“I have it on pretty good information from the Marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie last year. That’s really adding insult to injury. I bet that made him really happy,” Stone said.

Just a thought… If the best the Democrats can come up with for 2008 is Hillary Clinton, they can just kiss their chances at the White House goodbye.
Don’t get me wrong, I would really like to see a strong Democratic candidate for 2008. The Republicans have been doing so well for the simple reason that the Dems have been doing so poorly. Many of my fellow moderate Republicans are quite unhappy with the spending habits of the current administration and the pull the far right currently has on the party. Just give the moderates a option that we do not despise and they might just have a chance! :End Rant

10 years ago this market didn’t exist… Absolutely incredible!

After spending a time in New Orleans over the past few months and nearly having a mental breakdown of my own I totally understand this article. I vividly remember one of my first conversations with someone who had his whole life turned upside down by Katrina. I young guy my age with a family, a house in the suburbs, a young wife and a child. His house was under 10 feet of water and everything he had worked for was destroyed. This past weekend while talking to him I found out that when Katrina hit his wife was 8 months pregnant. Just imagine the stress of that whole situation. Today he has rebuilt a house on higher ground but continues to deal with insurance companies and endless paper work. Imagine the normal stress in your life compounded by such an experience that just drags on and on. Now imagine yourself in different shoes… already poor, not having insurance or the means to pick yourself back up. There are literally thousands of stories like this in New Orleans and most people have not been as fortunate as this one person I can now call a friend.

Here is another article aptly entitled: “It’s Worse Than You Think”

Somebody Photoshop a Mac logo with holes in it please! Right after you finish installing your patches!

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I took a walk downtown yesterday and took a few beautiful pictures along the way. Several pictures are of the under construction Trump Tower which when complete will be the second tallest building in Chicago at 90 stories and 1,350+ feet.

Cool diagram of the tallest buildings in Chicago including Santiago Calatrava’s purposed Fordham Spire project which if built would stand a proud 2,000 feet and 124 stories tall.

Trump Tower from Upper Wacker Drive.

Trump from Wabash

Trump Tower on the left, Wrigley and the Tribune tower (center)

Looking west down the Chicago River from the State Street bridge.

(More original content brought to you by 2487)

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This is for all the deep geeks out there. Hey look more original content!

Keep in mind this is certainly biased and purely my own opinion, but I thought I would share my beliefs on where Linux is and is not fitting into the business world. Either way ya’ll can chime in or tell me where to go!

Let’s start out with some of the benefits of Linux:

• Typically it’s a pretty rock solid platform that relies on proven technology and engineering know how.
• Definitely up and coming. A lot of younger people and seasoned professionals have a strong interest in Linux which will only help to bring it into the main stream.
• From a programming prospective it is extremely flexible in that someone that knows what they are doing can rip the kernel apart and make it do exactly what it needs to do.
• Availability of robust, free applications has made it an ideal platform for application development.

Draw backs to the platform.

• The prize of what will eventually become the “standard linux platform” is huge and right now there are simply too many flavors of it floating around. Before Linux hits the big time there needs to be some big time consolidation of resources and know how.
• Lack of documentation and version control. There is not a single Linux flavor that even comes close to the level of documentation and version control that the big boys have (i.e. Microsoft and Apple).
• Product maturity. Yes, I know, Linux born from Unix is old, in fact a lot older than any Microsoft Platform, but it simply has not gone through the paces of an OS that a few billion people have tried to break.
• Lack of professionally trained support and engineering folks. I’m not saying that they are not out there but their numbers are not nearly as large as those who support a main stream OS.
• The reliance on browser based front ends is a mistake. An application that functions within an existing GUI shell performs so much better than some of the goofy and awkward web based apps out there. It was a good idea in 1999, but I think those days have passed.

Where Linux is going.

