markomalley

There, got it fixed. BTW, if you want any kind of reference on HTML, I would recommend the following site:

http://www.w3schools.com/

I use it as a reference all the time -- you have actual examples for just about all aspects of HTML, XML, JS, CSS, VBScript, etc. from that site.

You mean like this?

{bgsound src="http://home.comcast.net/~markomalley12345/guns_n_roses-sweet_child_o_mine.mid")

I'd really rather not, its somewhat annoying, imho. (LOL)

Insert the following tag:

{bgsound src="http://URL and filename"}

(replacing the "{" with "

(btw, I keep editing this fool thing to find the clip that will work--but the tag works fine)

We want pictures of the show!!!

quote:

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Originally posted by What The Hay:

PBS just did a special the other night on whether or not Wal-mart was good for America. It was fairly controversial. Manufactures used to have a lot of clout for setting the price on the goods they produce, but now retailers like Wal-mart have the most clout by forcing manufactures to drop their price or "we will take our business elsewhere" - i.e., overseas. Wal-mart even wanted one supplier to drop their unit price to .01! That explains why there are many people in China who work in factories for only .25/hr.

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And its curious that Wal-Mart used to be cited as an example in a lot of management books as an example of how you should leverage your power over suppliers. Now, of course, it is far too politically incorrect. But, still, they are trying to get the cheapest price possible for the stuff they sell over here. I don't know what company that would do otherwise. Because they are so big, they are able to leverage that market share to force their suppliers to produce the parts they want. Nobody is going to force a company to add or subtract features from their product; nobody is going to force them to sell their product for $___ per unit. But, if they want to sell to this one company, they will. Otherwise, they can peddle their wares elsewhere.

BTW, what explains why there are people working in China for .25/hr is that there are more people than jobs. Employers do not have to pay them more than that, because there are people waiting in line to get those good jobs when a person decides that .25/hr is not good enough. But, the situation with Wal-Mart is that when China becomes too expensive, they will engage factories in Bangladesh. When Bangladesh becomes too expensive, they'll start up factories in Tanzania.

ExC,

Sorry (blush). But the point is that you can get a decent rate of return on savings. As long as you invest a little every month, you can make a decent return. You just set a goal (retirement, kid's college, buying a new car in a few years, or whatever) and discipline yourself to save for it. Realistically, a disciplined savings plan like what I outlined can yield about 8-9% per year (on average) if you look at it over five or ten years. As long as you don't call it an IRA, you can pull the money out when you have your goal set, whether you are 35, 50, or 70. But the key is to dedicate to regular savings.

quote:

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Originally posted by Wacky Funster:

Mark!!!!!!!

Tell me tell me....where are you getting 5% interest so I can put all my money there too!!!! I'm there!!!!

??????

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Sorry...the best CD rate going today is 4.97%.

However...where do I have my savings? In equities...

my company's stock fund is up almost 40% this year...

s&p index fund is up 13%

vanguard windsor is up 11.5%

oakmark global is up 13.9%

pimco bond fund is up 6.85%

and my GNMA fund is up 31%

So, yes I get a little better than 5%, thanks...

(btw, what I did was took 15% out of my paycheck and put it into a liquid fund that paid an even 5%. When the market hit rock bottom in spring 2003, I transferred all of it over to the S&P fund -- and then had all my deductions go into a diversified portfolio since that time -- because of that, I've made over 40% on my investments in the past 3 years).

Most funds will allow you to begin with as little as $50 per month and zero down, as long as you have the money transferred through payroll deduction.

Savings: put money away for yourself first. Highest priority. Even a little bit saved over time will have a tremendous effect over time. For example, $50 per month @ 5% interest will add up to over $20,000 in 20 years. That's not much but it adds up.

Debt: Get real about whatever debt you have. Know your debt. Figure out which credit card is costing the most money (the highest interest rate). Pay that credit card off first. If you pay more than minimums on all your cards, switch around to pay as much as you can on the highest interest rate card until it is paid off, while paying minimums on the other cards. Once the first card is paid off, close it and work on the next card and the next until they are all paid off.

Start a warehouse buying club up with neighbors. You can leverage the larger sizes that you get at a Sam's Club, Costco, etc., by going in together with neighbors. If you have three families that can go in on buying quantity, you can buy the 10 lb package of meat and split it up three ways -- and that is often cheaper. Get a Foodsaver to repackage and vacuum seal the food once split up. Also a foodsaver is helpful for freezing. Since it gets the air out of the packaging, you can freeze food while delaying the onset of freezer burn (also helps you leverage grocery store sales on perishables).

