Bright, Clean, and Beautiful Hummer

I just love the way Humvee's (the Civilian models) look. And I spotted one yesterday in a mall parking lot. No, I'll probably never own one (too big) big I do appreciate the way they look!

Enjoe!

It just doesn't make any sense. I saw an NBC news report about Catholics and how they have left the church over differences in how they see the world as opposed to how the Church sees the world. These include gays and same-sex marriage among other things.

Are they serious? Because even if you got the church to change it's views it doesn't mean that God is going to change His. So what would Catholics do if God's voice boomed from above that he doesn't support same-sex marriage or gays either? Change Gods?

Well, there's only one God and you're out of luck. Get back to what's really important. Why focus on silly and wrong views that only matter to silly people and ignore your salvation?

Isn't your fate after death what really matters?

God and Goals

Goals. A wonderful thing to have. Goals give you a purpose in life, and they make the seemingly very difficult easier because goals have a way of motivating you. Without goals, you would not accomplish as much as you could with goals. So it's generally accepted by folks in general, and society as a good thing; your parents, your teacher, and so on. So goals are a good thing, but I have a goal and it's the most important goal that any human can have.

I caught on to a show on TV that I must have missed. But no problem because you can catch episodes of it on YouTube, and it was called "I survived - Beyond and Back" and it's about near death experiences (NDE's).  And one young man (a ladies' man, by his own admission) died in a car crash, was dead for several minutes, and was revived. And something he said struck fear into me. He said that he went to hell, and saw a lot of newly dead souls there who were suffering from regret. They wanted one more chance, or only five minutes more of life, just for the chance to save themselves by repenting, but it was too late for them. And I saw myself among them because I too (like so many others still alive) am a sinner, and unrepentant. But that has changed. My goal in life now is to change, and make sure that I don't regret my choices when I am finally gone. And that goal is more important than any goal here on earth. I am now repentant.

But I know what most of you are thinking. You probably believe in God, but there are many who don't, and chances are probably pretty good that many who read this article do not believe in God. There are so many things going on that you may be in support of; same sex marriage, or abortion and probably other things that are sinful. Church may be a bother, prayer a thing of the past for you. You may be gay yourself, and may be offended that someone might see what you do as wrong and sinful, or a young man, or woman, enjoying every sinful pleasure as you discover and experiment with your sexuality. Life in other words may be one big party and my talk of God may be the last thing you want to hear. You may in fact have been swayed by the chant of so many who don't want their fun to stop, mainly that God doesn't really exist. That when you die, you just die, and that there's nothing for you on the other side. I don't believe those who doubt. All they want is to stop thinking about eventual consequences because life is so much fun when you're sinning.

But your life here on earth won't last forever.  You'll see the end of your days (about 25,000 days on the average) eventually. And I for one don't want to carry anything with me on that day that I would be ashamed of, that I might want God to not know about. I want to go there forgiven. I want to see a bright light, not darkness. I want to be close to God, I want to be rewarded for being good, both while still here on earth and beyond but most of all, I don't want to wake up on the other side regretting anything.

Sorry I've Been a Little Busy Lately

Been so busy lately trying to learn five or six applications so that I can publish some instructional videos on YouTube that you can look at. I think I have a knack for showing anyone how to get off the ground quickly, but I have to do a little “getting off the ground” myself first.  So, what am I trying to learn?

Well, I’m not going to give you a complete list of all that I’m trying to learn, but I’ll give you a short list of 2. The two apps are Unity 3.5 (which is used to write games for your PC, Mac, Nintendo Wii and so on. And the other application is Google’s SketchUp version 8, which is a really neat application that lets you draw structures such as buildings. You can draw for Google Earth and have your drawing be included in Google Earth’s vast map of the world. No experience or drawing talent required.

And of the five or six applications I am going to cover, they all have the potential to turn into very interesting, and high paying careers!

Of both applications, I think SketchUp is the easiest to learn. I have fun putting instructions together (I love to do it) that I am ignoring SketchUp in favor of Unity. It’s just that I’m having such an interesting time with it. But I want to share with you that I have a bit of a voice control problem due to a condition that I have, but I believe I can pull it off.

I should be ready with the SketchUp article and video soon, so come back soon and check it out.

Would You Boycott Apple?

I just got an article in my email from CNet that talks about a move  to boycott Apple because Apple outsources their manufacturing overseas. As a result, the workers who manufacturer Apple products in China work under the most dreadful conditions; cramped and overcrowded factories and inhumanely long hours, workplace hazards and accidents. Americans would not work under these brutal conditions, and it is our responsibility to boycott any company that knowingly allows these conditions to continue. There’s only one problem with boycotting Apple.

Apple is not alone in this practice. A lot of computer companies outsource their manufacturing overseas. And the computer makers are not alone either. Almost no matter what product you want to buy, electronics, kitchen appliances, clothing, and food, is made by workers who live in developing countries and work for pennies. So to pick on Apple doesn’t make much sense. But what do you do? Stop buying anything made overseas? You couldn’t do it because we need those products. But you shouldn’t boycott Apple unless you’re boycotting every company that makes any and every product you use.

