The old man is glad Obama is out of the Whitehouse

My brother sent this to me. I love it.

One sunny day in January, 2013 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sitting on a park bench.

He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."

The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I've told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."

All I can say is ......Semper Fi !

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

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You are responsible for you

A rock thrown from your hand, crashes through a window and breaks it. You threw it on purpose. There could be any number of reasons (even entirely legitimate ones) why you threw the rock, but the facts are the facts. You threw a rock, the window is now broke and you did it. You can blame it on error, the wind, and dumb luck or you can claim it to be an accident, however the facts do not change because you do not like them.

You threw the rock and it is your fault the window is now broken.

This is a negative example of the thanking God theory. It stands to reason that if the winning hit in a baseball game is due to Gods divine intervention, then the rock being thrown and the window being broken is because God did not intervene? Alternatively, is it because free will dictates the outcome?

I think it is more likely that the hitter practiced a lot and the pitcher threw a pitch that the hitter could hit. I don’t think it had a lot to do with intervention. God may have set him up for the hit by allowing his mind to be clear , by allowing his body to exercise, by keeping him focused and giving him good eyesight, but ultimately I think when he stepped into the batter’s box, God pretty much said “OK kid, let’s see what you’ve got”.

The hitter (or the rock thrower) is responsible for the outcome.

The CEO got a Hummer because he convinced a bunch of other rich people to allow him to have the money to get one.

A team wins, a CEO gets rich, a murderer kills and a rapist rapes because they choose at some level to do so. The same factors are in play in most every case, with very little exception. Mental illness may be one area where this does not apply as handily, but then you have to believe that it is our divine self-interest to have people wandering around committing mass murder.

Life is a series of choices. We come upon “T’s” in the road all the time. If we go left, we shoplift a candy bar. If we go right, we pay for it. Simple as that and inescapable at the same time. You are responsible for you. You win your fault. You lose your fault. You don’t play, again, your fault.

Easy – Peezy. Nothing to it.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Headlines that Lie, Film at 11 pm.

The latest news headlines (and why a lot of it is just a big FAT lie !) :

1. Economy adds 290,000 jobs, rate rises to 9.9 % (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/business/economy/08jobs.html) It is always easy to think about the country / economy as a whole and to report it that way. The problem is that we are not a national economy, we are a bunch of regional economies. What this headlines should say is "Economy adds 290,000 part time low paying jobs to replace full time higher paying jobs. Millions lose benefits as unemployment compensation finally run out." At least it would be accurate that way.


2. Regulators look to soothe market's raw nerves (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6463NP20100507) The financial reporters always talk about "the markets" like they are a single organic piece of a larger instrument. Realistically 2/3rds of all trading done in this country is automated and executed by computer. What the headline should actually say is "Rich people make tons of money by selling stocks when price is high, prices fall as stocks sell off." They come up with all these so called reasons for stock price variations and truthfully, the price wouldn't move a bit if every executive in every public company in the USA wouldn't run their companies based upon the short term share price.


3. Apple's iPad in short supply at companies' stores (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-07/apple-ipad-in-short-supply-at-company-s-retail-stores-update1-.html) What this headline should say is "Strategy to keep iPad price artificially high is working." No , it isn't in short supply. This is a myth being foisted upon the public by Apple and the tech writers. Factually, they projected a demand well in excess of what they have actually sold. Then in order to keep the price high, they (Apple) managed the production capacity down to near short levels. This creates excitement and thus demand, which "DUH !" inflates prices. We have saw the exact same thing with the original X-Box, the X-Box 360, the iPod, the iPod player and every other game system and video device in the last ten years. Who they think they are fooling anyhow ?
4. BP lowers dome in effort to catch oil. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338004575229864184350730.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird) What it should have said was "BP doesn't have a clue how to stop oil leak, they are now going to try the old rug on top of the stain trick." This may actually work who knows? It strikes me as very odd though that you can drop a 110 ton steel box on top of an oil leak, and the oil will not float the box upward because of hydrodynamics. I'm guessing they thought of that but does this seem uh, surreal to you?
5. Iron Man 2 rakes in 7.5 million on early Friday. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iea8f9cfddb155917db3f5d86f8183f6f) What it should have said was "Producers continue to release meaningless numbers in hopes of selling more tickets." Now in the interest of full disclosure, I saw the first Iron man and plan on seeing this one too. I like movies and watch a lot of them. The problem is that all of these "Sales records" they talk about with movies is a made up numbers with no standard for comparison to any other movie. Here's why. Suppose Movie "A" comes out and makes 100 Million dollars, Movie "B" comes out and makes 75 million dollars. Following the logic of the headlines of the story it only makes sense to say that movie "A" was a hit, sold more tickets, made more money whatever right ? The answer is , well, it depends. What if Movie "A" is released on 4000 theatre screens and Movie "B" is released on 2000 screens ? Movie "A" made an average of $25,000 per screen and Movie "B" made an average of $37,500 per screen. On this basis Movie "B" is doing better, isn't it? This doesn't even take into account cross merchandising, logo branding, video games, the cost of making or distributing the movie and a thousand other measurements. The total value of a release over a weekend (or whatever time frame) is meaningless unless you have some standard way of comparing it to other films.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

I find this to be entirely appropriate

Yesterday I posted an entry about the iPad and the iPhone.

