Posted by montytx on October 11, 2011 at 6:55 am
Its my personal opinion that we are headed for a dramatic shift in America like no one has ever seen since the American Revolution. Will we go so far as a full revolution, I’m not sure. When I talk to people about it I feel like most people have their heads stuck in the sand, somehow they seem to think that what is going on financially and politically in our country is a TV show, to be turned off every night and put out of their mind til next weeks show. If they have a job I suppose they think nothing has really changed in the past 5 years. Never mind that the American dream has been sold off to the Chinese for 2 foreign wars and a Wall Street bailout, never mind that manufacturing jobs are as common as fire flies and toads these days, never mind that our schools are doing a dismal job of educating our future….never mind. As long as they can sit in traffic on the way to work and pay their mortgage every month, they see everything through rose colored glasses.
The problem is their are millions of people who were told to work hard, get an decent education ( even go into debt 10′s of thousands of dollars to do it) and the results would pay of in the form of a good job. There are also millions more who used to be able to get a decent manufacturing job with a high school degree and a little elbow grease. Those days are gone and are not coming back form many and both of these crowds are now feeling cheated. Stagflation appears to be the new norm, real income for the middle class is down 10%+ (below 1997 levels), and housing… ohh what a handshake many Americans made with the Devil when they bought that house that has dropped 10% or more.
So the stage is set for a small reaction to explode on the stage of the American Dream and turn huge. It could be something like a police confrontation with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, it could be another protest not yet set, or it could be an organization bent on causing chaos. “Escape from New York” and its post apocalyptic scenario seems a lot closer to reality these days. That brings me to my comparison to the lead up of the French Revolution.
From Wikipedia….
- Economic factors included hunger and malnutrition in the most destitute segments of the population, due to rising bread prices…
- rising food prices, and an inadequate transportation system and drought…
- state’s effective bankruptcy due to the enormous cost of previous wars… The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt…
- the growing commercial dominance of Great Britain.
- the royal court at Versailles was seen as being isolated from, and indifferent to, the hardships of the lower classes… opponents in the parliaments successfully thwarted attempts at enacting much needed reforms.
- Those who were opposed to Louis’ policies further undermined royal authority by distributing pamphlets that criticized the government and its officials, stirring up public opinion against the monarchy.
Eerie how much of that applies now. Substitute Congress, President, China and Tea Party in there and I think we have smoldering keg. I know plenty of people are going to say this was an oligarchy and absolute power, blah blah blah. But, while the players are different, the results have been the same up to this point. We are all look for change and neither party seems to be able to make any difference. The system is broken. Food for thought…
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Posted by montytx on October 10, 2011 at 6:05 pm
It has happened before, the rapid upheaval of the telecom industry. Many companies didn’t make it such as MCI, Nortel, Frontier… Its about to happen again. Cell phones are as ubiquitous as landline phones were 20 years ago. Everyone had one, if you were well off you had 2 with call waiting. But, they were expensive and long distance was ridiculous, a quarter a minute or more in many cases. I remember getting 200- 300 dollar bills calling Dallas from Houston. What a joke that was.
Don’t think AT&T and Verizon aren’t plotting a way to keep people from dumping their $140 a month phone bill, but history has shown that technology always wins out. The question is when, 5 years? 7 years? I think it will be start happening next year with Techies like me and mainstream a few years later.
What am I talking about? VOIP, or skype or google voice or what ever comes along next. Think about it, the only reason you can’t skype everywhere and ditch your cell phone is the internet and bandwidth doesn’t exist everywhere. But with 4G
and LTE coming onto the scene, there will be no more need for the cell phone. You want to talk on your ipad, itouch or laptop with 4g, its going to cost under $50 a month. Verizon looks like they are going to offer $29 a month plan.
But what about your phone number, you ask? Well, that’s the tricky part that has to be worked out. Currently Skype doesn’t support the porting of numbers from another carrier, but they will have to eventually or they will lose out. Google, which is my carrier, does allow Sprint numbers to be ported over, but I am not sure what would happen if I cancelled my sprint plan.
Since I have switched to Google Voice the world has opened up to me. I now do most of my texting on my computer with a keyboard, I make calls from my bluetooth headset which is connected to my computer, and of course I manage all my voicemails through google voice which looks like email. When I get calls my computer rings 5 seconds before my phone. so I have plenty of time to react. I have found I look at my phone half as much as I used to, and I am currently connected anywhere I have wifi. All that is missing is mobility. If I had a reliable wireless WAN like LTE, I would no longer need the phone or data plans that come with it. It is just that simple. And the cost savings is staggering. I currently spend $120+ a month for Sprint unlimited, switching to a data plan would cost $30-50 a month for an annual savings of around $850 to $1100 a year. That is no small potato, and one everyone will be deciding on in the next few years. I likely will switch in the next several months and reduce my sprint service to a shell account which is $29 a month for 200 minutes. Then use my computer and touchpad to make calls.Your decision gets easier if you are always in a wifi spot at work and home. You could just have a mobile phone with purchased minutes just in case.
