Blair A. Schumann

What an announcement it was when they unveiled the Google phone, aka the Nexus One.  It is exciting to me that Google’s getting into the hardware business as well as software (Android). Unfortunately I don’t have one to actually review, but I have used the Android software.  The hardware specs are pretty impressive, though I think they could have added more on-board storage (512 mb, really?) though add-in SD cards remedy that.  There are two things that will keep me from owning one of these at this time and those are: no multitouch in system apps, and no AT&T 3G.  Those are killers.  I don’t understand why they (Google) are still behind on that ball.  The other issue is the lack of AT&T 3G, as the phone will only work on the channels that T-Mobile uses, and T-mobile has no service anywhere.  I can’t even get service by them where I live. If those 2 things were fixed, I’d jump all over it and buy it unlocked, even at the $529 price.  All-in-all, I feel this is a great step ahead for Google, and a welcome phone to the growing number of smartphones.

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After I first heard of the SkyDock I was interested in it. It seemed like the perfect accessory for me. So, recently I purchased the SkyDock. It runs on the XM network, so I was very relieved as the Sirius network sounds like complete garbage. I would never have purchased it if it were on the Sirius network. Moving along… In the box they include an antenna, 1/8in male to 1/8in male audio connector, 3 different spacers (depending on the case on your iPhone), and, of course, the dock. The dock plugs into a cigarette lighter to power the device, and charge the iPhone. On the cigarette lighter plug end, there is an antenna plug, line out plug, and an FM out plug. In my opinion the length from the plug to the dock could be a little longer, but then again my plugs in my car are kind of out of the way, hard to get at. Once you run and install the dock, which is very easy, you need to download the free SkyDock app from the App Store. When you dock the iPhone, the power light will light up on the dock and the iPhone will start to charge. When you launch the App for the first time, it will walk you though activating the radio part of the dock, with instructions to a website, or number. Very handy Sirius XM, kudos. Once it’s activated, the App is very easy to use. You can type in channel numbers on the screen, swipe between channels, or see an entire listing. One of the cooler parts of the dock is the inclusion of Sirius XM’s new FM transmitter system. It’s called PowerConnect; and it distributes the FM signal through the electrical system of the car for much more powerful and clearer audio. Again, kudos Sirius XM for developing a system after the FCC screwed up the normal FM transmitters by practically killing the transmission power. One thing that I’m missing from my MiRGE is the ability to do timeshifting. It’s the only issue I have with it, and I’m sure this can be added in a future update. Please add this, you have more than enough space to work with. The dock, in addition to it being a satellite radio, will allow you to play anything through it from any other app. You can play the iPod, Last.FM, Pandora, etc. though it with awesome quality. It unfortunately cannot transfer the audio from a phone call through the dock and the car speakers, which would be so very nice. All-in-all I feel this is a pretty solid offering from Sirius XM. I do wish they had never merged in the first place, but change in inevitable and I’m living with it. Now if they would just decommission the Sirius satellites (since their audio quality sucks) life would be good. The only real problem with this lies in Apple’s hands. The lack of multitasking in the iPhone severely hinders this device. It would be so very nice to be able to switch apps and leave the radio playing in the background. Fix this, Apple, in iPhone OS 4.0.

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Tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of absolutely the worst attack on American soil ever. 7:46am Central time is when it started. I remember sitting in my high school social studies classroom before school waiting for class to start. It was a normal day, and we were all chatting, no idea what was had just happened. About 7:50, is when we learned about what had happened. I have no way to describe how I felt. I can’t. I’ll never forget the feeling, but it is completely indescribable. When we heard there had been another hit on the other tower at 8:03, it was a double whammy. We thought that the second one was the last. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. At 8:37, we learned that the Pentagon was hit too. And then United 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania at 9:03 central. I applaud everyone on that flight for their heroism. We didn’t do much of anything at all that day schoolwise, and spent most of the day watching the news. Students who were more affected were allowed to leave with no penalties. That was the single worst day I have ever lived through. I hope to never EVER have to experence that again. I remember watching, over and over again, the replays of the planes hitting the buildings, the explosions, the debris; just the horror of what was unfolding right before my own 14 year old eyes. At 7:46, 8:03, 8:37, and 9:03 am central tomorrow, I am going to stop whatever I’m doing and remember those who were lose. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who actually lost family and friends in this tragedy. Obviously I can never know how they feel, and I never intend to. I hope all that lost will keep their significant one’s memory alive. Their unfortunate death was not in any way necessary. Thousands and thousands of innocent people died that day because some (pardon the language) effed up jerk-off Islamic nutbags assumed that Allah wanted them to kill Americans by suicide. Why? Who knows. They have no reason to hate us. We help so many, and get bombed because of it.

