Peter Schiff says Hyperinflation Is Right Around the Corner

This series of videos on hyperinflation - skewed opinions as they are - are the most riveting analytical pieces on the current state of American economic theory that I have seen to date. Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, etc. say it like it is and warn of impending doom. One might find their theories on economic collapse, hyperinflation, and financial Armageddon to be fear mongering but they were the few (Peter Schiff & Ron Paul especially) who called the market collapse long before it ever happened.

Personally; I'm not convinced that hyperinflation is coming unless deficits continue to climb year after year at the current rate. US debt owed is still only around 75 percent* or so of national GDP (which is darned high); the only problem is that debt is rising and GPD is falling. 100 percent seems right around the corner with the way Obama is spending money... It's a crazy world we live in. I'm getting into commodities once the next leg down occurs... and if this debt to GDP ratio starts getting above 100 percent I will have a hard time not getting into the hyperinfation boat.

*Update 7/3/09: The debt to national output (GDP) is actually 80 percent now. MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising debt may be next crisis: "The overall debt is now slightly over 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product."

Enjoy the following videos.

Hyperinflation Video - Part 1

Hyperinflation Video - Part 2

Hyperinflation Video - Part 3

Experimenting With SEO - Part 2

Last month I spent a good deal of time discussing some of the interesting things I was learning about Search Engine Optimization. I related the information directly to the one post in my site which is the most popular of them all; my review of and desire to purchase a Sony Ericsson HCB-150 car speaker phone. In the first post int his series I attempted to do some editing of the post in question to see if I could optimize it for increased traffic. I ended up linking directly to the post with anchored text as well as editing some of the content of the old popular post to include more keywords and heading tags in the content section. It’s been a good deal of time now since this experiment and so I figured I’d take a minute to run a quick analysis and see if there has been any uptick in traffic to this page.

In a nut shell, there’s been essentially no long-term change in activity to this page, however, there was a surge in activity for the two weeks or so after I made the SEO post in May and edited the HCB-150 page. During that two week period traffic was up nearly 50 percent before volume fell back to normal pre-experiment levels. The two weeks before the post the page had 19 visitors and the 14 days after the post the page had 31 visitors. Now I’m not sure if this is statistical noise or a simple coincident but it is a correlation.

Since my initial foray into SEO I have read and learned more about what to do and how to do it more effectively and one of the most notable things to do to increase search traffic is to do more internal linking so over the next few posts I’m going to try linking more often to some of my more popular pages just to see if I can find any further correlation in the search engines. This long-standing and slow-moving experiment should come in handy in the future as I start dabbling a little bit more significantly on the web and trying to do more than just documenting my life here on this site.

Currently the more popular pages on this blog, in addition to the aforementioned Bluetooth Headset post are my posts on the Cadillac Graveyard and Derek Paravicini, the blind, autistic pianist. I’m also going to try and highlight a few pages on this blog that are not all that popular and see if they do any better with some optimization such as my old book review of Alan Greenspan’s book; The Age of Turbulence. And my picture post of my new Brunswick Fury Pearl Bowling Ball.

In addition to optimizing these pages I intend on cleaning up the many other pages a bit more significantly, eliminating more personal matters, and linking between more of my old posts in hope that this will give the entire domain more favorability in the search engines. Stay tuned for the eventual part three in this SEO Series.

Stratosphere Thrill Rides - Video

It’s been over two months now I know but Flor and I enjoyed our time in Las Vegas at the USBC Nationals both on and off the lanes. Of course I put on a show of inconsistent achievement during the tournament and she showed me how to bowl after I purchased her her very own bowling ball and bag… but when we weren’t in a bowling center we had some fun seeing the sights.

