I think maybe in the future I will write once a week like a digest of whats been going on… I dunno…maybe.

I guess to catch you up real fast starting with the latest while its fresh on my mind, I will start with a movie that I saw last night.

I went to the local theater here to see To Save A Life. I gotta say I was BLOWN away by this movie. It was simple film making at its best with several very powerful messages in for all ages.

I am gonna take a moment to rip off  IMDB.com and show you the full synopsis of the movie and possibly spoiling some of it for you but trust me you need to see this movie.

The film tells the story of Jake Taylor, a young man who has it all: a basketball scholarship, the ideal girlfriend, and the right friends. But faced with the demands of the in-crowd, Jake has written off his childhood best-friend, Roger. Isolated and mistreated, Roger finally takes his anger to the extreme when he shows up one day on campus with a gun.

Jake’s last-ditch effort cant stop Roger, and the events which follow rock Jake’s world. He begins to question everything, but most of all, he cant stop asking: Could I have saved Roger?

In his search for answers, Jake finds himself looking for the next Roger. He reaches out to geeks, losers, and loners. But crossing the strict high school caste lines threatens everything Jake values. And pushes him to answer the most important question of all: What do I want my life to be about?

This film doesn’t shy away from the real struggles facing our teens.. It is rated PG-13 because it portrays some of these issues accurately: from teen sexuality, to abortion, to cutting, to drug and alcohol abuse, to suicide.

But because it does so, teens are praising this film for its realistic and relevant portrayal of their world and responding enthusiastically to its message. As teen author and speaker Zach Hunter comments: It conveys the raw emotions of life and the ups and downs of high school My friends who have seen the film are already talking about it and encouraging others to go see it.

A must see for all teenagers and parents.

See the trailer here

Ok…moving on. I have been BAD sick last week with the flu or a severe chest cold. I manage to pull through it and just have a  minor weezing cough right now that fading day by day.

While I was sick I managed to start a few new top secret web projects, so you will to stay tuned for those.

I also managed to watch several good movies at home.

THE ROAD

FLASH OF GENIUS

PERFECT GETAWAY

The Road, I got to see an advanced copy of this. It was well…bleak. Very sad. Its about a boy and his father and their struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic world.

Flash of Genius was a very good movie based on the true story of Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and how FORD Motor Company stole his idea.  He later battles FMC in court and wins, but don’t let these simple sentences stop you from checking this movie out, as you will never look at your wipers the same again. Good flick!

The Perfect Getaway was a movie that I expected to be very scary or suspenseful but it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong it was a GREAT movie. This is one of those who dun it movies and you will never guess, not in a miiiillliiiooonnnn years. Watch it!

That’s all for now, I’m tired of writing and I am sure you are tired of reading.

I will try to post more soon.

I quickly grabbed a Nikon Camera (s230) with video capture capabilities and started to record. You just never know what might happen.

I then later edited it a little bit in Adobe Premiere Elements 8 and made it a little funnier.

Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away

By: Kitty Werthmann

What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or will ever read in history books.

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history.  I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.  We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote..  I’ve never read that in any American publications.  Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression.  Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed.  We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily.  Young people were going from house to house begging for food.  Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.  My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need.  Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other.  Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna , Linz , and Graz were destroyed.  The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.
We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany , where Hitler had been in power since 1933.  We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.  Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group — Jewish or otherwise.  We were led to believe that everyone was happy.  We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family.  Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.  Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades.  The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order.  Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed.  The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women.  Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home.  An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family.  Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education – Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:
Our education was nationalized.  I attended a very good public school.  The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore.  Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance.  Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum.  They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time.  The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.  The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination.  The rest of the day we had sports.  As time went along, we loved it.  Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.  We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy.  When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent.  I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful.  There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.  I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it.  Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home.  I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.  Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me.  They lived without religion.  By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.  It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly.  As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:
In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established.  All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps.  At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented.  It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps.  During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.  They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps.  After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.  When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.  Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack.  I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers.  You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government.  The state raised a whole generation of children..  There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.  By this time, no one talked about equal rights.  We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:
Before Hitler, we had very good medical care.  Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna .  After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone.  Doctors were salaried by the government.  The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.  If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn.  There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine.  Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income.  Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household.  We had big programs for families.  All day care and education were free.  High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized.  Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