Today I read an article that presents a different slant on the same story but probably expresses it much more eloquently than I did.

You can read it here at
http://seekingalpha.com/article/202777-why-the-ipad-won-t-change-anything?source=article_sb_popular

I love it when I feel validated !!

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

No iPad or iPhone for me, Thankx but No thankx !

I have never been an early adopter. The last time I bought anything as soon as it came out was about 1980 , and I bought a VCR that weighed about 50 lbs, had clunky noisy buttons and took forever to rewind a tape. It was way over priced and I learned my lesson with that experience.

Up until very recently I had a Sam sung flip phone that was about 6 years old. No camera, no video, no email, no web browsing, no touch screen, no music player, no ring tones and no texting, but it made a great telephone. Then, sadly, it died and had to be replaced. As I went through all the options with the phone store salesperson, I was struck by the oddity of some of the options available and thought to my self "How badly do I really want a device that does a bunch of stuff, but none of it very good?".

The salesman was gaa-gaa over the iPhone and couldn't wait to tell me all about its "features"., and how cool it was. She kept saying "...and it does this (insert feature) , isn't that cool?". The more I heard about it the less impressed I was. The music player option means I am tethered to the iTunes store. The apps options means I am tethered to the "Apps store". The more I saw the less I wanted to be tethered to one company for anything and the problem is I know I am not the demographic as well. I let her keep explaining things until I said "How is it as a phone ?". She seemed stunned by the question. But...You get widgets, you get widgets !!

So anyway, I learned a long time ago that if you are an early adopter of technology a few things are usually true. For one, you usually pay more than twice what it will sell for 12-18 months from now. Another thing that is pretty common is that the first versions of almost everything technology related, doesn't work as advertised. Not only that, the basic things it is supposed to do, it usually doesn't without an enhancement, a service pack or a new item. Lastly, there is always either the promise of things to come (which may or may not appear) or the glaringly obvious functions that it doesn't have, like the seriously ancient technology of 1993 called "multi-tasking".

As it turns out , I have pretty fat fingers and the touch screen is pretty sloppy. I hated it and hate their commercials and the sappy music that goes with it. Want to know where you parked your car? There's an app for that. Sheesh. You can't get it to respond to fat fingers and it ignores the input altogether if you hit the edge of two "keys", but somehow , that is better, because Steve Jobs said so. What ever.

I remember the roll out of Windows 95 , the big marketing commercials that Bill Gates sponsored when the first version of GUI windows came out , together with the midnight madness, the worldwide new coverage, the long lines of people waiting to buy their very own copy and then when the announcer starts to explain something to Bill and then "BSOD". Funny as hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VILt5JS7Lk

So anyway , I opted for a Blackberry Bold. Been around forever, 8th or 9th version it, worked right out of the box, lots of cool features that all do pretty well and I'm pretty happy with it.

So why do I not want an iPad? I can't remember the last time I sat on a train, looking for a girl to share something with. I don't want to run down the street dancing to my shadow with white ear plugs in (full disclosure- I have an iPod shuffle, but don't use it all that much), It doesn't play any Flash enabled web sites, I read real books so I cannot figure out what I would do with it in the first place. Is it supposed to replace my Desktop ? or my network? or my laptop ? or my phone? Or is it just another example of market share being gobbled away by another conglomerate by selling us more stuff that there really isn't a defined purpose for. I mean it doesn't have a camera, you can't shoot video with it, there is basically no porting on it and not much storage so what is this thing good for? I can't figure it out, unless I am a college student or I want to read an e-book or fill out an electronic form. Maybe a doctor or an inspector of some kind could use it, but if it isn't rugged enough to put on a UPS truck, Whats the appeal? Really?

I just don't get the lots of devices in one package format anyway. We all have them, but truly, what works better? The dedicated digital camera or your phone camera? Which is easier to take the pictures off the device , phone or camera? Do you truly think the videos shot with a cell phone are superior to the ones shot with a hand held video camera? It is really all about convenience to be able to send an email with a phone or is it just easy to respond to them?

Of course, I sometimes still use a fax machine too, so go figure.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=292482513888.

We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!