These days, I guess the car rental companies are trying new things to try to attract customers. One of the things they are trying is offering non-traditional cars for rent. A few weeks back I was assigned a Chevy HHR, and one of my coworkers got a VW New Beetle (which he hated). This week I got a PT Cruiser. It was bad enough that I felt I had to comment on it. The first thing I noticed upon getting the car was that there was no way to open the rear trunk in order to get your bags in. There was no button inside to pop the trunk, and no button on the keychain either. There was not keyhole on the trunk that I could see. I gave up and put my bags in the back seat. I noted that getting on the highway was a chore for this vehicle, as it had very little pep even with the hammer down. As I drove to the hotel, I noticed that the information on the trip meter and the outside air temperature were in metric units. I was unable to locate any apparatus for changing this to standard units.
The next day I had to park in a parking garage. As I went to roll down the window, I discovered that there were no switches on the door for rolling down the window and no manual crank either. The controls were also not on the center console as they are on some cars. After a few seconds, I gave up and opened the door to retrieve my ticket. Later that day I discovered the window controls were up on the center of the dashboard, a very inconvenient and out of the ordinary place. As I went to park, I noted that the turning radius was terrible on this car and I had to make two attempts to get the car to turn into the spot. Also, the shaped of the front hood makes it impossible to tell where the edges of the car are in close quarters, which makes parking difficult. On the way home that night, I noted that the ride was terrible. After going over a bump, the car continued jittering for several seconds. Then when I went over some railroad tracks that were on a shallow corner, the car hopped sideways, which could have caused a loss of control, as it was totally unexpected.
Once, while fiddling with the trunk, I got it to open, and I looked at some articles on the internet, and discovered that you are supposed to pull up on the Chrysler logo. I tried this several times, but it was hit and miss. I found that even if I hit the unlock button twice in succession, it was about 50/50 whether pulling up on the Chrysler logo would open the trunk. The logo was kind of flimsy and I was afraid to pull on it very hard because it felt like it would break or fall off. Once I got the trunk open, I found that there was very little trunk space. There was also no privacy flap, which is a must in a wagon or SUV type of car where you can see the trunk contents through the back glass. I had to leave my bag in the trunk visible to the world in the parking garage after checking out of my hotel.
The keyfob has a panic button on it which is very easy to hit. I hit it once during the five days I had the car. It is located in a place where you are likely to hit it while removing the key from the ignition.
The gas mileage was surprisingly bad for a car that has so little pep.
There is really not much positive to say about the car. The styling is retro and harkens of a time before I was born, therefore it is not much interest to me. It may appeal to people who were born in the '50s. I think they were going for novel ideas on the convenience features which may work well for somebody who owns the car, as they would be used to the location of the features and it could be a subject of conversation with passengers. However, as a rental car, it just doesn't work. When you rent a car, you need the switches, trunk releases, buttons and other features to have expected locations and behavior, otherwise it is frustrating and possibly even dangerous. A rental car with no way to hide your bags is just asinine.

When it's less than or equal to the increase in the cost of living. If you, as a manager, value your employee exactly the same this year as you did last year, assume that he has learned nothing in the interim, and that he doesn't add any more to the productivity this year than he did last year, than he deserves a Cost of Living Adjustment. If you give him now cost of living adjustment, then that means that you feel that the employee contributes LESS to the company now than he did last year, that he has lost some of his ability to do his job and has forgotten how to do parts of his job.
An employee who has worked hard, learned and applied new skills and taken on new responsibility should feel slighted if he receives only a Cost of Living Adjustment and should feel slapped in the face if he is offered no increase in compensation whatsoever.
This year, I received a modest pay increase, only it wasn't a raise, as I have not received a pay increase in the last three years. During that time, the cost of living increased by about 8.6%. By contrast, my increase in salary was only 6.25%. So I am worth about 2.4% less now than I was 3 years ago.
What is truly insulting in my case is that this current increase is only half of the amount that I was promised to get 3 years ago, which I was supposed to get two weeks after my start date. I was told they could not give me the salary that I requested, but in two weeks they would increase it to what I was asking. A year later, when I inquired about the status of my year old raise, I was told that raises were coming soon. A year after that, I inquired again, and provided updated figures of what other people with my job description were getting and pointed out that I had been lied to several times by management, and also quoted a new figure which I thought I should receive, which was about 20% under what other people in my position are getting. Well, I received my increase in salary, and it raised me up about 25% of the way to the salary that I felt I could accept. As I pointed out, it is even less than the cost of living has gone up. However, I know that management likes to give out small increases like this, because then they can feel that their employees are greedy if they request another raise before another couple of years has gone by.
Yes, I know that some people received no increase in pay this year, others received reductions in pay, and some have no job. I don't ask them to feel sorry for me. I ask them to be even more outraged at what their employer or lack thereof is doing to them.
Time to read the classifieds.

