So we sprung out and got a couple of new development toys at work. An Apple Power Mac G5 arrived yesterday. It is almost completely silent even with two processors running at 2Ghz, 1GB of RAM, and a Radeon 9800 Pro (drool). We also bought one of these. That has to be the most beautiful monitor ever. It is so crisp with its colors that it is unbelievable.

Well, if you were using Internet Explorer you probably noticed that you had to scroll down to get to any content. My first piece of advice should have been to download Mozilla Firefox but I decided that maybe fixing the problem would be a better idea.

I basically had a nested table row that was throwing everything off but it should be completely fixed now! Sorry for the confusion.

First off, Bush is doing things to help the economy along. Now, I am not going to say everything he has done has been the greatest of ideas but at least he’s trying. Kerry on the other hand, like Patrick points out here, is a brush off who is full of talk and no action.

Here Kerry is preaching about how bad the economy is and saying how he could improve it and yet, he cannot even show up for a vote to improve (even if just a little).

If you don’t know the whole story, I’ll quote the Washington Post. (The important parts are bolded)

“The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort Tuesday to extend federal unemployment benefits.

Democrats tried to attach the benefit to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year’s budget agreement.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning Tuesday in Kentucky.

The amendment would have offered emergency federal unemployment benefits for six months, temporarily giving 13 weeks of extra assistance to people who exhaust their state benefits — typically 26 weeks.”

If Kerry was sincere about his stance on the economy he might have just showed up to vote, but no, he’s campaigning. Way to take care of the people Mr. Kerry.

I never look at this site in Internet Explorer but this morning I decided I would see what it looked like and saw that the ad on the left is breaking the page basically…

Well good news, I spent this morning working on a new design. I am not sure I am happy with it, but it may have to do for right now.

I have come to realize that I am truly no good at designing. I have a short attention span for it or something because

1. I get frustrated.
2. I don’t like what I see and give up

Part of this comes from my lacking knowledge of how to build CSS designs from scratch. I have grown so dependent on tables that when I try to move to complete CSS I screw something up and don’t really want to try fixing it.

I’ve been reading about some of the things that Microsoft and other computer companies want to do about the increasing amount of spam. One of the suggestions is paying for e-mail, as in a fee per each one sent. So basically there would be electronic stamps for e-mail, how long would it take before the price continually rose on that like it has on paper stamps?

I personally do not receive a ton of spam and the little I do get is usually filtered out by Mozilla Thunderbird. I do have a few ways of avoiding spam.

• Do not give out your e-mail address to every website you go to.

  This is probably the main reason people get spam. You go to a site, they ask for your e-mail, and you start getting spam. So how do you get around this? I have a dummy e-mail account just for such situations. There are also free disposable e-mail accounts available from sites like http://jetable.org and Mailinator.

• Don’t use the “Click me to unsubscribe” link.

  All these links usually do is report to the people that are spamming you that you are receiving the mail they are sending and to keep on sending it. Just ignore spam, trash it. Most e-mail programs have filters you can turn on to help fight spam.

Well that’s my $.02 for the day…

Simon has posted a nice little tidbit about Python and switch statements. You can read what he has to say here.

As soon as my internet gets working again I plan on making some major changes to the site. I so far have decided that the site will be content driven with some things that I have been working on in my spare time and then I will have a personal side to it as well.

I really wanted to get started on all of this last week but with the internet down I haven’t had a chance to upload any of it. Just to get my point across, everyone needs to update their computers when there is a new Windows Critical Update. You cannot expect people to not get viruses when they do not update critical components. So from now on, when that little globe pops up in your taskbar, pay attention to it and do what it says.

Well, took my last final yesterday at 4:30pm. Came out with a ‘B’ so I’m pleased. Now the summer begins and I am pumped to work and save some money up.

I plan on going to the river and the beach sometime but I’m not totally sure when. I also need to make some time to get my truck tuned up and roaring to make the 8hr. trek back to Houston (sometime).

Other than that nothing else is really going on. It is extremely hot (supposed to be 95 by the end of the week) and so some time will be spent at the pool.

I am still trying to figure out why anyone would vote for this (excuse the rudeness) goober. The guy is a moron, he can’t get his story straight worth anything (and people complain about Bush)…

I asked someone why they were voting for him and they replied “Because he isn’t Bush”… Ok, because that is good reason (not!). That’s like saying, “I don’t like either of them, so I’ll vote for the one who ticks me off the least”. That has to be the dumbest reason for voting for someone… I will be the first to tell ya that if Kerry becomes president, our economy is going to go right down the crapper. Bush is making strides in the economy and the number of home owning families in America is at an all time high. Why would you want to throw that away because you do not like someone’s foreign policy, that in all honesty does not effect you (unless you are in the government or the military).

Another little mini-rant is the fact that people take everything they see on the news as literal. Well, I hate to break it to you but the news (especially TV) is twisted. They show you what they want you to see to twist your opinion to the left. Close your eyes for a little bit and take a little bit of reality in, Iraq is not another Vietnam, nor will it become one. I truly believe that once the whole ordeal over there is finished people will look back on it 10 yrs. later and go “You know, that was a good thing we did”….

My internet at my apartment is still all messed up so I am doing this update from work. Don’t worry, I am not missing work, I am on a break, so doing this update won’t get me in trouble.

Just one exam left and then I am completely done. I’ll probably spend most of tonight and all of tomorrow finishing up my review sheet (we are allowed to bring in notes to the exam). I am really hoping this thing is a breeze, but knowing my luck, it is going to suck.