An Open Letter to Legislators on the Second Amendment

I NEVER put political statements on my blog. In fact I feel my blog should remain an apolitical zone – I like it staying technology-centric. However in light of recent events, coupled with the fact that my legislators in Washington (such as Senator Patty Murray) have turned a deaf ear to my words, I think it’s time to “nail those words to the church door” so to speak and publicly state my feelings on the matter.


As your constituent, I strongly urge you to oppose any legislation to ban so-called “assault weapons” and “large” ammunition magazines.

A previous ban on these inanimate objects was in effect from 1994-2004 and had no discernible effect on violent crime. In fact, a study of the ban mandated by Congress found: “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.”

Tens of millions of Americans choose to own semi-automatic firearms with ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds for the same reason as law enforcement officers: they are effective for self-defense. One never knows how many rounds he or she will need for self-defense or defense of others, or how many criminals may attack. Thus having a firearm that allows its lawful user to discharge multiple shots can often be the difference between life and death. In fact, a number of studies have shown that firearms are used for self-defense hundreds of thousands of times to 2.5 million times annually. This amounts to guns being used 3-5 times more often for self-defense than to commit a crime.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

If he were alive today, to see what our elected officials are attempting to do to the freemen and free-women of this nation, he would drop dead on the spot of a broken heart.

I grew up with a father who is a retired a Naval Officer and a Vietnam veteran. My next door neighbor in Napa California was a gun collector. As a child growing up in the 1970s I used to help my neighbor cast bullets. Never once.. NOT ONCE.. was I ever in any danger or in any harm from any of the myriad of arms he owned. My neighbor was a responsible owner and taught ME that same respect for firearms – as did my father. NONE of us were ever harmed by any of his firearms. And no one I knew ever was either.

Every time some sick or evil person does something heinous the government responds with punishing the good people of this once-great nation and taking away more of their rights. Why do I say “once great”? Because when PRAVDA – the TABLOID paper of the former Soviet Union calls the United States a nation of “socialism and moral decay” you know something has gone horribly wrong in this nation and continues to do so.

Once again our elected officials – the public servants who are put in office by vote – are responding to the actions of a lunatic by legislation in violation of the laws and principles this nation was founded upon.

Maybe that’s the difference between us, I was taught to respect the firearm and what it can do from an early age. I’m guessing most of those on Capitol Hill have never fired a gun let alone owned one – all the while enjoying the safety of armed guards at every turn.

But the Second Amendment, that the Democrats seem to revile,isn’t about hunting or muskets, as so many of you try to claim, it is about freedom and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. What part of the phrase “the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” escapes so many of you??

We’ve walked in the same footsteps as our forefathers who fought for their freedoms, so we don’t take it lightly. However, so much of the political elite seem to forget their heritage, or at least ignore it, which is an even bigger tragedy.

I urge all of you to reconsider enacting any new legislation on “gun control”. DC, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and New York already have some of the toughest laws on the books. It has done *nothing* to stem the tide of gun-related violence in those areas. It HAS, however, left the law-abiding residents of those areas at a severe disadvantage in the ability to protect themselves against criminals. As the son of a veteran, as someone who has friends in law enforcement, I have seen what happens when people are unable to defend themselves. I encourage you to make a stand *against* this irrational punishment against law abiding citizens and vote *against* this insane legislation.

Rather than expanding previously failed legislation that won’t curb violence, but will affect law-abiding gun owners, I urge you to support legislation to enhance school security and improve our nation’s ailing mental health system. We don’t have an issue with guns in this country… we have an issue with crime, punishment, and recidivism in this country. Address that issue.

Please use sanity and reason and stop these affronts to the Second Amendment. Thank you for your time in reading this.

New Hosting Provider…

If you noticed an interruption to the blog or trying to email me it’s because I just changed all of my hosting and domain management to godaddy.com.  Now I’m not getting paid by them and I’m not going to post some ‘affilate link’ to them where I get a bonus if you sign up for service with them.  But what I AM going to say is that they’re probably the best hosting provider I’ve used since my original provider was bought.  Their prices are outstanding, their hosting feature set is excellent (they support WordPress, Ruby/Rails, and pretty much everything except Java/Tomcat/J2EE servers) and their technical support thus far has been second to none.