We actually didn’t venture very far from our Hotel but we did walk around the Freemont Street Experience a little bit and we decided to hit up the Stratosphere. The sole reason for this visit was because neither Flor nor I had ever been inside the hotel let alone gone to the top of the needle. Anyway, long story short we rode up the elevator and took a gander at the strip from some 1000 feet in the sky. It was very beautiful up there but unfortunately for us the bar was closed and the rides were just too scary to consider enjoying. Yes, I know. We are chickens. Here’s the video:

The Top of the Stratosphere

Experimenting With SEO

Today I'm going to be crafting a bit of an experiment for my topic. I met earlier today with my buddy Aaron for nuggets at our favorite Tuesday afternoon lunch spot and we got to talking about a number of things. One of those things happened to be our business and finding our business' website through search engines.

The problem as we discussed revolves around the fact that our business website is not searchable... meaning it cannot be found on the web unless you know the company name and or web address in the first place. Now this has been on my mind for some time and until recently I didn't have the time to devote to it anyway so it didn't really bother me too much. Well, it did bother me, I just didn't lose sleep over it. Anyway, since my classes ended last week I've had some free time on my hands and I've generally been in a more ambitious mood so I've been reading up quite a bit on the concepts of SEO or search engine optimization.

What is SEO

The concept of SEO is all about crafting your website with the Googlers of the world in mind. Most sites, ours included, have been crafted in the interest of passing product and service information along to viewers and less about the drawing of the viewers in in the first place. This is a big deal. Consider this. Most people that know about our business know it by name and what we do. Because they know of us they have probably no need for our business or have already used it's services. If they meet either of these two qualifications then they already can find our site without or with little help from Google.

Take another situation for a spin. Let's say you are a budding bride living in San Diego and you've always wanted a local wedding on the beach. How would you find a videographer if you wanted one but didn't know of any off the top of your head? You would probably pop onto Google and type in some like 'San Diego Wedding Video' or something like that and go down the list one-by-one. Well, the people making these kinds of searches are the one's that actually need our services and they are actually the ones that have money to spend. These are the people we want to bring to the website and when they can't find it through Google then we're not going to be meeting these brides anytime soon.

This is my dilemma, I want people to find the site; so how do we go about making the site optimized for search? To try to answer that question I decided to try some experiments here on my blog based on some solid information I've picked up from around the web.

Search Optimization Experiment

This website, my blog, has traffic monitoring code built into it so that I can track who's visiting the site, how often, what pages they look at, and how they got here. Most sites have similar code working on them and it's there for good reason. It should help me decide how to drive more traffic to the site by simply analyzing what is coming in already.

According to my stats, my blog's most popular page is HCB 150 - I Want One! Over the past 13 days this page has been hit 19 times by random visitors via search engines. After recently reading a fair amount of literature on SEO, I'm going to see if I can get this page's traffic to go even higher through various techniques. If these techniques work I think I can then use some of the same techniques to start building up searchability within the Google system.

The post above is a post about the hands-free car speakerphone that I blogged about last Spring. I wanted it for two reason. First, because it was cool, and second, because California was legally going to require driver's to have a hands-free device to use a phone while driving. In the end I got one, though I only got the next model down, and I've enjoyed it but since then this post continues to drive more traffic than any other post on my blog... and I have nearly 400 posts on this bad boy.

Filtering my stats down further I can see that the most frequent method that people find this post is by Googling 'HCB 150 review'. If you Google this phrase you'll find that this post is in the number one position. However if you take 'review' off and try any other word combination I'm not anywhere to be found.

The reason for this can be attributable to any number of things but mostly it is probably due a few things. First, the page does not contain many other words that are related to phrases that people might search for when looking up this device. Second, the pictures on the page are not labeled with descriptive text in the 'alt' tags. And third, there is no webpage out there linking directly to this original post of mine. General SEO knowledge says that when pages link to something search engines place greater importance on the destination of the link. Additionally the words used for the link, otherwise known as the anchor text, correlate directly to the words used in the actual search box. Meaning if I want people to find my business website I should link to it not by saying 'click here'. I should say: view my San Diego Wedding Video business website; you won't be disappointed. :)

So aside from plugging my business I will take some time in this post to plug my most popular webpage on this site with an anchored link of descriptive key words. Click through to take a look at the Hands Free Bluetooth Car Speakerphone that I wanted to buy last Spring, which also happens to be the most popular webpage on my blog.

