Category: Uncategorized

I’m still amazed that people actually like these things’ picture quality so much. As soon as the light level drops, the picture quality goes to hell. I guess they’re fine for web use and snap shots, but give me 35mm any day! On a more positive note, the video quality (at its highest setting) is more than acceptable for TV viewing. That’s good since it was a big factor in my purchase decision. I’m hoping to make some DVDs to send back so that you guys can get a better feel of the place. Everything looks good!

Isaac

Believe it or not, my most popular page on my website is my essay on demand curves. I’ve gotten over 50 hits in the last two days. Most of them are from two different IP address, one in India and one in England. I wonder if whole classes are using it, it sure looks like it, 20 hits from the same IP address within a 2 minute window. Makes me think that I should get on my supply curve page and then lead into supply and demand and the meaning of a price of a good. Sigh, that’ll take actual time though. If I got that laptop, I could do it over at my mom’s and up at my aunt’s place in october…. Hmmm….

Isaac

A friend of Rick’s friend came to the party that he threw. She’s (to me) a grandmotherly lady with quite a bit of traveling experience, she learned her Arabic in Morocco. She was with the State department I think… Anyway, she and I had a nice conversation at the party. She admitted that she had always wanted to go to Yemen and was envious about my travel plans. I gave her an invite to come out and see the place whenever she could. Well, she came in the store the other day and bought a camera from me. We were talking about my trip and she asked if I was going to go up to Oman. I had thought about it, it would be an interesting place to go to. Well, one of her good friends is living there. Oh yeah, she’s also married to the US ambassador to Oman as well. She said that I should give them a call sometime… I can see it now, I call up the embassy and ask for Bob, the ambassador… If I can get in touch with them I’ll be sure to go visit Oman, especially if Anne does come out there. She also has friends with USAID. Not really sure what they do…

Another customer of mine works for some government agency or another and he’s given me quite a bit of good advice. He hasn’t been to Yemen (yet), but he has travelled all over the world. I doubt that I’d be able to make contacts like this anywhere else in the US, so I guess there are some benefits to living in the DC area:-)

Isaac

I’ve decided not to get a new computer, I think… It’s just too much money, and my current computer works just fine. That’s the rational side of me talking of course, it sure would be easier to take a laptop though, and I could use it on the plane ride too… It would also make some of my tasks much easier and faster… I’m currently trying to rip an AVI file into an MP4, it’s taking a long long time to do though… Why am I doing that? So I can out it on my iPod of course. No, I haven’t bought one yet, I’m waiting to see what the new ones look like on tuesday, there’s going to be a big announcement about the Apple music store too. I figure that an iPod will be a good replacement for me on the plane, and it’ll allow me to listen to all of my music without disturbing the locals (not sure what kind of reception “Walk” by Pantara would have over there. Now that I think of it, they’d probably dig it…)

I’ve also gone on a mini music spree. Picked up the Best of Rev. James Cleveland on Ebay for a penny (plus shipping of course). Great rave up gospel music, no excuse for not owning this, great music and cheap!! I’ve also ordered an Aretha Franklin live gospel album and a collection of black prison work songs form the 30’s. All of them are well known incredible performances so I’m looking forward to it.

I also got my new (to me) camera today. A black Konica Hexar AF. I can’t try it out though since I don’t have a battery for it. I’ll take care of that tomorrow. It looks just like what I was looking for and it has the reputation of being an incredible performer. I should be set, now all I have to do is try a little harder to convince myself that I don’t need that computer….

Isaac

Just weighed myself for the first time in 3 or 4 months and I’m at 210. It’s actually exactly what I thought I’d be. Not bad considering I’ve been eating whatever I want and not doing any exercising to speak of. I have put on 5 pounds from my low of 205, but its still much lower than my worst (measured) weight of 229. I’m hoping that I can exercise a little more before my trip. I’ll still be eating whatever I want, after all I’m sure there won’t be any pork BBQ (or pork anything for that matter), pepperoni pizza, ice cream, etc over there. Of course I’m sure that I’ll find new things that I love over there and will rationalize my bingeing on them cause they aren’t over here… Well, as long as my weight stays under control (along with my blood stuff) and I feel ok I will continue to enjoy food… Now for that whole exercise thing…

Isaac

I was never much of a fan, but I admired his courage. The way he died reminded me of a friend of the family. Mike lived next door to my grandmother and had health problems his whole life. Circulation problems, respiratory problems, heat attacks, and even diabetes. He lived into his early 70’s when he died of cancer…. Steve Irwin handled numerous deadly snakes and man eating crocks but was killed by a 1000 to one freak occurrence. Getting stung through the heart by a sting ray was probably the least likely way he imagined himself dying. Oh well, just goes to show that when it’s your time, it’s your time.

