Two thieves rob 82 year old man, he's facing charges

This is one of those stories that you hope isn't telling the whole story. Apparently, an 82 year old man discovered that two men (illegal aliens with prior charges no less) were stealing his trailer. The guy runs out after them, yells, and shoots holes through the front of the truck.

One of the thieves was hit and the other dropped him off at the hospital. The thieves haven't been charged with anything, but the old man faces 12 charges.

Colorado law states that you can't harm anyone (even if they are doing something illegal) unless it's self-defense. However, the old man shot the thieves through the front of the truck as they were trying to run over him. That sounds like self defense to me.

Here's the story:
http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-theives-free-victim-arrested-txt,0,231586.story?

Queen receives around $1 per year from every citizen

As I'm not from Great Britain, I have no misplaced allegiance in the monarchy. We Americans are arguing over whether or not everyone should be entitled to health care while Britain wastes something like $58 million every year on the royal family. Britain is having budget problems and is tightening the reins on welfare. Think about that for a second.

There are people out there who happened to be born poor. Then there are people who happened to be born to the royal family. The queen has never had to do anything. These poor people have probably worked some tough jobs. She gets around $8 million a year just for her expenses, and she's expected to ask for a raise, since that amount hasn't been increased in over 20 years.

Just wow.....

Source

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Improper word usage

There are some common word errors that people make that should be stressed more in elementary school. I don't pretend to use correct grammar all of the time, and I have as many typos as the next guy. However, there are a few common mistakes that I try to never make. Here is a list of these mistakes with correct examples:

1.) There, They're, and Their
This is probably the most common error. People can not get these right, but these
words can not be used interchangeably.

There should be used as follows:
"There is a place we can meet."
"My hat is over there."
"Did you know there is a cat on your back?"

The word "They're" is simply the words "They" and "Are" combined. If you can't substitute those words in the sentence then you are not using "they're" correctly. It's just that simple. Here are a few examples:
"They're going to the mall."
"Do you know where they're going?"
"They're here with me."

Finally, the word "their" is the possessive form of they. It says that something belongs to "they." That's the only way it should be used, ever. Here are some examples:
"Their dog ate my cat!"
"Have you been inside their house?"
"Wow, their shoes have pumps on them!"

2.) It's and Its
This is another common word usage error. These two words aren't that hard to use correctly. One is a conjunction and the other is possessive. "It's" is just short for "It is", while "its" means that something belongs to it.
Examples for "it's":
"It's going to be a hot day today."
"Do you know why it's so cold in this room?"
"Your gun sucks. It's killing me."

Examples for "its":
"This Dell no longer works. Its hard drive crashed."
"Its speakers aren't turned on."
"Where are its peripherals."

3.) Could Care Less
This one I hate. I'm not sure what point in time the "not" was dropped, but people say this incorrectly all the time. It should be "Couldn't care less" or "Could not care less." It should never be "Could care less" and here is why.

"Could care less" doesn't make any sense what-so-ever in the context. The phrase is meant to exclaim that you don't care. That's the whole point of the phrase. If you say "I could care less" you aren't making that point at all. If you could care less, then how much do you care? If you say "couldn't care less", then you are stating that you are at the bottom of your caring for that particular subject. You could not care any less...YOU DON'T CARE AT ALL.

So always, always say "couldn't care less", please!

There are plenty more of these, but these are the issues I see the most. Look, communicating through only written language already has its downsides. It's very hard to convey emotions. Don't make the communication less effective by making these errors.

I Hate Typical Laptop Touchpads

I remember when the first touchpads came out. I believe sometime in 1995 was the first time I'd ever seen one. I could be wrong. I may have seen them prior to that, but I know that was first time I'd ever used one. I liked it, and thought it was need. Of course, back then it was a great new idea.

The problem with the touchpad is that it never really changed much. The only things that have changed about them since 1995 is 1.)They are predominantly on laptops now. The first one I tried was a desktop peripheral. 2.)They have different surfaces. Other than that, they are the same device I first tried in 1995. I would even venture to say that some of them aren't as good as the device I tried in 1995.

There is a great exception to this, however. There is one touchpad that truly redefined the touchpad industry. Many of you may be perking up and ready to say "the multi-touch pad by Apple." This was indeed the direction I was heading but there's something important to note. You could buy the multi-touch pad for the PC prior to Apple acquiring the company that first manufactured them.

FingerWorks was the name of the company. The iGesture was the name of the pad. It was a multi-touch gesture pad that could have been great for PC users. It just never took off. It didn't have the right marketing. Thus, Apple now owns the technology and you can no longer buy it for your PC.

The technology went straight into the Macbooks and the iPhone/iPod Touch. You can still buy an iGesture and it may actually be a collectors item one day. A quick browse to here: Fingerworks iGesture Pad shows that it goes for around $1000 on Amazon. That goes to show that they are collectible. The original price was around $100 if I remember correctly.

So, while I had most laptop touchpads, there's one that I love. It's one of the main reasons I just purchased a Macbook Pro. The pointing interface is amazing. I prefer it to a mouse actually. It responds better than any touchpad I've ever used. It mades the touchpad on my Acer look like crap. Don't believe me? Go try one for yourself.

Keeping up with the Jones's

Let's all pretend for a second that we don't have to keep up with our neighbors. I mean if they buy a new car, we don't have to buy one as well. In fact, let us just say "nice purchase, Bob" and go about our day as if nothing happened. Because, you know, nothing did happen. Your life hasn't changed a bit. Your neighbor has made a purchase, and they should be able to enjoy that purchase without you buying something almost exactly like it.

