Found a snapping turtle far away from his home, we decided to return him.  They can move much faster than you think !  He was calm until I picked him, they sure do have a reach with that neck so keep your distance !

It's becoming an annual event, snake round up.

Links to previous years !

http://www.lifeasbob.com/2009/03/22/PiedPiperOfGrandview.aspx
http://www.lifeasbob.com/2009/04/27/PiedPiperOfGrandviewII.aspx

Less of them this year so maybe we're starting to get rid of them.  I saw 5 in the front yard at once, I managed to grab 4 of them all at once, but 1 got away !

This has to be one of the worst ever toys for kids.  There are some positive reviews out there for this, and I'm convinced those are paid reviews or something.

This toy does not work, it requires heavy objects to weigh it down and it is near impossible to get the car to run on the rope.

A huge disappointment for the kid awaits with this toy.

I don't blog product reviews, but this one sucks so bad i had no choice.

I'd pay money for someone to show me this toy working...

January and February are peak times for my company's business; now I can start to focus on new things, here is what I learned during peak and where 2010 will focus:

• Capacity management is the 2nd most important thing dba's do.
• Performance tuning and monitoring is the most important thing (during peak)
• Locking and Blocking is the biggest scale issue i regularly see.
• Mirroring on SQL Server standard edition sucks (especially for geographically disperse sites).
• Mirroring on SQL Server enterprise edition rocks (though the cost factor is prohibitive).
• Informatica is no better an ETL Tool than SSIS
• Oracle and SQL Server are a pain in the ass to make work together (Oracle DBAs are'nt much help either)
• 1 terrabyte of disk space is almost enough !
• Re-indexing and defragging is analogous to politics and religion and DBA's should be barred from discussing the topic
• Encryption is a pain in the ass.
• Surprise - Merge replication actually works and is not near the PIA I thought
• 6gb of RAM is never enough
• Polyserve is not worth the effort
• VM Ware with VMotion is awesome
• VM Ware is a good alternative to Polyserve
• Hyper-V is not there yet
• SQL 2008 R2 licensing sucks
• SQL 2000 is finally no longer meeting the business requirements and we may finally get funding to upgrade the remaining instances !

Need an H&R Block Coupon ?

Coupon's for new H&R Block Customers, $30.00.

Drop me a comment.

Stock Break Even Work Sheet.

This is something I worked out a while back.  Oddly I couldn't find an easy formula to plug in for excel, so I had to create one.  Recently somebody asked me for it, so I wanted to post it here so I could reference it.  The reason for creating this is I was trying to buy some ford stock at a 1.60 a share and wanted to know what the break even price was if I had to bale out of it.  Of course I didn't bail out and today it's a $9 something a share, "Quality is job 1"; Ford made my year !

Basically I needed a formula that would help me calculate how much a stock must rise in price to cover my commissions and taxes and break even.

There is some really good reading here in this book, Page 116, "Calculating the Stock Break Even Sales Price", my formula is adapted from that, good book to read.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YmZV-Jxt28kC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=break+even+formula+for+selling+stocks&source=bl&ots=dR84EvLZGH&sig=dL-LdOG4oEptNx1wrrW9xaisjUY&hl=en&ei=NUGxSeHSAo3Btgequ-TDBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Technincally my formula is not 100% accurate as depending on your particular tax situation the rate can can change between 15% or 28% and there is some "cost basis" versus "individual lots".  The forumula is just meant to be used as a guide, your actual mileage may vary.

I've updloaded the excel spreadhseet here.
Stock_Break_Even_Price.xls (22.5 KB)

Here is the formula, surprisingly my Algebra was terrible and it took me awhile to solve this.

