Simple America

Want to wish eveyone a Merry Christmas. May your stockings be filled. Your dinners be wonderful. And the time with your families memorable.

Merry Christmas hugs from Santa, er, Simple American.

A couple of days ago a reality hit me in the head about the President elect. No it was not the way his team bandies the word “rule” about instead of “govern”. Nor was it my irritation concerning how the press covers the next First Lady’s fashion choices with such graciousness, while criticizing Sarah Palin’s choices. Both ladies looked pretty sharp to me. But back to my problem which is even worse than the drop of a thousand points on the Dow Jones index since the election results.

What is it that bothers me more, you ask? What has President elect Obama done to bring me such dismay? He is younger than me. This has never happened before. In the past I have always been able to refer to the President as an old goat whenever his policies might upset me. What am I to do now? I’m feeling old. And I don’t feel ancient enough to refer to Mr. Obama as a young whipper snapper. Can you feel my quandry here folks? Do I have to start picking the color of my jello snacks at the retirement home?

I am further tweaked in the aging process by my son who is now learning to drive. An automobile that is. He has always driven me crazy. But that is just one of the joys of parenthood. No? This week I have been scooting over to the passenger seat and letting him make the drive home from school. When I listen to the boy talk now, he sounds so much like me. The same innotations and mumbling. How I wish he was a clearer speaker like his mom.

Oh well. Guess I better check out the Geritol aisle, so I could boost my aged blood. Perhaps I should stop throwing away those  membership letters from the AARP (American Association of Retired People). But can that organization benefit me in Asia once I retire? So many questions. Maybe Alzheimers shall come on so I can forget how to worry so much.

 I added some new titles at Jerry Trader and I am really pleased to offer these. I have always been a bargain bin shopper for PC Games and these are some titles I plan on enjoying myself.

 I am definitely drooling over this bundle. Why? Well it has several kick ass games that I wanted when they came out, but could not manage to get at the time for one reason or the other. So what are titles are included in this bundle? Check it out:

• Black & White 2
• Black & White 2 Battle of the Gods Expansion Pack
• Lord of the Rings: Battle of Middle Earth
• Command and Conquer Generals
• Command and Conquer: Generals Zero Hour Expansion Pack

Some pretty awesome titles on 14 CDs all in one package. You can pick it up at Jerry Trader for $16.95 today.

One of my favorite games series has always been SimCity. Something about playing at city manager and developer has always pleased me. And in this offering, SimCity Societies, players are given even greater control over the cities they create. You can control the mood of your city. How do you want the buildings too look, traditional or futuristic, rural vs. urban, to even environmental concerns. Players can assign sims societal values, name locations in the city and even design custom constructions. I’m ready to give this version a shot. If you want to try it to then pick it up at Jerry Trader for only $8.95.

When you miss a game that first time around. Come and see if we have it at Jerry Trader and save same bucks while you’re at it.

No this in not an end to my blog. But it is an end to the dream I once held. With President-elect Obama’s promise of change I do not expect anything to be simple in the country again. Our flag shall still be red, white, and blue but I am not sure it can remain true. I fear for my brothers in arms. That they shall be squandered and endangered by a hater of the military.

Like the Roman Republic, the American Republic is poised to fall. Despite free election day coffee at Starbucks and ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s the new administration is going to want free from the working citizens. The worker bees are expected to continue working and happily give to the dud bugs that refuse to get off the couch and turn off Oprah.

Our next President told Joe the Plumber he should share his success, so that others behind him could succeed when asked how Obama’s tax plan would work. And Joe the Plumber has been attacked like a pariah for asking his question. Do we want to live an America where people are attacked because they want to understand Obama’s policies?

Why does the public tolerate the media’s biased? It is time to tell network news and print media that we want balance. They demand it of talk radio. The reason talk radio has achieved its popular is because they provide the other voice that people choose to hear. That is the Simple America I dream of. A land of choices. I make mine and you make yours. We should not criticize each other if we make a different choice. Just don’t force me to make your choice as I would never force you to follow my path.

I congratulate the new American President, Barrack Obama, and wish him the best as the leader of the greatest nation on Earth. Like Ceasar, you need someone in your chariot reminding you that you are mortal and that America achieved greatness long before you or I were born. Your task is to keep American great. We shall see if you are up to the task of leading. You won’t have any training wheels. Good luck sir.

The week flew by. I am almost breathless.

