<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

I had a great time yesterday catching up with family from my moms side that I havent seen for a while. I even met a few cousins that I didnt know I had!! We spent a few hours at Hazel dell park in Vancouver. I posted some pics online for you family members that I managed to get an email address for. Feel free to register with the schricker forum and upload pictures that you got at the reunion also.  To see the ones I took, visit the Schricker Gallery Tab at the top of this page and find the album for the Reunion

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

My friend Chris, AKA Moose, sent me this link to a paper written in September of 2005 and updated in December of 2006 by G. William Dumhoff and posted on University of California Santa Cruz website. Here is the link to the paper: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I was completely amazed after reading this paper and looking at the incomes that CEO’s collect now compared to just a couple decades ago. From 1990 until 2005, the average CEO’s paycheck increased nearly 300% (after adjusting for inflation etc etc) whereas the typical production worker’s pay only increased a scant 4.3%. To put it in another format of comparison ratios of CEO pay to factory worker; CEO pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000 which was the height of the stock market bubble, when CEO’s were cashing in on big stock options, the ratio dropped down to 411:1 by 2005 after the crash and readjustment. To compare, the same ratio in Europe is about 25:1 during the same ending time frame.

Please take a look at this article and take note at the main time frame when CEO’s paychecks grew fatter and the regular Joe’s paycheck got slimmer. I think you’ll notice that it’s during REAGANOMIC’s. That’s right, the good old “Trickle down effect” where the wealthy get more and supposedly are supposed to “share” in their wealth. *COUGH* Yea right! Not to mention the total assault on unions during the 1970′s.

After watching the news and listening to the radio about our countries 700+ billion dollar bailout of our banking industry, is just making me steam. What it going to cost to bail these folks out? $2800 for every man, woman and child in the United States. (Number obtained from NPR during their 5pm news) Why not make the top 10% of the wealthy in this country pay for it? Lets levy up a nice hefty tax hike on them for once, god knows they’ve made enough money off us for the last few years!  In fact, why don’t they cut their own paychecks when they need to increase their bottom line instead of laying off more workers?

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

Ive heard they are pretty darn decent considering its made of healthy junk…

http://www.kashi.com

Sign up for a free cookie. Yum!

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

I belong to a thread for couponers that says this little club from Betty Crocker is the one to join.
Ya take a little survey and once accepted they occasinally send ya free stuff and coupons. Several of the girls on the thread say they recently recieved a case…. yes.. thats right.. a WHOLE CASE of Progresso chicken broth along with about 10 coupons for $1.25 off per can.

They dont spam the heck out of you if you do join the club from what I’ve seen. So if yer interested here is the link

http://pssst.generalmills.com

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

Yes, it’s the season for politicians to begin slinging mud at their competitor using whatever crappy tactics at their disposal. I especially like the one from Senator Smith bashing his rival Jeff Merkley by using an image that was undoubtedly taken from a television debate placing him in a bad light and using edited testimony from said debate. Why can’t we simply take a look at the candidates track records and judge them by those records? Senator Smith has routinely voted 85% of the time in favor of the current administration and their policies. Of course now that our current administration is on the way out, Senator Smith is trying to distance himself from it in an attempt to save his job.

Now I’m not saying Jeff Merkley is any better than Senator Smith, but as we only have two real choices for this election, which means the choice of the lesser of two evils. While I can’t vote in the Oregon elections, I can say that if I were able to, I would vote for Jeff Merkley on the simple basis that we can’t afford another term of Senator Smith. It’s time to give him a boot to the head and have him go back to running FlavorPac.

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

Our oldest daughter, Shelby, is taking beginning photography and American Sign language this year. She opted NOT to continue with French (THANK GOD!) because she hated it and a swap out of Physics to Photography was necessary since she hasnt taken Geometry yet. She’ll be doing Geometry next semester then Physics next year as a Senior. I am very excited that she is taking these 2 classes related to things that I love. As crazy protective over my Nikon D80 as I am, I let her take it yesterday on a walk and was plesantly surprised by a few of the pictures she took. They are learning alot about photoshop so they are currently taking stills. I created her her own album in the forum gallery especially for photos she has taken for class if you would like to check it out.

Also, there will be a few more gallery albums for images I have shot. Would appreciate any feedback you have as I am going to be entering my first competitions this fall.

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

Here is a super cool site that not only buys your books, they pay for the shipping also! Gather your good condition books and go to thier site, then enter the ISBN numbers (which you will find on the back cover or on the copyright page in the front of the books) and see how much cash you can get for them.

Complete the transaction online, print the pre-paid shipping label, pack up the books and in a few days you get a check or a deposit to your paypal account.

You wont pay a penny! Not even for the postage… and YES they buy used textbooks also!

Here’s the link….

Cash For Books – We Buy Books & We Pay The Shipping!

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

Ok, I am made of suck and failure but only a small amount. I learned last night that I can not drink more than one scotch and keep my guard up against the beast. I’ve been good all morning and strangely, as well as thankfully, I’ve not had any real cravings. So I figure I slipped a small amount, recovered my footing, and will be moving onward soldiers!

Another thing to note for all those techies out there, if you’re ever installing Microsoft Exchange 2003 using an older ISO image, either run the forestprep and domainprep prior to patching Windows 2003 server or run them from Exchange SP2 extraction folder. Otherwise the Active Directory won’t get prepped properly and you will have one completely hosed install. One for the notes!

The yard is almost complete as I’ve tilled up all the area past the new shed and leveled it out, now I just need to apply one small area with weed killer and then seed it. I’m looking forward to having regular grass up there instead of weeds and crap.

Lastly, Cyndi should be starting to post here as well so be on the look out for posts done by batty herself.

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

So it’s been 2 weeks and 3 days since I quit smoking, it’s gotten easier except for yesterday and the day before. I don’t know what was with those days but the cravings were horrid! Thankfully they have passed *knocks on wood*!

Kids have started back at school so Cyndi and I have some quiet time in the AM again, at least as long as the baby sleeps or is an awake happy baby, but when she gets grumpy…man she is a grump!

Monday I was helping dad with the backyard and I’m finally not hurting so bad after digging out and setting a bunch of paver stones in their backyard. Course he still has about another 30 more to set, but I was hurting so bad after that first set I needed a break to get better.

<div class=\"postavatar\"></div>

The nicotine beast is the worst in the mornings, all those years of having a single routine…get up, make coffee, then smoke with my coffee. I keep beating the beast off at this time of the day and it is getting easier, just not as easy as other times.

For those techie types out there, I’ve figured out how to get Windows Deployment Services to work with PXE boot and installing an image from the network so no more need of CD’s or DVD’s to install operating systems. I’m going to try to have it load a Linux image at some point, but right now I want to have it pull an existing operating system image and save it. I’ll post in my Techie forums the exact steps I used on how to get DHCP to forward the PXE boot requests to the appropriate server.