Obama will not defend the US Constitution. He will Destroy it.

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Obama and the Democrats will enact the Fairness Doctrine which will severely curtail opposition media on the radio.

Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Obama wants to keep individuals (the people) away from owning guns. He does seem to want to have a civilian militia but I guess if you're not a part of it, you don't get to keep your gun.

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The PATRIOT Act is not likely to be repealed.

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings. Ratified 12/15/1791.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Obama wants to take more taxes. And abortion is deprivation of life. Care to compensate for an aborted baby?

Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Obama believes that those rights not enumerated by the Constitution can be assumed by the federal government.

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Obama believes that abortion "Freedom of Choice Act" is something that must be decreed on a federal level. Unfortunately, it isn't up to the federal government.

PuTTY, SSH, Web Browser tunnel

This bypasses your proxy server, tunnels through your own SSH server, and provides web access.

1. Have a running ssh server, accessible from the Internet. http://www.dyndns.com can help give you a name to your IP address, if you have a dynamic one. Making the dyndns connection is beyond the scope of this tutorial.
2. Create a PuTTY session to your ssh server. Chances are, if you know what step 1 is about, you've already created a PuTTY session to it.
3. Inside PuTTY's session, go to Connection, SSH, Tunnels
4. Type a number (8080?) into Source Port. Click Dynamic, Auto, and then [Add]
5. Save the PuTTY sesssion
6. Connect to your PuTTY session
7. Configure your browser's proxy settings: Manual, SOCKS v5, 127.0.0.1, port (whatever number you used as your Source Port in 4.)
   
8. If you go to http://www.gwy.org/yourip.php, you should now see that your IP address is your ssh server.
   

There are interesting side effects that happen when you do this, especially since you usually can ssh connect any time you have any internet access.

ImageMagick is cool

Command line for images? What?

OK, so I have this .png file that makes a bevel on a picture:
except I don't *really* want to take the time and effort to load GIMP/Photoshop every time I want to apply this bevel/bezel. Now, I take ImageMagick's convert and composite and make my button from the command line:

convert -resize 244x132! originalpic.jpg resizedpicname.jpg
composite bevel.png resizedpicname.jpg buttonizedfilename.jpg



Original:
Resized:
Bevel/Bezel:

The Devil you know

Better the devil you know... that means that people would rather vote for someone decisive in what they believe (even if they think he's lying) than to vote for ambiguous policies.

You know Obama is feeding you a load of junk. He's cute and he explains the junk he's selling. It's still junk. But then you have McCain saying stuff. You don't know what he's selling. You don't know what you can do with what he's selling. You're not even certain HE knows what he's selling. All he wants to do is call you "my friends." You're wary about what he wants to do. "The devil you know" may lead you to the path of destruction. "The devil you don't know" perhaps can't or won't lead you anywhere.

In essence, you're the Gingerbread Man, Obama's the fox who'll carry you across the water. He'll probably eat you, but you're dry and in motion away from the other doom. McCain is the river. You could jump in the river. You could be safe, but then you could be a soggy mess.

New Monty Hall Puzzle(s)

Based upon some comments in the other Monty Hall puzzle, I propose the following scenarios:

Three doors which the host knows the location of a car and two goats. Two contestants get to choose SEPARATE doors.

• Scenario 1: The host always opens the non-chosen door, regardless of car or goat. A car shown means both contestants lose immediately. No choice offered.
  
• Scenario 2: The host always opens either goat door that does not declare a winner, but can declare a loser (random goat 1/2)
  
• Scenario 3: The host always opens the non-chosen door if it's a goat (2/3), but chooses a random contestant's door if the non-chosen door is a car.
  
• Scenario 3a: The contestants do not know this rule
  
• Scenario 3b: The contestants do know this rule
  

In each scenario, the option to switch is given, not forced. In what cases is it advantageous to switch?


The billion door equivalencies:

• Scenario 1: The host always opens the 1 billion minus 2 remaining doors
  
• Scenario 1a: There is one remaining door and 1 billion minus 1 contestants
  

As I'm running through the permutations of this in my head, I realize that adding multiple contestants greatly convolutes the problem. With two contestants head to head, the math is indicative that at least one of the contestants is likely to have chosen the car (2 contestants out of 3 choices). More contestants means it's more likely that one of the contestants have already won the car. With multiple contestants already knowing that one of their set has the car, there appears to be little incentive to change even if the host shows a goat. However, if the host starts showing known losers the set of unopened doors plus shown losers increases the probability that the subset of unopened doors more likely contains the car than the original probability of the set of original choice of doors versus the set of total doors.

Excel Fix a Phone list

Occasionally, you'll have a list of phone numbers that need a little fixing. This code fixes many things as long as the last 8 digits are like 555-1212 and there's three digits of area code either preceded by "(" or flush left as in "(555)555-1212" or "555-555-1212". The result will always be formatted as (555) 555-1212, unless an area code is given.

A2 represents where the broken number is stored.


=CONCATENATE("(",IF(LEN(A2)<9,"555",IF(LEFT(A2,1)="(",MID(A2,2,3),LEFT(A2,3))),") ",RIGHT(A2,8))


You should change 555 to your local area code.

I'm a pretend tv doctor