I know, it may not seem like much, but my notary system is done.
Sonny and I worked up a decision table for the binary logic of courier/fax/notary selections.
EG: If someone wants to pay us for receiving a fax, and faxing it out, its cool.
There were 256 possible combinations in the decision table.
I love those things.
I suppose its old faded technology, but any consequence can be determined with them.
Excel worked nicely as my tool.
Now that faxes are coded up, and Becky is familiar with the system, we're almost ready to rock and roll.
Emails are coming in already from people wanting to hooking on to my wagon. Its cool.
We've got so many things to do:
- Rent the condo,
- Order a fax line
- Buy an all-in-one color fax
- Distribute flyers.
- Do lunch with Brian Grady and some other people.
- Do corporate stuff, yuck!
I'm getting so burned out from everything. I've spent 1 month desigining the database, and programs for this system.
17 hours yesterday alone. God I hope it takes off.
If anyone want to take a peek, go to http: //www.lvdude.com/notary_welcome.asp . It works, but I disabled the main shortcut to it (www.lvdude.com/notary) to cut back inquisitors.

You'll like it. Zip Code Utility. Its in Info/Zip Codes
It shows:
- All the counties in a state.
- All the cities in a state
- All the cities in a county.
- All the zip codes for a city
- List zip codes in order.
- Will show a map for any it displays.
I wrote it in 4 hours. Pretty cool, huh?

---

I need to pick up a laser multi-function printer, if anyone has any suggestions.
I added faxing to my little system.
It should make in $0.75 a sheet, in or out.

Don't take a day off though.

I love the attitude that every moment spent regretting life, is a waste of life.
Me, I've been alive 26,876,556 minutes, and I've pretty much enjoyed it all!
Rob still lives in my heart, and his daughters wedding seems like yesterday.
As I grow older, time seems more and more like an illusion.
I love the way the skin on my hands are scaling.
I love how Becky's eyes are growing old with mine.
I think this is all magic.
I'm so glad to be alive!!!
I hope you are too.

Well, I have to write a couple of puny programs, and test a little bit, but now I'm down to hours of coding.
The next step will be the funnest part...using it, putting it together and selling the service.
Its nice to know my skills have improved over the years.
Becky and I have to get dolled up for smoozing customers. 
I can finally order a fax line and get a dual tray laser printer, then we can make up flyer's and brochures.
It should be a BLAST!!!
And if this system holds up well, we're going to doing Notary Conventions.
I never really, really wanted to actually do notaries. I wanted to develop a transactional system, and I did.
It took 1 month to develop. YEA!
Thursday (tomorrow), we have to get the condo rented good to go.
That means picking up some blank contracts, and getting organized for renting. It should be very easy this time.
We're less lost.

Gosh, I love that show!
House (an atheistic doctor), was trying desperately to help a rape victim who was looking for truth.
They were haggling about life. She wanted truth from House, he said the truth was uninteresting.
She said she believed that there is a god that values and cares about all life.
House said, if there is a god, he's either extremely cruel or insane.
Did he let her get raped to make some kind of sick point? Or does he just want to punish the bad guys in a burning hell while letting innocent people suffer. If thats his game, its insane.
She said, it wasn't like that. Its more like we enter a series of rooms going through life. Our value is based on how well we handle ourselves in those rooms. She asked him if he believed in god.
He said, if there isn't a god, what we do here has no consequences to our eternity. Therefore, there's nothing to keep us from doing evil. We should just have fun and not care about anyone but ourselves.
But if there is a god, then we should suffer here to earn brownie points in some kind of fictitious heaven.
He said, the concept of god is just that, us trying create a central point in the universe that has all of the reasons.
There is no reason for why things happen.
But what we do today matters, and will have an immense affect others down the line.
I like that show. It makes me think.

Its was Gma's birthday. The Italian restaurant we went to was pretty special. Paul reserved a private room for the seven of us (Paul, Gma, Dustin, Jennifer, Sonny, Becky, and me).
We had shrimp scampi (3 shrimp), and calamari fritti for the appetizer.
- I had osso bucco, because I'd heard of it, but forgot what it was.
- Sonny had sea bass *****
- Becky had Chicken Parmesian. ****
- This kids split a pizza **
- Paul had a seafood medley *****
- Gma had veal marsala ?????
The reason why I didn't rate my osso bucco is that I was raised on osso bucco!
Its basically roast beef with gavy on rice. Whoops on me.
The service was wonderful, the atmosphere was great, and we had fun. Plus we survived the trip to get there along I515.
The price was high, but, for a once in a year event, it was worth it.

