McRib is back!

I just had 2 of these McRib sandwiches for dinner tonight. I got the combo meal and an extra sandwich. I thought I remembered McRibs being better than the ones I ate tonight. I thought these were rather bland. I got them plain without the onions and pickles which is the way I've always had them. Maybe if I wouldn't have skipped the onions that would have given them more of a flavor.

My cashier at McDonald's wasn't too bright. My total was $6.39 so I handed over a 20 dollar bill and 2 singles. She looked at it for a moment and then gave me the 2 singles back as if I had made some mistake. Then she gave me $13.61 in change.

Hillary "Exhibit A" Follow Up

It's looking like this is getting a good amount of attention. It's campaign advertisement material already. This ad is from John Edwards. I love the split screens. Nicely done.

I saw Dick Morris on Fox the other night and he put it well when he said something to the effect that, "Hillary can't say what she really believes because if she does then no one would ever vote for her". I'm paraphrasing that.
I saw this clip from MSNBC on townhall.com (5 minutes)

A couple of outrageous moments...

1:35 - "Digging into the far right playbook..." Huh?

2:00 - Huffington Post loony Taylor Marsh claims it wasn't a "yes/no" question

Is this the whole segment? Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter gets to speak for all of about 10 seconds and she had to interrupt just to get that much in. At least the host challenges the position Taylor Marsh takes. If you break it down her position is basically that the problem was the questions and not Hillary. The debate moderators' questions were sexist and out of line and it's not fair. Cry me a river. You don't get to pick your own questions at a debate. Deal with it. I think that when your positions are dictated by the polls any question where your response will reveal an unpopular position is going to be a difficult question to answer directly.

In the days following the debate Hillary should have been out there clarifying her position instead of taking issue with the debate questions. In my view she shows that she doesn't have any respect for the debate platform or the American people who follow the process. The American people deserve to know who their candidates are and where they stand. I do think it's legitimate to make certain judgments about the performance of the moderators but I also think any clear thinking individual could see that the question she got was fair. I hope that after this fiasco people will start to see exactly who Hillary Clinton is. Her popularity is mind boggling.

More directly with regard to the issue of giving licenses to illegal immigrants, an idea which Hillary apparently supports. Democrats will never admit to this but they support this idea primarily because many places require an ID to register to vote and all it takes is a drivers license. If illegals can register to vote Democrats stand to gain the most votes. Democrats seem to have no limit to what they'll do to obtain power. Even if it is supporting a hair brained idea like this that puts America's security at risk.

But now back to the topic of debate questions...

Is there life in outer space? That sounds like a good idea for a future post for me on this blog. Here's Guliani fielding a similar question from a youngster. He clearly wasn't prepared to be asked about this.

Wolff-Parkinson White

I happened to see this news article today. It's about a guy who collapsed 5 1/2 miles into a marathon race for the Olympic trials and then later died at the hospital. I suppose it's true that there are different ways to push your body to it's limits. Some people eat a lot like this guy while other people exercise. I imagine collapsing and dieing of heart failure during exercise is pretty rare for someone his age. This is an example of, "anything can happen". Everyone should realize by now that one of the risks of leading a sedentary lifestyle and having a poor diet is heart failure. What this story reminds me of is that even if you eat right and exercise you can still die of heart failure. We're all gonna eventually die no matter what we do.

I don't worry about it because it's not a serious heart condition but I found out when I was still in high school that I have Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome. It sounds serious when you put "syndrome" at the end but it's not, and it's not all that uncommon. It's easily under control in my instance with a 50mg tablet of a beta blocker every day. The iVillage site and Wikipedia have pretty in-depth descriptions of WPW but basically it's this...there is an extra electrical pathway in my heart which at times can bypass the normal one and can cause my heart to beat at an abnormally high rate. A high rate for me would be maybe 120 or so but it's noticeable because it occurs in the absence of any physical activity. It has never happened to me, but heart rates can go up much higher and people can even pass out or get dizzy spells from this.

I can pretty much take a pill everyday for the rest of my life or they can open up my chest and go in there and fry out this extra electrical pathway. My doc says it's not really worth all that trouble as long as the medication keeps my heart rate under control, which it has.

