Keep Governors Out of Jail

In the wake of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, now is the time to start an aggressive program to keep our governors out of prison. We must reach out to this at-risk group, help them stay out of jail, and show them how to become productive members of society. The following graph shows that governors are now incarcerated at a higher rate than whites and hispanics.


Convicted US governors from the past 30 years:

Governor	State	Term	Notes
John Rowland	Connecticut	1995-2004	resigned in 2004, convicted and sent to prison
Don Siegelman	Alabama	1999-2003	convicted in 2006 on corruption charges and sent to prison
George Ryan	Illinois	1999-2003	convicted in 2006 on corruption charges and sent to prison
Bob Taft	Ohio	1999-2007	convicted of misdemeanors for failing to report gifts, remained in office
Fife Symington	Arizona	1991-1997	convicted in 1997 and forced to resign, conviction was eventually overturned
Jim Tucker	Arkansas	1992-1996	convicted in 1996 and forced to resign, received probation and house detention due to poor health
Guy Hunt	Alabama	1987-1993	convicted in 1992, sentenced to parole, later granted a pardon by the parole board based on innocence
Edwin Edwards	Louisiana	1972–1980, 1984–1988, and 1992–1996	convicted in 1998 and sent to prison
Marvin Mandel	Maryland	1969-1979	convicted in 1977, sent to prison, conviction was overturned in 1987
Rod Blagojevich	Illinois	2002-present	arrested on December 9, 2008

Please help keep our governors out of prison!

- schneid

Fitness notes 12/5

I worked out 2-3 times the week before Thanksgiving, swam and went on a hike during the week of Thanksgiving, and worked out twice this week. This week really should've been 3-4 times, but it's a start. I'm going to start playing volleyball with my friend Tim next week. It has been, oh, almost 7 years since I've played regularly in an indoor volleyball league. It should be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

And if it ever warms up to 50 (it's like 12 degrees today), I'd like to start running with the other Tim again.

- schneid

summer blend gas

I love that term - "summer blend gas". Whenever I think about it, I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from Seinfeld. Jerry is buying a car from David Puddy, and says "That undercoating, that’s just a rip-off, isn’t it?", and Puddy says "Oh, we don't even know what that is."

The plunging oil prices made me think of that. Watch out, by the way. We're not even close to the bottom of this recession. Unemployment, housing, stock market, and everything else are still on their way down. Why? There's no reason for them to go up. There are a lot more people that are going to default on their mortgages and lose their jobs. You can't improve the economy if people aren't working, regardless of what Wall Street or Washington would have you believe.

- schneid

Thanksgiving 2008

I really need to catch up on the last 6 months, but maybe I should start with the most recent events since those are fresh in my mind.

Due to the bad economy, we decided to drive to North Carolina for Thanksgiving this year instead of flying. This was the first time we drove there with the kids. We gave Anna an early Christmas present, a Nintendo DS and some games.

The kids occupied themselves with their games, books, and DVDs. We spent some time sitting in the back with Anna and keeping her busy. The first day was an easy one, a 5 hour drive to Bloomington, Indiana to visit Kevin, Amy, Carter, and Archie. We hadn't seen them (I think) since our 20 year reunion in August 2006.

We arrived around 2:00 and stayed until after dinner. Ben and Carter were excited to see each other, almost as excited as Sweetness the attention-starved (or so he would have you believe) beagle was to see us. The kids (that sometimes includes Kevin) ran around and had fun while the adults (that sometimes includes Kevin) caught up. We had fun playing Wii Rock Band and hanging out. We had a great time - thanks Kevin and Amy!

We spent the night at a hotel in preparation for our 6:15 wakeup - because I didn't want to hit the mountains in the dark that night. We did wake up on time but didn't leave quickly due to a leisurely breakfast. It had been beautiful and sunny the previous day. This day it was dark and rainy.