No. We’re basically stuck. And it’s hard to point blame. All people, no matter where they’re from, want a better life. We want to provide for our families the best products we can afford. So what we do is go to our employers and ask for raises. And when raises are not forthcoming, we organize unions to gain a bigger voice. But many people criticize unions but they’re basically after what all Americans are after. More money for a better life. However, unions have asked for, and gotten too much.

There are retired union members who live on very generous pensions. More than non-union members do. And when, for the sake of the solvency of the company they work for, they’re asked if they can accept less of a raise (but a raise non-the-less), or give back a small portion of their retirement, they refuse; and for the company, bankruptcy looms. They want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It’s exasperating.

So naturally what happens is that manufacturing in this country is more expensive. The companies have to pay more to make the things we want. But remember what I said about providing for your family. You can now buy a 32” HD TV set for a few hundred dollars because that TV set was made by someone who works for a dollar a day. If it had been made right here in the United States, for $35 - 40 an hour, how much would it cost? I can hardly guess, but I can guess that we would not be able to afford it. At all. Forget about that TV.

I am not a big fan of Apple computers (I like, and own an IPhone, and an iPod) because I think their computers, although very fine computers indeed, are not really any better than PCs, but they sell for a premium price. And Apple, in my opinion, has a irritating habit of putting on airs. But should they be boycotted for doing what everybody else does?

Not in my opinion.

Giving Up. Submitting To Defeat. Is It Wise?

Did You Ever Just Feel Like Giving Up? It’s a common feeling that happens to people when their problems seem overwhelming. They whine and complain as if whining and complaining solves anything. Well, it doesn’t. Neither does worrying (where did I hear the phrase “does worrying add one extra day to your life?”)

One quick way to lose the respect of your family, friends, and co-workers is to just whine and complain all the time. You’re not even supposed to do it a little bit. It’s destructive. I remember hearing that “When you complain to people about something bad that happened to you, you’ll find that most of those you tell are secretly glad it happened to you”. So don’t give them the satisfaction of hearing you complain.

Believe it or not, we as humans have a wonderful power that God gave us. It’s the will to win. Even animals have it. Most people waste it by quitting too early, but sometimes it surprises us by coming out at our most desperate times. I once heard a story that was supposed to be true. I don’t know all the details but apparently a wild cat, like a mountain lion or a Puma (I’m not sure) had gotten loose, or escaped from a zoo or a circus.

People ran for their lives, but one small boy was cornered by the big cat and it was getting ready to pounce. Suddenly the mother of the child jumped to his defense and she did the only thing she could. She balled up her fist and shoved it down the cat’s throat. She was injured, and lost a lot of blood, but both she and her boy survived. I even heard of a mouse whose baby mice were threatened by a hungry snake that attacked the snake and saved her little ones.

There is a great power in this ability to dig deep down to find the courage, and face adversity and suffering head on, solve the problem, and come out on top. But some people are easily defeated because the problem they’re facing isn’t immediately threatening. Like smoking cigarettes. Most people know that smoking cigarettes is bad for you, will eventually cause cancer, and will kill you. But it’s not going to kill you yet, today, or even in the next month. A lion will kill you instantly, but you can put off quitting your habit for now.

Most smokers who want to quit will eventually quit trying. But you must believe that whatever your goal, you must never never quit. If you continue to fight, you will eventually win. You might be poor and want very much to be richer, like say in the middle class for instance. But you might not feel that you’re good enough, or smart enough and you might feel that the deck is stacked against you. You might feel inferior. That you have no right to want to be a little better off in life. Well snap out of it. God made you in his image. God doesn’t create inferior people.

If your path to a better life is to be a professional, like a doctor or an engineer who designs electronic medical equipment, then do it. It may be very difficult, but it can be done by anybody. Yes, even you.

The thing you have to remember is that no matter what obstacles get in your way, they’re not really obstacles. They’re opportunities. Opportunities can be scary because some goals are difficult. But because they’re difficult, they’re more rewarding when you finally achieve it. By yourself. One thing I have always believed is that if you’re rich, the worst thing you can do for your child is pay his or her college tuition. Let them pay for it themselves. Let them work to earn it. Because if you pay for it, they’ll always expect you’ll be there to rescue them whenever they need help. They’ll learn valuable lessons. They’ll be better and more mature adults and a lot more capable of doing whatever it takes to handle whatever problem comes up.

The gift of self-reliance is more valuable than tuition money. The lessons you learn from overcoming barriers to accomplish some goal will make you a much more successful person.

Good luck.

The Politics of Getting Sick.

When a young man, or a young woman attends medical school, they usually follow a plan. A list of courses, called a syllabus, that they need to follow in order to become doctors. But there are a variety of specialties that a person can study. Neurosurgery, psychology, cardiology, and so on. It really doesn’t matter what specialty they’ve undertaken as their specialty, the list of subjects that they must study is designed to prepare them for their ultimate mission in life. And the purpose of that mission is to treat the sick.

