I'm going to make this a quick and easy post as I'm headed out the door.  Anyway, here is how to get NTFS working on Snow Leopard.

1. Install MacFuse Beta 2.1.7 (it is attached to this post).

2. Install NTFS-3G 2010.1.16 (you can get that here: NTFS-3G for Mac OS X 2010.1.16)

Reboot your machine and you'r good to go.  Have a great day and thanks for visiting!

MacFUSE-2.1.7.dmg (2.57 mb)

I posed this question, "Can an individual with a felony become a licensed nurse in Iowa?" to the State of Iowa Legislative Services Agency.  This is the response I received from them.  Please note that this information is current as of today and may have changed by the time you're reading this... so please contact the agency for the most up-to-date information.

First, if you are on probation or parole it is best to work with your case officer.  Your case office can access the specific information on felony convictions that may cause employment issues.  Even if you are no longer on probation/parole you may want to contact your former case officer for additional information.

The second thing the office suggests is to check out the Board of Nursing website.  In their FAQ you will find the following:

Q. Can an individual with a felony become licensed?

I was asked why my posts have widely varying hours; how I must never sleep.  After thinking about it for a moment I came up with the following:

Though thine skin beneath the orbits of the soul be blackened I must admit that sleep is of darkness and darkness be of death. Thou shall fear that if one enters into thy sleep and thus thy darkness thy might never wake and so one must be vigilant to continue into ones day so as not to ever become that which is lifeless. - Joshua Andrews (2009)

Some of you may know that my daughter Athena (6) has already been in a commercial.  I haven't had the chance to upload it but now that I've got it done I'm ready to share it with the world (at least those who haven't already seen it on the boob tube!).  So, without further ado:

We drove a little over 3,000 miles to/from and around Florida as I mentioned in a previous post.  However, that trip hardly compares to the road trip that our Federal government has been doing since the early 1900’s and what Obama has said he plans to do with our national debt.

In fact, a very smart guy who writes for the Political Math Blog wrote this excellent post and made this video that really helps us see what kind of trouble we are in.  You can find the blog post here and the video below:

I don’t want to be Chicken Little and say that the sky is falling but really… this doesn’t look good at all.

Davenport, IA is a city adjacent to the one I'm currently living in and as a neighbor (and previous resident) of Davenport I have noticed that crime seems to be an even more pressing issue lately.  In fact, I can't remember a time where I've looked in the morning newspaper and can daily find an article stating that someone has been stabbed or shot.  These crimes seem to generally happen and stem from certain population areas of Davenport that the police just can't seem to get under and keep under control.  So, here is my Libertarian idea of how I would resolve the problems if I were the Mayor and/or Police Chief of Davenport:

The number one way, and most popular way, is to spend more tax money by hiring more police officers to patrol the streets.  However, even though Rudy G. in New York proved this method can work at what tax ramifications are we shoving down the throats of the city's citizens?   I believe I have a better idea; although half-baked I thought I would list it here and see what kind of comments I could drum up from the audiance.

My plan would be to designate swafts of population centers that seem to house those who cause the most issues.  For example, take the area between Locust, Bridge, 14th, & Brady and call it Zone Alpha.  Zone Alpha properties will now be given special tax breaks in order to make them highly appealing to investors.  For example, the average home price in that area is probably around $60,000 and the age of the home is nearing 70-100 years old and in fairly poor condition.  However, these homes were built during a time where bigger was better and hardwood floors, stairs, and other areas were all the rage (as we know these features are in major demand now-a-days as history repeats itself like clockwork) and with excellent square footage and great bones can be turned into beautiful masterpieces.

So lets give investors the tax breaks as follows:

• Investors who purchase a property within the next 18 months will be given a 100% break on capital gains if they bring the property up to code and refurbish the entire home and lot with 12 months.
• Investors will be required to sell the property within 24 months from the 12 months refurbishment deadline giving them a total of 3 years from start to finish to fix and sell the property.
• Investors will not be required to pay property taxes on the property during that 3 year period.  In addition, to help spur sales new homeowners will not be required to pay property taxes for an additional two years from purchase of the property.

I believe this plan could work because investors would automatically make a large % of their flipping profit on the capital gains tax savings and the property tax savings right off the top.  That doesn't even count the spread they will make from the original purchase price and final sales price with appreciation factored in as well.  The city may lose out on some tax revenue initially but in the long run they will make much more because the values of the properties will have massively increased (thus increasing property tax income) and because the purchase price of the properties will be out of the range of previous tenants and incoming hooligans which would immediately reduce crime.

