Yesterday, being Black Friday, I went to Circuit City & picked up a free (after rebate) Sirius Satellite Radio receiver. Upon attempting to install it, and reading the install directions, I realized I had a bit of a problem...

You see, the antenna for the system is magnetic and designed to stick directly to the car. My problem is the fact that my car is made of aluminum, and for those of you that aren't aware, aluminum is NOT magnetic. For those of you questioning if this is correct right now, try sticking a magnet to your soda can & see what happens...

At any rate, it didn't take me too long to come up with a solution. And after trying it I found the solution worked extremely well. So I figured I'd post it here for anybody else in the same position...

The only thing this requires, that you may not have, is a neodymium magnet (which you can find on eBay). Mine is 3/4" x 3/4" x 1/4" and works great. I am going to have to get a different one, however, as I'm using one that I got for a completely different very specific purpose.

At any rate, what I did was simple: I placed the antenna on the rear window, then used the magnet to anchor it in place. I also used the provided cord guard and ran the cable up to the edge of the trunk, then pulled the cable though into the frame of the trunk (as the directions say to do).

I will have pictures below shortly, so you can see what I'm talking about much clearer. I'll be able to take them shortly, as I need to go down to tape the cord along the internal parts of the trunk frame in place anyway. I was actually quite pleased as to how it came out (my wife even said it looked good), and being the back of the car is curved gradually, the reception is perfect at any angle! I would assume this trick would work for XM as well, though I decided to go with Sirius myself...

[EDIT]

Okay, here are the pics!

This post is long overdue, as the #1 thing I hate to see in life is hypocrisy. Event though I can't really spell it (I'm certain by the end of this article, every spelling of it will have had to have been fixed with a spell checker), its the one thing in life that causes me an immense amount of stress. Enough that I'm certain my blood pressure rises when I'm confronted with it.

At any rate, the incident that has pushed me to write this today, specifically, is a story I heard on the radio. Namely apparently some students were suspended from a school in California for reasons relating to handing out anti-Bush fliers at a school. I say related for a reason that I will address further down in this post. The reason, however, is not the main reason FOR this post.

There apparently was a protest in relation to this suspension and the clip played on the radio is an adult (asumeably a parent) saying something along the lines of "...these kids should not be suspended for doing what is RIGHT." So apparently this parent has ruled as of now that it is RIGHT for students to hand out anti-Bush fliers. This is an extremely loaded, and biased statement that it angers me. This parent has now decided that it is right for anti-Bush fliers to be handed out to other students, regardless of what the parents of the OTHER students believe. And it seems obvious, based on the choice of verbiage, that if I had a child that were say, handing out pro-Bush or anti-Democrat fliers, my guess is this parent would probably be the first one all up in my face for giving what they would perceive as "garbage" to his child. Because THIS would inherently be wrong. And if my student got suspended, he would probably be the one complaining that the suspension wasn't for enough time.

Lets say I were to give this parent the benefit of the doubt, and the guy agrees if my student wanted to hand out pro-Bush fliers, that would be Okay... So, if handing out a political based flier is RIGHT, then I have to ask, does that make all political issues fair game in school? If it's okay to hand out anti-Bush fliers, shouldn't it be logically be okay to hand out anti-abortion fliers??? How about fliers against illegal immigration? What about fliers against affirmative action?

Ideally if you argue the anti-Bush fliers are "right" you should have no leg to stand on to say ANY of these fliers are wrong. And if you were to disagree you would be being Hypocritical. You have a double standard if you say otherwise. I'm sure I would hear tons of arguments as to why they are different, but in reality they are in fact the exact same thing. They are political issues that have as much valid dissent an anti-Bush flier. And as long as you see them different, you are enforcing a double standard on your political views as opposed to mine and others...