In the course of handling your care, doctors do tell you, and advise you, to eat right and exercise. They also advise us to stop smoking. Patients rarely follow this advice, and doctors are trained in only curing illnesses. Not on preventing them. Today there is an epidemic of health problems that can be traced back to patient’s bad health habits, the way they eat, and their lack of enough exercise. And the results of these bad health habits are obesity, cancer, heart problems, sleep problems, depression and so on. When these patients were young, they didn’t have these health issues due to their youth and fitness levels. The issues manifested themselves as they got older, and after years of sedentary lives, overeating and of course eating the wrong foods. Supermarkets sprung up after world war II, and TV dinners became popular, Pizzas, Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers, and so on. But what we are really supposed to eat breads and grains, vegetables and fruits, dairy, proteins, and fats.

But the portions of these food items is what’s important. We’re supposed to have much less red meat, less egg and cheese (dairy), and much more fruits and vegetables. Lately, there has been a movement to juice ourselves to health. And it’s having a positive impact on those of us that are juicing. The first thing juicers do is detoxify themselves in order to lose weight. They fast and only drink a concoction made up of kale, cucumber, ginger, celery and lemon. Then of course they change their diet to eat more solid foods, but they cut out, or severely restrict meats, and dairy (eggs, cow’s milk, and cheese) and make a wide variety of different juices that they mix themselves. They mostly follow the advice of Dr. Joel Fuhrman who wrote the “Eat to Live” book. The result is a complete reversal of illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

But despite these inspiring results, doctors still treat patients with pills and medicines. If a patient asks about juicing, doctors nod, and say things like “uh huh”, and “I see” but steer patients back to their medications. It’s because that’s how doctors were trained. They prescribe these medications even though they are known to have adverse side effects. But there is another side to this situation.

The reason that doctors and hospitals exist is because people get sick. But it’s the reasons that doctors have jobs, and hospitals exist. But doctors need to advise healthy life styles. It’s their duty. One of the earliest doctors, Hippocrates, who came up with the Hippocratic Oath that doctors know by heart, said this: “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates knew that eating the right foods, in moderation, had a positive effect on the patients who were ill. But doctors, who I’m sure have heard this quote before, rarely follow it. And the reason is pretty simple. Hospitals throughout the United States employ millions of people. I believe that hospitals try to do good by their patients and want them to be healthy. But the problem is that in order for hospitals to exist, people need to be sick. I worked for two hospitals over 10 years (I was in desktop support) and whenever we had a low census (a term that hospitals use to indicate when business is good or bad) it was not seen as a good thing (although I’m sure that the hospital doesn’t really want people to develop health problems, but it’s good for business). It hurts business when hospitals have a low census, It is in the best interest of the hospitals that people get sick.

But the real culprit in this health crisis are the drug companies. If you search the internet it’s not hard to come up with stories of payoffs by the drug companies to doctors. The task that the drug companies want the doctor to perform is to steer the patient toward a certain drug that they’re selling. Drug companies need to stay in business too, and doctors talking to patients on the subject of going on a juicing diet is detrimental to the bottom line of the drug companies. But also to the doctors and hospitals as well. So what do you do if you’re a doctor? Or a hospital? Do you tell the patient to take the medicine you’re prescribing or do you try to steer them towards a healthy life style? If you choose the former, do you reveal any negative information about the drug, as some doctors have done?

I remember the day when you never saw a commercial by law firms on TV. Today, I see commercials on TV put out by law firms hoping to make a profit themselves by suing the doctors and hospitals. A practice formerly known as ambulance chasing, but which today you see more and more of. They want their cut too. And this has the undesirable result of making health care extremely expensive. A problem which caused the government health care program that’s due to affect all Americans next year in 2013. This event is worrisome when we see the massive fraud in both Medicare and Medicaid.

And the fraud is unavoidable. Because the government puts restrictions on how much they will pay for specific medical services, hospitals and doctors don’t make good money helping the poor and the elderly. Money has a effect on people. It spawns greed. Fraud will absolutely and definitely happen to the health care program when it eventually begins. This means taxpayer money will be lost, and money having to be redirected from other sources such as Social Security, or raised by raising taxes. This means that the taxpayer will certainly lose. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a lot of debt right now to the tune of 14 trillion dollars and this debt is barreling unabated at runaway speeds towards 15 trillion. So what can we do?

Well, this is something that’s difficult to start, but we need to start a jucing movement. Start to eat right and exercise. Get a juicing machine because it makes getting your veggies. I like it because I drink the juice quickly. And hopefully, as you start to lose weight, and start to look and feel younger, and hear from the doctor that you can cease taking the heart medicines, your cholesterol medicine,  or your diabetes medicine. It won’t happen overnight. The disadvantages that I spoke about are certainly going to happen. There’s no stopping them. But the nice thing about going on a health kick involving eating right and exercising is that you personally will suffer less than everyone else. The downside to this newfound health of yours is that you can now work longer, and you’ll have to in order to pay for taking care of all those sick American citizens. And those taxes will certainly be misspent and stolen. But at least you’ll have your health.

I hope this article inspires you to adopt a healthy life style, as we have in our household. And that you in turn inspire others to do the same. Because it affects the most important person you know.

You!