As many of you may know I have decided that I am turning into one fat son of a bitch. With this realization I have started exercising (went out and spent a pile on a treadmill and everything...actually using it, too!). Along with this comes the obligatory watching of what I eat, including tracking calories, etc. As many of you also may know I recently baked, and promtly ate most of, a very large cheesecake. I am an awesome baker. But that is beside the point.

I have been eating a lot of sandwiches lately, being very careful to only use low sodium and low fat meats. I went out today and picked up a loaf of bread being sure to get something whole grain with lots of fiber. Can't lose weight if everything stays in you, right? Yeah...you know what I'm talking about. I was reading the nutritional information on the loaf of bread and was happy to see it was only 110 calories per serving. And there is the kicker.

Per serving. Tell me this, however...what delusional lunatic jackass decided that a serving of bread was one slice. Yeah...one fucking slice! How the hell am I supposed to make a sandwich with one god-damned slice of bread?!?

Pricks.

Have I ever mentioned that I really cannot stand the new disk defragementer utility included in Windows Server 2008 and Vista? No analysis display before choosing to defragment. No progress indicator so you have even the slightest clue how much longer you have before it is finished. Just a box that with an option to Analyze Now followed by the following results:

• You do not need to defragment
• You should defragment

This is accompanied by a button that says Defragment Now and if you click on it, it changes to Cancel defragmentation. Useful, no? But wait! Next to that is the ever so useful "Defragmenting hard disk (x:)..." with the spinning activity wheel and the uber-informative "This may take from a few minutes to a few hours".

Seriously...this is the best they could do? All the changes they made and they had to replace a perfectly fine utility with one that does less?

Come on guys...you can do better than this. Just give us the old disk defragmenter back. Is that asking too much? Just give us back the nice little utility with the pretty display of our analysis results and the blocks that move around so we can see what is going on.

I am watching a show on the History Channel called Taboo. It is an interesting series which covers societal taboos and norms and how they are viewed. This particular episode is titled Extreme Punishment. They are, you would assume, covering extreme forms of...well...punishment. Right? Or am I just losing my mind. Because it should really have been called Unusual Punishment, as nothing shown so far could be considered extreme. And certainly nothing that could be considered X-treme.

The last segment of the episode is about a judge in Tennessee who is taking the unusual path of using public shaming as a punishment in lieu of jail time for minor crimes. When you think about it, it really doesn't seem like a bad idea. Certainly a better option than filling up the jails and prisons with petty offenses, right? This is not what I take issue with.

Here is my problem. I always thought that judges are supposed to be well educated. In this particular instance the judge is sentencing a kid to spend eight hours a day for four days walking outside the store from which he shoplifted. Walking with a "place card". Forgive me for my confusion but is the kid being sentenced to a wedding? Is he going to spend thirty-two hours over four days looking for his seat, only to be stymied by the fact that he is holding his own place card?

I am no genius and I am fairly confident that I am becoming dumber by the day. I never went to college and am certainly not a judge. But I know what a freaking placard is. Yeah...placard.

Forgive my crankiness but the weather is absolutely fantastic and my motorcycle has been in for repairs for the last week. To make it worse I won't be able to pick it up until next Saturday since my work hours are the same as the repair shop's. The icing on the cake would have to be that when I do pick it up, I will have to give them $1,200.

Crap.

OK. I know it has been quite a while since I last posted but what can I tell you. Following the massive decline in the financial markets I have been reeling from the devestation done to my immense stock portfolio and spending all of my spare time hoarding potatoes, ramen noodles and ammunition. Be prepared, people! Be prepared!

Speaking of our economy going completely tits up, I recently read an article on Yahoo News about the results so far of the recent $700B economic bailout. The banks have been given roughly $125 billion and here is what seems to be happening:

"The infusion of federal money is to rebuild banks' battered capital reserves so the institutions would feel comfortable resuming more normal lending practices. But that confidence was undercut somewhat when reports surfaced that bankers might use the money to buy other banks. Indeed, the government approved PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to receive $7.7 billion in return for company stock on Friday and, at the same time, PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion."

So basically we are looking at a bunch of ridiculously wealthy organizations taking advantage of a shitty situation in order to become even wealthier. Oh, and did I mention they are doing it with YOUR MONEY? I am SO glad that we have provided them with the opportunity to better themselves. I was really growing concerned over how the bank CEO's quarterly bonus might actually slip down into the single digit millions. Poor souls that they are. On the bright side, nothing will get done to fix the economy so it will continue to go down the drain. Slowly the larger banks will snap up all of the smaller banks. Those large banks will, in turn, begin acquiring one another until eventually there is just one big bank. And since nothing was done to actually make that one giant bank more stable, it will collapse taking the entire country with it. YAY! Then we will all get to play Mad Max, except it won't be playing at all.

In case you hadn't heard, there is some sort of big election thing coming soon. Oddly enough, however, there has been almost no mention of it on any of the news stations. Go figure.

Oh yes! How could I forget? I got a new job a couple of months ago and things are going great. I am working for a moderately sized software development company in Boca Raton doing deployment and upgrade work for our clients. It is not quite what I was looking for but it pays the bills and I really like the people I work with. It is a very relaxed environment and we have a lot of fun. The only negative so far is the almost hour long drive to get in and get home each day. But I make myself happy by thinking about what a good person I get to be in helping those oil company executives get richer.

Speaking of oil company executives, this morning I read an article discussing the (again) record quartely profits posted by Exxon Mobil. The profits are attributed to the record breaking prices on crude oil this past summer. I am not going to go on and on about this because it has been done to death in the past, but seriously...how can this continue to happen? The oil companies blame the increased price of gasoline on the increased price of oil. So logically speaking, if the cost of oil goes up and the price of gas goes up accordingly, wouldn't profits stay about the same. Maybe work in a slight increase for your company? Nope! Not these guys! $14,000,000,000 in PROFIT. In a single quarter. While all the people needing to buy that product wondering how they are going to manage to get gas to go to work AND get food to feed their families. Way to go, oil companies. You truly are what makes this country great.