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You may have noticed that a few days ago I added a link to my side bar to donate to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign. I think he is an experienced candidate with a lot of good ideas. I like his stance on the war, taxes, and border control.

I wanted to post his latest video here so you can kind of hear what he is all about. At least listen to what he has to say and if you think he’s your man then great! If not I encourage you to find someone you believe would do better. But at least read up on the person a bit and go by more than what you see in their TV advertisements. Above is a link to Fred Thompson’s web page and you can also take a look at his stance on a lot of the main issues here.

Just found this video tonight and I thought it quite humorous. Kind of a throw back to old school comedy like back in the 3 stooges era. Hope you enjoy.

I started using a program called Jing to create some how to videos for work. Very simple design and lets you record the entire screen or a small portion of it if you prefer. What’s nice about Jing is that once you are done you can click share and it will upload to an online store at Screencast. When the file is finished uploading it places a copy of the link to it in your clipboard so you can easily paste it into an email or on your blog. Oh and did I mention that right now it is free?

It won’t be free forever but it will be for a while. Right now they are referring to it as a project and are offering it for free to see if there is any demand for something like this. If and when they do decide to switch to a non-free version, there will be a grace period that you will be able to download your videos from screencast or sign up for a paid storage account.

If you like Jing and don’t want to use Screencast you can also set the program to share with Flickr, an FTP server, or just create a file on your computer. Not to shabby. If you want to read more about it, check out the Jing Blog.

Was doing some catching up today on my internet news when I came across this story about what I consider to be a frivolous lawsuit.

An 82 yr old widow stores a cashiers check she received in 1985 in a safe deposit box at the bank and suddenly finds out that after 5 years the money was considered unclaimed and surrendered to the state.  Why should Chase honor a check that old is my question.  Yes there was no expiration date on the check but I think it should be just common knowledge that checks don’t last forever.  If more people held onto checks like she does then everyone’s books would be off for years and years creating a huge mess in the books.

I think my pay checks are only good for 180 days before they are no longer valid and I thought that was pretty standard.  Did this women not have a job?  Surely she would have known that checks do expire then.  I know its mean and its her life savings and all but please, let Darwin do his work here.

Apparently they don’t have enough parking for all those attending the Climate Change Conference.  Unfortunately  I am not talking about cars.  They don’t have enough parking for all the private jets!  That’s just terrible…

Now that Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard has been replaced by Labor Party member Kevin Rudd, the United States will be the only major economic power to not ratify the Kyoto Treaty.

I know many of you are thinking we need to hurry up and jump on the bandwagon and start curbing our carbon emissions. Yes I think doing so is a very worth while cause. Do I think we have to sign a treaty that doesn’t force any restrictions on up and coming countries such as China? Not really.

I don’t think the treaty is all that effective because China is such a large producer of CO2 emissions, yet has no obligation to control their emissions. I don’t see how it is okay for China to still increase its pollution when pollution is reaching deadly limits over there.

If anything, I believe that we do need to review our emissions and think that it would be in our best interests to lower emissions of our own accord. The only thing signing Kyoto could really do is be a sign of good faith that America is still willing to work with the rest of the world. I still think its a bit absurd to curb emissions in one area and grow it in another. Reminds me of when I was paying down one credit card while racking it up on another.

In about 10 years they’ll look back and show that the major economic powers have cut their yearly emissions and give themselves a big pat on the back while turning a blind eye to the fact that global emissions is still on the rise, and much sharper than predicted. Its only going to get worse as the up and comers like China double and triple yearly emissions.

But go ahead and get pissed at our current administration. Drive your SUVs, and fly your personal jets (like your poster boy Al Gore) to all of your protests that make us highly aware that you are concerned about the issues. Its really helping.

So I was doing some Redditing tonight and found and interesting article on this blog called “web of debt“. In the post she talks about a judge’s ruling in Ohio that kept a bank from foreclosing on 14 properties.

“Judge Christopher A. Boyko of Federal District Court in Cleveland dismissed 14 foreclosure cases brought on behalf of mortgage investors, ruling that they had failed to prove that they owned the properties they were trying to seize.”

Apparently they are having trouble finding all the paperwork that shows who owns the properties in question. When you get a home loan, the bank then packages that with other home loans and sells it to investors on Wall Street as mortgage-backed securities. The problem arises because the mortgage notes are not sent to the trustees that buy the securities, they are kept in a repository run by another company. By not sending the actual note, the process goes faster and money can be shifted around a lot easier. When you make your payments, a trustee bank that manages the security makes sure the money gets shifted to the proper investors.

So since the holders of these securities can’t produce the actual notes, technically they can’t foreclose on you.

Now this doesn’t mean you can just stop paying on your house. This is apparently just in some cases. (but sadly, a lot of cases) Apparently this could cause a huge stir with the sudden rise in foreclosure on sub-prime mortgages. The case will surely be refiled and sent up to higher courts but it will definitely be interesting to see how this all pans out.