Variable Description
 
N # of Shares
B  Buy Price per Share
C1  Buy Commission
C2 Sell Commission
P  Purchase Cost (Cash out)
X Sell Price Per Share
T Total Cash In
TR  Tax Rate
TX Total Taxes
G Gain
 Calculate Gain

Example Ford Stock 1.60 per share, 100 shares, 10 commission for both buy and sell
 
Description   Formulas                          Example
Cost            (N*B) + C1 = P                 (100 * 1.6) + 10 = 170
Gross           (N*X) - C2 = T                 (100 * X) - 10 = T
Taxes           ((N*X) - (N*B))*TR=TX     (( 100 * X) - (100 * 1.6)) * .15 = TX
Break Even    T-P-TX=0                        ((100 * X) - 10) - 170 - ((( 100 * X ) - (100 * 1.6)) * .15) = 0
                                                        ((100 * X) - 10) - ((( 100 * X ) - (100 * 1.6)) * .15) = 170
 How to solve for x ?                            (100X - 10) - ((100X  - 160) * .15) = 170
                                                        (100X - 10) - (15X  + 24) = 170
                                                        100X - 10 - 15X  + 24 = 170
                                                        100X  - 15X = 156
                                                        85X = 156
                                                        X=1.835294118

Hunting Public land evokes images and stories of many orange hats grouped together shooting each other !

But when you don't have access to private land, you have to go public!  This past weekend for opening day of deer season, my buddy Dale and I went down to Clinton Missouri, around Truman Lake to hunt.  There is a lot of pulic land around Truman lake for hunting, i've read estimate of up to 75,000 acres.

The key is scouting, scouting, scouting, and lots of walking.

We ended up not doing as much scouting as we wanted, but found what we thought was a nice area with lots of potential.  We didn't see much.

There was a lot of shooting around us, but they must have been poor shots as we didn't see anyone with a deer.

Lots of "road hunters", many would drive down a path, jump out for 30 minutes and then walk back, not sure what these guys were doing; maybe they weren't seeing much either and looking for a better place.

Ended up having some of these road hunters blast 3 rounds in quick succession at some running does (there's a good idea !), and scared them right to the side of me, about 25 yards.  Unfortunately they were so spooked that I was unable to swing around 45 degrees and get a shot off, so I just got to stare at them for a bit and hope to see them another day.

I finally found some private land to hunt for no cost, we'll see how that goes next.

I'm in the middle of an all-nighter for a SAN Migration.  Lots of down time, here's what I found worth reading:

The unspoken truth about managing geeks.

Understanding Service Level Agreements for Database Development.

Is SQL Server's latest security hole a real threat?

Very interesting syntax of the in-clause I didn't know existed:

SELECT * FROM person.contact

WHERE 'thomas' in(Firstname,LastName,LEFT(emailaddress,7))

From the I did not know this would work department

Big competitors spark Netezza’s partner-friendly strategy

Keeley Hazell looks hot while she's shilling for something.

Don't ask me how I'd go from Keeley to Jeremiah Johnson, but all nighters due that to you, than and i've never been normal, it's boring.

"where ya headed?"
"Same place you are Jeremiah, Hell, in the end."

Link to download sound track to the movie, Crow Corner., a long time ago I had it on LP, doubt I'd ever find it on cd or mp3, but all night'ers have a way of helping you find things.

Sunday
 BBQ Beef Brisket
 Green Beans
 Corn
 Bread

Monday
 Ham Steak
 Macaroni and Cheese
Carrots
Peas 

Tuesday
 Chicken Paprikash with Egg Noodles
 Steamed Broccoli
 Sliced Tomatoes

Wednesday
 Salisbury Steak
 Mashed Potatoes
 Asparagus
 Left-over vegetables

Thursday
 Left-Overs 

Friday
 Baked Fish with Basmati rice
 Stewed Tomatoes
 Mixed Vegetables
 Rolls

Saturday 
Pizza 

SOLD

I have up for sale on Craigs list one Murray Tractor, $100.00

I'll be sad to see it go, I enjoyed puttering with it...

Murray riding lawn tractor with cart. 10 HP engine, starter and battery 1 year old. 32" cut rear discharge. This is definetly an older riding mower, i used it on another property and no longer need it. 100 obo. For an older tractor the thing just works, the biggest reason i'm getting rid of it is lack of storage and lack of safety equipment. The tractor was made before the "seat kill switches", and the mower blades have a tendency to spin (albeit slow with little power), even when the mowing deck isn't engaged. With 3 small children, it can be a safety issue. The only reason i ever kept and fixed this tractor is I liked the rear discharge cut, the yard i mowed with it was large, but I still disliked tractors with the side discharge, pia to cut around stuff.