If your kid goes to parochial school, you can apply for scholarships. You can also get a part time job at the school -- and they will reduce the tuition cost significantly, if not eliminating the cost. I know about four families whose mothers work in myu kid's school as "para-professionals." The pay is pretty low, but their kids' tuition is 100% paid for.

If you are buying a car, use the Carfax service to check on past accidents involving the car. It won't save any money initially, but it may help avoid expensive repairs in the future.

Satori:

I created a blank base layer that was 8 1/2 X 11 at 300 dpi. I then grabbed the individuals from other pictures using a lasso select, so I could just grab their bodies and not a ton of background that I didn't want (having said that, if I had the time, I would then erase up to the edge of their bodies, but I was a little sloppy -- 'cause I wanted the girls to be able to take the picture home with them). I then cut and pasted the objects onto the base layer. I smoothed them out by making a 50 pt. soft edge for each of the objects. I arranged the picture objects on the base layer to be somewhat attractive and adjusted the lighting on some of them as needed to make them appear somewhat homogenous (PhotoImpact has an AI lighting feature that can simulate different lighting effects). Again, if I would have had more time, I would have done a little more (erased the lamp stand that appears in some of the pix using a cloning feature, etc.). Finally, I put a pattern on the base image using a feature called "magic gradient."

After all the editing, I saved the object-based image (so that I could edit it more if I wanted) and then merged the objects onto the base image and saved it as a JPEG (the version I have here is a scaled-down version more suitable for the web -- the original object-based image is 46 MB and the original JPEG is about 3 MB -- this scaled down version is 146 KB).

For printing, I used a HP 952 and some 24 lb 108 brightness paper. Not the best stuff in the world, but plenty good enough.

Oh, btw, this program (PhotoImact)is more analogous to Photoshop CS rather than Photoshop Elements. It has advanced features like cloning, dynamic transform, AI filters, path and raster drawing, histogram image management, etc. that put it on a par with professional products.

Thanks for the feedback folks. There were 6 of them spending the night. I made that collage as a little keepsake for their party.

As far as how it was done...the pictures were taken with a Kodak DX 3600 camera and the photo-editing/ composition was done using a software package called Ulead Photoimpact. Free advertising, here: I have been formally trained on the use of Adobe Photoshop and will tell you that this Photoimpact program is every bit as capable as the Adobe program, but, instead of costing over $600, it costs about $85-$90.

Oh, btw, the collage took about an hour to throw together. Software is a beautiful thing.

My daughter had a slumber party last night. Amazingly, I survived the event.

The girls didn't manage to kill each other and they aren't enemies for life upon the end of the party, so I guess it worked out pretty good.

Hope y'all enjoy the above collage.

Hey, haven't these crazy men figured out how to keep their pants zipped (except for with their spouses)???????

And I hadn't checked out any of the case law on this. That's why I said "that I'd heard of." If there's already black letter law on the subject, I'd just wonder why NOW would be pitching a b*t*h about the charge? (See this thread)

But, shucks, "HotShot" coming from you is quite the high praise! Shucks ((blush))

Funny. What worked with mine was when we were at a resort in So. Italy for about a month during the summer when mine was a little over 3 years old. My little one had been in regular underwear during the day for months, but we still had to use the pull ups during the night or would deal with a wet mattress. Well, we brought a package of the pullups with us, but ran out. The Italians didn't have pullups -- they only had pampers. So, we had to let her tough it out. She let go the first night. And that was that. She found she didn't like waking up with wet jams and wet sheets. The beauty of the situation was that she ruined the hotel's mattress, not ours. :D-->

Nope. California already had a law in place since 1970. The federal law you're talking about was signed in May of 2004 (":P-->ubl212.108" TARGET=_blank>UNBORN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE ACT OF 2004," Public Law 108-212).

So, Peterson could not have been tried under that federal law:

First, a state court would not have jurisdiction to try a case using federal law (it would have to be tried in federal court).

Secondly, it wouldn't be possible to try Peterson under a law passed after the fact (violation of ex post facto protections). Laci Peterson was murdered in (2002?). The law was passed last May.

