***UPDATE*** - Literally 3 minutes after I sent this email, I found out he was laid off today…piss-poor timing, now I really hope he talks to me.

I thought that this blog would fizzle out when I stopped having girl problems, but now that I’m set in love, I’ve inherited a whole new set of problems in a would-be father-in-law…but it is interesting. Please read this ridiculous story just emailed to me by ET’s dad:

SOMETHING OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS IS HAPPENING By Tim Wood

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back. Why?

We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has ‘loaned’ two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of ‘we the people,’ who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about) the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary. Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders. No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah
Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.

Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now!

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers,
were afraid to speak out for fear that his ‘brown shirts’ would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttledeconomic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department-by-department, person-by-person, bureaucracy-by-bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media. Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)

Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe .. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years ‘a shorter time span than just two terms of the U.. S. presidency’ it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is
transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe, and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.

WHAT?! Obama is Hitler reincarnate?! I’m befuddled by the people that write these things, but I did maintain my composure long enough to write this reply:

Tony,

Paranoia is a bad thing, and given the subject of the dozens and dozens of emails from you over the past year or so, it has a hold of you.

Tim Wood is fictitious for all I know. If a college professor had written 15 books in 6 languages, you would think there would be something about him on the internet…anything, anywhere, but there is in fact nothing. In the second paragraph of this slanderous essay, Tim Wood says the “gemstone” of a crisis has been brewing for 15 years, yet ALL the blame is being laid on Obama, a man who inherited the horrors of the Bush years and has been in office for all of 32 days. A little over a month, give him a chance huh? You don’t have to vote for him, you don’t to support him, just give him the benefit of the doubt.

Tim Wood says “we learned just days ago” about $2 Trillion in Fed loans to undisclosed recipients under undisclosed terms. When the truth is that this story broke in September of last year, on the sunset of the term of the worst president this nation has ever seen. For information on the some of the loan terms, please see this press release by the Federal Reserve last September: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20080914a.htm and also take a look at this editorial regarding possible reasons for the secrecy: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/10/the-feds-dirty-little-2-trillion-secret/

While Obama may have had some unsavory associations in his lifetime, it certainly isn’t ALL of them as Tim Wood states. You can’t find people without mistakes in their past, it’s what makes us human. Take a look in Bush’s past, he has just as many if not more questionable business associates (remember Enron?). And despite the liberal media’s portrayal of her, Palin was a moron, she presented herself that way to all facets of the press because she was one. If she didn’t like Tina Fey, she shouldn’t have gone on Saturday Night Live. And spending $150k on clothes while promising to help americans who lost jobs is a ridiculous example of hypocrisy.

Our dear Tim Wood places so much emphasis on history and why we should be paying attention to it, but despite all the cliches you might now, history does not inform the future. Obama is in no shape or form like Hitler, he is not running on a platform of eugenics like Hitler did, this metaphor has to be one of the most laughable things I’ve ever read, despite a lengthy PDF recently supplied by you. There is no fate, you or I or anyone can change individual destinies at any given time. Change is upon us, I’m hoping for the better because it’s pretty bad right now, but it certainly isn’t scripted and it’s not a conspiracy.

During the election, I politely asked to include you on an occasional mailing list that might shed some light on the democrats, you refused without any reason. But I don’t share the same one-sided arguments as yourself, I read everything that you send my way, and disagree with the vast majority of it…but I am honest. Despite being a liberal, I do believe in gun ownership and protecting those rights, and I detest wasteful government spending, but I’m not so naive as to think that we can fix everything without any action and certainly not without raising taxes. I blame the ‘victims’ of foreclosure for not reading the paperwork, and if your business didn’t make it then you weren’t cut out for business…it’s the beauty of free market captilism.

So, get your food, you’ve got your guns, and some of your gold, I won’t stop you form stockpiling more, but maybe it’s time to do some background research on all the propaganda your friends send you. I have opinions too.

Frugality, Common Sense, and Sound Investment Strategy.

With the deepest respect,

Brandon

To explain the sign-off, he signs all of his emails “Food, Ammo, & Gold”. An warning for the Mad Max future he is anticipating. I signed my email “Frugality, Common Sense, and Sound Investment Strategy”.

I hope he still talks to me at Christmas…

Previously, I told you about how I read a book and it realigned my thoughts/actions with money.

Well since then, I’ve read several books. I came across a very interesting idea called “The Personal MBA” or the ‘pMBA’ for short. Read the manifesto, it essentially says that expensive grad school for business is nothing more than access to world class textbooks and smart people to talk about them with. That is precisely what the pMBA provides, a list of great books divided by category, and a forum to ask questions and get answers from other people doing the same thing. I have only 2 books left to read in the ‘personal finance’ category, and then it’s on to ‘finance & analysis’. Finding the pMBA is exactly what I was looking for. A focused way to expend all this new-found excitement towards kicking ass with cash. I hope to complete 50% of the reading in 2009, and then by the end of 2010, I’ll have my pMBA and a wealth of knowledge I can apply to everyday situations to better myself and those around me.

