I love Netflix. It was great back when I could get 3 movie at a time delivered in the mail, watch them, then drop them back in the mailbox only to have 3 more show up just a few days later. That was a few years ago. Fast forward to the present. I can’t say when the last time it was I actually watched an actual DVD but I use the NetFlix streaming service several times a week. It’s an awesome service, that fast, rarely has problems and dare I say it, great customer service (at least the couple times I’ve called about movies that wouldn’t stream).

If there is one complaint I have, it’s that Netflix doesn’t have a lot of what I consider “top shelf” movies. You know, the really good movies and new releases that are typically available via the mail. They still have good selections and new movies hit the “Instant Queue” regularly, but they’re still lacking when it comes to having a full blown streaming library.

Well, all that’s seems about to change. Seems Netflix has struck a deal with Epix, the company holding rights to movies from Lions Gate, MGM and Paramount. This means we should soon be seeing many more “Blockbuster” movies available for streaming. Netflix is also courting HBO which could put them over the top.

Have you seen this ad put out by the RNC that plays off the JetBlue employee who blew a gasket recently? Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat you gotta like the ad. On the red side, you gotta love it for the overly simplistic message it sends about the current political strife between Obama and democrats. On the blue side, it almost seems as if the RNC is desperately looking to get attention because they used an extreme amount of cheesiness for this ad. IMO, it just shows the desperation both parties have right now.

OMG! What the hell is wrong with people? Do they not understand that the issue with the Islamic Mosque being built near Ground Zero has absolutely nothing to do with Freedom’s or Rights? I jumped on “The Anointed One” the other day saying he thumbed his nose at the 9/11 victims and survivors. In hindsight I (reluctantly) agree with what he said, YES, these people have every right to build a mosque on property they own. On Saturday, Obama felt it necessary to clarify his statement by saying he wasn’t questioning the wisdom of building a Mosque at that location.

Watching the news today, I’m amazed at the morons on national TV talking their heads off about how opponents to the mosque are fanning the flames of hate. WTF!!!! Are you kidding me. People need to wake up and smell what their shoveling. Again, this has nothing to do with religious bigotry, suppression of religious freedoms or Constitutional law. It’s about the insensitivity the Muslim community behind the mosque is displaying by NOT respecting the wishes of the majority. They claim to be peaceful but in pushing forward they are blatantly disrespecting the memories of the victims and survivors and that folks is ALL it’s about. Period! Anyone that says otherwise, is simply out of touch with reality.

Thumbing through some news articles this morning I ran across this one from PCWorld (“Verizon Customers Eager for iPhone“). It caught my attention because I’m one of the gazillion AT&T iPhone users that can’t stand the service and would love to be able to move to the Verizon network. Why? Simple. Where I live AT&T’s service has steadily declined for months now. It’s near impossible to travel a half mile without dropping a call and many places that used to have decent service now has extremely poor service or none at all. Granted, this is mostly due to the capacity increase the iPhone has added to AT&T’s network but they don’t seem to be too interested in doing anything about addressing it. They have this exclusive deal with Apple but only seem to care about providing quality service to the downtown metro areas. Whereas, Verizon’s service out here in the sticks is awesome.

The Verizon iPhone is still speculation, but a survey says the arrival of a CDMA iPhone would steal a sizeable chunk of AT&T and Sprint customers. Over half of current Verizon customers say they intend to get an iPhone with the carrier, while almost a quarter of AT&T iPhone customers would jump ship in frustration of network quality, the survey from Morpace Omnibus says.

Morpace Omnibus’ poll of 1000 American consumers claims that more than half of all Verizon subscribers are likely to buy an iPhone on the carrier’s network. The survey also shows that 23 percent of current AT&T customers would go for a Verizon iPhone, 22 percent of current Sprint customers, and 20 percent of T-Mobile customers.

So according to this survey Verizon stands to gain 65% of the collective competitive market. Make you wonder why they wouldn’t want to take on the iPhone and why Apple wouldn’t want to make a CDMA model doesn’t it. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing good news in this area soon.

However, I wonder if the capacity problem won’t be the same as it is now with AT&T? Can Verizon’s network handle the combined traffic of the Droid market and what could be a significant chunk of the iPhone market or will it collapse under the pressure? That’s going to be key but even given that possibility, I think I’d switch simply because to me, Verizon seems more interested in reinvesting in their network than AT&T does.

