About two years ago I purchased a Canon EOS Rebel XTi in anticipation of the arrival of our new baby girl. Until that time, I had been using Google’s Picasa (then at version 2) along with the Canon subcompact du jour. I was pretty happy with the usefulness of this combination. Picasa is simple, extremely fast and doesn’t obfuscate the underlying photos in any sort of database or binary file.
Bill O’Reilly is no friend of permissive culture. He’s got no use for the drugs, the loose morals, the abortions or the media that glorified it. On Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy, he had this to say:
Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her or even over Britney Spears. Look at the way she behaves. Read more…
Last week I had what might be the strangest air travel experience I’ve ever had. I was flying from Raleigh to Ft. Lauderdale via Atlanta. Before the gate agent in Raleigh opened boarding for the flight, she found out that our plane was called in for maintenance. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before she changed our gate to the next one over and told us we’d be on a different plane. No problem, we thought.
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I finally sucked it up and bought a Mac. I knew about how smooth the system was, but in all my years have never had one as my primary machine. I ordered a refurbished Mac mini Core Duo 1.66 with 512MB and a Combo drive. Certainly not a powerhouse but I decided that if I wind up loving it, I’ll order a more substantial box and relegate this one to media center duty.
I was listening to the radio the other day and it occurred to me that there may be some problems with the American health care system. Just about every politician is talking about it and about as much as we can grok from all the rhetoric is whose plan isn’t going to work. But it seems to me that we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
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Marissa decided the house was way too quiet without our furry friend around. Even the cats were looking at each other, waiting for someone to challenge their reign of the house! That’s when we found our new friend in the online classifieds. A family in Port Charlotte, FL (about 2.5 hours drive) had been surprised with a litter of nine purebred rottie puppies! They had only one left — the one they’d considered keeping as their own.
We drove that day to look at the little guy and fell in love. He’s just over eight weeks old and his name is Guinness.
Last week our 9-year-old rottweiler Bodi was diagnosed with cancer. He had two large tumors and we were forced to make the choice that no pet owner ever wants to make. Bodi did not come home with us.
Bodi was at Marissa’s side almost every waking moment from the day he came home with her in college. He protected the house, his owners and his dog pals. He always knew what was going on and would not tolerate violence. He’d step in to break up a fight regardless of whether it was human or canine.
We will miss him dearly.
Paul B. Farrel, in a recent article published on MarketWatch.com, posits that everything you need to know about personal finance is contained in nine simple steps. In a Dilbert book. He goes so far as to praise the ideas as worthy of a Nobel Prize in economics.
Paul, you may be onto something. I won’t get into too much blabber, but I certainly agree that these simple bullet points are essential and bear repeating. For the lazy readers (and because I think this is so important), I’ll quote them here:
There you go. That’s it. Do these things and you will retire worry-free. Furthermore, you’ll live the rest of your life not having to worry about losing your job or being able to pay the bills.
I realize these things aren’t easy, but work towards them. Most of the people reading this post can go 9 for 9 if only they prioritize a little. If you’re not making much money, you can always save a small percentage somewhere you can’t touch it so easily. Do you smoke? Quit — and put away the $4 a pack. You’ll kill 2 birds with one stone that way (and maybe even save yourself).