There is an odd thing going no in Governors races across the country.  Presidents have been asked to lend support and raise money for governors in races for years, there are plenty of precedents going back for years.  Popular presidents are always used by parties to help push the party lines into state politics as they are going on at the national level.  This makes it easier to do things like gain majority support for implementing federal regulations or laws when a majority of states aligned with the White House agree to accept Federal suggestions.  The issue here is not the White House raising funds or even making endorsements, there is nothing new or news worthy there.  The issue is the degree to which and the tactics being used to manipulate gubernatorial races nation wide.

First off you have to understand some of the background.  For those who forgot or never learned in civics class there is such a thing as State’s Rights.  The United States is a Federal Government that makes a national framework of laws, states have their own constitution, frameworks, etc. that can choose to follow or not follow these federal laws, like speed limits, drinking age, etc.  The Federal government used tax dollars as leverage to help a state make a decision.  States are basically independent to make, pass, and ignore laws as long as they do not violate the state or US constitution and amendments.

Since the healthcare debate stalled and is now stuck in the mud a movement for states to ‘op-out’ of public options has become known.  This goes to the State’s Rights acknowledgement on the divisiveness and lack of consensus on the issue and the bills being discussed and voted on on the national level.  The last time there was such talk about State’s Rights was the mid 1800’s and it was not a pretty sight.  Given this is it any wonder why the White House is getting so intimately involved in gubernatorial races in New York (Paterson asked not to run), Wisconsin (Lawton asked not to run) verses the normal campaigning seen in New Jersey (Re-election of Corzine) Virginia (Deeds), and Massachusetts (Re-election of Patrick).  The major difference in the first two is how the White House publically and heavy handedly meddling in state elections making party decisions for the electorate essentially bypassing political primaries and preventing the people of the state to select who their candidate for choice in representing the parties in the final contest to select governor.

Here is the problem.  The White House is trying to fix the race before it is run by manipulating the primaries by asking candidates to not run and signaling who they prefer instead of letting the citizens of the states select the candidate and then getting behind that candidate and raising money, making appearances, etc.  I do not recall seeing such an overt and heavy handed approach as I have seen in New York and Wisconsin.  First, Peterson was not endorsed and essentially given the kiss of death by the White House over fellow Democrat New York Attorney General Cuomo.  The move is said to give the party a stronger chance to Democrats as Peterson was not a stellar executive and has been marred in the news over the last year.  This sparked some political debate nationally, until health care took all the press.  Now we see the same thing going in when Obama has asked acting Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Lawton to stop her campaign so Barrett can fly through the primaries unhampered.  This will leave Cuomo and Barrett all their political monies and little dirt or scandal exposed for the respective state’s governor's races.  The issues here are the interference of state political processes by the White House and the disfranchising the state’s DNC primary process to allow the people to select the best Democrat. 

The issue is the brazenness of the White House in this and the utter silence in the media over two clear examples of election manipulation of governors races by hand picking the Democrat candidate without thoughts or input from the citizens of that state.  Normally the respective candidates slug it out and the one best able to communicate their platform, demonstrate executive experience and responsibility, and ability to lead wins the party nomination and resources for the final showdown with the Republican or Independent.  This is being supplanted by political posturing and green lighting by fixing the field before the game begins.  Voters then have had the major decisions of initial choice removed for them by an outside force that is not taking their unique needs into consideration.  The White House is forcing national politics into these two state’s elections and substituting national political alignment over electorates choice to select the leader based on local interests, needs, and desires.  This is irresponsible and dangerous as it takes the decision process out of the hands of the citizens on the most basic level of the selection process for the states lead executive.  This party manipulation is ignoring state issues, state needs, and state alignments all to gain a much larger political objective.  This is the real danger no matter what party is attempting it. 

We have seen the larges spending spree in political history, the largest expansion of American government in history, and the most interference into citizen’s lives and decision making process by the government in American history and yet it continues.  The ability to choose is dramatically changing in America and this is just another example of limited choice to the citizens by the government.  This goes beyond higher taxes, proper representation by those elected, increased spending, and expanding government.  All of these are things we have dealt with before and part of our process of negotiating and compromise to get things done we all can live with.  This is the continuation of federal government intrusion into the most basic decision making process to fix the outcome before we even begin to decide.  By fixing the races for top executive for any state the federal government is ignoring the needs of the state and its citizens for a cheap national strategic alignment for future political power plays.  There is real defeat in the air over healthcare and future battles over cap and tax, having ‘op-outs’ is politically nice because it sounds like a choice but if the governors of the states have been hand selected and backed to win are the ones making the decisions political re-payment for such favors would trump citizen concerns and force the national agenda on a state from a more politically friendly top executive state level. 

The real danger here is people, many of whom have become re-energized since April (the Tea Party movement), may feel the government is no longer representing them and give up on it.  This will lead to the inevitable fall of the American political system into pure corruption as our citizens are falling in education, activism, and engagement in the political process.  Sure we have seen a resurgence lately, however the creeping feeling I am getting is this is a last hurrah before a long winter.  We are seeing more and more decisions taken out of the hands of the individual and placed into the greedy hands of the government.  We are seeing government conducting its business more and more behind closed doors and making laws without consulting or at least listening to the majorities who elected them.  The political winds have shifted to either set up a system where it becomes too confusing or too much work to be engaged so the government can simply say we are no longer needed in the decision making process.  This is what our forefathers warned us about.  Governments are not here to solve our problems, they have never solved a problem in human history!  Governments take on a life of their own, and when unrestrained they will become large, fat, malevolent entities that act in selfish ways until it can no longer move or function, at which point calamity happens.  Trust in government, media, and the future is at historic lows in America.  The largest problem is we are accepting what others are telling us instead of opening our eyes, ears, and minds and acting on our own intelligence instead of what is spoon fed to us by those who wish to control the game.  We need to stop looking to others to solve our problems and solve them for ourselves, through our own actions, works, and efforts.  This is what created our nation and sustained it for 200 years, too bad it only took 33 years to wreck it all over the promise of easier life and decisions.

September started with a bang, news wise, and was a month that just kept on giving!  From more Acorn videos to Wall Streets return we have seen a huge variety of topics come and go, and unfortunately the biggest one, Health Care, took all the oxygen out of the others.  Well that is where blogs like this come in and help restore balance, by putting it all into some unique perspective that gives equal attention to each topic, and only one topic per topic, so to speak.  Yes, it is the middle of October and I am grossly overdue on this, but hey, I am not a professional journalists, writer, or in any media racket and I am not getting paid for anything I put up here so take it as it is.  We just finished celebrating 60 years of communists rule here in China with a huge parade full of the best military might Beijing is willing to show the world, but that is for October’s rant.  With my PC now 35% faster and twice as roomy as before I will get right into it.

