I’ve been in the business of using computers, in one way or another, since 1982. I wrote my first college paper on an Apple III. I owned one of the original IBM PCs (Hercules Graphics Card! 512K RAM! Two full-height 5 1/4″ Floppy Drives! Dot Matrix Printer! DOS 2.0! Ashton-Tate Framework! All for the low, low price of $4,000!!!). I’ve worked as a software engineer, product manager, project manager, marketing manager, and user interface evangelist for software publishing companies. I was around for the birth of Windows 1.0, the life and death of COMDEX, the rise of the common user interface, the Year of the LAN, and a slew of other things, long consigned to the dust bin of computer history. I’ve been a user, author, coder, beta-tester, evangelist, designer, and planner. In short, I’ve held just about every job you can hold in the software industry.
Now I’m writing reviews. [Read more…] about My two cents.
I’m a conservative. So’s Sen. Ted Stevens (R, Alaska). I believe in drilling for oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. So does Ted. I believe that conservatives principles should guide our government. Ted agrees. So why do I want to see Ted Stevens resign from office?
Know what a “Tween” is? Unless you’ve been living under a rock (which might not be such a bad idea, actually), you know a tween is the trendy label for those ages 9 to 12 – not quite a child anymore, but not quite a teenager. A “tweenager,” if you will. I’m the proud father of a tween. She’s obsessed with all the typical things that girls her age are – fashion, Miley Cyrus, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and fashion. The problem is, I’m not sold on the idea that all those obsessions are the right ones.
I love to read. I read just about everything I can get my hands on – from mysteries to histories, tech books to cook books. My favorite for light reading are in the techo-thriller genre…books about heroic Americans fighting the spies and soliders of other countries or terrorists. Glenn Beck (one of my favorite radio/TV guys) had author Christopher Reich on his show recently, to plug the book Rules of Deception. Beck mentioned that he’d not yet read the book (never a good idea to plug something you haven’t read, Glenn), but he was amazed that, as the story revolved around Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium for the express purpose of building nuclear weapons, that the New York Times had given the book a glowing review. Little did I know when I bought it that there was a good reason the NY Times loved it. 
Here’s the deal. Ever since the MoveOn.org crowd decided that the morals of a politician were nobody’s business but their own, we’ve lived in a world of double standards. Both those on the Left (Sen. Edwards, Jesse Jackson, Rep. Jefferson, etc.) and those on the right (Larry Craig, Ted Stevens, etc.) try their best to convince us that their private behavior has no bearing on their public fortunes.
Whoo, boy, am I opening a can o’ worms on THIS one. Exhibit A to the left here is one of the cartoons the Danish papers had the courage to print. Now, it’s not that the cartoon is really in bad taste – not when we Christians have to content with the ‘art’ of Robert Maplethorpe, and countless other depections in the media of Christians as narrow-minded, biggoted simpletons – but it is not the cartoon itself (nor what it implies) that I want to talk about tonight. No, campers, it is the reaction to the cartoons – not by the radical Islamists, but by everyone else. 
I have. I rented a couple of DVDs for my wife and I to watch. One was Vantage Point, an action/mystery/thriller about a Presidential assasination, told (and retold) from a variety of points-of-view. It was surprisingly good…”surprisingly,” because it came – and went – at the box office so fast, I’m not sure it lasted a week. If you like intelligent movies that make you think – and pay attention – you’ll likely enjoy this one. However, if you’re like most of the movie-going public, maybe not. And that brings me to my rant du jour…