When on the page you'll also notice that I expanded the post a bit today (what, you don't remember what it looked like originally?) to include more related text that people might search for, heading tags around headings, as well as an actual (albeit small) review of the device, which was never actually on the page in the first place. Ironic, I know.

To state my goal here one more time, I'll say that this is an experiment so we'll see how this works out. The last 13 days this page got 19 hits through Google so over then 13 days we'll see if the number goes up. I guess I'll check back in again on this topic on around the 25th of May. See you then!

-Brian

This is the Best Time Ever to Buy a Home

I was just looking back through some old posts of mine here on my blog and I came across this gem from Spring of 2007. I wrote that '2008 would be a great entry point for first time home buyers' as I hopefully crossed my fingers that the real estate market would continue softening for another year.

Housing Market 2008
Well, a funny thing happened and housing did continue slumping into 2008, as we all know well, and we did take advantage of what I had forecast and hoped for. Flor and I ended up buying a condo in 2008 after all. We made an offer in late April and were in the underwriting process this time last year, finally closing in July. We felt great about ourselves buying for a 60% discount over 2006-2007 prices.

Housing Market 2009
It's amazing what happens in life. Now we're sitting a year later. It's the Spring of 2009 and the market is still dropping. It's down now in our condo complex about 75% from it's peak two years ago and now I'm just wishing we could buy a second place... maybe I should hope for the market to continue softening for another year or two... That might be devastating for the economy but maybe then it'll be the optimal time to buy a second property. Let's just put it this way though. The rest of the year things might continue softening but eventually it's got to to stop. I can't imagine this bottom lasting long enough for us to buy a second place despite their incredibly low asking prices but I do know that now and the near future seems to be one of the best times ever to buy a first or second home.

Shout Out to Myself

I just wanted to take a few lines here to send a shout out to myself. Last night I finished up the last assignment of my MBA program at Ashford University. It's been a good long 18 months since I started this process and I'm immensely satisfied that I did it. Go me!

Now that that project is behind me I can start working on scraping the popcorn off my ceiling and cleaning up an old computer I've had lying around for the past year or so. I also should expect everybody to call me 'Master Brian' from now on to reflect my status in life... :)

I am feeling very happy right now.

Mr and Mrs Arend Hermsen

I guess technically it's after midnight and today is now tomorrow but ignoring that fact Aaron and I went today to Sycuan Resort out in East County to film / enjoy my old friend Arend Hermsen's wedding. Ironically he married Aaron's former coworker Carrie Stone (whom I've also become friends with over the past couple years) though there was no prior knowledge of the friend of friend situation. To my great pleasure Flor also came out about an hour after Aaron and I arrived to enjoy the wedding too; it was great having her there.

Weddings these day's seem a little different to me than they did not too long ago. Since Flor and I married I now think about us whenever I watch a wedding ceremony. I think about what I was feeling and thinking during each significant event during the day. It makes me smile. Anyway, the wedding was very nice, the location and weather were perfect and the food was good. I just wish I was able to enjoy the party a bit more than I did... having to wield a camcorder kind of wipes you out.

Congratulations my old bowling friend!

Reminiscing on the Past

As I've been diligently working on cleaning up my blog and website over the past week or so I've actually gone back and re-read virtually every post I made on the topic of bowling. I've also started going back through many of my oldest posts on all other topics (mostly my personal journaling from my old Live Journal blog which has since been transferred over to this site) and I've been cleaning up a lot of these posts to fit a little nicer with the format of my newer entries. I like the look of justified margins and none of my old posts were aligned this way. Also, back in 2004 and 2005 I apparently didn't know how to utilize the spell check nor does it seem like I ever proof read my posts for grammar problems. A lot of these errors are finally getting fixed thanks to my recent ambition.

