Tent City and it's Future in Sacramento

For those of you that work and live in the Sacramento area, you are well aware of the number one issue that the city is having to deal with, the Tent City that the homeless in our area have created. Mayor Johnson has gone on record, regarding the Tent City issue, saying that he does not want for people to live in a "third world" environment and that a "Tent City" will ruin the reputation of Sacramento and possibly attract more homeless to come to Sacramento and live in a Tent City.

Sacramento's homeless population should not have to live in a third world environment and the sanitation issue at Tent City can be solved quite easily. Portable toilets and washing stations are and have been available for some time and are used quite effectively for temporary sanitation solutions at events and in times of emergency. I am sure that one of our local sanitation suppliers would be willing to donate their equipment and services providing that they get a tax write off for their effort. People, including myself, are donating to the people, "down on their luck", of Tent City, food, water, clothing, shelter and whatever else we can spare. Being that location of the homeless is known and they are not scattered throughout the city, it makes it easy to give, and giving to the less fortunate has it's own rewards on a personal level.

Yes, Mayor Johnson, we may have a Tent City and hundreds of homeless occupying it, but how one treats it's poor and less fortunate is a true measure of a civilized society. If done right, OUR Tent City can be a model for the country and the world to follow. And if our compassion helps to improve Sacramento's reputation, so be it, but that byproduct is only incidental to the greater good of helping our fellow mankind.

Mayor Johnson, do the compassionate thing and support the current Tent City. Put all of the other issues (ie entertainment, sports teams, etc) on the back burners or better yet off the stove until the MOST important things, Sacramento's citizen's issues, homeless or not, are resolved.

Chas. Fenner
3rd Generation Sacramento (Gardenland) Resident

Obama to help get rid of "Monkey Grass"?!?

On the Morning Joe show, Joe Scarborough in an interview with Steven Pearlstein from the Washington Post states that "...is he (Pres. Obama) going to get rid of Monkey Grass in your backyard..." first the New York Post with their "chimp" cartoon and now Joe Scarborough with a monkey reference towards President Obama, when is it going to end?? Racism is alive and well in the USA in 2009.

Chas

DTV Delayed Until June 2009

Have we become a country that cannot be counted on to do what we say we are going to do?

Today it was announced that the digital television switch that was mandated by the federal government to take effect on February 12th has been delayed until June of this year. The government stated that we are not ready for the switch. I fear that in the eyes of the rest of the world, we are going to loose even more credibility than we already have.

In 1975 Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act which "suggested" that the US start to use the Metric System (SI) as the preferred measurement standard. It set no time limit for the conversion and to this day, we are a nation of the Imperial System.

In 2004 the US finally decides to put a deadline in place at which all US citizens must posses a passport for international travel, December 2005. Later in 2005 the deadline was changed to December 2006. In September of 2006 the deadline was changed to January 2007. The current deadline is June 2009.

So this June will be a busy time for us. You will need to get a converter box for your rabbit ears, you will need to have your passport and what the heck, you will need to know your height and weight in Meters and Kilos.

All kidding aside, if you have ever hired a company or an employee and they promise to meet all of your deadline and at the last minute have an excuse on why they won't be able to, how likely are you to trust them when late won't do?

Chas

SCHIP Signed by Obama

Late yesterday Obama signed the SCHIP expansion into law which raises money for the children in need of health care who live at 200% below the poverty line . Besides the fact that most people don't know what the poverty level is and would be unable to calculate 200% of that number, all this does is to burdon one segment of the population for another. The bill increases the current 39% federal tax on a pack of cigarettes to 100%. For other tobacco products, such as cigars, it puts a 53% tax on each cigar with a maximum of $3. The funny thing about taxing tobacco is that if everyone quit today, where would the money come from? As many of you may know, Obama is a cigarette smoker. He kept it hidden during the campaign for fear of alienating voters. Don't get me wrong, I like Obama and voted for him, but be a man and fess up to your vices.

Chas

Emoji on iPhones outside of Japan

Greetings,
Yesterday while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Macbreak Weekly hosted by Leo LaPorte, one of Leo's guests, Justine Ezarik from the blog "Tasty Blog Snack" had a great tip regarding enabling emoji on iPhones outside of Japan. For those of you who don't know what emoji is, it is little pictographs (icons) used in Japan as keyboard shortcuts to communicate quickly in text messages and emails. Check out Justine's blog to get complete instructions for enabling emoji. FYI: you will want to enable them BEFORE you update your iPhone to 2.2.1.

