Wal-Mart Shopping Carts

Has anyone else noticed this? I went to Wal-Mart the other day, and I saw a sign on my shopping cart saying Wal-Mart has implemented a new security feature on the cart that will cause the wheels to seize up if the shopping cart is taken outside a clearly-marked boundary in the parking lot. I assume this is to keep homeless people from taking their carts.

The odd thing is, I looked at the wheels, and I didn't see anything that looked like it could manually lock the wheel. The wheels look normal. And I didn't see a boundary in the parking lot. I'm thinking this is an empty warning. It makes me want to drag a cart outside this so-called boundary just to see what happens.

Hillary Clinton

You don't change Presidents in the middle of a war, or so the old saying goes. In the next Presidential election, we won't have any choice, assuming the war doesn't end before that time. There are no signs suggesting this might happen.

Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton threw her hat into the ring. And I've been asking myself all weekend, is America ready for a female President? Recently, we saw Nancy Pelosi become the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives. But with a war going on, it is really hard to tell if the American public would be receptive to a female Commander in Chief. Recent polls are showing America is tired of the war, and that Iraq is the single issue with the highest importance. Therefore, if she has any hope of winning, she will need to have an outstanding plan for Iraq.

Blocking Unwanted Ads

If you're like me, you get tired of seeing ads all over your browser. Here is a website with a pretty easy way to remove ads from your browser: mvps.org

Basically, you replace the hosts file in your operating system with their hosts file (be sure to backup the original hosts file first).

An Inconvenient Truth

We just finished An Inconvenient Truth. I'm already convinced we need to try to do something about global climate change, but after watching this, I'm doubly convinced.

I felt Al Gore did an outstanding job of explaining the science behind global climate change, while keeping it accessible to everyday people.

One of the scariest parts for me was when they showed how the United States is drying out, and the south central part of the United States (where I live) is going to go through a major water shortage in the next 50 years. We're already in a drought. Up until now, I've believed to be a temporary condition, but now I'm not so sure.

Oh well, maybe the ice caps will melt and we'll get an inland sea again...I'd love to have a house on the beach.

New Oklahoma Postage Stamp

A new Oklahoma-themed postage stamp is going on sale this Thursday (January 11) to commemorate the Oklahoma centennial.

XM Radio

XM Radio made the news today. They've reached something like 7 million subscribers now, and I'm just wondering...who has XM? Everyone I know that has satellite radio (except for one) is on Sirius.

User-Friendly Software

There's no doubt that computers are easier to use today than they've ever been, but there is still room for improvement.

My Yahoo Messenger window recently started taking up the full screen when I got a message...and then some. So each time I would get a message, I'd have to resize the window to make the close button visible. After some google searching, I found that I needed to set my desktop resolution to smaller numbers and then back to the current resolution to fix the problem. That's intuitive!

Another unintuitive procedure happened to me a few months back when I upgraded iTunes, and it wouldn't play any of the music I had purchased prior to the upgrade. I actually had to create a dummy user account, open iTunes with it, sync my iPod to that account, and then finally log back into my original account and re-sync the iPod with it.

Banning Trans Fat

I know it's been a while. Happy New Year. On to important things...

I read the other day that New York City is banning trans fat in restaurants. This morning, Universal Studios Hollywood announced a similar measure. As someone who takes cholesterol medication to improve my cholesterol ratios, I think this is a good first step.

American diets are terrible. We eat all the wrong things. I think it is primarily because junk food and stuff that we shouldn't be eating are available everywhere. I hate to say this, but I think the only way Americans will be skinny again is if we start legislating healthier diets.

High fructose corn syrup is another culprit people should avoid. Since HFCS was introduced, diabetes levels in the United States have been on the rise. You can thank the American Farm lobbyists for that.

I don't want to go overboard, though, and get rid of all bad food. People still need ice cream every now and then.