23. August 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

I just had neck/back surgery. Feel pretty good for it being only 2 days old. They removed a bone, and fixed it with a cadaver bone and a few screws. When I checked out yesterday they gave me this cool card for metal detectors, saying that I had screws in , and not to worry or something to that affect.
Will be up and around in about 10 days or so. I hope. If not will write a short blurb here.

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9. August 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

A friend of mine sent me a really neat plug-in for just about all of the main browsers.

It’s called PicLens. What it does, is take images and videos on the web, puts them into categories.  Allows you to search for videos and images. Allows shopping products from Amazon. Keeps you up to date on the news. It does all of this, by putting your screen in a 3D mode, or the appearance of 3d. It may not help you do a lot of work, but it sure does look nice and it’s a pretty neat program to have.

Best part about it, is it’s free.

Download here  http://www.piclens.com/

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4. August 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

If they were every going to get serious about saving gas, it would start with the Federal employees. Not all federal employees can take mass transit, in the area I live in few do outside of D.C. It gets used but only by those who have to use it. Drive in would be to long, or they live right on one of the lines.

What the Feds could do is start working 4 10 hour days. Of course this could not be everyone, and some people would get mad, have to work Friday or Monday while most of the other folks are off. However tough luck. Most of of the office’s could do this. From the FBI to Congress. Now I am not saying take the police or the agents off, since they are more then likely working more the 10 hours a day now. I am talking about the staff. Instead of having 300 people on the phones for the IRS 5 days a week, lets cut down to 200 a day. If each person could have one day off during the week. That would cut 300 trips to work each week. Before I forget, I am not talking about shutting down offices or services. They would still be open 5 days a week or whatever their normal work days are now.Take 4 days and work 10 hours on those days.

Lets make the math simple. Since there are a ton of variables, let just say the average car gets 20 mpg. Since a lot these trips you are stuck in traffic. Round trip to work and home is 100 miles, you get 20 mpg and work 5 days a week. 500 miles each week. That’s 25 gallons a week. Lets say gas cost $4 even, means you spend $100 on gas.
Now take my plan ( I am sure some one much smarter then me has thought of this) Now you are driving 400 miles a week. Cost of fuel $80 each week. Doing this way save you $20 per week, or $ 1040 per year.

Now that’s not bad an extra grand each year, but wait I have not shown you the big picture yet. You now have an office that was burning 390,000 gallons of gas each year down to 312,000 gallons a year. Saving 78000 gallons per year. Now this is only one office. I also left those that could work from home 4 days a week and only go into the office one day a week, off of this. Like I said earlier there are so many variables
Someone much smarter then me should do the math, since its 5:30 am here, and I have been up since 2 am.
This plan IMO is much better then to just go on vacations which is what congress did. House side at least, the Senate is playing games so they open up, sort of every 3 days.

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25. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

I was looking at my bookmarks today, and it dawned on me that I have over 2000 online accounts. I have them all it seems, file storage, photo storage /share, document storage /share, virtual desktops, web portals for different things. Not to mention all the forums I belong to. Do I really need all of these? No, but some how I can’t say no the the webs free sites.

My question, which I will try to answer latter, is which of these accounts can I get rid of? Do I really need 5 photo hosting and sharing sites? etc… My goal is to get rid of some of my bookmarks. The only way I can do that is to transfer all the data to one type of account, and dare I say it, pay for the site? Yes I know you get what you pay for, but so far I have had few problems with any of the free online accounts.

So now do I take 4 years of stuff I have saved and move it, delete it or just don’t log back into those accounts again?
What are your favorites and what ones could you live without?

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16. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

This seems like the longest election I have witnessed in my life. We need a new law saying you can only start running 18 months or so before the election date. I would prefer 12 months. However the media would have a fit.
What I would really like to see is, a debate on each issue. So if there are 10 main issues, then let them debate those 10 issues. Get rid of the smear ads from both sides, and lets elect the best person for the job.

To me, the way we have are elections, we limit those that are willing to run, because they do not want to expose their family to the media. Think what might happen if we had some good CEO’s or CFO’s in office?Instead we seem to get is a bunch of lawyers. Not that I have anything against lawyers.
It’s time for real change in our government and sadly; Obama nor McCain are the men to get the job done. McCain’s real strength is that he is not afraid to go against the grain.

