Letter to Obama

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 182013
 

I read an article here that contained a variety of quotes from President Obama regarding the senate voting against the proposed (unconstitutional) extensions to background checks. Here is the text of a letter that I just sent to the president:

  Dear President Obama,

  I am dismayed by your public comments after the senate voted down proposed
  extensions to background checks for gun buyers.  Regarding these extensions
  you said:

  "There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn't do this."

  Actually sir, there are very good reasons for NOT doing this.  One that I think
  we call *all* agree on is that current laws are ALREADY not being enforced.
  Of the very few legitimate denials that came out of the existing system,
  there were even fewer arrests -- I'm talking single-digits here!

  It is already a felony to lie on the form 4474 that must be filled out for
  ALL gun purchases, with the exception of private transactions among
  individuals.  So why are we not prosecuting those individuals that lie in
  an attempt to illegally purchase a firearm?  That just does not make sense!

  Instead of cultivate emotional responses to tragedy, why don't we apply our
  God-given logic and reason to the very real problems of violence and mental
  illness?  Those are the real problems.

  There should be NO infringements on the rights of law-abiding citizens to
  purchase and carry firearms.  NONE!

  Thank you for your time and attention.

  Respectfully,

  Gordon Tillman

Letter to Senator Toomey

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 122013
 

Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl Metcalfe and 75 House Republicans sent the following letter to U.S. Senator Pat Toomey on 2013-04-09 (Tuesday):

The majority of state legislators in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives believe that the right to bear arms must be vigorously defended, as evidenced by the passage of Castle Doctrine (Act 10 of 2011). Here in Pennsylvania, we have a longstanding history in support of our God-given, constitutionally-affirmed Second Amendment freedom. We swore to uphold and defend both the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions the day we took office. As Article 1, Section 21 of our state Constitution reads, ‘The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.’ We stand in defense of our Constitutions.

We write to you today to request that you stand with us. As part of our elected representation in Washington, D.C., we urge you to reject any compromise that would advance any new gun control measures, including ‘universal’ or ‘comprehensive’ background checks that are being advocated for by New York City Mayor Bloomberg, Obama, Biden, Senator Chuck Schumer or any other individuals seeking to violate the rights of law abiding citizens instead of stopping criminals. Our country does not need additional gun control laws from the federal or state levels of government. We should work to actively enforce our current laws; to stop those who are committing crimes against their fellow citizens.

In 2011, just in Pennsylvania alone, our citizens purchased over 600,000 firearms and our county sheriffs issued over 166,000 licenses to carry firearms, according to data from the Pennsylvania State Police. Meanwhile, crimes committed with firearms continue to decrease as issuance of licenses to carry firearms increases. Since 2006, Pennsylvania has seen an over 20 percent reduction in violent crimes committed with firearms. These statistics prove that an armed law abiding citizenry is the best deterrent to crime.

Enhanced gun control measures ultimately hinder the freedoms of law abiding citizens. As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.’

We encourage and expect you to stand with us to protect our God-given right to keep and bear arms.

You can view a PDF of the original document here

2012-04-08 (Sunday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 082012
 

oh iMovie

OK, so I have this lovely new 3′rd-generation iPad. I used it to shoot video of my youngest daughter’s wedding ceremony. Today i purchased and downloaded iMovie for the iPad and attempted to do some basic editing before uploading it to youtube.

Ater about 10 application crashes, in between which I have tried rebooting the iPad, I contacted Apple support. Spoke to a very nice lady named Linda who did her best to help me out. They apparently have no no knowledge of any problems with iMovie on the iPad crashing.

Bummer.

Trying to import it into iMovie on my MacBook Pro now to see if I have any better luck.

2012-04-07 (Saturday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 072012
 

linode

I have been meaning to move my personal MoinMoin wiki that was installed on my laptop to some secure place online where I can access it from anywhere. MoinMoin is written in Python, so I needed a place where I could host an online Python application. In addition, I use xapian indexing on all of my wiki pages, so I needed to either have that already available or have the flexibility to install it myself.

I decided to find someplace that offered good value on VPS hosting, one that allowed me to use the operating system of my choice, Ubuntu, where I would have complete control over the environment and be able to build and install anything that I needed.

So yesterday I consulted Google and, after a bit of review-checking, decided to give linode a try.