As for the related statement I said above, the very last sentence of the report states that at least one of the suspended students is now also wearing an ankle bracelet for attacking a police officer. Being this is the only other detail given, I believe it's safe to assume the reason for suspension had less to do with what they were handing out than it did to something they did WHILE handing them out. Also, for the record, there have been a couple schools here in California that have had anti-Bush walkouts over the past couple weeks. So if they are allowed to shut down a school to state a political point, I highly doubt fliers would be the sole purpose for suspending other students.

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Now, I have other hypocrisy issues to type up, and hopefully I will be able to calm myself down enough to type them. Until them, try to enforce the same standards on yourself as you expect other people to follow.

That didn't take long...

A virus has been written that uses the functionality of Sony's protection software which supposedly is completely safe to hide itself from the system.

So much for this quote I talked about in a prevous post:

Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?


    -Thomas Hesse, President of Sony's Global Digital Business

Why you ask? THIS is why!

If there ever was a time in history to slap a music artist and two bit actor in the United States, it would be now. In my opinion, it's two years too late. We should have done this before the making of Meet The Fockers to spare the country the pain, the icompetence and the suffering of this menice of an actor...

Barbara Streisand

You have effectively told the legislature that they can keep spending us in to deficit after deficit and you approve of this spending!!!

You have told the legislature that you approve of things such as re-introducing the car tax and other outrageous taxes as that is the only possible thing that can now keep the state from going bankrupt (and yes, a state CAN go bankrupt)...


Oh, for thoes of you who didn't vote for more of the same, you might want one of these.

I just want to do a breif synopsis of these props and clarify the truth about them in contrast to the lies everybody is spreading about them:


74: Changes probationary period from 3 years to 5 years.
Lie - Will make it harder to remove problem teachers (this ad actually ran)
Truth - Does the exact oppisiate in fact. In the real world you can get fired for many things, which teachers if they manage to stick it out for a couple years they're in for life. Why not up the years they have to wait it out so we can stop hearing so many reports of teachers having sex with students???

75: Makes public union members political support "opt in" instead of "opt out"
Lie - Members can currently opt out.
Truth - If they can currently opt out and choose not to, what will this change? Ideally if what they say is true, it will change nothing. So why spend $100 million dollars to fight something that will change nothing???
Most members who try to opt out usually find they really can't. It becomes too difficult and overly burdensom (many union members who try it fail). And they unions do nothing to assist the people in doing it, they in fact do the oppisate. Most members end up opting out the only way they can - by removing their membership from the union, which in turn makes them loose all their power. For the record, even though they leave the union, they still pay their regular dues, they simply pay for nothing according to what the union tells them...

76: Causes a re-ordering of the budget if we're out spending
Lie - This will give the govener more power than any other in the entire country
Truth - There are currently 35 other states that have symiler bills in effect. So logic would tell you that the govener can't have more power than any other govener if well over half the goveners here have symiler powers. Oh and also - for the record - 6 states version has the govener being the ONLY person who does the re-organizing of the budget. This is different than California's 76 in that the legistature gets first crack. So even if this bill does pass, at least 6 other states currently give their govener MORE power than this bill gives Califonria's govener if it passes, so the argument is a flat out lie...

77: Puts retired judges in charge of political districting
Lie - 3 partisan judges will tear appart Caliornia for their own desires.
Truth - For starters, these judges simply draw the lines, you will have to vote on their plan to approve it once they finish. Also keep in mind that this policy was in place in California for many years in the past and it worked well. As of now the people who control the election lines are the same people who benifit from these lines. There were something like 136 seats (I could be off on this number) up for re-election last year and 136 of thoes went to the incumbant. What are the odds? 100% re-election thoughout California, we must love our congressmen. Either that or maybe they have more power than they should. Laws make it illegal for a politician to rule on something he has a conflict of interest in, yet the current set up allows them to rule on what their exact zone will be to vote on them. This is the biggest conflict of interest I can see a politician would have...