Jeez, I hope this doesn't become a trilogy or worse have to go the prequel!

Original Post:  Pied Piper of Grandview.

This weekend was again a good one, hopefully now that the lawn mowers are in full action I won't be seeing any more friends. 

Missouri Corn Snake, found this weekend crawling along the fence line, pictured are my neighbor Jimmy and his kids.  By far this was the biggest, most colorful and exciting one, very calm as well, never tried to coil and snap or snip, though it was quite quick and required two of us to catch.  I had to enlist Jimmy to hold the snake for pictures, as I don't mind grabbing them, but once I get them in the bucket, i don't mess with them again.  This one was about 3-4' long, I almost suspect this one to be someone's pet that they let loose, but it is now in the Horkay serpent relocation program.  The last picture is of the garden variety, curled up in a bucket(number 15 for the year).

Too many snakes, I finally had to take action and capture them this weekend, I caught 9 in all, and 1 donation from a neighbor, for 10.  At least 2 got away, so there's more...

I don't mind the occasional garden snake, they have their place, but when I can count 4 or 5 at a time sunning themselves in the front yard, it's time to go.

Now I didn't play any games with them, like the fellows on National Geographic, I just picked them up behind the head and put them in a bucket.  They were a pretty good size, and quite lively, each about 12-15" long.  If you sat quitely in the yard and waited in the sun, they just slowly start to come out of their holes, than you snag them.  At one point I had 3 or 4 poking their heads up at a time.

No pictures, I want to forget the whole thing.

I released them in the woods at the local park.

2000 Ford Windstar with a rough, low idle, occasionally stalling when coming to a stop. 

I put off repairing this for as long as I could, which as with most things, is not a good idea as it causes more damage.

The end diagnosis is what I expected, though the cost of repairing this via a professional is expensive, but I needed it done quick and with little frustuation.

Diagnosis:

• Intake Manifold Gasket leak
• EGR Valve failing due to working itself to death trying to compensate for the intake leak

Other necessary work (120K miles)

• Major tune-up
• 02 Sensor, there are 4, but supposedly only 1 is bad

Over-all putting off the work caused the EGR issue, but the tune-up and 02 sensor have been needed for a long time; i decided to have these done as well, if you've ever tried to get to the back plugs on the windstar you know why.

Total estimated cost $1100-1200, ouch.  I should do it myself, the intake kit is about $109.00, but it is a big job, and then throw in the 02 sensor, egr, plugs, wires etc and it's easily $400+ in parts alone....I needed it done right so we'd have a reliable vehicle.

Aaron James becomes the first to make the Emergency Room visit to get stiches.

Pushing a bike or running and trying to jump over a bike is how the story goes.

Oddly he seems to have actually enjoyed the experience!

Putting in the ceiling...

The outside walls are basically completed, clean'er up, trim it up, insulate it up, caulk, caulk and more caulk...

Happy halloween, 1 day, 2 windows installed and 1 door, not bad for one days work.

Today was the day to button up the wall.

Finally the one set of doors and one window are installed.

Dealing with an unlevel floor and walls that are not plumb are a joy.

I still have some caulking and and gutter work, but for the most part it is leak proof.

Roof day 1.

Now that the skylights are installed, time to get working, putting down the snow and ice wrap and tar paper and managed to get the first row of shingles installed.  The real difficult part is all the cutting of the shingles and properly aligning them to seal against the skylight flashing.  This simple pitched roof should be shingled in probably 6 hours without the skylights, but because of the skylights and low pitch it will take me two days and some hours.

Saturday was skylight day, i tried to start friday, but rain and late delivery caused most of the day to be a wash.  Before really starting, had to remove and rebuild one wall which was supporting the roof, as the wood had started to deteriorate through moisture and the use of non-pressure treated wood on the footings.

Tired of the screened in porch being a dirty space, with a leaking roof, that's always dirty....time to turn it into a room off the back of the house with heat, air and skylights to open it up.

Initial pictures, concept, roof opened up and all old material removed.

Might as well have been deliverance...

Send the wife out to scope out a good deal for a new washer and dryer, emphasizing the need to be cheap and ensure it includes delivery and pickup of the old ones, i'm too old to be squabling over $50.00 and breaking my back lugging the crap up and down steps.

