This article is copied from cnn.com and can be found here.

Authorities say they’ve arrested a man who broke into the home of two California farmworkers, stole money, rubbed one with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing.

Fresno County sheriff’s Lt. Ian Burrimond says 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxers and socks after the Saturday morning attack.

He says deputies arrested Vasquez after finding a wallet containing his ID in the ransacked house.

The farmworkers told deputies the suspect woke them Saturday morning by rubbing spices on one of them and smacking the other with an 8-inch sausage.

Burrimond says money allegedly stolen was recovered.

A man breaks into a house and rubs spices on one man, and smacks another guy with a sausage.. Sounds like the guy likes to play with his food — especially his sausage. ‘nough said.

Tags: Funny, News

The U.S. economy is constantly heading downhill and people are losing their jobs left and right. Virtually everyone in the country has been affected one way or another, and with the U.S. hurting as bad as it is, the rest of the world is suffering as well. At every level times are tough, and while some people have more money than others, you can’t deny that even the rich are feeling the cost of increased food prices, gas and so on.

My wife works for the University of Florida, which is considered a Major University. It is a state funded, public university with an undergraduate student body of roughly 34,612 (Wikipedia) and 15,081 postgraduates (Wikipedia) and has a wide range of popular college-level athletics and student programs. Due to the financial situation of the school, they are looking at doing major job cuts for the faculty later this year which puts her job in jeopardy. This is becoming a typical situation across the nation. Even big establishments and jobs once thought to be comfy and secure aren’t.

What I’ve been most confused about when it comes to this country-wide crisis for employment is if the jobs are constantly disappearing, who are the ones doing the jobs that others are getting released to free up funds for? Lemme explain..

Let’s say I am working for Business A, and I’m in a management position. It is my job to hire employees, pay employees, schedule work hours, place orders for restocking of items that we may be selling, and acquire new items. Now given the current economic situation, several employees below me have been let go, we’ll say 5 of 15. I’m down to 10. Then my number gets called, and they are out a manager and 5 other employees. That is 10 people left to do what took 16 people to do, and the 10 people remaining don’t have the experience or ability to do my job. Why cut my job? And why cut the other peoples jobs? You’re hurting yourself more, right?

Let me try this again, with another example. A major car company has a work plant. They build the cars. They have 10 thousand employees, and they shut down the entire plant to save money. 10 thousand people are out of a job and the company saves lots of money, right? That is 10 thousand people now unable to afford to purchase the very cars they were building in the first place, and since nobody is working on building those cars there, there are no cars to sell. That makes things worse, right? You’re taking away the ability to purchase items and taking away items to be purchased. Absolutely no flow of money either way in this situation. How is that helpful to anyone?

Gas prices are one of the main root issues in our economy right now, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t agree. The high gas prices get added on every items price tag at the end of the day, which is why a gallon of milk has been so damn expensive. It costs money to transport the heavy milk from the farms to the milk processing plants, then from the plants to the store. Even cabs have raised their rates. What used to be a $15 cab ride can now run you up to $20, or more. And don’t even get me started on how much of a difference cab drivers are showing now compared to the lower fuel prices of a couple years ago. Damn near killed a cabby for yelling at my wife over her not tipping him more than a couple bucks. It’s a tip, be thankful!

I could sit here all day and talk to you about what the problems are, list off personal stories about my own financial troubles, but none of that is any good anymore. Those with the power to do any real good refuse to listen to the real problems, and would rather talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, and things that will eventually cost our country more money. Help the homeland economy? That isn’t on the agenda. We’ll consider another tax rebate check, but that’ll do nothing more than let a bunch of poor people go out and buy some game consoles, sit at home and become distracted by a game or the TV and hopefully everyone will forget we’re in a failing economy.

How about some real fixes! Need a place to start? Why don’t you start with the broken educational system in the U.S. and give teachers incentives for being good teachers. I’m talking real, worthwhile raises and bonuses. I’m talking boosting a school districts funding. I’m talking doing something as small as boost local school funding to provide more regional coverage of local school athletics which drives up local support. I’m talking about giving students better learning material and more access to computers on a broader scale. Let’s take $5 billion extra for each state and dump it into their public school systems and watch what happens.