All of this reading however has really got me reminiscing on all the old friends that I have but don't see anymore and all of the fun times that I had back in my undergrad days. I know I didn't start blogging until after I had graduated but many of the people I spent time with were my friends from college and many of them were still there in '04 and '05. We had good times together back then and I miss them.

Beyond the sentimental, I also found myself looking back at a few old pictures and smiling wholeheartedly at them. I guess everybody does this from time to time so this is not earth-shattering but I have enjoyed reviewing some of the memories. I'm not going to elaborate any more but I will share a few of those good times below. Enjoy!

2001 - Venice with Doug Downing & Kevin Parker


2002 - Madrigal Dinner with Matt Sconce


2003 - SD Gulls Game with Erin Westgate and Klingons


2004 - Impromptu Dinner Party at Hotel Del with Friends


2005 - With Evan at a Schmidt's Place


2006 - Hanging with Chris and Brad


2007 - Rob being Rob with my Girl


2008 - Rich and Flor | 80's Party


Fun times... and don't we all miss this fantastic facial hair:

1st Meat Since February!

1st meat since February! It's been a long time coming.

Shave and a Haircut

Last week was a fine week of vacation for me and my lovely wife. We both enjoyed a much needed time of relaxation and care-free leisure. Of course I’ve already blogged a bit about the first day of our trip in Vegas and my bowling exploits but before I finish that epic up I thought I’d offer a little tidbit from the beginning of the trip (my dramatic haircut) and a tidbit from the middle of the trip (my dramatic shave).

Those that know me could probably remember the days when my hair wasn’t so long. A few years back my hair was quite short and then one day this girl told me she liked guys with long hair. Needless to say the past three years my hair has been long… but at least I got the girl. :) Not so anymore as on Friday the 13th I decided finally to hack it back to what it was a few years back: Proper. Ohh, and it feels so good too.

Flor of course was very supportive of the move (despite her liking men with hair) and later in the week she decided that I needed to complement the new do with a fine shave. She purchased me a wonderful facial, shave, and scalp massage while on our cruise this past weekend. Now, I’ve been shaved before but not by someone else. It was so weird having someone else holding a blade to my neck. Anyway, I thought I’d share my post-haircut / pre-shave picture followed by my post-shave pic. Then feel free to check out my fantastic commentary on the shave last Friday evening the 20th.

Looking Back On 2008

My dad was 28 years old back in the summer of 1980. He had been married for a couple years already and had finished up both college and seminary. He was about to take his first church on full time way up in the frigid tundra of South Dakota. That summer I was born and I don’t remember any of it. But what I do know is that 28 years later, in the summer of 2008, I celebrated my 28th birthday with my wife for the very first time. We didn’t (and still don’t) have any kids, nor have I or she finished grad school but my life, right now, is in the arena that my father’s was when I was born. This is the first year of my life where I felt as if I was on par with my father for the first time. He was always (for as long as I’ve known him and have been alive) a grown-up while I was still a kid.

Looking back on 2008, now that it’s a pinch behind us now, about four weeks and a couple days to be precise, I am proud to say that my first year as a married man was a really good year. I know I have a history of lamenting on my good years every January or so and spouting out my eternal optimism for the coming year but I don’t feel bad about that because so far I feel that every year has truly been better than the year recently ended.

2008 not only was my first year as a husband. Flor and I also adopted 2 cats and became quasi parents of two little ones named Esther and Fred (Freddie).

We even took advantage of the horrendous economy and market conditions of the times and purchased our first home, a small one bedroom condo out in El Cajon, just East of San Diego. Flor and I even endured about 26 days of separation in the summer due to a school term she had to attend in Washington DC and we experienced our first ever phone bills exceeding our allotted monthly minutes. :) We ogled the capital together with my sister and road tripped the United States all the way back to San Diego.