Two major questions come to mind when I present this scenario.  1.) How would you get current homeowners and/or renters to move out? and 2.) Where would these people go?

Well, the first question can be complicated but I think I can tackle it.  Let's say that someone purchased one of the properties in this area two years ago for the average $60,000.   Well, an investor could come in an offer a 5% premium over the current assessed value of the property (maybe more) and convince the owner to move.  Afterall, the neighborhood knows that the prices of the homes will only come down due to the age of the properties and violence in the neighborhood so I could take an educated guess that very few, if any, would pass up such an opportunity.  Afterall, the investor stands to make an automatic profit from the tax savings alone and so has a lot of room to negotiate an acceptable offer.

Secondly, we must answer the question of where would these people go?  Well, once the neighborhood properties have outpriced the previous owners/dwellers they would be forced to rent/buy elsewhere.  Of course some will find local homes in other local neighboorhoods but many will generally move out of the city.  In fact, if this plan takes place all over the city there will be nowhere for these people to reside within the city or surrounding areas.  So then it begs the question of, "What about neighboring cities, won't they have to deal with these people and the crime?".  Honestly, yes they will and with that being said I say, "Who cares."  No really, we resolved the problem here and so when these hooligans move out of our city where do we care where they go, as long as they aren't here to cause us problems it truly is... no longer our problem.  Those cities will have to deal with the issue in their own way.

I'd love to hear comments about my idea and perhaps someone can shoot me down and explain why they believe this wouldn't work.  So fire away!

The family and I took a trip to Florida last week (thus the lack of blog posts) and boy was it a blast.  In fact, we splurged a little because we bought two tickets to a resort called Discovery Cove in Orlando.  I have never been to a more relaxing, well maintained, and very polite and helpful staff than I was at Discovery Cove.

You first enter into a massive entryway with beautifully tiled floors where you check-in, take a photo for your access badge, and from which you are guided down a well designed nature path to the lockers and suit-up area.  You are given either a wet-suit or a wet-suit vest, snorkel kit, and locker key.  Once we had changed into our stylish outfits we headed down to the coldest section of the Discovery Cove experience.  In this pool were many types of tropical and non-tropical fish, sting rays, barracudas, & even sharks.  Of course, the barracudas and sharks are in underwater glass cases to protect us swimmers but it was still a bit unnerving anyway.

After that experience we moved to the closest snack hut where we are provided with all the drink (including beer) and snacks we could ask for at no extra charge.  Of course I down a few cold ones and had a bag of chips but I couldn't spend too much time there because we had much more to do.  Just a few feet to the right was the relaxation pool which featured a massive waterfall and MUCH warmer water.  The temperature here was more like an indoor heated pool than the previous frigid ocean temps in the last pool.  Anyway, the waterfall actually has a huge artificial cave behind it which you enter via the right side.  The current easily takes you through this massive cave with inner pools you can relax in and look through the raging waterfall.  From there, unbeknownst to us the current was actual a lazy river that changes depths from 1 foot of water to 8+ feet of water (no tubes are provided so you better know how to swim ) which continues into the massive, departmental, aviary.  The lazy river seems to go through a massive majority of the park and takes quite awhile to complete from start to finish which ends right back in the massive relaxation pool from which we entered.   The birds in the aviary were awsome and introduced us to many species which we'd never seen before.

From there we enjoyed a hearty and unlimited lunch buffet.  The buffet is served by chefs and staff with everything made fresh and very tasty (I'd highly recommend the cheeseburger & cheesecake!).  We could of had breakfast there as well but opted out because we were too exited to get our day of exploration started.  After lunch we headed over to the dolphin experience.  We paid extra for Andrea to do this and although it lacked in personal attention and depth it was still a fun experience.  To tell you the truth it felt more like a petting zoo than it did a "dolphin experience".  In any case, I got to see Andrea ride on the dorsal fin of the dolphin just like you do with SeaWorld performers and that was something not everyone gets to do.

We then walked through the aviary to get a more close up experience than down in the river previously.  We were surpised to see staff members generously handing out as much bird food cups as you could handle.  They must put crack in the food because the birds were on us like crazy!  We had big birds, little birds, peacocks, owls, you name it all around and on us.  At one point we saw a woman throwing dead baby mice at a row of birds who lined up like Marines at chow.  It was kind of gross to see dead babies being fed to the birds but hey.. we all gotta eat don't we?