Domestic Items – Pittsburg was unlucky enough to host the latest G20 summit, and at the same time as the UN general assembly, more on that in International items.  Unlucky in that it drew every angry college student obsessed with Michael Moore’s ‘capitalism sucks’ mantra and the environmental whackos who somehow love the environment but find it acceptable to burn down housing developments and SUV dealerships releasing tones of carbon into the atmosphere, way to go green geeks!  We saw similar scenes in London at the last G20 and it mirrors scenes from Seattle and others, hooded and face mask clad kids using a cause as an excuse to riot and trash a city.  I was taken aback by a video of some wise old sage college kid dressed in black and swinging on a swing set declaring for the camera, anarchy is cool.  Well to be frank, it ain’t cool and it only works if everyone follows the rules, if they don’t then you get mob justice or the wild wild west where a vicious cycle of reparations begins and never ends civilly.  Of course the fully mature 20 year old brain is so much more enlightened then the vast majority of people on the planet in the past 3 centuries.  Here is my take on all of this.  Its a bunch of misguided, angst driven, ungrateful snots who have way too much time and money on their hands to do anything constructive or useful in society.  Harsh you say, let me briefly explain.  Capitalism, the very virtue they are denouncing, is the only thing that got them and their pot head friends where they are.  The simple mercantilism ideal on which the first economy of this once great nation was set upon is the only reason they are able to go off to college, meet the industry failures who call themselves professors, and come up with idiotic theories after a few hours of pretending to be in Jamaica.  You see our modern liberal arts college system is maintained solely through capitalism.  First, people go to college to learn enough to get a degree to get a job.  This job allows them to purchase things that make their lives easier and more enjoyable.  They finally grow up and get a life and end up saving money for retirement and kids colleges and start the whole thing over, been that way since the 1800’s and its that way today.  Second, capitalism is the only vessel that gives them what they desire and love.  Would Steve Jobs have invented the iPod without the motivation of money or capitalism, don’t count on it.  Look at the innovations in capitalistic countries verses others and see what has the most innovation and prosperity.  Capitalism feeds off of competition, the person who has the best idea and can market it will win the most money.  That is why we have $10 blue jeans and $1,000 blue jeans.  Without capitalism there is little motivation to grow or innovate anything (unless the government wants something then its all repression and guns to the heads).  Michael Moore and all of Hollywood would be a very small fraction of itself without the virtues of capitalism.  You see, all that we have today, enjoy, despise, and is envied the world over is due to capitalism.  In the 1700’s it was our lumbar, shipbuilding, and agricultural output.  in the 1800’s it was our industrialization and natural resources.  In the 1900’s it was our innovation and manufacturing until our skilled labor and its unions priced itself our of competition with the developing world.  These kids would hate living in the very type of world they advocate, they are just too naive and ignorant of real socialism or anarchy.  Don’t get me wrong, its not their faults, you can’t blame ignorance solely on the individual, unless they are adopting the ignorance is bliss philosophy.  No, its our overly liberal primary education system that has failed these kids and not given theme the critical evaluation tools necessary to make a rational decision or to even function in a modern and dynamic society.  Look at our test scores and results and you will see that the places these kids are coming from are inept laboratories for social educations theories.  If you can’t understand supply and demand or import and export trade balances then how can you expect to understand capitalism at its most simple definition?  I blame the idiots withholding the information from these kids more then the kids themselves, they are young, impressionable, know nothing, puppets who are led astray by capable adults who refuse to grow up and face reality, capitalism and competition works, socialism and humanism fail.

America, as a country and a society, faces many challenges these days.  Unfortunately we have grown so petty as a nation and our views so narrow we resemble race horses instead of mustangs.  What I mean is we have all had blinders placed over our eyes and can only see the things a very select few deem worthy and place before us on a silver platter.  I have a few cases in point on this.  First off is the tragic death of a part time Census worker in the national forest in Kentucky.  The media harped on this as the right wings fury whipped up by hate mongers on talk radio and cable news channel Fox News.  Too bad they neglected their primary directives of journalism to just sell headlines for their sinking media outlets (formerly known as news).  If the reporters would have reported, and not written popularized fiction on their take of the current social climate they would have found a much more interesting story.  It is tragic this part time primary school teacher was killed, and worse his body treated the way it was after death, but by ceasing on pop culture, flavor of the month, credo the real story was missed.  Anyone who has grown up outside of the south and then migrated there for more then a few years will understand.  The mountain areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia are remote, isolated, and led by elders who have been taught, and had re-enforced, that the Federal Government is never to be trusted and is their enemy.  It is a hold over from reparations, concessions, and surrender in the late 1800’s, and yes this is the way it is, believe it of not.  From then it was prohibition, that ultimately led to the birth of auto racing, and re-enforced with actions taken by the Federal Government in other areas like Waco TX.  You see, in these areas strangers are not trusted and often not tolerated.  You go into some of these areas at your own peril, even the locals in surrounding cities know this.  This poor man was killed for being a stranger and working for the Federal Government in an area outside of what we call normal.  The people who killed him most likely think Fox News is too liberal and that Rush Limbaugh is a pansy jew too old and fat to get a real job.  Their views are shaped by hundreds of years of distrust and ignorance of the rest of the country, and they like it that way.  They hate any and all interference and would treat anyone that way if they interfered or threatened their way of life.  This was not something cooked up and hatched by a few months worth of rantings on media airwaves, it has nothing to do with Obama overall, its the power and influence of the ‘feds” the faceless ‘them’ that tell them how to mine coal, send their kids to school, how to build their houses, come in and make roads and such without asking them anything, not that they would listen in the first place.  This is the real story, not some shocking slock about anti-Obama sentiment resulting in murder.  On the other end of the spectrum we have the New Black Panthers, who this month found they are not 100% out of the woods on their election vote rigging charges just yet.  Despite Obama’s AG dismissing all charges against them on voter fraud by intimidation for their parts in threatening physical violence to anyone not voting for Obama last year (with video and audio evidence provided), the investigation just won’t go away.  Despite the media being in the bag for Obama and burying this and other election fraud cases, ACORN, it seems the law just won’t pardon them as easily as the press has.  Its one thing for the son of a seated Representative’s son to slash tires in the parking lot of the RNC on election day (Milwaukee Rep Gwen Moore), its another to stand outside of polling areas in Black Panther garb wielding a baseball bat and saying you will beat down anyone not voting for Obama as they stand in line to get into the voting building.  Again, press on this has been light, lighter on the charges being re-opened after the AG dismissal!  This is the problem.  Not only do we have a president hell bent on governing by the polls, we have a fawning media who is following suit by reporting only what is popular, and seldom doing anything historically known as reporting.  Maybe this is why subscriptions and ratings are falling to historic lows?  Maybe this is why papers are failing and only 1 cable news channel is not seeing double digit declines, Fox News is seeing just the opposite.  You see when ad revenue is falling to historic lows it is because the services the medium is providing no longer coincide with the appetite of the masses, no matter how much you refuse to acknowledge it.  You see, when you rail against capitalism, greed, and freedom of choice a funny thing happens, you lose the support of those you are trying to influence.

