The Pete's blog/

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Saw this in Hollywood last night. Sorry it's a little blurry, but I didn't feel like it was really worth a clearer shot :)



First Yorkie bars that aren't for girls, then a study that tries to blame women for breast cancer and, now, we've got guys like this who still think it's appropriate to connect a woman's ability to perform in bed to a woman's ability to perform in the White House.



I don't hear anyone accusing Bush of shooting blanks in the War Against Terror, despite the fact that he's doing exactly that. I mean, TALK about impotent against the terrorists! He has just flaccidly flopped around in the Middle East while the only things *rising* are inflation and the cost of oil. Instead of $145 billion, perhaps he should try some Viagra for the economy.



Just imagine what sex must be like with Laura.



"The time for diplomacy has past. You're either with me, or against my orgasm."
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How did this movie do in the theater?



Did anyone see it? Anyone at all?
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The above screencap comes from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/news.html



Haha, dig that pun in the title for this post!



Anyway, so the article is pretty self-explanatory as is the headline. Just because the price of oil goes up it doesn't mean their profits should go up as well. In fact, unless they're hiking up prices even more, their profits should be going *down* not up.



See, what is happening here is that Shell is charging us more for their product--but they've increased the price of gasoline at a rate that is not commensurate to the price-increase oil has gone through.



In other words, they're getting greedy.



One of the theories of the Free Market goes like this:



You can charge as much as you like for your product so long as the market will bear it.



Another way to put this is to say: As long as people are buying, your price isn't too high.



What the Free-Market-thing doesn't really take into consideration is that sometimes people will buy something they need even if they can't afford it.



Housing is a good example. Health care is another. So what happens when you can't afford to buy those things but you need to anyway? You take out a loan.



We know how that goes. The number one reason people declare bankruptcy these days is because of health care costs. Another popular reason? Housing loans. Perhaps you've heard of the recent sub-prime mortgage mess?



So, some of us (even those of us who don't drive SUVs) are paying in excess of $30-$40 (and even $50) to fill our tanks up. A friend of mine who does drive an SUV pays $350 a month on gasoline. That's a car payment or in some areas of the country a month's rent.



So, are we going to start taking out loans just to buy gas? I'm not suggesting that--I bet we're going to end up sacrificing other things instead. That new suit for work, or the new TiVo or better car insurance, health or life insurance, those nice things you want to buy your family and friends on birthdays, nights out with your significant other--that sort of thing.



There are a lot of "little" things we can all sacrifice so that companies like Shell can keep all that cash coming in.



And we'll have to sacrifice a lot of them just to keep our cars running. What choice do we have?



Of course, companies like Shell *could* reinvest their profits into diversifying their products. They could spend some of those gobs of cash on alternative fuels--solar, wind or hydro power for cars.



They could quite easily do that--What, you don't think $28 billion would go a long way to developing other power sources for cars?



What about the profits of the other oil companies? What about car companies? Shouldn't *all* cars be hybrids or better by now?



We consumers can't change things like this--only the oil and car companies can.



I guess they're not just greedy but lazy, too.

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Because they're not--I love my Macs way more than I ever loved my PCs, but have a look at what OSX and/or Firefox does. The top browser popped into being above the menubar. On Macs, the only place you can drag windows from are the titlebars. Of course, if you can't reach the titlebars, the best you can do is force-quit (ctrl+alt+del for Windows folks) and restart the browser in hopes that it won't happen again. This isn't a huge deal these days--but in the days before session managers to remember your tabs, it really sucked. Nowadays it's just annoying as heck (not hell).
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Source for the above screen cap: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news



I meant to post about this a couple days ago when I first saw it. It's like Bush is paying attention to our failing economy in time-release caplet-form.



Seriously, everyone's talking about it already--some of us have been talking about it for years.



I don't think all the jobs in the world added will help when the US government borrows $1 trillion for wars. That kind of borrowing causes some major inflation--as in, it drives the value of the USD down. I don't see how giving more people low-valued dollars will help things.



So, now, with talk of the Fed dropping interest rates by another half-percent, one wonders if they're not just making it worse--especially since they've already dropped rates a startling 1.25% in the past couple weeks and that hasn't helped.



I think it might be time for America to stop spending money abroad, both in the form of wars and other expenditures, as well (like foreign aid to countries, sadly).



I think our economy is spread way too thin to continue to support itself. If some new solutions are tried I see things getting worse before they get better.



Of course, I'm just a guy with a blog. What do I know?



I'm just glad we have the eagle-eyes of our beloved leader, George W. Bush, on the job!
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Can't remember where I found this post (it's been an open tab on my browser for days) but I thought folks might find it useful:



http://www.onmoneymaking.com/…guide.html



It's a post about how to find a job you love and it has some great, if a little obvious, tips on how to do it. Obvious in that they ask you to define what "love" even means to you and what you want in a job, among other things.



Pretty obvious, but how often does life seem to force us all to just take what ever we find first? We end up not really considering the most important questions.



One thing I'd add is to consider your potential boss. I've had too many jobs where the work, itself, was fine, but the boss made it hell on Earth.