After returning home I would have made my Grandfather proud surely by becoming the handyman that that he would have admired. I’m sure he would have loved helping me and Flor fix up our place. Having said that however, I think maybe he might have helped us out some way along the way anyhow, who knows. We painted walls, patched holes, changed light fixtures, installed hardware, and as the year turned we even fixed our ceiling and roof (minor repairs mind you, nothing to get too exited about). 2008 even brought with it my return to school as I did the bulk of a Master’s program between my regular work and bowling excursions. And Flor’s schooling has made great progress and makes me so proud to call her my wife. She started going to the hospital once every couple weeks shadowing doctors and seeing real patients. She’s so cute in that white coat. :) I swear she’s going to make a fine doctor, one of those doctors that everybody loves, the kind that seem to love what they’re doing.

All in all Flor and I had a remarkable year in 2008. Sure retirement accounts fell precipitously, as did everybody’s, and there were stressful times at work and at home but the smiles and happy times were much more prevalent. We even found ourselves peering into the small little eyes of a new baby nephew and received word that another nephew/niece is on the way. Flor’s family has been blessed with little ones and we’ve had the good fortune of being the fun aunt/uncle coming to town to entertain the kids. It’s been really cool to be in that spot… and then we get hand the baby back over to mom when the little guy poos. :) The point here however is that I feel like I’m an adult now and that my life is good and in order. I have my wife and all of my friends and family to thank for that because really, it doesn’t feel like I did anything to make this happen.

I hope my dad understands that though he is now twice the age (and maturity surely :)) that he was when I was born, I am now infinitely more mature than I was then, just 28 years ago… or even a few years ago for that matter. For the first time I feel like I can walk side by side as equals with my dad, and his dad, and his dad.

They were all great men and one day I hope to be a great man as well. In 2009 I look forward to all the things that might come our way. I should graduate while Flor will be spending many of her days in the hospital. Our little kitties will both turn one. Happiness and comfort should abound, and surely many unforeseen happenings will direct our lives… but hopefully with a little luck 2009 will turn out even better than 2008 and we’ll have many more happy stories to tell in the years to come.

Lest us not forget the one defining moment however. I became a man when I purchased this awesome refrigerator. :)

Yesteryear's in Review
2007
2006
2005

Underwriting Approved

I just got word that underwriting finally approved my loan. I should move into the new condo on Tuesday. I've never shed tears of joy/relief before today. I can't even describe the feeling. Praise God! I can't wait to get Flor and the cats into the new place!

Considering BeyondTV in my Living Room

I'm giving some thought into our upcoming move. We're actually trying to think of ways to minimize our monthly expenses without sacrificing anything and the first thought that comes to mind is cable. Of course we've grown to love DVR and we are amazingly addicted to it so I'm not sure we could give it and digital cable up just to save a few dollars but I came across another option which I've been secretly wanting for a couple years now... a PC based DVR system.

Apparently I can purchase a PC TV tuner on eBay for about $70, a download for BTV or BeyondTV for about $60, and a VGA to S-Video-TV out converter off of eBay for $5 which will run directly to the TV. With this setup I can work a personal DVR from my computer for an upfront cost of $135 plus an extra optional $20 PC remote control. Doing this I can effectively drop from Cox Digital Cable to standard cable and save about $20 per month in Cox bills and break even on this investment in a mere eight months. In the mean time I can enjoy the benefits of the setup as well such as expanded DVR space, DVD backup of shows I'd like to keep, compression of shows to podcast to my Zune/iPod, compression of shows or movies to archive on my PC. Really the possibilities are limitless. I can even network the drive to other PCs and watch live or recorded TV on my laptop in bed, at my desk, in the laundy room, or out at the pool! Crazy!

Anyway, I'm really just lusting at this point and will have to look into my PC's abilities before I commit to this but I am pretty sure I can do this. So exciting! I'll have to update later when I look into this a bit more.

Sony Ericsson HCB 150 - I Want One!