We drove on some winding roads back to the freeway. It seems like Bloomington is up on a hill. This was the start of hilly driving which continued for the next 7 hours until we past Asheville, North Carolina. We did get some daylight in the mountains. And mostly is was drizzling, so the drive wasn't too bad. We arrived in Clemmons around 7:30 PM.

The kids were excited to see Nana and Zadie (and Tigger and Eeyore, their cats), and vice-versa except for the cats. After a day or two, an adult would be able to rub the cats into a purr-induced coma so that the kids could pet them. The cats referred to Anna (or at least we imagined they did) as the "Pink Thing". They would take off whenever the kids were moving.

We went to Sci Works in Winston-Salem with Zadie on Tuesday. It's a nice science museum for kids and we enjoyed it. On Wednesday, we went swimming at the YMCA with Nana. Debi and David arrived with Genevieve that day. On Thursday, we visited a couple of Zadie's homes for sale and had a big Thanksgiving dinner at home. Of course, that was not much different from every other night that we had a big dinner, except that Nana did all the work on Thursday. We ate and drank too much the entire week. On Friday, we went hiking at Pilot Mountain. It was a nice sunny day and maybe 50 degrees up there. In fact, it was sunny and warm the entire week. Near the end of the hike there was a lot of grumbling, but we had fun and needed the exercise.

Nana and Zadie were gracious hosts as always - it's not easy to have a houseful of people for a week. Nana's brother also came on Wednesday and left on Friday, so they had 8 guests! I think everyone had a great time. It was fun to add Genevieve to the mix. The kids liked having another kid around and Anna really liked doing things with her.

Now that we were leaving on Saturday, of course the clouds and rain came back, although it only rained for about 3 hours on the drive home. We left before noon and drove straight back home. We spent about 12 hours driving and 2.5 hours on stops. Anna fell asleep around 8:30, but Ben was so excited to go home that he didn't fall asleep until about 9:30. We took turns driving and it went fine until we hit the wall around 9:30. The next hour or two were excruciating until the caffeine set in. The last 4 hours were tough. We were really sick of being in the car and ready to get home. We arrived around 1:30 AM. We were all happy to be back in our own beds!

Airfare was about $425 each, plus we needed to rent a car, so it would've cost a minimum of $1900. With the price of gas as low as 1.54 (in Indiana) and an average of about 1.79, we only spent about $150 on gas. We spent one night at a hotel and had some meals. The whole trip cost less than $400. Good deal. I did have one splurge - I bought a Garmin Nuvi 650 GPS before the trip. It worked very well and I left my stack of maps at home.

- schneid

again

Another day, another workout. On Wednesday, I attended a yoga class at work. I am very sore from the Tuesday fitness class, so that was perfect. The stretching felt great. Then I had a big salad for lunch.

- schneid

another workout

I worked out again today. Woohoo, two days in a row, it's a new record. I didn't work up a sweat yesterday so I decided to try the fitness class today. I have never attended a fitness class. It was not fun. I had 12 lb weights in my hands for almost 45 minutes. My stomach muscles were cramping from all the abdominal work. I know I sound like a wimp but it's pretty tough when you're this out of shape.

Thank god it was taco salad day in the cafeteria. It was almost worth it. Fortunately they have yoga tomorrow. I'll go to class and just lay on the floor.

Can't wait to try it again next week! Buy some Advil stock.

- schneid

I worked out

Yes, believe it or not, I worked out. I've been slacking off badly. I worked out hard a couple months ago and ended up with back spasms. That wasn't fun. I'm feeling better now, including my ankle, so I'm going to get back in the groove. Hopefully I can hit the gym at least 3 times this week, especially since next week is Thanksgiving. I also ate a salad for lunch. Pathetic, I know. But it's a start.

- schneid

Swoopo - wish I'd thought of THAT!

These is this ridiculous new auction site called swoopo. The company itself is auctioning all the items. In some auctions, the bid increments are 1 or 15 cents. And the winner of the auction generally gets a TV or laptop or whatever at a good price.