Short on good teachers? Loosen the educational requirements of a teacher and setup programs to identify prospective teachers on a personality level, rather than pure knowledge. A fun teacher will help you learn things better than a stuffy teacher who will stick a book in your face and walk away. Give them extra tax breaks for being teachers, give them 100% free medical care at any doctor they choose to visit, and at any hospital they want to use. Beyond the failure that is Medicaid and Medicare, and give them total freedom. With worthwhile incentives, you can lure in great teachers to help build the future leaders of the country and they could prepare those future leaders how they should be prepared, and maybe we might not end up with the batch of failures that we’re dealing with right now.

The foundation for any great country is education, and if you can’t figure out that 1+1 = 2, and if you can’t read The Cat and The Hat then how do you expect to do any sort of leading in any possible avenue in your life? You can’t. You do need a certain level of basic skills in your life to succeed and if the schools are incapable to fulfill those requirements and needs of the kids then something needs to be done.

I don’t mind sharing our past success to help the future of another country or two become brighter in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think enough is enough and that we are at the point and have long since been at the point where we are wasting insane amounts of money of a cause that has already been accomplished. Instead, that money desperately needs to be dumped into the economy otherwise those two countries may be some of the last we’ll ever be able to help and we might be the ones in dire need of outside assistance. How would you like that?

The sad fact is that there are many problems in the countries economy, and that it will take many years to recover from them. We just need people dedicated to actually fixing the problems instead of giving the country more and slapping a tiny little band-aid on a critical wound. We just need those people to come into power and take the bull by the horns and get the jobs done. Until then — we’re screwed.

I see a dead U.S. Economic System.

Tags: Economy, Education, News, Politics, Sports, World News

First off, let me share a little something about myself that you might find a little odd. I don’t have TV. Due to personal reasons, we had to give up cable TV over two years ago. I know, right? How can we live without TV? Well, we can.

While I often whine and complain about wanting TV — even NEEDING TV — I have other methods that I use to watch a very limited amount of TV legally. What I’m talking about is streaming. If you’re a computer novice, odds are you’re likely clueless as to what exactly streaming is, or your idea of streaming is limited to YouTube. You’re missing out on a great deal if that is the case.

You can stream just about anything online, and there are free solutions that enable you to even broadcast your own streams and share with friends and family, or privately to yourself when you’re not at home. In my opinion, streaming has so much more to offer than it currently does and deserves to be thrust into the spotlight on a whole new level. It deserves development and exploration, and above all it needs to be a free service provided by your ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) at no extra cost to you.

The United States is about to make the digital switch, which will cease analog broadcasts. Very few people in the U.S. use antennas anymore for signals, and almost everyone has a computer and most have access to broadband internet connections. What do you think the next step should be? Streaming. Networks such as ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS and so on should provide a free access online LIVE stream of their channels for everyone in the U.S.

Why should the streams be free? Because there is no difference between an online stream that is free, and an analog signal picked up by an antenna which is also free to everyone in the U.S. within range. One is on the computer, and the other is on the TV.

Big networks currently offer, in one way or another, a VoD (Video on Demand) streaming method found at their sites where you can stream entire episodes of a show they’ve aired online on your computer. But very few offer a truly live stream of their channel online to watch in realtime. That is one thing that you really give up when you try to switch to stream-only viewing.

Some events are simulcasted online such as sports through ESPN360.com, which allows you — provided you have access courtesy of your ISP — to stream live college football games among other sporting events such as soccer, baseball, NASCAR, tennis, hockey, and other assorted sporting events. The problem with ESPN360.com however, is that its options are extremely limited. Allow me to explain.

While you get to watch the game “live”, you have a a delay that rivals a satellite broadcast and odds are you’ll hear people around you cheering for touchdowns up to 2 minutes before you get to see the action yourself. It also fails to provide proper support and can lag you to death when using a much superior internet browser in Firefox, compared to a more smoother experience in a much less liked browser in Internet Explorer.