Chas

The End of 2 Human Sound Bites

With the Democrats winning the election, one of the 2 best human sound bites of all time will be fading into the woodwork (albeit frozen woodwork), Sarah Palin. She provided so much material for the media and entertainment industry that she will be missed. Tina Fey's portrayal of her just won't be funny anymore. Keith Oberman's Countdown satire will be a little less entertaining. Matt Lauer followed her home to try to keep the Palin entertainment train rolling along. She will be missed.

The second best human sound bite, GW Bush is due to vacate the White House in January and the likes of Letterman, Oberman and party are wondering where they are going to get their material from. We have been enteraintained, at our expense, by Bush Jr for the past eight+ years and while we were laughing, we really got hoodwinked.

Obama doesn't strike me as someone who says stupid things, but the media hounds will be praying for just that. Time to get back to the boring business of politics and turn this waywered ship around.

Chas

iPhone 3G Review

6 weeks ago, I got the new iPhone 3G 16Gb mobile phone from the Apple store. I tried to get one the Friday that they were released, but 2 AT&T and 1 Apple Store lines that I stood in ran out. So I decided to wait a couple of weeks and try again. I still had to stand in line at the Apple store, but after an hour, I got one. The activation took a few seconds and I was out the door. I also bought a case and Mobile Me (I will post a review a Mobile Me at another time).

The first thing that I noticed as I started navigating around the iPhone is that it is more than just a phone. The email works great, the apps are very useful, the GPS adds great features to many apps and the internet browsing is simple and fast. It uses the fastest connection that it can find depending upon what is available at your location. Edge is the slowest, 3G is the midrange (when you can reliably connect to it) and WiFi is the fastest.

I setup fetch email for my current address and setup push email for my new Mobile Me address. The email works fine in both fetch and push and allows me to reply to messages instantly. Is it as good as a Blackberry? Yes and no, It gets your messages just as quickly as the Blackberry thanks to Mobile Me push and Microsoft exchange server compatibility. The iPhone has built in viewers for MS Word and Excel and for Adobe Acrobat as well as picture viewers and movie/audio players. The Blackberry has the advantage of having a physical keyboard which makes thumb typing a breeze for most people. After 6 weeks of practice with the virtual keyboard, I have gotten very proficient with it, but that is a pretty long learning curve for a simple item like a keyboard.

The 3rd party apps are a great addition to the iPhone. Depending upon your interests, you can personalize your phone to make doing your daily tasks faster and simpler. There are blogging apps, ebay apps, games, etc. Currently there are approximately 3000 apps available on the iTunes store.

There have been 2 updates to the iPhone since I got it. Both were for "Bug Fixes". The phone is snappier since the updates.

So is the iPhone the best thing since sliced bread (and what was the best thing before slice bread?)? No, the battery life is horrendous. If you charge it all night and try to get through the day without plugging it in, it will die on you...and thats if you only use it for phone calls. If you check emails and browse the web and play movies or music and use a few apps, your iPhone will be dead in a couple of hours. So you have to plug it in in the car, at the office and when you get back home. The way to get better battery life is to turn off the GPS and the Wifi and the 3G and the push email and the iPhone (just kidding bout the last one). So all of the great features that your iPhone can do are useless for an ultra mobile person. Even the great Steve Jobs can't change the basic law of nature..."the light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long".

I like the phone and am happy with it.

Chas

Win XP SP3 Released

The final update to XP was released recently, Service Pack 3. I downloaded and installed it with no issues. As a matter of fact, there are no noticeable changes at all. I am sorry to see that XP will not be updated any longer as it is a rock solid OS and the only thing that we have until Vista dies and the next Win platform comes out.

Chas

Best Show on Tracks 2008

The following post has some of the pictures that I took at this years Best Show on Tracks in Woodland Cal. They have many tractors along with crawlers. They even have the first track vehicle built by Cl Best! If you have any information about any of the tractor or crawler models, please feel free to post them.

Enjoy,
Chas

Best Show on Tracks 2008

Lost Animals worth more than Lost People?!?

