a good educational system will move Mexico into the same position that India and China are currently in. But, because of the proximity and the time zone compatibility, Mexico stands a better chance of competing for outsourced services than India or China. (Goods on the other hand, should remain locally dispersed. More on the issue of the importation of goods in a later posting.) The ramifications for making Mexico the capitol of American outsourcing is extremely long and powerful. Perhaps the best part of the equation is that, illegal immigration will become a thing of the past. We won't be building a stupid wall, virtual or real.

Of course, there are always winners and losers in a transformative economy. There are lots of methods to make that transformation smoother for the losers, enabling them to become future winners. Again, another future posting.

high fidelity snobbery?

I read a comment online from someone that suggested digital music was not going to replace the CD because of the bitrate (quality) of CDs.

I've been ripping most of my music either with a variable bit rate (VBR) or at 320 kbps, which is higher than what I've seen available for digital download. Naturally, I started researching it more, and found that there are two codecs that prevent any loss of data from compression during ripping, and since winamp comes with a FLAC codec, I ripped a song at 320 kbps in MP3 format, and lossless with FLAC.

Then I listened.

And you know what? I couldn't tell the f'ing difference. I went back and forth over and over again, and still I couldn't tell the difference with my $100 headphones. Thinking it was because the music was pop-rap, I then tried a digital recording of Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps.

Then I listened again.

And I still couldn't tell the f'ing difference!?%#$! It took me over 15 minutes listening closely, one after another, back and forth, and eventually I actually could hear portions of the second movement, Le Sacrifice, where the tonality changed from a group of instruments to a more muddled sound. I had expected the difference to be in the deep bass sections or the high trebles, but this was not the case; the differences appeared to be highlighted in the middle sections, usually when there was unison of several instruments. Isolated sounds of solo instruments didn't seem to be affected; perhaps they lacked the complexity of sound that a group of instruments has, and therefore harder to recreate if you're compressing data?

The way I tested the music was to basically close my eyes and use the keyboard to navigate between the FLAC, MP3 and CD track. Yes, I pressed the arrow keys up and down in a manner to try to randomize and disguise which file I was playing. I ended up being able to hear between the three, which was the MP3.

Anyway, it led me to believe that, until I get my 12" sub-woofer and vacuum tube amp, I didn't have much to worry about, because on the face of it all, no one would never notice that you were playing music at 320 kbps mp3s, FLACs or CDs, and the only way to tell would be to listen carefully, side by side.

Barack's righteous facts

Barack won the war of "In fact" and "fact" usage, 14 - 3, during tonight's debate in Ohio. I learned at an early age that when people use "FACT" or "IN FACT", they're frequently trying to pass a white lie. There is no reason to point out that a fact is a fact, if it can pass the test of truth. By the way, the same goes for those who use, "THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER"; when you start hearing someone use that phrase, you know they're telling you a half-truth. I thought I'd count the "facts" after reading an early story with a quote from Barack with "fact".

This is my favorite, contiguous excerpt from tonight:

And the FACT was, this was a big strategic blunder. It was not a matter of, well, here is the initial decision, but since then we've voted the same way. Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is, who's making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch? And the FACT is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one, but IN FACT she was ready to give in to George Bush on day one on this critical issue. So the same person that she criticizes for having terrible judgment, and we can't afford to have another one of those, IN FACT she facilitated and enabled this individual to make a decision that has been strategically damaging to the United States of America.

With respect to Pakistan, I never said I would bomb Pakistan. What I said was that if we have actionable intelligence against bin Laden or other key al Qaeda officials, and we -- and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to strike against them, we should. And just several days ago, IN FACT, this administration did exactly that and took out the third-ranking al Qaeda official.

That is the position that we should have taken in the first place. And President Musharraf is now indicating that he would generally be more cooperative in some of these efforts, we don't know how the new legislature in Pakistan will respond, but the FACT is it was the right strategy.

Read each portion closely, and see how much Barack is really trying to assign facts to Hillary, as opposed to discerning facts.

The desperation of Clinton's campaign.

I watched the SNL clip of the fawning of the media over Barack, in a Democratic debate, and couldn't agree more. I mean gawd, could the media be more overt than it is right now? Maybe that is the key: Capture the hearts and minds of the media, and they will, in turn, make you the winner. I'm going to repeat...Katie Couric accidentally blurted out, "Good news!" when she was announcing that Barack had won a state during the Super Tuesday results. She is not the only one.

