A New Song

I play guitar – badly. But I play metal so who cares? Yet I love writing songs and since my lyrical ability is much better than my musicianship, I don’t feel so bad inflicting the lyrics on you. Don’t worry… I’ll not post any files of me playing my Les Paul.

This is the beginning to a new song I am writing. It is, of course, METAL! Here’s hoping you like it, if not…well you know what to do. I have directions to the nearest cliff from wherever ye may be.

Death to Life
© 2008 StrayVision Media, All Rights Reserved

Oh for the cool, dark cover of death
To wrap my soul for an endless sleep
Where not so much as a single breath
Or the cold, wet touch of a blood red worm
Could ever disturb the watch I keep

Yet who should lie upon the bed
Beneath the shroud of dark, black peace? Black peace.
The one or the other must be dead
For the one remaining to reaffirm
Life. And such a life which will not cease.

The Truth Republished

This has been going around in email for some time attributed variously to Jay Leno and David Letterman. I don’t know why. But it is true and so I had to republish it here.

Original by Craig R. Smith

The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain’t happy and want a change.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ”What we are so unhappy about?”

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess
having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones and computers.

How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S., yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don’t have, and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.

I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks?

The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me? Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn’t take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad?

Think about it … are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the “Media” told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.

Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn’t have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a “general” discharge, an “other than honorable” discharge or, worst case scenario, a “dishonorable” discharge after a few days in the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans? Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by “justifying” them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn’t kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way … Insane!

Stop buying the negativism you are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad.

We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.

Frustrations of a Multilingual Developer

I have just gone back into Delphi to work on an update to my product: cvSee, the Delimited Text File Editor. having invested thousands of dollars in this development language and third-party components, I am quickly getting frustrated with it. I earned a c# certificate at SDSU and have worked with Visual Basic since version 1 and the state of Microsoft’s tools has gotten orders of magnitude better over the years. So, I have my choice of programming languages.

In Delphi 2007 the Help System has now just crashed. It contains nothing, not even the unwanted and unneeded and enigmatic Visual Studio help. I have both VS 2005 and 2008 and the help works fine in them,  so its not that. Nothing changed on my system except the continual MS Vista updates. But then one day, the IDE started to crash on exit and a couple of days later, the help way missing. I have replaced the Welcome page with the http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/ page just so some help is there, but I am considering installing my Delphi 7 help and getting the Ctrl-F1 wizard.

Actually, what’s the point? I only have one product out written in Delphi 2007. Porting that to c# would be no problem. I’ll probably do that for version 2. All my other projects and clients want C# or VB.Net. I can’t find contracts in Delphi anymore unless I want to leave my family for an extended stay thousands of miles from home. No thanks.

Seriously, the help issue has plagued me (and others) long enough. I am quickly running out of reasons to develop with Delphi. Borland/Inprise/Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero/???: please give me a reason to buy multi-thousand dollar software when Microsoft gives VS to me for a couple of hundred for becoming a partner and jumping through a few advantageous hoops. And VS has a much better editor. In just a few years they have leap-frogged you. Their code-completion is much faster and more useful.

Give me a reason!

On the ASP and Shareware

When I started out on my programming career, I collected software. Some of it was freeware, some shareware. Having heard of the ASP through word-of-mouth on BBSes, its reputation at the time was enough for me to prefer to get software which sported the ASP logo. This was its member’s greatest asset at the time. Being a member of the ASP told potential customers that the software was held to higher standards than the rest of the bunch; that it could be trusted. I knew then that when I got my shareware business going, I would aspire to ASP standards.

Fast forward fifteen or so years. I now have my shareware business. But the world has changed. The ASP logo on a piece of software still meant quality, but there was so much else available on the web which was of good quality from big companies with great reputations which had adopted the try-before-you-buy model that the presence of an ASP logo was no longer a deciding factor in the purchase of shareware. Not to mention that the high standards of ASP had been diluted to include feature-crippled software, software which timed-out and other practices which were frowned upon by the original ASP. But there was still enough shine on the old girl even if she was tarnished by age that I decided to join.

It was the memory of the old ASP that enticed me to join. It had been a dream of mine from the beginning and I still looked at ASP membership through a rose-tinted monitor. In truth, I could see no marketing advantage to being a member: I doubt that very many people even know that ASP stands for other than Active Server Pages. And then I discovered the newsgroups. The value of membership was no longer a message to potential customers that my software adhered to higher standards. It now provided valuable advice through its newsgroups and information on marketing and writing software through the newsletter and articles on the website. But I never would have known that had I not still seen the ASP as she was: a mark of sterling standards which proclaimed that here was software of a higher quality and trust.

I think that is the message the ASP must somehow shout to the world. We should write software which lives up to higher standards and be held accountable for it. The Safer Downloads program does this. And I think it should be a requirement of ASP membership that we adhere to its standards. It should not be an extra that we must pay for in addition to ASP membership. By requiring all member’s software adhere to the Safer Downloads standards, we will regain the reputation that flying the ASP banner once did.

This reputation alone would attract new members because it would give them an official method of saying to the world that here is shareware of a higher quality. The ASP logo should again be made to mean something to the world at large.

Davy Jones

Well. I have to say Davy Jones was terrific. A bit smarmy, but very entertaining nonetheless.