I found this video showing the electrical pathway of the heart. The extra pathway I have they call the bundles of Kent which I think has a nice ring to it.
According to Wikipedia Meat Loaf, Marilyn Manson, LaMarcus Aldridge from the NBA (article here) and some other WWE wrestler I never heard of also have this WPW Syndrome.

Happy Halloween!

Tonight I went to the book store at the mall. After that I went over to the food court. My treat to myself was Rocky Rococco's pizza and a cinnabun. My cashier at Cinnabun was wearing a bee costume. I think I saw a spider too but spiders don't have wings so I'm really not sure what I saw.

Yes or No

This is all over the blogs aready but I just couldn't pass up posting about this myself anyway.

I didn't watch the entire debate but just by chance I happened to tune it in just at this was happening. I thought that was awesome that Tim Russert threw her a tough question. As you can see here she simply would not answer it directly, instead choosing to throw in a slam on the current administration and dance around the issue on both sides. The last 45 seconds are golden. I was yelling at my TV, "It's a yes or no question!"

I can't help but smile inside when I see stuff like this. Hillary's out of her element if she's not taking softball questions from those that don't or won't ever challenge her answers. Put her on her heals and you end up with results like these. If a candidate can't answer tough questions and take a clear position how are we to support that candidate? Tim Russert tried to pin her down to a position. She clearly resisted being pinned down.

I've often thought that too much is made of candidates who change their positions. The so called flip-flop. Certainly I agree that a person can change their opinions and positions over time. I know I have held to positions in the past which I no longer agree with. What I can't understand is taking opposing positions within weeks or months of each other or expressing different opinions depending upon who the audience is or what the polls are saying. That either means your pandering or it means you don't have a core value system with which you base your beliefs upon. In either instance it's not a characteristic of a leader. While some issues can be nuanced, this issue of giving licenses to illegal aliens is anything but. The answer to the question as it was presented was "yes or no", not "yes and no".

Hotair calls this Exhibit A in the case against Hillary for President.

Can I Afford It?

A while back I was surfing channels and I got sucked into watching part of a Suze Orman show. Ordinarily I cruise right on by when I see her annoying presence on television but I stopped anyway. In the same way I can't stand Keith Olberman on MSNBC I still can't help but stop at it now and then. Maybe to remind myself how repugnant he is I don't know. Anyhow as annoying as Suze Orman can be (and mind you it's not anywhere near being in the same league or flavor as Olberman) I got sucked into it watching this segment called "Can I Afford it?". It was actually rather interesting because people call in with all these ideas in mind for things that they want to buy. Then they say what their income is, what their savings are, and how much debt they have if any. Suze then reviews the situation and gives them her approval or a denial. Most of the time she denies people and most of the time it's pretty obvious why. I felt better about my financial position in life after I watched this. A lot of people out there have a lot of debt and not enough savings. This one guy wanted to buy a horse for 6 grand I think and she denied him. If I remember all this right I think he was 58, he had 7K/mos income and debt-wise I think a mortgage. Then he says that he has $2000 in stocks and didn't mention any retirement savings. What the heck? Your 58 dude! Your in serious trouble if you want to retire anytime soon and now you want to buy a horse that cost more money than you have saved?

In don't need Suze Orman to tell me if I can afford stuff or not. I could buy everything on my wish list tomorrow if I wanted to but it wouldn't be a very responsible thing to do. I labeled it "materialistic" for a reason. I'm going to buy the stuff I can afford and save for the rest or maybe just forget about buying those items altogether in the short term. It's called priorities and thankfully I have mine straight.

Materialistic wish list

#1 Cell phone - I sometimes think I'm the last person in America that doesn't own a cell phone. My plan right now is to get rid of my land line and use only a cell phone with hopefully an inexpensive service plan.

#2 Bike - I don't really NEED a new bike but I can easily see that the bike I have isn't particularly suited to the longer distance rides I've been doing. This one and #1 will be knocked off the wish list first as they are both long overdue purchases.