And now, in what appears to be the late stages of the campaign, the Clinton team sounds a lot like a desperate campaign in search of anything that will hold traction against Barack. You know you're desperate when you're trying to pin plagiarism against an orator.

You know, it's not that hard to turn a negative into a positive, and I just don't get it why the Clinton campaign hasn't figured it out yet. You voted the wrong way on the war...so what? All that matters is that you learned from your mistakes and move on to deal with where the situation is now. And I've read his plan to extricate our forces; it's foolish. A specified timetable of gradual pullout, without any sort of leeway to deal with changes in Iraq or the Middle East. Compare that to Hillary. Her plan is to ask the JCS to draw up a viable plan. That's what leadership is about - delegating to the people that know the BEST. Barack is suddenly smarter than the entire armed forces? Give me a break.

Barack is good at speaking to vagaries of idealistic, if not populistic themes... but idealism and populism falter in the realities of the world. That is why we generally swing to the center of political discourse and not wildly to either the left nor the right.

Hulu is a great concept

They just need to expand their advertising repertoire beyond the small handful of sponsors that have limited appeal to me.

I'm an idiot.

I can't believe I waited this long (over a year) to supplement my dual dual-core xeon workstation at home with upgraded memory. My system shipped with 1 GB of 533 Mhz ECC FB-DIMMs, and I knew all along that my system was having difficulties because of the memory limitations.

However, you have to understand that my system already has Xeons running at 3.0 Ghz / 1333 Mhz bus speed and a 10,000 rpm SATA drive. Most people have the standard SATA-300 running at 7200 rpm, but let me tell you first of all, even at 150, the SATA running 10,000 rpms is still twice as fast.

Wow, I just received my (2) 2 GB chips today from Newegg, and the difference is huge. I thought my system ran fast before, now it blazes without sweating a drop. My hard drive barely moves (no caching). The same rendering that took my dual xeon workstation at work 10 minutes to do, that used to take my workstation at home 5 minutes to do, now takes 2 minutes...that's how it feels.

The renderer I use for my models allows me to select the number of processors to dedicate towards rendering, which up till now, made little difference because I only had 1 GB of memory. Now with 4 GB, it makes sense, and the speed is clear.

Also arrived with my new memory chips was my Panasonic NC headphones and my....drum roll....Taiyo Yuden CDRs. If you know what I'm talking about, then you know that Taiyo is considered the best of the best blank disks, and they were fairly cheap on Newegg. I can't wait to burn MP3 disks so that I can play them on my Philips micro stereo that I got a month ago for my bathroom. :D

Obama bashing.

McCain has already started taking his jabs, and the Obama team is already playing the politics-speak game to circumvent being tied down to what their candidate has said. Does the Obama camp have what it takes to survive the attack? Is McCain attacking the frontrunner because he's getting a head start on the race, or is he more scared of Obama than he is of Clinton?

I think the Democratic race is one of the best things to come along in some time. Let's hope the two sides' supporters don't become so adamantly egocentric that they can't bring themselves to help the eventual Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is.

Latecomer adopter.

I'm still holding out on:

• Buying a new LCD TV, even though my 25" tube is around 15 years old.
  
• Buying an iPod, even though my new Scion xB has iPod connectivity.
  
• Buying a new DVD player, even though my current DVD player doesn't do MP3s and likes to variably darken and lighten the video.
  
• Buying a second home, even though the money isn't the down payment is all but guaranteed (via special gift from parents).
  

But I figure as time goes by, I've saved a bundle from waiting this long, and I won't be getting old technology either, compared to those that rushed in. At some point this year, I'm going to splurge and get myself $2500 worth of audio and video equipment. The longer I wait, though, the cheaper this stuff gets...so when it's all said and done, I might only end up spending $2000.

No rush.

Why the prolonged Democratic nomination is a good thing.

In primaries past, the candidates wouldn't visit more than once in small states. Now that everything is up in the air, the two candidates are forced to pay attention to the small guys. If we're so lucky to still be in the mix, Oregon will actually become center-stage, late in the season! Now how about that?!?!

Small states have needs that often go unheard and unseen by the beltway powers-that-be. Can you imagine, McCain is already on the path of national matters, completely bypassing the point of listening to the concerns of people in small cities and rural areas. I see this as a distinct advantage to the Democratic candidates, as they will get a very good feel for what the people think.

Is Obama running for President...of the NRA?

Violence begets violence.

There hasn't been a single case of school campus violence stopped by armed civilians, police or campus security. In every case, the violence ends when these people committed suicide.

