I know that this kind of thing just happens.  It just pisses me off that the city is so damn dirty that this kind of thing is more common than it should be.  I wish the scumbags who are responsible for littering and turning that part of the city into a shit-hole would grow up and act like adults.  Pick up after yourself you worthless shitheads.

Take some friggin pride in your neighborhood for Christ’s sake.   Just look at what has happened to the majority of the city over the last fifty years.  All those old neighborhoods where families used to live in tight communities have been neglected by the people living there.  The gangs and scumbags have taken over a lot of those neighborhoods.  Those neighborhoods all look like ghettos now.

It really doesn’t matter which side of the city you are on either.  Every side has its own shit-hole.  Some are bigger than others.  Still, the vast majority of people who actually give a shit about their property have moved farther and farther out to get away from it all.

When you are driving around the city pay attention to the condition of the vehicles.  Notice how many dents you find in the vehicles.  Accidents happen, but they happen a lot more frequently in the city.   I think that a lot of that stems from the same carelessness that you see in the housing.

The city’s solution is to bulldoze the old homes and make way for new housing.  Do you really think that is the fix though?  Isn’t the long term fix really to somehow get people to start caring about their own environment?  Let’s see how those new housing developments that have been government funded end up in a few more years.  Maybe these residents do care and will take better care of those homes.  There is also a good chance that those people will be driven out of the city just like their predecessors.

I don’t have any idea how the city intends to go about attracting people to live there who actually care about their environment.  One drive around the city’s limits will change their minds.  It is a real shame that you can find hundreds of thousands of people living in a region who couldn’t give a shit about their neighborhood.

If I saw a plastic bottle or broken glass on the street in front of my house, I would pick it up.  I wouldn’t leave it for someone else because I know that nobody else is going to pick it up.  As far as I am concerned the city of Buffalo has become one giant garbage dump.  Carelessness breeds more carelessness.  I wonder if we will ever get to be the caliber of an area that will ever produce another United States president.  It doesn’t look like it at the rate we are going.  Isn’t it amazing how so much can change in just a couple generations?

You can’t automatically expect, presume or assume that everyone else loves animals as much as you do, nor is it any of your damn business whether they do or not.  As far as the lady goes with the horses that were portrayed as being so badly abused, the horses did not look badly abused to me.  They are farm animals after all.  They grew up sleeping in horseshit.  They grew up smelling horseshit their whole lives.  They are used to horseshit being stuck to their bodies.  I can assure you that if the horses could speak and you asked them about the horse manure, they would tell you that it really is no big deal.  In fact, not only is it not a big deal, they probably aren’t even aware of the fact that there is shit stuck to them.

Ask any kid who grew up on a dairy farm in the country about the smell of cow shit and how much it bothers them.  They will tell you that you get used to it and it is no big deal.  It is part of life growing up on a dairy farm.  Horses getting shit stuck to them and having to sleep in their own feces is part of growing up a horse.  I am sorry if you think that is abusive, but I think it is pretty normal to a horse.  I think a judge with any common sense whatsoever would also agree, especially any judge with experience in farming.

Another fact to consider is that older people also have a different outlook than we of a younger generation do.  I can’t help but think of when I was a kid.  Farmers would not hesitate to get a gun and put a 12 gauge slug into the vitals of a stray dog that was running loose on their property.  That includes little old church going grandmothers.  They would also not hesitate to kill them even though it was probably someone’s beloved pet.  (In case you can’t tell, I grew up in the country)  This was part of life.  Dogs were not to be trusted.   Nobody ever got reprimanded for it.  You knew that if your dog went and visited the neighbors farm, there was a really good chance it wasn’t coming back.  Those old farmers would exceptionally good marksmen.

When we had a pet dog growing up, that dog spent its entire life sleeping in a dog house outside.  So did grandma’s dogs.  That dog was loved and cared for, but it was never treated as well as one of us kids, nor do I think it ever should have been.  We would turn it loose and play with it outside on nice days, but living in that doghouse was its reality.  After all, it was a dog.  Isn’t that why they invented the dog house?  What did the dog eat?  It ate table scraps and dog food.  After all, it was a dog.