#3 ipod - I'll probably get just this basic ipod shuffle. I use headphones at the gym all the time and my current one is sooooooo 20th century. I mean I actually have to put the mp3 files onto a CD and carry the bulky thing around with me. With one of these I could just load it up and all I have to do is clip the thing onto my clothes or slip it in my pocket.
#4 Mattress - When I went to Disney this last January I slept on the most comfortable mattress I have ever slept on in my entire life. The tag said Sealy Posturpedic Encore 720 Plush. I've done some research and that specific model name is only distributed to hotels but equivalent models are sold all over the place. I'd like to get a new bed frame and a queen size mattress. I really don't need the queen size but one never knows what the future holds. #5 LCD television - along with a new entertainment center to put it in. My folks just got a new 32" Samsung and it looks great. Darn if I don't want one of those High Def TVs too. This one is a bit further out of reach when I consider what I allow myself to spend with respect to my disposable income. #6 Laptop - I really could use one when I travel. I like to write down my thoughts in a notebook whenever I travel and keep track of everything I did and where I went and all of that. I think a laptop would be more convenient and on top of that I could access the Internet and keep up with email and the news and my portfolio and so on. Plus I could also unload all of my photos onto it and look at them in full size at the end of the day rather than on that tiny screen on my camera. I take a lot of pictures when I travel. The only thing is I only travel about once a year so for 50 weeks out of the year it would probably sit around and collect dust. #7 CD player for my car - I only drive my car 5 months out of the year and during that time I have it out of storage I drive it maybe 25% of the time I go anywhere. My Trans Am is a luxury of sorts already but I only have a cassette deck in it. I put it in there when the factory stereo quit. It was at a time before CDs were something you could burn at home. I used to dub mix tapes for myself from my CDs so it was logical at the time to get a just a cassette deck. Now things are different and I'm stuck listening to tapes whenever I drive my car. I always seem to have the same couple of tapes and I'm getting real sick of them.

Easy Money

Nothing like makin money without lifting a finger. A bit of research is necessary but a stock like FCX which has clearly been a winner for me wasn't that hard to find. Sunpower I can't claim as my own find, but it has been totally rockin just the same.

My cost basis in Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold is $71.82. The resistance point on this stock is around $120 now. This one's going even higher short and long term. I have no doubt about it.

My cost basis in SPWR is $38.18 and it has recently been on a breakout up over $100. It could easily pull back a bit and even when it does, the stock has still more than doubled for me since I bought last November anyway. Sweet!

So what's the plan? As long as I continue to have stocks like this...and believe me they aren't all this great...to counterbalance some of the not so hot ones I'll retire from work as early as possible. I'll do some traveling and I'll drink wine and eat steaks and shrimp, chocolate cake and ice cream until my arteries can't take it anymore and I die of heart failure.

Or maybe not exactly that but I'm sure I'll come up with something good to do. Right now I'm spending more time learing the ropes of investing than I am planning out an endgame. The name of the game now is invest, reinvest the gains, then reinvest those gains and so on.

Huh?

Buckethead

No comments just great music.

Mary Katherine Ham

Where has this woman been all my life? She has an open invitation to dinner anytime. Smart, attractive, and conservative. I don't really know what collards are or why I should eat them on New Years but she looks great in this video making them and going on about politics the whole time. Now that's my kind of woman for sure.


I think I first saw her on Glenn Beck's show but now I see her more on the O'reilly Factor. There a segment on there maybe once a week called "Policing the Net". I don't know if it's on the same day every week or what but I should try to figure that out.

Totally free Saturday

I have a totally free Saturday with absolutely no plans. I didn't go to the gym today but I did have some great sandwiches for lunch. Among other things I'm gonna catch up on some posts since I've been posting here relatively infrequently lately. Most of the things I've been thinking about lately are just trivial. Most of the other things I've been thinking about for posts are just the same political things already posted about all over the internet anyway. I think a lot more about politics than is reflected in my postings here. I highly recommend the checking out the "other blogs" listed on the right of my page. For now it's a short list but I should expand it to include other blogs I visit. There are a lot of good ones out there. Whether I need it or not my almost daily visits to them remind me how messed up liberals are. Jessica McBride's blog has a more local flavor but I like to keep track of both local and national politics.

On television I generally watch bits here and there of The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and Glenn Beck. Mainly because the channel MSNBC is on is between Fox and Headline Prime where Beck is I sometimes run into Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews. That Olberman guy is completely unhinged. I just can't put to words how over the top that show is. It's an hour of completely unfettered and unchallenged far far left liberal views. And how may times is he going to give Bill O'Reilly his "worst person in the world" title? I think O'Reilly can be a bit of a windbag sometimes too but on balance he's a fair guy. I somewhat prefer watching Glenn Beck though. He's more entertaining. It's rather alarming sometimes to watch and learn what's going on in the world and what it is that the enemies of the US are up to and what they are saying openly. Things that aren't on your local or network news channels. A lot of it is what liberals would rather minimize, deny, cover up, or just label those that don't as fear mongers.