If you are looking for hosting or if you feel like you might be paying too MUCH for hosting (I certainly was) then I recommend you check out godaddy.com.  It’ll be worth your time.  It certainly was worth mine!

 

 

I’m writing this with tears on my eyes !!!

Does that title sound familiar? My wife and I got an email this morning from my father that read as follows:

Subject: I’m writing this with tears on my eyes !!!

Hello,

I’m sorry for this odd request and I’m writing this with tears on my eyes due to the situation of things right now, I’m stuck in London United Kingdom with my family,we came down here for vacation and we got Mugged at gunpoint, worse of it is cash cell phone and credit cards were stolen , it’s such a crazy and terrifying experience for us, we need help sort out our hotel bill and flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% helping us, but we thanks God we still have our passports, Our return flight leave today,But we still have problem in sorting out the hotel bills.Please help us i promise to refund it back.

Now I’m freaked out.

David.

There were two problems with this email:

  1. My father doesn’t write like he barely understands english. In fact he’s one of the most eloquent writers I have ever known and is a native speaker of the Queen’s English.
  2. My father lives 12 miles away and has no travel plans

Turns out this is happening to a surprising number of people. It’s a growingly common scam. It’s also happened to a friend of mine. Apparently there is a keystroke-logging trojan that’s in the wild. Virus scanners like F-Prot, and current Mal-ware scanners are not detecting it and it’s causing a lot of havoc:

  1. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-28/opinion/greene.email.scam_1_e-mail-first-byline-subject-line
  2. http://community.ca.com/blogs/securityadvisor/archive/2010/04/15/beware-of-scam-emails-i-m-writing-this-with-tears-in-my-eyes.aspx
  3. Google Support

If you see an email like this from any of your friends… CALL THEM before you decide to try to send money to them. Also, if you get an email like this from your friends, tell them to UNPLUG THEIR COMPUTER from the internet.. erase it completely and RE-install windows.

You could also tell them that perhaps they should consider buying a Mac… Because in 4 years of owning and using them I have yet to have them compromised by trash like this.

Pontiac 2010 Solstice Orders Cancelled

It’s very sad to read this. The Solstice GXP is one of the best cars that GM has put out in the last 5 years. However, it’s not surprising given the bankruptcy of GM, and the announcement of Pontiac’s demise. But still, you’d think GM would want to sell these cars a *little* longer. Hopefully someone will consider buying the delaware plant and continue making this excellent car under a different moniker. It’s probably a naive hope, however.

To: Select Pontiac Dealers and Sales Managers

Subject: 2010 Model Year Solstice Orders Cancelled

On June 1st, GM announced the closure of the Wilmington Delaware plant which produces the Pontiac Solstice. All 2010 Solstice in-system orders will be cancelled today. All 2010 ordering materials in Order WorkBench and the On-Line Order Guide will be removed from the site. All 2009 Model Year Solstice orders have been received. Build out of the 2009 Model Year for Solstice will be July 28, 2009.

YellowPages.com Sucks

For the last year my wife’s small-but-growing, word-of-mouth based business has been listed with YellowPages.com. The Networking Group my wife was a member of included in their ranks a sales rep who pushed that this would be an outstanding way to expand her business. That they could setup an online coupon with my wife’s listing and people could just print it and walk in with it. All the typical sales rhetoric.

My wife felt that the momentum of her business (which was doing OK) could use a boost and decided to invest in advertising with YellowPages.com as an attempt to expand and grow her business. Contracts were signed, paperwork was filed, paperwork was turned in for the online coupon, and charges to my wife’s business card started piling up.

And as a result my wife’s business was listed on YellowPages.com.

Now, in the past year there certainly was an increase in traffic to my wife’s website. I have a statistics collection system running on her web server. And she got probably an additional 3-10 referrals via YellowPages to her website each month.