I forget sometimes that people do pop on LVDude. This is usually a very lonely site.
Well, someone popped in, checked out the Notary system and entered a transaction.
The system does work in the real world. It will take credit cards, and it does page people on their cell phones.
Its not quite there yet. I behaves poorly. Cox internet has been quirky, and I haven't been able to update it anything lately.
Anyway, I have Sonny in the system as a mythical agent in Ely, NV.
I used his cell phone to test Sprint's messaging.
The notary system finds the agent closest to order (which was, I think, in Michigan), and Sonny got a page. LOL.
I was laughing so hard after I figured it out.
The system still has some minor bugs in it, one of being that if someone did create a credit card order right now, we wouldn't know it.

Unfortunately, I wasn't ready for it. I was really surprised they even had my cell phone number. I was listed on SigningAgent.com as a certified notary on December 21st, after completing my certification test.
Anyway, I was so surprised. I thought it was another loan company calling my cell phone for a home refinance.
I didn't have a canned response for the loan company, so I apologized. Then I asked if the loan was something they could walk me through, since I'm new (I was honest). They said it was a piggy-back loan, and it was rougher than most. hmm.
We will be using Becky's number out for Notaries, not mine. Oopsee.

As usual, I had to argue with them. I don't know why I waste my time with these people. Some 18 year olds with a Mormon bible or whatever they call it, came by preaching the word, or whatever they call it. LOL.
I told them as long as they believe in doing good, feeding the hungry, help the elderly, improving the quality of life, their on the right track, but I didn't believe in their religion.
Their ideas seem pretty weird too me. But then again, most all religions I've learned about seem weird.
They were rambling on about how you must be Baptized before you die so your spirit doesn't go to hell and yada yada.
I said, spirit! What is a spirit? They said its that part of you that goes on after you die.
I asked them, is there proof that something like that exists? They said they could feel it.
I asked why do you think it exists? Can you measure it? No, but the bible says it exists.
I asked them if they believe everything they hear, like do they really believe Joseph Smith had a vision? And why?
Its all so bizarre.
I can't get over, how the idea of a spirit evolved in the first place.
And how it must have evolved from ideas to full blown religions.
And then religions evolved further to tell all kinds of unbelievable stories.
And how people just believe these stories, without question.
There is no proof that spirits exist.
Some say they see them. Some say they feel them. Some say they hear them. Some say they speak for them.
Am I wrong for thinking these people are delusional?
I see miracles everywhere, that  I can see, touch, and measure Why can't these people see them too?

Its really picky code to master, after all, who wants spam in their cell phone's text messages.
Here's how it works right now.
- You logon into the notary system.
- You place your order
- You select cash for payment type.
- The system locates the closest agent, and sends him text messages about the order on their cell phone.
- A log entry is made to the administrator of the notary system.
- The agent replies to the cell message when each task is completed.
Pretty cool, huh?
The last enhancements will be:
- Add text messaging for credit card payments.
- Add transaction screens for sales people
- Add transaction screens for notary agents.

All except for the final clean up. Becky cleaned and  painted. I painted. Sonny cleaned up the garage.
Sonny actually did most of the work this time. Cheers to Sonny...YEAH!!!!
This time, we'll charge a $50 refundable application fee and we will check references.
No more cash deals. Its too much effort.
I called a real estate agent about the houses across the street.
The 1,600 square foot houses cost $310,000 ($193 a square foot)
The 1,800 square foot houses cost $352,000 ($194 a square foot)
So the condo should be worth over $120,000.

