I was doing a quick search on the possibility the Apollo 1 fire was a conspiracy because the astronauts killed were going to come forward that the whole planned moon mission was being faked.

I ran across Bad Astronomy's page, which I've visited a couple times in the past. I found they addressed this, however, they actually did so in a bad manner. So, in true Bad Astronomy style, I'll use their technique for analyzing why this is bad...

Good: Phil of the Bad Astronomy website addresses this possibility.

Bad: He does so by saying its such a horrible thing that he won't address it.

Generally speaking, a scientific argument doesn't skip addressing something because the idea of it is bad. That turns it from a scientific argument to an emotional one. And an emotional argument has no basis in science...

My biggest sticking point on the moon was following authentic footage which was never intended for the public to be viewed. The footage, which was on YouTube but was then very quickly removed, shows what is clearly the astronauts faking the appearance of earth at a distance using a round window, and a darkened cabin.

Essentially the video shows what looks like the earth at a distance. But what happens while the camera is left on is that you eventually see the whole cabin filled with light and the earth at a distance was actually the earth through a portal, and they are in fact right next to the earth. There's no question about what the video shows, so the only question is, why would NASA have the astronauts do this? Until that question is addressed, I can only assume there is only one reason...

At any rate, it appears to be back on YouTube for the time being, so here it is... Ignoring the audio completely, it just appears there is fakery going on here and it's just fishy...

As I always say, protesters who have to resort to vandalism and/or rioting only do so because they in fact have no valid argument in the first place. This is easy to prove because, if they did have a valid argument, these things would be wholely unnecessary... Our legal system, which is built upon our constitution, does not include vandalizing or rioting to prove one's guilt or innocence... As an example, anybody can spray paint "moron" on someones car, but in pretty much all cases, the moron usually turns out to be the idiot who painted it in the first place...

Now, on to the point: It now does in fact appear now, with absolute certainty, that the anti-war protesters officially have no argument. They have officially lost & are officially wrong... So I guess they can pack up and go home now...

I swear the events I'm going through with my Ambient Orb seem like that of a sitcom who's writers can only think of one story, so they continue it from episode to episode...

For thoes not familiar with the story so far it goes like this: I bought the orb & registered it online on November 17th, only to get an error when trying to log into the account... They eventually removed my account & told me to re-create it, only I couldn't as when I tried their site said my device was already reigstered. After two weeks they finally removed my devices registration. I proceeded to re-register it, only to get the exact same error I got that first night. They told me to send my circiut board in to them for an update...

At any rate, I finally got it back last night (now over 2 months since that first night in November when I go the error). Prior to opening the package I asked my wife "how much do you want to bet that I won't be able to get this thing to work tonight?"...

At any rate, upon opening the package, I was surprised to find that the package did NOT contain a new serial number, in addition to the circiut board (as I assumed they were assigning a new serial number)...

At any rate, long story short, when I tried to log into my account the account did NOT exist. When I tried to re-register my device it stated that my serial number was ALREADY REGISTERED!!! That's right, problem #3 in the list of steps I went through before mailing them my circiut board is occuring again...

My guess? Durring their testing they didn't think to remove the number from whatever account they used in their database to test the device when they were working on it. A simple thing that should have logically been done...

I've called their support line 5 times this morning. The first 4 times I got a recording indicating all of their representatives were busy, and that I had to leave a message. I did so the first time, but haven't gotten a call back...

Annoyingly enough, as I started typing this I was sitting on hold on my 5th call (assuming their queue wasn't full), but for some reason after sitting on hold for a few minutes, it came back with the same prompt to leave a message...

Bottom line, I bought the device, and they seem utterly clueless how to get the damn thing to work as adveratized... Being they held my circiut board for over 30 days (not to mention I sent the board into them on my 14th day of owning it) for a grand total of 68 days since the date of purchase, I can no longer return it to the store from where it was purchased... So they sure better get this thing working at this point...

I called my MasterCard company well over a week ago regarding an issue I blogged about around a month ago now, in that the TiVo MasterCard I signed up for is NOT crediting my points into my TiVo Rewards account...

They told me at that time that I had to wait 30 days for anything to begin to be resolved...

Well, not to much surprise to me after that 30 days my points still did NOT show (and still don't today). I called the credit card company as TiVo's website says to do, and they quickly told me I needed to call TiVo. Upon calling TiVo & being transfered around a couple times, and waiting on hold for quite some time, they finally determined I needed to call a special number. That special number? The MasterCard company's number that I had called first who referred me to TiVo in the first place... Effectively giving me the compelte run around...

So I called the credit card company back being TiVo insisted they could not even look into the issue as everything is on the credit card's side. The credit card company told me they would do an investigation & I would get a call back 24 hours later...

Which takes me to today, around 10 DAYS later. I called the credit card company again and they indicated to me that the case is still open, but that they are waiting for TiVo to contact them (effectively going back to the last source who refered me to them). TiVo, unfortunatly, has not responded...

Hopefully between TiVo & the credit card company they will get the issue resolved because this is beyond rediculus...

I just got home from a drive home from a friends house all of 2 minutes ago, and all of 5 mintes I go I saw a nice dishonest cop once againg entraping yet another victiom into a ticket...