However, because of the lackluster and incompetent effort on the part of the sales rep we worked with (who’s now a district sales manager) my wife’s legitimate health care practice was listed along side escort services.

Why Yellowpages.com Sucks

Nice…!

As a result those YellowPages.com referrals resulted in two calls. Those two calls resulted in requests typical of what escort services would provide (even tho for legal reasons they say they do not).

Pan forward a year… My wife, near the end of our contract, lo-and-behold gets a call from a new Yellowpages.com rep!! And he wants talk about renewal options for another year. My wife informs him that is not going happen. He goes into the usual rhetoric that sales reps right now are trying to use in the face of our current recession; ‘Well, with this recession going on it will be impossible for your business to survive without us!’. When she explains the lack of the online coupon, the lascivious phone calls, it’s at this point in time he’s willing to get the listing re-categorized but only in the face of certain discontinuation of a contract. When my wife asks about the online coupon he says; “Well, you needed to turn in the paperwork for that”. My wife said; “I turned in the paperwork for that [to the previous rep] when I signed up for service and paid all this money!” He replies; “Oh, well then there’s nothing I can do about that. Sorry.”

He tries every angle and pressure tactic he can think of and even offers a meager discount for the following year worth of service. Even though she didn’t get what she paid for to begin with.

At this point, if YellowPages.com wants my wife’s listing for another year, they can pony up a year’s worth of free service. They simply didn’t do their job and actually possibly did *damage* to my wife’s business considering it looks like it’s a damn prostitution service.

If you’re with YellowPages.com and you’re reading this, you and your company suck. Big time.

Borland… a once great company. Now gone the way of the Dodo…

After a 26-year run that saw it adopt multiple personalities in going from influential to non-entity, the tools house that once challenged Microsoft and Lotus is being acquired by Micro Focus for $75 million cash, a buck a share.

Borland has been operating under an acting president since CEO Tod Nielsen, an ex-Microsoft star, jumped ship in January to join his old Microsoft colleague Paul Maritz at VMware as COO.

Gee, thanks Tod.  You totally trashed the value of what few shares I had left in Borland, and then jumped ship.  I really hope there’s a special place in hell reserved just for complete incompetents like you.  I wouldn’t waste the saliva to spit on you.  Hopefully you won’t destroy VMWare the way you destroyed Borland.

I will take this moment to remind my friends who were at Borland that I said this is exactly what would happen with him coming to the helm.  I was right.

Micro Focus Buys Borland | JAVA Developer’s Journal

The Next MacHeist is Finally Out – Get “Process” Free

The (in)famous free Mac software bundle is finally out.

For those of you who want the freebies but do not want to do the heist (like me):

1. Be sure you’re logged into
http://www.macheist.com/

2. Go to
http://mainframe.macheist.com/

3. Copy/Paste each of these URLs into the box and click on the button after each one: *You’ll have to right click -> Copy Location or go here to copy them http://pastebin.ca/1301685

http://tangledupinlies.com/0a5faf225b3b27f4c75826dde0c4eba2.tga
http://logicallyillogical.com/165557be81d5d043d8d7adb4d7334953.tga
http://wormzappertheapp.com/b5cabcde1533bd90d8551748bb583fba.tga
http://swordsofthetelevisiongeneration.com/3ad47fe00e6ac913b356bcb432ee1b7c.tga
http://eisoptrotriskaidekaphobia.com/f1e67304f67ab03d7751d318b55cca39.tga
http://s3.amazonaws.com/voxdl3/a3d2206796576316f21313563ca02edd.tga
http://appleinternal.com/fafa2b94ee5b1baf4022599b2b28f7de.tga
http://www.forgottenpasttriggersrepetition.com/2a0efd8e3a70fd06bf8cea9ddae77603.tga
http://mollymcford.com/17cf10f9a82b7cc26e73c45e913554ba.tga

Apps you get for all of this:

Process: http://www.jumsoft.com/process/
Pandora’s Pests http://www.koingosw.com/products/pandoraspests.php
MacDust http://www.macdust.com/

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