I understand that California is going through some law changes this summer. Everybody driving a car as of July 2008 needs to be using a hands free device if they are using a cell phone. I knew this a while back so I picked up a Parrot Drivers Headset so that I could start the hands free experience while driving a little early. I didn't realize this at the time but after it arrived I found out that my ears are strangely shaped and these in-the-ear buds don't stay in my ear; they just fall out.

Flor however had better luck with it and liked it nicely, it has a nice car charging dock for it so it's always charged and always has a placed to be stored while not driving so I gave it to her. Since then however I've been in the market for a new device. I don't really care for the standard over the ear models that are meant to be portable. I'm really only in this for a car kit. I don't want to have to worry about charging it and I don't want to have to worry about messing around with attaching it to my body... which led me to this awesome discovery of the Sony Ericsson HCB 150, which won't be released until the 2nd quarter of this year. I can't wait; I've fallen in love. This do-dad is looking awesome.

Bluetooth Car Speaker Phone

It's just a bluetooth speaker phone system for the cell. It attaches to the sunshade visor in the car, has a display showing who is calling, has a text to voice recognition and will hold a charge for ever and a day. It can even link up to multiple phones so we'll be able to pair it with Flor's phone too if we ever have to switch cars. Ohh yeah, did I mention how cool it looks. Check it out:

...and from Sony's website:

HCB-150 Specs

Network Features
Bluethooth® Technology: Bluetooth® 2.0 + EDR3, Auto Pairing™ technology3, pair up to 5 phones3

Power
Battery Life (Approx): Talk time - Up to 9 hrs, Standby time - Up to 700 hrs
Battery Type: Li-Polymer 900mAh

Display
Technology: OLED display with tilt function

Weights and Measurements
Dimensions (Approx.): 130mm x 80mm x 25mm1
Weight (Approx.): 180g

Regarding the pending release of the HCB 150:

"Sony Ericsson has announced the new Bluetooth hands free Car Speakers HCB-150. The SE HCB-150 features a convenient text 2 speech feature & verbally alerts you who is calling. The Sony Ericsson HCB-150 has a talk time of up to 25 hours Yes 25 Hours & 700 hours standby time. The Bluetooth Car Speakerphone Sony Ericsson HCB-150 will be available globally from Q2 2008."

Book Review: Personality Plus For Couples by Florence Littauer

Almost a full month ago I finished up Personality Plus For Couples. This was one of the two books that Flor and I were encouraged to read as part of our pre-marital counseling back in October when we met with our Pastor, Scott Peterson. Both Flor and I really enjoyed reading this book as we were able to discuss it all the way through. I think we both really enjoyed the first half of the book a lot more than the second half though. The second half was a grind of a read. I'm not sure if it was any one reason it just didn't seem that helpful to the subject matter; it seemed to only be there to take up space.

The premise of the book, though a little overly general, was to demonstrate that there are four main personality types that all people fit into to some degree. It's pretty much impossible to to be 100% of any of the four types though so the book comes with a nicely developed but not to long test to determine what percentage of each type you and your mate are. There are combinations that are somewhat normal and there are combinations that don't occur very often... as it played out I was one of the weird types. I tend to be passive, reserved, and introspective (Phlegmatic) and "gettr done", take charge, lets start a project type (Choleric). These two types naturally repel one another so it's strange to tend to be both.

Flor ended up being Phlegmatic and Melancholy, or one who tends to be a perfectionist, a more normal combination. Anyway, it was fun learning about these different types and labeling ourselves and our friends in their respective types. We also found joy in learning that both of us are predominantly Phlegmatic, which bodes well for us having a peaceful relationship together. I also have tendencies to get things done so I'll keep us moving forward but Flor has tendencies to do things right so she won't ever let me do a shabby on anything.

The book was nice to learn what tendencies people of various types have and it was nice to see what needs people of the various types have so that we can be aware of what to expect for each other, how to deal with each other, and how to better care for one another.