Financial Items – One funny item in this current health care socialization things getting shoved down our throats, Obama and his ilk keep claiming it will cost nothing and much of the savings will come out of cutting fraud, waste, and abuse.  Well riddle me this batman; if all these savings are there to be had, why or why have are we just taking action now to keep the reform bills from bursting the bag?  You see, this argument is ripe with fallacy.  If these kinds of savings, enough to provide health coverage to 40 million people (there figures, not mine) then why are we facing a crisis in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?  Heck it seems if we just police those faceless government agencies correctly we can come up with trillions of dollars to pay for it all!  Well, this isn’t the case but it does have some merit.  Here in September we have seen news of a Milwaukee mom/day care operator who bilked the system for over $140,000/year for over 5 years despite officials knowing she was doing so, she was so brazen she even bought a $400,000 mansion, with ACORN’s help no doubt, and has paid of it all while claiming to be a working mother so poor she needed government assistance to pay for day care she herself provided as an employer to working women who needed daycare.  Not part of same money pot I hear from the peanut gallery, how about this – 27 Michigan residents were arrested for SSI fraud to the tune of just over a million dollars.  I have discussed a few times on this blog my experiences in rural Alabama where SSI fraud is ripe, and local officials will do nothing to stop it because that would be mean.  Recently in the news a Detroit radio stations promoted a government aid program for low income people and then went out and interviewed the people in the line and found out they all thought the money they were expecting to receive would be coming directly from Obama, his own personal stash.  Well, of course these people have no clue where government monies that come by the way of SSI checks, stimulus checks, etc. come from, they were never taught civics in class, they were taught how Columbus was a war criminal and how evil capitalism was and how it was the profiteers on Wall Street who were keeping them down and making money off of their misery.  There is fraud in the system, including the treatment and payments to illegal aliens now, and in the future.  There is little doubt there are savings to be had here, but only by a couple hundred million at best, not enough to pay for all this stuff we have seen lately.  Still, that few hundred million could go to aid the insolvency of SSI or Medicare but would not be able to make much of an impact.  The problems in the fraud is that no one committing it can tie it into stealing from their neighbors and others to receive that aid, and that is exactly what it is.  The amount of money required to police, check, and verify these payments to preventing fraud will not be free, they will require more staff, wages, facilities, insurance, utilities, etc. and this extra cost will come from other pots of tax payer dollars.  Our financial house is so out of order that they only way to correct it will be to scrap it and start over.  Being such a huge task, and a politically suicidal one, it is one that will never be done until it is so far gone it can’t continue anymore.  If we took all the fraud in our government, all the waste (redundancy, obsolete, unnecessary), and all the abuses (misuse of government assets) you may come up with enough to fund a small national program.  The real issue are the policies that just won’t die, like farm subsidies, urban programs, regulations etc.  These account for far more then the waste in the system.  Obama has already shown his will to do the unpopular extends only to spending more, not cutting costs or controlling them but exploding them.  The real fraud, waste, and abuse going on is the politicians who expand our government, demand more tax dollars, and set up a system where stealing from the government is easier and has less consequences then earning a living the right way, through dedication, hard work, and self sacrifice.  Sure, if it were that easy we all could and would be doing it, well, it seems that is where we are headed, entitlement mentality dead ahead and the last exit on this road we are going down now.

I saw an interesting take on the overall economics of America on Digg this month, if the United States were a person what would their credit score be?  Well, Loans and Credit.com did the calculations and came up with the answer; 620.  For those outside of America your credit score is a big deal and dictates much of your future, including where you can rent an apartment, if you can buy a car, house, etc. and even prevent you from getting some jobs at some companies.  The ranges are this; Poor – 350 to 619, Fair 620 to 659, Good 660 to 749, and excellent above 750 maxing out at 850.  So what exactly does this mean?  Collectively as a nation we are one good financial crisis away from economic ruin.  Why so dramatic?  Well it boils down to this.  Unlike people governments can print more money, but by doing so they devalue the currency making it worth less because there is more of it and less real cash backing it up (bond holders).  You see our national debt is sold off in bonds to individuals, corporations, and foreign countries.  This pool spends their own currency on our bonds in return for a future return of funds, in kind, with interest.  If this pool shrinks, or collapses we are unfunded with future debt.  If our currency becomes unstable or too inflated we lose investors and it all collapses with unfunded debt.  See where I am going here.  I seriously encourage everyone to follow the link and look at the graph, its really telling.  Here is the most scary part, quick cover the kid’s eyes!  Our two largest sources of credit are BROKE, and the next two – China and Japan, ain’t buying our worthless bonds anymore! 
It breaks down like this;
Top 6 creditors - #1 Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Fund @ $2.2 trillion (shrinking thanks to baby boomers), #2 China @ $739.6 billion (they just lost confidence in the US by buying $50 billion in new IMF bonds offloading risks of US failure to repay), #3 Federal Employee Retirement Funds @ $738 billion (less workers and more retirees means less available for loans), #4 Federal S&L Corp Resolution Fund @ $689 billion (ummm 1 word – bailouts), #5 Japan @ $634.8 billion, #6 Foreign Oil Exporters @ $186.3 billion.  So our sources or income are not stable, more like short term contracts and thanks to calls for a new international super-currency by China, Russia, UN and the IMF we are seeing results of the IMF bonds going and global currencies surging against the dollar. 
Grand total: $5.187 trillion, not too shabby considering our taxes and public held securities and bonds valued at $6.2 trillion for a grad total of $11.387 trillion.  Well, now the bad part.  Our current national debt is just over $11.2 trillion ($38,400 per man, woman, and child) and our last two years have seen relatively stable national debts go from $700 billion to almost $1 trillion last year and more then $1.2 trillion this year to date (and remember that debt here is beyond all income and spending!).  This is why China started offloading our bonds for the new IMF.  Sure they want America to be strong and repay the bonds on time with interest in money worth something, but they do not seem so confident and are signaling it loudly now.  Tax revenues will be short this year due to the financial meltdown.  CEO’s are getting less pay and fewer bonuses, of which their income tax was the highest brackets, no pay no tax revenue.  People still are not going out and spending money, production is still anemic and there are few bright spots on the horizon.  I would beg to differ that the spectacular credit score of 620 was for last year and come January, or better April 15, our credit score will dip to the upper 500’s.  Why so bleak, well all that stimulus money had to come from somewhere.  All that money the Fed keeps printing has to be backed by something.  All this expansion of government, regulation, new government jobs, oversight, etc. has to be paid for and it seems the well is running dry.  Of course if we could get Obama’s czars and cabinet to pay their taxes maybe we could fund this fiasco for a another month or two, heck while we are at it maybe get NYC Rep old Charlie to pay taxes on ALL his income and we can make it two months!  While Obama is hitting that reset button on Russian relations how about jabbing the old US debt reset button a few times for good measure there Dear Leader.

International Items – I can’t resist, seriously I feel like a cat on catnip here.  Ok, how does Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize committee promoters feel about this glaring headline: LA TIMES – Renditions continue under Obama, Lebanese man first abducted and tortured, for fraud charges.  Ok, that was NOT the actual headline but it sums up the whole article quite nicely, we get the who, what, when, where, and why all right there.  Again I have to shamelessly quote my good friend Dave, ‘I don’t feel anymore peaceful’.  That’s right, Dear Leader pledged to close Gitmo by January and stop torturing people, or was it terrorists, can’t remember.  The Lebanese man Obama had abducted, flown from the Middle East to the US aboard the top secret ‘black ops airline’ and subjected to enhanced interrogations was done so for running an elaborate government contracting fraud scam.  So terrorists get milk and cookies while white collar criminals get the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed treatment.  So now I understand why ACORN is good and Wall Street CEO’s are bad, sheesh am I dense or what?  For all those anti-Bush loving liberal true believers out there who had the audacity to believe real change would be delivered, I guess this one flew under your radar.  Sure, the LA Times reported it, and it was a good read, but from there it went NO WHERE.  Chunk this one up on another story buried by the main stream media to help out this administration any way possible.  Last year this time he would be on 60 minutes, 20/20, Dateline all telling his tale of woe and how evil America was and they would be eating it up, lap dogs that they have proven themselves to be (and now their master is scolding them for his plummeting approval ratings and troubles).  Seriously, stop me if I am lying here.  If I were not speaking the truth please tell me and I will stop.  I swear.  In somewhat related international news, its all the Middle East, Africa’s supreme son, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, graced the UN with his first assembly visit and address to the international organization.  Fresh off the devastating victory over Scotland in getting the Lockerbie bomber released AND a lucrative oil contract out of the deal he just kept on rolling.  Not even getting his Bedouin tent permit revoked on a technicality slowed him down, he just set it up in the back yard of a Donald Trump estate some Libyan businessmen were leasing.  He was so confident he went over his 15 minute limit to address the UN, right after our Deal Leader Obama, and delivered a blistering 90 minute tirade that would make Hugo Chavez blush, to be fair Obama went over 15 minutes but only by 10 or so and because his teleprompter has a slight cold that morning and was a little sluggish.  Gaddafi was so wound up he burned out his translator who had a public meltdown near the end of the speech.  The significance of this I hear you say?  Well, when we HAD a strong foreign policy, you know one that dealt with terrorists and terror sponsors as such, we never had the UN graced by terrorists, just by crack pots (Chavez) and those with the political might and economic strength to warrant and command such an audience (Gaddafi’s was slotted between Obama and lunch).  I remember stating some time back that many countries in this world only respected one thing, strength, well we are seeing what they thing of us now as we invite them onto our soil to degrade us publically in front of on international audience, and then wonder what is going on because that is what our President did for 4 months after taking office, they are just following in his footsteps, again stop me if I am straying off the truth path here.

