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.

That's great. And I think you miss your days at IGT. Speaking of which, have you heard recently from Susan Stone? No, I know Sonny had given you Office 2007. But I haven't worked with it yet. I have no need to spend the money. My Office 2003 Pro is fine with me.

What you're up to, these days. Are you notarizing?

I followed the link.  Thought It might lose me it was moving at such a frenzied but groovy pace.  Ended up here.
What feedback? At the payment window I entered some funny credit card number without selecting payment
type, like usd or card icon.  It didnt care.  Took me to the next window.  There was a broken image.
Did this on explorer.  Not my comp.  I use Mozilla.  Im a user.  And a snot.  You probably know this dont you.
DONT YOU?  You and your high falutin cronies.  Good job on it though, Auto complete, auto zip detect, aparently you
have math in your pocket, very nice.  No lines or cursors for some fields and lines under others.  I can backkey and forward thru stuff I entered long after the fact and its still there, even after googling in the same window and rewinding
(after the payment window!).  Something I wish like freagin wonderland you had going for the logs. [because] I had  the most
awesomely smoking response to the "MLK whos that guy" log entry.  Seriously, it was beautiful, like I was channeling
a hybrid of Nelson Mandelas soul and James Woods balls, I was gonna smoke that comment.  Alas, I tried in vain to
bring it back to life after looking up wether Martin Luther King actually walked from Selma to DC (800 miles!) accidentally
from not another tab, and .. it just wasnt the same.  The freak was all I could channel of spirit, every sentence just missed some little kibble of metre, dammit all to hell was my evenings name then.  Anyhoo.  I dont really need the small catapult.
Ps. there is triple scrolling happening here.  two scrollbars, outermost one scrolls a shmeensy percent of the content, up arrow saves the day.  Peace baby.

I had hoped to hear that you had already started nortarizing. Maybe getting your name out there, via flyers, word of mouth, etc. Or had hit "The Brain" up for some possible work at his place, around the corner on Flamingo. There was a guy here briefly, last summer, who was doing Notary, and maybe the laws are different here, than in NV, but he'd quote anywhere from $120 to $250 to go somehere (in the evening after work) to do a typical real estate loan document.

Why????

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.

Ford Trucks Red, White & Blue Balloon Festival
An event for the entire family is coming to Sam Boyd Stadium on January 13 & 14, 2007. The Ford Trucks Red, White & Blue Balloon Festival will feature twenty-five special shape balloons and forty race balloons. Making it the second largest Special Shape Balloon Festival in the country.
We went there.
They didn't launch the balloons and they did last year. There was no wind, so that couldn't have been the reason. The balloons were only inflated for less than an hour. And to top it all off, the DJ for KOMP radio said there was no smoking at the outdoor event. Ummmm. So thats the way its going to be.
Between the balloon event, and the short New Years fireworks display, I have to wonder what's going on.

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.