What I was talking about was that this is the first time I've heard about somebody being convicted using those fetus homicide laws. It will be interesting to hear if that verdict is allowed to stand or if the law is declared unconstitutional. Why? Because he was convicted of murder of his unborn child. I would think that a person would need to be a person (with human rights) in order to be murdered. Peterson could not have "murdered" a legal non-entity, which essentially is the legal status given a fetus. So, I would think that if that verdict stands and the law is not declared unconstitutional, it would provide some kind of a precedent that might be able to be used against womens' health clinics in the future, particularly those that perform late term abortions.

Interesting dimension to all of this...they found him guilty for murder of an unborn child. This might have some implications that the prosecution may not have realized.........

They are especially beautiful up in the Artic regions, like in Finland. I saw them when I was up in Greenland a little over 20 years ago. It was an absolutely stunning sight.

Figures...the guy was from the District of Columbia Air National Guard. Around here, we all realize that the DC government has a hard time doing even simple tasks. Didn't realize it extended to their Guard, too.

OK. I can buy that. Thanks for the info.

Would you all who support removal of the ten commandments from public display have a different opinion if they were on display with other sources of law? (such as the magna carta, constitution, scales (representing justice), etc...in other words, acknowledging a historical connection between the ten commandments, along with other precursors, in forming the modern body of law?

I'm just curious if the argument is with their excultation or even their presence in/ on a public builidng at all?

Thanks.

quote:

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Originally posted by Zshot:

Hmmmmm,

if they are useing "spyware" to track numbers...

I think that there are a few of us here who have anti-spyware software loaded on there computers (I have PC Tool anti-spyware loaded).

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In Alexa's methodology statement, above, they say that they get their numbers based upon traffic data from Alexa toolbar users. That is about as close a definition of spyware as I can find.

Pat, thank you.

But I still believe you are misinterpreting what you've read.

The traffic rank for www.greasespotcafe.com is 2,730,191 (3 mos avg). The reach per million users is .05.

Source: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...asespotcafe.com

The traffic rank for www.theway.org is 843,550 (3 mos avg). The reach per million is .45.

Source: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...=www.theway.org

The traffic rank for www.excultworld.com is 5,415,972 (3 mos avg). The reach per million is "--" (unmeasurable).

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...xcultworld.com/

So, yes, we are talking rank, not the number of hits. I am sure that Pawtucket could verify that there are not 2,730,191 (or 2,827,286) visits here in 3 months.

According to Alexa,

quote:

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What is Traffic Rank?

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

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So, the ranks and numbers are based upon people that have the Alexa toolbar installed on their web browser. (This means that the Alexa toolbar is a piece of spyware, as it reports your web usage to a third party database for compilation)

I would wager that there are probably about 100 users a day who access IP address: 63.251.4.135 gscafe.com (the infopop forums). And, unless these people navigate to the forums through the web site, there are probably far fewer who access the IP address: 207.217.96.34 www.greasespotcafe.com (the website). Maybe a few more, maybe a few less. Now, out of those users, how many have the Alexa toolbar installed on their web browser? (Hopefully most of us are smarter than to intentionally install a piece of spyware). Now, how many people access www.theway.org? I have no idea (nor do I really care). But I would wager that probably a higher percentage of them have the Alexa toolbar installed on their web browser than GSers. (Something about mind-numbed robots vice people who have started again to think for themselves)

Oh, and Pat, it doesn't matter to me that much. When I saw your initial post that implied that any one of those sites had over 2,000,000 visitors in the period of three months, then I had to investigate.

Take it easy.

Sorry to burst anybody's bubble, but with a web site ranking, the lower the number, the higher the rank, i.e., a ranking of 1 is better than a ranking of 1,000,000.

I fully agree with the content issues mentioned by the others...

Well, here is another one on the same subject (sorry that it is from the Washington Times rather than the Post, but I don't think it is overly political):

quote:

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Scouting jetliners for new attacks

By Audrey Hudson

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published July 22, 2004

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Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.

At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane.

"No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," an air marshal said.

Pilots and air marshals who asked to remain anonymous told The Washington Times that surveillance by terrorists is rampant, using different probing methods.

"It's happening, and it's a sad state of affairs," a pilot said.

A June 29 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles is similar to a Feb. 15 incident on American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

The Northwest flight involved 14 Syrian men and the American Airlines flight involved six men of Middle Eastern descent.

"I've never been in a situation where I have felt that afraid," said Annie Jacobsen, a business and finance feature writer for the online magazine Women's Wall Street who was aboard the Northwest flight.

The men were seated throughout the plane pretending to be strangers. Once airborne, they began congregating in groups of two or three, stood nearly the entire flight, and consecutively filed in and out of bathrooms at different intervals, raising concern among passengers and flight attendants, Mrs. Jacobsen said.

