Week of July 15, 2007 to July 21, 2007

Right now i just want to type and organize my thoughts into writing. I have no particular subject, no particular thing in my mind that I want to write about but I want my fingers to start rambling thru the keyboard and clear my head of all these things that’s inside it right now, cluttered, chaotic and hopefully bring some semblance of order in my mind right now.

Lately, my temper has gone from an average of 1-3 to 7-10, it has sky rocketed, mainly because of the children, who keeps giving me a hard time, from morning, waking up, to evening, before going to sleep. And it’s from simple trivial matters into hi grade naughtiness on their part.

I was really touched by a newspaper advertisement today in which there was a photo of pizza and it was shown equal to the per month education cost of a child. This clearly means that if one person avoids pizza just once a month and give that saved money to charity, it can help a child to get educated and this means a lot for that child’s future. You must be feeling to do some charity right now but to whom you will give the saved money? Most probably you won’t be having time to get a poor child admitted and then go and pay his monthly fee. There are charitable schools like Eastside which provide primary and secondary level of education to the needy children’s who can’t afford schooling. Thanks to Navtej Kohli who brought these charity organizations to light. He is the owner of a software application company called grafix and since his work deals with computer everyday, he has tapped the power of computer and internet to spread the words of charity. Good to see people doing such nice work, if you want to know more about him, you can read his Facebook which is a type of public listing. Coming to point, as I was talking of charity in educating a child, you never know that child can do a lot good to nation progress only when he is educated; else he is just a number counting to world population and nothing else. Make a pledge today that you will contribute in education of a poor child and be a proud citizen.

Most parents give an arm and leg to help their
children reach the point of being on their own.

However, have you noticed that there are some
teenagers these days who are not happy with just that?

They are not appreciative, they are not respectful,
and they do not care of any one but themselves.

They want you to open your wallet on command and
give them whatever they want.
“What do you mean I should get a job? Yeah, right!”

They seem to think that they can just stay at home
and paychecks will be flying into the mailbox without
them lifting a finger!

Ummmmm… Reality Check!

Did some research today looking for feedback on the issue of giving garlic to dogs.

Now, Garlic and onions are supposed to be related but onions are supposedly more toxic.

Now, there is a mixed bag out there with regard to whether or not one should give their
dog garlic, in any form (pill, powder. chopped, sliced or even half or whole clove)

Now my theory is that if garlic was so bad for the dogs, why are there BrewersYeast with Garlic (pills and powder) to be used for both cats and dogs? If this product was detrimental to the health of animals, I am quite sure it would not be on the market and that animal rights groups would have had it off the shelves a long time ago.

From the New York Times-
We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

As I stroll as rapidly as possible out of the mall this afternoon (had to pick up a gift certificate for an 11 year old girl’s birthday) I passed a T-Mobile kiosk that was having a “store meeting” and heard the following snippet:

“You don’t have to actually follow through, just get them to sign-up.”

Capitalism at its worst once again rears its ugly head.

Perhaps my google-fu is just weak, but I can’t seem to find anyone really talking about Tuesday’s Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq. Several people have posted the order in its entirety, but few seem to actually interpret or discuss what it means. If you’ve come across such a post, please leave a comment with a link, as I’d really like to read what the more educated have to say about it.

What really scares me about it is not-

Calling off the wedding because she found out that her groom’s ex-girlfriend is pregnant and then realizing that she herself is pregnant as well she was suddenly unsure if she had made the right decision. In two months time she will be giving birth to a baby boy. She refused to return his phone calls. She still feel betrayed for keeping from her about the girl he got pregnant. But she knows she need to talk to him sooner or later. she need to tell him about their coming baby. When she found out that she is pregnant she left.

So here it is. The elusive payday.

Today I plan to go shopping, or rather go pay bills.

Its a never ending cycle really, but still the promise of cash each payday is like a drug. I get up, bounce around then go shopping. Happy as larry the lamb I am.

Of course by the end of the day I am skint and miserable. Usually cos it rains.

It sooooooo isn’t fair.

Baby Gal is happy though. She knows she will get a treat today and so she behaves all day long.

I am so bored this morning. My Baby daughter is sat in front of the tv. Before you ask, I am a fully paid up member of the bad mum’s club, but at least she is still and quiet.
My daughter is 15 months old and a little cutie, but blimey can she be lively. She learned to walk 3 days ago and hasn’t stopped since. Hence my partner and I spent the whole day yesterday rearranging and spring cleaning our living room so she had more room.