I feel like I could do just about any job if the boss was cool (and the pay was reasonable, of course). My last stable dayjob had a great boss. My job was important but boring. The fact that my boss treated me very well made me wish I never had to leave. But budget cuts made them fold my duties into other positions. They did offer me a spot working in another department, but I'd have been working directly for the doctors--pushy, absent-minded, blaming-you-for-their-mistakes doctors. So, I decided to move on. Was it a mistake? Well, I'd have been miserable (the job would have also had me coming it 6 days a week) and while I'm out of work now, I'm happy, so I think it was not a mistake.



Happy>money in my mind.



Of course, at this point, I'm thinking I can put up with a semi-crappy boss if it means decent money.



Here's that link again:



http://www.onmoneymaking.com/…guide.html
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Wee! Here's a quick little video news round-up for anyone who hasn't been following the news. You can also check out my website http://thepete.com/ for more of what I'm following. Or hit http://bradblog.com/ and the forum at http://blackboxvoting.org/ for news on voting irregularities.



The screencap in this post is from DrudgeReport.com who is/are reporting that a stack of polling places in LA didn't get their voting machines. WHOOPS!

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WEEEE! It's the 2pm Pacific Time news roundup according to ThePete! (That's me!)



No more voting irregularities that I've read about, so that's good news. Chris "The Freak" Matthews on MSNBCTV (sad-face) and still hours to go. I'll be voting around 7pm tonight. Have you voted yet? VOTE!
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WEEEE! It's the 2pm Pacific Time news roundup according to ThePete! (That's me!)



No more voting irregularities that I've read about, so that's good news. Chris "The Freak" Matthews on MSNBCTV (sad-face) and still hours to go. I'll be voting around 7pm tonight. Have you voted yet? VOTE!
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Here's a little video I cut together featuring stuff I saw on Super Duper Pooper Tuesday. This includes, lame stories CNN ran to fill time, a good story CNN did on problems some people had voting, and footage of me actually voting! It's ok if you watch! I don't mind if you know who I voted for, but the only way to find out is to watch!
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So, I had the TV news on for most of the day today (er, yesterday?) and I heard very little about any voting irregularities at all. As usual, the print media seems to do a better job covering the "boring" stories. The screencap you see comes to us from BradBlog.com (specifically: http://www.bradblog.com/) and it talks about how there was a lot more to report on regarding voting irregularities than we saw on the MSM (MainStream Media).



The previous post on BradBlog before the one I just linked to talks more specifics: "Voting machine malfunctions were wide-spread as were electronic poll book failures. This evening and tomorrow will bring us many more reports of problems as counties get polls closed and begin to tabulate the votes. Please note that our information comes from media reports and not anecdotal reports from voters."



So, check out that post if you want to see links to their sources (there are a LOT):



http://www.bradblog.com/



Personally? I had no problem at all voting. Wellll, that's not *entirely* true. I had initially wanted to vote for a Green party candidate, but they said I couldn't. I wanted to vote for Cynthia McKinney who is a former Democratic Congresswoman who is now running against Nader for the Green nom. She's as good a person as Nader, but in different ways.



I'm not sure if I have to be registered Green (I'm an independent) or not, but they said I could vote Democrat or American Independent. I just hit the CAGreens.com site and could find nothing specific about whether their primary was open or not (I should have asked at the polling place).



Actually, looking at their website I can totally see why those guys are never going to get anywhere. Terrible design (too cluttered!) and I couldn't find the info I was looking for. Not good when the info is an answer to the question: "Can I vote for you guys?"
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I posted the other day about having a love for custom toy making and here is a progress shot of something I'm working on right now. It's the head of a glow-in-the-dark, blank Munny figure that I am applying my own design to. The piece, over all, is very close to being done--but I need to pick up some sort of spray-on clear coat before I can be completely done. The Sharpie I used for the silver there is still very sticky. :P



I've got plenty more pictures of my customs that I'll be posting soon for anyone who wants to see more. :)
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Special night-time trip to the supermarket for the thing you must have

in order to make coffee. With out filters all the coffee in the world

is USELESS!!!



So, I bought four packs. ^_^
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I screencapped the above from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…218055.stm



What's the significance of this?



Rather huge, actually. It was one thing to drop interest rates by 3/4 of a point ten days ago--that was dramatic and was the biggest drop in something like ten years. However, combine it with this new drop by another half makes an interest rate drop of 1.25% which is a truly massive drop.



I might be paranoid, but this sure seems like a huge warning bell to me. When the richest/biggest bank on the planet (the Federal Reserve) lowers interest rates at all, it's a sign they're concerned. When they drop them by more than a percentage point that represents millions (billions?) lost in interest payments.



When any bank is willing to sacrifice that kind of cash, it probably isn't a good sign.



Just my 2 yen, of course. Please let me know if I'm wrong.



I really, really, want to be wrong...



EDIT: Haaaay--Utterz cut off the first 15 seconds of my audio! I even re-recorded it and both times when I loaded the page the first fifteen seconds were missing. :(

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