One man took a McDonald's bag into the bathroom, then passed it off to another passenger upon returning to his seat. When the pilot announced the plane was cleared for landing and to fasten seat belts, seven men jumped up in unison and went to different bathrooms.

Her account was confirmed by David Adams, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), who said officers were on board and checked the bathrooms several times during the flight, but nothing was found.

"The FAMS never broke their cover, but monitored" the activity, Mr. Adams said. "Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. But there was enough of a suspicious nature for the FAMS, passengers and crew to take notice."

A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling "ready-to-build" bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms.

On many overseas flights, airlines have issued rules prohibiting loitering near the lavatory.

"After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together and eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified," Mrs. Jacobsen said.

"One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves ... one of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down."

In an interview yesterday with The Washington Times, Mrs. Jacobsen said she was surprised to learn afterward that flight attendants are not trained to handle terrorist attacks or the situation that happened on her flight.

"I absolutely empathize with the flight attendants. They are acting with no clear protocol," she said.

Other passengers were distraught and one woman was even crying as the events unfolded.

The plane was met by officials from the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, Federal Air Marshal Service and Transportation Security Administration. The Syrians, who were traveling on one-way tickets, were taken into custody.

The men, who were not on terrorist watch lists, were released, although their information and fingerprints were added to a database. The group had been hired as musicians to play at a casino, and the booking, hotel accommodations and return flight to New York from Long Beach, Calif., also checked out, Mr. Adams said.

"We don't know if it was a dry run, that's why we are working together with intelligence and investigative agencies to help protect the homeland," he said.

Mrs. Jacobsen, however, is skeptical the 14 passengers were innocent musicians.

"If 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?" she asked in the article.

The pilot confirmed Mrs. Jacobsen's experience was "terribly alike" what flight attendants reported on the San Juan flight.

He said there is "widespread knowledge" among crew members these probes are taking place.

A Middle Eastern passenger attempted to videotape out the window as the plane taxied on takeoff and, when told by a flight attendant it was not permitted, "gave her a mean look and stopped taping," said a written report of the San Juan incident by a flight attendant.

The group of six men sat near one another, pretended to be strangers, but after careful observation from flight attendants, it was apparent "all six knew each other," the report said.

"They were very careful when we were in their area to seem separate and pretended to be sleeping, but when we were out of the twilight area, they were watching and communicating," the report said.

The men made several trips to the bathroom and congregated in that area, and were told at least twice by a flight attendant to return to their seats. The suspicious behavior was relayed to airline officials in midflight and additional background checks were conducted.

A second pilot said that, on one of his recent flights, an air marshal forced his way into the lavatory at the front of his plane after a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in for a long period.

The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side.

The second pilot said terrorists are "absolutely" testing security.

"There is a great degree of concern in the airline industry that not only are these dry runs for a terrorist attack, but that there is absolutely no defense capabilities on a vast majority of airlines," the second pilot said.

Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, said there is no "central clearinghouse" for them to learn of suspicious incidents, and flight crews are not told how issues are resolved.

She said a flight attendant reported that a passenger was using a telephoto lens to take sequential photos of the cockpit door.

The passenger was stopped, and the incident, which happened two months ago, was reported to officials. But when the attendant checked back last week on the outcome, she was told her report had been lost.

Recent incidents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have also alarmed flight crews. Earlier this month, a passenger from Syria was taken into custody while carrying anti-American materials and a note suggesting he intended to commit a public suicide.

A third pilot reported watching a man of Middle Eastern descent at the same airport using binoculars to get airplane tail numbers and writing the numbers in a notebook to correspond with flight numbers.

"It's a probe. They are probing us," said a second air marshal, who confirmed that Middle Eastern men try to flush out marshals by rushing the cockpit and stopping suddenly

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This is a major topic right now on our local (Washington DC) talk radio station. Had a pilot for a "major airline" on as a guest and he provided confirmation that these things are happening more and more in recent months. (FWIW)

Galen: thanks for the offer. I think we are going to be north of there, but we're getting the last of our propaganda in now -- will probably be doing our actual trip planning next week. I think the game plan is going to be for us to go almost as far north as Troy NY or even Plattsburgh and then cut east from there.

Having said that, if we do our return trip along the coast (yucch, means driving through NYC), then we might take you up on the sub tour -- Appreciate it!!!

All I can say is it was too much (although it didn't seem like that at the time).