9/11 isn’t about blaming (though I certainly do) but about remembering the 2,993 people that lost their lives for absolutely no reason. Those who say any Government would cause this need to re-evaluate their views. It is horribly disrespectful to those who lost someone.

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I thank God that this crazy is no longer associated with the White House.  Now, contrary to what many of the hard left try to tell, it was not because he was black.  In no way does that matter to us.  Van Jones was a self avowed frickin’ communist. An extremely psycho one at that.  He believes that the Bush administration was involved in the 9/11 attacks, which is completely deplorable.  How anyone can even imagine that your democratic government, whether conservative, or democrat, would purposely let or cause such a horrific and tragic event is just beyond me.  I saw an article at salon.com talking about how Van Jones was forced out of his position by Fox News and Glenn Beck.  Sure, Glenn was the one who pointed this lunatic out, but it was the rest of the country that wanted him gone.  Fox News and Glenn Beck is just an easy target for those who have radical ideas since Fox has more intelligent viewers, and can see what’s going on unlike the other media outlets (msnbc, cnn, etc.) whose viewers are wearing huge blinders.  Here’s a snippet of the article I found on salon.com that I found interesting:

The statement was released in October 2004 and has been signed by nearly 200 people, including many relatives of those who lost someone in the attacks. It called for an investigation into 9/11 but also directly questioned the government’s conclusions about the plane crashes.

This statement is regarding “truthers”, or those who believe that Bush had a part in the 9/11 attacks.  It is also the statement that Van Jones signed.  Notice that it says that since 10/2004, it only has 200 signatures.  200? I go to church with more than 200 people. It’s even more funny that they say “signed by nearly 200 people”.  Like that’s going to make it sound like a larger group.

I highly disagree with most of what President Obama is doing with the country, as do many others as seen in his sharp drop in his approval rating.  You’re smarter than this Obama.  Stop dancing for the DNC, and go back to your moderate views that you were campaigning on. You would get support back if you didn’t think that the government should rule everything.  Czars, or advisors as some call them, should NEVER be allowed.  Anyone in the government needs to answer to more than one person.  That’s how democracy works, and how it should always be. Checks and balances should NOT be disturbed for any reason. If that is disturbed, we are no better than that hole-in-the-ground country called Venezuela and their smelly dictator.

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Obama’s First Six Months’ Accomplishments

1.  Offended the Queen of England .
2.  Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia .
3.  Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
4.  Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
5.  Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia .
6.  Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras .
7.  Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
8.  Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
9.  Expanded the bailouts.
10.  Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
11.  Doubled our national debt.
12.  Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
13.  Released information on U.S. intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
14.  Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
15. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
16.  Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
17.  Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America ’s world leadership.
18.  Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
19.  Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
20.  Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States .
21.  Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
22.  Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
23.  Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
24.  Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel .
25.  Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds.  Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
26.  Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
27.  Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. (See cartoon..)

Bloomberg:  Daschle says, “Health care reform will not be pain free.  Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them,” while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have “a duty to die.”

If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it.

Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level.  We have an election coming up in one year and four months where we can reverse the dangerous direction of the Obama administration and its allies.  In the interim, we can make their lives miserable.  Lets do it!

If you disagree, don’t do anything.

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Recently, as in last week, I received my new Sirius XM MiRGE radio. I now can receive every single channel on both the Sirius and XM Satellites. A good majority of the channels (mostly music) are the same on both sides, so it really only is for the special channels only available on each side; such as sports, talk, and news. The radio is almost identical to my previous XM xPress RC radio, it’s just a bit thicker and lacks the ability to store 10 songs to play later, oh well. In place of the info button, there is a “Sat” button to switch between Sirius and XM. All in all the radio is the pretty much the exact came as the xPress RC, so I have no gripes about it. The new antenna that ships with the MiRGE is huge compared to the XM antennas I’ve used. I’ve never had Sirius, so large antennas may be normal, but all my XM ones have been quite tiny. I never knew how different the audio quality is between Sirius and XM. Compared to XM, the Sirius channels sound horrible! I can’t believe the compression used. Sirius at times can sound like a low quality Internet stream. It may not be noticable when you can’t compare, but I can’t believe Sirius had so many subscribers with such an inferior audio quality. I’ll stick with listening to the XM side for music, and only sneak over to the Sirius side if I want extra info on the song or to listen to NFL or other specials. Final verdict? The system is great. It’s roughly $20/month for the Sirius XM all in one subscription, but it’s worth it in my opinion.