We had another agency designed to monitor business.  My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables.  Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners.  Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar.  He couldn’t meet all the demands.  Soon, he went out of business.  If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection.  We were told how to shop and what to buy.  Free enterprise was essentially abolished.  We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers.  The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“Mercy Killing” Redefined:
In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps .  The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.  So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded.  When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.  I knew one, named Vincent, very well.  He was a janitor of the school.  One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.  I asked my superior where they were going.  She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write.  The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.  They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death.  The villagers were not fooled.  We suspected what was happening.  Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months.  We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps – Gun Laws:
Next came gun registration..  People were getting injured by guns.  Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns.  Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms.  Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns.  The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech.  Anyone who said something against the government was taken away.  We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria .  Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath.  Instead, we had creeping gradualism.  Now, our only weapons were broom handles.  The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria .  Women were raped, preteen to elderly.  The press never wrote about this either.  When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process.  They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned.  We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses.  Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized.  Those who couldn’t, paid the price.  There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians.  This is an eye witness account.

“It’s true..those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away
“After America , There is No Place to Go”

So Valentines Day is fast approaching. Have you given much thought as to what to get your sweetie?

I took the liberty of shopping at my favorite “find it all” site amazon.com and provided you with links to gifts for HIM and for HER.

Enjoy.

Valentine’s Day Gifts for Her

Valentine’s Day Gifts for Him

When you do the math, sometimes you will quickly see that not all things are as safe as they appear to be. Dont get me wrong this is still a good meal for bulking, but the italian dressing surprised me. Use it lightly, just for taste and you will be fine.

Some say the refined carbs in the pasta are a bad idea. If refined carbs bothers you, simply use wheat pasta. I have no problem or guilt from ingesting refined carbohydrates.

So without further delay, here is the nutrional makeup for the meal made yesterday.

Tuna x 2 cans
Calories 200
Fat 4 grams
Protein 44 grams
Carbs 0 grams

Pasta 2 1/2 cups uncooked
Calories 440
Fat 6 grams
Protein 16 grams
Carbs 80 grams

Purple Hull Peas
Calories 135
Fat 0 grams
Protein 9 grams
Carbs 29 grams

Italian Dressing
Calories 432
Fat 43 grams
Protein 0 grams
Carbs 14 grams

Grand Total for it all
Calories 1227
Fat 53 grams
Protein 69 grams
Carbs 123 grams

Before you get started read this several times. I have had some get confused and omit the Italian dressing, and even boil the tuna from the start. First of all the Italian dressing is the most important part to the flavor, second I only add the tuna at the end and let it sit in the water for about 1 minute to get it all warm.

I call it Tuna Deluxe. Its Tuna with Pasta, throw some peas of some sort in there for the fiber, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART add Italian Dressing and lots of pepper with a dash of salt. Some all the tuna and pasta meal the prison meal cause they say its what a lot of inmates eat in the “joint” to get huge. If it works for them hopefully it will work for me, and its delicious to boot! I would pay for what this meal I am about to teach you to create.

Thank me later. (or now)

Ok you will need the following:

• A pot to boil water in, mine is a 1 1/2 quart or maybe its 2.
• 2 cans of chunk light tuna in water, drained
• 2 1/2 cup of uncooked wide egg noodles
• 1/2 can of chickpeas or any peas for that matter. I like chickpeas, but purple hull peas or crowder peas work well too.
• 3/4 cup Italian Dressing
• Salt and lots of Pepper

Ok here is all our ingredients we will be using. Listen to me real quick. This may sound disgusting and even look disgusting but trust me, if you like pasta, you like tuna, you like Italian dressing…you will like this.

Ok boil your water, add the pasta, and yes I know it seems like a lot, but HEY we gotta feed those muscles!
When cooking noodles you can add a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to keep it from boiling over.
Cook it for about 7 minutes or until tender but not gummy. We want out pasta to have a little bit of strength to it. Its know as Al Dente.

I like to add my peas into the mix before the boil so that they are nice and warm. I just cook it all right in, no need for extra dishes to dirty up.
I know this might look a little nasty, but trust me it will be great in the end. As you can see in this picture I have added half a can of purple hull peas.
I did not have any chickpeas, so the purple hull will have to do. The Tuna is open and ready to go in later. Yes it gets grosser.

