The 'Super Banks' aren't so Super

The three new Super Banks, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wellsfargo now have more consolidated money and power than any institutions in US history and they are using that power to charge higher and higher fees. In fact, you could easily see $200 in fees for a single overdraft. Here is the situtaion, say you go shopping and you buy stuff from six different stores throughout the day, you know you went below zero in your account on the first transaction but no big deal, you can just move money into the account when you get home. Wrong! You just racked up $35 for each transaction. The new term is ‘fee-ed’ to death.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27441147/

700 Families foreclose each day in So. California

I found this very good video news report yesterday watching the News Hour. I was surprised by what people leave behind when they leave a foreclosed home. Some people leave everything and just walk out the door. Very sad but informative. Watch the video.

Click to view the video

Ron Paul on the bailout plan

Click to see Ron Pauls thoughts on the recent bail out plan.

I love the line, "if printing more money solved everyone's problems then why work. We could just print money"

Survivor - the TV Show

I am a fan of Survivor and although I have skipped a few show hear and there I mostly follow it. I found this article about what happens behind the camera and wanted to share it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26726792/

Titanic (Global Economy) and deck chairs

This is a great blog post from Silvia Wadhwa. It's best if you read down to the video clip, start the video clip and continue reading as it plays.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/27043945

This Bailout won't be the last

To say that no on knew this wouldn't happen is just not correct. In 2003 Ron Paul a congressman from Texas gave the speech below outlining what would happen if the government continued to subsidize the housing market through Fredie and Fannie. Read below.

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr091003.htm

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2008/09/19/ron-paul-this-bailout-wont-be-the-last.html

Bailout will cause a US Depression, Says Hennecke

The end result of the global economic slowdown may be the U.S. announcing national bankruptcy as the government cannot afford the bailouts that it promised and the market will not bail out the government, Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, told CNBC on Thursday.

Full Article below:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26656750

New Blog Items

I found a couple of items to add to my blog page today. The first is an electoral college vote count based on recent surveys. It's good to know who how the '08 race is going. I enjoy politics and am always willing to share my thoughts. More than most people want to know...
The second is a way for you to add my blog to your favorate website. You can add it to Google, Bloglines, Netvibes, newsgator or myYahoo. I think it is a cool little tool.
I was very excited to see McCain pick such a great woman for his VP pick. Not sure that it is enough to win. Not sure I want him to win??? Even so, Have A Great Holiday Weekend and don't work too hard.

There is no insurance fund for FDIC...

I found this to be a very interesting article. Basically, there is no more of a bailout insurance fund (FDIC) today than there was in 1901.:

http://www.thedeal.com/newsweekly/features/the-failure-option.php

Excerpt:
"The deposit insurance fund doesn't exist as a free-standing pool of money. Instead, it is a bookkeeping convention, like the Social Security Trust Fund.
The premiums banks pay to the fund are invested in U.S. Treasury bills, and, on paper, the fund grows with interest. In reality, the money is spent to help fund the federal budget. To cover the cost of the IndyMac bailout, the Department of the Treasury was forced to issue additional debt. Increased federal borrowing will also cover costs of future failures. Eventually, the industry as a whole must repay the federal government through higher annual premiums."

3D photo of yourself

This website is offering a very cool and free tool that lets you make 3d spaces from you pictures. Very cool.

http://mslabs-086.vo.llnwd.net/d5/oss/index.html

Oldest Bible going on-line

The oldest bible is going online this comming Thursday. The bible was written on calf skin some 1600 years ago. Hi-res photos have been taken of the Greek manuscript and will be available on-line. Very coo. http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/

I just can't pass news like this up.

The incidence of the deadly skin cancer increased by 50% between 1980 and 2004, a study finds. Use of tanning salons is cited as one possible reason.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-melanoma11-2008jul11,0,2830770.story

Another good day

Today has been a good day but a tough week. It seems like there is never enough time to get everything done. My wife had the flu this week. We missed out on Valentines day. We will have to make it up on another day. I have been slacking on SkillBinder.com and my Blog. Things just got too busy. I am planning on doing some more coding this weekend.

I read a cool article in the Wall Street Journal this week about LED green lasers. Very cool if they can get it to work. Dreams of cell phone size high def. video projection and very low cost.

Slow day

There is not too much to talk about today. Somewhat slow. I went out to eat at Posados, a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I went with my wife and some friends of ours. It was nice that they paid for dinner. Afterwards we went over to their house to watch a funny movie, The Singles 2ed ward.