The point I am trying to make here is that I think reasonable people put all pets below humans on their priority scale.  Some people will put them at the very bottom of that scale.  Some will put them higher above most other things in terms of their importance in the grand scale of life.  I love animals too, but I obviously put them much farther down the scale of importance than you obviously do.  When I see a dead animal, I feel sorrow for the pet owner, but very little for the pet itself.  I don’t like to see an animal suffer but I would euthanize one before I would pay a $1000 vet bill.  That is right.  I put $1000 above the value of a pet’s life.  Call me cold hearted.  I call it being a practical person who has his priorities right.  I could care less if your animal’s value is $1 or $10,000,000.  That is your call.    Just don’t expect me to put the same value as you do.  That is my judgment to make, not yours.

People have different perspectives and priorities that we need to consider and respect.  This lady who was arrested for animal cruelty was in tears over the death of her dogs.  Was it a stupid thing to do?  Yes, of course it was.  Should she have been arrested for it?  I hardly think so.  In my mind that is obvious abuse of power over a citizen who caused no harm to another citizen.  Was it irresponsible?  Yes, without a doubt.  I think that those tears on her face were penalty enough as far as I am concerned.  How would you like it if you got arrested for every irresponsible thing you have done in your life?  Yea, I thought so.  You probably have done far worse things than neglect your pets in your lifetime, and you got away with it.  Yeah.  How about your early drinking years when you got behind the wheel after a couple too many beers?  I bet you did that more than once or twice.  How about that first time you smoked that doobie with your buddies?  Yeah, how would that look having a permanent police record for something like that?  This lady is balling her eyes out because she knows the death of her dogs is her own fault.  Leave her be.  She will not repeat this mistake.  The laws in this country and this state are out of hand and you seemingly innocent people who think you are doing everyone a favor are really adding to the problem.

It is Friday and I heard Tom say on his show that he doesn’t claim to be an angel.  Really Tom?  Sounds to me like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. 

Tom, I like your apparent stance on political issues which I happen to agree with almost entirely.  But, sticking your nose into these people’s business like this just because animals are not as high of priority in their lives could not be any more liberal.  Your whole stance on this issues screams that you are a raging liberal on this issue.  You lost major wisdom points in my book pal.  You call yourself a Tea Partier?  Really?  How about you let people live their lives their way and butt the hell out if it doesn’t affect you.   Isn’t that what this tea party movement is all about.   You claim to want the government out of our lives and yet you support stiff laws against people who neglect a friggin dog?

I am so infuriated by this issue that I am seriously considering stopping all future contributions to the SPCA.  I thought we were helping out a good organization.  After seeing them stick their noses into matters like these farther than I think any person has a right to, I have to reconsider my previously undying support for their organization.  Maybe that money isn’t supporting the kinds of things I thought it was. 

It is great that you love animals.  It is great that you do what you can to help abandoned animals.  However, it is completely irresponsible for you to stick your nose into these people’s lives in the way that you have with the horse lady and this lady with the dead dogs.  It was wrong of you to make the accusations and assumptions that you have without considering the obvious fact that these people have the human right to set their own priorities in life when it comes to how much they care about the animals they own.  Stop assuming we all should and that we all ought to treat animals as well as we treat our brethren. 

I encourage you all to travel out into the country and take a damn good look around a real farm.  (You know, the places where that packaged food in the supermarket comes from.)  How about a little common friggin sense on this issue?  If you really loved animals that much Tom, I can assure you that you would be a vegetarian.  Go visit a slaughterhouse for Christ’s sake.   How could you possibly take the stance on these issues that you have and not be completely appalled at what goes on every single day in the life cycle of every single farm animal.  Come back to reality, would you please?  Animals are animals and should be treated as such.  It is sad when they are mistreated.  People should be encouraged not to mistreat them.  But, that is as far as it should go.  They are animals after all.

From everything I know about the horse issue, I am glad to see the horses were returned to their owner.  That is the common sense thing to do whether you nosy do-gooders like it or not.  I applaud the judge for standing for liberty.