Great deal secured.

Deliverance, er... I mean delivery begins.

Quiet, delivery shows up at 8:30pm in the evening, right as rug-rats are about asleep.  No problem, let the men get to work...take that back, let the man get back to work.  Man is late 60's, wearing a knee brace / prosthesis thingy on his leg, teeters worse than my mother-in-law, and barely speaks. 

Somewhere, as I'm watching this unfold, i'm imagining a Monty' python or Saturday night live skit.  I'm guilted into helping, just because I can't take the site of this guy muscling around a washer and dryer, up a flight of steps, while I cooly enjoy a frosty mug.  The guy's reluctant to let anyone help, as he thud, thud's and grunts his way through his work.  I keep expecting the guy to drop dead any moment, i briefly wonder if i'm liable for that...

Finally as the task is almost complete, the sound of breaking glass...fortunately it's just my favorite ashtray out back, which has been around since my Marine Corps days, and was wide enough for my favorite cigars, graced the desks of Colonels, Master Gunny's and lowley Sergeants desk's (I remember when you could smoke at your desk!). 

Fortunately the task is done.

The old craftsman mower finally reached the point of not working, the mower continues to run great, but the safety mechanism is broken.  I rigged it to run without the safety, but since there is no on/off switch, you have to pull the wire to the spark plug (tingly !).  Though it was nice to mow and not have to turn the mower off to empty the bag, but definetly a bit unsafe.  The wife was not pleased...and I guess with 3 kids, it's probably a good thing to have that little bar working so you can just let go and turn the mower off.

My neighbor Jimmy has almost the exact same craftsman mower, but his handle broke where it attaches to the mowing deck and purchased a new mower this spring.  A 12 pack of beer later, and i've succesfully bartered for his mower.

Now I have two POS mowers!  Not for long, I put the boys to work, turning some wrenches and now I have one working mower and the old mower parts (wheels [ever price one of those big wheel $10.00 each and self propelled parts are not cheap either), and some nice big items for the recycler center (too bad steel doesn't pay anything unless you 100's of pounds, but at least it'll be better than burying it in the landfill).

Pictures below:

Thomas was finally first, the first to experience a decent injury.

What comes up, must come down, in this case, Rock meets open toed sandals....

Very nice picture of a toe, i'm sure he'll loose the nail, but hopefully it'll all grow back normally..

Just another Saturday.

EJ Breaks ceiling Fan in living room.

TJ Breaks light switch in ceiling fan in his room.

Dad (me) breaks garage door window.

Sunday will be a day of repairs....

Fatally False Positives, and risk reward analysis.

I Ran across this article in National Geographic Adventure, March 2008, Deep Survival Series, by Laurence Gonzales.  I read it, and just kept popping back into my mind, so I repost here, so it won't go away.

The are many points and analogies, wheather it is investing in Yahoo (past performance is not an indicator of future success), Driving a 69 VW Micro Bus or some other behavior, re-think your thought process:

------------------------------

FATALLY FALSE POSITIVES
By Contributing Editor Laurence Gonzales, author of the book Deep Survival

On December 6, 1988, Todd Frankiewicz was on Tincan Mountain in Alaska, making his comeback as a top-notch skier. The previous summer, a serious auto accident had left him hospitalized, and after months of rehabilitation, he felt ready. The day before, he had gone to city hall for a license to marry his girlfriend of nine years, Jenny Zimmerman.

That weekend the Anchorage Daily News ran headlines warning of avalanches. But Frankiewicz had skied Turnagain Pass before and took reasonable precautions, first discussing the danger with Zimmerman and then calling Doug Fesler, a friend and one of the top avalanche experts in the area. As Fesler’s wife, Jill Fredston, wrote in Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches, “Todd asked careful, intelligent questions.” Significantly, “he’d never before phoned us at home to ask for a personal update.” Fesler told him to “avoid steep north-facing slopes like the plague.”

