Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences – predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics – are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind – another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

I never watch TV during the summer (and even more so now that I have my media server working with my ps3). However this fall has some good content coming up. So I suggest canceling your premium cable until the following:

Dexter season 3 (Showtime): September 28th.
24 season 7 (Fox): November 23rd. (2 hour mini movie called 24:Exile)
Californication season 2 (Showtime): Just list “Fall”
Entourage season 5 (HBO): September 7th.
CSI Season 9 (CBS): October 9th.
Flight of the Conchords (HBO): January 2009

The only thing that makes me excited about 24 is Jon Voight has signed on to play the bad guy. Could be very good or very bad. I’m excited about Dexter, Californication, Entourage, CSI and Flight of the Conchords because all left off on good notes. If it wasn’t for cable content such as this I doubt I would have any at all. I would like to make the full jump to my media server and skip the cable completely, seeing as how 99% of what I get is bullshit. Maybe I can just rock the torrents to the media server, but there is something to be said about quick HD content on all the shows I mentioned. I think come 2009 I’m going to cut the cable out and stick with a linux media server with torrent abilities. Cheaper and I get exactly what I want and not “Dancing with the Stars” ugh.

Work is so damn stressful around the holidays. A lot of people are in bad moods and everyone is stressed. Not to mention half our clients don’t pay their December bills. I’ve never been a fan of December and I know it’s only because of work. I love when clients call at 3:30 in the morning because they “thought it was earlier”. I never have any “so so” clients. I have clients that are rad and I love to work for and then I have those smaller clients that aren’t very profitable and are just a giant panic attack. I need to be a lot more discerning when picking new projects. Thats my new years resolution. Serious.

- PeekVid allows you to watch just about any TV right now for free. Sure you could find a torrent for better quality but if your in a hurry this is the way to go. Bring on The Wonder Years!

- Kevin Rose Confirms Apple iPhone (Diggnation is getting more and more annoying for me.)

- Specialized Bikes Christmas Greeting, this is pretty cool is watch.

- Seinfeld – Lost Episode (Kramer Becomes A Racist) (wow)

- DeGraeve’s Color Palette Generator is amazing, I just used it for a client. I found out about this over on My Site Stinks but Yours is Cool. You should go there.

Below is a new video made for Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”. The song is good, although Cash wasn’t around to approve or disapprove anything on this album as this was recorded right before he passed away. R.I.P. But this video is the worst thing to bare his name. It’s a bunch of celebrities acting serious and sad. Celebrities are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to morals and eithics, so lets put them in a Cash gospel song. Rad. Does anyone else find it ironic that this video is to a song titled “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”? Not to mention the choice of people was strange. I can see Jonny Depp (plays music was in a Cash cover band) and of course the country greats that appear in the video, but Kanye West, Timberlake, Lisa Marie, the Evanescence chick, etc… If I wanna see these people I’ll watch a movie. Not to mention Cash was an icon of post gospel country music. His lyrics were rough and spoke of personal responsibility (remember that?), hard times, guns, whiskey and red, white and blue. So what is anti-american, pro racism, bitch like Kanye West doing in his video?

EDIT: Also why is coked up and beat down model Kate Moss in this? (thank you Antonia)

God I hate Rosie O’Donnell! Here is a video of her fighting on The View over gun control. She flat tells the another woman she is wrong at the end. Not to mention she has no idea what she is talking about. This bitch needs to show some respect to other people’s viewpoints and do some homework.

San Diego investigative journalist John Mattes was attacked by a couple he was investigating: Make sure to watch both videos on the right hand side. Insane. This is amazing, how dumb can you be to attack the media on camera, threaten to kill them and have them killed in mexico. This video made me super mad.

First off I’m a huge history and news buff. I’ve been following the situation in Israel for the last 5 years in detail. I’ve read a couple of books on the subject and I am aware I am new to this 2000+ year situation. As you can tell I 110% support Israel, and I know how unpopular this viewpoint is among twenty and thirty something Americans. I really don’t have the time to go into detail but here are a couple of my quick points. Mostly just a blog to bleed my thoughts out so I am remember later.

