The Canadian dollar is now worth more than the US dollar.

Today, Nov. 27, 2007, the US dollar is trading at about 99 cents of the Canadian Dollar.  In November of 2003, the US dollar was worth approximately $1.57 Canadian dollars.

Is it any wonder though when you look at our national debt? The national debt was pretty much flat for 40 years until 1983. From 1983 to now, the debt has been increasing except for 2000 and 2001, and over the past 5 years, the debt has increased from roughly 6 trillion to over 9 trillion. Somehow, we’ve managed to spend an extra 50% of our total debt in 5 years.

Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m surprised by how many items cost more from week to week. 2 liter bottles of cola were regularly 89 cents not too long ago, and now they’re $1.29. Oreo cookies were regularly $2.50 a bag a few months ago, and now they’re $3.69. When every item at the grocery store that costs under a dollar is increased by 10 or 15 cents, it adds up very quickly.

Supposedly our inflation rate isn’t out of the norm and has been floating between 1-3% for the past 7 years, but the value of our dollar is dropping fast, and we’re compounding the problem by spending way too much money. Our government can’t afford to spend another 50% of our debt over the next 5 years.

We need to make some hard choices soon or we’re all going to be in a world of hurt. If we continue on this way, we’re going to end up with another great depression or worse, a bankrupt country. We have a war going on in Iraq, which doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon. If we pull out now, we’re going to be in a worse situation because Iraq will fall apart. I’m not sure it’s the wisest thing in the world though to take the financial burden of starting a new country when we have so many problems in our own country to deal with.

Now we have politicians saying that we should have universal health care. How on Earth can we justify the expense when we’re 9 trillion dollars in debt and have a dollar that’s worth 63% of its value 4 years ago?

How can we justify any new expenses? Building a wall to stop immigrants? Are we serious? Let’s pay off our debt first otherwise we may not have a country to put a wall around.

The US has the strongest military in the world, but wars can be won without firing a single shot. All they have to do is buy us, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

The US people need to come together. We need to think more about “we” instead of “I”. Rather than farming work out to India or China, we should hire people from the US. The more people we can get off of welfare and out of poverty, the better our economy will become and the less our government will be burdened with the expense of supporting people. The more we buy products made in the US, the better off our economy will be. If we can’t buy US Products or hire US citizens, then at least we should support friendly countries. I don’t know how many times lately that I’ve heard about cheap Chinese products causing health problems such as lead paint on Thomas the Tank Engine trains. There has been recall after recall of toys and other Chinese products because in all honesty, they aren’t our friends, and they don’t care if we get sick or die from their unsafe products.

The other side of the coin is that we need to get out of debt as individuals. We need to make the hard decision of cutting back and paying off those credit cards and other high interest loans. I heard recently that the average American spends 20 dollars for every 19 he or she earns. With spending habits like that, is it any wonder that our government is in the same boat?

We can’t keep going on like this, and we can’t rely on our government any longer to bail us out of financial burdens. If we’re on welfare, we need to do everything we can to get off of welfare. If we have a dispute, we need to resolve it ourselves before wasting time and money in the courts. There are a million ways we all can make a difference, and if we don’t now, it’s all going to come crashing down around us in the not too distant future.

Sources:

Inflation Rates: http://www.inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/CurrentInflation.asp
National Debt: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
USD to CAD Value Trend: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDCAD=X&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

At work, the president of the company is very good at pool, specifically 9-ball.  We have a pool table in the center of the office and there’s a standing challenge that if we can beat him 5 out of 9 games, he’ll buy us a pool cue.  I’ve been working here for 10 months and after about 20 matches, I finally won.  I feel really good about that match because I didn’t win by shear luck - no easy 9 ball combos, 9 ball breaks, etc.  Every win was earned and I came close to running several of the tables.

For my prize, I’m getting a Lucasi L-P70 Pool Cue.  The butt and forearm is ebony with crimson inlays surrounded by micara.  The wrap is black Irish linen with red specs, and it features three crimson rings surrounded by silver set in black phenolic. 

One of the reasons I went with Lucasi is the uniloc quick release pin so that I can take it apart quickly.  It came with a hard rock maple shaft and Le Pro leather tip.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about this cue, and can’t wait for it to arrive (it’s being shipped UPS Ground).

One of my goals is to attract a million people in a year to my websites collectively.  From January 1 to September 30 of 2007, there have been 312k visitors to my various websites (averaged out to 416k in a year).  The Lens Flare, my art and photography community, has received the majority of visitors for good reason.  There are over 30,000 images on there.  However, my fantasy & science fiction site, Desert Realm, still gets a fair amount of traffic even though I haven’t done much with that site recently.  I’ve recently added 2 blogs to the mix.  This blog and my tech blog, Ask Some Geeks, is starting to get a little traffic, which should increase as more postings are written.