Violence begets violence.

And Obama clearly supports the rights of individuals to own guns. That is not definitive according to the 2nd Amendment, as the right is predicated on the need to have militias. If you're not in a militia, do you have the right to bear arms? Obama thinks so, as was evidenced by his speech today.

Violence begets violence.

Strategizing the election

Hillary/Richardson vs. McCain/Paul:

• Hillary wins over women, Latino and white liberals. Many blacks stay at home to protest Obama not being on the ticket. Catholics lean towards Hillary/Richardson.
  
• McCain wins over white males and splits the Independents, Protestants stay at home.
  
• Winner: Hillary/Richardson 51 - 48

Hillary/Obama vs. McCain/Jodi Rell:

• Hillary splits the latino and women's vote, wins the black vote by a wide margin. Most Independents move to McCain. Catholic vote split, Baptists definitively vote for Hillary/Obama.
  
• McCain wins white males, gains over 50% of the latino vote, gets into the ballpark of 50% of the women's vote. Protestants turn out as expected (high).
  
• Winner: McCain/Rell 51 - 48

Obama/Richardson vs. McCain/Paul:

• Obama wins handily the black vote, gains over 50% of the latino and women's vote. Catholics lean towards Obama/Richardson, Baptists come out in droves.
  
• McCain wins over Independents and white males in large margin, barely loses the latino and women's vote.
  
• Winner:McCain/Paul 53 - 46

Obama/Napolitano vs. McCain/Bobby Jindal:

• Obama wins the women's and black vote, loses the Independents, gains over 50% of the Latino vote. Catholics split evenly, Baptists heavily vote in favor.
  
• McCain definitely wins the Independents, splits the youth, handily wins the Protestants (though many will stay home), splits but loses the Latino vote.
  
• Winner:Too close to call.

Of course if Obama wins, I think Bloomberg enters the competition and splits the vote evenly with most Moderates and Independents voting for Bloomberg. The man has more money (over $11 billion) than what either candidate can possibly hope to raise.
Obama: 30 / Bloomberg: 38 / McCain: 31

Pimping out Chelsea?

It's like I said, there's a lot of people in the media that are pro-Obama, or at least anti-Clinton. David Schuster's comments are perfectly in-line with what we should expect to be seeing in the media, both TV, print and internet.

On Super Tuesday, Katie Couric let it slip from her mouth, "Good news", when it was announced that Obama had won in one of the states out west. I heard it, I couldn't believe it, I don't know how many other people caught it.

It's a sad time, when you cannot trust anyone to deliver news unadultered, unbiased, and free from commentary. In the case of Schuster however, he needs to be fired. There is barely a difference between Don Imus' comment about "nappy-headed hos" and "pimping Chelsea". That is purely sexist, and MSNBC should have taken the most severe action immediately and fired Schuster. Suspending him accomplishes nothing. Even his apology was forced. If you watch the video of him, he's reading from a prepared statement, and it makes him out to be a person carefully trying to walk on egg shells.

I'm sorry, but Schuster has to go.

I always hated those stupid speed bumps...

And now I have great news: They adversely affect the environment too!

Apparently, a study done in England has shown that reducing speeds from 30 mph to 20 mph results in a 10% increase in fuel consumption and emissions release.

Portland needs to get rid of those darned speed bumps that so many traffic engineers seem to love.

Story here

Confirmed: Politicians are generally dumb.

A proposed $300 federal tax rebate doesn't seem likely to stave off recession, and it is anticlimatic to the initial proposal of $800.


Gift cards that expire in four months.

What if the government issued every person $800 gift cards $2000 gift cards to businesses registered in the US, that expired in four months? That meant you'd have to use it or lose it in four months, and thus instant cash flow.

Healthy living through Natural products.

I was staring at two different tea products from different companies, and I couldn't stop laughing inside.

"Contains Healthy Antioxidants".

"Natural Tea".

Which led to the manufactured conversation in my head between two people:

Customer: Excuse me, but can you point me to the un-natural tea section?

Store Clerk: Unhealthy?

C: Yes please. You see, I saw this tea that said it had natural tea, so I figured I'd try the un-natural tea to save some money.

SC: Uh. There is no such thing as un-natural tea, sir.

C: Oh. I see. Well, how about some stuff with unhealthy anti-oxidants?

SC: Unhealthy antioxidants?

