Halloween at the Obama’s

Hah, funny stuff here.

Great plan for small business owners

Driving in to work this morning the radio talking head passed on this plan to fight Obamas tax hikes.

A friend of his is a small business owner. He runs a local bakery here in St. Louis and employs about 2 dozen people. He has taken a long hard look at Obama’s tax plan and has come to the conclusion that if Obama is elected and gets his tax plan implemented, he is going to have to lay off between 6 and 10 employees.

So he made a plan. He walked out to the employee parking lot and noted which cars had Obama bumper stickers on them. Those people are the top of the list for layoffs.

Beautiful, poetic justice.

Obama’s supporters

Geeze, no wonder Obama is still seemingly in the lead for this election.

He has secured the lazy idiotic demographic.

“I never thought this day would happen. I won’t have to work on puttin’ gas in my car. I won’t
have to work at payin’ my mortgage.

You know. If I help him [Obama], he’s gonna help me.”

No insult intended to those of you out there supporting Obama with IQ’s over 45.

THIS IS (not supposed to be) SPARTA!!!

I read this post by Marc over at Bugskippy the other day and I couldn’t help but totally agree with what he had to say. His post is all about how the ancient Spartans child rearing methods compare to our modern cultures. I never would have even dreamed up the connection, but after Marc laid it all out, I just had to post up a link to it so that my 4 readers could see it too

Take a look, its worth a few minutes of your time.

THIS IS (not supposed to be) SPARTA!!!

TBM’s Book Review: Mistborn: The Hero of Ages

Splendid.

Oh, you need more?  Ok.  Brandon Sanderson is the chosen one to a Wheel of Time fan.  He is the author that Harriet, Robert Jordan’s wife, hand picked to finished Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series after his unfortunate death.

I decided to read through his writing to just kind of get a feel for him and form my own opinion as to his fitness in finishing the Wheel of Time (not that I don’t trust Harriet, I’m just curious).  (The preceding sentence is an example of why I am not a writer.  It’s horrible but I can’t figure out a better way to say what I am trying to say there.)

The Hero of Ages is the fourth book of his that I have read.  It is the conclusion to a trilogy, and it is very, very good.  Ok, let me qualify that.  Was it the best thing I have ever read?  No.  I still have trouble picking a better book than the sixth book of Wheel of Time, Lord of Chaos.  But it was much better than most of anything else I have read.  Including a few of the many installments of Wheel of Time and the entire last two thirds of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.

I can’t really write up a lot of detail about the book because it would spoil a lot of what happens in the first two books of the series, Mistborn: Final Empire, and Well
of Ascension.  Let me just say that the twists and turns and highs and lows that Sanderson built into this story leave me confidant that he will do the final piece of the Wheel of Time series justice as few others besides Jordan himself could have.

Dropping the ties to the Wheel of Time work, this book was great.  The ending left me as satisfied as any extended fantasy story possibly could.  I, of course, got attached to so many of the characters that it makes me sad to say goodbye to them.  Even though he leaves the story open ended enough to know that life will go on in this world, and has told us that he may revisit it in a future series, I will still miss all of the people I have come to know and care about through these three books.  (Oh, I guess that was a little bit of a spoiler in itself right there.  Oh well, you know the good guys always win in these stories already, I’m not
really spoiling anything huge there.)

That is a sign for me of a good story.  Some stories I finish and I am glad I don’t have to pick it up again.  Those fall into my yuck category that won’t get recommended to the people that annoy me more than anyone else.  I wouldn’t be so mean as to inflict those books on them.  Books like David Edding’s Dreamers series.  Man was that awful.

Mistborn though, right now it stands right beside The Wheel of Time as a series that I would recommend to anyone.  So there it is.  Great story, go check it out.

(I know, I know.  Any English teacher would tear me up for the horrible job I did italicizing book and series titles.  Shoot me.  Individual books got italics.  Series got italics when they were first mentioned.  Call it the Bald Monkey Annotation Format.)

Final Holiday Inn Update…

I am sure all of you are just holding your breath waiting for the conclusion to my Holiday Inn fiasco. well here you go.