For most Americans the big deal is Halloween. But for my family we always have my daughter’s birthday on the 29th to override Hallow’s Eve. Hard to believe the girl is 17 already. My friends with babies and toddlers. Enjoy them as they grow much too quickly. We celebrated by having an early dinner at Buca di Bepo. Love their Italian food and we ate until we exploded. Had a bit of a rush so we had to get the tira misu to go. Why the hurry? Well they had a recruiter from Colorado University at Boulder in town and we wanted to hear about this school. One of many engineering programs she is applying to.

For Halloween the girl dressed up as a zombie. I caught a glimpse of her and she commented that she looked like a Harry Potter zombie because of her striped pullover sweater. She really did a good job with the make up but was stressing as she had no fake blood for her gouges. Oh well I left her on that note as I had to take the boy to school. Did not see her again as she had a Halloween party in the evening, followed by a sleep over.

My wife and I had a lovely evening with the Houston Pops on Halloween. They were playing the music of Rogers and Hammerstein. It was quite nice, though the string section looked a lot smaller than usual. They had to make room for a huge screen, which displayed video clips of the movies as they performed the music. Even better you could hear the vocal track from these flicks. They performed pieces from Oklahoma, Caroussel, South Pacific, The King and I, State Fair, and The Sound of Music. It was so beautifully performed and I could not help but sit there with a huge smile on my face. The music’s euphoria simply overwhelmed me. My only disappointment is that they stopped playing. I so wanted to hear Edelweiss too.

Tonight number 4 sister-in-law is coming by to plan for a camping trip in a couple of weeks. We intend to go fishing and camp one and possible two nights at Lake Somerville. Number 5 sister-in-law may join us too and I intend to ask Ed too. He lives so close, I hope he can at least fish with us if he cannot camp with us.

12 to Midnight has been keeping me mad busy. Which is good. I enjoy working on budgets and forecasts. We have to be really careful with our cash in this economy and we now prepare to publish some of our works in print and not just digitally. There are the secret projects; still very hush, the hush. Both are progressing well and I hope that we can release the one in the next couple of weeks as I hope this work shall be available for Christmas shoppers. Just know that both of these items should prove to be scarey. Very scarey! Muahahaha!

Well today I did the deed. Completed my civic duty as all citizens should do. I went to the early voting precint in Sugar Land and cast my ballot.

Early voting here was easy peasie. Took five minutes and it would not have taken that long if my voter registration card’s barcode had not been scratched. So they had to look me up manually. Still much quicker than the days of sorting through the books loaded with voter’s information printed on green bar paper.

The electronic ballot boxes took a second for to me to get used to. I kept wanting to use my fingers as if the device worked as a touch screen. Instead spinning a dial moved the cursor from one selection to the next. Then it was spin, click, spin, click, repeat until all races have received a vote. They had a pair of review pages at the end so you could check your choices. Once satisfied with the ballot’s accuracy, you accepted your choices and the ballot was cast.

I voted for John McCain despite the fact that I have never liked his maverick attitude toward conservative issues. He is far more conservative than the Marxist Obama shall ever be. What is it in the Soviet Union that the Democrats like? Did that system not fail? Chinese communism also crumbled until they opened up to capitalism. Why kick ourselves in the nuts? Go figure.

And after the vote it will probably be a time to cry. None of the candidates are worthy of the presidency. The standards have fallen pretty low. Both have favored socialistic policies and one I fear even steps over the Marxist line. Why do we want to follow a system that fails whereever it has been applied?

Capitalism works when you prosecute the crooks and throw them in jail. All of these Wall Street swindlers should be behind bars instead of cashing government checks and executing golden parachutes. The Secretary of the Treasury sat on the financial crisis for a year before demanding action. His timing coincided with Congress’ need to leave so they could campaign to keep their political seats. How many people can sit on that kind of information and be rewarded with the trust to dole out billions of dollars? The Secretary of Treasury should be in the unemployment line and maybe even a jail cell. He certainly is not independent of Wall Street.

It is because of things like this that Americans need to vote. Every American needs to go out and vote for the best candidate at all levels. We are going to lose at the Presidential level no matter who wins, but still you need to send the least worst candidate.

What am I looking at? One thing I am not going to do is get on the experience band wagon. Some folks just rattle off that experience is so very important. To me experience just shows folks how to take short cuts and possibly cheat. I find motivation to be a much more important measure.