From there Andrea and I spent the rest of the day drinking, snacking, and returning to the lazy river and sting ray pools again and again until they kicked us out.  At the end we were presented with the opportunity to purchase any professional photos of us that had been taken throughout the day.  A touch screen computer allows you to hand pick the images you like.  We had purchased an underwater camera to capture some of our moments so we opted to only purchase one of the photos of which we made keychains and a single large photo of.

If you ever take a trip to, or live in, Florida and haven't made it to Discovery Cove it is definetly worth the price.  I would like to recommend to the Discovery Cove leadership that they rethink their "dolphin experience".  Don't make it a petting zoo.  Allow the guests to really interact with the dolphins on a more personal and free manner.  Don't line us up like children and have the game come over for a petting.  I don't recommend the extra $100 it cost to swim with the dolphins unless your heart is set on it.  Other than that it was truly the best park in Orlando we've ever been to and was a truly relaxing and entertaining experience.

I've posted some of our photos from that specific park on my facebook account.  You can see them here (please excuse the quality as it was one of those one-time use underwater cameras):  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023633&id=1413432373&l=90d5e57344

I found this video recently of Iowa Congressman Braley speaking on making Iowa a wind energy super power (my own terminology).  Watch it below before continuing your reading:

Most of you know that I'm a Libertarian and denounce any activity that would use tax payer money to fund anything but police, fire, military, and other limited scope functions.  Wind energy is one of those subjects that our constitution does not allow us to fund and one in which I believe should be an entreprenueral endevour.  So to make myself feel better and to provide a way to possible discourage such activity I've written a letter to Congressman Braley in regards to this matter.  I've posted this letter here for your review to aid others who may want to do the same thing and to maybe help those on the fence understand why I make the claims I do.

Dear Congressman Braley:

I really appreciate your efforts to increase the economic power and energy self-reliance of our great state of Iowa through the method of wind power.

However, I don't agree with your methods of doing these things.  You are using tax payer money, whether Federal or within our State, to pay for these programs.

It is not the ambition of or the method that our Founding Fathers asked us to partake in.  Electricity is a COMMERCIAL enterprise that is in extremely high demand.  Government should have no interest or interaction with this particular portion of our State commerce.

If wind power is more economical for Iowa than there is an entrepreneur and an investor out there making plans as we speak to build and sell electricity at a lower rate, with the same reliability, than our current methods of providing power.  If there are no entrepreneurs finding this to be a profitable and sustainable model of business than the business shouldn't be created.

If you are interested in making Iowa the kingpin of win power than you should do it in a way that wont make our founders roll over in their graves.

So what solution do I propose?  I propose you stop spending our hard earned money on these businesses.  You are digging a hole so deep that you will bog our state down into these businesses as we may be required to support them for more than our lifetimes.

So to summarize, I find that you are taxing us to death in order to support wind power initiatives.  Once they are built we will continue to support them to keep them afloat.  Once "afloat" we will then have to pay for the same energy that we already payed to build?

Doesn't sound like a very logical business plan to me.  Do the right thing Congressman.

I would love to hear what any of you have to say about this issue.  So use the comments feature below and give me your best shot!

I use an iMac 24" for most of my computing needs as shown here:

Well, I finally had the need to use the iLife iDVD '09 edition to create a home video.  So I got everything all edited, cut, spliced, and digified and began the burn process.  Well, it was a large DVD I was creating and so would take many hours to convert and then burn.  I learned that when this process is happening Mac OS X does not allow the screen saver to turn on nor does it allow my monitor to go to sleep.  Well, you can probably guess that a little bit of screen burn-in (some might call it ghosting or ghost images) appeared.

This has been a huge annoyance and so to resolve it I natrually searched Apple's KB.  I didn't find anything myself so I posted on the Apple Forums.  A user by the name of den.thed found the solution I was looking for.  I then implemented that solution and everything was resolved!  Yeah!!!

For those that will read this who have the same issue you can find the solution here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2807?

For those who don't know how to make a huge white picture I've attached the one I made for your use here: WhiteBackSplash.jpg (42.29 kb)

I hope this helps others out here who have this problem.  If you have further questions feel free to use the comment feature below!

Everyone knows the shameful fact that our governments, at all levels, spend way too much of our hard earned money each and every day.  I could spend years listing offense after offense trying to show you just how much our government spends.  But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case I couldn't agree more.

The picture I attached comes from WallStats.com and only shows what our FEDERAL government spends.  The good Lord knows we'd all have massive heart attacks if we included every other government expenditure.  So, take a look at the attached file and use that comment thingy at the bottom and let me know what you think.

WARNING:  The image you are about to see may not be suitable for those who are faint of heart.  View at your own risk.

wallstatsdatlarge.jpg (2.18 mb)