Well, I had to see what all the fuss was about. I work with and, of course, go to Church with quite a few Christians, and most of them are pretty conservative. So I had heard all the buzz about how this movie was a horrible anti-Christian movie where they kill God at the end. Well, the Bible tells me that I am always supposed to study and prove out what other people say to see if it is true. So I watched The Golden Compass, and much to the probable horror of many Christians, I watched it with my family. I was prepared to shut the movie off at the part where they killed God, if it came to that. However, I had my suspicion that they wouldn't kill God, because no one really knows what God looks like, and you can't kill the author of life, because He doesn't have a physical existence in the Universe that He created. To think that someone on Earth could kill God is like thinking a character in a painting could kill the painter.
Anyway, the movie was good enough as movies go. It was pretty similar to the Narnia movies. This is where I think some Christians get up in arms. Before I knew that C.S. Lewis was a Christian, I was always amazed that Christians didn't get up in arms about his portrayal of Aslan as a Christ figure. Other than the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, most of the other books did not have such a vocal religious message, so I didn't put two and two together that C.S. Lewis was a Christian. It was only later that he was and that he had written other Christian works. So it seems that Christians don't get upset when one of their own writes a book containing a blatant Christ figure who is not actually Jesus, but if another author who professes to be an atheist and an agnostic writes a book about fighting a false religion, than Christians get all up in arms. It's sad to me as a Christian myself. In particular the fact that so many have not seen this movie and yet pass judgment on it blindly by listening to what other people have said. I mean, this is why people bash religions, because people blindly listen and parrot back what other people tell them without so much as verifying what was said. Don't they read their Bibles? It plainly says that you should always read the scriptures to see if what the pastor says is true.
Another funny thing. The author of The Golden Compass claims to be an atheist and an agnostic. Those are two contradictory ideologies. An Agnostic does not claim to have the answer to whether there is a God or not. An Atheist claims that he knows for sure that there is no God.
I actually liked aspects of The Golden Compass. For instance, the religion they fought had people high up in the organization who KNEW that the religion was false and actively fought scientific study of "dust" which would prove the religion false. Of course, this is a strawman as there is no way to prove any of Earth's religions false scientifically. However, there have been efforts by some religions, including by Christians at times, to thwart scientific progress. In my opinion, this is because their faith is weak and they fear that science may discover something which proves their religion wrong. In truth, science can not prove a religion wrong if it is right. If God created everything, then science is the study of that Creation, and everything they discover will only ever server to reveal more about God. As a Christian, I believe I have nothing to fear from Science. I have read Darwin, his works did not turn me away from my beliefs. It turns out that I share the same beliefs as Darwin. He was a Christian. He also was a 'naturalist', one who studies nature. He came up with some theories about how species evolved. In many books he wondered at the grandeur of God's Creation. He never proved there was no God.
In short, this is a pretty good movie for those who, like me, don't like religion, and is not a threat to those who, like me, are Christians. The message is not anti-Christian, but anti-religion. I don't like religion either. Neither did Jesus. Religion is all about worshiping the practices of worshiping God, instead of just worshiping God. Religion says that by following certain rules and guidelines, you can obtain heaven. Religion is all about bondage to a set of rules. Jesus came to break those bonds and set us free. Not to enslave us to another set of rules.
By all means, see the movie. Don't listen to the people who haven't seen it.

