I can't help not talking about it....

I've tried to not talk about politics at all in my blog for the most part but the thing about taxes and funding the health care system is just bugging the crap out of me. So here is my current understanding of what the "plan" is.

1. Everyone is going to get health insurance, whether its by private companies or the government (I'm guessing there has to be criteria to be eligible like being a citizen or having a work permit etc. but if its everyone and their mother then we're in deep doo doo).
   
2. The sucker has to be paid for in some form or fashion so as not to raise the national debt
3. Historically, the price of health care rises faster than tax income so you know the tax man is coming whether I want to see him or not.
   

So far I've heard about Congress kicking around some ideas like raising taxes for only the most wealthy people (so they make the lion's share of the cash but why should they be forced to spread their wealth that they earned on services that they probably will never use because they can afford it out of pocket?), taxing employee provided health care to provide less expensive plans to employees (yeah and that makes them offer plans with shitty coverage with more out of pocket expenses for me), or finding other fun ways to tax me and the goods that I want to buy.

I personally hope this sucker stalls in Congress, no matter which way you slice it, health care reform is going to be expensive and there won't be a way to pay for it unless you totally tax the hell out of people. I've also read that 47% of people don't even pay taxes or something crazy like that. Can you imagine the amount of tax revenue that we're missing? It's almost staggering! There are a lot of tax breaks built into the system for people to reduce their tax liability and while reducing taxes is fine and dandy, it might be a better idea to lower the over all tax rate and just get rid of any exceptions. I personally benefit greatly from deducting my mortgage interest from my taxes but if they reduce my over all tax rate and eliminate that benefit I don't think I'd mind as much.

So what can really help our good ole government with generating revenue? Well I only have the canned responses that people have been saying for a long time and it will be easier said than done to implement but hey, might as well say it again.

1. Simplify the tax code! There are too many rules and what not to figure out to see if you can slip through something past the IRS, we've made it a multi billion dollar business to provide software and professionals to input data into complex tax returns that no one understands. Make it nice and easy for the average person to do on their own and file. What more do you really need than name, SS, wages, and taxes paid? If you didn't have to do the complex calculations to find what your liability or refund will be you can better predict what you can spend as a government
2. Budget Transparency! Not really all that difficult. There are parts of the budget that can't be seen by the general public (R&D for the military, intelligence services, etc.) that need to be hidden from our foes near and far but other stuff like infrastructure projects, salaries, expected personnel, services sectors should all be able to be picked apart by the general public.
3. Slimmer government! I like that the government provides services and what not but I sometimes it provides too much. Protecting us from our enemies, building our infrastructure, and providing oversight over the various sectors of the economy are all good areas that government should continue. I don't need the "man" telling what I should and shouldn't do. I just need reasonable protection from big business trying to screw me but this country is built on freedom so let me have my freedom to screw up.

OK I think thats enough for now, I could go on and on but I'm getting tired of typing this post. Time to make myself some lunch!

IE Only Websites annoy me

I've been on the internet for quite a while and I've used almost every browser at least once. I can do it more so now that I have virtual machines that I don't really care if I mess up. It still amazes me how many web sites are still geared towards using an IE engine rather than something else. I primarily use Firefox for most of my web surfing activity because of all the plugin's that I install to make it a better experience and all that (hear that MS? You gotta support plugin's that people want!) but there are still some sites that I enjoy that still require IE.

An example is Last.fm. I found this gem while using my iPod Touch. I've blogged about the service before and for the most part I think its pretty decent except that you need to be running IE or an IE engine in Firefox in order to use it. BOOO!! I don't really have anything against IE, my wife actually prefers it to Firefox so I always have it available just in case but it would be really helpful if all websites were compatible with at least Firefox without me switching to a different engine. Oh well, there's nothing I can really do about it except complain. At least I can get to the content which is what really matters most.