Echoing the above theme, strength garners respect and actions, we have 2 interesting tidbits, one of which most of you missed.  First the one no one missed.  Iran seems to have Obama’s number.  Since the student uprisings over allegations of voter fraud in Iran this June the Obama administration did little and said less.  Since then Iran has slowly pushed the envelope and seems to be finding no limit or resistance to its efforts.  Obama’s ‘velvet glove’ approach seems to be working out quite nicely, for our former enemies, North Korea and Iran have had noting but victories and appeasements since January.  So with little in the way other then shock and verbal condemnation in the media it was announced this month that Iran had a secret uranium enrichment plant and they made this known to the world AFTER stating the terms and conditions of which they would talk to the US and allow the IAEA in and what and what they could look and for how long.  Sure, its a sticky situation, one for which I don’t envy Obama for being in and one that has confounded presidents since Carter on Iran and Johnson on North Korea.  The two are linked by more then just similarity in nuclear ambition, and that is the rub, what we concede to one we have to the other else we are seen as playing favorites and giving into one and not the other.  It is a stark contrast that in the past 30 years Iran has only been able to tell 2 presidents what to do and how to do it, both Democrats and both going down similar paths.  Realistically the secret uranium enrichment plant in Iran was not all that secret, but its location, capability, and output were until now.  First it seemed the old velvet glove would work as Russia quickly condemned the announcement of the new plat, but then they had to scratch our backs for pulling out of the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe giving that region back to the Russians who want it known no one but them are allowed in that area.  But, that is as far as it went, Russia then quickly retracted their support for further sanctions and with a hardy wink wink nod nod they stated no additional measures needed to be placed against Iran as everything was on the up and up, so much for nuclear non-proliferation.  And the second indicator that weak foreign policy is only good for those who see us in an obstructionist view, Switzerland was just found to be more competitive then the United States for conducting business according to the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report.  The Swiss knocked off the Americans based on things like business climate, banking climate, and regulations and interference with factors specific to business.  While banking has taken the focus of things over the past year Swiss banks are not seen all that much better then American according to the report, Swiss banks come in at 44, American at 108, and British at 126.  The Swiss were being lauded for their innovation and dexterity in removing regulations and business hurtles.  America was being criticized for its anemic growth, but mostly for its lack of separating the government and private sectors, bail outs and subsequent regulations, and the private sectors’ apparent inability to properly self audit and regulate (missed lessons from Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley).  What is shocking to me about this is the Swiss, who have a famous liberal cradle to grave social services package, have less regulations, fewer corporate taxes, and less change for government interference in their business sector then America currently does.  While Switzerland had to bail out its larges bank, UBS, its remaining banks were not so exposed to US sub-prime mortgages and have weathered the storm with few ill effects, bottom line, they are sound, stable, and lending money with ease.  American’s current passion to bailout all and enact government control as the cost for bailing out have seemingly turned our only potential for growth in international business investment against us by poisoning the well.  Add this to our previously mentioned massive debt load and loss of confidence in our bonds and bond ratings and you see a bad moon rising, as the song goes.  The velvet glove that gave Iran, North Korea, and Libya license to dictate terms has also placed a ‘back in 30 minutes’ sign in the window for business opportunities.   I guess this is what Obama meant by ‘spread the wealth around’ let the other nations in the world have at it by taking ourselves out of the game and not earning it through fair and determined competition.  Of course this the problem with liberal policies, if you can’t control the game, why try playing it?

Science Items – Religion is one thing that does not come up much here in China, and I am a little relieved about that to, no explaining all that stuff I have to here.  The reason I bring this up is that I can have discussions with Chinese friends about the below story in the news this month without interjecting religion into the affair.  I am referring of course to the find in the country of Georgia including a few skulls dating back to 1.8 million years ago.  The proto-human bones at the Damanisi site show that humans were in eastern Eurasia 10,000 years earlier then previously thought and shot a huge gaping hole in the African single location theory.  The skulls are similar to the oldest found in Africa and are not significantly different enough to warrant a new species so they are being classifies as Homo-erectus.  Scientists are certain they are not the bones of a migratory groups wandering to Georgia from Africa so it seems we have a problem with the migration timetables science has taught us before.  All theories are not turned on their heads as either people did a migration, reverse migration, and then migration again or migration occurred much earlier, or there were different isolated groups that migrated independently from different locations.  Still the oldest bones come from Africa, but the possibility of them inhabiting the rest of the planet are now uncertain.  I remember is middle school social sciences how we were taught about 3 races of humans, Caucasians, Negros, and Mongoloids (Asians).  All three have distinctive skeletal signatures, muscular makeup, and genetic markets that go well beyond hair, eye, and skin color.  My belief is that the 3 evolved independently on said continents separated by natural barriers with the possibility of a 4th, Americans as the South American Indians are distinctly different then the North American Indians (thought to come come Asia), Australian Aborigines, or others.  This would make sense, to me, and goes far further to explain the modern differences we see today as being genetic birthrights and not environmental adaptations through evolution to different continents.  Superficial differences aside the underling muscle, bone, and genetic differences are too stark to come for a common ancestor who left a lush land of plenty to cross deserts, mountain ranges, and glaciers to populate 5 continents while other decedents stayed home and yet others settled along the way, getting tired of all the travel for no good reason when another lush land of plenty was found.  We have to take a step back and remember that science is just the new religion of the liberal mindset.  The theories and hypothesis (educated guesses) are just that, guesses but smart people but people who don’t have all the data or clues to be making definitive conclusions.  The bar is still open, so lets take all this stuff with a grain of salt, it isn’t over yet and we still have a long way to go before we are able or ready to handle the truth of it all.