The other day, an acquaintance from the coffee shop that I used to frequent, had lost her cat and was asking every customer including myself if we had seen him? I politely asked what he looked like? She brought up a picture on her computer, showed it to me and I answered her question with a no. She said that he had been gone for one day and she didn't get much sleep because she was worried about him.
Anyway, I got to thinking about all of the flyers, and craig list ads that people put up when they have lost their animals. On craigs list, people offer reward money up to $2000 to get their lost animal back! People go missing everyday, all the time yet you don't see as many fliers or craig list ads for people as you do for animals? And you will never see a reward offered for a missing person. Which are more important, humans or animals ? Of coarse, everyone will answer, humans are! But we spend soo much money and time on the care and feeding and recovery of our animals that it would make one think...

Chas

Tractor Tip: Stabilizer Bars Dragging??

For those of you who use stabilizer bars with your 3 point, one of the nagging little problems arises when you drop an implement and have to maneuver and back up to another implement is that the dragging stabilizer bars dig into the ground when you back up. So you have to take them off, back up to the implement and put them right back on, what a pain! My lower lift arms have brackets on them for holding the lynch pins when not in use, so I got to thinking that if I attach a small chain to the bracket and the pins I can use it to hold up the stabilizer bars and keep them from dragging. Life just got a little bit easier!

Chas

Massey-Harris Ferguson DEO 25 Hay Rake

This last weekend I finished restoring a1953 Massey-Harris Ferguson DEO 25 9 foot side delivery hay rake. This rake is 3pt, PTO driven, not ground driven like all of the other rakes available from the other manufacturers. This is one of the largest implements that Harry Ferguson made for his tractors. It weighs in at approximately 1000lbs and the tractor is required to have front wheel weight in order to lift the rake and still be able to steer properly. The DEO 20, 7 foot model was way more popular than the larger 9 foot model. I purchased this rake from the family of a retired farmer in Livermore California. I pulled it out of the weeds 8 months ago and now it is good as new and field ready to work for another 5o+ years.

The curious thing about this particular rake is that it was made by Massey-Harris Ferguson in Canada. Previous DEO's were made in Detroit and the manufacturers metal plate states the name of the company as Harry Ferguson Inc. Detroit Michigan. After 5 years of producing the TO tractors in Detroit, Harry decided to quit producing tractors in the USA and wanted to find someone to produce his tractors. He met with Massey of the Massey-Harris tractor company in Canada and Massey agreed to buy the Ferguson company for 16 million dollars in 1953. As a result, the new company named Massey-Harris Ferguson was born. All of the tractor and implement manufacturing moved from Detroit to Toronto. In 1955 the company changed it's name to Massey-Ferguson as Harris had left the company before Massey bought Ferguson. The Massey-Ferguson company still exists today and is owned by Agco. The Massey-Harris Ferguson company only existed for 2 years before the name change in 1955. This rake was gray as all of the rakes from Harry Ferguson and Massey-Harris Ferguson were. The rakes produced from 1955 on were all Massey-Ferguson red.

Chas

Glass half full or half empty...

In today's economy, it is hard to believe that someone (besides the big bad oil companies) is honestly profiting from high costs. Today's farmers are seeing record prices for their crops because of a global demand that hasn't been seen in 40 years. As fuel prices increase 25% from a year ago, crop selling prices have increased 100%! Last year, corn was selling for $3 a bushel and this year it is selling for $6. So when all is added and subtracted, the net profit for farmers this year is 40% higher than last year. I don't know about you, but my salary hasn't increased 40% this year. Now might be a good time to get into farming if you have the knowledge and a few hundred acres laying around. As you can see my one of my previous posts, I have a tractor so I am ahead of the curve!

Chas

Indiana Jones and the Kindom of the Crystal Skull

Over the long Memorial Day weekend I had a chance to see the new Indiana Jones movie, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I have been a big Indy fan from the first time that I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. The new movie was a good, entertaining movie from start to finish. It was a movie that Lucas should have made about 10 or 12 years ago because Harrison Ford would have had an easier time making it in his 50's rather than in his 60's. Indy has lost a step or two and his whip cracking has slowed but it wasn't distracting, it was what you would expect from a 60 something year old. The movie was less about the search for the crystal skull artifact and more about the past relationship with Marion and his new relationship with Mutt (Shia LaBeouf). A must see for any Indy fan. Hopefully the movie franchise will continue with the next generation of Jones boys.

Chas