Author: sean

Inside the Meltdown…

I was in Texas last week and was able to see a number of “Tea Party” protests that are generally against big government, and are fed up with the currently elected government and the recent bailout monies allocated for these large banks. Since I fancy myself as a person who agrees with these ideals, I started researching into what really is going on with the recent bailouts. I’ve learned about how republican hardcore conservative political bodies suddenly were asking congress to pony up billions of dollars to shore up companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG due to this newly discovered economic nightmare called, “Systemic Risk“.

Republicans…. Asking for money?  Seriously?  So while the “Tea Baggers” have valid points, why is there such difference in handling the current economic crisis from the typical repulican platform?

People generally thought that huge corporations are less likely to go belly up simply because their portfolios are so large no one event could cause total failure.  With the housing market we all know and love these days,  the US found out the hard way that not only are these extremely large corporations suseptable in their own right, they’re so interconnected in the markets now that when one goes down like Lehman Brothers, it causes a whole cascade effect.  Example:  Lehman has all these assets and bonds that go to hell because of the housing bubble popping.  The government doesn’t intervene because of fears from “Moral Hazard“, so Lehman goes to bankruptcy.  So why does AIG suddenly fail?  So if you are AIG, and you’ve been selling insurance on Bonds and such where if a bond goes to crap and AIG will insure you against the risk – AIG is now required to honor all these insurance policies for bonds in the tank.  AIG’s assets are also hurt by the market in general, and now with the prospect of having to pay all these insurance claims on bonds from companies like Lehmans, AIG is now in dire straits…. The trend goes on and on to the point now where there are entire countries like Iceland who are completely bankrupt!

The best program by far I’ve seen regarding this whole deal is the Frontline episode, “Inside the Meltdown”.  While this is a PBS show, I’m a firm believer that every American needs to watch this at least once.  Agree or Disagree with the details, but watch the program and educate yourself – Please!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-05

  • Off to the Glenn to Celebrate Rachelle’s B-day. Earlier I started work on my main wing assembly for the F4U Corsair. 2 weeks to flight! #
  • Just got to my hotel in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Feeling kinda sick. Hopefully it’s just jet crud #
  • Wrapping up at the customer site in Ft Lauderdale. Going home tomorrow! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

John Mayer

In case you’ve been in a bubble and are in dire need of decent music,  I highly recommend John Mayer.  There’s a few songs from him below.  If you happen to be a singer/songwriter, check out John’s web site blog @ http://www.johnmayer.com/battlestudies/. A recent post called “Conscious Composition” is very cool.  Good Stuff.  So what album is his best?  Well I like Continuum, but probably just because it’s his latest studio album.  I have seriously enjoyed every album to date.   Frankly you can’t go wrong with John.  One album that never had big press that I enjoy is, “Inside Wants Out“.  Check him out!

The song, “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room“, is in my humble opinion is a masterpiece:

“Belief” is another great tune from John…

Howie Day @ The Bluebird

howie-dayStuart was gracious in surprising me with a Howie Day ticket tonight. Man my bro can be a cool cat. At the venue Stuart ran around taking some great pics of Howie live. Highly recommended if you like phenomenal guitar and smart songwriter lyrics. Pics are @ www.skfunphoto.com. Below are a few video’s of Howie doing his thing.  His talent is in the way he can play guitar, and in using loopback devices construct a vibrant full sound — live!  During the BlueBird concert he took the song below, played it, and before he ended the whole thing decided to double up the speed and start a whole techno vibe with it.  Truly makes a regular DJ look like a pud.  Beyond his obvious playing talent his lyrics are great too.  Try him out!

The Song, “Sorry so Sorry”

The Song, “Bunnys“, Live – Incredible!

Live version of, “She Says” – Awesome lyrics!

Bye MobileMe…

iphone_thurrott_mobile_me2Buying a hosted domain: $100
Buying a pro membership on smugmug: $60
Installing WordPress: $0

Able to manage my familiy’s websites with freedom and without major pain: Priceless!

I recently started a journey on removing my dependancy on Apple’s MobileMe services. When .Mac ruled the land with web-based wonders, life was good. Then Apple decided to trash what worked with MobileMe, and everything went to hell. Load speeds, reliability, service limitations, email address changes, ical incompatibilities, groups disabled; all this appeared with the shiny new MobileMe. But I can sort of sync with my iPhone. Are you kidding? Did Apple really have to choose between having great user experience with .Mac and basic iPhone sync with MobileMe?