It's important to be different. It's important to be unique. Some people do not have this need. They wish to be exactly like everyone around them. I strive to be the opposite. I don't want to buy something just because my neighbor has it.

"Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky. Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same."

I love that song and hate it at the same time. It is the theme song of the show "Weeds", though it is an old folk song. It's really full of meaning and can be transposed to many situations.

I Hate Vacations

Don't get me wrong. I like to relax, and that is exactly not what vacations are all about. At least, that is the case if you have more than two children. Two children are enough for anyone. Once the kids outnumber the parents, problems arise.

I'm amazed that so many people go on vacations. You're always so tired afterward. I'd rather stay at home and just relax.

My family just returned from Cocoa Beach, FL Monday night. We were supposed to stay another five days. My children would have seriously injured one another if we had stayed a couple more days. My youngest(2) was already clawing my three year old's eyes frequently.

We were thoroughly sunburned. I had sand all over me, and that stuff just won't come off easily. It also gets everywhere. The sheets on our bed were constantly covered with just enough sand to be annoying. The beach would be great if not for all that sand. I hated it. I'm sorry beach lovers but after all, I'm a grumpy old man.

Diets

I'm currently on what I call a "rice and water" diet. I was trying to think of a food that fills you up but doesn't contain a lot of calories. Rice was the logical choice. I've been drinking nothing but water for a few weeks now. Well I say nothing but water, but I have had a few sodas. I used to drink sodas all day long though. I've probably had about 1/30th of my normal soda intake over the past 3 weeks.

I'm like most everyone else when I say, "I hate diets", though. They usually don't work. I think the key ingredients to any weight loss plan are lots of water and plenty of exercise. That's all one needs to lose weight.

Rice doesn't really stay with you a long time, which is something desirable for me. I wanted something that would promote lots of small meals throughout the day. Rice expands in the stomach and gives a full feeling faster. This is especially true if you drink water along with it.

My theory is, the rice will expand in the stomach, making me feel full. I'll eat less at meals. I'll also get hungry faster because the rice digests easily. I'll also avoid indigestion, which I've started getting quite often in my older age (30+ hehe). The more frequent meals of rice should promote a faster metabolism and a smaller overall stomach size.

All these things along with exercise should help me lose weight well.

This leads me to another thing I can't stand: Diet Drinks, especially diet sodas. The other diet drinks are not as bad. I just don't get diet sodas. They taste horrible. They have sweeteners that are possibly just as bad for you as sugar if not worse. They still have the carbonations. They aren't as good for your body as plain water.

I prefer water to a diet drink any day. Water is something our bodies love. Water is also something that most of our bodies could use more of. We're supposed to drink around a gallon a day. I used to drink that much soda a day. Now I drink a lot of water. Some people pay a ton for fancy diets. Here's a great tip, and it's possibly the only diet tip anyone needs. Drink lots of water. Before, during, and after your meals drink water. During the day when you feel a little thirsty, drink water. That's probably the only diet some of us even need. Well, we also need to stay away from fast food. That will be enough, try it.

Internet Abbreviations

I hate abbreviations in everything we do. I also hate that most people call all abbreviations "ACRONYMS". They aren't all acronyms. Acronyms are abbreviations that form words. For example, WHO is an acronym for the World Health Organization. WHO is a word you can say. FBI isn't. FBI is an abbreviation.

This isn't why I started the rant. I started the rant because I am using twitter these days. The media and everyone on the internet told me I should be. If I want to message someone on twitter it's called a "DM", or direct message. Why the hell couldn't they just call it "private message" like every other damn application with such a function has always called it. It's supposed to be "PM", or "PM me".

Oh that leads me to something else I can't stand. I hate when people say they'll ping you. You hear a lot of IS manager types use this. I believe this resulted from a manager mistakenly overhearing someone say "I'll PM you" one day. They also heard the work "ping" because it's an often use networking term. Then they just substituted ping for PM. They thought it made sense and everyone around them just assumed that it must be correct.

I don't know how it came to mean "PM" but ping shouldn't be used that way. So please stop.

Texting

You are going to want to avoid this post if you don't like cussing, because this subject stirs something inside of me that I can't control.

Everywhere you go, you see someone with a cell phone in their hand "texting" someone else. Texting, for those of you who may have been living in caves for about 10 years is how everyone loves to communicate these days. Texting is DUMB.

Sure, there are SOME uses for texting. For instance, if you are running late somewhere and you want to let the person know so. You can shoot a quick message "I'm running late" to them. That's where the usefulness of texting ends and the dumb use of it begins.

People don't just use texting for short quick messages. Texting is used for entire conversations. The stupid part of this is that these conversations are typed on a CELL PHONE. Cell phones themselves are superior technology. You can actually communicate much faster by talking and listening.

What's worse, in many cases where people are using text messages, if they had just called the person they would have saved money. Calling can be free in the evenings and weekends. It can also be free between two people of the same carrier. Texting however still costs money. People will pay upwards to $60 per month for a text plan.

If that sounds reasonable, remember that before texting and even before everyone had cell phones, there were these things call two-way alphanumeric pagers. They were basically just pagers you could text back and forth on. They weren't very popular compared to texting today which doesn't make much sense considering they were exactly the same thing. The big difference: two-way paging cost us around 9 bucks per month back then.

It's like people are working in reverse these days. Twitter and facebook are other examples. IRC is still much more efficient that twitter and it has less spammers. It is superior in many ways. Calling someone and talking to them is FAR superior to texting any day.