Monday, March 31, 2008

New Posts

Well it seems that Obama's campaign manager has the same name I do. I was getting emails everyday, I actual got someones resume Saturday from Australia.

Because of this I started to write under a pen name; Deadheaddave. If you do a google on that name you can find many of my videos and articles at other sites. I am submitting more stuff to different sites now, not just associated content.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Michael

Well we got the news on Tuesday that our brother-in-law Michael had lost his battle to cancer. The cancer was fast growing. About a year ago Michael noticed a cough and thought he have had a hernia. Next thing he knew; cancer and spreading fast.

It is always so sad to see someone die so young. Micheal was only in his mid forties and worked hard his whole life to care and provide for his family. He built his own house that he raised his family in and rebuilt a house to use as a vacation home for his family. He was so young with so much to look forward to.

His wake is today in NY and the funeral is tomorrow. Lynne will attend to support her sister and family, I will be staying home with the children. My thoughts are with them.

Michael leaves behind his wife Laura, his two sons Chris who is in college and his 10 year old son Mikey.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The upcoming election

I am very concerned with the potential outcome of the upcoming American election.

Recently Americans are very concerned about rising home prices, raising food prices, raising medical bills, inflation, job loss, the mortgage crisis, the loss of manufacturing, a war that people are tired of and the growth of big government. Throughout history, these have been the reason that people have revolted against their government.

The upcoming election with Clinton, Obama, and McCain could very well rock America’s democratic institution.

Currently Clinton is leading Obama in the Super delegate count. However, Obama is leading Clinton in delegates and in the popular vote amongst democrats. Obama is very moving and his supporters are very loyal to him and his socialistic cause.

During the democratic convention if Clinton gets the democratic nomination due to the super delegate vote, while Obama maintains the popular vote, this might mark the end of the Democratic Party. America will view Clinton’s nomination as a political backroom deal between super delegates and the Clintons. They will feel that their candidate, Obama got cheated out of the nomination due to the established democratic political administration.

I fear there will be riots. The riots in LA in the early 1990s were triggered by Rodney King when home values were at decent prices and people had much to lose. Currently many people do not have that much to lose and they feel that their government is short changing them. If people feel cheated by the Clintons and the super delegates, they will riot.

The only way I see this scenario not happening is by the Clintons. Hillary would destroy herself by her own actions and words (Obama doesn’t seem to be throwing stones). Or Hillary must have so much dirt on Obama that he will destroy himself.

Many of the recent allegations against Obama do not seem to be sticking. Rev. Write seems to have little effect amongst his supporters. Obama’s lack of experience seems to have little effect on his momentum. Hillary will have to get a picture of Obama training with Al Qaeda to stop his momentum.

After the Hillary and Obama battle is over, if Obama survives and gets the nomination, there is another battle with McCain. I think there will be more turmoil at this level if Obama doesn’t win.

McCain needs to pick someone as a running mate that will affect the racial or gender bias. If McCain picks a man from the GOP, it will look like the same old routine. Like it or not, race and gender are factors in this election. McCain should pick someone like Governor Jodi Rell from Connecticut.

It just seems to be that America is at an implosion point. I fear that this election is the fuse that will light it.

Monday, March 24, 2008

4000 american military deaths in Iraq

While no one like seeing anyone die, I want to discuss the 4000 military dead in Iraq that is being covered throughout the news today. 4000 dead in the last 5 years is not a really high number. I know that the family members of the soldiers that died do not want to hear that, but it is not. More people die every year drinking and driving on "safe" American highways ("In 1995, traffic fatalities involving a drinking driver represented 42 per cent of road fatalities [17,732 deaths]; in 2000, they represented 41 per cent [17,380 deaths]" http://www.safety-council.org/info/traffic/impaired/stats.html). That being said, it is actually safer to walk around Iraq with an American flag tee-shirt than to drive home Saturday night on RT 95.

I found the following from another blog (http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/military-casualties-during-the-bill-clinton-administration/):

"As I write this there have been about 3100 soldiers killed in Iraq fighting for and defending this country. This is from 2003 until now. I know this because we are constantly barraged with the death toll on the news every day. Can you image fighting WWII with the coverage as it is today?
Our enemy killed about the same number of us in one day on our soil, but sadly that has been forgotten.