Overall MobileMe is no longer worth the money and time I invested in it.

So now I’m sporting a spiffy new web site using WordPress which is very easy to use and I have completely stopped using Apple’s iWeb as a result. I have a regular IMAP email server with my web isp provider for email, and even Google Sync Mobile services for my iPhone calendar and contacts.

I also use a paid picture site called smugmug for all of our photos. Why a paid site? I have complete control of the site and the themes, no Adware, backups, Share with family sections, and I was even able to point my own domain to the smugmug directly – http://pics.gridleak.com. They also handle raw picture formats which is a real plus. I learned the hard way that many of the “free” sites will tamper with your image resolutions when you upload them to save server disk space. If you’re interested in trying smugmug you can test it out with a free 14-day trail, and you can use the coupon code OHpYezYHRef9s for a discounted join rate. My Bro Stuart was the one that turned me on to the site. Yes… Stuart. The kid that didn’t have a computer until last year and started life right with a Macbook Pro. Werd!

So I’m now ready to cut the cord on MobileMe. It’s sad really; Apple broke something that really worked. Even today it’s getting better again, but I’m tired of waiting. I’m also done with being at the mercy of a support FAQ web page when I have real problems. While Apple’s computer support is the best in the business, you can’t get a live person to talk to you about MobileMe issues.

If you’re interested in making the plunge, or you want MobileMe like functionality, below is a list of technologies that take care of what MobileMe does for a Apple system:

MobileMe Replacement
Website ISP like FatCow or BlueHost
Email ISP like FatCow or Google Mail
iWeb WordPress
Mobile Sync Services Spanning Sync, GooSync and Google Sync Mobile
iDisk ISP or something like Amazon S3 or Nirvanix
Back to My Mac Screen Sharing or LogMeIn.com
Pages and Numbers sharing Google Apps

My hope is that Apple learns from this experience and doesn’t become another company too big to care about it’s core users; like what happened with “the other” company we all know and love.

Let us now pray…

RC Flying fun with the Padilla’s

Today was a great day: planes, friends, and no trashed planes at the end – Perfect! Below are a few photo’s from the day’s events. The smurf lookin’ guy is me, and Grace and AJ are in the mix as well. We went to the Miniature Aero Sportsters field to fly and the hospitality was wonderful. A number of “Pros” were there doing thier thing and they were eager to see a new potential member. I got the memeber information and just sent the check in. I was very pleased with the attitude of everyone there, and I even got some great advise on my Stryker F27C delta. Good stuff.

AJ flew the Alpha Trainer for the first time using a “buddy box”, which is a transmitter tandemed to another transmitter I was controlling. I use a “Train” switch on my transmitter to selectively give control of the plane so AJ didn’t have to sweat much about it. I was very impressed and he got the whole “Your plane – My plane” concept and really hung in there. It generally takes about 15 flights on a buddy box to get used to flying, and another 15 flights to be good enough to do solo take offs and landings. Simulator time can help greatly with getting the concepts down. FS1 and Real Flight are the most popular sims out there. There’s even a ready to fly starter plane kit, complete with everything including the flight sim stuff at most hobbie stores now. The Hobbico Nextstar RTF is one of them.

Grace had my camera and got a number of great shots, including a few of me flying the helicopter. Thanks Grace!

Flying RC’s today

Today I think I’ll be flying some of my Remote Contol Planes and Heli’s. It’s been a long time so today may end in tragedy! I think I’ll fly out at the Miniature Aero Sportsters site north of DIA. It’s a bit of a drive but the area is beautiful and it’s rare to be able to see real jumbo’s flying while you’re flying RC’s. A great site. Details Here: http://home.comcast.net/~tglaess/Field.html

View Larger Map


Flobots Rock

flobotsMy Bro-man Stuart turned me on to a local band called the Flobots a while ago and I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear intelligent lyrics again. It took a while for me to warm up to them, but now Debi and I like to rock to them on a regular basis. We really do it up too – Turn it up on the little pocket radio and slowly move our rocking chairs. Kick ass! Seriously – the’yre good. For starters, try Handlebars or Rise – Give them a try, and support local music!