Story goes like this... I was driving in the fast lane, not too fast, and saw a car quickly approcing me (without any lights on indicating it "couldn't" be a cop as cops exceeding the speed limit with no lights on is as dangerous as anybody else exceeding the speed limit). Well, instead of speeding up I had more than enough room to get out of this "guy's" way...

10 seconds later the car pulled in front of me in the middle lane, and it was at that point that I realized this mysterous speer was in fact one of Ventura County's finest (there by defining just how corrupt the finest in our are truely are). But you see, when I changed lanes there was a guy in front of me, and the cop (when pulling in front of me) was behind him. Without missing a beat I turned to my wife and said "now watch this cop try to get the guy in front of him to do something so he can give him a ticket"...

The sad thing is, I was trying to be sarcastic, but it turned out I was being all too real. A few seconds later I asked my wife "what does it look like that cop is doing?" And she (who's just learning to drive and only has a permit) said "tailgating that guy." Without missing a beat the guy did what most logical people would do when some crazy guy starts tailgating them at night, he spead up in an effort to put some safty distance between him and this corrupt tailgater.

My wife started counting backwards from five but she never hit on, as on three the cops lights turned on and this guy had been officially pulled over for speeding...

Upon arriving home my wife said to me "why would anybody speed up in that circumstance" and I provided her with the one reason I do it: Safety...

You see, when you're driving down the freeway late at night the only thing you can be sure of is that there is absolutely no surefire way to know the state of any given driver at any given time. More precicely, when a driver speads up behind you and starts tailgating you, you've no way to know if he's an asshole (which I guess still applies in this instance), a guy in a major hurry, a guy who's psychotic, or a guy who's drunk. When someone is tailgating you, chaning lanes can be very dangerous, as it greatly increases the likelyhood that any given tailgater will collide with you, especially if the person's judgement is impared by alcohol...

So this settles the argument. Cops are nothing but power tripping dishonest thugs. So if you're a cop, yes I'm talking about you. And this shows me first hand that my past cases are in fact no way unique, and are more likely the daily norm for most of these dishonest thugs...

Bottom line: If a cop believed he could give a driver a ticket at the cost of serously risking lives of other drivers on the road, his only thought would be nobody lives forever anyway...

This is exactly the type of thing that really pisses me off. The Weather Channel's "most prominent" climatologist is stating that ANY meteorologist that expresses skepticism about 'Global Warming' should be stripped of their scientific certification...

Why don't we just put them to death, like what they did back in the day when those blasphemers claimed the world was round...

I've posted my very first YouTube video:



My MacBook is now having a not so random shutdown. You see, when I boot with the shift key down, which is the Mac method for booting into 'safe mode', my Mac shut off...

I've tried both Zapping the PRAM as well as resetting the PMU, neither of which had any effet on this problem. My MacBook has already gone through 2 weeks of repair (that's 2 weeks I didn't have my MacBook for a fix of a problem that a new computer should not be having). Now I have to go through yet another 2 weeks of repair, only this time for this issue, along with a screen flickering that is terribly annoying...

I truely hope at some point in time this new MacBook will behave like a new computer...

I've been meaning to blog about an issue in the illegal immigration debate, and about where I believe the arguments against cease to be about the issue... After reading a recent post, I'm going to extend it to two issues...

The first is a story about a pizza place excepting pesos in the US, and hate mail being extended. The thing is, when an argument against this is made, this ceases to be a specifically 'illegal' type issue. I'm firmly against illegal immigration (as anybody who's read my blog semi-regularly probably knows). But the key here is that stop at 'illegal'. I've been to Mexico a few times in my life, and each time I spent American dollars in Mexico. I was not an illegal visitor to Mexico when I did that, and I did not see any Mexicans being uptight about the fact that I did. In reverse, if someone comes into America from Mexico legally, and happens to have Pesos (possibly even an American who may have been staying there for a while), what's so wrong about an establishment excepting them? Just because illegals may have or probably have pesos in their pocket does not mean that inherently everybody who has pesos in their pocket is an illegal...

Unfortunately too many people are blurring the line in the argument, and when they do they give fuel to those who argue that those who are against illegal immigration are racist...

This extends further and the second point hits a little closer to home. I was in a store and two employees were speaking to each other in Spanish. A guy waiting in line then proceeded to go berserk screaming they should be speaking English. One of the two employees proceeded to inform the man that Spanish was in fact their second language. The fact is there is nothing inherently wrong about speaking in a foreign language. The problem comes when people elect to refuse to learn English and expect others to cater to always cater to that choice.

In fact legal immigrants who come here may not know how to speak English when they arrive. My wife came here on a student visa expecting to attend school starting by learning English. That never occurred, unfortunately, due to the simple fact that the sponsor who brought her here never intended to allow her to attend school. She's learned English from English speakers, and has made a solid effort to do so...

When I stated above that this issue hits a little closer to home, it was in reference to an event that occurred while my wife was answering the phone for her 'adoptive' sponsor... That is, the place my wife went to after managing to get away from the sponsor who originally brought her here...