Here's the catch...it costs $1 to place a bid! Suppose they auction off a TV worth $1500. Let's suppose that 100 people bid about 50 times each for this TV. So the TV sells for $750. Someone gets a $1500 TV for $750 (plus their $50 in bids). 99 people are out $50 each. And swoopo makes...drum roll please...$5000!!! (OK, they had to pay $1200 for the TV which they sold for $750, so they made $5000-1200+750 = $4550 profit.)

They also have automatic bidding so sometime near the end of an auction, automatic bids come fast and furious. And every time someone bids, it adds time to the clock!

Sometime they even auction off CASH. That doesn't seem legal. It's basically gambling. The whole thing seems borderline illegal and unethical. They are making money like crazy. Wish I'd thought of it!

- schneid

Creating tabs in SharePoint using Javascript and CSS

I couldn’t find an example of this, but I was determined to make it work. Here is the result.

I wanted a set of tabs where clicking on a tab would change the category but stay on the same page. Also, I must be able to pass in that category through the URL.

For example, I might have a web page http://...describe.aspx. I want to display information from several SharePoint lists. However, if I use the
URL http://...describe.aspx?animal=cat, then I only want the information about cats, and if I use http://...describe.aspx?animal=dog, then I only want the information about dogs.

Data views in SharePoint Designer will be used to display the desired information, using the animal variable. The method for that is not described here.

So I need to somehow read the variable from the URL using JavaScript. Then I need to highlight the tab corresponding to the variable. I found the code for that here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-11883.html

It doesn’t look that great in the screenshots, but when you put the code into a SharePoint web part, it looks better. Here is the code:


<style type="text/css">



span.class1

{

float: left;

padding: 4px 0px;

font-size: 1em;

font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;

border-right: 1px solid rgb(123,166,225);

}



.class1 A:link

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:visited

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:hover

{

text-decoration: none;

background-color: #FCE293;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/PortalTabSelected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:active

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}









</style>





<script type="text/JavaScript">



// set the color of the chosen tab

// the tab is chosen by appending ?page=cat to the URL



function change(page)

{

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundColor = "#7BA6E1";

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundImage="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavselected.gif)";

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundRepeat= "repeat-x";

document.getElementById(page).style.fontWeight= "bold";



}



// runs a function at page load time



function addLoadEvent(func) {



  var oldonload = window.onload;

  if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {

    window.onload = func;

  } else {

    window.onload = function() {

      if (oldonload) {

        oldonload();

      }

      func();

    }

  }

}



// run this function at page load time



addLoadEvent(function $_GET(key_str) {

if(window.location.search) {

var query = window.location.search.substr(1);

var pairs = query.split(/&|;/);

for(var i = 0; i < pairs.length; i++) {

var pair = pairs[i].split("=");

if(unescape(pair[0]) == key_str)

return unescape(pair[1]);

}

}

change(pair[1]);

}

);



</script>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=cat" id=cat>cat</a>

</span>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=dog" id=dog>dog</a>

</span>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=horse" id=horse>horse</a>

</span>





- schneid

The Salesman at Home

I was wondering what life might be like for the salesman at home.

Customer (Billy): cries and screams incoherently.

Salesman (Dad): "OK, I understand. I'm sure we can do that, let me talk to Engineering. No problem."

Later:

Dad: "The customer would like the system to produce chocolate milk. When can we have that implemented?"

Engineering (Mom): "I'm pretty sure that's impossible".

Dad: "3 months then?"

Mom (exasperated): FINE.

Dad: "Also, a stretch goal would be a baby brother, can you squeeze that in? It's a nice to have, but would really help our customer relationship. The customer really wants that."

Mom: "I think we need more time to consider the implications of that. And we're going to need input from sales. It's going to take 9 months, at least."

Dad: "Can't you work harder and move some things around? We really need this or we might lose the customer. And we need it in 3 months."

Mom (giving up): "Sure."

- schneid