A couple related items came across the science desk this month that have profound future implications.  I am speaking of the discoveries of water on Mars and the Moon.  In the days of old sailing ships water had to be carried in barrels, along with food and fruit.  Due to the limited supply of these provisions sailing and exploring were limited to costal excursions until ships and storage technology advanced enough to allow cross ocean travel.  The problem is the same for space travel.  Space and weight are a huge limitation on space flights, so much so that we sent people to the moon 5 times and they never stayed longer then a few hours!  It makes it easier if you can resupply at your destination then take everything with you.  Sure, ocean travel was extended with boilers were invented allowing people to turn sea water into potable water, but you can’t do the same thing in space, save the converting urine into water and who really wants that in the back of their mind?  The next step will be figuring out how much water there is, how best to harvest it, and how to store it and possibly expand it, solar stills that condense the air (Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen) into water.  Some believe the best way forward is to let robots, probes, and satellites keep exploring and gathering data.  All the while we are remaining grounded, nothing ventured nothing gained.  Not until some profit motive and business case can be developed can we expect to break the tethers and go forth.  Finding water is the first ground breaking step necessary.  Remember that Columbus was out seeking a cheaper trade route to the Indian subcontinent when he ran into the resource rich New World.  Of course he over exaggerated the riches of the find, mainly to keep his pocket book and head!  Since then it was a mad rush to secure the resources, land, timber, and precious metals that had become exhausted due to the system of kingdoms of Europe.  Now there is no telling the minerals we will find on other terrestrial bodies.  Sure there will be the same ores and similar concentrations however the different atmospheres, or lack of, will result in different purities and possible new materials we can’t imagine.  This is something only human exploration will find.  Drop a Mars style rover in the Gobi, Sahara, Death Valley, or, Australian outback and you will get a report of unsustainable life outside of the atmosphere requirements we have.  Granted we have the advantage of satellite imagery however that only goes so far.  If water is able to be found, or farmed on near planets we can expand our construction mindset into a whole new realm, what if we had 3 Earths worth of steel, aluminum, titanium, nickel, and copper available to us?  Knowing what we know now about conservation and metallurgy we could leap-frog closer and closer to the edge of our own galaxy, eventually.  Just as getting from Europe across the Atlantic to the Americas it took profit motives, guts, and the right mix of crazy and luck.  We have to decide if we will take the Asian approach and close ourselves off and stay put, or the European approach and say if we survive we will be everything we every dreamed and more?  That is the big questions with water found on Mars and the Moon.  We have found the most precious resource, now we must know if there is enough and will getting it be easy enough.  Once we have that answered we can determine if a new Mayflower Compact or Virginia Colony Charter is worth the expense and peril of the journey.

Sports Items – The Lions have already done the hardest part, they won a game, the first win in over a seasons and stopping the slide at 19 straight losses.  Now we must calm down else we could expect a few more wins this season, hell its already a 100% improvement over last season.  The Tigers imploded and the Pistons are looking not so hot in exhibition play, not the caliber that they were for the previous 6 seasons before last seasons let down end.  At least there are the Red Wings, oh yea, they ancient old timers who were showed up last year by youth and vigor.  Sports here is dominated by a scattering of local and foreign flavors; soccer, ping pong, tennis, volleyball, billiards and snooker, F1 and basketball.  The NFL has pledged to make inroads here and has youth leagues however there is no real exposure and I wish I knew where this stuff was so I could watch, advise, or even try my hand at coaching, at least at the position I know a little about, defensive backs.  As a lackluster sports fan its not a big deal but there is a lot of things you miss out on without sports, like what sports star is under investigation, getting tens of millions, or setting the latest social trend.  I do have a complaint about sports here.  Shanghai is trying, and trying hard, to attract top sports stars and sporting events.  This results in a premium for what they do bring here.  The tennis masters tour is here, not that I like tennis or follow it ever but at over $100 for a ticket I won't consider it with parking, traffic, and getting home so late with work the next day.  Same with golf, I did get free tickets to the HSBC Masters tour and got to watch Tiger Woods play 6 holes as well as dramatic final shootout but if I had paid it would have been more expensive then going to see the Sawgrass or GMO as well as driving for 3 hours.  In Milwaukee going to see a baseball game, basket ball game or racing was not that much of a big deal or expense.  It is not a major gripe but here in Shanghai how can they expect sports to become mainstream when the pay and make going to see them such a hustle?  Soccer is easy to see, there are over 20 stadiums in Shanghai and most are on or very close to subways or buss lines but they are used for the more established events and concerts.  If they could get prices down to $40 USD then it would be much easier to get the stands filled, its not so much the big names they need, its the pricing to fill the stadiums, do that and the big names will come.

In a follow up on the Caster Semenya case I brought up a very good question, what about those rare humans who are both genetically male and female in muscle mass and hormone levels.  Well it seems I was right on the money on that one.  The results of the tests confirm Semenya is both man and woman, a hermaphrodite.  She has no womb or ovaries and has internal testes producing 3 times the normal testosterone levels of women.   that Now begs the answers to the questions I raised on fairness.  Is it really fair to have Semenya race against women who are 100% female and have no male hormones or muscle structure?  What will the LBGT community do about this as there is a definite discrimination case here as she was stripped of her 800M gold medal by their standards of fairness against sexual discrimination.  We are seeing the first case of mutual discrimination against feminists and LBGT here as there is no clear cut winner and a whole bunch of losers in this fight.  To be serious Semenya should be stripped of the medal as the other women were at a disadvantage racing against her.  Next the IAAF, IOC, and other sports agencies need to review this case and make a way for it to be free and fair for all competitors against genetic oddities without going overboard.  Semenya is advised to have an operation to correct the condition and be eligible to compete, if she will is yet another question.  The whole mess is going to open another can of worms unrelated but as significant.  The outcome is to be expected as a female runner with 3 times the testosterone, naturally produces so undetectable by PED tests, is clearly able to out train and out perform the others.  The interesting part of this is the debate of fairness verses political correctness.  We were all shamed by the African Council for the questions, accusations, and doubts on the runners gender.  We were told she had won fair and square and it was racist sentiment behind the whole affair.  Well, it facts painted a completely different story.  While Semenya did not go out and deliberately cheat or try to undermine anything, she did and allowing her to keep the medals would have been wrong.  Its bad for her, Lord knows she has much larger problems, concerns, and issues to deal with now, however fair is fair and the competition needs to be from a level field as much as possible.  

Political Items – Obama’s inner circle has started to have more and more light shown on it since Glen Beck started the Van Jones Green Jobs Czar background checking Congress failed to do.  As Obama has still not filled all the outstanding Executive Branch positions his hiring of special advisors with direct access to him, their respective areas and bypassing all usual Congressional channels and procedures.  These people are highly paid, 6 figure minimum, radical (many have published books or lectured extensively on fringe ideals), and they are accountable to the President only and this is the scary part.  Only a few were vetted, checked and confirmed, by Congress who is more likely to approve as they are majority tied to his party as well.  Since Van Jones arrest, conviction, and prison records were made public, as well as his radical theories in 9/11 and other ‘black helicopter’ ideas he was quickly dropped as the President is more concerned with image and perception then loyalty.  This month a couple of new czars and their questionable views came into the spotlight.  1) Mark Lloyd, the FCC Diversity Czar, has had his ‘down with all things whitee’ comments come into question.  Conservatives were worried he was appointed solely to push through the Fairness Doctrine, or government censorship of free speech based on market availability.  He was passed off as a position to ensure the FCC had proper diversity of views and radio in American was not being monopolized in programming or ownership of stations, who can own what, how many, and what can they do with it.  Radio has evolved a lot since the 1980’s with live DJ’s being replaced by iPod like devices who are programmed with music and local commercials for most of the day.  Talk radio is dominated by conservatives mainly because all liberal talk radio shows fail miserably, ask Sen Al Franken about Air America (liberals talk a good game until its time to pay up, because they pay out so much to so many there is little left to do to personal entertainment).  Mark Lloyd wants all white people in leadership roles to step down and let minorities take over.  Well, nothing wrong with that if they have earned and demonstrated the ability to TAKE the jobs away, and the free marketplace agrees.  This revives the old liberal view of affirmative action.  You remember the tested and failed theory applied under the Clinton administration to diversify the work place.  Sure, it diversifies like it promises, but it kills corporations and businesses because it forces employers to look past qualifications and directly to racial, sex, and age of candidates.  Corporations have their own cultures, they have their own internal societies, if you are not aligned with with in any way or you do not reflect their goals or mission statements then they don’t want you and why would you want to work there anyway.  Jobs are about competition, may the best person win.  Forcing diversity is like allowing Semenya to keep her gold and telling the other women, tough, you have to try harder to compete ‘fairly’.  Thanks to healthcare and Afghanistan Lloyd may just skate under the radar and fade into the background to deliver on his agenda.  Next up is Cass Sunstein, the Regulation Czar or czar of everything, and his books and papers on governments rights and obligations to harvest organs from people before they expire and without their, or family consent.  He of course is arguing the greater good and using legal arguments to make his case, citing coroners already harvest corneas during autopsies for implants.  The problem is that some people and their religions prohibit the practice of organ harvesting, so where is the choice and observations of the wishes of the dead?  Sunstein was vetted but his views are now part of this thing called healthcare we are debating now.  Sunstein is in the unique position to actually create a regulation that does just that, the taking of body parts without consent or directives of the family.  These, and the other 20+ czars Obama has surrounded himself with really needs to be investigated more closely and by professional reporters in the mainstream media, if any are left.

