From the article:

The men who argue that you should be able to keep all of what you have earned have never actually earned a dime in their lives.  Does it come as any surprise that all men oppose an inheritance tax?  The put themselves forth as the defenders of the working man, while giving his boss a tax cut.  They look the lower middle class in the eye, while they pick its pockets.  These trust fund babies and husbands of opportunity could never understand what it means to struggle for a living, they’ll never know how it feels to choose which bill to let go for the month. You couldn’t get any further away from a normal American life.

This pretty much sums up the great mystery that is the Republican party and their supporters for me. I’ve never understood how some many lower class people seem to support a party whose fiscal platform and policies seem to work directly against their best interest by favoring the wealthy and placing the tax burden on poor and middle class. The Exquisite Truth does a great job of pondering this question and providing some real world historical examples of it.

In the name of full disclosure, I am a registered Democrat. I have already voted early and supported Barack Obama. I’m not stating this to try and influence anyone or invite anyone into a political argument. I simply want my perspective on this to be clear and for no one to take me out of context.

A thought on Presidents via The Exquisite Truth

The JegBeg party bus returned from our adventure in sunshine state on Saturday. Altogether we had a fantastic time, even despite weather conditions that were, at times, adverse. We enjoyed ourselves so much, in fact, that I, for one, can’t help but fantasize about packing up and moving to a location closer to the coast.

Highlights of the trip included an amazing rental house (complete with tiki bar, jacuzzi, and pool), relaxing poolside, soaking up rays at the beach, a side trip to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, and an incredible meal prepared by our resident chef, Aaron.  Check the slide show after the jump. Full photo coverage can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.stalnaker/CocoaBeach and  http://picasaweb.google.com/crescentfresh.lisa/CocoaBeachVacation/

Cheers,

J

Seriously, you’ve got to get your shit together. Like many others, I love your concept. You fill a niche in the social web that no one else before you even addressed. You’re adding new users everyday. Some of us have come to rely on you as a quick and easy way to spread news, stay in contact with our friends, and even remind us to water our plants and turn off the lights.

Despite all of this goodness, you’re really starting to disappoint me. I am now trying to wait out your third outage this week.

So far, I’ve tried my best to be understanding. Your user base and popularity are growing at a pace that baffles the mind. As a developer, I can understand scalability problems and how difficult they can be to solve. But, you had to know that you were onto something when you launched and that rapid growth was inevitable. You should have planned accordingly and had a scaling strategy that could accommodate this kind of growth. You choose Ruby on Rails probably so that you could be agile and push out new features and bug fixes quickly, a decision I understand and respect, however it seems to be failing you now.  I won’t slam you for things you did in the past that you can not change now, but I will hold you at fault for not addressing problems when they arise.

This scalability problem is getting out of hand. The outages are starting to turn people off and now you have competitors to worry about. If you can’t stabilize yourself your most dedicated users will start abandoning you for other services that may lack your features but are at least available consistently. If you can’t handle any more growth, maybe you should stop accepting new accounts. I doubt this would help you long term, but perhaps it would stop the bleeding long enough to solve the problem and prevent an exodus of your users.

I’ve even considered leaving. The only thing keeping me around is the fact that I invested a considerable amount of time convincing my friends to jump on your bandwagon and I don’t want have to explain to them why they need to switch to something else (a affair I already went through when I moved from MySpace to Facebook).

Consider this your intervention. I love you enough to keep using you and want you to stick around. Please, Please, Please don’t me regret making you a part of my online life. If you do, I’ll never forgive you.

Cheers,

J

Update: Even before I finished writing this, it seems you’re back up. Maybe you are doing something to combat this problem

As we are now a community, we are opening our doors for more contributors. If you’d like to write for JegBeg and have some basic writing skills, contact us through the Contact link at the top. We’ll get back to as soon as we can and hopefully you’ll be up and ready to post in a matter of hours.

Be on the lookout for more changes coming soon!

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Now playing: Jose Padilla - Strolling
via FoxyTunes
Cheers,

J

Cheers,

J

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Now playing: Radiohead - All I Need
via FoxyTunes

8. Whistle
When you are lost in the woods, signaling for help should be a high priority. Blowing a whistle periodically requires much less energy than yelling and the high pitch sound may travel further.

It makes sense, but I guess I think of the big three: food, water, shelter, when I think survival. Signaling can help you getting rescued faster which makes everything else a little less critical.

With this, Tivo continues its long run of outdoing every other DVR manufacturer out there and truly making their box the center of the entertainment universe in the living room. Here’s to hoping they keep it up and add something like Joost.

J

WikiHow - Meditate

Master Bedroom Makeover

Do Nothing to Become More Productive

WikiHow - Install a Bathroom Fan

Hone Your Rock Band Chops

Ok, so the last one is a bit off topic.. in my defense, I do plan to get in some good Rock Band time during my break. Have a good week!

J

Unscrew America via StumbleUpon

PS. Follow my twitter feed for fresh links day in and day out.

Cheers,

J