They make it out to be like they are trying to be helpful.  In fact, they aren’t trying to be helpful.  They are trying to monetize your typo by getting you to click on advertisements.  In my opinion that is just taking advantage of someone for your own profit.  I am a hardcore capitalist.  So I don’t begrudge a company its profit.  This is just idiocy though. 

It takes about 5 seconds for the Time Warner computer to return your page that shows you that you have made a typo.  This is the part that pisses me off.  Before they used to do this, you would get the infamous “Page Cannot Be Displayed” message.  But, that message would come up almost instantly when Time Warner’s DNS server found there was no such myreallybadtypo.com website.

I never considered how to fix this recently until I heard that Google was publishing a set of public DNS server addresses that anyone could use.  I changed the settings on my computer.  Holy bajesus am I pleased.

Not only do I no longer get that incredibly stupid page from Time Warner, my page load speeds have gone way up.  That means I am navigating the internet at much faster speeds than I was before.  And, it is all free.  Kick ass!  I am a huge fan of free things that actually rock!

Thank you Google.  Click on that link to see more about Google’s public DNS.

I really don’t have many nice things to say about Time Warner.  The amount of bandwidth you get is pretty good.  Their latency to some major websites is crappy.  Their DNS is crappy.  Their reliability is crappy.  I wish that FIOS would come to this neighborhood.

I like having the extra bandwidth that I get over a standard Verizon DSL connection.  But aside from that………………..

I also have a low level password for things that don’t matter a whole heck of a lot, like my accounts at social bookmark websites or my accounts at other social media sites.  The way that I see it is if something gets compromised on there, then I will just create a new account.  I think the incentive for hackers to crack those accounts is pretty low.  It really wouldn’t be a big issue unless someone had a really trusted account with tons of followers who marched in unison to their every request.

Then I have some mid level passwords.  Those are the passwords for sites that are important to me and would be a pain if they were compromised somehow.   Maintaining lists of passwords is a necessary pain in the rear.  Even if you use a program to save them, you still need a master backup.

The whole point of this post though was to rant about something that bothers me.  An awful lot of the time, I will go to create an account at some website and the password I want to use is not within their guidelines for passwords.  This is completely infuriating.  The passwords I use are pretty long.  I do this on purpose to make it even harder for brute force password crackers to figure mine out.  It is going to take a computer a number of years to crack my better passwords.  I usually change them within that time frame anyway.

The infuriating part is the fact that my higher security passwords are declined on some of these websites.  The company actually has the nerve to tell me that my password cannot be longer than 15 characters.  Screw you pal.  I like long passwords.  You guys are idiots for not accepting them.  As far as I am concerned, there should be a much higher threshold on password length.  There should also be more flexibility in terms of what you can put in there.

I skipped out on a service for a website that I like to visit that is called Intense Debate.   Basically it is a script that some bloggers use to monitor their comments.  You have to log into the system if you want to comment with your name.  Otherwise, you just comment as a generic guest.  Nobody gets to see your link back to your website if they are really interested in your opinions.  I skipped out on this because the dumbass service requires that your password be 15 characters or less.   The password I wanted to use was a few more than that. I just wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit today.  I whipped the bird at my computer screen and took that person’s blog off my reading list.  I am no longer a subscriber.

People are fickle.  I guess I am too.  This blogger probably thought he was doing something great when he decided to use that particular service for his blog.  Well pal, you lost one reader because of their stupid password insecurity.  This isn’t the only service this has happened with.  There are a lot of them out there.  I have just gotten to the point where I am fed up with companies not taking reasonable measures to make it easy for people to participate in things that the companies pretend to want participation in.  If you actually want people to comment on your site, you should probably make it easy for them to do so.  I was willing to sign up for intense debate so I could comment on that site.  But, the second inconvenience of having to come up with a new low value password that I would have to record specifically for a rare service like this one was a deal breaker for me.

