It seems that capitalism is now without risk for those with the right “leverage”…

-22%  (!)

It almost makes me wish I’d blown it all on household electronics.

All those forecasts - “We’ll use the conservative model of 7% growth per year” - aren’t looking all that promising at this point.

I’m taking the advice being sent to me by all those incredibly wealthy folks who run the various brokerages and I’m “staying the course”.

Am I just being foolish? Should I just stop investing in my future and join the majority?

Sometimes I wonder…

Lately I’ve been having problems with my DSL where it drops for about 15 seconds and then springs back to life (they’re sending me yet another modem to address the issue…). This is, of course, enough of an outage to cause the VPN client to drop its connection like a hot potato.

Trying to reconnect yields the dreaded

Secure VPN Connection terminated locally by the Client.
Reason 413: User authentication failed.

 error. And it seems you’ll never reconnect again without rebooting your computer.

Do this instead:

• Close the VPN Client GUI
• Open “Services” (Click “Start” button, type “Services” and hit enter)
• Find the “Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service” and STOP it.
• Now single left-click on your connection icon in your system tray and select “Network and Sharing Center” OR Click “Start” button and type “Network”, you should see “Network and Sharing Center”
• Look at your current connection and click on “View Status”
• At the bottom of the “Connection Status” dialog click on the “Diagnose” button
• Click the “Reset the network adapter “Your Network Connection”" option.
• Wait for the “The problem has been resolved” dialog to be displayed and click the “Close” button
• Close the “Network and Sharing Center”
• Go back to the services dialog and START the “Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service”
• Wait for about 15 seconds and you can now click on your Cisco VPN Client icon or start menu item.

Now the tough part. Depending on how poorly the system is configured on your company’s side you have to wait a few minutes until it times out your connection. Otherwise you will need to go through the above steps all over again.

I hope this helps!

I’m going to disengage the power meter now since I want to reconfigure things a bit as I swap in my new modem/router combo from AT&T. I’m going to hook it up to some known consumer (a light bulb) to verify if the consumption readings are accurate.

Assuming accuracy, my main computer’s consumption after 273 hours (a little over 11 days) is 51 kilowatts or $5.42. The average cost is about 47 cents per day or $3.33 per week. The predicted annual cost is about $173 per year. A bit of an eye opener really. Little things have so much power to add up when paired with the inexorable march of time.

I don’t usually put much stock in what actors have to say on the issues as they’re often not terribly broadly educated and the ones with the clout to get heard seem to be rather cloistered and somewhat detached from the world that most of us live in. But this campaign hits the nail on the head.

Be sure to educate yourself on the issues that are important to you. Your individual vote may seem meaningless. But if you throw away this opportunity to express yourself, then you are just one more drone in a sea of drones who are willing to accept whatever government is thrust upon them. And there is simply too much of that going on.

Check out this video:

Then head over to this site here and register yourself to vote if you are not already registered.

For my county the deadline is by October 6 so there are still 2 more days left. Hopefully it’s not too late for you.

An avatar is a graphical representation you provide to give others some kind of insight into who you are. In this largely anonymous “interworld” it can provide a way to let folks know that you’re not (or maybe you are) overly serious. Or maybe you’re a cat lover… whatever you want to express.

This site supports a particular type of avatar called a gravatar. A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar. You can go to their site and register one or a few of your email addresses (they don’t have to be your primary address, just one that you’d provide to blogs and forums you frequent) and then put up your avatar image there.

Any blog or forum that supports gravatars, once you’ve provided one of your email addresses, will then show the relevant avatar sourced from the gravatar site.

You can even specify “G” through “X” so that you can have different images on differently oriented sites. My site supports up to an “R” rating.

The iGolf neo is a compact GPS unit you can use while golfing to let you know how far away you are from the front, back and center of the green. The maps are downloaded from their website to which you subscribe for a modest fee. Once you’ve downloaded a map it’s yours, so if you don’t get around much you may not need to renew your subscription.

You can also map your own courses if you choose.

This is an image showing all the stuff that comes out of the box when you purchase an iGolf neo.

The little booklet is actually pretty useful. It answered nearly every question I had about the gadget as I was walking myself through its features.

I already had some experience with this little gadget, my friend David D. picked one up earlier this year and was finding it very useful. The accuracy of my unit matched his in being within about a yard or two of the markers in the tee box.

I don’t have too much trouble judging distance when I’m playing the short part of my game, maybe within about 90 yards. But that oddball area between about 120 to 160 yards I seem to have trouble gauging and find the neo a valuable aid. I’m pretty consistent with which clubs hit which distances. It’s guessing the distance that was somewhat of an achilles heel.

Also handy is the neo’s shot ability. When at the tee I just click the “Shot” button twice and, when I am at the ball for my next hit I can see how many yards I was actually able to achieve. Great for refining my opinion of how far I hit which club.

It’s supposed to last about 16 hours on a charge and uses the same technology as my bluetooth puck GPS which seems to never run out of steam so I anticipate never running out of power as long as I charge it at least once every couple of games.

I originally did not realize that this was the third in a series or I probably would have gone and picked the others up first so that I could grow with the story. As it turned out the book does a very good job of standing on its own.

I won’t bother to summarize the plot here, others have done a much more thorough job on Amazon and elsewhere than I could hope to, what I am expressing rather are my impressions of the book.

It’s relatively and graphically violent in portions, which is fitting given the history of the pro-(an?)tagonist. In real life he would not really be someone you’d want to meet… ever. But it is interesting to spend the book inside his head as he recalls past experiences that involve quelling far-flung planetary uprisings with a ruthlessness reserved for those who are trained to kill and are very good at it.

Of greatest interest to me is the culture of a civilization where death is a rarity. By choice or by accident you can “resleeve” and have a brand new body to use to carry on your existence and that body can be tailored to your personal or business needs. Starting with that premise, how do casual folks deal with relationships and their attitudes toward the everyday travails of life?
Mutually agreeable divorce or separation is much more to be expected as it is possible for centuries to pass across which your growth as a person may be expected to diverge from that significant other with whom you shared so much so long ago.

I found this a satisfying read and have added the preceding books to my Amazon wish list and anticipate that they will be equally satisfying.

First, after a week with the hair dryer I see that I’ve only consumed .09 kilowatt hours (or about as much power as turning on a 60 watt lightbulb and leaving it lit for 90 minutes across an elapsed time of an entire week). This was surprising given that it’s such a high energy consumer. It’s rated to consume 1600 Watts but the Kill A Watt showed only 1398 Watts being consumed. So I suppose it’s a little “greener” than I thought

I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me greatly as I really don’t use the hair dryer for very long. Just enough to try to make my part somewhat stable.