Your viewing ability is limited as well. While it claims “fullscreen”, it will maintain a windowed version of the video. It fails to provide a true fullscreen option, something that is very easy to do and would boost end-user enjoyment by leaps and bounds. The user interface also is very dated looking, and at times breaks in Internet Explorer. The “Go Live” button’s text will suddenly appear below the red button background. I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.

But this is why I spoke about it needing development, and to be given the attention it deserves. It would be a wonderful solution for the big networks because with internet streaming, you have the ability to use interactive commercials. Streaming websites have timed, matching commercials and advertisements, that’ll bring up matching ads that you can click on, or even interact with that’ll take you to the products website for more information, while not affecting the stream you’re watching or listening to.

It could revolutionize what you know as a commercial, and perhaps one day enable you to “test drive” a car they’re pushing to you in an advertisement, and you could get a little enjoyment out of a commercial rather than it just being a video playing that you use as an excuse to take a bathroom break.

Streaming is more interactive, more personal, and can bring many more things to the table than a normal TV broadcast. Need more examples? Imagine this. You’re watching let’s say.. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Bored? Play along! You could scroll your mouse to the bottom of the video, and an interactive menu could slide up, listing the answers you’re allowed to choose. You can pick the answer you want, and so can the rest of the country. Next thing you know, they could offer a live scrollbar showing what others are choosing, and it makes TV truly interactive. A game show becomes a game for everyone, not just something to watch but to ENJOY. Polls can be conducted instantly by popping up on someones stream, and they could easily press their choice and move on. News broadcasts wanting viewers feedback? Boom, already got it.

There are finally some companies making a statement by offering streaming TV. Verizon FiOS and AT&T’s U-Verse, to name a couple, but could be improved greatly if the options were provided directly from the networks themselves online from their websites. Keeping their channels free, like they should be.

Earlier I spoke of VoD features, which the networks offer so you can stream episodes on demand, which is a good feature. There are other websites that provide non-network unique shows, such as Comcast’s Fancast.com site, which archives multiple shows and provides them via streaming for VoD. It’s a good site for network shows, but is lacking in video picture quality — another issue plaguing online streaming.

Now I can’t do an article about streaming without mentioning audio streaming. Internet Radio is an amazing thing. Odds are if you give internet radio a chance — just once — you’ll be hooked and you’ll fear switching on your FM radio stations again. Internet Radio has been in a nasty battle, in which record labels want to effectively kill it off because they want more money, and most internet radio stations are incapable of paying the amounts the record labels and more notably the CRB (Copyright Royalties Board) want to allow internet radio broadcasters to continue playing their music.

What makes internet radio better than FM radio is audio quality, less annoying ads, and more genre oriented playlists. You get to pick a station that’ll play the music you know you’ll like, and hear more music of the same that you might not have heard before and could easily find yourself discovering a couple new bands that you enjoy.

It is a wonderful thing, and provides great freedom for the listeners and the artists alike. It doesn’t matter is you’re an award winning artist, or a local band looking to get discovered — you have a chance at hearing all of the above and so much more.

The leading method in my personal opinion to get internet radio is through Winamp’s SHOUTcast which provides CD quality audio streaming directly to your PC and thousands of stations to choose from. They also provide their streaming software for free, and you could setup your own internet radio broadcast.

There is another side of streaming that is often overlooked. Self streaming. Ever go on a business trip or vacation and you have access to a computer, but not your computer? Streaming programs like Orb can allow you to stream video, audio, live TV and so many other things for free directly from your PC to all sorts of devices including your cellphone, laptop, PC, XBox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Streaming is the future, and the future is looking bright.

EDIT: In response to the comment below for this post, I’ve felt the need and taken it upon myself to provide a sample of a Fancast streams image quality.

Clearly the quality needs improvement, but it is watchable and better than nothing. Plus it is free, so there is no sense in complaining over it and I’m not. I’m just saying that sites like Fancast can easily improve their streaming quality. Don’t believe me? Let’s not forget about the greatness that once was Stage6 and its usage of the DivX Flash Player. It was virtually lossless, and was insanely beautiful in clarity compared to original video sources. What was uploaded is what you got in the stream.