I want to make you aware of a huge problem with all of the major wireless providers. They all allow shady third party billers to claim charges against wireless customers, pass the charges through to the customer with no authorization and no research into whether the charge is legitimate, and then claim that they are unable to reverse the charges which THEY placed on the bill.

In my specific situation, my stepson had his phone stolen. When we received a replacement phone, he immediately started receiving text messages which we did not sign up for. Presumably the thief signed up for these programs. Even though Alltel is fully aware that our phone was stolen, and these charges mysteriously showed up on my bill on the very day that the new phone was activated (although I did not even give the phone to my son that day), they refused to reverse the charges and told me I had to call the original company which billed these charges. Why am I guilty until proven innocent? Why do I have to call a company with which I have never done business in order to receive a refund for charges which I never authorized? Nevertheless, I did as directed, and they said that it may be up to 12 weeks to receive my reimbursement, if their accounting department approves it. How come I have to pay my bill this month, but they have up to 12 weeks to reimburse me, if they choose to do so at all? Alltel says they will cut me off and charge me $200 per line cutoff fee if I do not pay these unauthorized charges. In my case, I know my stepson could not have signed up for these, because the phone was stolen and we had no phone with which to make these charges. In other cases, these companies apparently send unsolicited text messages, mostly to kids, because they know kids always respond to text messages, and if they receive a response, they automatically sign the phone up for charges ranging from $5.99 a week up to $9.99. Most of the time, the people with the phone are under 18, so are technically under no obligation to pay, but the phone companies and the shady companies who deceitfully send these text messages claim that the children act as their parents' representative, so the parent is responsible for the charge. This is not a case where a person can simply change service providers as EVERY SINGLE WIRELESS PROVIDER promotes this scam. They are all acting anti-competitively and in collusion to steal money from consumers. The wireless companies get to keep around 35% of these fraudulent charges, so they have no desire to help end the problem.

We need legislation to force Wireless providers to block these companies from billing their customers. These third party companies all provide a service which no one would legitimately sign up for for the price which they charge. People responding to their text messages have no opportunity to review pricing or know what they are signing up for simply by replying to a text message. Most of the people responding to the text message are not of a legal age to be able to be held to a contract.

I am completely fed up with the wireless companies all doing business with these third party deceivers and then claiming no responsibility, no ability to reverse charges, etc. I am writing my state representatives, the Better Business Bureau, the Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission, my lawyer, the Corporation Commission, and anyone else I can think of, because these companies are stealing from people.

It was my great displeasure to have to travel on the day after the foiled terrorist plot on August 10th, 2006. Security was, of course, heightened. It may seem odd to have heightened security when the plot was, in fact, foiled. But sure enough, they were not allowing liquids of any kind on the plane. They were allowing prescription medications, though. Obviously, a terrorist is not able to obtain a prescription for some medication, and then empty it out and fill it with some sort of explosive.
The most major annoyance was that no one was recommending to you at checkin that you should probably check your carry-on if it contains any shampoo, toothpaste, cologne, deodorant or anything like that. But really, who travels with that stuff anyway? Everybody just buys an entirely new toiletry set every time they travel right? Well, from now on they do. Once you get to security, you have to throw all that stuff away, even the $100 bottle of perfume. Just try to get out of line and go back and check your bag now. They'll shoot you where you stand. So you have no notice that they are going to make you throw away all of your toiletries until you are in the security line.
Then, the second annoyance. After they have forced you to throw away all of your liquids, they then ALSO refuse to allow you to take any liquids on the plane. So if you have a 6AM flight and decided to buy some toothpaste in the terminal to brush your teeth, you get to throw away the remainder of your toothpaste. If you buy some Orange Juice, you have to drink it before you get on the plane. This is AFTER security. Instead of forcing you to throw away everything you buy at the airport stores, why don't they just tell the airport stores not to sell explosives?
Finally, on the plane, I had to sit next to a guy who had his own aluminum coffee mug, with coffee inside it. Nice job, security. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

