Don’t take me wrong, before you master the art of picture taking you will go through a healthy dose of frustrations (my being using  external flash light with my Canon XTi). If you do not have patience, you may not survive the initial numberless out of focus, over and under exposed shots that have been ruined by an amateur photographer (this means YOU).

I was fortunate to be asked by my priest to be the official picture taker from some church events, so I got to take many of very rewarding pictures lately. What a blast!  First Communion, Corpus Christi procession, new altar boys’ introduction and the Christmas Eve dinners. So many pictures, so much disk space to use, so little time!

Even today, I got to take few family pictures, which will bring a lot of joy not only to me, but to the folks I am photographing. Even one of the headers for this blog is a panoramic creation of my afternoon walk to the local park.  With the help of Photoshop CS4 and a good use of adobe tutorials, I managed to create a decent looking background headers for this site (look for the island with few pelicans at my city’s artificial lake).

Don’t you wonder why is it that as you expect 2-3 packages from your vendors to arrive on UPS, they arrive on … 2-3 different tracks. Same company, same distribution location, and still – multiple runs of multiple UPS tracks (sometimes minutes apart) are almost a daily occurrence in my neighbourhood.  Oh…. and let’s not forget about the other UPS  tracks that keep driving up and down the street all day long with a sadistic pleasure of  watching you in the window waiting … and waiting … and waiting.  Waiting for the  packages that left local location for delivery 10-12 hours ago. 

I could WALK faster guys, with a monkey doing flips on my back!

How is it, that a 21 century folks of UPS cannot figure out how to do their basic business:  CONSOLIDATION?. It seems it is more about not delivering packages before the promised day.

Here goes my message to UPS: guaranteed delivery means only NO LONGER THAN, and not NOT EARLIER THAN.  As I get to watch individual deliveries, I can see the madness of the corporate “wise guys”, who will make the delivery sit in one of their warehouses to make sure that the TWO DAY GUARTEED does not turn in to a possible NEXT DAY SURPRISE.  Instead of  straightening customer loyalty,  not to mention the obvious cost savings,feelings of  resentment and disappointment sets in in most of our minds.

One should explain to the corporate brainiacs of UPS that a people who need guaranteed delivery in one or two days are still going to pay for this promise, others will not be forced into picking a more expensive option. Do these guys truly believe that I will pick a $30 delivery option on a $7 eSata cable, which Newegg.com had on sale?  Do they have ANY illusions that this type of logic is not going to backfire? Instead of new revenues, or easy way of savings millions in unnecessary overtime and gas, you will have thousands of people writing stories, ridiculing your absurd business practices. 

I don’t know if UPS is the only carrier plagued by this phenomenon, but from the comments I read on many shopping portals, they seem to hold the top stop in this game of madness.

Shape up UPS!  The folks of US Postal Service are passing you in customer satisfaction, and this cannot be good for your health.

Update:  My new camera arrived 12 hours and 3 minutes to travel 10 mile to my house after being aged in UPS Oakland for …. wait for it…  3 days, and this is not even a record.

Finally, lets explain the title a bit. Long time ago, one of my friends explain to me about managers and people that they hire. “A” (Top notch) class managers hire “A+” class employees.  They seek people who are smarter than themselves, people who will make them shine and successful.  ”C” class managers hire “F” class employees.  Lousy managers who are afraid that by hiring a little bit smarter people, the world will not appreciate their contribution, and they won’t be able to keep their jobs. They think, that doing so they look better in comparison.  Well… how little do they know.

 One more year has passed,  so you and I have added some “millage” throughout last 12 months. All Americans got new el Presidente ( I call him Obambi, since I am such a big admirer of his ), you’ve been getting used to the new title of “grandpa”, “paps”… and lovely Jennifer is getting married in July. The last one hurts a bit, since I WAS hopping that she would settle for a more mature guy, and I would be calling you “Dad” some day – with all the love you deserve, of course.

Anyway, hoping that your birthday anniversary was a fabulous one, I wish you all happiness and anything your heart may desire my friend. Stay positive and most of all healthy.  Remember, you and I are may be a bit older, but we age well, and our families, friends need us.

 The next time we meet, let’s finish the  bottle of “Goldwasser” – remember that one? 

In a meantime my friend – Happy  B-day!

- Bogdan

P.S.

To make your day a bit better, I found this little music clip.  I hope you like it.

Why this gloom and doom for USA? Funny one should ask this question, since so many people hated previous president and his administration with such a passion, and wanted “changed” .