Finally we have seen quite a bit of education items this month, most for the wrong reason, it had little to nothing to do with actual education.  A few items this month needing a little more then headline coverage are, school length and school quality.  First off Obama has floated the idea of getting rid of summer vacation.  First off we need to look at why we have the school year set up the way it is now.  School starts in the fall, that historically was after fall harvest.  There is a winter break that coincides with Christmas (the shock and horror!).  There is a spring break that coincides with Easter (SHUT UP, there is NO religion in schools!) and finally the summer break for farming families.  This has been in place since the 1800’s and has become standard practice.  Now most public school teachers are part of a union.  They are paid for all 12 months but only do 9 months or so of work.  Sure their pay is only during these months but any adult with a fiscal sense can manage the 3 months of no pay.  The floating of this idea is to raise teacher’s pay and has been out there for decades.  We are no longer an agricultural society so we many need to look more closely into this, urban kids need more care during these breaks then rural kids do.  The problem is the annual pay of teachers will be argued as not enough to cover these additional months, this means a 25% increase in teacher pay and that means higher property taxes and other tax increases to cover pay, benefits, facility and maintenance costs and operational costs.  This is where the counter argument comes into place.  Summer break is the most busy time of the year for maintenance and repairs.  Some things you can’t take care of in a weekend or a week long break.  There as an older debate on having year long school but kids would attend schools in shifts, still the facilities upkeep question comes into play.  One thing nobody is talking about in all of this are the children, you know the ones the liberals parade out each time they want to raise taxes without pushback.  Kids today are under a lot of pressure and the breaks are needed to unwind and do things like play and develop physically which works best with little stress and sleeping in late and no pressure from peers and adults.  Instead of going forward with a thinly veiled teacher’s pay increase we should see how this will impact the kids and their mental and physical development.  Next up is the teacher performance issue.  I am not talking about the annual exams kids take that which teachers are judged against, I am talking about the informal tests that show a more clear picture into the practical application of things learned in school.  How about 2.8% of Oklahoma high school students passing the immigration citizenship test!  This is shocking as I have taken the test a few times and pass with flying colors each time.  That means 97.2% of students are completely ignorant about civics and history.  If they have no ideas about this how can they function effectively in an open democracy?  The question then begs to be asked of what else don’t they know and more importantly what do they know and what are they being taught?  Our government only functions if the electorate is highly educated and informed enough on history and current events to make informed decisions on representation and hold those people accountable during their terms.  No wonder we have kids running around in Pittsburg chanting anarchy is fun and people are saying socialism is fine and capitalism is greedy and evil.  The citizenship test is a bit more then the average citizen will retain due to it is aimed at assimilation of foreigners by making them prove they know and understand the history of the nation.  Well, why can’t high school kids, who are taught this stuff each day, pass this test at inverse numbers?  We are not even going to talk about the modern history lessons neglected.  The warning signs are there and I bet most Americans would be shocked at what is in their kid’s test books.  It is time we take as close a look at our education system as we are on healthcare, unfortunately this won’t happen anytime soon.  Our country is becoming soft in the middle, the time you lose the education base of a democracy is whey it falls venerable to being manipulated or taken over by a dictatorship or totalitarian regime, look it up in history, its everywhere. 

After settling for 500MB less RAM and 90GB less hard drive space the laptop is back and stable.  Loading Windows, Office, and utilities, as well as updates and such took about what was expected.  The fun part was getting it all together so I could put things on the PC and get it to the point of doing something (besides take up desk space).  The speed and increased disk space have helped a lot, Windows loads much faster, many old issues were resolved, Movie Maker works again, and a few new ones cropped up, my onboard DVD will no longer read burned discs or write to them.

This post is for the reloading of the settings and installation of necessary tools and programs so I can begin to do real activities again.  As discussed earlier the device driver install went smooth, except for the Mashita DVD-RAM UJ-841S drive.  My IE 8 now works flawlessly, as does Media Player 11, before both were shaky at best and prone to hanging and crashing.  I can even sync my time with internet time, something I thought was due to China blocking the requests but now works!  I have gotten McAfee loaded and the firewall configures as well as tweeking the port settings to the laptop is more secure and using less resources then before.

Modifying the startup file is a must and I am consistently getting cold boots to task bar in less then 1:30 and reboots in just over a minute.  As I did a clean install I was more concerned with saving vital data and letting the rest get thrown out with the junk during formatting.  This was, and is, the next project.  As I gained an additional portable HDD, the old laptop drive, I now have nearly 1TB of storage, however the drives vary in age and run time so they are not to be 100% trusted.  I have separated the data by type to drive size, photos to the largest drive, audio and video to the second largest, the third largest is a back up file storage drive now, and the two smaller drives hold files and programs, one storing and the other backing it up.  Of course all of this has to be backed up on DVD, and that is why the second DVD burning drive came in.  It was a good choice to spend the extra $6 for burning because my main DVD drive is now just for reading DVD and CD-Rom as it can’t even read anything burned anymore.

So now that everything was backed up, it was time to burn to DVD, requiring more blank DVD’s, and then installing programs without going crazy and loading everything I own onto the laptop.  That is one problem people have with they move into someplace bigger, they want to fill it in with more stuff, see George Carlin’s comedy bit for that one.  Games are not so much my main focus now, digital darkroom, digital video processing (3 years worth), and being able to put it all together is what is the main goal now.  Thanks to being in China I can get free legal MP3’s from Google, so I will continue with what I can find there.  I will load a few games, but only 5 or 6 out of the 30 or so I brought here.  As the PC is faster it should be easier to get video from from the DV cam and edit it into something viewable.

For the most part getting things loaded was easy enough, just plop in a CD or download the latest program files and do the installs.  Patches had to be searched out and is much easier due to Google now days, over the old days of searching through message boards and tracking down the vendor sites.  I have not had the same issues I did with the video card software I did for my last build, just before coming to China.  I am missing some of the pre-loaded tools and programs, some are missed (DVD burning software, Toshiba diagnostics, DVD playing software) some is NOT missed (MS Works, AOL, and other pre-loaded bloatware manufacturers always find necessary to put on your PC for you.  I did have a copy of Roxio Easy CD and DVD burning software I got in Chicago on one of my business trips a couple of years ago.  One note, I have version 9 that includes Drag to Disc.  Drag to Disc conflicts with my RAM-DVD software for the Mashita drive that doesn’t work anymore.  From the Toshiba and other message boards it seems the drive has an issue where it just stops working for no reason, go figure.