The Godfather - Coppla Restoration

My sister in law got me the Godfather set for my birthday. I have a terrible version of all 3 Godfather movies on DVD so this is a welcome addition to my collection. Most people I know have seen the movies but some of my friends haven't and I still can't fathom why. It's such a good story! Well maybe number 3 could have been better but thats ok, the first two movies are fantastic enough.

The cool thing is that movie 2 is only one DVD instead of 2 so it will be easier to watch the entire way through. There aren't many more movies that I need to add to my present collection that are must have's. This one might be one of the crown jewels next to the Lord of the Rings box sets that I have. I can't wait to watch these movies in all their remastered glory :)

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's July 22 which means that today is my birthday. I'm the big 31 so I have finally finished the first year of my 30's and started the second one. I don't feel any different and I think that it will be a good year personally. My wife is going to cook me an awesome meal for dinner tonight since I asked. Normally I would have asked to go out but I don't have any place in particular that I want to go. I also got Punch Out for the Wii, the Wii Motion attachment (for Wii Sports Resort which I will be purchasing on Sunday) and I also got a batting jersey with 42 on the back that I can wear at Yankee games :) For those of you that don't know, Mariano Rivera actually got up to bat this year and I watched him get his first RBI ever. So thats the significance of getting the batting jersey with Mariano's number on it.

I've tried out Punch Out today and I must say that its a lot of fun. It's almost like I remember it but since I never had a Nintendo I didn't play the game very much so I don't know a lot of the patterns of the fighters. I'll get better with practice and the game is also two player so I can play with Claire.

The rest of my day should be quiet. My two furry companions for the day are sleeping as I write this but thats ok, I'm used to them napping while I work. Only 364 more days until I'm the big 32, or as I like to say it, 29+3.

Flexmail is so slow

I received an email today telling me that there was a new version of Flexmail available. I had tried Flexmail before when I had my Treo 700WX almost two years ago. The program is very powerful an it has a lot of the options that I liked in Chattermail for my Treo 700P but as I was testing it today I noticed that it was really slow.

I also tried out he Today plugin an it took up a lot of screen space so it didn't leave ne with a great feeling. I ended up uninstalling it and just used the default Pocket Outlook again. It does most of what I need and I can always search my mail using te web browser anyway.

Next up I'm going to try another program called Evernote that a friend of mine suggested and see how that works out. Playing with software is a lot of fun but I just wish I had test machines to do some of tis stuff.

The return of Winamp!

I've been messing around with my music collection lately on iTunes and I've been looking for ways to get the playlists on my Treo. My Treo is dumb in that it syncs with Windows Media Player, now who the heck uses that in this day and age to sync and manage a music library? There are some 3rd party applications like Pocket Tunes that can sync my Treo and my iTunes library but its $35 for the program. I knew there was a better way to do it, and most importantly a free way!

And here comes Winamp roaring back into my life. Winamp is one of those programs that I always install on my computer since way back in the late 1990's. I used to use Winamp extensively when I was in college but ever since I got an iPod I've been forced to use iTunes more and more. Don't get me wrong, iTunes is pretty good but Winamp's plugin's are awesome and now with the latest version you can import all your playlists and libraries into Winamp. The cool part about that? Winamp playlists can be imported into Windows Media player so I can sync it with my Treo! How awesome!

So Winamp for the time being is back in my life again as I use it for playing music, and importing my playlists. I still use it to test music files that I've downloaded to make sure they're not corrupt or anything like that. I hope they keep development going on this product down at AOL. I think I liked it better when it was an independent company :)

Finally got the iPhone 3GS.... for my wife

Well here it is in all its glory! The iPhone 3GS in white. I didn't get this phone, my wife did and she's playing a game on it right now as I'm typing up this blog post. She's had the phone for maybe a week now and she seems to like it OK for right now. For me the jury is still out on whether or not its worth switching over from my WinMo Treo Pro. I've been able to do some cool things with the iPhone for my wife already, I was able to hook her up with GMail, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar so she doesn't have to sync with the computer as much. She bought herself a case and was able to put on a screen protector so it won't get scratched up.