Here's Glenn Beck video from a while back (10 minutes).


Thankfully the universal health care package he's talking about in the last 5 minutes of the video was dropped from the WI state budget thanks to Republicans. Unfortunately I live in a blue state where this type of nonsense is proposed and would become reality if it weren't for Republicans. Gov. Doyle and state Democrats should suck rotten eggs for proposing a pork laden state budget that increased fees and taxes by 1.7 billion dollars. The one that passed isn't great either but at least it only increases taxes by a few hundred million (I don't seem to be able to find the exact number at the moment). My personal assesment is that the Republicans gave in to too many of the new taxes/fees just to get a budget passed. They were getting pretty handily slammed in the press which as usual distorted the facts. The truth of the matter is that the previous budget could have remained in effect indefinitely until a new one was passed. Nothing would've shut down (govt agencies, state schools etc) as the Democrats and the press would have had you believe. I think I would have preferred to keep the previous budget to this one.



Now on to things a little more cheery...

Stupid Stats

I keep all my biking stats in an excel file on my computer. After each outing I take down all the numbers from the computer on my bike (distance, ave speed, time, max speed and cumulative miles) and enter them into a spreadsheet. At the end of the season I make up tables with relevant stats to see what I've done over the year. This year I pretty much blew away anything I've ever done before. I wasn't that far from tripling last years total mileage but I ran out of warm weather before I got that far. This chart shows my cumulative miles for each of the past 3 years.

There's a long flat, inactive period of about 2 weeks in August. I was out of town during the first week and when I got back it was raining for an entire week after that. I remember at the time I left for my trip thinking that I had already beaten my total 2005 mileage even though it was only the middle of August. After I got back and after the rain finally ended I made up for the downtime. According to my file I did about 275 miles in the 2 weeks that followed.

Additional stupid stats...

Out of 47 total outings my average ride was 26.32 miles. My shortest was 8.75 miles and my longest was 52.38 miles.

• 0-9 miles: 2
• 10-19 miles: 10
• 20-29 miles: 19
• 30-39 miles: 11
• 40-49 miles: 2
• 50+ miles: 3

My total riding time was 77 hours, 51 minutes, and 26 seconds. That's about 3.25 days. That only includes time I was actually in motion, not the time waiting at street lights or any rest stops.

Overall I think I did pretty good. I could've been in better shape to start the year. I was a bit on the heavy end of my range in the spring. I lost around 8-10 lbs over the summer but I could stand to loose another 5-10 before I'm in my ideal range. Maybe next year I'll finally get myself a new bike. My current bike is heavier and has much fatter tires than are necessary for the type of riding I'm doing. I can't remember how many times this year I thought about how much the charactaristics of my bike were holding me back.

Looking forward to next year it's hard to predict if I'll beat this or not. A lot will depend on what shape I'm in next spring, the weather, and if I get a new bike. It also turns out that 1200+ miles is a huge time commitment. I don't really have anything else planned. I enjoy the challenges and this keeps me in good shape. I don't have any regrets about having spent my time this way this year but on the other hand there are a few projects that I did not get at over the summer.

My Past DVD Rentals

Since I can never seem to remember the movies I rent I started keeping my Blockbuster receipts. This is a chronological list of all the movies I've rented since July of 2005 with IMDB links. There are a lot of good movies I haven't seen yet and looking back over this list, a lot of garbage that I have. My standards for judging a movie's worth aren't very high. If it holds my attention and is at least somewhat entertaining for the 90 minute or so duration that's enough for me. That said there are a few on this list that don't meet that standard. I watched them and by the time the end credits rolled or even before I wished that I hadn't. Those movies are marked with a *.