What a great decision that was! I signed up for the Linode 512 plan: 512MB RAM, 20GB storage, 200GB data transfer, dedicated IP address, Ubuntu 11.10. Perfect! It took maybe 1 minute from the time I made my decision until I had an operational instance with root access. Ran updates, installed a few packages, copied my data over, done.

cheapssls

So next thing I needed was an SSL certificate because I wanted to serve up my private wiki only over SSL. I brought it up with a self-signed certificate. That worked fine of course but I thought if I could purchase one for a decent price it would be worth it — if only to avoid the annoying browser warnings. Again after some Google-fu I decided to give cheapssls a try.

Another score! I paid only $23.97 for an SSL certificate that is good for 3 years. Again very easy. I ordered the certificate and then, while waiting to hear back from them, generated the CSR. By the time I had done that my cert was ready to activate. Pasted in the CSR, submitted it, and just a few minutes later I had my new certificate.

Dropped it in place, tweaked Apache config, and that was it.

summary

2011-04-30 (Saturday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 302011
 

Morning at Willow

We had a relaxing morning. Here is my honey making me some kind of surprise breakfast.

Mikie Making Breakfast - 2

And what a tasty surprise it was! Bacon with a fried egg over easy on top of a crab cake…

Amazing Breakfast

Shadow and Dot helped a lot in the whole cleaning cages process.

Shadowbird

Dot!

Trip to the gym

As I was on my way to the gym I spotted some unfortunate citizen pulled over by an Humble cop.

Humble Cop

At Lifetime Fitness I warmed up with 10 minutes on an elliptical machine and then 4 sets of circuit training on various Freemotion machines.

Elliptical Warmup

Stopped by the H.E.B. in Atascocita on the way home. Noticed that they sell various brands of Kombucha. Hadn’t noticed that before. Our daughter Chelsea makes this stuff.

Kombucha

Dinner

Mikie made this amazing dinner – ground beef cooked and seasoned with Mexican spices served over a bed of lettuce with pico de gallo, guacamole, sour cream, red onion, cheese, black olives, and salsa.

Dinner!

Daytum

All day long I played around with some software from Daytum. Pretty interesting. That came about as a result of me reading about Lifelogging.

2011-04-28 (Thursday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 282011
 

Physical Therapy

Had my third session of physical therapy at 07:00 this morning. The whole left knee situation is still pretty wonky. I cannot tell if physical therapy is helping or not. It still seems to me that the bulk of it is supervised stretching and weight training. I’m pretty good at doing that type of stuff without supervision, so … not sure how useful this expensive therapy is.

Drive to Work

Taco del Gordo

New Glasses

Mikie picked up our new glasses yesterday from the optical department at the Target’s in Humble. Still getting used to them.

New Glasses

Philip Greenspun Photography

Interesting site that a co-worker told me about: click here

Weird iTunes Error

Got these error dialogs this morning from iTunes. I ended up having to completely wipe and reinstall iTunes as per this Apple technote.

Weird iTunes Error 1

Weird iTunes Error 2

Latest in Paleo

I highly recommend giving a listen to episode 13 of the Latest in Paleo podcast.

Lunchtime workout

Got in a 30 minute cardio workout over at the LA Fitness by the office.

Elliptical

Drive Home

Houston Metro zipping by

2011-02-21 (Thursday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 212011
 

Rahab!

Had my first physical therapy session at N.E. Rahab in Humble. My therapist, Mary Jo, had me warm up for 10 minutes on an elliptical. The rest of the session was basically just supervised stretching and exercise. At the end of the session she showed me how to tape my left knee to help keep the kneecap in alignment while exercising. I’m not sure how much actual value there is to be had from these sessions. I think I would get as much value from just being given instructions and then turned loose at the gym.

Lunch

Got in a quick cardio workout at the LA Fitness by work. Did a bit of rowing followed by elliptical.

Rowing

Elliptical

Here are a few pics from the drive home

Harold & Woodhead

Harold and Woodhead

Coco’s Sushi Bar

Coco's Sushi Bar

Allen Parkway

Allen Parkway

Softlayer

Softlayer

Hanging with the birds

I spent some time relaxing with Dutch and Shadow

Dutch 1

Dutch 2

Shadow 1

Dutch 3

Shadow 2

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