It was a gorgeous day, and the mountains were heavy with new powder. As friends came and went on the slopes, Frankiewicz skied in a party atmosphere that fit his mood. He was back. Various skiers tested slopes that looked as if they might avalanche by skiing the tops first, but the snow held. Unconsciously, they were building up a store of experience that would serve as their model for future decisions. The unconscious rule of decision-making is that the past equals the future, and that we tend to do what we’ve been rewarded for doing. Skiing provides a powerful emotional reward. Moreover, the common psychological effect called “confirmation bias” dictates that we will take any sort of evidence as proof of what we already believe.

As the day drew to a close, Frankiewicz and friends decided to climb higher on the mountain for one last, long run down the North Bowl. While that was exactly the sort of slope his friend Fesler had warned him to avoid, the accumulation of evidence and experience throughout the day had gradually widened the definition of an acceptable slope. As they started up, however, one of the skiers had a bad feeling about it and decided to descend. But for Frankiewicz, the lure of a long and triumphant final run easily offset the attention he might have paid to that ominous signal.

The fact was, the signs that would have given rise to a bad feeling were everywhere. The texture, slope angle, shape, wind markings, and structure of the snow were easy to read and test. Simply poking a ski pole through the surface would have revealed that the new snow sat as a consolidated slab on top of a rotten foundation. Everyone who knew Frankiewicz was aware that he had the knowledge and experience to have avoided the accident that followed. Or as Fredston put it, “Todd might as well have stepped in front of a bus.”

Frankiewicz skied just 20 feet down the North Bowl and cut across the slope to test its stability, figuring that if it fractured, it would drop off below him. When he came to a stop, all looked good. He called to one of his friends, Regan Brudie, who skied down to Frankiewicz. When the two were a few feet apart, “the fracture line unzipped the mountain,” to use Fredston’s words. Within seconds, Frankiewicz was dead, while Brudie was swept away, miraculously unhurt. The following day, Jenny Zimmerman left city hall “with her marriage license in one hand and her fiancé’s death certificate in the other.”

As Fredstone wrote to me recently, “It’s amazing, really, how many times the same Todd Frankiewicz kind of accident has happened. All that changes are the names.”

That kind of mistake—or cluster of mistakes—is just as common in our daily lives as in the mountains. Frankiewicz had been a skier and mountaineer all his life. Being stuck in a hospital for months was like having his identity taken away. His first day out, he had to reestablish himself in the world that was familiar to him. He may have had a bad feeling about the dangers at the beginning of the day, which could explain why he called Fesler for advice. Most people who are caught in avalanches are aware of the hazard beforehand. But when repeated testing failed to fracture the snow, Frankiewicz’s confirming store of experience grew. The fact that he was skiing slopes that were familiar contributed to his willingness to take risks. An amazing 71 percent of accidents that involve avalanches occur on slopes that are familiar to the victims. Being in a group with its party atmosphere would also have increased his confidence.

I used to run into similar accidents all the time when I was flying aerobatics. I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had with fellow pilots after someone tried a low-level maneuver and it went bad. We all knew not to do it, and we all knew pilots who’d died trying. And then we’d stand around and ask: What was he thinking?

The same kinds of scenarios play out in business. The results may not be fatal, but they’re often costly. For example, reading a history of failed corporate mergers and acquisitions is like going through a history of avalanche accidents: They all know the dangers beforehand, but they go ahead anyway.

Relationships can work in much the same way. A friend years ago had just gotten out of a really bad marriage and spent several months swearing up and down that he’d never do it again. When I received the wedding invitation a few months later, I just slapped my forehead: What was he thinking?! The fact is, simply wanting to do something can often overwhelm all other considerations, unless you really take the time to analyze the situation.

The first step in avoiding this type of mistake is to be deeply aware of the channels of information, emotion, and influence that are flowing together to shape your decisions. Having a bad feeling is information. What if Frankiewicz had stopped the skier who decided to descend and asked him to explain his feelings more fully? Might someone have poked a ski pole into the snow and detected its rotten condition?

In addition, a recent success or failure is always a powerful influence on behavior. Because we are a species of ape, we behave according to what rewards us. Moreover, we have a strong motivation to recover from failure in order to regain status. Status confers access to resources and the right to reproduce. Frankiewicz’s death can be seen as arising at least in part from his drive to regain status (don’t forget the marriage license), which encouraged him to ignore important information.

