We recently celebrated Duncan’s 5th birthday, and here’s the reel! =)

We recently celebrated Sheri’s 40th birthday with a big surprise party at V’s Italiano Ristorante. Great place, great people, and a great time (at least I had a great time!). Check it out here…

I’ve got another post up over at Group 3 Solutions. We’ve turned our attention away from WordPress Plugins over to Joomla Plugins this time around. First up is Joomla Tabs & Slides. The post gives some background on tabs as a concept and then shows how to easily implement them in Joomla using this plugin. Enjoy!

Here’s video from some of the seasonal events we’ve been to and also Halloween night itself. Enjoy!

Great article over at Vandelay Design for anyone interested in hacking WordPress categories. Really helpful.

Just a heads-up announcing a benefit concert for the March of Dimes that will be Friday, August 28th at 7pm at Coffee Break near UMKC. Here’s a map and directions or visit the Coffee Break Facebook page!

Coffee Break is providing space for us to have kids’ music and entertainment from Dino O’Dell and Dennis Porter and try to spread the word about the March of Dimes’ mission. In addition to great drinks, Coffee Break also offers great sandwiches and snacks.

A small donation is asked for at the door to help the March of Dimes fight for every baby to be born healthy.

Was looking into Kindle publishing at Amazon for a friend and discovered that it’s a real pain in the neck. Here’s a thread breaking down the basic “what do I have to do to my Word doc to make this thing work” questions. Also, forget about simply uploading your existing PDF files or anything with tables. Buh buh formatting. Here’s a thread listing all the formats that Kindle “supports.” Problem is, it really only supports HTML. They use a special page non-HTML break tag, which explains some things. Headers, footers, and page numbers need to be removed. The forums are chocked full of complaints about the lack of publishing tools, and I couldn’t agree more. What a mess.

Been tinkering around with custom Joomla 1.5 component development. Here are some helpful getting started links with “Hello world” -level tutorials:

1. vojtechovsky.net
2. softmarket.ro
3. packtpub.com

The health care fight has turned ugly, fast. So the gang at MoveOn.org put this handy dandy list together (with sources) rebutting the key lies and misinformation circulating about the proposed plan. See below…

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”⁴ What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.⁵

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.⁶Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.⁷

If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.⁸ But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.⁹ And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!

The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.¹⁰ Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.¹¹

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy.

Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.¹² The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade¹³—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.¹⁴ Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.¹⁵

P.S. Want more? Check out this great new White House “Reality Check” website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ or this excellent piece from Health Care for America Now on some of the most outrageous lies: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=1

Sources:

1. “More ‘Town Halls Gone Wild’: Angry Far Right Protesters Disrupt Events With ‘Incomprehensible’ Yelling,”Think Progress, August 4, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51733&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=2
2. “Fight the smears,” Health Care for America NOW, accessed August 10, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=3
3. “Palin Paints Picture of ‘Obama Death Panel’ Giving Thumbs Down to Trig,” ABC News, August 7, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51728&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=4
4. “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill,” The Associated Press, August 10, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51747&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=5
5. “Stop Distorting the Truth about End of Life Care,” The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51730&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=6
6. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 11, 2009.
   http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#i1
7. “Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51737&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=7
8. “Obama: ‘If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Keep Your Doctor,’” The Wall Street Journal, 15, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51736&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=8
9. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
   http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#r1
10. “Obama: No reduced Medicare benefits in health care reform,” CNN, July 28, 2009.
    http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51748&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=9
11. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#s1
12. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1
13. “Premiums Run Amok,” Center for American Progress, July 24, 2009.
    http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51667&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=10
14. “Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies,” CNN, June 5, 2009.
    http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51735&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=11
15. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1

Sources for the Five Lies:

1. “A euthanasia mandate,” The Washington Times, July 29, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51732&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=12
2. “It’s Not An Option,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 15, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51743&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=13
3. “Rationing Health Care,” The Washington Times, April 21, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51742&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=14
4. “60 Plus Ad Is Chock Full Of Misinformation,” Media Matters for America, August 8, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51734&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=15
5. “Obama’s ‘Public’ Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation,” The National Review, May 13, 2009.
   http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51744&id=16778-3566365-cNUWWix&t=16

As previously mention here, we had a library CD stuck in our kids’ 20″ iMac (Intel). You can see the previous post to get up to speed if interested, but the bottom line is that is has been removed. It took four suction cups, a TORX 8 and TORX 6 driver, along with various other jewelers-type Phillips heads, two people, a bright flashlight, and about an hour and a half on a clean, padding tablecloth. Whew.

The instructions I mentioned in the previous post were designed to open a similar unit up and remove the hard drive, so our proceedure was slightly different but not on the points that mattered. The key, in the end, was that even once you expose the optical drive and remove it from the plastic housing that holds it in the unit, you still won’t be able to get the CD out without physically dismantling the optical drive… which, as it turns out, is a simple matter of remove 3 or 4 eyeglass-style Phillips screws, removing the top casing, and voila… the CD is just sitting there waiting to be removed. It was this particular step (the removing of the top casing) that Apple was wary of; the Genius had told me that if their policy is not to use/trust optical drives once this has been done. I’m not sure why, though, since the unit is not hermetically sealed like hard drives, and there was basically nothing that could be broken in the operation, provided you simply removed the CD and closed the thing back up.

Anyway, mission accomplished! We’ve tested the unit with blank discs (that we didn’t care about) to see if the eject mechanism is working, and all seems well. What a relief! Mental note… get AppleCare whenever possible. =)