Tags: News, Online Streaming, Tech

First, let me explain what exactly News Grouping is. News Grouping is when there is a popular topic in the media, in this weekends case it is plane crashes which can be seen in the image below…

While it isn’t a new practice by any means, it is still a popular trend that big name media outlets take part in on a regular basis. As the image shows, CNN.com’s Headlines circle around plane crashes. They seek stories out that revolve around plane crashes, and focus on that main topic.

Just like the negative Beijing news; when the stabbing happened, there was a flood of negative Beijing Olympics news. They made an effort to keep the news that they reported as grouped together as possible. Which brings me to my question to you. What do you think about it?

I personally dislike the reporting method. I like a diverse reporting outlet, that covers all sorts of things. Good, bad or otherwise. I want real reporting, and not the “What’s hot and what’s not” reporting style. Granted, if the stories are big then I’d like to read them. But odds are the secondary stories are extremely lacking compared to the original story that caused the grouping to begin in the first place.

Again, using the image as an example. The main stories they really want to emphasize are the top two. What do they feature? Death and injuries. What does the third story feature? A weak story compared to the first two, but because it has a plane involved and there have been a couple plane crashes that have had lives lost, they reported on it to continue the grouping.

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Tags: News, Opinions, Poll, World News

You may remember me hammering away at the Shuttle replacement, Orion, not all that long ago. Recently, on July 21st, NASA did a test of a mock of Orion to test its parachute system. It failed, smashing hard into the ground which surely would’ve killed the crew inside had it been a legit landing attempt, further proving that the Orion is a failure on NASA’s part.

I asked if looks mattered as long as its functional, and that is the main response from the poll; looks don’t really matter as long as it works. Well, it doesn’t. It is a waste of money and a step in the wrong direction, while companies are building plane-styled spaceships of their own to give people a taste of space flight — something in my humble opinion, is a winning plan.

If companies can build spaceships that not only look good but are functional, why is it that a government sponsored, internationally recognized and supported organization fails to design something that looks good and is functional? Hell, it’s ugly AND it’s non-functional!

Billions of dollars spent to make a fancy reto-styled metal brick to fall from space and splat an expensively trained crew. And don’t forget kids, you to can become an Astronaut! Congratulations, NASA. You FAIL!

Tags: NASA, News, Opinions, Orion, World News

Now that the Beijing Olympics are done, looking back at all of the stories that came out of it, what story most defines the Olympics? Vote below, select up to 2 stories.

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Tags: Beijing, Beijing '08, News, Olympics, Sports, World News

Now that Fay is finally done with Florida, or at least she is done with us, I can finally stop posting about her from a personal point of view. I never expected her to do as much as she did, and thought she was going to just hit us and run like every other storm in the past. Had I known that she was going to do everything she did, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and happily prayed for the best.

Yesterday, I had one of my most terrifying experiences of my life. We were upstairs in our bedroom and we were looking out the window at what the storm was doing. A nasty rain band was swinging up over us at a very high rate of speed and it was filled with all kinds of lovely red and yellow. As we stood there watching as the rain got harder and harder and the winds picked up, we noticed the rain start to swirl in the complex.

There is a big tree across the way from us and I mean it’s a big tree and that big bastard got manhandled. The floor started vibrating and I heard the roof start to pop and crack. The power started to flicker, so we ran down stairs and got the kids in the kitchen area since that is the most centered location in our 2 level apartment (we have the top two levels of a three level apartment). Shortly after things died down a tad, a Tornado Warning was issued for our area and just north of us there was a confirmed tornado that touched down. You do the math.

Either way, we feel lucky to still have our apartment intact and more importantly, our family is safe. Not one of the better experiences I’ve had with storms. I’ve seen tornadoes before and I’ve seen the aftermath first hand, but I’ve never had one come over me before. That was the first time, and I sincerely hope that it’ll be the last.

I also noted that I had a video I was going to post for everyone to see a little bit of the rain and winds that we got from Thursday, August 21st, 2008. I’ve just uploaded it to YouTube and you can watch it below.