Isaac

A great post over at Coyote blog about the inherent conservatism of the so called left in America. They are fundamentally against change, uncertainty, and don’t believe that ordinary people (especially the poor ones) are capable of making good decisions. That makes them against the driving force behind increased standards of living, longer life spans, and better tecnology…. capitalism. He discusses it much more depth here than I do. One of my favorite parts is in the comments…

“After exchanging numerous emails with a Liberal friend of mine, I finally challenged him:

“So you think people are simply too dumb to run their own lives?”

His answer was along the lines of “Yes and without intelligent people making their decisions, they’ll choose poorly.”

Then I threw out the kicker:

“What if you’re NOT one of the intelligent people?”

LOL, a great post.

Isaac

Gotta say I’m digging them. It’s true that I don’t have a very strong prescription and that I could easily do without them. With the exception of reading signs that are far away, I can see everything just fine. But when I put them on, everything is sharper, sharp enough that I now can really see how unsharp my eyes have become, and that’s annoying. I am a sharpness junkie, always have been. Plus, I’m getting used to how they look:-)

Isaac

A great letter in the financial times:

Sirs,

Guy de Jonquieres is right on the money when he advocates unilateral trade liberalization as the best alternative to the Doha round shenigans (“Do-it-yourself is free trade’s best ‘plan B’,” Aug. 24). But he falls into the usual trap of blaming countries’ failure to liberalize on shibboleths such as “fierce hemispheric rivalry between the US and Brazil. Nonsense! There is one, and only one, reason countries fail to engage in free trade – and that reason is that barriers to trade make a few people rich even as they make many people poor. Interest groups lining their pockets at the expense of their countrymen, whether in France, the United States, or China,a re responsible for the failure of the Doha round, the Free Trade of the Americas and a host of other such agreements. From sugar to cheese to computer chips, the opponents of free trade mouth platitudes about infant industries, national security, and traditional lifestyles. In the end, however, their arguments all reduce to “I’ve got mine and you can’t have any.

Andy Morris”

Exactly! Why people don’t see this I can’t imagine. When we do not have free trade, special interest groups are the ones benefitting at the expense of everyone else. Farmers (mostly agribusiness) don’t want to lose the free money that all of us have been giving them all these years. God forbid that they have to compete for our dollars… So they send their lobbyists to make sure that they do not lose their cash cow. Disgusting…

Isaac

Not only does wal mart save American consumers Billions of dollars a year and employ over a million people, they are perhaps the single biggest alleviator of poverty in the world. By giving jobs to millions of CHinese, Wal Mart has significantly raised their standard of living. Let’s see… according to this article, Wal Mart is responsible for bringing about 460,000 people a year “out of poverty”. That’s a pretty general term, what do they mean? Try raising their income by two to two and a half times, day in and day out, all year long. That’s an enormous increase and it far outstrips anything that charity or the world bank could ever hope to do. “Yeah, but those jobs suck!” That’s what anti Wal mart, anti globalization, anti free trade people say about these numbers. It’s a damned good start, the more people that are working, the fewer that are starving, and the more that will move on to better jobs as their skills and experience improves. With several generations, you’ll see a life in China much like our own (prosperity wise). Think back to the so called “sweatshops” in Japan, Taiwan, etc back in the 50’s and 60’s. Life is much better there, those sweatshop workers are now either retired or nearing retirement and they are living far better than they would have if they never had those “awful” jobs. Economic growth takes time, allowing people to work instead of requiring people to live off of subsistence farming will move an economy along the right path. Here’s my favorite part of the article…

“The Nobel laureate economist Robert Lucas once said “Once you start thinking about economic growth, it is hard to think about anything else.” Non-economists, especially those associated with the environmental movement, regard this as evidence that economics is a form of brain damage, a cancer on our earth. But rural Chinese peasants surviving on less than a dollar per day do not regard economic growth, or Wal-Mart factory jobs, as a cancer. When a Mongolian student at a U.S. workshop on globalization heard U.S. college students denounce sweatshops, he shouted: “Please give us your sweatshops!”

Great stuff! Shop Wal mart! Save money while giving people jobs! It’s a win win situation!

Isaac