The Better Business Bureau closed the case without resolution a few weeks.  The process went, I filed a complaint, the hotel responded, I responded, they responded, case closed.  The chick at the hotel continued to be a tool and basically had nothing to say other than, you had two rooms you have to pay for them.  She just would not acknowledge that I was lied to on multiple occasions.

I was annoyed that the BBB closed it, but a follow up email to them got them to tell me it was just standard procedure to close after the number of back and forth statements we had.  I knew going in that they had no actual power to force anyones hand.

That was the bad news, here is the good news.  About a eek, maybe two after the BBB closed my case I was looking at my credit card website for some info.  The info I found that I was not actually looking for was that I had been credited the money for half of what the hotel had charged me, plus the finance charge for it.

SURPRISE!!!

I was surprised that they had credited my account but not sent me any kind of notification so I called up to the customer support and asked them about it.  I told the lady that I wanted to make sure it was actually closed because the BBB process had gotten me nothing but my head slammed against a wall in frustration.

She checked the notes on the credit and it said that the dispute had been closed.  That was all the details in there, but she said that because they credited it back to me and closed the dispute that they had sided with me on the matter and that I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.  All I can figure is that the hotel chick must have not responded within the 45 days they allowed, because if she had I would have had to respond back just like the BBB case.

Anyway, thanks for all the prayers and thoughts you guys all sent up for me about this situation.  It’s so nice not to have to think about it anymore.

Fantasy Football…

Man, this is a weird year for fantasy football.  My expected #1 QB in one of my leagues, Peyton Manning, is trailing my #3 QB Jon Kitna by a pretty good margin.  My handpicked team in that league is actually awful.  1-3 on the season so far, and the three I lost were all by pretty good sized deficits.

My other league on the other hand is quite the opposite.  It was an automated draft and when I looked at my team afterward, I pretty much gave up on them before the season started.  Lots of names I didn’t recognize and players from teams that are terrible year after year.

Imagine my surprise now that 4 weeks in I am undefeated and #1 in the league.  I’m sure it wont last but it’s fun at the moment.

Football…

Well, the season started out well for the Packers.  2-0 was a surprising nice start.  Things are slipping away at the moment though.  I haven’t heard the latest news on Al Harris, and though I think he is an awful cornerback, some think he is one of the best in the league.  And I have to admit he is the best on the team.  It’s going to hurt us a lot if he really is done for the season.  Our defensive secondary is always weak to begin with.

I am hoping Rodgers can get is shoulder strength built up for this weekend.  The last thing we need is to go from debating the merits of letting Favre return, to deciding our future QB is ready after three years on the bench, to having to depend on two raw rookies.

On to my number two team, the Titans are off to a great start this season.  4-0 is always nice.  This weekend is going to be a challenging game at Baltimore.  The Ravens defense is looking like the old school Ravens D of their Super Bowl year in 2000.  Our D is lookin’ good to though, so I guess it’s going to come down to the veteran old QB (Kerry Collins) vs. the young guy (Joe Flacco).  Let’s hope experience continues it’s dominance over youthful confidence.

Politics….

Can I just tell ya I am ready for this election to be over?  I have just totally gotten burned out by it all.  I am ready for the next president to step in so that one of two things can happen.

If McCain wins, my wife can spend the next 4 years saying, “You voted for him.”

Or,

If Obama wins, I can spend the next, in his own words, “Nine to ten years,” pointing out to her that “You voted for him.”

Oh, and on a slight side note, I am so tired of people harping on about Palin being “one heartbeat away from the presidency.”  Look at who is currently two heartbeats from the presidency.  You all have to admit that if Cruella DeVille (Nancy Pelosi for the unimaginative) was to ascend to the Oval Office the country really would fall apart.  She has to be the most devisive, partisan, horrid old woman to ever serve in congress.

I’m back!!

Ok, it’s been over a month since I posted anything and I have no real excuse for that.  Lots has been going on though so I am gonna just do a brain dump and post out a bunch of stuff.  Maybe.

Here goes……