I know a lot of you chatty Cathys out there don’t want to give up your car phone talking, but I am sure it will be illegal in all 50 states within a few years considering research has shown that drunk drivers have better response times than people on phones.
Of course, I expect AT&T and other ISPs to fight back, likely charging more for their DSL plans or metering your home connection, much like they started metering cell phone data plans.
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Posted by montytx on September 1, 2011 at 1:12 pm
I love to laugh and I’m a big fan of practical jokes. I have one particular joke 20 years ago where I mailed a friend a letter with ransom copy using cut out letters from a magazine, that to this day I have never fessed up to. Anyway, I digress… I was thinking about things that are funny to do at other peoples houses when you are visiting them. Of course these are best done during a party so you can deny, deny, deny…
- The ole upperdecker in the toilet. A classic, I know, but shitting in someone’s toilet tank just tickles my funny bone. Listening to them bitch about it later is hilarious. Tip: this works best with a low profile, one piece toilet.
- Pube Shaving. Bring an electric razor and shave your pubes in the sink, leave the mess for the unsuspecting homeowner. Create more chaos by leaving their razor near by.
- Move shit around. Paintings, family pictures, lamps, knick-knacks. Nothing funnier than people trying to figure out why nothing looks right and what is missing in their own home.
- Nibbles. Take a bite out of everything in the fridge that you can. Spit it out in the trash. Leave no stone unturned if you can. Potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, uncooked sausage…
- Darkness. Unscrew all the light bulbs you can get away with. Closets, bathrooms, hallways, fridge. Anywhere they won’t notice for a day or two.
This is also great to do to mother in laws, the older they are the better.
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Posted by montytx on August 18, 2011 at 12:27 pm
I’m a Texan, been one all my life. 
My family roots go back generations in Texas, and West Texas just like ole Perry’s. But, I am not a fan of RIPs. Much like his predecessor, as governor, I don’t think Perry is very intelligent. Huffington Post recently released his grades , which confirms my suspicions. He’s also an opportunist, starting as a Democrat and switching to a Republican so he could follow the money. He does a great job of appealing to the far right and has even pulled out his “I’m a crazy cowboy” routine by saying Texas can secede, which clearly shows his lack of knowledge about Texas history which clearly prohibits it.
So to honor the not so grand Rick Perry, I offer a top five things to do with Rick.
5. Cheap Toilet Paper: Paper thin, no brains, and after a second in the lime light, full of shit. Is there a Kohler big enough to flush RIP away.
4. Dinghy: All air and no substance, Perry would be a great Dinghy, and we could sink him at sea if he sprang a leak or tried to pass a law.
3.Formula 409: Known for its ability to clean up oil messes, no one needs to know you ever spilled oil , and the EPA can suck it.
2.Kong: Add a little peanut butter inside ‘em and at least my dog will enjoy listening to him, or chewing on him. Maybe my dog will bury him in the yard.
1.Velcro: With hair like that he and Trump ought to see if their hair will stick together. Siamese hair twins…Trump for VP?
His slogan could be ” The buck stops in my hair.”
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Posted by montytx on July 31, 2011 at 11:36 am
The clock is ticking…and time is running out for Facebook. I have been on Google+ for a week and I have noticed one huge difference, google+ is much more social. While none of my Facebook friends are on Google+ I have already joined several circles of other people that interest me and have been added to several other peoples circles so they can follow me. What this means is that as a user, when you share something on your wall you choose who can and can’t see it. Google+ has several default choices such as friends, family, acquaintances….I added business to mine. I can now very selectively choose who I want to see which images, what post and anything else I desire. That is a very powerful tool and a great way to control your intended audience.
But the really cool part is people on Google+ understand this and are a lot more open as a result. There is no send a friend request which may or may not be authorized by the other party. You simply follow that person and if they opt to include you in their post they will. Its very simple and elegant.
I also love the google+ droid app. It is so much cleaner and easier to use than Facebook’s which I got so sick of messing with I removed it last year. It drove me crazy that it hijacked my calender and added everyone’s birthday that I was friends with on facebook. What is that all about? I also like the image upload feature which auto uploads my images for me and ques them for me to approve for viewing on Google+ or delete. Very cool.