I am not going to get in the dinking done (changing desktop, start menu, etc.) as that is just too boring.  So what is the conclusion?  Despite the set back of not getting the hardware desired I am satisfied with the increases in speed, storage space, and increased functions.  I will now have more excuses to lock myself in the home office on cold and rainy weekends to mix down digital video, process photos, and clean up may storage drives to make searching for and finding files easier.  I am still going to get the memory from the States, and get it sent with holiday packages, so I can at least get my 2GB of RAM with new chips and not the used 1GB chip I am currently using.  Laptops are a bit easier and harder to upgrade, easier as there are fewer options, harder as the parts are very specific and usually more expensive.  And that gets me to the back log of blog postings I have as nothing real was posted since the end of September other then progress on my PC rebuild.  I did not get a chance to keep myself fully updated on news or current events, but rest assured I will catch up quickly.  As we did not travel anywhere there are no great travel stories or pictures, but as I haven’t posted any photos in a while I will she what I can dig up, now that I work from the laptop directly and then save only the finished products.

With all the hardware in place it was time to re-install Windows.  I did toy around with the idea of cloning the drive but due to the odd things happening with the laptop I quickly decided to do a fresh install.  With the drive already formatted in NTFS I went ahead and plopped in the Windows XP SP2 install disk and did a complete install.  The Samsung drive did show its speed, as did the RAM increase as the install only took 34 minutes overall to perform.  This was the easy part.

Next up came the device drivers for the Toshiba.  There were 21 files to install but it only took an hour thanks to all the restarts required.  After the divers were installed I upgraded to SP3 and applied the security hotfixes so I could connect to the internet securely.  With this done I went ahead and visited Windows Update several times to complete the missing hotfixes, IE8, Media Player 11, Windows Live, etc.  During these I made system restore points along the way, about 4, just in case something went wrong.  Then it was over to McAfee to re-install my AV suite so I could go out and get the latest tools and utilities I didn’t already download prior.

After most of the base things I wanted were installed it had taken about 6 hours thanks to restarts and configuring this and that setting.  I then installed MS Office and had to go back to the Windows Update site to get the latest SP and hotfixes, another hour.  At this point I attempted my first backup, and discovered my first problem.  My Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-841S drive could not write to discs anymore, keep failing, and it could not read burned discs anymore either!  Investigation found the Toshiba DVD-RAM software was causing a conflict, well I was not able to correct it, so I installed Roxio CD and DVD Easy Creator 9 (with Drag to Disk) and ended up uninstalling the Drag to Disk program because it was also conflicting with the drive.  Needless to say we again took a trip to Cyber City and got an IBM external DVD burner (my wife needed one anyway for her Asus Eee PC 1000).

.Able to burn files was good for getting backups burned as well as the utilities I have burned earlier this year.  After 2 days, and one long day on into the early morning, the system was fully Windows XP Pro with SP3, all device drivers and factory programs, all MS updates, McAfee, and Office as well as Adobe 6 Pro and just a few other programs (and one game so my wife and I could play a little Age of Empires 2 over the LAN in the evening) the system was ready to start the next stage.  I ran a through clean up, degraded the disc, created another restore point, the 5th, and did a Windows, System State, and Full system backup.  It had now been day 5 of the process and I had not even started to think about programs and my growing collection of USB external drives to do major housecleaning on.

So why did I go with a fresh XP install?  As I stated earlier the system had some odd issues.  It was really slow, despite trimming the startup folder, cleaning the registry, and tweaking this and that it was just too slow.  Next was the performance of some programs was just buggy to where some programs were crashing and hanging too much.  All of those problems were corrected and only 1 new one cropped up, the DVD-RAM drive function but the IBM drive is a viable work around.  Putting a new install of an OS, drivers, and programs onto a fresh drive is like moving your home.  You find a whole lot of junk you forgot about, throw away the old stuff that is broken or not needed anymore and it just works better.  I used to rebuild my systems every year when I lived in the states, that was a job because the lab I had was 3 main systems and a few test boxes.  I was not sure on the Windows authorization thing in China but it worked fine.  The time to do everything was longer mainly due to family commitments I didn’t have 4 years ago.  Still, despite the long hours and small frustrations the laptop is running MUCH faster, performing better, and ready to hold all the programs and media I have, next up… Getting it all loaded, configured, and housecleaning the USB drives and data into something more logical and less adhoc. 

I am breaking the upgrade of my laptop into 3 separate posts, memory and hard disk, re-imaging, and reloading settings.  As with all things planned for in the real world this project did not go as initially thought.  It all started going downhill at stage 2, procurement. 

As previously stated I was wanting to accomplish 2 goals, increasing physical RAM to 2GB and increase the hard drive to 250GB, well that didn’t happen.  In getting the memory we ran into a glitch, so I shifted efforts to the hard disk.  In researching the Western Digital (WD2500BEVE) Scorpio ATA-6 internal hard drive I found some bad reviews and with further digging discovered the drive was about 80% reliable, and that is about 18% too low for my liking.  I then looked at ratings among my alternates and decided to go with the Samsung HM160HC ATA/IDE after reading about its speed, low power, quiet operation, and reliability comments over the past 9 months.  The price was just a small amount cheaper then the WD drive and it came with a warranty, something of a novelty here.

Next up was getting the RAM.  This was supposed to be the easy part, 2 year old RAM that is available for around $30 per 1GB stick and from almost every online vendor in the States.  We went to the Cyber City at Xujiahui and found out that nobody there had a PC-4200 533Mhz chip, well almost.  Instead of getting 2GB of RAM I only got 1GB.  NOTE, I previously stated the RAM was 768MB, wrong.  The laptop shares RAM between the ATI video board and the motherboard.  I have doubled the stock 512MB RAM to 1GB (1024MB) and it was only using 768MB for the system.  The chip they tried to sell me was PC-6400 800MHz set, thank goodness my wife insisted on a receipt and business card because the chips didn’t work.  After taking in the laptop and sitting with the kiosk staff trying everything they finally found a used 1GB chip from a Japan laptop.  I ended up with 1 – 1GB chip and 1 – 512MB chip (even hit up the Toshiba kiosks and ran dry there too).  After the 256Mb for video I now have 1.25GB RAM for the system, and that seems to have made a world of difference.

With all the parts now together, the hard disk arrived the afternoon we got back from the Cyber City, it came time to prep the system for the new hard disk and OS build.  For those who have only dealt with a PC fresh out of the box this will seems insane, for those who have done it before the pain will be laughable.  Before I put in the new hard disk I had to make sure I have all things ready; current laptop drivers downloaded, XP SP3 downloaded, most important XP hotfixes downloaded, most current utilities and tools downloaded, formatting the new Samsung drive (to save time), etc.  After all this was done and I transferred my files and settings to a backup drive I started the dirty work. 

Laptops in general are easier to work on now, most of them are modular and make access panels so you don’t have to tear down the whole thing to replace one part.  I was thinking I would have to take off the keyboard, I was pleasantly surprised to find Toshiba made this easy as the HDD access is right on the bottom, just remove 1 screw and there you go.  Swapping the drive was a snap, the new drive was not too thick and it took less time to install it into the laptop then to get the old drive into the USB external drive case.  Getting the two drives installed and working took less then an hour, that was the easy part.  Next blog – installing Windows and driver fun!

Since I was 13 I was fascinated with computers.  Ever since I first saw the Commodore 64 PC I wanted a computer.  Over the years I have had quite a few ranging from desktops, towers, servers, and laptops.  One thing that was always part of the old days in computing was upgrades.  Upgrades are replacing existing technology with newer technology as updates are mostly software related (this is not a rule but what happened most of the time).  Upgrades can be simple, adding more memory or complex, adding a faster processor or larger hard drive.