At any rate California has been majorlty screwed up now for some time. If it weren't, there would have been no recall. California is not going to be able to get back on it's feet until some changes are made, and we have to start somewhere. If we don't, the special interests will continue to get all the money and the average joe citizen will be the one giving it to them... The govnener said he would put the power in your hands to try to fix California, and he won on that promise.

What sense does it make to now say "To hell with it, I don't want the power to actually chage anything"???

This interesting little tidbit comes from an NPR interview

Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?


    -Thomas Hesse, President of Sony's Global Digital Business

Why should they? Well how about this...

I remember when people did not know what a computer worm was. Does that mean people will NEVER care about it? No, as a matter of fact, computer worms are so rampant today, EVERYBODY has now heard of them, and they cost people and buisnesses billions of dollars and send people to jail today. Does that mean someone who writes a worm can use the defence "well it's not dangerous to people who don't know what it is"??? So ,just because most people don't know what a rootkit is today doesn't qutie mean they aren't dangerous and/or that two years from now everybody won't know what they are...

Another example I can give is email. Do you who's reading this right now have any idea what email is??? I remember in one of my ninth grade classes the teacher mentioned the term "email" and ask if anybody in the class knew what email was, and I litarally (I'm not making this up) was the ONLY person in the class to raise my hand. I also was the only person in that class who had an email address at that time (logically). Now every person and their dog has an email address... So again, an example of just because someone doesn't know what it is today, doesn't mean it's not important...


So again, dimwits over at Sony: Just because people don't know what they are does not mean it will not effect them...

In the union commercial I heard this morning there is an interesting thing said that again makes me mad. The statement was that "union members already have the options to choose that their money isn't used for political purposes." While it is possible, that doesn't mean a member can actually do it without being attacked by the union...

Teachers who do this regularly state that they normally have to fight to get their money back, and all the wile the unions make it difficult and harshly attack the member in the process. How do I know this? I've heard multiple union members (specifically teachers) say this themselves. One teacher said he regularly gets mail reminding him they do NOT consider him to be a member of the union because he chooses not to support political campaigns. So they tell him he's not a member, yet they still collect the rest of his dues on a regular basis... So, the members can choose to get their money back, but look at just look at what happens when they do...

If you don't think the unions use these types of tactics, you can in fact look up a case where Teachers came out to support Prop 75 (again they are choosing to do so) and other union members are chanting in the background "Shame on you". In the particular instance, I believe John McCain was involved in the conference. If union members can choose what to support politically, why in the world can't they choose to do so without being directly attacked openly by the unions??? And if any of these members had given up trying to get their political fees back, they are literally in a situation where they are paying for the attack they are undergoing.

The unions and many of their brainwashed members believe it's wrong for people in the union to openly support 75, and yet the unions still claim the people have a choice on weather or not they want to pay money to support the unions political campaigns? Give me a break...

This was my first Halloween in my new appartment. And as in prevous years I was not home, as I had gone to help out at my church's family fun night... Since this was the first year where nobody was home at my place, I put a bunch of candy into a dish outside my door, with a sign that read "Take Two, Please Be Kind!". Note that this was good candy (the "fun size" of all the normal candy bars), not the kind nobody likes...

Well, I assumed when I got home I would find and empty dish of candy, while wondering all night if a few kids had stolen all of it, or if it lasted though all the kids that came by. The ideal ending would have been comming back to find a handfull left in the dish, indicating the candy lasted though the night...

Well, much to my surprise, niether of the above occured. In fact as of now I'm still not sure if ANY of the candy was taken, as the dish was almost as full if not completely full as when I left. If any of it is gone I would have to assume a max of 10 kids came by... Thats probably an over estimate though... Having been a kid myself, I remember as a kid always wanting to head twards the appartment complexes as they were concentrated, so you would always be able to cover more doors and get more candy.

I'm left wondering if there are no kids in this complex every year, or if things were unusual this year... But as of now I'm left with two $10 bags of candy from CostCo, and no ideas on what to do with all of it...