At the rate ET and I are going, by August of 2012 we will have paid off ALL debt ($41,000 worth of debt) and saved $44,000 to cover wedding expenses, a down payment on a house, and a robust 6 month emergency fund should one of us lose a job along the way.

Loving it! Maybe I’ll start a personal finance blog and make money on the advertising income…

This is an email from my future father-in-law regarding “Who is really the winner in the past election”:

This makes you think a little.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the Presidential election:

Number of States won by:
Democrats: 19
Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by:
Democrats: 580,000
Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:
Democrats: 127 million
Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Democrats: 13.2
Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won by Republicans was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare.

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal’s and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.

If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

The Democrat Party is the party of dependency & slavery.

This is my very well educated and highly thought out response, it makes sense, even to crazy people:

Come on Tony.

These numbers are a gross misrepresentation of the electoral college. The reason the democratic murder rate is so high is because every urban center in the US votes democrat (including Omaha). You can see that on this map by county: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countymapredbluer1024.png The one figure obviously missing from this list is the popular vote figures: Obama-69,456,897 & McCain-59,934,786. That’s a difference of 9.5 million people, or roughly the populations of New York City and Dallas combined, that voted democrat.

This election was really won by the man being sworn in right now, and it was won because the majority of Americans voted for him, including a great deal of republicans that voted for Bush the past 2 elections.

Happy inauguration day!

Brandon

PS - I am against making illegal aliens citizens and giving them voting rights. But there must be a way to tax the work they do, instead of just paying for their health care and imprisonment costs out of pocket

This was his final response, I’m not quite sure I understand the meaning:

Way to go and congratulations, Brandon,

You doubt a university professor?
I thought that all persons of academia were perfectly correct and you don’t?
Deport the illegals, as the law states.
“There are lies. Damn lies. Then there are statistics.” by Benjamin Disraeli

Happy Birthday,
Tony & Donna

So, clearly sarcasm on the “Way to go and congratulations”. Then, again sarcasm on “all persons of academia were perfectly correct”? Right? But isn’t he suggesting that this person of academia is correct, or did he mean the original numbers were sarcastic? And then, the statistics line suggests that statistics can be bent to your whim depending on the numbers, but he’s the one sending me the skewed numbers!

Maybe over the years I can convert him. It would sure help if Obama kicks fucking ass in this first term, lowers the deficit without raising his taxes.

Long road ahead…

I’ve been uber excited about the acquisition of my Blackberry Storm, I have been following all the updates via Crackberry and BGR for months, and finally on Monday my Storm arrived via FedEx.

But before we get into my impressions on the device, let’s address how the intertubes feels on the subject:

Wired Magazine - “The votes are in:The Storm Sucks”
New York Time’s David Pogue, scathingly upleased
MSNBC on RIM’s lack of response to the internet being pissed off

The results are not good, by and large people hate it, and the bugs that you have to deal with are just too much to tolerate. When viewed as an ‘iPhone killer’, there is just no damn way. iPods are stable, game changing devices, but in the beginning they had problems too, it just took a while to hammer out. I didn’t expect RIM to destroy the iPhone out of the gate, but I did expect them to be a little closer.

First impression out of the box:

My Storm came loaded with OS 4.7.0.65. Activating the phone was easy, not like the iPhone debacle if anyone remembers, and I was making calls within seconds. Right away I noticed a large problem, the screen is a bigass button, it *clicks*, when the phone is held between your face and shoulder (as often it is when one needs to write or drive) you end up pushing one of 4 options on the screen during a call: speakerphone, mute, flash, and conference call. With the exception of speakerphone, any of the other options pressed will lead one of the call participants to believe that the call may have been dropped. This is frustrating for several reasons; 1) My treo from 5 years ago had a ‘disable touchscreen on call’ option, 2) the iPhone does this automatically with it’s accelerometer (the storm also has an accelerometer), 3)There is absolutely no way to change it.