When I go and visit my father I'm sure I'll have to play around with the iPhone even more since he just got one as well. I think he got the 32GB one but I don't know what color. I'll end up setting that thing up as well so that it syncs with all his stuff online and with Outlook but that shouldn't be too big of a problem. The limitations that the iPhone has are still a concern of mine since I still use my phone more for business than for pleasure. I'm still contemplating whether or not I should pay the $10.00 for the upgrade to my iPod Touch. I'm hoping that they come out with more features that will be useful for iPod Touch owners and maybe make the next update for free!

Now all I have to do is wait for someone to cook up Windows Mobile 6.5 for my phone and I'm hoping that Palm will make another Treo once Windows Mobile 7 finally arrives in 2010.

Blogging v. Mico Blogging

I have both Blogger and Twitter and I've been using both concurrently for a couple of months. Of course I've been blogging for years now so I'm used to the medium and I only just started micro blogging with Twitter a couple of months ago so I don't have as much experience with it yet. I've seen some differences already beyond the obvious of course but both have their good and bad qualities.

First up is micro blogging! I've only been doing it for a little bit but it seems that there are tons of people on Twitter that are micro blogging what they're doing at any given moment. I've been using it myself to update Facebook so I kill two birds with one stone on that account. The community for Twitter seems very active with people looking at other peoples feeds or following topics. The limitations of 160 characters forces one to be brief yet to the point. I like it because its short and sweet and for the fact that I can just use text messaging to do it.

Second up is regular old school blogging! I've been doing the blogging thing for a number of years but no one reads it anymore. I still use it to give my opinion on things that I find interesting or that needs to be expanded on that can't be conveyed using Twitter. A lot of my interests focus on technology so that's why there are so many posts about iPhone, my Treo's and other things of that nature. I like doing regular blogging because I get to practice my writing skills out of the work place. I write a fair amount for work but thats all for my job and sometimes it just doesn't interest me as much as writing about what I feel like writing. It keeps me in good practice and lets me see if my writing style has progressed over the years. I'm also trying to reach my goal of 100 blog posts for 2009. The one thing about regular blogging is that there is that I don't get a lot of feedback or opinions like I can with micro blogging. I mean Blogger is open but it takes a lot of time to read an entire post let alone multiple posts.

I can't decide which one I like more but I'll probably end up continuing to use both since they have their unique uses. It's time to finish up some chores at the house and then some relaxation before heading out for the night. :)

Still waiting for the iPhone

I'm still sitting here waiting for my wife's iPhone to show up. I ordered the phone on July 8 and I still don't have it here in my hand! BOO! I got an email from AT&T saying that the phone was back ordered which truly sucks since I can drive out to Ft. Lauderdale and just pick one up from the Apple Store right now. Well maybe driving all the way out there might be a bit extreme but come on!

I was doing some more research into the iPhone and what the OS 3.0 brought to the table. One of the things that I'm quite pleased to see is that they now sync Notes to Outlook which was one of the biggest things that I needed. The reason for me to get an iPhone keeps on getting more and more compelling as I do more research but I'm still not convinced. Two things still stand in the way, number 1 is syncing of Tasks. I still use them to manage my life so thats still quite important and I need it to sync to Outlook. I still like using a computer to update my phone since I can still type faster on a computer than on a mobile device. Number 2 is that I'm still waiting for ListPro. I've created quite a number of lists and this program is a must. The developer is still doing its thing but there hasn't been a release date for the software yet and they might only be working on a reader and not even an editable version. For a road warrior like me, being able to carry and edit your lists around is quite important so I hope that they do this bit.

I've been tracking the order for the iPhone daily, actually multiple times a day trying to see if they changed the status or not. This is my wife's birthday gift and I would like for it to get to her in time. Another reason is that I need it to be all setup and ready to go for our Hawaii trip. My father is going to get one and I need to be successful with her set up so I can set up my father's properly. My iPod Touch is working just fine so I don't anticipate any snags.