This time I am dusting off the old tool bag and going after a performance upgrade to my existing laptop.  Its 3 years old but still capable of running most of the stuff I need it to; digital darkroom, office, games, etc.  It is getting rather slow and I may decide to give Windows 7 a try, or not.  My current PC is not too old, well for human years that is, I bought it 2 months before I moved to China from Circuit City during a year end sale, a couple of years before they went out of business.  Its a Toshiba Satellite M55-S139 (PSM53U-00K008). 

The stock stats are:

• Intel Celeron M 380 / 1.6 GHz
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200M video (shared RAM)
• 512 MB RAM and I added 256 MB the day I got it
• 80 GB w/ 5400 rpm Hard Disk
• 24x/8x/2x DVD±RW (±R DL)
• IEEE 802.11b IEEE 802.11g Fast Ethernet NIC

I also got an extended life battery to go along with the stock battery for those trans-Pacific flights.  The laptop has only 1 card slot which I use for my Firewire or IEEE 1394 connection to my digital camcorder.  I like many of the features of the laptop, namely the entertainment feature – allowing you to watch a DVD or listen to a CD without booting up the OS and that saves battery life for movie watching.  The centerpiece of the system is its gorgeous 14.1 inch high gloss wide screen display that has even survived a round with my daughter and a ball point pen. 

As you can tell from the above the laptop was not all that state of the art 3 years ago, but it wasn’t too shabby for under $1000 with RAM and extra battery.  Over the years it has slowed down to the point where I have to configure programs to run in striped down fashion to load in a timely manner.  I used to wipe all my hard drives and re-install the OS and reload programs each year, thanks to Windows anti-piracy policy I can no longer do that.  Believe me, it makes a world of difference to do a fresh install from a hard drive cleaned out of all data, including the MBR and boot partitions. 

Recently I have been becoming more and more frustrated in my laptop’s performance.  Add this to the video filter issue I have and ever growing collection of photo editing software and new USB HDDs to hold photos, music (yes we can still legally download MP3 from music studio websites in China), and video and the system is bogging down in its everyday activities.  This has led me to looking at Windows 7 as I was going to avoid Vista as much as I avoided ME.  The Vista tool tells me aside from RAM and a few programs, like Adobe Pro 6, I am ready to upgrade the OS.  This brings me to the upcoming project, upgrading the hardware of the laptop.

As the specs above show the system is lacking in RAM and hard drive space, the focus of the upgrade.  I would also like to get a BlueRay RW drive but that is not vital.  Now the Toshiba Satellites are known for being picky with RAM, and as it came with 512 MB and only has 1 expansion bay it will require a little extra work to upgrade.  Next is the hard disk that seemed ok in 2005 as I already had a 80 GB USB drive to store music and pictures on.  So the goal is to increase RAM to 2 GB, the manufacturer’s recommended ceiling for this motherboard, and to get a larger HDD.  The RAM is the easy part.  After some checking I found I need RAM with the following specs: PC 4200, DDR2 @ 533MHz, 1.8V, Non ECC, 200 pin SODIMM available in 1GB cards.  As the stock RAM is 512MB that means I will have to remove the keyboard and take out the stock RAM and insert a 1GB chip and another 1GB chip in the expansion bay.  It is best to get RAM in pairs, from the same manufacturer and the same size as the parity makes it easier, mixing and matching to save a few dollars is not worth the potential headache – especially in Shanghai.

As I will have the keyboard off anyway I am going to swap out the HDD for one with more capacity.  I was originally looking at a Western Digital Scorpio 250 GB monster, tripling my current drive space, until I read the reviews on how unreliable they were.  It seems that the Scorpio drives have a real world satisfaction rate of just below 75%, for a hard disc I am not comfortable with anything below 85%.  Of course this Western Digital is cheap, less then $100 so it does fall into the ‘seems too good to be true’ category.  I will settle for a 160 GB drive but am still searching.  Once selected I will then try to get the parts from reputable places here I can return them is they are faulty (a rarity here).  I have my eye on a few drives but will have to dig into their reliability a bit more.  As I get it all sorted I will post the progress, process, and results.  It is fairly simple and much easier then swapping out a proprietary power supply with a stock one in my Dell 8100, building my server from an old IBM, or my never ending projects of the IBM PS2 and getting its OS2 Warp to get onto the internet, I have it working but getting a NIC to work has been problematic with PCI cards and not ISA ones.  Follow along as I track down the parts for the laptop, tear it down, then migrate the OS and data onto the new drive.

This past month my daughter reached another milestone.  Not a developmental one, or a physical one, or even an educational one.  No, this last month my daughter got her first Barbie doll.  Well, so what, she is a girl after all and is almost 3 years old.  Well, for starters it balances her love for Ultra Man, the Japanese kids show similar to Godzilla but where you have a guy fighting monsters around scale models of cities.  Second, is shows her awareness of targeted marketing and desire to join a peer group.

First off I have to explain something about Barbie here in Shanghai.  Sure, its a doll you can get at Carrefour, Toy’s R Us, or other department stores, even the ‘fake’ ones you can get at smaller markets.  Barbie is still a doll with clothes and such but as many things in Asia, she has become larger then life.  About a year ago they opened a dedicated Barbie Store here in Shanghai, on Hua Hai Road, its one of the ‘highest end’ shopping streets (very close to Nan Jing Shi Road which is another) we have here.  So what I can hear some of you say, well you have to see it to believe it.  For starters, its the LARGEST Barbie store in the world, no kidding.  Second its a full service Chinese style take on a western theme, meaning they take something with brand recognition and expand it to many levels beyond rational thought.

As you can see the store is 6 levels; a lobby with a mini-store, a full spa and beauty parlor, 2 levels of Barbie dolls and clothes, and a photo studio and cafe.  This explanation however is not sufficient.  The store includes a huge spiral staircase surrounded with hundreds of Barbies, all in pink.  Actually most of the store is pink, so much so I strongly recommend any man stay away from the store. 

My daughter got a Barbie passport, yes a passport including picture and pages for stamps at areas like the photo studio, fashion show, spa, etc.  She also gets a discount and special cash registers that only passport holders can visit.  She was not all that interested in the wall of Barbie that highlights the fashion and style of each year of Barbie.  She liked the specialty Barbies like the Gone With the Wind and Barbies of the World displays, but not so much the ones that were over $1,000 (thank goodness).  There was even an Elvis and Pricilla Presley Barbie set, oddly enough Ken is all over the store too, despite the very public divorce.

So after half a day in the store my daughter was quite happy.  She saw thousands of Barbies, clothes, accessories, photo props, and we even had lunch in the Barbie Cafe (food not too impressive but service was outstanding).  We of course went there to get a Barbie, and I let my daughter know she could only get one, so choose carefully.  She did, she got the set that includes kids tattoos as well as tattoos for the doll.  She loved the store and had a good time, but has not asked to go back in 2 weeks now.

She has since played with the doll, however not as frequent as the first week, she plays more with the Ultra Man toys.  She is more interested in the tattoos then anything else.  There are a few times that kids reach certain phases that mark their development.  First steps, first words, eating by yourself, potty training, so forth and so on.  Its incredible to see kids go through these phases.  As my daughter grows its amazing to see how aware of things she is.  At just over 2 and half years old she was aware we had a Barbie Store here (not aware its the largest in the world or unique in its services) and wanted to go because a friend of hers at school mentioned it in class.  I don’t know for how long she will remember this experience, most likely she will if we go back a few time (if we do I will have to take my PSP and extra shots of testosterone to counter all the pink and stuff).  Because they have birthday parties, photo studios, etc. I am sure we will go back a few times.