Again the second half of the book went more into specific circumstances for various combinations of people looking at specific stories. All of the stories however seemed pretty much the same and very lame. They all revolved around friction in a couples relationship and how it was repaired through the very knowledge of the personality types. This was pretty campy in my opinion as every story seemed exactly the same and there was no real work that was taken in any situation to fix the underlining problem. There were some bright spots through it and a few of the stories were entertaining as well as informative but a future reader would be more than fine just reading the first 120 pages of this book and then putting it down.

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My other book reviews.

Book Review: Dispatches From The Edge by Anderson Cooper

Last evening I finished up Anderson Cooper's Dispatches From The Edge. I must say this book touched me like no book has touched me in years. I remember reading Chinua Achebe's book in High School, Things Fall Apart and getting upset as I read on. By the time the book ended I was mad. I had truly connected with the story and was emotionally affected by it. Since that time I have rarely if ever really gotten that connected to a book... until this read.

Last week I was sitting in a Taco Bell on my lunch break listening to chapters from this book on my Zune. I was sitting on the edge of my seat holding back tears as Cooper described the lives of people he encountered through his professional life as a journalist. I was sitting there eating a Crunch Wrap Supreme as he described the famine in Somalia and Niger and I suddenly lost my appetite. My food seemed somehow insignificant.

Cooper writes that the act of moving on kept him going. He intermingles his stories from the field with the story of his life. Everything seems tragic; everything seems painful. He describes his original desire to immerse himself in the worst situations in the world as a way to surround himself in other people's pain and sorrow in the hopes of wrapping perspective around the tragedy and pain of his own life. In the end Cooper makes it clear that he used to think his stories might cause change to the world but now he believes they merely show an audience what is happening in the world instead of inspiring us to change it.

From a news corespondent you hear on a regular basis the facts of stories and world events, hopefully unpolluted with bias. But from this book we really hear the opinion of a man who has seen many horrible things throughout a career. We see a man who has cried alone at night after watching men, women, and children dying of starvation in Africa. We see a man appalled by the death of Americans in the city streets of New Orleans with no government officials to clean up the bodies or save those clinging to life. We see a man who has held his tongue on his opinions out of duty to his profession who is full passion and pain.

This book was a brilliant memoir. It is short and readable and I will never forget it. It will change the way I think about war, poverty, hunger, and foreign affairs. It will stay with me for years. I don't expect another book to touch me quite like this one for a very long time!

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My other book reviews.

How do we fix the markets?

I'm going to get a little political here so bear with me. I've decided that of all the presidential candidates I'm going to be supporting Ron Paul during this electoral season. Mostly because he is a Libertarian and shares very similar views as I do.

I've decided that the Republican vs. Democratic system just doesn't work for people like me. Fiscally speaking I'm very conservative which bodes well with the Republicans but socially speaking I'm fairly liberal which bodes well with the Democrats. Basically if I choose sides within the two-party system I'm choosing one of my belief systems over the other and that's just not cool.

Anyway, Paul, though running as Republican, hits both sides of my political beliefs as he is fiscally conservative and socially liberal... and most importantly very capitalistic. He's perfect for me... except he's a little bit more anti-foreign involvement than I care for but I can overlook that.

So with all the market turmoil these days he has just published his "Comprehensive Economic Revitalization Plan". I encourage you to read it as it will drastically differ from all other candidates. The main difference is (generally speaking) Paul looks to revitalize the economy for decades instead of quarters. All this short-term stimulus stuff that everybody is talking about is just that, short term... and really short term. Although I'd like to receive a check this tax season for an extra $300-$1,200 dollars I'd also like the dollar to buy 1.5 Canadian Dollars again or 1.2 Euros again. I'd like commodity inflation to stop. I'd like government to stop spending us into greater deficits as that makes life tougher for me in the future.

In the end, a little market slowdown vs. recession today means next to nothing to me compared to a stronger US economy 20-30 years from now. I believe Paul's reforms could bring us the latter and that will mean something significant to anybody despite their beliefs.