Now everything has boiled up pretty good now, the pasta is just about right and now I have added all my tuna.
I only add the tuna right at the end. It does not sit in there the entire time.
I add it and let it sit in the water for about 1 minute to get warm, then drain it all.
I do it this way so that it will all be nice and warm and no separate dishes to wash.

After a little while I drained everything in a strainer and put it back in the pot.
Here we have peas, pasta, and tuna.

Now lets add the Italian Dressing. I usually use 3/4 to 1 full cup with this much pasta.

Doh! Lets not forget the pepper! I add about 3 tablespoons of pepper. I aint skeered! I like it just a little spicy.
I like to know I AM ALIVE ! Just stir it on in there big boy. Don’t cry.

Look at that right there. That’s some muscle food right there son!
Trust me, unless you are a hawg, you will have a little left over in the pot for a midnight snack.

Trust me it looks better in person and taste marvelous.  Now go cook some!

A little over ten years later, and now basically anyone who can type can have their own website. Websites have gotten a lot simpler to create, and update too.

Nowadays a newer type of website has evolved likes blogs. What is a blog you ask? A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. They are often called weblogs, more commonly known as blogs as I mentioned earlier. They are what you get when you cross a traditional website with a message forum.

Blogs have made it even easier to have an online presence. All you have to do is sign up for a host, (free or paid) pick a template, and just write down your beliefs, thoughts, knowledge, experiences, etc. and post.

Traditional websites have gotten easier to handle, but nowhere near as simple as a blog. The quickest person would probably take a couple of hours to setup a website, because you have to add pages and content before your website is even ready. A blog on the other hand, just one post and you are good to go.

Online hosting is another factor to consider whether you are going to have a blog or a website. While there are free hosts for both of them, like blogspot.com, wordpress.com or livejournal.com, and many others,  you have more control on the ones you pay for. I use Godaddy.com shared hosting for my blogs and use Wordpress as a backend platform in which to develop them. WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

With platforms to blog on like Wordpress, you can use what is known as “plug-ins” to increase its functionality. I use two that work really well called postie and subscribe2. Postie allows me to write my blog posts in an email and email it to and address that I set up. Postie checks every 5 minutes, and if something is in the mailbox that I sent the post too, it parses it and posts it as an article on my blog. Along with this, if you have subscribed to my blog, subsribe2 will email you and notify you of the new blog post. I also use tweet this to automatically tweet my new blog posts to twitter.

Blogs are great if you have a certain niche and can zero it in on that niche. You could easily profit from your blogging with affiliates as well. I will have to touch base on that one later on this month, but for now how about you get yourself a blog and start blogging!

I knew then all I needed to do was find an old church pew and I could cut it to the length I wanted and it would be perfect for my needs.

I drove all over the country looking for old churches that were rotting and falling down, in hopes I would find one with pews inside. I never found a church.

I asked all my friends on facebook and twitter and got some responses but nothing really panned out. I also saw some on craiglist but were too expensive and too far for it be justifiable.

I had almost giving up, then a co-worker that works with my wife knew of one at a friends house, and we struck up a deal. I got it for $40.

It was a nice older bench, about 8 feet in length. I looked it over and thought…hrmmm I could cut this in half and have two benches.

So with that in mind I went to the hardware store and got two 10 foot 2×10’s. Next I measured the length of the bench, found the center,  popped a string line in the middle and cut it in half.

After it was cut in half, I used the 2×10’s to copy each end exactly. Now I had two benches. A little dark stain applied and wallah, two nice benches.

See pics.

Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book. It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call.

Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty,that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant.

Give out any of this information and bingo; your identity was just stolen. The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma , Illinois , and Colorado.

This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

And here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

What is with these prehistoric morons driving 20mph while on the cellphone and can not merge onto the interstate at all!

I mean this guy I was following this morning was trying to merge onto the interstate and he  ended up stopping at the end of the on ramp with me and several others behind him.

This is how accidents happen people!

I mean who could this guy have been talking too? He was so old, surely all his friends were dead right?

This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Please comment below.