If you do wind up in a foreclosure situation, definitely fight it. Get a lawyer and make them produce the note. Now that there has been a case settled in the favor of the borrower, there is a precedent your lawyer can call upon in your case.

A good comment about this that I saw in another blog about this called “The Emperor Has No Clothes - And Neither Do Banks - Kiss your Mortgage Payments Goodbye!“, states some interesting things to remember about this whole thing:

“Read the whole post and read through the four comments to it.

At first glance, I can tell you that detractors make some good points, like the following (to name a few):

• 1. this problem doesn’t affect all lenders, just the ones who will have trouble locating their notes,
  2. the case was dismissed without prejudice, which means as soon as the defect is cured, the banks can file again, and
  3. the struggle is by no means over

However, (1) lenders who potentially cannot find evidence that they own the note represent a good chunk of the market and the shadow that this ruling casts could be huge since the securities market is ALL about confidence; (2) some of the “cures” that they’re talking may not be something that they can do without getting the borrower to recommit to the obligation - SO, BEWARE OF LETTERS FROM YOUR MORTGAGEE ASKING YOU TO SIGN SOMETHING!!! and finally, (3) the struggle may not be over - but, we have to start somewhere - and this is a great place to start! ESPECIALLY if massive numbers of homeowners question their mortgage commitments all at once.”

So again, don’t just quit making payments.  I don’t even want to think about what this could do to the strength of the American dollar. Even worse is what our whole housing problem could do to the global markets.

So I was reading this article on men’s health and am quite alarmed.  For a while I started watching my calories and I think I am gonna get back into it.  That article was a very rude awakening.  I never knew how bad eating out for you really is.  How many of you go out and sometimes split an appetizer?  You may want to rethink that.

Worst Starter

Chili’s Awesome Blossom

2,710 calories 203 g fat

194 g carbs 6,360 mg sodium

Even splitting this appetizer with friends will set you back almost an entire meal’s worth of calories.  Like to dip each piece in the dipping sauce?  Better tack on a couple hundred calories to that.

Think by getting the chicken items from fast food places is “eating healthy”?  Maybe you should look at this one from McDonalds:

Worst Fast-Food Chicken Meal

Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips from McDonald’s (5 pieces) with creamy ranch sauce

830 calories

55 grams (g) fat (4.5 g trans fat)

48 g carbohydrates

 Don’t forget that you probably eat fries and have a soda with this meal.  That’s just the chicken by itself!  I really need to look into this a bit more and find out the actual calories of the places I frequent.  Maybe I’ll be bringing my lunch more often.  Would be a good way to save some money too!

So I was playing around with my voice dial functionality and I am actually impressed. I mentioned in an earlier post how you can change the sensitivity but here are some other things I like about it.

1.Speak the number

So maybe this isn’t new but its new to me. I always assumed that you had to say a name from your phone book and it would only pull it up by name but you can say “call” and then say the number (in your phone book or not) and it will dial that number.

2.Check Battery

For those of you who are to lazy to look at the screen or maybe can’t read a battery meter, you can just say “Check Battery” and it will announce whether the battery is low, medium, high.

3. Check Signal Strength

Saying “Check Signal” will give you your current signal strength. The only thing better would be to tell you if you are roaming or not but honestly I can’t remember a time when I’ve been in roam.

4. Find your phone number

I personally never have a problem recalling what my phone number is but for those of you that do, try saying “Check Phone Number” and it will say your phone number out loud for you.

I find that most people don’t want to sit down and read a manual when they get a new electronic device and because of this they don’t use a lot of the cool features built in. Here are a few of my favorites from the Blackberry 8100 (Pearl). All of these are found under options unless otherwise stated.

1.Add words to the custom word list.

Your custom word list is found under options menu. The only words I really added were curse words but that’s because when I am trying to cuss in text messages, I don’t want to actually cuss in real life trying to type it.

2.Audible Roll.

This little gem is hidden under the screen/keyboard options of your options menu. At the very bottom you can turn off the audible clicking of rolling the trackball.

3.Voice Dialing Sensitivity.

Under Voice dialing on the options menu there is a sensitivity level. I changed mine to reject more names because I always got a large list of possible things I said when using the voice dial. If your voice dial never seems to work, try lowering the sensitivity to reject less.

4.Owner

This may not be a big deal for many, but in a corporate environment I think this option is nice. Here you can put in your name and some information (such as a contact number other than your cell) in case your device gets lost or misplaced.

5.Auto On/Off

This feature is quite handy for those of us who have an unhealthy addiction to our phone. My blackberry goes off all night with emails and text messages. If you are trying to get a good night sleep, you can have your blackberry power off and on at set times. Unfortunately you only have two options, weekday and weekend.