I've seen the movies where kids play "mailbox baseball"; driving down residential streets smashing up mailboxes with a baseball bat. I always thought that was a irresponsible, stupid thing to do. I mean, for one, it is a federal offense to interfere with the delivery of the mail. For another, it means that several people are going to have to get a new mailbox, even though they shouldn't have to, and even though they may not be able to afford to.
I thought that I would be immune to this, since I have a brick mailbox. But alas, I suffered from some derivative of mailbox baseball. During the night hours, what would almost certainly have to be several people, knocked over my brick mailbox. It would have been no easy feat, as it is about four feet tall, and 2.5 feet square. Someone would have had to both knock it loose from it's mortar, and then lift it up before pushing it back over. It obviously wasn't hit by a car, as the mailbox was knocked back toward my house, not along the street in either direction.
I can't understand the mentality that considers this "harmless pranking", as it quite obviously does harm to my budget, which is thin already, and also causes me unneeded stress with my family, and leaves me feeling violated and vulnerable.
Our whole society has a problem wherein the law abiding have to pay the cost for both upholding the law, and for the consequences if the law is not upheld. I feel it is unfair that I should have to pay for someone else's damage to my property. Why don't we just charge all the criminals that have been caught doing crimes like this, and pay for their damage out of that money?
We should make criminals pay for their own room and board in prison, pay for the legal system that brought them to justice, and recompense all the people that they hurt. Sure, it seems harsh, but of course, criminals always have the option of not committing crimes. It's not like anyone ever steals to survive anymore. The reason people steal these days is because they want stuff that they can't have unless they are willing to work for it.
I wish I could afford a camera system at my house. It seems like every couple of months, somebody vandalizes my house. If I could catch them on video, maybe I could get them thrown in prison. Seems harsh, but once again, nobody forced them to vandalize my house.

My father has been charged with "unlawful taking of a water fowl". He has confessed to accidentally killing a Canada Goose with a pellet gun.This is not the first time he has shot at the geese. He shoots at them when they chase his cats, chase his grandchildren, eat all the birdfood out of his birdfeeders, and congregate on his driveway, refusing to budge to allow him to go to work. This is the first time he has ever actually hit one, and unfortunately, it died. Naturally, for this first ever occurence, a treehugger (driving a big american pickup truck) was there to witness and to accost my father. My father was frightened by the man's behaviour, and it was a race to see who would call the police first. The police came, and my father confessed. Not having any idea what to charge him with, they eventually left. The next day, after constant badgering from the "good samaritan", they finally were able to come up with the charge of "unlawful taking of a water fowl". They asked my father if he would come down to the station and surrender his pellet gun, and $250 bond, or if they should send a squad car for him. My father said he would drive himself, to save the taxpayers some money on the squad car. And he did, and he surrendered his pellet gun, and paid $250. Now he has a court date at the end of March, and may face additional charges up to $5000, and up to a year in prison. This is an absurd punishment for a man who has spent his life bettering humanity and is now living on a fixed retirement income. My father was one of the brilliant engineers who helped Bell Laboratories to be a success. He dedicated 35 years of his life to the company, which under Lucent's horrible management, suffocated and was all but destroyed. My father has worked on premature baby respirators, cost effective home alarm systems, voice recognition technologies, and a host of other projects to benefit humanity, and now, at the behest of one environmentalist nutcake, society wants to throw him in prison. The self procalimed environmentalist admits that he wants the court to "nail his butt". he says he saw someone deliberately swerve to hit a canada goose once and he swore to himself that the next time he saw something like that, he would do something about it. Well, my father is not the one who swerved to hit a goose. Why should he be prosecuted at the whim of this nut job because of something someone else did? The nut job also admitted that he was a reformed hunter. Now it becomes clear that the man has issues with his own pat "sins" and rather than dealing with them, he is going to attempt to punish my father for his own sin. The man obviously has some emotional issues.
Ironically, my father was charged with a crime which he did not commit. He did not unlawfully take a waterfowl. The environmentalist did. The environmentalist took the bird and buried it. HE is the one guilty of unlawfully taking a waterfowl.
Anyone in the northern part of the United States is aware of the problem with Canada Geese. The geese cause airplane crashes, automobile crashes, bite children and pets, and leave their staining and corrosive poop all over pavement, roofs and anything left outdoor. It is legal in many states to destroy the eggs of Canada Geese. Why? Because it is the migratory geese which are considered endangered. Obviously if they are laying egges, they are not migratory, but resident. The law has seen the light of day and realized that non-migratory Canada Geese are a huge problem. Some states even have hunting seasons for Canada Geese. Was the one that my father shot a migratory bird? Evidently not, as it was in Illinois in the middle of winter. However, even though Illinois will allow you to destroy eggs, you may not actually kill one of the adults. The EPA has estimated that there are now more than 255,000 migratory Canada Geese, twice the number there were in 1972. However, there are literally millions of non-migratory nuisance geese. On the roads of Illinois, hundreds are killed every day. Yet none of those people are thrown in jail, or even charged with a crime.
I feel that my father is being unfairly targeted by a man with issues dealing with his own past, and unfortunately, the justice system is actually paying attention to the man.