Tropical Storm Fay’s Rain & Wind

Tags: Fay, News, Tropical Storm, Tropical Storm Fay, Weather

While this isn’t that big of a shock, China has blocked access to iTunes. The Chinese Government has a habit of doing things like this for sites of all sorts, including the website faildogs.com as an example. A perfectly harmless site which only provides pictures of random dogs doing random things that say one single word on the images; fail.

I just don’t understand why people would willingly go to such a country that clearly takes away your basic freedoms. In this case, legally purchasing and downloading music. China already has a horrible internet piracy record, and I can only imagine how bad it’ll become after this latest development. No matter the reason, there is really no excuse for this.

In the U.S., I have access to virtually any website I choose to seek access to, unless the website itself has decided to block U.S.-based traffic, which is well within their right. But to have your government step in and tell you what you’re allowed and not allowed to view, for something as silly and innocent as FailDogs, give me a break!

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Tags: China, iTunes, News, Poll, World News

Barack Obama has made his choice for his VP pick official. Joe Biden will be his running mate. It has been hailed as the perfect match by the public media with the only obvious exception being Obama-Clinton. If it isn’t completely obvious by now, it is almost a sure thing that the U.S. wants change and is going to elect Barack Obama as the next President.

But, does the announcement of Joe Biden as the VP pick for Obama have any impact on who you were going to vote for and who you are going to vote for? Weigh in below!

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Tags: Biden, News, Obama, Politics, Vice President

I’m a beer man. I love beer. I proudly announce to my friends, family, and strangers alike when I am drinking. It is one of those things I really enjoy being able to legally do. I have an old family photo of me drinking my first beer as a little kid. Maybe a little more than a year old. A toddler, and I’m chugging a can of Budweiser — the same beer I drink to this day.

In my years of being a frequent on internet forums, both U.S.-based and popular communities on an international level, as well as working for a popular international internet radio station which had me dealing with people all over the world, I’ve had one thing always come up in a conversation at one point in time or another; the drinking age.

When the topic comes up, I normally get the same response. “What a joke. We can drink at 18! The U.S. is stupid!” In this case, I completely agree. I was still out drinking just about anything me and my buddies could get our hands on at 12, 13, and up until I became an adult, and I still drink. But something did change when it became a legal thing for me to do…

When I came of legal age to drink, when I became 21, it lost its sexy appeal of risk. I knew that unless I did some law violation of some sort, I couldn’t get in trouble and I could legally purchase alcohol. So, I lost a good bit of interest in it. Same thing happened with smoking. Hell, now that I’m an adult — a real, legal adult — I’ve long since quit smoking. I picked up my first cigarette at 7, stealing them from my parents when they’d sleep, or while they were busy and I’d go outside, in the garage and so on.

I look at it this way. People will do it anyway, so why not let them? Now, I know that what I just said is a loaded statement. It doesn’t work for everything. People kill other people, so why don’t we just let everyone kill each other, right? I know, wrong. But, with drinking and with weed, I will break down my thoughts on why it would be better for things to change.

If the drinking age was reduced to 18 rather than 21 for the U.S., kids wouldn’t feel so obligated to drink. They’d easily buy it, and it’d lose its risky luster. It would become a normal thing, and it wouldn’t be such a difference maker in anyones lives. Further more, it would take the load off of police, jails, and college campus security. It’d also reduce issues for colleges who have to deal with passing judgment on students who violate school rules with an arrest.

To make things even more better, insert a special college town tax on alcohol. Increase the cost, and the extra tax money made can go towards helping schools fund research. Who knows, a town filled with a bunch of kids who love to drink could end up helping fund the research to find the cure for cancer! In non-college towns, the extra money should go towards public education. Teachers deserve to be paid nicely, and if they were paid nicely, perhaps more people who would make great teachers might actually choose that career path!

Many good things — possibly GREAT things — could come from lowering the legal drinking age in the U.S. to 18. It just makes sense to capitalize on the people who want to spend so much money on alcohol, and get something good out of it in the process.

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