What makes the candidate do the things he will do? And as I wrote earlier I fear one candidate is heavily influenced by Marxism and that motivation scares me to no end. Where is the motivation for a small business owner to work hard if he shall be forced to share his hard earned wealth with someone that stays home all day flipping channels on the boob tube?

I want to believe that any candidate I vote for loves my country and therefore does his best to keep it safe for all. This means my military shall be prepared in times of peace and war. My local police and sheriff are allowed to maintain the peace, while respecting the citizentry. How can a candidate love American when he surrounds himself with people that demean America and in some cases have violently attacked America? How can a candidate decide to remove military programs without discussing what is needed to protect America in a world threatened by terrorists? Because of one candidate’s association if he was in the military he would not be able elgible for even secret level clearance. But yet we could vote him the chance to control the nuclear football.
But really my purpose here is not to tell anyone how to vote. But ask all Americans to please vote. Think about it. Do not make an emotional vote you might regret later. Make the vote that keeps American and your community strong and prepared for whatever the future offers us. No matter how down you might feel about the political system. The only way to improve our politics is with intelligent voting. Then let the politicians know that you are watching them. From the dog catcher to the president. Don’t let them forget we are the boss.

This if supposed to be government for the people.

Not government to the people.

Well I went off and took the plunge. I listened to Pink Cotton and got a domain for selling the bargain software I had listed on my eBay store. How could I not listen? This is Pink Cotton, Jack! That means cute and smart all in one tiny person.

But economically it made more sense too. With the eBay’s ever charging fee structure and now they want to decrease and even eliminate shipping charges I could not remain there. That model might work for big established sellers, but I think it makes it difficult for the new stores. Now I am using Yahoo Merchant Starter and the fee structure is cheaper. I don’t have to pay a listing fee like on eBay. The monthly charge is less and so is the fee for each sale I complete.

My only problem it appears is the marketing side. So I am going to use this blog to market Jerry Trader a bit. And I am trying a few other tools out there too. I may do some PPP again to create marketing funds too. Maybe I will try the other side of PPP and advertise too.

Most of my products are bargain softwares. Last weekend I added a lot of kiddie software. This included children’s computer games and education software products. There are some pretty cool things there. I may get this one biology package for my son to help him with 9th grade biology.

I hope in the next couple of weeks to add movies to my catalog. After that I want to list the comics I have to sell as well. Actually, considering to sell new comics if I can find the right distributor.

Things I won’t be selling are action figures, costumes, or roleplaying items. I do not want to compete with 12 To Midnight’s Midnight Cellar. I am involved in that store too and I want it to be successful as well. Marketing is the low point for it as well.

The best news now is that I figured out how to sell internationally. So there are few limitations. The new store can reach most of the world including my good friends in Southeast Asia, Europe, and down under. The shipping might kill ya, but the game will be a bargain.  So what you waitin’ for?

Just came home from the Houston Symphony and my toes are still a tappin’. What a great performance by the Pops and their headliner, Wayne Brady. They opened up the first half of the show with just the orchestra performing. They played a lot of tunes made famous by Dean Martin, Bobby Darrin, and Frank Sinatra. I really enjoyed their Rendition of Mack the Knife. It was just cool baby.

Then Wayne Brady joined the orchestra after the intermission. He sang the tunes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Sam Cooke. He also founds way to use his improvisational skills through out the night. Mister Brady is one funny dude. But he is an excellent singer too. When he sang Mr. Bojangles I could have cried when the dog died. He just captivated me and the rest of the audience too.

I never realized how much I loved Sam Cooke tunes and I have to thank Wayne Brady for that. So many beautiful songs. By the time they were playing Twisting the Night Away. I was just getting warmed up. This had followed Another Saturday Night, Chain Gang, Cupid, and a couple of other goodies. But that was the end of the show. Aw man. Did not have an encore either, but Mr. Brady came at and thanked the crowd once more. Really is a nice guy and a great entertainer. Check him out if you ever get the chance. Houstonians can catch him tomorrow and Sunday.

Just a quick update about life stuff. Everything is back to normal for my family. My son’s school had him come in for football practice Tuesday and Wednesday after my last post. The school opened for classes on that Thursday, though my son complained it was a bit hot as the a/c was coming online. I was glad to see the lazy bum back in class.

Those first few days of driving into Houston were a challenge. On the first day the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane was closed and I had the boy late for practice. I drove to the gym nearby and it was slow driving as about every other street signal did not work. In the area around Rice University there are a lot of old homes and therefore huge trees. So many trees and limbs had been blown down that in places the two lane road was narrowed to one because of the rubbish. Thank goodness someone came along to pile it up neatly though.