1. Lebanon has had 20+ years to eradicate Hezbollah (which was formed only to fight Israel) from their country. In 2002 the United Nation even joined up to help them with the effort. Not only has no progress been made against this terrorist group, rather Hezbollah has grown almost 3 fold in the last 2 years alone. Hezbollah has completely controlled southern Lebanon with their schools, hospitals and more importantly large army. How do you not see something like this coming? I feel for the people in Lebanon, however the leaders of Lebanon really blew this one big time. I would love to hear the excuse for that.

2. In January 2000, Hezbollah assassinated the commander of the South Lebanon Army’s Western Brigade, Colonel Aql Hashem, at his home in the security zone.

3. On May 25, 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon to the UN-agreed Israeli border, and their pullout was certified by the UN as complete. Lebanon and Syria claim the Shebaa Farms, a 35 km² area, to be occupied Lebanese territory despite the UN ruling, and on that basis Hezbollah has continued to engage Israeli forces in that area.

4. These dumb American’s bitching about how they are stuck in Lebanon and no one will help them. First off Lebanon has been on America’s list of countries not safe for American’s to travel to for almost 6 years. Secondly Lebanon is a country clearly not doing anything about Hezhollah. It’s not rocket science people. Go to hawaii.

I am not jewish and I don’t really have any jewish friends. But come one, read up on this issue! It’s not only interesting and then you can from your own opinion!

Bring on the hate mail!

I’ve had my XV6700 for about 2 weeks now. So here is a quick review:

Overall I really like it. The EV-DO network is a lot faster then I had thought. This makes it really easy to view a e-mailed link or SSH into a server and reset something. I’ve never had a mobile device chance my life so much. I can actually go out to dinner and still keep an eye on a server or fix something if needed. So far I have an SSH client, FTP client, Skype, Google Earth, Firefox, AIM, WiFi finder, etc all on my phone. The keyboard is large and easy to use to get a quick e-mail out. MS Outlook Mobile actually does a great job of managing my IMAP account and using my outgoing mail server the mail is very fast out and in. I took it along on some recent Search And Rescue training, which included a very long hike (all day) and a night on top of a mountain. The coverage (Verizon) was very good. I got coverage in the middle of nowhere and was able to log into a server without a building within 20 miles. Almost scary. Now the bad points: Very short battery life. 8 hours is good for this phone. I’ve ordered another battery and a car charger, both are very key. As some of you know the voice quality isn’t all that hot. A good bluetooth headset will fix that. So over all it is a good phone and more importantly a very powerful tool. For $300 and $100/mo is it more than worth it for myself. I’ve left many dinners/weddings/parties/bbqs to go home and reset a server and now I won’t have too. Not to mention I you can connect this phone via USB (Mac or PC) to your laptop and be online at decent speeds anywhere! Maybe I’ll have a somewhat normal life away from the office.

P.S. This is being posted from the XV6700

I’ve never been a fan of search engine optimization. I’ve always seen it as a joke. I have clients that spend $3k a month to pay some search engine firm to get them on the first page with a random keyword and then I have clients that have never heard of search engine optimization and they are the first page on all their keywords. The difference? Popularity. If you have a lot of people going to your site and talking about it in blogs and message boards thats more than money can buy you. Bands own the search engine market and I doubt they have search engine firms helping them.

So I decided to actually do something about zeropresence’s search engine status. Being has how I named the company after BBS handle I used to have back in the day when I was 13, I always thought it was weird enough and random enough to not have much trouble with the search engines. (Although there are days I wish I had a newer more creative company name, but it works and its worked for a long time). I’m not going to change ZP to a pop punk band name like “Forget our sunday love” with a photo of a dead tree. Moving along… A google for “zeropresence” show a lot of our stuff and of a lot of some kid that creates counterstrike maps. So to fix that I got ahold of a copy of Web CEO. Its a great little tool. It runs a lot of reports for you. For example it looks at your meta tag keywords and then go into google (about 100 different other search engines if you want) and compares your keywords to your rankings so you can see what keywords are working and which ones aren’t. It will also give you advice on what keywords to used based on the amount of results per keyword. I could go on and on… but check it out there is a free version. for me its not worth buying the full version but its a tool I would use every couple months to help a client get off the ground. As a client it would be nice to see what is working and what is not all in a nice report.