Here is a list of how many US soldiers were killed when Bill Clinton was in office. We didn’t get constant death tolls the way we do now, so you probably haven’t seen these numbers before.
1993-1,245
1994-1,109
1995-1,055
1996-1,008

That is a total of 4,417 military deaths during the Clinton years."

Remember during the Clinton years the military was in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and the Sudan. We any of these campaigns successful? It can be argued that Bosnia and Haiti were successful. But that is a high American military loss of life for those small campaigns, compared to the fall of Afghanistan (which even communist Russia spent ten year in and still failed) and Iraq.

Like I said the loss of human life, any human life is tragic. Any of these brave men and women after their military tour could have found a cure for cancer or built cost efficient space travel.

We just have to put things in perspective before we make judgements based on the news coverage.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Death to the virus!!

Well it seems that the flu has worked its way through our family. Lynne seems to be over it. It quickly hit Hailee. Jaiden and Anna seemed to be untouched. I was hit the worst. I am still tired from the flu. I wake up tired, I am tired at work, it takes all of my energy to go work out during lunch. However, it seems to be going away and I'm getting back to normal.

I finished my applied statistics class last week. I was surprised that I was able to pull of getting an A. Next I start an educational research class then I start the dissertation process. Hopefully I can finish by spring 2009.

The girls and I are taking Friday off. Rhode Island has good Friday as a holiday, even though it is not for the federal government. therefore it is going to cost me a day of leave. I'm not sure what we are going to do. It's supposed to be a nice day so maybe we'll go hiking, even though Jaiden hates to go hiking.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Virus Continues

The Flu has been working its way through the family. Lynne needed to take yesterday off, Hailee had it shortly during the weekend, Anna is battling a sore throat, and I still have a hacking cough. The only person who is untouched is Jaiden.

I finished my last paper for my statistics class yesterday. Hopefully I did pretty well with it. I hate statistics. Perhaps the only subject I dislike more is accounting. My dislike is not due to the actual subject matter, it is because the texts are written by mathematicians and the professors want your answers to written like you are a mathematician. That is not me. I cannot write that way. When I read the questions I have a difficult time understanding what they are asking. I guess I’m not alone, because if it was easy, the world would be full of statisticians!

I haven’t been working out this week because of the flu. Hopefully soon I can get back in the swing of things.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Flu

I've been fighting the Flu for the last couple of days. I started to feel it on Thursday and stayed home with Jaiden. Thursday morning I felt just a little strange, then by noon, everything hurt and I must have slept for about 14 hours. On Friday I had to go to work for a phone conference. I left after the phone conferance and went to bed. Anna and Hailee took my temperature at about 103 Friday night. But the fever broke Friday night. Saturday and Sunday I've just been recovering (very tired and weak).

Poor Hailee has caught the flu from me. Yesterday around noon she started to complain about being sick. She has all the symptoms of what I had.

It's all my bosses fault, he was the first one to have it and gave it to me.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Weight loss

Well it's been two weeks since I started back on my exercise plan. I feel better of course. I've been doing about 40 minutes of either jogging on the treadmill or riding the stationary bike. I also do about 20 minutes of weight lifting every day.

I haven't lost any weight yet; however, I do feel the pants loosening up and the belt needing more tightening. If I remember correctly from my other weight loss experiences, the next two weeks will hopefully be a big noticeable weight loss as long as I keep exercising every day.

I wasn't able to get the girls signed up for swimming lessons like I wanted to. Registration began at 0900. I called at 0902 and they were all booked up. Must have been the kids that were previously enrolled in level 1 advancing to level 2 classes.

Tonight we meet to register Jaiden in Kindergarten. Hopefully we can bypass kindergarten and just enroll her into first grade. Last year the age requirements changed (had to be 5 years old by Sep vice Dec) and Jaiden had to wait. Jaiden can already read a little bit, write a little bit and spell many words and do simple math. She will be so bored in kindergarten.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Sat basketball finals

Yesterday was the girls basketball finals. Anna's team came in first place. Hailee's not so good. Jaiden got a trophy, so did Anna. All of the girls got backpacks and had their pizza party. After basketball was girl scout international night. The girl's troop did Greece.

Here is a bunch of videos that I took yesterday, hopefully I can get them all on.