I guess I'll just keep on watching the order status on the web, I don't want to call AT&T and yell at the customer service reps since they are pretty powerless in assisting me in this. Hurry AT&T and ship the phone!

iPhones for Everyone!

It has been a really long time since I've done any blogging but the past month has been very busy. The latest development that I thought was very blog worthy was that a good chunk of my family is getting iPhones. A while back I switched to AT&T because I wanted to get a Treo Pro and the only way to get it was to go GSM and AT&T is the best out there for that so I switched. I decided for my wife's birthday that we would break her current contract with Verizon and bring her into the AT&T fold by getting her an iPhone which I ordered this past week. It's a real pretty white one that has 32GB of memory so she won't be hurting for space and she can keep a lot of video and music on it too.

My father's birthday is also coming up pretty soon so I gave him a choice between two different gifts, a new underwater digital camera or something else I can't remember right now but I did see it at Best Buy. After a couple of weeks of giving him his choices he said, why don't you just buy me an iPhone? Well this was a switch! After months and months of pestering him about it, my father is going to do it and get an iPhone. He only wants the 16GB one so it won't be as expensive for me to get him one. So thats iPhone number 2 for my family.

Now the funny one! My sister in law is also on Verizon but her contract is up in July (on my wifes birthday actually which is kind of interesting) and she is joining in on the family share plan since she really uses texting a lot and not a lot of voice. She has a BlackBerry Pearl and didn't want to pay for the data plan anymore so things would be cheaper. She was on vacation this past week and she went out with some friends and one of them had an iPhone, after playing with an iPhone for a day she calls me up and tells me that she wants one! Man what a switch! LOL She went one better and even went all the way to the Apple Store in Ft. Lauderdale to pick one up and changed her phone number to a Connecticut number so she could be on the family plan with me and my wife.

It looks like I'm the only hold out not getting an iPhone. I still have the opportunity to get one if I want it by renewing my contract right now but I can't bring myself to do it. I've been mulling it over in my mind a lot and I can't see a good reason to get one because of all the functionality I'll lose by switching over, not to mention I hate the way it syncs to my Outlook stuff. Well there you have it, my iPhone family minus me!

Trying out Twikini for my Treo

I'm trying out this new Twitter client for Windows Mobile on my Treo Pro phone since its a little challenging seeing all the tweets on Pocket IE. I installed it last night and so far its been pretty good. I like that I can go ahead and change some of the settings (that TWEET sound it made last night scared the crap out of me and my wife and I had to check the house to make sure there were no intruders because we didn't know where the sound came from so I turned it off) and that I can see people that sent tweets directly to me. I'm going to try this out for a little while longer and see how I like it. I threw up some images just for the hell of it. I'll say this, its pretty comparable to the twitter app that I'm using for my iPod Touch. Link is below if anyone wants to give it a go!

http://www.trinketsoftware.com/Twikini

More posts are coming....

I've been pretty silent over the past month but thats more due to my being quite busy of the last month with wrapping up things in Atlanta and preparing for my vacation. I finally finished up my long term project in Atlanta so I won't be going there any time soon unless my new client work takes me there. Thats quite unlikely though and my new gig isn't half bad with me spending a good amount of time at home since I'm whats called a Virtual Team with people spread out all over the place.

I went on a cruise right after I was done with work to Key West and Cozumel Mexico. Blog entries about the cruise will be later though since I have some pics that I want to include with those posts. All in all it's been a very good month. The next two months should be quite busy with me working from home but there also might be some travel involved just to keep things interesting.

Anyway, I gotta keep this post short. Look out for me on Twitter (@jvwong) which updates my Facebook status too. I've decided micro blogging doesn't count towards my total blog entry total so I have a ways to go until I reach 100 entries for 2009.