Today it is much easier to get around. I did not encounter any malfuntioning sigmals. There are very few homes without power anymore. The biggest reminder of the storm now is the plywood covering the windows that were smashed on the area’s skyscrapers. Looks like eyepatches in some respect. My hats off to all that worked so hard to get the city back together.

Sorry I have been so slow to post. Been really busy with different projects. I closed my eBay store and opened up a new store on the web. Will tell more with my next post. Still have a lot going with 12 to Midnight and I am working hard for my CPA firm too. Will try and make some blog visits soon. Hugs to you all.

Slowly but surely I try to get back in the swing of things. Last week I existed in a funk that prohibitted much in the way of production. Outside of this blog, which has seen mcuh more activity over  the last couple of weeks, I did not accomplish much. I did drive to the gym this morning, only to discover that it remains closed. Man I’m going to bloat up bad if I cannot get back to exercising.

This morning my daughter returned to school. Power became restored at her school Saturday much to the girl’s disappointment. I cheered inside as she needs to enjoy her senior year of high school and not lay in bed all day goofing off. My son, however,  snoozes after 11:00 in the morning, as the power is off at his school. Wonder when he went to bed. I instructed him to go to sleep at midnight because he cannot be a bum forever. School could open Tuesday and he needs to be on a regular schedule. Kids are so disobedient now adays. Never listen to instructions. *Sigh*

Last night I saw something that cheered me up a great deal. As I walked downstairs for dinner I spotted a Jay bird flying by the window. This pleased me to no end as I had not seen one since before hurricane Ike. Must get them some bird seed. Watching them flutter about my yard in the morning eating bugs and gathering twigs always cheers me up.

Readers may recall that I recorded problems with my desk top in my last post. It kept hot booting every few minutes. This computer has gone through a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows XP to include Service Pack 3 and all the other updates. I did everything except create new partitions on the hardrive. What a pain in the ass. And when I loaded Bioshock on my PC the damn game crashed (just the game session, not the PC). Aiyah! So I googled this and googled that trying to find the patch that would cure my ills.

While searching I found the BioShock TweakGuide and that gave me a few ideas. However, the problem did not sort out. Then I noticed Khoroush Ghazi (the author of the BioShock Tweak Guide) had some other guides. He provides help for some other popular games and provides Tweak Guides for gamers and the two main video cards (ATI Catalyst and Nvidia Forceware). But most importantly I discovered he has written TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (TGTC) to help out Windows XP and Windows Vista users. From this page you can dowload the TGTC document as I did for XP.

The document requires Adobe Reader and is almost 200 pages of how to make your windows more efficient. I wish I found this before I reinstalled Windows, but that is water under the bridge. He provides a lot of instruction here in language the common man can understand. This is a must read for those folks like me that are not tech savvy. Already I have improved my BIOS settings, an area I was quite fearful to dig into before. The main thing that happened here was I turned off the Audio system on my motherboard, since I use a Sound Blaster card for audio. Bingo! The audio had been conflicting and that is why I could not run BioShock.

In the TGTC he lists a lot of free software tools that you can use to look into you PC’s performance and do various benchmark testing and help make the tweaking easier. I have not finished (still only on page 45) because there were Slicers and Big Daddies to shoot in BioShock. I intend to go through the entire guide as I am convinced this book shall improve my system’s performance. He describess how to turn off things you don’t use and make sure old files get removed instead of residing in place taking up space and maybe hogging resources.

Want to get TCTC for Vista as well for my laptop. Had a blue screen of death on Saturday and that *sarcasm alert* cheered me up to no end after spending the day before rebuilding the desk top. So I ran Norton Antivirus on the lappie in safe mode, which took all day. No viruses found and I am typing this blog post on her now.

So how shall the rest of my day go. Must deposit some checks (my first payment for services from a business client) and pay some bills. 12 to Midnight financials need to be completed and I must pay the imprints. That should be completed today. Then I need to figure out where some deliverables are on a project that 12 to Midnight has going. I hope these answers are satisfactory. Otherwise I may just write them all myself. Honestly I suck as a project leader because, I don’t like to create conflict by asking where is such and such. But the deadline is passed two weeks and I want this secret project to be available for Christmas shoppers. Why do I have to so wimpy at this kinda stuff?