Performing a risk-reward analysis can often clarify decisions. If the risk of a failed marriage is that you may have to experience heartache and an expensive divorce, you’d better think carefully. If the risk of a bad ski run is that you’ll die, you’d better think even more carefully about what you’ll gain by taking that risk. But be careful. As Christopher Burney, a prisoner at Buchenwald wrote, “Death is a word which presents no real target to the mind’s eye.” In a sense, Frankiewicz’s death was a failure of imagination.

SOX Compliance has missed the target.

I work a lot lately with auditors and sox compliance, and I wonder if this is just something that got created to drum up business.  Post Entron, SOX was supposed to restore confidence, I highly doubt Enron's balance sheet was corrupted by lax database standards.  It's always good to have a good security policy in place, but it seems that SOX Compliance and database security while on parrallell paths diverge when it comes to intent.

A recent article about how companies still "hide" (really under-report) off-balance sheet liabilities, show how SOX has missed the target.  Reading this article than made me think, about why as DBA's we spend so much time on SOX Compliance, when the real issue has very little to do with IT standards.  Not that IT standards and security are not important, but when it comes to SOX, maybe these audit companies are spending too much time looking at the wrong department.

The original article is located here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/28/business/norris29.php

FLOYD NORRIS

Off-the-balance-sheet mysteries

The best article I've read in a long time; I wish the focus would have been more on an "Angry American Man", as opposed to "White", and less focus on Hilary, as there are many points that resonate with every American Man, but over-all I enjoyed reading it.

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Gary Hubbell is a regular columnist with the Aspen Times Weekly.

My latest "finds" are now working.

I couldn't help my self recently, noticed two items in the trash of a house that was recently vacated by the occupants; snow blower and lawn mower.

Both looked good, Toro Snow blower, litle 3hb job, nice; Troy Built 6.5 hp self-propelled mower, a beauty both side and rear discharge, why would it be in the trash ? ; even if didn't work, i can always use parts.

Snow Blower, no-start, 10 minutes of tearing apart, cleaned carb and spark plug, shot of starter fluid in the carb, starts right up, very nice.  Electric starter is broken, but properly cleaned plug and carb, fires right up with the old fashioned pull rope.  These 2-stroke engines foul easy with lack of maintenance, oil-gas mixture goes bad quickly, snow blowers are rarely used (even in the midwest, most only see use 4-5 times a year), people rarely drain the gas out in the spring and few bother to start them occasionally.  I always like to have fun and tinker; once a month I start everything I have, generators, snow blowers, mowers, tractors, weed wackers, chain saws and leaf blowers...that's fun ! 

Troy built mower, looks brand new, but diagnosis shows lack of basic care.  Carb fouled, spark plug fouled, electric cut-off safety device broken and underneath the mowing deck a side peice of sheet-metal tore off and impacted the blade (what the hell were they mowing, the african bush ?).  Hoping the engine isn't shot from the impact; so I clean 'er up enough to start, bend the metal underneath out of the way, rig-up the safety so it's ignored !, 6 pulls later she runs like champ, what a great mower.  Cut-out the metal under the mowing deck, fix the safety, this mower is better than the one I got, what a find !

Of course the "boys" helped the entire time, they love fix'n stuff too !

"People know the cost of everything and the value of Nothing", Unknown quote I heard from somewhere;  Nowhere is this more true than here, I can sell either of these peices of equipment for a few hundred bucks; absolutely nothing wrong with them except lack of care.

Another man's trash is another man's treasure.

It has taken me some time to get this done.  As any good tech guy I rolled my own first, but found the functionality I wanted missing.  Though it is a great exercise to create your own.  I evaluated other options, but didn't want to use a commercially hosted solution; because I wanted to integrate the blog into my existing web site.

Some might ask, why not just use one of the commercial sites, etc; I don't like the advertising; I wanted the blog integrated into my non-blog site content.  Also from a technical perspective I find it very important to stay current with technology, and my web site, which isn't the prettiest thing, is my place to work on things; gives one a new perspective on technology.

Enter dasBlog.  Much more complicated than I thought, but I managed to get it up and running in probably 4-6 hours; than I had to get into the source code and see how it works; i'm impressed.

bob