Prayer Pilgrimage: UNBELIEVABLE
Written by Aaron Paulley on January 31st, 2009
Prayer Pilgrimage: UNBELIEVABLE.
This is an incredible story from Pastor Tom Steagald.
My Tomato Soup Loves Me
Written by Aaron Paulley on January 18th, 2009
Made some tomato soup in the microwave the other day. I think it was trying to send me a message.
I bought my first digital camera in 1998.
Written by Aaron Paulley on January 15th, 2009
If my memory serves me well, I believe I have not taken a photo on film since 1998. I have been taking photos digitally since my first Sony Mavica camera. This is an interested fact to me because it shows how behind-the-times our government is. President-Elect Barack Obama’s team revealed the official presidential portrait that will be hanging in all Federal buildings across the country, as well as in embassies around the world and who knows where else. Not only is the portrait historic in that it is a picture of the first African American president, but it also marks the first time that a presidential portrait has been taken with a digital camera.
So I guess its official. I’m ten years ahead of our government.
Thank Goodness I Live in a Free Country by Don Cooper
Written by Aaron Paulley on January 15th, 2009
I woke up in the morning in my FHA (Federal Housing Administration) approved home that was built in accordance with USDOE (Department of Energy), FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and numerous CFRs (Code of Federal Regulations).
I went to the bathroom to clean up for work. I showered with soap, shampoo and other toiletry products that have been approved for me by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) using water that meets federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) quality standards.
I took my morning vitamins which had to be approved by the FDA.
I went downstairs to eat breakfast foods that had to be approved by the FDA and listened to my morning radio programs which are regulated by the FCC (Federal Communication Commission).
I then got into my EPA and DOT (Dept. of Transportation) standards approved and FTC (Federal Trade Commission) regulated car and was forced by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to buckle my seatbelt and put my daughter into an approved child seat. I then drove on DOT regulated roads and was forced to drive a certain speed while listening to more FCC approved programming on my radio.
I stopped for gas but there wasn’t any due to state legislated gas quality restrictions which caused a decrease in the supply of gas and also gasoline price controls that kept the price so artificially low that there was an excess demand such that it sold out as soon as it arrived.
I arrived at my DOL (Dept. of Labor) regulated and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) sanctioned place of employment, running on fumes, and was forced to work the first 2 hours of my 8 hour shift for the federal and state governments by giving almost 30% of my wages to the IRS and SSA (Social Security Administration) with no compensation.
At lunchtime I went with colleagues to eat and was forced to pay with the only medium of exchange the government approves that is regulated by the FRB (Federal Reserve Board): worthless fiat bank notes.
I then went to pick up my daughter from school where she’s learning a DOE (Dept. of Education) approved curriculum. I took her to an HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) approved doctor to get her HHS (Health and Human Services) mandated vaccinations that I learned she needed while watching a Disney family movie which was interrupted by an HHS PSA.
After returning to work I checked my SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and IRS regulated investments in my now Federal Treasury owned banks to see if I’ll be able to retire someday since the SSA trust fund that I’ve been paying into for 25 years has been raided by the federal government and is now bankrupt.
That afternoon I had to catch a flight to our office in Detroit aboard an FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) approved plane operating at an FAA regulated airport.
Before boarding I had to pass through a TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) security checkpoint where I was forced to disrobe down to my shirt, pants and socks and pass through a scanning machine that saw right through my remaining clothing.
Onboard I noticed federal sky marshals with weapons so I decided to have a cocktail composed of liquor that is controlled by the ATF (Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms), as are the sky marshal’s guns.
Once sufficiently sedated with bourbon, I sat back and relaxed and thought to myself: Thank God I don’t live in a country where the government controls your life!
Duplicate Annihilator by Brattoo Propaganda Software
Written by Aaron Paulley on January 14th, 2009
I’m going to kick off the blog with a software recommendation. Last October, I had the incredible misfortune of hearing the little motor in one of my external hard drives make some very strange noises. I had the further misfortune to see that drive no longer readable by my computer. My misfortune continued when I learned that it would cost at least $300 to get the data off and at the most $1,500. The data that was lost was about 12,000 famliy photos dating back to 2002. All lost.
Fast-forward to today, when I poking around in the Time Machine backup for my MacBook Pro. I loved Time Machine… now I love it more. I had never even thought to check and see if I had a Time Machine backup of my photos… and sure enough I did. All 12,000+ photos, automatically backed up by Leopard before I moved my photo library to my other, no dead, external drive.
I used iPhoto Library Manager (another program I recommend) to merge the now-found photos with my current iPhoto Library. What I had after that was a huge 30GB mess of duplicates (since I had been able to painstakenly download a few thousand photos from my Flickr account). Enter Duplicate Annihilator.
Duplicate Annihilator scans your iPhoto Library and creates and MD5 hash for every one of your images. Then the program acts on your instructions and can either Trash the duplicates it finds or add the word “Duplicate” to their keywords, which is what I did. After it was done scanning, hasing and comparing my entire library (about an hour and half for around 20,o00 images) I simply searched for “duplicate” and found all 3,000+ duplicates in my library. I did a quick visual check of them and trashed ‘em, saving a lot of disk space.
At $7.95, Duplicate Annihilator is a bargain, but I don’t think any iPhoto user should be without it. Perhaps there will be better duplicate detection in iPhoto ‘09, but I doubt it. Duplicate Annihilator fills a need and fills it well! A+