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Posted by montytx on July 20, 2011 at 8:26 am
So I have had about 24 hours to look through Google+ and obviously compare it with Facebook. The layout is similar to Facebook’s, which is good, I don’t want a learning curve here. I see some really nice advantages over facebook:
- one login since I use Gmail constantly already everyday
- Circles, a great way to filter who sees what on your page, by assigning people up front into groups of friends, acquaintances… something Facebook dropped the ball on big time
- the work toolbar, I’m already using this for calender and docs so for me it is nice to have it in place and ready
- auto loaded my Google public profile ( if you don’t have one of these you should) which brought in all my info so I didn’t have to retype the who’s and what’s of me-dom
- integrates with Google’s Picassa. I have not been a big user of it but this gives me a chance
I think the real reason Google rolled this out is to get people on their properties more and to get people using their cloud ( word processor, spreadsheet, calender….). At the end of the day they need to sell adverts to make money and this will do that with more eyeballs spending more time on their site. Unlike Google wave, I think this will survive and do well. For a first attempt I think they did well. I’ll have to update as I become more involved.
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Posted by montytx on July 19, 2011 at 2:19 pm
This took a little digging for me to figure out so I thought I would help out anyone else that might not be able to figure this out. If you have a gallery of images on a wordpress page and want to include the title under each image you need to add the code:
template=caption
to the nextgen code:
nggallery id=10 template=caption
in your page or post. I had to leave off the opening [ and closing] brackets. WordPress kept saying the gallery was not found.
This will show the titles like I have on this granite colors page here.
Note: The only field that shows up from the gallery admin page is the Description.
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Posted by montytx on July 18, 2011 at 1:21 pm
I finally set down to try to get a Google+ invite and found a fellow blogger, Jason Pollock had them to hand out. I want to thank him for sending me one, and in the spirit of paying it forward I will send out invites to anyone who wants one. I just have a small favor to ask ( there’s always a catch, huh?) I am trying to get my web design facebook page more likes. So if you want an invite please post a reply here or on my facebook page and like “Montfort Web Design Dallas” and I’ll make sure you get one. Then you can invite who ever you want.
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Posted by montytx on July 12, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I don’t drink a lot of soda but I do drink diet Dr. Pepper on occasion and consider Dr. Pepper a Texan brand even though it has been through a ringer of insolvencies and mergers. Somehow it is still headquartered in Texas. One of the unique aspects of Dr. Pepper is that had several small bottling companies across the state. Many of them went out of business, but a few still remain. For me, and my family heritage, Dublin holds a special spot in my heart.
My family is originally from West Texas and we still have a small ranch outside of Dublin, Tx. So, I always enjoyed a sugar sweetened Dr. Pepper when I was visiting my grandmother and when I stayed at the family ranch. It was one of the treats from my childhood that I remember and think fondly of. I can’t imagine it not being there.
That is where the lawsuit lies. Dublin Dr. Pepper has a certain folklore status in West Texas and as such labels their bottles “Dublin Dr. Pepper.” Well, this doesn’t sit well with the corporate suits in Plano that now run Dr. Pepper, who ever they are these days. Corporate is suing Dublin Dr. Pepper insisting that they remove the “Dublin” from the bottle, or else… they will lose their bottling license. Looks like a real dickhead move to me, so my response? I will not drink anymore Dr Pepper, 7up or Snapple related products until these morons give up this lawsuit and allow a small bottler that controls 1% of Dr. Pepper’s consumption to do what it has done for the past 120 years, sell Dr. Pepper in Texas.
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Posted by montytx on July 2, 2011 at 7:11 am
While I enjoy being outside, my 
backyard has always been an issue for me. I had a patio back here with pavers for several years, but I really wanted to install a clean looking, simple deck. Last year after my Home Depot- purchased- giant -gazebo -tent collapsed under the weight of 12″ of snow, I decided to build a good sized overhang using corrugated steel roofing to provide a nice shaded area. All that was lacking was the deck.
Anyone who knows me, knows I like big decks.
So, this year I decided it was finally time to build one. I ended up building a roughly 16′x16′ deck using pressure treated wood and stainless steel screws. There was a lot of screwing going on, more than 1000 screws and counting. I opted for screws over nails because I’ve seen those decks with the nails coming out after a few years in this ever increasing Texas heat. I knew my deck needed to last through the pending apocalypse so I screwed it down. It took a day and a half of screwing and likely two weeks of back recovery to get it done but the result has been worth it. The deck looks great and will look even better once I stain everything a redwood color. I also ran an electrical outlet and a water spigot with pex and sharkbite to the far end of the deck so I would have easy access to water and electric. Really all that is missing is a fridge and a john. I still have steps and a bench to build out, but the hardest part is done. Next step is to find some mosquito curtains, then I’ll have the perfect spot for a good card game.
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