• A truly dominant player will emerge in the next few years. Maybe Red Hat, IBM, Sun, or Novell. Who knows, might be some kid messing around in a basement right now that will come out with the winner. Either way unless this infighting comes to a stop and a clear leader emerges the OS is going to continue to trail the pack.
• Companies will look to license Linux kernels on which they can build a robust, controlled platform for in house developed applications. This is already starting to happen and where the big money for Linux is.
• Backend systems. More and more I think you will see applications relying on a Linux backend that has a user friendly Windows based interface. Again there are examples of this in the market place but this is the ticket to the big show.

Where Linux is not going:

• Linux is not going to conquer the desktop world anytime soon or within the next 5-10 years. The reason why has nothing to do with how good the operating system is or how bad the competition is. This is a matter of training, application availability and the number of capable support folks out there. It’s just not going to happen. The business world has invested heavily in Microsoft based systems and despite the rhetoric are quite pleased with how those systems perform. This is all about economies of scale. For the foreseeable future a large Linux based desktop system does not come anywhere close to being as cost effective or well managed as a Microsoft based environment.
• Linux has largely grown up in an open source community and while this is not going to change any time soon. Sooner than later people will realize the value of their own code when others starting getting rich off it. This is totally going to change the dynamics of the platform. While this has brought much attention and interest, ultimately people will want to start getting paid. I’m not entirely sure where this will lead but something is going to change whether good or bad.

: End Rant (hopefully a good discussion to follow)

Just cool…

Sunday afternoon I took a drive to Gulfport and Biloxi Mississippi, and here are some pictures I took along the way:

What’s left of a Church on the Coast
Hollowed out hotel with furniture still in the rooms.
Picture from the beach with Biloxi in the distance.
Surf shop on the Gulf
Everything along the coast looks like this, although there are many signs of cleanup and rebuilding.

Also on Sunday I took a walk around New Orleans “Garden district” which was relatively untouched by the hurricane.

Gas lantern.
Typical house

And because I love tall buildings a picture of the New Orleans Skyline.

Bonus material:
Cool animated timeline of the flooding in New Orleans.

Ok, maybe there is something wrong with me but I thought this was hilarious! This guy for some crazy reason decides to eat nothing but "Monkey Chow" for a week… Remind you of anyone?

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So besides every idiot you went to school with (present company accepted), creepy guys still living in their Mother’s basement and that guy 2,000 miles ago that want to rip off your identity now the Pentagon is data mining off the site looking for god knows what…

Just more reasons not to join sites like MySpace, Xanga, Classmates Online, Friendster, Bebo or facebook. For the life of me I can’t figure out why people put themselves out on the internet like this.

This week I am back in New Orleans. Things on the project I am working on have slowed down quite a bit and today I had a chance to go for a drive and take some pictures of St. Bernard’s Parish (County), which was one of the hardest hit areas.

This is the approximate path I took on my drive.

Here are a few pictures that I took along the way. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and well… just look.
Welcome to St. Bernard’s Parish
Abandoned Truck in the middle of the street
House with a notice warning thieves
Typical Piles of trash along the highway
Entire neighborhoods look like this.
Buildings across the street from where I am working (note all the broken and boarded up windows.
The building I am working out of, which was under about 4 feet of water (For my fellow geeks, the sixth floor is a data center and the entire building was without power for nearly two weeks after Katrina, which obviously wasn’t good for business.)

Still there is history and beauty. I took this picture a few weeks ago of the famous St. Louis Cathedral which is basically the center of the French Quarter.

What amazed me the most is how bad things look nine months after Hurricane Katrina. The devastation in this city is incredible and the best way to describe it to people who have not been here is to imagine the entire metropolitan Milwaukee area flooded and then hit with 500 tornadoes. I’m really not exaggerating. The pictures above are not the worst of the worst, they are pretty typical of the majority of the city.

Unless you have been living under a rock or too immersed in American Idol to bother watching the news there has been a huge debate stewing regarding immigration in this country. I’m curious what some of the JohnnyV readers feel about this complicated problem. (I’ll post my opinion if some of my fellow readers post comments.)