So what say you? Would you switch your iPhone service to Verizons if they offered a CDMA model? If you don’t have an iPhone would you be more likely to get one if it was offered by Verizon?

photo credit: Bas van Gaalen
I’ve never been one to really go all out on political commentary and I’m certainly no political analyst, but I swear, with every passing day the more depressed I become about what’s going on with the country and around the world. Yesterday, The Annointed One finally weighed in on the issue of building a mosque near Ground Zero. I can’t say that I’m surprised at the side he took.

Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” Obama said at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. “But let me be clear: as a citizen and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.

Now, let’s first get one thing straight, I’m all for upholding the constitution and in doing so have to admit that according to the Constitution of the United States Muslims have the right to build a place of worship on private property in accordance to local laws as anyone of any other religion. However, the problem isn’t a matter of constitutional law or even basic religious freedoms, it’s one of respect for the thousands of victims that died on Sept 11, 2001. It also has nothing to do with religious tolerance as most proponents would have you believe. Even Muslims have expressed their disapproval of the placement of the mosque.

Without going into the conspiracy theories behind the building of the mosque it’s simply a blatant abuse of the very freedoms we have here in America. It’s a lack of moral respect by the Muslim community by offending so many people who died or have suffered from the attacks. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said of Obama’s endorsement.

“While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much,” he said in a statement Friday. “The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero. Unfortunately, the president caved in to political correctness.”

New York City firefighter Tim Brown (a plaintiff in the lawsuit trying to stop the bilding of the mosque) had this to say of Obama’s position.

I really think he was not speaking to us, I think he was speaking to the Muslim world

It’s hurtful, our own president, the president of the United States, has abandoned the families who gave too much already. It’s insensitive what he did, it’s hurtful what he did, and he couches it in religious freedom except (the Imam building the mosque) doesn’t feel that way.

I think he’s also trying to do damage control — he’s trying to turn the polls back a bit.

CNN recently reported that a poll found 68 percent of Americans didn’t approve of the building of the mosque so close to Ground Zero. Just as a majority of Americans have disapproved of many other efforts this president has been behind. Yet he continues to thumb his nose at the very country that elected him. What gives!!!!!

I wonder how tolerant the Muslim community would be if a Christian church were to be built on grounds they consider Holy? Somehow I doubt they’d be acceptable of religious freedoms then!

So what’s you’re opinion? Is the great O completely out of touch with the American public?

I haven’t posted in a little while but I just had to throw a free plug to these nifty little gadgets from LapWorks. Anyone that has a Macbook or Macbook Pro knows just how hot they can get and if you’re like me you’ve been using something to prop it up on in order to get air underneath it. Ever since I got my Macbook Pro I’ve been using these plastic small square plastic containers a friend gave me. That got to be pretty annoying, cause they moved around and was just one more thing to keep up with, so a few weeks ago I broke down and bought me a set of Mac Feet.

What are Mac Feet? Simply put, they’re just stick on props that let you set the incline of your mac at 3 levels, allowing airflow underneath. The actual product description goes something like this:

MacFeet attach to the bottom of any Mac notebook computer with an easy to apply peel-N-stick adhesive. Each MacFeet has two fold-down sections – the smaller section elevates the back of the notebook 1″ while the second section raises it 1 3/8″. The small section has a large rubber pad for gripping on the desktop when folded. Typing on a flat desk top surface forces the user to move their elbows away from their body in order to position their hands comfortably for typing. Supporting the arms away from the body fatigues back and shoulder muscles reducing performance. The Laptop Legs elevate the keyboard for better typing ergonomics while reducing body fatigue and improving personal performance. Internal heat is a notebooks worst enemy and is the principal cause of sluggish performance, screen freezing and shortening the life span of the computer. The Laptop Legs increase air flow under the notebook reducing heat build-up and cooling the notebook. Other uses for the Laptop Legs include elevating desktop keyboards higher than their built-in legs allow. In addition, for negative tilt positioning, the MacFeet can be applied to the front of the notebook.

At $12.00 for a pair I thought that was cheap enough even if they didn’t work. However, I ended up getting 2 pair (2 pack evidently means 2 pair). They stick right on the back of the Macbook (or any other laptop) and are made from tough plastic. They also look nice and don’t seem to create a problem storing in a laptop back. If you’re looking for something more permanent for your laptop, check these out.