Moving on from that, I plugged it into my computer to sync my contacts from outlook, it tells me there are software updates available…they took almost 45 minutes to install. Afterwards, there was no perceivable difference in either version numbers of apps or OS, and certainly not with bugs. After it was “updated” I gave it a thorough test-drive. Basic phone shit (making calls, sending SMS and MMS) work fine. There is a huge lag between the screen reorienting self from landscape to protrait and vica-versa. I tried to play a movie (it comes preloaded with one for demo purposes), the video quality is amazing, truly gorgeous. When I tried to stop the video, the screen went to static and then blank while the video sound was still playing, all buttons unresponsive. I had to wait for the video to end to get the screen controls back, that was a big fucking glitch in my mind. MP3 playback works, but it’s nothing special. When attempting to unlock the phone after a spell in a pocket, it took at least 3 attempts in landscape mode, and usually 2 in protrait…really annoying, especially on an incoming call. I also attempted to use TwitterBerry, but that ended up crashing the system, but I’m not sure it’s up to snuff for the storm just yet, I’m hoping it will come up at a later date. At that moment, I was pretty upset with the lag of display, and with the phone/face-touching thing.

But…along comes a leaked version of OS 4.7.0.75 via Crackberry. I immediately upgrade, consequences of black market software be damned, this time the update takes almost an hour. Right away, the lag was severely reduced, but not eliminated, but at least it’s tolerable now. No fix for the face-to-phone issue though, and this will be an annoyance until it’s corrected. Haven’t tried the video thing since then. Even with the update though, there is also a ridiculous lag on the camera, really really long to take a picture, renders it totally useless for anything other than still life shots.

Final Thoughts:
Pros: The phone is stunning hardware wise, it’s gorgeous, the display is amazing, the phone also has a nice weight (I picked up a curve once and thought I was going to break it, but this has some mass to it for sure).

Cons: It’s chalked full of software bugs, mundane shit that phones have had solved for years (disable touchscreen), and random other small things. The internets are ablaze with engraged customers, when MSNBC picks up on something like that, I’d like to think that RIM is doing something about it behind the scenes.

Other Pros: Announced today, Verizon will have updates later this week that will hopefully address some of these issues.

In the short term, this device was rushed to market for the holiday season and it shows. Even so, I’m happy I bought it, and I don’t plan on abandoning it anytime soon. The good news about all the problems is that none of it is hardware related (BTW, I really really like the clickable screen, it’s a great idea, and I think it was executed well) meaning that in due time all of them should be ironed out, and when the app store launches next march, I think we’ll see some really iphone/G1 competition as far as functionality goes.

Oh the plight of being an early adopter of technology…

Homeless Guy in San Francsisco: “Got any change?”
Me: “No…sorry”
Homeless Guy in San Francsisco: “Quit lying”
Me: “um, no change” *shakes pockets…no jingle*
Homeless Guy in San Francsisco: “I bet you voted for McCain too”
Me: *grits teeth, makes fist, walks away*

Some guy in SF seriously said that to me, and I seriously wanted to punch him in the face, if it weren’t for his numerous homeless friends and the worry that I might get syphilis from his teeth puncturing my hand, I might have. After that, I started thinking, where do they come from, and why in such abundance?

It is my belief, which may be narrow but I think holds true, that every single one of them made a series of bad decisions to get to where they are. Maybe they had ill educated parents? Unless the parents were homeless too, then they also have the ability to find a place to go. Perhaps they’re into drugs? Poor excuse, check into a clinic or at least commit a felony and go to jail so I don’t have to deal with you anymore. Maybe ‘The Man’ forced him down, took away his apartment for not paying rent, and then denied him access to a shower so he smells? I doubt it, they call them slums for a reason, it’s an entire section of housing that’s low income, and in most places it’s mandated by law!

So what’s the deal then? I can understand not being able to get a job once you’ve become homeless, it’s hard to look presentable for an interview like that, and you can’t list an address for your check to be mailed. But I’m not dealing with how to dig yourself out, what I want to know is how did you get there in the first place? At some point along the way, it must’ve been painfully obvious that you were headed down the wrong path. Ignorance let you keep the downward spiral, or maybe just a gripload of apathy.

Either way, something needs to be done, I felt a little intimidated in downtown SF at a decent time of night, with lots of other people around, they were very aggressive and all over the fucking place, and frankly it gave me a really poor opinion of almost the whole city. I went to see D-Rock in Haight Ashbury, far away from downtown, same situation although the age of the indigent was much younger. This further boggled my mind, how the fuck did you end up here as a 20 year old? The only logical conclusion I had was that these kids (which D-Rock lovingly calls “gutter punk”) were probably ejected from their homes by their parents for being total fuckups. So that’s it? You were such an idiot that your own flesh and blood would rather disown you than tolerate you any further. If that is the case, then the young fuckup in question is at a crossroads: On the one hand you may realize that you are in fact a total fucktard and that now is the time to go back to your parents and turn your life around -OR- on the other hand, you accept your fate and without any foresight of personal worth just continue smelling of urine and guilting the hard working people around you into supporting whatever it is you’lll be eating/drinking/stealing that day.

Get a fucking job…