C: Well yeah. I saw a different tea that said it had healthy antioxidants, and I figured, since most things that are unhealthy for you taste good, I'd try some tea with unhealthy antioxidants.

SC: Ah. Well sir, all antioxidants are healthy, so there is no such thing as an unhealthy antioxidant.

C: Oh. I see. Well this tea stuff is just too much.

SC:Well sir, sorry to hear that. Would you like to try our Organic selection of produce?

C: Oh I dunno. I guess I've been eating all this inorganic produce since I was born, I don't know if it's a good idea to switch.

SC: Uhm. I gotta go now. Have a nice day, sir.

Mr. Christopher P. Bliley and the EPA

Interestingly enough, you can google Christopher P. Bliley and find out that he was paid a handsome amount for 2 days' work for Rep. Jim Nussle (Iowa) in 2007, but as EPA Administrator, Christopher P. Bliley won't tell you how the EPA came to reject California's request to self-regulate greenhouse gases. What's really entertaining is the excuse that Christopher P. Bliley puts forth - attorney to client privilege.

That's slimeball-low.

If you work for the government, you are required to have transparency. The same issue came up when Nike went to court against the City of Beaverton and the City's attempt at annexation of Nike property into the City's limits.

I'm sick and tired of the way government treats its citizenry. I'm slowly warming to Bloomberg's candidacy as the only viable way of forcing Washington back into the Constitutional framework that was created over 230 years ago. As an Indepedent, he is not beholden to the interests of any party, which is more appealing everyday.

The cheesiest car design, ever?

The Bubble Boy called, he's searching for his stolen car.
No, not really.

Actually, Disney called, China answered.
No, not really. Well, it was a Chinese company that designed this baby.

Ugh.



Image via Cnet.

A future batmobile???

The Mazda Nagare concept looks like the next Batmobile, don't you think?

Image via Cnet.

Bush+Bernanke = Prolonged suffering....seriously

They're a bunch of fools.

The parable of the fisherman...you'd think someone that openly wore his Christian faith on his lapel would not heed his own faith, right?

They're talking $800/person in a onetime tax rebate. They want to put cash in your pocket. Only problem is, that won't necessarily create jobs. We're facing a reduction of spending and this money will only prolong the spending for a short period. What happens when that cash is gone? Jobs go away. Well, that is, if the mood hasn't improved. If the mood remains the same, people stop spending and jobs go away.

Watch what happens, and then you'll know how screwed our politicians really are...the one at the top is the worst, BTW.

Bush + Bernanke = Failure

The President commented today that he would like to use tax cuts as the means to stimulate the economy. Here's what's wrong with his idea:

A stop-gap measure requires you to plug the hole now. A tax break is like slowly filling the hole with grains of sand, one grain at a time. You might use up all your grains of sand eventually, but you'll never fill the gap because the water keeps pushing the grain of sand away. Likewise, a tax cut only trickles cash into the pockets of people, and in fact most people will only realize their large cash flow come next year when they file their taxes for a refund. How often do you receive a nice, big check after you've filed your 1040? We're well into the new year and the budget has already been passed, so this year's tax refunds cannot be retroactively changed.

And so that's how I know that the President is emotionally and financially separated from the common man; he knows not how the middle class actually does things. We will be paying for his mistakes for a long time.

The problem of the global economy.

The US is caught in a unique situation of rising CPI/inflation and the economy tanking because of the credit crunch foisted by the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

In the past, from what I remember growing up, the Feds used the prime lending rate to keep inflation in check by raising rates. To stimulate growth when the economy was down, they would lower interest rates.

Well, now we have the convergence of doubly bad news of growing inflation and a tanking economy, and it occured to me that the real culprit is the global economy. Not that the global marketplace is a bad thing; it is merely an observation that requires the Feds to change strategy. That is, that lowering interest rates really won't have an effect on the US marketplace, as it once did in a more insular economy.

The only solution would appear to be to pump cash into the economy, but that itself is prone to exporting cash to other countries via the marketplace (after all, we import more than we export). It appears that what we really need is to have the Federal goverment look closer at providing direct grants to revitalizing the existing infrastructure. This is a direct investment in jobs, people, and the local economies across the US. Sure, those dollars will eventually find their way overseas towards the purchase of consumer goods, but it will be a process by which it will have gone through the hands of several people and kept local companies afloat.

Stupid world.