Exciting things are happening in the WordPress world. The official release candidate for WordPress 3.0 has been released which means a final release is not too far away. While this release isn’t an entirely new animal it does make some astounding strides at integrating the currently split world of WordPress and WordPress Mu (Multi-User). The long touted merge of WordPress and WordPress-MU appears really seems more like a cleaned up version of MU. Having used WPMU for time, I can’t openly see a lot of major differences, on the surface. There are a few, the most notable being plugins. Gone is mu-plugins directory and the annoyance of not being able to see what “global” plugins are installed. Instead, the traditional plugins screen adds a “Network” category, where all plugins can be displayed but those that are considered “global” or “Netowrk Active” can be seen along with other plugins. I’ve tested a number of MU plugins on WP3 and so far haven’t found any that require much effort to get to work. In some cases WPMU plugins call core WPMU named functions which have now been worked into WP named functions, but these are easy to remedy. Even most of the Premium WordPress MU Developer plugins work without a hitch.

For those that have no reason to run WordPress 3 in multi-user mode, don’t worry. The default configuration is single-user mode and you have to activate multi-user in order to get the additional benefits.

This blog is running the current WordPress 3.0 RC and to me it seems pretty stable and for the most part nothing seems to amiss. I am pleased with how well this release seems to work as I’ve not ran into any core issues that caused me problems as yet. I’m sure I’ll find some eventually but for now, the stability of WordPress 3.0 seems to be rock solid.

Just a side note. Two things I haven’t tried yet are upgrading a single user blog and a WPMU installation to WordPress 3.0. I can’t foresee many issues with a single-user site upgrade, except maybe for some very old plugin incompatibilities or theme issues that may crop up, but these I think are to be expected in the normal course of WordPress’s evolution. WPMU on the other hand, could present all kinds of difficulties but from looking at the code itself, it shouldn’t…. in theory. The issue with WPMU I think is going to be handling the numerous mu-plugins as I assume they will all have to be moved to the normal plugins directory and reactivated (haven’t tested this).

For now, if you haven’t looked at the latest release of WordPress 3.0, I suggest you give it a glance (download WordPress 3.0 RC1 here). It’s pretty slick and continues to show why WordPress is the best blogging software out there.

So I’ve probably confused a number of you who’ve been following along as I’ve been back and forth about whether or not I’m moving to this domain. The short answer is YES I am, or have. Mostly because I’ve had this domain for a pretty good while and it offers a bit more latitude in content than just my personal mildly insane rantings. Plus I have other ideas that I’m hoping to implement and I felt that a personal domain just didn’t fit as well. Basically that’s it, I hope you continue following along, I hope to be posting more often, especially on things I’m working on relating to WordPress 3.0. Thanks again for stopping by: James (aka: RustedBucket).

So I’ve been playing with the pennies for about a week and I’ve learned a couple of things right off the bat. First, I need to learn to read charts. While I understand an active or realtime chart, understanding how to analyze a historical chart is a key element to making successful plays. So that’s on the to do list. Another thing I’ve figured out is that if you chase a rising stock, you’re probably going to get stuck with, so don’t bother. Sometimes pennies can benefit a long position but from what I’m learning, that is not hardly the norm. Here’s some of the advice I’ve received.

“Buy low, Sell High” – well duh to that one.

“Don’t be greedy.. you will always lose if you are” – oh how true is this.

“Protect your profits” – Amen! Again, don’t be greedy.

So far my problem has been picking an appropriate entry point. I’ve chased several stocks that started out running but didn’t get in until they were starting to peak. I’ve only been buying about $100 worth of shares but I did manage to make $15 on GOIG and $60 on EVXA but turned around and lost that $60 again on EVXA the next day. Oh well. All three time, I got in at too high a price and instead of looking at what the stocks had done in past after a good day, I assumed that momentum could be maintained. NOT!

Good picks seems to be fueled mostly on some type of news released by the company which sends the stock upwards but rarely keeps it there. Something to keep in mind is most news seems to be fluff so before you jump on the latest hot pick, make sure you check it out first.

One other important lesson I’ve learned. If you think you should exit a position, DO IT!!! Don’t wait to see if it’s going to uptick again. I’m holding two positions in which I’ve made that mistake 3 times now. Had I gone with my first instinct and got out, I’d be up about $500. But no, I held and each time the stock reversed quicker than I could react. Now I’m stuck holding the bag waiting/hoping it can make a play again and I can get out without a loss. Which is certainly possible but until I choose to take a loss and free up that cash or can exit the position on a positive, I’ve got money I can’t use.