Did someone say disturb?? Someone say ugly head? Guess thats my cue. For all they have seen and done in deed, "it must be horrible".  The news on the wankertube should be reformatted in three layers.  First the news, keep the sounds and oratory media.
  1st superimposition, CSI like hyperbolic pornography.  The kind of stuff that tailors itself to fantasies involving solving murders and keeping consumers together when trauma takes ahold in some unfortunate demonstration of tissues force and physics.
This sets the tone for alerting the viewer that interest and fantasy is now licensed(thus possibly connecting with a baseindex of meanings from outside the actual box of the hour(program)).
'because we care about YOU' Thats a real message solicited across the broadcast interface. (TV)..
Second superimposition.
THE media REAL detectives, police EMTs and medical triage peepz must sort through every second of the day.  mainly the gruesome cacophany of images taken for evidence in repugnant flash lighting. If you like text there are reports to be read then. Adjoin a sparse but breathtaking clause of  THE scenery. things WE are familiar with, that usually offer the inheritance of their usual safe, usefull ordinary meanings, (this is a wall, that is a mailbox, this is a refridgerator, thats a bustop,hey look children playing in a park!).  Now you have the news. 
Hmm, clean desert clad 'workers' kicking in a slightly dusty door for the nteenth instance and reviewed? Following an APC exposing security enhanced bodylanguages, ...
Nope, just keep the dumbed down audible headlines and cirkle-reasoned headline qualifying agents, (gotta keep something to let us knoiw its the news right?),,,,
Add the fantasy liscencing agent, and then please dont close your eyes cuz you need to know what youre recompositing with the fantasy licsencing agent along with the ordinary scenery clause into the news,ok now add those two last little darlings so that YOU, who WE care about, like ..oh my GAWD, all the time -- DUHH !!! can actually get the news, and then, i dunno, pop an asperin or something.
Thats the world of these poor people from under one umbrella of hate to under a several of others is like. 
And then read some antiquated irrelevant humoring bits of stuff copied of John Quincy Adams in his feverd rush to rise to his occasion something something um experiment in democracy .. yeah yeah yeah and TRY like hell to keep an even brow when someone tells you in so many unspoken terms of preemptive censorship that{"if we werent there" As If {(the official infinitive state of the term 'there' is whatever an ends justifying a means will suffer;) evidence of children torn apart and wailing parents is ok}}. Im done.  Im too pissed now to be of any use. Tvee news should be experienced in three layers minus the heart though, if we are as interested as our habits suggest. sorry eh. There is always a simpler way, what use this is escapes me.
If anyone has any better and distanced perspective please share, my myopia is summoned me into a trite fairweather gadfly.
yuck!!! ooh, theres what I was hoping for "Please enjoy your visit to LVDude." ok, next time then.  can I still have that beer??

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.

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.

Good Morning babe
I had a great time last night. You were right about the fireworks being so short.
I really didn't know what to think about that guy that came up to me dancing.
I've never had that happen before. It was kinda flattering to me. I wanted to grab
you but you were taking a picture. LMAO!!!!!!!!. What was so funny about it
was the way he danced. I got a kick out of all of the people there. I couldn't
believe how some of those young girl's were wearing dress skirt's in cold weather.
WOW!!!!! LOL. Thank you so much babe for a good time at the strip.
I Love You
Becky

WHY??????

12/31/2006 - I saw the New Years Ghost
I saw a ghost this News Years Eve when I looked in the mirror. It looked just like me.
Then I started seeing ghosts all around me.
When you go out this New Years, look around at the people. Picture them as if you watching them in a video filmed 100 years ago.

Notice how much we all look alike, how well we get along, and how we all seem to be related? Don't look at our differences. Look are how much we have in common.
Pretend you lost your long term memory?
Ever see a picture of a Great Great relative that looked just like you? Ever talked to someone who thought just like you?
If you can think like me for just a moment
Imagine that when we die, we don't go anywhere. Imagine the we are all reincarnations of our ancestors, without their memories. Imagine that it goes much deeper than that. Imagine we are all the reincarnations of the dinosaurs and further back. Too me, life seems too obvious. Animals, birds, fish, insects, we all have the same organs. We all must be related.
We were born with knowledge.
It came from someone. It probably came from our parents.
Nature could have populated our memories with that of our ancestors, but for whatever reason, it didn't.
Who knows, maybe we'd still be arguing about how someone sacrificed our favorite lamb or something...
But doesn't that seem a lot easier to believe than some fairy floating down and touching us with her magic wand.
If you think like I do, you'll know that on this planet, all life is related. Given enough time, we all come back.

Hi babe
I Love you too!!!