Thursday day, Becky and I worked on the condo (finally). The holes were patched, the front door was painted. The fridge was cleaned. The stove was cleaned. Our tenants were complete slobs. 
I sliced my finger open, and bled in the paint, darn it! But all thats left to do some touch up painting.
Thursday night, Sharon, Michelle, Mandy and Mirrissa came over. They didn't leave until after 2am.
Friday night, Dustin and Jennifer stayed over. We were up late again. I kept cracking up at them. They say the oddest things. A girl in some movie was standing on a hill all saddened by her loss and Dustin said, "Is she going to jump?". I said, "Yea, she's going to roll down the hill to her horrible death"...and I just couldn't stop laughing. It was the thought of a girl in a beautiful dress doing something that stupid just cracked me up to pieces.
Today, we lazed around, playing Family Feud and watching tube. 
Question 1 - "Other names you call small children"...Dustin's answer, "Virgins". My answer "midgets".
Question 2 - "Other names for horses"...Dustins answer, "Jalopy","Sam","Duke". My answer "Equestian".
Question 3 - "Name things that shrink after using them"...My answer...well, I couldn't say it, its dirty.
Its a strange, but leisurely life.

I'd call a newborn baby an adult fetus...haha.
You could only call the baby a virgin if it didn't have a twin brother.
Who knows what preborn babies do in there? Nine months is a lot of time!
Myself, I think I was always trying to peek outside. har har.
I like kangaroo babies.
Their fetal baby is called a "Joey".
Weighing less than two grams, it climbs into its mothers pouch after she licks a path for it to follow.
Her milk will change during its development..
And whats really odd about the Joey
Is has an semi developed backup (a twin in suspense).  It hangs out in the womb for a few weeks after Joey's birth.
If conditions are good, the twin will crawl out.
I think thats incredible how these macropods live.
They live in mobs, ya know.

Nevada foreclosures over 100,000 for the fifth month
See article. Personally, I own two houses here.
I recently talked to a condo owner who lives near one of them. He said he bought his 3 bedroom condo for $80,000 in 2004. It is now worth $160,000. Like most of the people here, he has refinanced and pulled cash out. If he had only $20,000 into his condo (with payments), that would represent a two year gain of over 400%.
I would think the foreclosures would hurt the loan companies, then the banks, and eventually the US Treasury. I would think the interest rates would go up. But who knows, things often work out the opposite way of how you'd expect to.
On the flip side, luxury houses are going for a mint! A luxury condo at the Turnberry Towers goes for $2,000 a square foot. Most houses go for $20 a square foot.
Child Welfare gets bad an "F".
See article. No surprise there. I've heard the best thing to do, if you need social assistance, is to move to California.
Nevada Educational funding gets an "F".
See Article. No surprise there. Talking to kids these days, they seem to know very little about our Greek and Roman heritage. They're understanding of geograpy is weak. It seems that even with D's and F's, these kids pass the grade. I still find it hard to accept that playing a computer game is considered Physical Education.
Nevada stem cell research is happening.
See article. I was curious about why research was so contraversial so I read up on it. The stem cells can take on the attributes of any cell in the body (IE: liver cells, or in my case, a new brain), but with current technology, extracting them kills an embryo without dignity. Normally, the embroyos would be wasted if not fertilized. See wikipedia.
Nevada Methamphetimine use called Epidemic
See article. No surprise here. I often drive down the road and see people waving their hands and talking to themselves. Sometimes they walk erratic and fast.
This is why I don't read the news much. Its depressing.

One of Sonny's engineer buddies gave him MS Office 2007 Professional. Then Sonny gave it to me for Christmas.
Its pretty cool.
I've been using their Access 2007 for my database design.
It looks just like SQL Server 2000. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was MSSQL 2000.
I like the way table relationships are done...
EG: I have a User table and a Tran table. To create a relationship, you drag User.user_id to Tran.user_id, and Bingo, you've got a relationship! I like that a lot. I did a lot of that for IGT with their transformation tables.

Click this link and tell me what you think about my system: http://www.lvdude.com/notary
The system should take credit cards securely, but I'm using $10 for testing purporses.
I don't want to have brochures and business cards printed up until I have a system in place.
I'm almost done too =)
But you never know how it comes out on different browsers. Netscape is one I'm not even considering.
Mr Short might like this:
Right now, the system calculates distances between zip codes (using my address as a base).
Legally, a mobile notary may only charge $5 a notary and a maximum of $10 for travel during the day, $25 at night.
That sux. So, how are notaries making money?
The way to make money is to inform the customers of additional charges in advance. EG: I want $20 for the order, plus $2 a mile for every mile of 20.
I'm not doing notaries yet. I have to advertise first. My Yellow Page ad comes out in April.