It used to be an every 6 month chore to reinstall windows back in the old Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95 days. But after working with Windows 4.0 and 2000 and XP for the last few years, I had thought reinstalling Windows was a thing of the past. But not so! The day before yesterday, while working happily on my computer, I noticed Windows Update wanted to install some things. So I let it. BIG mistake. HUGE. After rebooting and logging back in, Windows Explorer throws an error. Then Dr. Watson throws an error. Every icon I doubleclick or right click throws a Windows Explorer error and a Dr. Watson error. Then I have to kill both instances of Dr. Watson before I can even get focus back. After that, the cycle just repeats itself. And of course, Clicking the Start Menu does the same thing. I try several different user profiles to see if the problem is only with mine. It's not.
I boot into safe mode and the same problem happens, but luckily after the first error, I am able to click some of my other icons. I attempt to run adaware, but after 25 minutes of scanning, (and finding about 83 things), it throws an error and dies. I try rebooting several times. Annoyingly, I am unable to log off in safe mode, so I have to keep physically powering off.
At one point, after allowing my computer to send the results of an error to Microsoft, I get a message back from Microsoft saying that the error is caused by LAME MP3 codec. Well, I decide to go ahead and uninstall the program that uses that, just in case. Unfortunately, it will not uninstallin safe mode, and I can not get to the uninstall window in normal mode.
I run the windows file checker utility to make sure the original versions of all windows executables are in place. It exits without saying anything, which I don't know if that is normal or not. But it sure didn't fix anything, as the problem still persists.
I download and reinstall XP service Pack 2. It doesn't immediately solve my problem of not being able to shut down cleanly when in safe mode. But when booting back up in normal mode, the windows explorer problem appears to be fixed. The computer works fine all day.
Then this morning I wake up to find that Windows Update has downloaded some more files to my computer and automatically rebooted. Once again, I get the windows explorer and Dr. Watson errors on everything I touch. One more time, I will try reinstalling SP2. Plus I am disabling Windows update. The exploits from the script kiddies cause much less damage and stress than the Windows Update is causing me.
If SP2 doesn't work this time, I guess it is time to reinstall Windows.