IE only allows 20 cookies per sight.
It looks like one cookie when you look at it in explorer, but you could basically
unstring a cookie.txt file delimited by ";" into cookie1, cookie2...cookie20.
Handling the cookie is IEs job since you have to go through its routines to access local files.
That really sucks. All the other browsers don't care how many cookies you have.
I hate spending hours trying to figure out why items are dropping off when the reason is plain stupidity.
--- sheesh ---

Hmmm, scrolling action incapacitated at some point, but aside from that.  A super great method for quitting shmoking is this, and it really works.  Dress up your hands each morning.  One hand, the hand you smoke most often with, dress up as a
burglar, or better yet as Bush, or any of his sneaky awful cabineteers.  Dress the other up as something good to you, like some one you would ordinarily most always trust.  Then when the burglar attains in its arms a cigarette you immediately know to
demand an answer from it as to what nefarious intentions it plans for you.  And it will say to you, "Oh this? I just want to
bring the chemicals inside by way of lighting it on fire, you kniow, show them off again to the rest of the body, beginning with
the lungs and heart."  Well, youve caught him there! and the wrestling match should be easily won, as you are alot larger and heavier than your own hand.  After awhile the burglar hand should just give up.  If youve dressed up your other hand correctly
wrestling with it will not be an issue, it will not want to do things it knows you frown upon.    No - Bad mr rumsfeld, you will not host a fundraiser in my body - bad bad mr rumsfeld!!
Im winning yay! This has such moralizing
overtones i think Ill just stop now.

I've heard good things about being hypnotized to quit. How do you look that up?

Thats kind of why I mentioned it in this blog. I wrote the shrinks name down, but forgot it, and lost what I wrote it on.
Shoot. And if I try to look it up on the net, I get thousands of junk sites.
I thought his name was Bill...but I forgot his last name too.
--- One of these days I'll fix the order of entries on this blog.

I have Bill's email address written down, on my liptop, but not here at work. I haven't emailed him in two years plus. So, I don't if it's any good. I can try emailing him this evening.If I hear back from him, I'll ask about the smoking hypo.

Jimmy... You remember - Oh, what's his name (Bill something)? The tall, gray haired bloke who you worked with at MGM, and I worked with at Fly's. The cashier... Remember how he said quit smoking, using hyptotism, and it worked for him really well.

People we lost in 2006
Gerald Ford (US president) 93, James Brown (singer) 73, Peter Boyle (actor) 71, Moses Hardy (oldest man) 113, JB Hunt (trucking mogul) 79, Samual Bowers (KKK Imperial Wizard) 82, Dave Kochran (author X-Men) 63, Mike Douglas (talk show host)  81, James Van Allen (Van Allen belt),  James Harvey Young (medical historian) 90, Mikey Spillane (Mike Hammer author) 88, Red Buttons (comedian) 87, Billy Preston (singer) 59, Darren McGaven (actor) 83, Don Knotts (comedian) 81, Wilson Pickett (singer) 64, Shelly Winters (actress) 85, Lou Rawls (singer) 72, Aaron Spelling (TV mogul) 83, Dennis Weaver (actor) 81, Louis Cutlar (my dad) 83.

Wilson Pickey was 64...I copied the footnote reference accidentally. Thanks SAE.

Jimmy... Wilson Pickey (aka: Pickett) was 64, almost 65 - not 93. typo!!!! Howl...