Pathfinder
Crank *
The Hills Have Eyes
Children of Men
Smokin' Aces *
Turistas
The Descent
The Protector
Saw 3
Slither
Star Wars Ep. III
Wedding Crashers
Lucky Number Slevin
Rest Stop
Hulk
The Sentinel
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Matador
Super Size Me
Underworld Evolution
Running Scared *
Underworld
Blade: Trinity
Hostel
National Treasure
The Bourne Supremacy

Seems like a short list...maybe I lost some of the receipts or something. Unfortunately every one of these was rented from Blockbuster. They have a monopoly on DVD rentals where I live. As far as I know there isn't another video store within 20 miles that isn't a Blockbuster. There was one independent store for a while but the guy closed up 3 or 4 years ago now. I boycotted Blockbuster as long as it was possible. I did that because every time I went in they claimed I owed late fees which I know were bogus. I guess now that late fees are non-existent I won't have that problem anymore. I've considered using Netflix but usually renting movies is a spontaneous event. I don't know if I want to have to plan this stuff ahead of time and get my DVD's in the mail and all that. Maybe I'll try it and see if I like it. I still feel the less business I give Blockbuster the better.

Maywood 2007

Yesterday was the annual Maywood Earth Ride. I couldn't be less committed to the cause really. The earth? The Ellwood H. May Environmental Park? I don't care about that at all, I just like doing the bike ride. This year I did the 50 mile route again. They have 12, 25, 50, 65, and 100 mile routes. Some year I plan on doing the 65 but it wasn't this year. They call that 65 mile route a metric century. This year again it was windy as usual. The wind was primarily from the NNW and I'd say somewhere in the 10-15 mph range. Most of the first part of the route goes to the North and West. On top of that it was much colder this year than all 3 previous years that I've done this ride. I think I overheard someone at the start say that it was 45 degrees. I'm not usually out there biking in anything less than 60 degrees but I wasn't about to skip this just because it was cooler out. The last two weekends I've done some longer routes to test myself. Last weekend I did a 40 mile route on Saturday and a 50 mile route on Sunday just to see what it felt like. It felt pretty good. Saturday's route in Sheboygan has much more difficult hills than my 50 route but the wind was comparable. My average speed was 14.6 mph across 50 miles yesterday and a full 1.4 mph slower when compared with my 50 mile route from last Sunday. I felt at times like I was crawling along at 10 or 11 mph up some of those hills. Still I was smoking a lot of other riders. I got to one rest stop and wondered where everyone was. Then within a couple minutes the rest area was flooded with other bikers. I'm sort of left with the feeling that I could have gone further or taken a quicker pace. I could've done better. On the other hand if I compare myself with others I'm near the front of the pack. Someday when I get a lighter bike with thinner tires I'm really going to be out in front and kicking butt. Although I expect that if I move up to that 65 mile route I'll be with another class of bikers altogether.

DJ Sara

Does this kid do birthday parties? I got a birthday comin up in October.

The War on Zombies

Slowpoke Rodriguez

Occasionally my blog will be informative. Today's bit of knowledge that I am choosing to highlight is that the popular Speedy Gonzales Loony Tunes character has a cousin known as Slowpoke Rodriguez.
If what I read is accurate Slowpoke and his cousin Speedy are not shown on the Cartoon Network because the characters were deemed to be "offensive ethnic stereotypes". Well what is Elmer Fudd then?

Here is a Slowpoke clip from YouTube.

And here is a Speedy clip from YouTube.

Bobblehead #2

I got my second bobblehead of the year Friday. This time I got the more common pinstriped home uniform and not the powder blue visitor uniform like I did last time. The left fielder Ben Oglivie was the 9th of 13 bobbleheads given out throughout the year at Friday games.

We tailgated before the game and then sat in $7 nosebleed seats that were 8 rows from the very top. I thought it was actually pretty cool to be up that high. You can't exactly see the seams on the baseball or the laces on the player shoes but do you really need to to enjoy a game? I don't think so. Brewers won 2-1 and the hot dog won the sausage race. It was a good time.

Flavored Bread

This better not be from the Home Pride factory.


Home Pride is my bread of choice. Butter Top Wheat just like in this image. Just one mouse and that would be it. That would be enough for me to switch brands forever. My mom found a fly at the bottom of her coffee cup at a KFC somewhere down south once. Now she won't ever go to any KFC anywhere ever again. It's irrational. I could see if it was a beak, some feet, or an entire chicken head maybe, but a fly at the bottom of a coffee cup could happen anywhere. I'm not sure even if I found a McNoggin in my McNuggets that I'd stop eating at McDonalds. I'd at least make sure I got some sort of golden pass or something that allowed me to eat free at any McDonalds worldwide for the rest of my life.