I got another amusing job solicitation the other day. It was for a medium length (6 month) contract in Connecticut. It looked like something I could do, so I responded that I was interested. They sent me a contract to sign prior to being presented to the company. When I looked at the contract, it stated that I would be an employee of the company, and that I would be responsible for all travel, relocating and living expenses. Now that is just completely unreasonable. Can a company really expect someone to up and move their family every 6 months at the whim of the company? Or since it is a short term assignment, does the company expect it's employees to eat $45,000 a year in travel expenses? Sure it's all tax deductible, since it is a business expense and is required in order to maintain employment. But tax deductible is not substitute for money in the wallet.
The other funny thing was that about half of the document was related to H1B status. I'm a citizen. I can work here. That's about all you need to know. But there were all these other questions about H1 status and whether I'd be willing to transfer my H1B to this company and so forth. My guess is that I will never hear from this company again, because they are only interested in hiring H1Bs. I am thinking that they are looking for H1Bs because H1Bs are more willing and able to relocate since many times they have no family ties here. As such, the H1Bs would be more willing to take a small apartment for 6 months at a time in a new locale. Also, they can afford to have tens of thousands of dollars shaved off of their wages for company expenses, since they are not trying to raise a family.
To a certain extent, they seem to meet the letter of the law by offering a competitive wage to H1b and citizen alike. However, the fact that they make the employee pay the travel expenses puts the job below the competitive wage, and thus it is illegal to give that job to an H1b. Also, if a citizen and an H1b are in competition for the same job, I believe it would be illegal to offer the job to the H1B unless he had specific jobs skills which were required by the job and that the citizen did not have. And then finally, I have to wonder how a company can actually offer jobs to H1Bs that are already here anyway. My understanding is that you can only hire an H1B if you offered a competitive salary and got no takers from a citizen. Only then could you offer the job to an H1B already here or a potential one in another country. However, many companies seem to be skirting the whole concept of offering the job to the citizens first. I find this to be an illegal method of trying to save money by hiring offshore labor when there is labor here in the United States willing to work if given the opportunity.
Well, anyway, as I said, I doubt I will hear from that company again, as I am not an H1B, and so they probably view me as being too expensive. (But how can that be, since H1Bs are paid the same competitive wage as the rest of us? Ha!)
Luckily, the market continues to improve and it will be only a matter of time before I can laugh at the two companies that have so far treated me in a way most unappreciative of my years of experience.

I recently received a job offer from a local company. The offer itself was somewhat low on salary for the experience required. In addition, the job offered no paid holidays or vacation. Of course, they would still require you to take certain holidays off, they just wouldn't pay for them. The job was also somewhat risky, as the company basically did projects for outside companies, and if they didn't get a contract for a few weeks, they would let you go. Essentially, you were a W2 contractor for this company. In fact, if I had taken the job, I would have been termed a contract employee. However, in an effort to play both sides of the fence, despite all the lack of paid time off, and the fact that you would get laid off if there was no work, they still also termed their contract employees as exempt so that they wouldn't have to pay them overtime.
Well, since they offered no paid time off, I had to figure out how much that was going to cost me each year. They kept telling me to look at the "total package". However, they should have told me to just look at the base salary, because the total package involved me having to subtract from that. The total compensation they were offering was a few thousand more than I make at my present job. However, I stand to lose probably five or six thousand if I leave my present job, due to quarterly bonuses, 401k matching, profit sharing, Employee Stock Purchase program and other stuff. So in effect, the new company was asking me to make a move for a decrease in pay, at least for the first year.
While doing some research on salaries in the area, I found that the amount they were offering was about $10,000 below the average for the position. So they were offering below market wages AND not paying any time off.
So, naturally, I could not accept their offer. Instead, I made a counter offer. I asked for a compromise between what I was asking, which was industry average (despite thinking of myself as above average. See how accomodating I am?) and the amount they offered. I also asked that they pay for holidays and three weeks vacation. I told them that if it was a problem to give a new hire three weeks paid vacation, I would settle for two weeks. I also asked for a modest starting bonus to cover the losses I would suffer from leaving the old job.
Apparently, they were very upset at this counter offer, and I will no longer be considered for positions at this company. They rescinded the offer and gave the job to someone else. (Actually, no one else in this region has the combination of skills they were looking for, so I guess they had to settle for someone who can't do the job as effectively as me).
So when did it become a no-no to negotiate with a prospective employer? I realize this isn't the dot com era, but the economy is getting better, I am getting several notices a week from headhunters seeking to see if I am available. Another good question is, if you can't negotiate at hire time, when do you negotiate? Once a company has you, it is almost impossible to negotiate a new salary. If you get a raise, it will be only a few thousand. Just as in the '90s, the only way to get a significant raise is to go to a new company. Well, anyway, I feel that I should be allowed to negotiate with a company that pays far less than industry average, offers no paid time off, and expects you to take the risk of losing your job if they can't find a contract. I guess they figure they can find some suckers in the local market that don't have a job and would be willing to take anything just to work. That kind of sucks, because it brings down the average salaries for those of us who are more experienced and can actually do the job.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City byt Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. I am once again saddened and outraged at the injustice of the murder of 168 people, 18 of which were children and infants. The fact that none of my family were directly affected, despite living in Oklahoma City does nothing to console me or to relieve my anger at the perpetrators of this crime. The fact that Timothy McVeigh was executed for committing this crime does little to console me. I wish that we had resurrection technology to bring him back to life and kill him repeatedly, over and over. If he were driven insane by this process, we should treat him until he is well again, and then kill him some more.
My birthday, April 19th, was ruined forever by this tragedy. My own family on this day forgets my birthday, but remembers this tragedy. I don't blame them, and that is not why I am angry. I am angered because of the people whose entire lives were ruined, destroyed in an instant, by this evil, evil person. Beyond the people who died in the tragedy itself, there were the thousands of people who lost spouses, children, friends, even whole families. People committed suicide from the sorrow of the loss. McVeigh claims these people deserve to die because they served the "Evil Empire". Children and infants serve the empire? Please. What about McVeigh himself. He served the "Evil Empire" in the army. Why didn't he set a good example by killing himself first?
Even ten years later, the anger at this injustice boils inside of me. I don't think it will ever go away. Time doesn't heal all wounds. May God be with all the families of those hurt and killed in this tragedy. May God welcome them into heaven with open arms. And may Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols burn forever in Hell.

