Brads Blog

This is an issue that the more I think about it, the higher my blood pressure gets. The Russians no doubt SEVERELY opposed this shield, the eastern European allies strongly wanted it, then out of the blue it’s scrapped leaving several strong allies with bus tire tracks all over their backs.

Obama campaigned on rebuilding our relationships with our allies. How is this building our relationship with the Czechs, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, and several other eastern European nations in Russia’s cross hairs?

If they want to make the case that it cost too much, well how much is it? Is it more than the stimulus that recently passed? I heard them say that they’re going to use ships at sea to accomplish the same thing, but the military budget is also being slashed.

The missile defense shield is a huge bargaining chip that in my opinion is off limits, and was simply given away as far as I can see. We are seeing carrot after carrot and I think Joe Biden was right when he said that Obama will be tested early in his presidency. Did he pass the test?

President Obama is going around the world stopping all programs that the bad guys don’t like, assuming that if we just close Gitmo, they will like us. If we just dismantle the missile defense shield, they will like us. If we only sell out Israel, they will like us. If we cancel the embargo with Cuba, they will like us. If we apologize for being Americans, they will like us. What’s next? Maybe if we withdrawal from Afghanistan they will finally like us.

You don’t have to be a general to know that if you let your guard down you’re going to get punched in the face. I think that now that Russia knows we don’t have the spine to back up our European allies we’ll probably see strong Russian aggression in the region pretty soon.

Do you Facebook? I do. Recently, I was bored and was looking at a person’s friends list who I have as a friend. I noticed that there are several of my friends listed as their friends also. I’m not jealous or trying to not share friends, but I know for a fact that these people have never met, or probably never even heard of each other.

Facebook is a social networking site, so maybe this is what it is for? The friends Facebook suggests should be my friends whether I know them or not? Someone please help me understand.

This weekend, I attempted to replace my brake pads due to some light squealing I’ve been hearing lately. I’ve had the pads for a few weeks and finally had time this weekend to do it. I got my wheel off and began getting frustrated with my inability to break two of the bolts free that had to come off. The temperature outside felt like 200 degrees and finally I gave up and put it back together.

I called Tire Discounters, because I bought a set of tires there last year and figured I was due for a rotation anyway. He told me if I use my own parts it would be $90 including turning the rotors if needed. After I hung up I could already hear him telling me I would need new rotors and get taken for $300 dollars.

After I went in and they went through my brakes they told me that there was nothing wrong with my pads and that “if we changed them it would be a waste of money, and that’s not what we do here”. The squeak was from some rust on my rotors and was OK. He gave me a quote for some new rotors.

They rotated the tires and I left, without spending anything. Two thumbs up for the Tire Discounters on Princeton Road in Fairfield Township.

For years I have been using Mozilla Firefox as my web browser of choice, and after seeing Google Chrome mentioned here and there I figured I’d give it a try. Most of what Google comes out with is pretty good. After two weeks of using it, here’s what I’ve determined:

What’s Hot:
1. By not having a toolbar or anything else at the top it makes your screen appear cleaner and larger.

2. The two menu options makes it easy to figure out where you need to go to make adjustments.

3. Adding a new tab will display thumbnail of the website you visit most often. Clicking one of the thumbnails takes you right there. It would be nice for Google to incorporate other items in here such as GMails, RSS feeds and other items.

What’s Not:
1. The biggest problem that I see with this is you cannot lock the tabs in place. If I have a lot of applications running I might accidentally drag a tab to create a new window. This really bothers me.

2. As a webmaster, viewing the pagerank of a page is important to me. You would think that a web browser made by Google would have the PR indicator, it doesn’t. I’ve had to add a third part shortcut and place in my bookmarks to see what the pagerank is.

3. You cannot add plugins to this browser.

My overall feeling about Google Chrome is that I like it and I guess I’ll stick with it for a while.

Andrew go a hit his first baseball game this year, then has been completely hitless since. He finally made contact this weekend and we were lucky enough to have the camera running.

Two years ago, we decided to give Trugreen Lawn care a try. They were a bit pricey, but we decided to try them for a year then be done with them. When the next year came along, I informed the guy calling that due to financial issues we would not be getting our lawn treated this year. He seemed to understand my situation and that was the end of it, so I thought.

Since then we have been hammered with Trugreen calls, every time we tell them to not call and we aren’t going to have our lawn treated. I’m about to go down there they are pissing me off!

My advice, if you’re going to get your lawn treated, use Scotts or something else, NOT TRUGREEN, you’ll never get rid of them!

This weekend, we went camping at my parents house. Adnrew and I made a narrated video with the photos we took.

Last Sunday, we celebrated Easter in the morning with Andrew and Zachary finding their Easter baskets. Then we picked up Brandon from his dads and went to church.

After church, we went to Bernie and Teri’s for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. We flew kites and everyone had a great time.

Yesterday the boys had their first games of the year. Brandon got a good base hit, but got tagged out at second stealing. Andrew had some practice before the game, then managed a base hit and scored the last run of the game!
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They’ve been badly in need of a haircut. Tonight, Samantha got out the clippers and raised their ears some. Brandon and myself will be getting ours done by professionals in the next week.