Everybody acts like some evil guy working at BP knew that this drilling was going to lead to an explosion and he did it anyway.  That is utterly ridiculous.  I am quite sure that the man in charge did not think that there was going to be this massive accident.  If he did, he most certainly would have stopped the project.  There is no doubt that no one wanted to see those 11 people lose their lives.  Speaking of which, how come we don’t hear about that anymore?  All we hear about is how the leak is gushing thousands of gallons and how the government is responding to it.

It is becoming just like after hurricane Katrina where all of these people blamed the federal government for not responding faster.  They blamed the government for not somehow stopping the damage caused by the hurricane.  This is just ridiculous.  Now people are blaming the government for not stopping the oil leak.  It is as if people think that the government can wave a magic want and make everything better.  What a bunch of retards.

Governments are essentially worthless in times like this.  They weren’t designed to handle problems like this.  Nor are they capable of doing so.  Getting the government involved in this is like asking your grandmother to fix your computer when it blue screens while booting to Windows.  It is ridiculous to even ask for their help.

This whole issue is just another political football that will be used to drive a wedge deeper into American society.  People will choose sides over this issue.  How did we get so far off track as a people?  Can’t we just admit that sometimes bad shit happens?  Let’s just fix it and move on instead of worrying about who has to become a scapegoat.

If consumer confidence improves enough in the US where people start committing to large ticket purchases, companies will begin hiring again.  If companies begin hiring again, the economic problems we are facing right now will begin to fade.

In most countries in Europe, government taxation is a very big drag on the economy.  The people also tend to work fewer hours per week.  There is also a lot less manufacturing.  All of these things are more links in the chain that is going to keep Europe shackled for the next decade.  Unfortunately, the US is not immune to problems in Europe.  The worse their economy gets, the worse our economy gets.  The world is flat and very much interdependent.

The United States economy is much more elastic and much more resilient than other economies in the world.  If need be, the United States can monetize its way out of its debt problems.  Hopefully that doesn’t happen.  If it does though, you had better own gold or something else that doesn’t lose its value.

If people in the US don’t wake up and start holding politicians accountable for overspending, the United States will soon be in the exact same boat as Europe.  Then we will not be able to get ourselves out of messes like this.

One problem I always had with Kiyosaki’s message in the book was his lack of clarity about taking on debt.  I distinctly remember that the overall message of his book was not to be afraid of debt.  He said smart people are in debt.  He said poor people try to avoid debt.  I always felt that his book was way too simplistic in its approach on this subject and that it would leave people with a false sense that it was okay to be way in debt as long as you are trying to make money in the process.

This message is Tom Foolery.

What Kiyosaki should have been clearer about was some simple principles that are made known to anyone who builds businesses.

A good business model involves creating a system where you can create value that people will pay for on an individual basis.  In other words, you create a product or service that someone is willing to pay you more for than it costs you to produce.   This is the fundamental basis for any business model.

It is okay to borrow money to produce that product or service so long as you can still make a profit on it after paying back the loan and you are able to sell whatever that product or service is.  The business model must be profitable though before you can scale it up.  If you borrow huge sums of money to scale up an unprofitable business model, you simply drive yourself to bankruptcy at a much faster rate.

In fact, part of a bank’s responsibility before making a loan is to see that your business model is sound so that they can expect to get their money back from you along with interest.

Kiyosaki fails to make this point clear in my opinion.  Obviously he understands this principle.  He just didn’t communicate it properly.  Instead his message attained an image that debt is good and people should welcome it with open arms.  His one caveat is that the debt must be for assets and not liabilities.  If someone needs to be taught that, then they should not be borrowing money for anything period.

Imagine conducting your meetings on a monthly basis where every one of your sales people can attend.  It doesn’t matter what part of the country or what part of the world they are in.  They can call in and be brought up to speed on whatever is going on.  You might already do something similar to this.  Here is the big advantage though.  If you use a good conference call service, those meetings are all recorded. 

The teleconferencing service I use records the whole thing for me and makes it available online for as long as you use their service.

If one person missed the meeting, they can listen to it later.  If there is anything that people are unclear about, they can replay the meeting a second or third time.  The entire meeting can be replayed again and again.  Can you see the value in this? 