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I’m so sick of North Korea. I’m even more sick of the way that Obama is handling this. North Korea needs to shut up and go back to their crappy little desert Kim Jong Il calls a country. All the talk from them about how they’re going to destroy the US if we interfere is ridiculous. Obama needs to get off of his butt and do some work as our Commander in Chief. When Bush was in office, he was feared; Obama is laughed at. He needs to show North Korea that they are a powerless little dirtbag nation that we will completely and totally destroy if they don’t get back in line. Screw the UN, they are useless. It’s time to make some real threats and possibly invade if they continue to threaten our allies. It’s unacceptable.

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I just returned from a trip from Phoenix and flew US Airways.  Never again will I.  The flight there was no problem, a perfect flight.  But the return flight is where everything falls apart.  The Flight was supposed to leave for Milwaukee at 6:40pm.  As soon as I arrived, it was delayed to 7:40pm due to a delay from the incoming aircraft.  Okay, I can live with that.  We were supposed to board that flight at 7:20pm, but didn’t until about 8.  Around 8:30 and after taxiing almost all the way, we are alerted that there was a hydraulic leak in the right wing.  We went back to have it checked out.  About 15 minutes later, they told us we would need to switch planes.  Again, no problem with me; I’d rather be on a safe plane and delayed than an unsafe one.  We reboarded and flew out around 10:00pm Arizona time.  When we reached the Chicago area, there were massive storms not allowing us entry to Milwauakee, so they circled O’hare for about 20 minutes while talking to ATC.  Eventually they decided to land at O’Hare.  We had to descend through a probable severe thunderstorm, and got thrown all around (which I liked, it was an adrenaline rush!)  Once we landed, we were forced to stay on the tarmac because the rain and lightning was so intense that no one was leaving any of the gates.  We stayed there for 2 hours (3:00am to 5:00am central time) before the storms subsided.  During this there was almost 4 inches of rain on the tarmac and cloud to ground lightning, a massive storm.  We were told by the captain that we were going to be given accommodations, which we all thought meant hotels.  Apparently it meant nothing.  We were told to go to baggage claim, which was about 2 miles away.  When we got there, all of our baggage was on the carousals waiting to be grabbed.  Around 5:30am we were told that we were going to be bussed to MKE, and the busses should be there around 6:45am.  Come 7:15am they still weren’t around.  The guy who told us about the busses then said that they would have a plane ready to board in 30-45 minutes.  Great, we all thought.  Well, we had to get hand written boarding passes, and go though the TSA checkpoint again, which was a complete waste of time.  Then we had to hike back to the same area we had just come from 2 hours earlier.  When we got there, we sat and were notified about 30 minutes later that our flight was moved to a different gate.  We moved there. Finally around 9:00am we were boarded onto that plane, flight 9030.  After everyone had gotten on, about 9:30am we taxied out.  We were then told, yet again, that we couldn’t take off due to weather.  We  waited about 2 hours, until 11:00am, and decided to head back to the gate. We then disembarked yet again. We were given the option of waiting for the plane to take off (which it may never do) or getting a bus.  Most people headed to the bus.  We had to go back to the same baggage area a second time to get our checked baggage. We then got vouchers that would get us on the busses free, but not guarantee us seats.  We waited about an hour and a half until 1:10pm for the MKE bus to come and luckily most of us got on (others had chosen other ways or stayed  the flight out.)  We finally got going and got back to MKE around 3:00pm or so.  All in all a horrible experience that I will not soon forget.  Now, I do understand that the airlines have no control over the weather, and this has nothing to do with that.  The staff were all very unaccommodating, most were rude, and very snippy to us.  They were just pushing us along, and I believe lied to us many times. I will never fly US Airways again due to the fact that they were very rude to all of us and didn’t seem to care aside from this one Manager at O’Hare whose name escapes me.  They should have gotten us all on busses at 7am and left it at that.  We would have been back in MKE around 9am, not 3pm.

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I’ve never liked David Letterman, and only watch his show when there is someone interesting on. His humor is cruel and just plain annoying. On Monday, he makes some nasty, nasty comments about Sarah Palin and her daughter. He called Gov. Palin a “slutty airline stewardess”. If that wasn’t enough, he makes another very disturbing sexually based “joke”–if you can call it that–about Gov. Palin’s daughter. He said that Alex Rodriguez knocked her up while they were at a baseball game. As disturbing as that is, turns out Gov. Palin was there with her 14-year-old daughter, making this a joke about statutory rape. Wow Lettermann, how big of a nasty perverted pedophile can you be? Imagine if he made that comment about Pres. Obama’s daughter? Oh wait, HE wouldn’t because he’s employed by a far left leaning network that would edit that out. No one on the other side of the aisle would make that comment either because we have a conscience. It’s so sad that it comes down to slamming people that aren’t even involved. Read the whole story here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525724,00.html

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This video is just too awesome.  Quickly becoming viral!  These guys rule.

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