Hey this is Cliff Haines(?)...

Hey this is Cliff Haines(?) and I'm blogging. Yeah, I love you. Bye-bye. listen

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I am confused

I'm not confused- George Bush is running the country into the ground.

First off- even the Nigerian scams no longer use all caps.

2nd off- Isn't it amazing that after 7 years of Evangelical, conservative Republican, white Protestant rule- electing a liberal- no, a radical free thinking (Muslim?) African-American with a good line of gab is not only possible- but indeed probable- and yes- for many, preferable to continuing with the current administration's policies? (the polls last week showed Obama up 15 points in some all white Western states) Why do you suppose that is? Traditionally conservative voters have suddenly taken leave of their senses? The Rainbow Coalition has seized Montana?

3- Let's face it- George W. Bush destroyed once and for all time the best thing that we as WASP men had going for us- the illusion that we had everybody's best interests at heart and that we knew what we were doing. From a situation where we had everybody's sympathies with us and we had military carte blanche, to one where the dollar shrinks against even Chinese currency, we are afraid to go into Pakistan to get Bin Laden, and every one views us as impotent.

George Orwell (author of 1984) wrote that 'The struggle of the white man in Asia is the struggle not to be laughed at...' The people in the West and MidWest know they are being laughed at because of the current administration, they hear the laughter at the gas pumps. Our Saudi 'allies' (who supplied 17 out of 19 commandos who crashed the 9/11 planes) laugh up their sleeves as we pump $4+ gas. These are the same people who bailed our current President out of many failed business enterprises, who walk hand in hand with him.

4 Finally - the answer to whether Obama is African or whatever lies in the punchline to the old joke- 'What do they call a black with a Harvard PhD, an MD from Baylor, and who is admitted to the US Supreme Court Bar in Alabama?'

Hint- If your answer was Doctor, Lawyer or Professor- you are wrong.

The shiksa or the schwartze? Only George & Dick could have brought us to this hitherto unthinkable spot. Either one is preferable to Rudy 9/11, Mitt-(I kill mice with our 22) Romney, Mike (I lost 50 pounds at Subway) Huckabee, or John (I was a POW) McCain. Did I tell you Obama might be a crook? Relax- he's pretty small time compared to the Bush family or Dick Chaney.

Let's repeat this one more time; George Bush was the ideal Conservative Republican Evangelical  President, so ideal in fact there is a good chance that he could be replaced with an inexperienced light weight, radical, black, (Muslim?), liberal, Democratic, latte sipping elitist  who is endorsed by Teddy Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Bill and Hillary Clinton (who hate his guts-but that's another story). And he doesn't fit in at the salad bar at Applebees.

George Bush was such a good Republican President in fact, that the Democrats could probably run a yellow dog for President and it would win. Poor, confused John McCain- he still thinks that the Presidency is something that a Republican should want. Did I mention that there's a chance Obama's a Muslim? We already know he's Black, he isn't even decent enough to try and hide it.

Network Audio Collection

Networkable Audio- with the purchase of a Logitech Squeezebox Duet- the networkable audio collection is madatory- sometimes I can't get enuff Opera- and I never seem to be there when the Met is performing.

fios down

How does that old blues number go?

'woke up this morning, and my Fios was down, another day older, and my lady was gone...'

Is Plasma TV dead?

with audioholics reporting that Pioneer is getting out of the Plasma TV biz and will only be stocking LCD in the future- does that put pressure on the LCD makers to improve their feature set?

Fios at last?

finally we have had 8+ hours of nearly uninteruppted fios internet access.

Verizon Fios

The Verizon Fios Story



We had DSL from Verizon and were relatively happy. But two very active
computer users in the household, one with Skype video connected nieces
and nephews, argued for maybe a faster, bigger tube.



So we were the first ones on our block to sign up for FIOS as soon as
the optical thread became available. I argued for the full package,
phone, TV, Internet. I was overrulled. Only Internet. Ah well, I could
live with Dish Network for a while longer. We ordered the Verizon Fios
Internet basic package.



Big mistake- the tubes became clogged very quickly. That evening, Fios
went down. What could it be, must be something- we'll check it in the
morning. Sure enough, we rebooted the router next morning according to
the instructions of the automated Verizon lady and it came back in a
little bit. It went down again. I called.



Our first service visit, how fondly I recall. He increased the loops on
the pole outside, said the light couldn't go around the bends. It made
sense. When the wind blew, it would cause the cable loops to
momentarily tighten and we would lose signal.



Another serviceman was back later that week, in between, Verizon had replaced
their router, he replaced the router we had just replaced, the outside
box and introduced us to 'Moca'.



While the Fios was quick, when it operated, something called the MOCA
(mocha?)-which the installers explained to me as an acronym for
Multimedia, Something, Something, did not always recognize our little
Internet
node. We quickly became a clogged urinal on the pipes. Rebooting the
router might work, or it might interfere with the natural operation of
the Moca.



Fios would work fine, and then go down, come up 45 minutes later
then go down 15 minutes or 2 hours later, randomly throughout the day.
Like copy
machines- if you really needed it- it would go down. It became
impossible to do research, update websites, check on job operations on
distant mainframes, or even surf the web.



We are not even talking about watching a YouTube screamer here- we are
talking about visiting Google or Wikipedia was a crapshoot. But, wait a
random amount of time and the web will come back up. And it will stay
up for a random amount of time. Really need it? Checking on an e-bay
auction final? It's down. Need to leave for an appointment? Up and fast.



So two weeks after they started- Verizon is still not sure exactly what
is wrong, they think that the 'order' is wrong, and of course the
'Moca' but they have replaced the router 3 times, the outside box once,
troubleshot the inside cable (all 15 feet of it, installed by them)
twice, sent 3 service men Saturdays, Sundays, and weekdays (25
of their manhours, 30+ of mine), done a host of network
truobleshooting, and still can't find the problem beyond the Moca,
possibly.



The Verizon inside people claim it's the physical install, the
installers and outside plant people claim it's the Moca, and while the
inside network people see our little node tripping alarms,
they still can't (or won't) do anything about it.



Now a word about the phone service, when we ordered and installed Fios
they switched out our copper for that fiber. It has worked flawlessly.
But thank God we didn't order the TV, without TV or computer, I'd have
gone postal.



In the time it took me to write this the web went from being down to
being up, I read 2 paragraphs on 1 news site, called up another site,
and it didn't even finish loading the pictures before Fios went down
again. How long will it be down? It appears to be anybody's guess. That
was a short cycle-usually it stays up longer to lull you into thinking
that you can actually get some work done.

Music sales from Salon.com

According to the market-research firm the NPD Group, iTunes is now the second-largest music retailer in the world, after Wal-Mart.

iTunes, of course, sells only digital downloads, and Wal-Mart sells CDs, and that's the crux of the story: CD sales are plummeting while digital downloads are skyrocketing, so it's likely that soon, iTunes will be in the top spot.

NPD says that a million people "dropped out of the CD buyer market in 2007," a "flight led by younger consumers." Almost half of American teens did not buy a single CD in 2007, compared to 36 percent in 2006.

Last year, iTunes moved ahead of Amazon to become the third-place retailer; now it moves up on Best Buy, which lands at No. 3.