Thats what I'm hoping to get ($120 to $250 a signing), if I actually do the work.
Actually, I would like to get ALL the business from the other agents in town.
I'd like them to go through my notary system. That way they can legally get more than the legal limit, and I can get a commission.
The way it works now is clutzy for notaries.
They are lucky to get paid anything, from what I've heard.
Most of them don't take credit cards.
One girl said when she gets a check, and she runs to the bank asp to cash it.
Most of them only make $600 a month doing loan signings, and thats usually around the end of the month.
What I need to do is smooze lawyers, title companies, loan companies, hospitals and real estate agents.
I created a transaction under your name for the heck of it.
If you click on the Notary dropdown or go into http://www.lvdude.com/notary , and click enter twice, you'll see the Pizza transaction. lol.
Let me know what you think, ok?

Sorry it took so long for me to discover your entry.
Sonny got your order on his cell phone the other night.
If I had all my code out there, you would have seen a little cell phone with your message on its screen.
Anyway, now that I know that was you, I'm cracking up !!!!
You are awesome dude, and Sonny's expression was priceless!!!
I fixed most of the problems you mentioned, but its still in my local test system.
I've been having trouble copying my stuff...cause my cable internet burps a lot.
The credit card portion does take credit cards
but I haven't finished yet, cause I'm actually testing with my money.
Right now, if someone paid by credit, noone would know about it...haha. I'm dealing with Paypal, and I still have to find out what they're going to tell me...eg: did the credit transaction work or fail?
I've been testing with both Mozilla and Explorer.
Screw Netscape. IE and Mozilla seem to have their own ideas on what OVERFLOW:AUTO means. Now I've got scroll bars everywhere I look. They're ugly, they're blue, and I can't seem to change the little boogers.
I like how Mozilla handles errors with its magic disappearing cursor.
The cursor just disappears. I'm dealing with 5 languages here, and if I miss a semi-colon somewhere in the 1,000s of lines of code I've written, boom, the cursor disappears. That blows.

The movie log, or as I'd like to spell it, the moovy log. Inspired by the ever so awesome Warren...
Big hand for Warren....rah rah, clapping hands, confetti and dancing girls to ya.
You mentioned Zardoz 
which, by the way, happens to be one of my all time favorite B movies.
I liked that movie so much.
They used crystals for their memory storage.
At that time, I had read they were developing crystals with blue lasers for computer storage.
I thought. "YES, FINALLY, a better medium than VHS tapes! I can free up an entire room now.". 
But they came up with DVDs instead. They looked just like CDs, but cost more.
DVDs confused to people, somehow.
I've seen people throw DVDs like Frisbees, put their finger prints all over them, and even use them as coasters.
Some people decorated their Christmas trees with them. They even hung them on their rear view mirrors.
But outside of their misleading appearance, DVDs are supposed to have a shelf life of 100 years.
Thats great, really great, but I don't keep mine on the shelf! I keep them in a coffee can. I actually watch them too.
They just don't last that long after all the sliding in and sliding out and spinning and screeching to a halt from 1,000 mph.
Another advance that I liked about Zardoz was the flying head thing.
Imagine, if cars flew and looked like your head. That would be great!
No more searching for your car in crowded parking lots.
You could just ask anyone if they knew where you parked. "yea, uh, that car over there looks just like you".

Thats a good question Mikey. I looked it up. Who is this guy?