A few weeks ago, we stayed with my wife’s sister in a small town in eastern Idaho called Victor near the  Grand Tetons.  While we were there, we visited the Upper and Lower Mesa Falls and Cave Falls inside Yellowstone National Park.   We were there during the middle of the day, which is probably the worst time to shoot a waterfall because the amount of light needs to be really small to keep the shutter open long enough to capture the motion of the water. 

I used a special filter called an ND2 (neutral density) filter.  This is like putting a pair of sunglasses on your camera, and set up the camera so that it would limit the amount of light getting inside by using the smallest aperture the lens would allow and setting the ISO to the lowest number the camera will go.  For my Nikon D50 and 28-80mm lens, the smallest aperture is f/32 and the ISO is 200.  I also used a tripod to make sure the camera didn’t shake while the shutter was open.

One thing I learned is that the white water tricks the camera into thinking it’s getting overexposed even though it’s not, so I could have increased the shutter time even further.  I’d also like to try shooting these (or other falls) either at dawn or dusk, or during a dark cloudy day because the camera’s shutter could be open far longer than it was.

At any rate, I believe these pictures turned out reasonably well: (click on the pictures for larger versions):
 

Even though I plan to continue to shoot waterfalls wherever and whenever I can, this fulfills one of my goals to take a slow motion picture of a huge waterfall.

I finally made it to the pool yesterday morning.  It was a nice feeling to get off my butt and start doing something about my weight.  I only swam about 150 yards because I wanted to take it easy and see how my shoulder would hold up.  I injured it a few years ago and don’t want to injure it again.    Yesterday, we went fishing and I probably walked 4 miles taking kids from the lake to the bathroom, so that’s got to help a little in the exercise department.

So as of July 27, 2007, my weight is 275 pounds, and my goal is to get to 200 pounds. 

On the food front, I’m working on limiting how much soda I drink.   This is a big factor to my weight because I average about 120-150 ounces of soda a day.  I don’t trust ‘diets’ because I believe that 99% of them are frauds.  Instead, I’m just trying to eat healthier and cut out or reduce stuff that’s obviously bad for me.   Gatorade is my new best friend because it has about 1/3 the calories of Coke and no bubbles, but it has enough sugar in it to help trick my brain into thinking it’s having enough soda.  Of course, I’m starting to drink water more often, but I can’t stand the taste of it unless it’s ice cold.  I think that I’ve trained my brain to expect Coke or Pepsi instead of water.  It’s going to take some rewiring to get that one straightened out.

I’m totally addicted to caffeine, so my plan is to keep drinking caffeinated beverages along with Gatorade to keep the headaches and other withdrawal symptoms to a minimum while slowly weaning myself off of them completely.  It’ll be a great day when I’m able to go a full day without a Coke and not suffer from a headache or drowsiness because of it.

Ever do a search for your own name to see what and who is out there?  It’s almost like there are alternate universes with different versions of you in each one.  They lead completely different lives from you, have different friends, and live in different parts of the world. How would your life be similar to their’s if you grew up in their home town, and you were presented with similar problems?  How would you have handled the situations presented to them and thus, how and when would your life’s path diverge from their’s?

I looked up Brian Broderick on Google and here are what my alternate selves are up to:

One is a rookie for the SL Cardinals.  He’s a pitcher, which is something that I’ve never been good at although I fancied myself decent at 2nd base. One is a scientist researching how traffic emissions affect air quality in Dublin Ireland.  Another alternate self is a guitar player in Texas, while another plays soccer at the University of Maine.  There’s a real estate agent in Alaska, a lawyer in Massachusetts, and another works for the Metropolitan District Commission in Boston, MA.  There’s entrepreneurial spirit in one that owns a bakery in Detroit, while another is a sales manager in Australia.  Another Brian Broderick was extremely lucky fishing in Florida and caught a large fish with his bare hands.  Another, in Oregon, is probably the closest version of me.  He’s a graphics artist and web designer.  Of course, not all of the Brian Brodericks have made good choices.  One of them was sent to jail in Alabama for some sort of white collar crime.

I can see myself in most of these guys. I’ve been athletic, although not so much any more.  I fancy the quick dollar that entices most real estate agents to choose that profession, while realizing that everything is harder than it seems on the surface.  I could be happy researching something that could affect other people’s heath.  I’ve always wanted to play the guitar - perhaps there’s a gene hidden somewhere that was closer to the surface in the Texan universe.  Lawyers have to be logical, and I’m very much so, and I definitely have the entrepreneurial bug. 

For me, I’m a Web Programmer.  I love art and photography, the free and untainted wilderness, a great book, the occasional dip in a hot tub, and life in general. 

For the rest of the Brian Brodericks in the world… I salute you.  Live long and prosper.  Perhaps one day we’ll meet (although that might cause a rift in the universe and destroy us all).