You and I both know that your best sales people are revealing little nuggets of top quality information during your regular conversations with them.  What if that information could be captured for the rest of your sales staff to listen in on?  Wouldn’t that help those other less experienced guys get much better at their craft?  You bet it would.

A lot of managers and small business people out there don’t know that this kind of tool is available.  It has been around for a little while now.  You don’t need to be really tech savvy to conduct a meeting this way either.  It is really easy to learn how to use a simple control panel to adjust any settings you want for your particular needs.

Once you do it once, you’ll see that it really is a nifty tool.  It is the perfect way to capture and preserve all the little ideas that reveal themselves when having a meeting with your sales staff.   I highly recommend you give it a shot.  I went with the service that I use because I heard they were reliable.  I know there are free ones out there.  I just didn’t want the headaches that inevitably come along with using a free service.  In my opinion, it is worth it to pay a few bucks for the increased reliability.

In any event, I feel like I need to post here from time to time just to let people know that I haven’t abandoned it.  I work really long hours.  As a result, there are many times I just get too bogged down to spend any time here.  On another note:

Welcome home Todd

I thought I would take a minute to welcome home a guy that has been serving our nation overseas.  His name is Todd and he runs a blog called TMtips.com.  Todd is a good egg.  You can read about his adventures in Iraq as well as his online business material on his blog.  He is not a bullshitter either.  His information is genuine.

Glad to see him come home in one piece.  I can only imagine how happy his family is to see him.  Thanks to guys like him, the rest of us can go about our daily lives and bitch about politics.

Family values come into play here because the lack of these values and utter lack of moral character creates the underlying mentality that people use to pass bad bills such as this one.

Imagine a boy who grows up in a strong family value oriented household.  This kid’s father is going to want to teach his son some of the more important things he has learned in life so that his son can avoid some of the mistakes dad made.  He will teach his son ideas like “go to college so you can get a better job”, “drive that car another year until you can really afford a newer one”, “learn about computers because they are the way of the future”, “life isn’t always fair”, “take the lemons life hands you and make lemonade”, “there is no substitute for hard work”, etc.  In fact, you may have heard some of these things yourself.

Dad is going to teach him to do things that need to be done even though he doesn’t feel like doing them.  Dad is going to teach him things like, how to change the oil in his car or low to replace a light switch or how to use basic hand tools.  They may seem rather insignificant, but they aren’t.  Learning all those little lessons in life helps to make a man more autonomous.  It helps him to be a little less reliant on someone else and more self reliant. It teaches him to think for himself and focus on long term benefits of living responsibly.

This is the entire basis for my point about family values affecting political policy.  When people are self reliant, they don’t want someone else telling them how to live their lives.  They don’t want someone in Washington making a law that forces them to follow new rules for things that should be none of anyone else’s business.  He doesn’t want government doing things for him that he is quite capable of doing himself.

Look at the trends

As the family unit continues to deteriorate, you will see more and more legislation passed that tries to force people to do things that dad should have taught them to do.  If you asked your dad, he would have told you that you would be a damn fool not to have health insurance already.  In fact there are numerous people who take a job mainly because they need that insurance coverage.

As the family unit continues to deteriorate, you will see the high school graduation rates stay at ridiculously low levels.  You will see more people on welfare because nobody ever taught them to feel shame for it.  You will continue to see excessive numbers of teenagers using drugs.  More people will believe the lying politicians who tell them that it is not that person’s own fault that they are in a bad situation.  People are quick to blame someone else for their self inflicted problems.

If we are going to mandate anything in this country, it should be mandated that parents have to preserve the family unit once children are born.  Churches tried to do this for all the right reasons, but people shunned them instead of taking their good advice.

Have you noticed any correlation between the deterioration in the family unit and the increased me, me, me attitude in people?  I bet you have.  People’s own character is at fault here.   People of reasonable moral character do not need all of these bullshit government regulations to force them to live in a responsible manner.  Can’t you see that this is really the root of the problem?