I've been searching for the meaning of life as long as I can remember.
Growing up, there were too many Bibles, too many insane stories, too many overlooked truths.
I look around and I see animals that are not that different from myself. They have organs like me; hearts, kidneys, stomachs, brains. They have hair. They are as alive as I am. Yet we kill them, because somehow, it isn't a wrong.
I never saw people as black, yellow, white or brown.
That was just a minor difference. All the hate was plain stupidity.
I wondered, if people were smart, why didn't they seek science for longer lives. Why did they seek greed, power and control. I realized, our species is insane. If we don't understand what we see, we invent concepts that are not real. Then we kill our own species if they don't believe in our insanity. As a result, most of the human race believes in things they know can't be real. Our ignorance is only overcome by our arrogance.
It should be obvious to anyone who dares to look...
We were all spawned by the same entity. Everything on this planet is necessary. All life on this planet is related. We are cousins of the animals, and distant cousins of the plants. Our greatest forefathers were single celled creatures. Life on earth could have been spawned by one single celled creature. Four billion years is a long time for life to grow.
It takes our own body only 9 months to form from a single celled life form.
Its not so far fetched, that all the knowlege we were given at birth, was inherited by our ascendants. We are reincarnations of those who spawned us. We just can't remember them simply because we don't need to.
Our purpose is to help life spread.
These observations should be obvious.
I believe that the worst thing we could do to our dead is to embalm or cremate them. To do so, destroys their DNA. It obliviates any chance of their knowledge being passed down.
Adults seem as impatient as children at times.
I've heard people say that when we die, we go to heaven, even though theres no evidence of this.
I think we don't go anywhere. I believe we mutate and there is evidence of that.
I think, in 8 billion years, given nothing else to accellerate the process, we'll be back. I say that because that is how long it took the universe to create us.
Perhaps, in a hundred years or so...
People will drop their fantasies, forget about the gods and devils they imagined, their heavens and hells, and just look at what is real. Maybe we won't use and abuse other life forms just because they are different.
Maybe someday, we'll share with this planet and go on to make the universe a better place.
But for now, the human race seems to be insane with greed, religion and power. We are dooming ourselves.

Martin Luther King Day was founded as a holiday and was promoted by labor unions in contract negotiations. hmmm. See Wikipedia. I don't know much about this guy, except that he was a Babtist minister. I guess he was pretty cool back in the 1960's. But as a kid, he scared the brownies out of me. He was always yelling and pointing his finger at something. He even yelled about his dreams!
People like that scare little kids.

Iraq is smaller than Arizona. It has less people than California. Mexico City has almost as many people.
With that in mind, why is it so hard to conquer?
If something sounds wrong, it probably is.

From: Morningstar.com, stock named HAL.
I guess, from what I've read, $1.4 billion was awarded to the Texas company called Halliburton in a no-bid contract. It was run by Dick Cheney, a Bush advisor (See Article).  That stock price has to be one of the hottest ones in the NYSE. Man, why can't I have buddies like that!!!   
The Bush speech was touching. .
Help the Iraqis people grow democratic.
Stop the 'insurgents'. Stop the Alkiada regime. That sounds great!
But how do we know we've won, exactly?
And how we never, ever, hear about the oil production over there?
I've always thought thats what the war was really about. We never hear about that though.
I do wish we'd help our neighbors in Mexico, instead.
Maybe they'd stop fleeing to the US. I suppose there is now profit in that. To bad, hombres. Your country doesn't seem to have anything we would kill for to get. hmmm.
Now, I gotta say that I don't intentionally look up disturbing new.
It just seems to rear its ugly head all by itself.

I got your log Sonny and I'm glad to see you're contributing to it.
LVDUDE.com probably has a total of 12 visitors a month...haha.

It was cold in the parking lot in front of the Frontier. We found a parking spot, almost right on the Strip, and right around 9pm. I thought that was AMAZING! We had to hang out for the next three hours for the big fireworks spectacle, so....

Becky and I walked up and down the Strip.
We popped into the Frontier, Venetian, and Treasure Island. Compared to the other New Years, the crowd was as thin as Charmin. But like I said, it was f-f-f-f-f-r-e-e-z-ing!
Finally the time came...midnight on the Strip.
I futzed with my new Christmas camera for a few moments, the looked up, and it was over! Wut thu hay I hooted, and I'm not an indian. 2007 had to be the shortest New Years fireworks display I'd ever seen, lasting only 6 minutes long.
The things I enjoyed this New Years were:
The scantely clad girls.
The guys in heavy fur jackets.
The people with flashing balls in their mouths.
The horse cops.
And the all-slapped-give-out drunks.

The car runs GREAT now...nothing like those 100,000 mile tuneups.
The car stereo didn't work on the back right, because the speaker was missing...hmmmm.
Did I take it out, or was it already missng. That's a very puzzling question.
What's my name again?