Yes you read correctly, it took us all day. We live in what is known in our area as a pensioners house. Come on in and I will give you a tour. As you walk in the front door you are straight into a small hallway with the refridgerator on your left hand side. It won’t fit in the kitchen so is at the end of the hallway. Turn right and you walk past the stairs on your left and a little cubby hole to your right. At the end of the cubby hole is a cupboard but my partner (lets call him Hubby to simplify) uses it for his junk.

Welcome to my blog.

So I came across this site a week or so back and signed up. I haven’t had chance to take a look until now but I am so glad I did. So here I am, writing a blog so that you lovely people can take a look inside of my brain. Don’t worry, shouldn’t take long.

Last week I shared the story of David Burch of White Cloud, MI in Grow Grass or Go To Jail. While not directly related, today we bring you the story of Betty Perry, 70, of Orem Utah. From the Salt Lake Tribune-

Two days after Independence Day, 70-year-old Betty Perry experienced an ordeal she said shouldn’t be happening in America.
The retired military and U.S. government employee answered the door at her home Friday morning to talk with a police officer about her bone-dry lawn and ended up getting arrested and suffering a bloody nose.

Do you think that good credit is not an important asset? I have a friend that thought that very thing. Suddenly, not to long ago, reality slapped him in the face. His credit score was so bad that he could not get financed for a car! His lease was up and he tried to get another car, unfortunately, he was denied at every place he attempted.

You may be thinking that he did not look hard enough or was trying to get too expensive of a car. You may be correct, however, the point is that something like buying a car should be an enjoyable experience. Buying a car should not be an industrial pain that consumes one week of your life!

In my previous post What are the Components of a FICO score?, I discussed the different components of a FICO score and their respective weights in determining your credit score.

This post will provide a few tips that you can use to raise your credit score. First, if you have no idea what your credit score is or what information is in your credit report, I suggest you get both. You can get a free copy of your credit report from all three credit reporting agencies by going to Annual Credit Report. This service is completely free (there is absolutely no catch) and is easy to use.

The Fair Isaac Corporation is the company the created the FICO score for credit. A credit score can range between 300-850. All three of the credit reporting bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian) use a FICO score system, except each bureau calls their respective systems by a different name. TransUnion has EMPIRICA, Experian has the Experian/Fair Isaac Risk Model, and Equifax has BEACON. Do not be confused by these names. Although different by name, these credit bureaus’ systems differ only slightly in calculation.

Although the exact formula used to calculate a FICO score is unknown to the general public, the Fair Isaac Corporation has released the components used to calculate a score and their respective weight in the calculation.

From Philaahzophy.com-
File this post from RottingNation.com under “No Surprise To Thinking People”-
It is no surprise that the Republican Party has received more campaign contributions from employees of the military than the Democratic Party. However, it may surprise a lot of people to find out that, according to FEC numbers, Ron Paul has received more campaign contributions from military members than any other single candidate.

{see original article for numbers}

Scribus is an open source cross-platform page layout or DTP (DeskTop Publishing) program. Originally is developed on Linux, but runs also on MacOS, OS/2, and windows 2000/XP/Vista. Well, the fact is that is not easy to learn and work with Scribus (but hey, with which professional DTP software is easy??) but the goal of the Scribus Team are to make professional DTP software accessible for beginners.

Scribus has all publishing features as other professional DTP programs (Quark Press, PageMaker, InDesign): spot color support, CMYK color, high grade PDF creation, Encapsulated Postscript import and export and creation of color separations.

From Philaahzophy.com-
Earlier today I stumbled across a post at Ameliorations discussing a paper from the University of Connecticut’s Department of Economics titled Why doesn’t Capitalism flow to Poor Countries?. The post’s author, Chad Perrin of SOB, does an excellent job of summing up the paper’s conclusions and reframing the discussion from the academic language of the paper into nearly conversational language. It was truly an excellent post, which ended with the following poignant conclusion:

The Next great show online is coming soon on the Internet. It is still in the prelaunch session and I am sure that everyone can make money through this great site and you can still make great downlines and earn more than ever you can make on the Internet.
So hurry up get the great out of this site and you will really enjoy being the member of Evolution. It is in prelaunch and this business in future can make 412$ per second for you.

http://www.evolutioniscoming.com/EVO189379AS

Almost 30 years ago I started smoking. Why? Cause I was a dumb kid who succumbed to peer-pressure. Of course, the PSAa they were running then said that smoking wouldn’t make me cool. They were lying. Smoking did make me cool. Even my friends who didn’t smoke thought it was cool that I did.

Fast forward to December 2005 and I’m really starting to think smoking isn’t cool anymore. In fact, I realize that it’s just one more thing separating me from my daughter. We have limited time together as is and my smoking takes up some of that time and that’s just no longer acceptable. So I take action!