Feeling down from a cold
I wasn't really a pleasure to be with today. I guess its a cold. Sore throat, sneezing, itchy eyes, can't breath.
Since I've been back, my breathing has taken a drastic turn for the worse.
Becky and I are going to quit smoking on New Years.
It seems like the right thing to do. Nevada hates smokers and I don't like being an addict.
I suppose if I succeed, I'll end up like all the other people who quit smoking and hate smoking too.
I'll probably end up using the inaccurate term "Cancer Sticks" in slurs, myself.
BTW - The odds of rolling a 3 in craps are about the same as a smoker getting cancer. 
Only an idiot would think 3's are probable. Hence, "Cancer Sticks" is a stupid label. I know it sound cool.
"Empysema Sticks" would be far more appropriate. Everyone that smokes will eventually get emphysema.
While I'm on stupid slurs,
"Heart Attack Coffee", "Chlorestoral Bacon", "Big Butt Burgers", "Fat Fanny Fries",  "Mucous Milk", and "Bimbo Beer"would be more appropriate labels.
You could even slang ham by saying, "Here, have an ass sandwich", but thats just wrong.
IM'd GMa
We thought we were all invited over today for dinner, but it turned out the invitation was for New Years.
IM'd Ida
We talked about our Christmas's.
Ida says her boyfriend is going to liquidate his business and retire. He hurt his hip not long ago.
I should offer to buy it from him. Ida says he was doing well with it.
She invited Allen into our Instant Messenger conversation.
IM'd Allen, after over a year of silence
We'd been friends since high school, but fell apart over money. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot.
He was funny as usual. He said he'd just visited the Blue Hole in Kentucky. Small world.
He was getting run off by the same hillbilly that tried to run us off. I told him that the guy knew both Allen and me.
Its funny how hard it is to recognize people after they've lost all of their teeth.
I thought the hillbilly guy was just paranoid about us finding his pot crop

 
The Christmas I'll remember best will be the one thats happening today.
My memories of the past
have faded into sepia-like images, tinted by the colors of the spirits that I've chosen to keep in my mind. What I'm trying to say is, when I remember Christmas, I see the spirits of love.
So, at this time...
I want to thank the 100s of people who have shared their holidays with me and made them absolutely wonderful.
You've worn pajamas, business suits, tank tops, and robes. You've put bows in your hair and worn funny hats.
We've celebrated at work, at your place and at my home. We've spent time together and you made me smile.
And I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart.
Thanks for the memories.

Howl.... Life is life. We shall see what happens. But it's all in the right direction over time..

Not that I can claim to know the exact wording of the NV law that just took effect, I can't see where it descriminates. It applies to you, me, and every other Bloke and Sheila (British terms for "Guy" and "girl"). If it ends up closing up all those little bars, of which there are 15 on each LV intersection, then so be it. Part of progress. Who needs those 2 million bars in LV anyway. Let people drink at the larger establishments that will still be around or at home. 

The law discrimates against business types. If they said it applies to all businesses, and allowed for smoking areas, that would be a start at being impartial, but it didn't. The law said it applies to you, you, and you and but not you.
If you own a hookah bar (a specific club for tobacco users), your business will be destroyed. If you don't have an unlimited gaming license, or a strip club or brothel, or serve food thats not prepackaged, your business will be damaged.
After the hooka bars did all of the homework to start a legal business, gotten all of their licensing, and dealt with all the Krapola involved, after all that, a law came up that will shut them down. RED just invested $250,000 to expand one of their hookah bars in Las Vegas.
Don't we have too many stupid laws already?
What if they came up with a law that said computer consultants had to be licensed and pay $20,000 a year in taxes.
These kind of items have already popped up in laws claiming to be Sin Taxes. Cute, but stupid.
What will happen when these kind of discrimintory laws hit your business.
I've read the sample ballots countless times.
No way would the voters think that
- any bar that serves a wedge of lime with a drink be counted as a serving unprepackaged foods
- hotel rooms would be included in the ban,
- the health department can now write $100 tickets to customers
   in effect, turning them into another policy maker and enforcement agency.
But really, I could care less. I'm not effected by the law.
Nevada is. I'd expect the winners of the law would be the casinos. They've had business legally thrown in their direction.

We took to the dentist at 8am this morning.
THEY SAID: She can't have a root canal, so they're going to have to pull her molar.
However, they are saying she needs to be put under for the extraction.
While waiting in the lobby, waiting I talked to this fellow about Medicare supplimental insurance. I told him I thought Champus took care of that for a small premium. Somehow we got to talking about Mexico.
He said, his parents, rather than go through the health system in the US, got their teeth work done in Mexico for 10% of the cost. He also said he has heart problems and will probably go to Thailand for an operation.
I thought that was an interesting thing to say.