And, despite the title of this missive, enough about Davy Jones. On to more exciting news from StrayVison Software.

My first shareware product, cvSee is out. This is a delimited text file editor which can export delimited files as HTML, XML and many other formats. It examines the delimited file’s columns and determines the most likely type of information which each column stores. Types like numbers, dates, character strings, etc. Just go to http://www.strayvision.com and click the download button to try a fully functional trial. If you like it, it goes for only $25.95 and you can install it on as many computers as you are the primary user.

That’s the last blatent advert I’ll do on this blog. Oh, I’ll make mention of future products as they appear, but only in passing.

Up next: Investing for fun and profit.

First Shareware Product

I have been dreaming of this moment since I was a wee technician at a local computer store called Megabyte Computers. I was looking for a career change. Having been a chef for fifteen or so years, I was getting tired of smelling like grease all the time and working late hours. So I found this little PC clone shop and became friends with the owner. He taught me how to build and repair PCs and encouraged me to learn to program. So, I taught myself. And dreamed of selling shareware to throngs of adoring fans. And now my dream has come true.

I created and sold my first shareware program on 8/19/2008. Its called cvSee and it is a unique CSV file editor. You can get it at http://www.strayvision.com.

More on this subject later… I’m off with my wife to see Davey Jones (of Monkees fame).

Thank You Carbonite!

I just sat down to write another c# article. In preparing for the article I began gathering a few code files together in a separate folder for the article. As is my habit, Once the article is published, I don’t save the files I put in this temporary folder. That’s when something went terribly wrong.

Instead of deleting the temporary folder, I deleted the source folder. The Recycle Bin was of no help because I permanently removed them via shift-delete. Ah, but there sat Carbonite: silently backing up all my data for over a year now. Never a peep or complaint from her. I restored my lost files quickly and easily and the new post will be up shortly.

How to Get Wealthy in Two Simple Steps

So. How do you become wealthy? It is in theory actually very simple. There are only two rules that really matter:

• Spend less than you earn
• Maximize your earnings

Most people say that money is the root of all evil. Based on this inaccurate belief most folks seem to not care about money by spending it as if it was worth nothing. As soon as they get some cash, they trade it away on some worthless trinket – usually an upgrade of a trinket they already possess. TVs, bigger TVs (better get new glasses if you can’t see the one you have) and other similar consumer liabilities.

The Bible actually says that the love of money is the root of all evil. This changes the picture completely. If money is not the root of evil, then we can keep as much of it as we want. We don’t have to throw it away willy nilly. This leads us to the first rule: Spend less than you earn.

If you spend less than you accumulate, your cache of cash will invariably grow. For those large ticket items like 52″ plasma HDTVs, wait until you have accumulated 140% or more of the purchase price of the trinket. Then buy it. You will still be ahead in the cash department and you will only have had to wait a few months, maybe a year. By then the toy you wanted so badly will have become a better toy for the same or less money anyway. You only need a bit of self-discipline.

As for the second rule, this is where your imagination comes into play. What you want to do here is spend your money on things that will make more money. This means investment. Even if you only invest one dollar for a return of 3% that dollar will sit out there and make 3 cents for you all by itself. Over and over again. Or, better yet, don’t spend any money at all. Spend your talents and sweat. Start a small, home based business. Make custom cards. Type things up for people. I won’t go into everything you can do because the list is literally endless. Just use your God given talents to earn money.

These methods are foolproof. They work. All they require is committment from you and hard work. Yes: hard work. Unless you win the lottery or inherit from a wealthy relative, you will never get rich without hard work. This means burning the midnight oil, going to social events which are also business related (AKA networking), basically living your life as your business. No more 9 to 5. I guarantee 9 to 5ers will never become wealthy. Their heart is not in it.

It makes no difference how much money you have. Anyone can become rich. The difference between being rich and being wealthy is that, to be rich, all you need is a lot of money. To be wealthy, all you need is to manage well the money you do have.

Now that you don’t have to spend thousands on some seminar, go get wealthy!

A Man and a Boat

A Man built a boat. He told the people on the boat “Do not pull the plug in the bottom of the boat. If you do, the boat will sink and you will die.”

They pulled the plug. Up through the hole came the water. Folks started to drown.

So, the Man said to them, “I will jump in the water and let you walk on my drowning body to the safety of My other boat. All you have to do is believe that I will support you as you walk over.”

Some, overcome by fear, refused to believe that He could support them. Others, believing that they could fix the boat, refused to believe they needed the Man to save them. These people drowned while trying to fix the leak. Others, sat drinking at the bar in the stern of the boat, and thought, “I’m having too much fun. There’s no need to panic just yet: see, the bow is just starting to go under. It will take a long time for the stern to sink.”

But some of the people believed the Man and crossed over His body to the safe boat. Each of these groups made a decision of their own free will. What will your choice be?

My Collectable List

My wife once asked me to narrow down the list of cars I want.
So, honey… the following cars are on my “to get” list. Remember, Christmas is coming 😉

• 
  1958 Porsche Speedster
• 
  1967 Pontiac Firebird – Convertible
• 
  Mercedes SL55 AMG
• 
  Maserati GranSport Spyder
• 
  BMW Z3 (I don’t like the Z4)