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15. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

Thanks to the reader who gave me the link to the new update, I must say after only a few days, I am back loving Sxipper.
If for no other reason, it makes my day easier again, and there are no more annoying bugs or at least I have not found any yet. I am sure the people who make Sxipper will have newer things coming our way in the future. I look forward to it.

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12. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

After using Sxipper for about 2 months, I find that there are a few quirks in it. One being if someone who has a higher trainer ranking then you do, you can not retrain a form or login area. Another is it will pop up after you have already logged in to an account. Not a big deal only happens every once in a while but still annoying. Biggest quirk IMO is it wants to log into every page that has a login area, even when your just browsing. I still do like it, however I will be looking for a new fourm, passwork manager over the next few weeks.

Edited on July 12, 2008

After trying the new version, I have yet to have any problems with Sxipper! Thanks to the poster for the link

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8. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

Is there a cure for alcoholism? Yes and no. While there is a way to put your drinking into remission, there is no cure for the disease, meaning you can not expect to drink again. Why this is I do not know, but I have tried to drink again after I had stopped for 6 months, with the exact same things happening again. So While you can arrest your drinking, you can not stop the disease. However the good news it unlike Cancer, you have control over your disease. Pretty simple don’t drink, do the next right thing, and pray, does not matter if you pray to a tree, you need to have some higher power, to turn all this crap in your head over too. If not there is no reason to even try to stop drinking. (Being a bit harsh here, there is always a reason to try)

Some normal people think that stopping drinking is easy, for them to feel anything for you and what you are going through is very tough. Even family members can feel this way. So keep that in mind, and never get into an argument that you can win. Since the only way they will change their minds, is through education. Don’t blame them, just smile and keep doing what you are doing to keep from drinking.

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8. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

For me drinking is something I can not do, think of someone who is allergic to peanuts. Bad things happen to me and people around me when I drink. At times I would get loaned some new bracelets most people refer to those as handcuffs. The other thing that happens is I don’t stop drinking for awhile, Generally till my body hurts real bad, or I run out of money. I have not drank for 5 years and have had more fun, (I am sure part of it is because I can recall some of the last 5 years) then I had while I was drinking.
What normal people think when I tell them I don’t drink, their first response is to say they are sorry. My question is why are you sorry? I am the one who has the problem, drink lots for me.

One problem I have always had with those normal people is they don’t know how to drink. Having one or two is not drinking, that just asking for a DUI. If your going to drink go all out till you pass out. It’s what real drinkers do. Of course I am kidding.

My point is while alcoholism is called a disease, it can be a great disease to have if your one of the lucky ones who arrest your disease. (meaning you no longer drink)
Stop drinking is the easy part for those of us who surrendered, the hard part is learning to live as close to a normal person as I can. When your drinking like I was, you become very selfish, and that’s a hard habit to break. The other hard thing is wanting it now. Instant gratification. Be it drinks, sex, toy or whatever I wanted at the time. One good thing about getting older is sex is not as important to me, as it was when I was younger. Now if I was in love with the Lady then sex would go back up on the list, however if I am not in love with the person, its reminds me of work.

Just some thoughts that came into my head today.

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3. July 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

There are so many new and hacked applications (software) out
that it’s hard to keep up. What I recommend for those of you who are looking
for something special is to subscribe to the RSS feeds of a few sites. One
would be Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/
if you have questions or would like to ask a question then sign up and they
will try to help. This is a free site, and I have learned a ton of stuff from
them. Keep in mind when I use the word hacked or hacker I am referring to
making a program work better, not hacking into someone’s files or
computer. Another good site for new
applications is App Scout http://www.appscout.com/ which is also a reader friendly place. If you’re
a fan of Gmail then a must have is Google Operating Systems http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/
Tons of info on all the things you can access through your Gmail account. Don’t
have Gmail? Get it, it’s free and it’s really simple to use. If you’re new to Firefox
then you need to check out the add-ons https://addons.mozilla.org/ the last site that is Ghacks, http://www.ghacks.net/ Sometimes with this
one I get system overload in my mind. However it’s a great site as well.

These are just a few sites I subscribe to their RSS feeds,
in order for me to keep up to date on what’s new. There are more, but these sites
so far have given me more information that I have used then any others. Keep in
mind there are more sites that are great, these are just my top 4, for this category.

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