Google Adsence and a broken truck

Its been a long day. I have the www.SkillBinder.com site up and running. It is limited but users can create accounts and they can add skills. I only have three or four skill options at this time. I need to come up with a good list. If you have ideas, please, share. The bad thing is that I sit at my day job thinking about the website. Tomorrow I should be able to get the My skills section working. That or I might work on the point system.
Now that I have setup Google AdSense for this blog and www.SkillBinder.com, I realize how important those annoying web ads are. Each time a user clicks on an ad the website earns money. I have start looking for ads that I am interested in and have started clicking on them (not on my websites, but new site I visit). It is a way to support the site and who knows, I might find something I like. Happy Clicking.
P.S.
My truck suck. The last two days I have had to pull over on the side of the road because the diesel was too cold and the engine lost power. Ford F-350 ‘1997 for sale!
One last thing. Check out this article about Sears.

Setting a goal

Good morning world. I missed out on writing yesterday. I remembered several times but didn’t take the time. I will try better. You know it takes 21 days to make a habit. I guess that should be my first goal. It is now my goal to write every day for 21 days. You can hold me to it.
I have spent a few hours over the last two days working on Skillbinder.com. I started building the quiz section last night. I didn’t get too far because I got distracted by a mediocre episode of Law and Order SVU. I am contemplating separating out the quiz questions into their own table. Currently, the questions are in the same table as the class section. I hope to have the basic structure up on Saturday evening. I can’t wait. Then I need to start figuring out what I want the page style to look like.
Did you hear? Fred Thompson is out. Where do his voters go in Florida? I am predicting that they go mostly to Mitt Romney. I’m not being bias, my views are based on the Jan 21, 2008 Rassussen poll.
It says that Romney is the most likely to pick up the undecided. Think about it. If you are undecided you must not like Giuliani very much. He has been campaigning there for months. You also cant be too big of a McCain fan either, he is not a very strong conservative. That leave Romney who has momentum.
Have a great day!

Day 1

In starting this blog I have several subjects I to cover. First, I love politics. I have my own views, but don’t feel you can read this is your views differ. I believe I can learn something from everyone. Second, I am starting a new website called SkillBinder.com. The purpose of the website it to provide a how to do encyclopedia verses the very popular know about websites like wikipedia.com. I will be discussing my strategies to make the website successful, successful in revenue and visits. I believe in education and want to provide a place where anyone can learn and be recognized for their knowledge. Third, I consider myself a hobby jumper. I define this as jumping from one hobby to another, learning as much as I can in between. Lastly, I may sometime cover miscellaneous thoughts and ideas like my favorite restaurant, a hard day or quantum theory (yes I find it fascinating).

This 2008 republican primary election season is turning out to be interesting. We have Rudy who seems to have more skeletons in his closet then Dracula. He was running high in the polls and favored to win (in some circles). Now he is struggling to win in Florida where it seems this New York constituency spend the primary election season. Then we have Thompson who hasn’t been able to pull in the votes or execute and effective campaign. I was too young to remember Nixon as President, but maybe he was right to call Thompson dumb. It seems there is a large group of new men that believe McCain is too old. Although it my be true, shouldn’t they be focusing on the fact that he is a liberal in a republicans race. Last, and my favorite, Mitt Romney is leading the pack. He is seems to be using his years of experience turning around business to turn around his campaign. After second place in Iowa and New Hampshire, he has now won in Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada (this is pronounced nə-ˈva-də) . It’s still too early to tell who will win but I am pulling for Romney.

www.Skillbinder.com Coming soon! My first ideas about the website came to me as I was laying in bed late one night. I had been thinking for some time about creating a website / web 2.0 / web application that I could create. I wanted an idea that fit me, my like and dislikes. Laying there in bed it came to me. I love to learn new things, whether it’s changing the oil in my truck or laying tile or one of D.A. Benton’s 22 vital traits. Why don’t I create a website where everyone can learn a new skill and share their skills with others? It would need to have static and multimedia that gives people the opportunity to learn by reading, seeing and doing. I also wanted to include a way for learners to test their new knowledge and be ranked against other users according to their skill levels. To make the site work I also need to get users to contribute their knowledge. I have several ideas about this but I am still working on it. At this point, I have coded about 50% of the project. I am using asp.net in c#. I am also using MySQL as the database. This has been a challenge. MySQL .Net plug-in is not fully functional yet. Gurrr, this has caused more than one headache. I will hopefully have the website online and mostly functional January 26, 2008.