All the freaking technology in the world, all the laws, and I can't get some dumbass from constantly calling me on my cellphone, all because he speaks spanish and I speak english. I tried talking to Sprint, Tmobile, the police...no one is able to do anything. Personally, I think the Portland Police officer that took my call is either stupid or lazy. He thinks that the person on the other end must know that they're reaching me in error, in spanish, before it is considered harrassment. That is flat wrong, because you can be in violation of any law without knowing that you're breaking it - you're always required to know the law, period. Harrassment is pretty cut and dry.

The Portland Police just seems lazy...or at least the officer that took my call.

The phone companies are no better. On the one hand they'll fall head over heels to help the NSA, but with the average customer??? Not really.

Okay, I'm just really really pissed off right now, and I need to sound off on all the freaking idiots that can't help me. I mean, what good is Sprint PCS if they can't send a simple message to their own customer to tell them to stop calling me? Or better yet, their customer service guy tells me that they can't restrict who their customers call. Right. They can cut off outgoing calls if you don't pay them on time, but if their customer is harrassing you, they can't do a thing? BULL.

Final football polls out.

USC is #2 in the final Coaches' Poll (didn't expect that).
USC is #3 in the final AP Poll (didn't expect that either). Should have been reversed, don't you think? I thought the press was in love with USC at the end of the season, especially after the dismantling of Illinois? Oh those media types, they're so finicky.

In both cases, Ohio State dropped like a dead anything...and rightly so. They had a patsy schedule with non-conference foes that read like the schedule Hawaii played. You can't argue that LSU didn't deserve the NC...but perhaps OSU shouldn't have been in that game since, after all...they like the rest of the Big-10 suffer from a lack of speed.

And so what if USC lost its chance to play for the NC? It was still a damned great year and USC finished #2/3. USC has finished in the top 4 every year for the past 6 years...beat that.

Sports observations.

1. Either Clemens is being truthful, or he's a total idiot. If he goes up to Congress and lies about not taking steroids, he will be prosecuted for lying to Congress, among other things. I think he did it, so I expect him to issue a carefully worded statement, and to circumvent Congress' questions. But then again, it's still going to come down to his being truthful or a complete idiot. Especially since he filed a defamation lawsuit.
   
2. Ohio State in the first 4 minutes of the game is thrashing LSU's defense. I look for both sides to settle down and the game to become a defensive struggle.
   
3. June Jones left Hawaii for SMU...the national media thinks it's about money, the local media thinks it was about the school not meeting the expectations regarding facility upgrades and commitment to the program. I think the local media got it right. They really haven't done much with the facilities since...forever.
   
4. The Seahawks look really good, defensively. The defense is really contributing to the scoring...they're going to have a heck of a time playing at GB.
   
5. USC was darn good at the end of the season, and everyone except those from the Big-10 knew that USC was going to blow out Illinois. It took only one series on each side, to see that Illinois was overmatched all around. I don't know that USC would have beaten Illinois if they played during the regular season, but give USC a month to prepare, they do the best job of any school. That's what makes them a tough team to play in a bowl game. They would have beaten anyone in the NCAA in a bowl.
   
6. USC has something like the top 3 of 4 offensive linemen coming out of high school. Now how's that for a statement? It's not about having the best recruiting class; it's about recruiting the best in the positions that you absolutely need.
   
7. Portland Trailblazers are amazingly improved, even without Greg Oden. They might actually have a chance to go to the NBA Finals next year when GO gets into the lineup.
   
8. Even with a +1 BCS game, USC wouldn't have played for the NC. So what's the point of even discussing it?
   
9. Now that June Jones has gone, I think Norm Chow might be willing to take a pay cut to return home and coach Hawaii. That would only go to improving the team's offense.
   
10. I like reading the sports writers talking about how they think USC is the best team this year, but that they didn't especially deserve to play in the NC game...and these are the same people that vaulted LSU from #7 to #2 in the final BCS poll. They get exactly what they voted for. Talking about the Stanford loss is pointless. USC is the toughest team right now; after all, they don't play the NC game in the middle of the season, do they? You pit a team that is playing the best at the end of the season, you pit the team playing the best at the end of the season and in the NC game. Bottom line.
    

Work in progress...

They're still working on the building, but here's a view of where the building stands, as of today. They've made more than a few mistakes, the worst of which is using black colored coping around the top of the red canopy...I mean, who made that decision? I certainly didn't design that in the drawings...they're nuts if they think that black on red looks good.
I didn't want to include a photo of the entry area, which I'm still working on the design and documentation for. It'll look damned good all together, except that we need to get the concrete wall painted between the two renovated areas.