Fat Tax or Skinny Tax?

What do you think about the proposed 'Fat Tax'?


Personally it has me outraged! They are going to tax drinks containing "sugar" and to get the law passed they will drop all taxes on drinks with artifical sweeteners. This will try to force people to drink soda that contains deadly artifical sweeteners. Also consider this fact: Skinny people drink sugary sodas, fat people drink diet sodas. So the tax will actually be a tax on SKINNY PEOPLE! It is not a fat tax at all, unless they also tax toxic diet sodas! And what about all those candy bars that are not only full of sugar but they are also full of fat? What about doughnuts that are also full of fat and sugar??? Could these crazy politicians actually create a "Fat Tax"? Of course not, they just want to make Americans Fatter and Sicker, but that way they can get the backing of the people that are poisoning us.

BTW - I would be all for a "corn syrup" tax!!!

Word Press Cache programs

I have been experimenting with WordPress Caching programs. Over that last few months I have been trying out WordPress caching programs to see what works the best.

We started with 'WP Super Cache'. It delivered pages very fast, unless it was the first time the page had been accessed this hour, and then it was slow. But every once in a while the page load time would get really slow. I recorded an 18 second page load using YSlow under Firefox. It happens about every 100 page views, something goes terribly wrong and some pages may never load at all!

So next we tried DB Cache reloaded. They claim to be really fast, by loading the database into memory so it can be read much faster. The load on the server went way down, but the average page load was 2 seconds, about the same time as it was without any caching program.

So now we are trying 'WP-Cache'. With it installed the average page load time is about 1 second. Of course we need to leave it on line for a while to see how Alexa and Google will respond to it.

This picture shows our page load time over several months.  The sharp changes on the left 2/3 were recorded while using WP Super Cache.  The gradual changes on the right were while using DB Cache.

Straight Talk Cell Phone Problems

Are you thinking about a Straight Talk Cell Phone?

Well I fell for it. They promised a cell phone for only $40 and then either $30 a month for 1000 minutes or $45 a month for unlimited calling! What a deal! When I used a track phone years ago I paid over $100 for 1000 minutes, then used them up in as little as a month or two. This new deal sounds too good to be true, right? Yes, it is too good to be true. Their service simply does not work. The other day I spent over 90 minutes in a 10 minute queue waiting to talk to someone. They charged my credit card for the $33 a week ago and their web site says that I have 1000 minutes, but when I try to make a call it still says “There is not enough money on your account to place this call.” That’s after a frustrating week of trying. Should I give up and take it back to WallyMart?

Here is a decision maker for you. Call them at 1-877-430-2355, if you get a real person in less than an hour consider getting the phone. If after several calls exceeding 2 hours or more and you never get through, guess what? Don't get one of their phones!!!

It sounds to me like it is time for a class action law suit??

Today they called me several times, one call was over 18 minutes long, to no avail.  Turn the phone off, turn it on, dial *22890, try again.  Still it does not work.  Will I have to go through this every time I want to add minutes to the telephone?

Well it has been two weeks and still no phone?  THe good news is that it shows 3000 minutes on my non working phone.  I guess they added minutes to try to get it to work?

Its time to Ban JAVA !!!

I have said time and time again that Java should be banned! Well now Firefox has an available add-on that does exactly that. It is called ‘NoScript’. It has the option of allowing Java on a page if it is needed for that page to work. Look under ‘options’ in the bottom right corner of Firefox once NoScript is added.


To top that, according to Kaspersky, Virus News, April 2010 Malware Statistics, 14 out of 20 exploits on the web all target JAVA! If you are using a computer that does not block Java, get a gun and shoot yourself in the foot, it makes as much sense.

Also you might want to seriously consider replacing Adobe reader with ‘FoxIt reader’. They have added the ability to block things from running inside of your PDF files. Like whom else but a virus writer would want to do that anyway?