The story is fairly short. My wife, who is of Chinese descent and is originally from Indonesia... Whom I'm able to comfortably converse with few if any problems (not knowing even a single word of her native language)... At any rate she answered the phone and had someone asking to speak with her boss. She asked "what this regard?" improperly phrasing the statement but making logical sense to anybody who natively speaks English. The person on the phone then rudely responded "what this regard? That doesn't make any sense, what are you speaking Spanish?" then proceeded to hang up.

Being that he could properly repeat the words meant he fully knew what she was asking... Anybody with a basic ability to speak English could insert the missing "s" and the missing "ing" with no real though on their part. The fact is she is making an effort to properly learn English to the best of her abilities with the resources she has on hand (which consists primarily of me).

But this guy was somehow offended because she isn't 100% fluent in English. And the simple fact is there isn't a single person on this planet who is 100% fluent in English. I'd be willing to bet there are a few English words I could use that would have him asking "ummm, what does that word mean?"... In fact I would venture to guess his complete fluentness in English is verisimilitude at best... You get the point...

The mere fact that someone doesn't speak English completely fluently is not something inherent to illegals. In fact even the inability to speak English doesn't necessarily denote an illegal. Going to a Chinese church, I'm in contact with countless legal immigrants and naturalized citizens. Many of them, when possible, prefer to speak in their native language.

The problem we should be having as those who are against illegal immigration, or even those who arrived legally but believe they should never have to learn English is when they choose to not even try. Keep in mind, English is not the easiest language to learn. In fact, to those learning it as a second language, it can be extremely difficult. An episode of I Love Lucy comes to mind where Rickey was trying to read a children's book in English. Containing words like Through, Cough, Bough & Though (each having a distinctly different pronunciation at the end) he was having a bit of a hard time... As native English speakers, we never usually think about it, but English has more exceptions than it does rules...

For the record, my wife does now know how to properly pronounce "what's this regarding?" Though for the record it wasn't that she didn't know about the "s" sound, but that it's extremely difficult for her to tack an "s" at the end of a word...

Another example of this is my Manager at my work. He is fluent in Japanese (born in America & totally white) and he used the word "oo-poo-soo" at one point. He then proceeded to explain that this is how those who's native language is Japanese, who later proceed to learn English, pronounce the word "oops". Case being that they generally are incapable of making the "s" sound immediately following a consonant and at the end of a word (both of which are obviously present in 'oops')...

But what this all boils down to is a desperate need for people on the anti-illegal immigration side of the argument to stop focusing on the specific issue of illegal, and those who want to live here but refuse to adapt to our culture what-so-ever. There's nothing inherently wrong about excepting foreign currency. There is nothing wrong with having Spanish speaking employees in grocery stores. The problem isn't with people who at the present time still aren't completely fluent in English, and it isn't even with those who at present don't know English.

The problem comes in when someone comes here illegally to spend foreign money. The problem comes in when someone illegal comes in to the country and then expects to get a free ride, while also choosing not to speak English. Heck, if you're an illegal, but are capable of teaching English, that shouldn't earn you a pass. If you've got 10,000 in American money, but are illegal, that shouldn't earn you a pass either... The national language is English and should remain English. The dollar should remain the one currency excepted everywhere in the US. That does not mean completely banning those who currently don't speak English, or those who have a few pesos in their pocket wanting some pizza from ever entering the country...

GreenPeace should be feeling a little embarrassed at the moment. You see, they've been running a Green My Apple campaign complete with various forms of protest against Apple.

However it's interesting to note that Apple just received the highest rating for environmentally friendly computers from the EPA on their notebooks. Essentially the rating states that Apple's MacBook Pros are the most green laptops available. Their desktops & monitors aren't quite the highest, but they are still pretty high up there... In other words, if you wanted to get the greenest laptop possible, you would in fact have to buy an Apple...

It's odd that GreenPeace is attacking Apple here, when Apple is by no means the top selling brand of personal computers.

I guess GreenPeace should do a bit more research before choosing a mark. As managing to go after a company that is first nowhere near number one in computer sales, but makes the greenest notebook makes it look like they're singling out someone to pick on solely to make themselves look smart & superior... Kind of like a high school bully...

Having been in Oregon durring the week of Christmas, I got disrupted in some of my normal daily activities. I did notice for the past couple days that the FoxTrot on my My Yahoo! page hadn't updated since Sunday, but until a short time ago I hadn't gone through and read my missed week of comics...

As Bill Amend has been known to do, he made reference to
this press release in a manorism that makes the characters talking about the story as if the actual story was comletely disconnected from them, with little tidbits here and there that shatter this disconnection.

So as of January 1st, '07 there will (seemingly?) be no more of thoes black and white 3 pained comic strips, which is kind of a bummer for me as they usually tend to be more enjoyable than the Sunday version for some reason. I did purchase a FoxTrot book I hadn't gone through yet, perhaps I can get a supplement from older coppies of the comic that I've yet to read...

It is a bit of a bummer, but all things come to an end as they say. At the very least it's good that there will be one strip a week, as apposed to going dead... But now a minute of my day will be freed up, hopefully I can find something to fill that time every day...