Like hundreds of other people, I waited at Wal-Mart at midnight on the 21st to get my copy of the last Harry Potter book, the Deathly Hallows. At first, I was surprised by the hundreds of people in line, but why not?  After all, I was there so why wouldn’t others have the same idea.  It went relatively smoothly, unlike when I went there the day after Thanksgiving trying to get one of their lost-leader items for a Christmas present.  My son and I stood in line for about 20 minutes, but we got 2 copies of the book for about the price of 1.

It was a really good book, and hard to put down, especially since a lot of questions presented in the prior books were finally being answered.

If you haven’t read the book and intend to, don’t read anymore of this post because there are a few spoilers.

I like how she handled the fact that Dumbledore was really dead.  I admit that I thought for sure he wasn’t really dead.  I thought that perhaps he was really a phoenix and would be reborn.  I also liked how she explained why Snape killed him, and that he truly was a good guy with dark curiosities.  A lot of people died, but they were all minor characters (even Dumbledore was technically a minor character), which made it a little unbelievable.  At least one or two of the main characters should have at least gotten injured.  Dumbledore meeting him at the halfway point between life and death was a bit farfetched, even for a fantasy story full of magic.  If somebody was going to help him choose to live or die, shouldn’t it be somebody like his mother or even Sirius?  Of course, it had to be Dumbledore so that we could hear first hand why he wasn’t perfect like everybody thought up until book 7.  The wise become the wise through error and learning from their mistakes, not through brains, and so it would be unbelievable if Dumbledore didn’t have a few skeletons in the closet. This side plot was perhaps one of the best in the book. 

The horcruxes fell into Harry’s hands far too easily and he was able to destroy them far too easily.  Why would Voldermort go through all the trouble of the dead people in the lake, the poisoned water, etc if he was just going to sit the diadem on top of the bust of an old statue?  Voldermort wasn’t stupid so the explanation that he thought nobody would find that room was absurd seeing as there were thousands of hidden items there.  Retrieving the cup was a great chapter.

The idea of the Hallows was cool and the fact that Harry united the 3 hallows to avoid dying was cool (but like everything else in the stories, a bit too much revolved around him and things always seemed to just fall into place for him).

The last chapter, “19 years later”, was sorely disappointing.  Large portions of the books were devoted to school and what Harry was going to do after school.  He wanted to be an Auror, he was an excellent teacher at the D.A., his popularity could have made him the Minister, but nothing was mentioned about any of their careers.  Ok, great, he and Ginny got married, had some kids, and named them after characters in the book that died, and of course, Ron and Hermione got married and had a few kids of their own.  But what else?  What about their careers and the rest of the characters?  Malfoy was mentioned, but only in passing.  Speaking of Malfoy, why did he act so strange at his house and not give them up?  In every other part of the books, he hated Harry.  I guess it could be assumed that he didn’t like how things were going with how Voldermort was treating the family, but nothing was expounded on that.  What about Luna, the surviving Weasleys, Cho and the other DA members? Longbottom was mentioned as becoming a teacher so good for him, but what about the rest of the teachers and the main Order characters?

All in all, Harry Potter is probably the best fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings, but the last book was a bit disappointing as it left a lot to be desired without promise of a sequel.

I wrote an article this morning titled, How to buy a printer, on The Lens Flare this morning detailing different types of printers, some things to look out for when buying a printer, what features are important from a photographer’s point of view, and some things I’ve learned the hard way about them.   Hopefully, this article will help you when you’re ready to purchase your next photo inkjet, dye-sub, large format, or mini-lab printer.

I really like the layout of the Ruby programming language site. It’s very simple and to the point, and has an obvious banana (in other words, it has a clear direction the visitor is meant to take) - Download Ruby. The arrow next to it is the only thing with a 3d effect which adds to its visual weight.

Further down the headers are 3 bold sections to make it easy to scan: Get Started, Explore, and Participate. Of course, these 3 steps represent the path of anybody new to the site and to ruby in general, and represent a structured path to becoming a competent ruby programmer.

Looking back at the main content area of the page, the bold headline “Ruby is…” tells what this site is all about in the 0.2 seconds visitors to the site spend before deciding to stay or hitting the back button. After the quick description of ruby, the code example hammers the point home with it’s famous line: puts “Hello World!”.

Once a person is hooked and ready to learn more, there are pleny of areas to read such as Ruby documentation, community, etc.

All in all, it’s one of the best layed out sites I’ve seen in a long time.

One of my goals is to have a million visitors to my websites in a year so it’s probably a good idea to log where I’m at now.

My flagship site is The Lens Flare, an art and photography community, which has close to a thousand members and currently 30k pictures on the site.

Over the last 365 days, there have been 323,978 human visitors (I say human because there are a lot of automated programs such as Googlebot that download the site’s content so that they can add it to their search engines).  Collectively, the visitors have looked at 2,387,041 pages.  Over the last 30 days, there have been 35,644 visitors (which average out to about 427k visitors over a year’s time).

So at the current pace, I’m about half there.