I hate April 1st. Okay, so maybe it was funny for the first couple of hundred years to make fun of the pagans celebrating the new year 3 months into the Christian calendar, butI think April Fools day has lost it's way. Probably very few people remember the origin of the holiday and instead spend the entire day making up horrible ways to trick people and making up phony headlines. Today I heard some idiot on the radio convince a DJ to call his wife and tell her he was a Law Enforcement Officer and that her husband had been picked up for solicting for prostitution. That's not funny! That's horrid!
To me wading through the jokes and fake slashdot articles and all the other BS on April 1st is just a chore. I liken it to having to "just hit delete" on the 1,000 or so spam e-mails I get a day.
Of course, I also hate the commercialism of Christmas, and having to wear green on Saint Patricks day. In fact, I pretty much hate tradition right down the line. I mean, tradition is supposed to be about remembering the origins of a practice. But nobody does! It becomes tradition for tradition's sake, which is meaningless and an afront to the thing you were trying to memorialize.
There may be those who take offense at my attitude towards April Fool's day. They say I should just enjoy it. I hope they also equally enjoy my own tradition which I invented for this day. Every time someone plays a joke on me, I punch them in the face. If they don't enjoy it, perhaps they just need to be more open minded and realize that, hey, it's just an April Fool's prank.

The only good news is that Terri is now free of the starvation and dehydration that has been forced upon her these last few weeks by her murderers.
It is inconceivable to me that we can force a human being to starve to death, yet if I don't feed my dogs, I would be put in prison. The priorities of society are so screwed up it is unbeleivable. Save the whales, murder the people.
What is truly sad is that Michael Schiavo went through such a change of heart when the money entered the picture. For the first several years, he tried all kinds of therapy and took her to many doctors in order to help her try to recover. However, after successfully suing one of her doctors, and getting a large sum of money for her treatment and for his own pain and suffering, his attitude totally changed. He stopped all therapy. He began pursuing legal action to stop her from being fed. He gave up on her completely. In fact, not only did he give up on her, but he forced everyone else to as well. He refused to allow her parents to take her back and care for her. Why? Because he stood to get the remainder of her lawsuit awards if she died. He wouldn't get that money if they burned it all up on therapy. It was also at this time that he began saying that she never would have wanted to live this way.
Sadly, it even became more than about the money, because at the last hour, he wouldn't even allow Terri's parents in to see their daughter as she passed away. Not only was he an accomplice in her murder, but he intentionally added to their pain by not allowing them to see their daughter, whom they had raised for 18 years and cared for these last 10 years. Michael Schiavo is obviously a man who became consumed by evil; the love of money, and the desire to hurt others. It is a shame, because he didn't start out that way.
Rest in peace, Terri. I hope that we can bring your murderers to justice.