And “the change” is coming.  Here is what happened in just 7 days, since President Obama took over the highest office on Earth:

• USA  taxpayers will now be paying for killing unborn children of African, Indochina, South Africa.
• Obama  government will (most probably) nationalizing banks (note: sell BAC tomorrow buy gold and silver) and many other major industries in our country.
• Forcing some financial companies to accept loans, which are going result in “preferred” status for the government, and ultimately leading to … nationalization.
• Democrats all over the country are demanding that opposition is silenced, conservative radio talk shows are taken off the air . Last 3 days Rush Limbaugh is being a subject of almost every AP / ABC / CBS / NBC / CNN news, with one common subject – how to silence the guy.
• New trillions of dollars are being printed to “stimulate” economy. In socialist terms it means: giving $6 bln + to “community” organizations (brown shorts possible picked up as preferred garment) like ACORN, giving tax credits to those…. you don’t pay any taxes, spend on the usual “pet” social projects like… the abortion of children, the teachers unions, the new government buildings. All of the things that will grow government economy.
• Forcing domestic car producers to meet new unachievable standards in fuel economy in next 2 years. Failure will probably result in nationalization.
• Calls to impose limits on executive compensations.
• Freezing any domestic offshore oil drilling, which was approved not so long ago by previous administration (remember the $147 a barrel / $5 a gallon gas?). Obama is still to explain  his campaign promises to drill.
• Oh.. in last 3 months California has achieved something that only Jimmy Carter was able to do – unemployment level is getting closer to %10.  Even illegals from the south of the US boarder are going back home for better job opportunities. Go figure. 
• Hugo Chavez has already warmed up to the new Prez. 
• B. Hussein Obama decided to do his first TV interview with … AL Arabiya. He accused his countryman of oppressive history, promised to talk to Muslims (with Iran specially). We are still waiting for any news about possible meetings to surrender to Al Qaeda.

So,  we are still waiting for the brown shorts member to search house by house for any conservative Republican, to be sent to special re-education camps with gates “Arbeit macht frei”.  All of this as liberal “useful idiots’ are cheering and trying to silence the “divisive” conservative “rhetoric’.

Interesting times. Still waiting for any announcement regarding May 1 celebration and military parades in particular.

You wanted change, we got it.

Old 2008 is almost behind us....

We all need to hope, that things are going to get better in 2009. Without hope, one could get really depressed.

The upgrade itself didn’t take that much time¹, and off I went into the new administrative interface. Different to be sure, but I do agree with the authors – much quicker and easier to use. I took some chances with this one, but it looks that there are no show stoppers² that would make me consider a rollback. So far, I am happy camper.³

As I was forgetting the story of the crooked investment advisor from New York» , I looked into few WordPress plug-ins. I decided to give them a “go”.

First, I opted for a optimization. New plug-in I used moves all the javascript code to the end of the page. It is a suggested technique for allowing the main static content to display as soon as possible. This gives the perception of the page to load faster. So far, it seems to do its job.

Second on the list, were two add-ins to provide footnotes and “sliders”⁴. I notice one blog site to use them, and …. I liked it enough to give it a spin.  Will see, which one is going to stay, and which one is going to go((I don’t think that adding so many plug-ins is going to be “healthy” for the overall performance of the site.))

Tomorrow … oops… today⁵ is a celebration of “Wigilia”"  in my Church, so I better finish.  Tomorrow, I will upgrade my second blog for my children. I still need to figure out how to split the content into multiple distinctive sections without going to multiple installations of WordPress.  Oh well…

1. Finally, I stopped fighting the basic requirements of deleting 2 directories, as the instructions suggested
2. I still remember a bad aftertaste from a 2.3.x to 2.5.x upgrade
3. UPDATE: As I was doing the “last minute” check, I discovered a bug in “AJAX Comments” module. Had to disable it, until a fix is available.
4. they work the same as footnotes, but they are hidden, to be exposed upon a click – give it a try above.
5. I better go to bed soon

Again, the leftist useful idiots of Hollywood decided to join in, and help their idol Hussein Obama to defeat Republican team. Drudge on his web pointed to a video where one of top Hollywood fools decided to embarrass himself. Matt Damon, the Harvard drop out decided to share his “wisdom” with the rest of the world. Acknowledging that he knows NOTHING about Sarah Palin and doesn’t plan on learning anything about her, he proclaimed that she would be a total disaster once elected for a VP spot.  This “wise man” was lucky enough to be picked to play a part in few movies that were created by, or started by people,  with real talents, made some money, and know this (in his little brain) qualifies him to speak out on matters of world politics.  As I am writing this blog entry over 2300 people expressed their thoughts on his “exposure” of Sarah Palin. I don’t thing that Matt is going to like what was written about him (he deserves every insult he got there), and I believe that this (evidently) not so bright commie is going to learn first hand (through his pocket), that freedoms do not come cheap. Most thinking Americans are truly fed up with the screenplay readers, who try  to dictate what is good for US, or the world.   Even “progressives” with some sense of decency refused to follow the extremists of Obama camp.  Hillary Clinton is not playing the anti-Palin game either.  Wise woman, I say.  Matt Damon should use his partial degree of English major to deliver the lines of the movie scripts, instead of pretending to have any insights to politics, or science, or … life in general. He is too young, and too arrogant, and too ignorant about most of the things that matter. Being friend to useful-I-wanna-be-his-twin-brother-idiot Ben Affleck does not help him either.

One more thing. John McCain proved  that experience count in no matter what area.  He outsmarted Obama with his VP pick, and EVERYBODY knows it. He IS going to be our next president, despite that Matt or Brabra-oh-so-old-but-still-so-dumb-Streisand hate the idea.