In addition to Paul's plan (linked above) I'd encourage you to take a look at his Campaign Blog and subscribe to it. It is updated roughly 5 times a day but it's an easy and enlightening read.

Living Like Christ Everyday

My dad has been blogging for a few months now and I must say it's probably really good for him as it's getting him used to using the computer on a regular basis. I helped him put together the basic framework of his blog back in June and in August he started writing in it most every day. I have found it very nice to read what he has to post as he has such a rich volume of religious writings floating around in his head that it's always rewarding to read what is "speaking to him". If you're interested I would encourage you to check out my dad's prayer blog. He writes a lot of commentary on the topic of devotionals, theologians, and encouragement.

Anyway, with my wedding fast approaching I've been a little behind in reading my blogs and news feeds so today I came across my dad's post back on November 22 regarding Oswald Chambers' The Shallow and The Profound. It's been about 3 weeks but I'm finally getting to read it and I find something that really spoke to me too. Oswald says (to paraphrase) to place some solid emphasis on living like Christ in everything mundane in your life. This of course means that you should live like Christ while you drive to work, cook dinner, do house chores, email coworkers, etc. instead of trying to be like Christ only in the Profound moments of your life.

The point is there are not enough Profound moments of one's life to make up for the mundane so it's best to live like Christ in the mundane because it speaks more about Christ to others. After all, Christ participated in all the mundane aspects of life as he once was a living man and he did indeed act like Christ in those times just as much as he did while preaching and teaching others.

Anyway, for some great words of wisdom on a nearly daily basis I recommend checking out my dad's blog and subscribing to the feed.

In other news it dawned on me that I forgot to post the pictures from the 5th annual Thanksgiving at Abby and Kathleen's. There's not too many but here they are:


I gotta say it was great to see friends that I haven't seen in ages, namely Kelli, Evan, and Judi.

Happy December 13th everybody! Just 4 more days to go!

I'm Becoming An Online MBA Student At Ashford University!

I can hardly believe this but after 5 years of school and three years off just to go back and finish my degree I am now going back again a full year later to get a Masters in Business Administration. This will not change my working situation at all and I will actually receive financial assistance from my employer to pay for the degree so it should be great for me in the long run.

This will be a 16 month program with 100% of the classes taken online. This is of course what makes this program feasible for me as I can't very well quit my job.

I'll be starting the online MBA program at Ashford University on January 8, 2008 and will be anticipating graduating in April or May of 2009. Wish me good luck!

This means that I will have a graduate degree for at least two years before Flor gets one. That will make me feel good. :) Of course she is going to be a doctor and I'll continue as a banker so I guess she'll eventually be far more impressive than me anyway.

Well, that's all I have to say for now. Expect more pictures from me in the future as the holiday's are coming up I will have to start capturing moments again.

I Am A Culinary Genius

So Saturday afternoon Flor and I were loafing around the apartment watching TV and relaxing. We were feeling pretty good about staying in all day when I suddenly got the urge to bake some cookies. Now, if you know anything about me you'll know already that I have a love affair with baked goods and cookies rank high on my "baked goods list". I don't use those nasty box mixes either I build those cookies straight from scratch.

Anyway to prohibit myself from droning on about this too long I'll just summarize from hence forth. The cookies ended up coming out of the oven in perfect condition. Quite soft but not gooey, fluffy but not towering too high, chocolaty but still leaving plenty of the doughy goodness to savor between chips. Let's just say they were perfect and they looked gorgeous!

Aaron even thought so too and later that evening after he had finished his photo shoot for the day he set up his indoor studio and took some awe inspiring shots of my cookies, catching them in all their glory.

I now present them to you with one disclaimer. There are no more cookies left. Jeremy, Aaron, AJ, Rich, Flor, and Myself killed them off by yesterday evening. Sorry to tease your sweet tooth and then leave you wanting more but some things must be the way they are.

For more of Aaron's ridiculously good photography check out his blog and portfolio. He usually photographs beautiful women but sometimes he takes a break to photograph my food.