I’m fairly certain this article is right leaning:

Five Reasons “Cash For Clunkers” Is A Joke

By now I’m sure you’ve heard Obama has passed a bill, Cash For Clunkers. I visited Yahoo news today like I usually do since Yahoo is my home page and I read this interesting, BS article.

1. Not sure if the author of this article has ever traded in a car but you can’t get much for it. Nine out of ten times you’re better off trying to sell it on your own. Dealerships usually rip people off. In the article it even states that you’ll get MORE for it with the CFC bill than you would normally… Not really seeing why the bill won’t work if people are getting MORE MONEY from their cars.
2. Yeah average price of a new car might be $24,000 but honestly, if you’re hurting for money and need a car, I’d go with a Rabbit or a Yaris. Even now with Ford and GM not doing so well, I’d go for a Focus. Much cheaper than the $24K this guy is saying a new car is. A Yaris costs $12,200 MSRP, negotiate a little, could get it down to $11,500 easy… CFC makes the car a whopping $8,000. Say you had to borrow $9K, that’s only $174 a month at 6%.
3. Some people might not need their big SUV anymore, or their truck, or their minivan. And some trucks DO get better fuel efficiency than before. And if your truck is old and on its last leg, now could be the perfect opportunity. Furthermore, the bill states different qualifications for trucks.
4. This argument is weak at best… and pretty funny. Don’t scrap your car because it MIGHT be a future classic? Pretty pathetic. Yeah, I’m going to hang on to my 1994 Chrysler cause it might be worth much more one day. And how do classic cars get value anyway? Because there are only A FEW LEFT. I honestly don’t think people are going to keep their junkers in hopes that one day (could be 20 years or 50 years down the road) it could be worth something. You know how much it costs to store a car? The guy who wrote this article certainly doesn’t.
5. That’s a problem with Ford and GM, not with the CFC program. If they were hoping this bill provided a boost to the automotive business here, they would have put in the bill that the car must be traded in at a Ford or GM dealership.

Re People’s Participation: I actually know a few people that can benefit from this program. One of them is going to participate and trade his 1993 Mercedes in for either a Toyota Prius or a Toyota Yaris.

Tags: Cars, Debunking, Money, Politics // Add Comment »

I usually have some pretty good debates with my fathers lawyer who is a Republican. He always likes to blame Democrats for the problems we face in our state and in our country (like all good Republicans, right).

Anyway, so he recently said how one third of the rich people in this state have since moved or changed their permanent residences due to O’Malley hiking up their taxes. So, what the Right likes to think is that it drove out rich people and increased taxes on the working. They’re correct, but let’s take a look at the numbers:

The increase on the rich of they “grinned and bared it” would be another $106,000,000 revenue to the state.

In reality it put us in the hole -$100,000,000. (Figures from the Wall Street Journal.)

So that’s a -$206,000,000 swing that we have to make up to (baring that the tax increase on the rich would balance the budget) keep the budget balanced for the year. In other words, Maryland needs to make up $206,000,000 MORE than last year.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Maryland is 5,633,600 people. Assuming that only half pay taxes, which is more than fair in my opionion, that leaves us with 2,816,800 tax payers.

Doing our math on this:

$206,000,000/2,816,800 = $73.13 per tax payer

So, the Right (and some Democrats no doubt) lead you to believe that increasing taxes on the rich will drive them away leaving only the middle and lower classes to make up the difference. Sorry but I’m a lot happier paying barely $100 more A YEAR than other alternatives… look what California is facing. Also keep in mind that inflation is a little more than 4% a year so an extra $100 per tax payer may not be so bad.

Of course this blog is assuming the rich were driven out because of higher taxes. One article from the Baltimore Sun actually suggests it’s due to the estate tax being so high in Maryland.

Tags: Debunking, In The News, Money, Politics // 1 Comment »

So I went a week without eating a single piece of meat… sorry Bri.

The results were fine. I lost two pounds. Some of it was really difficult, but I managed. And I did stay away from meat that I normally love to have.

Some meals included:

• Spaghetti with sauce and bread (had once)
• The pipe noodles with cheese, bread (had this twice)
• Panara cheese and broccoli soup bread bowl (had this twice)
• Grilled cheese and corn (had once)
• Pancakes, eggs, and biscuits (had once)

The hard parts:

• Eating spaghetti with no meat
• Being very picky as to where to go out to eat (ate at Panara and Bob Evans)
• Scrapping the toppings off the meat lovers pizza at work
• Not eating chicken that Monique brought in for lunch
• Not eating the same meal as Brian

The good parts:

• Sauce and bread
• Panera
• Caramel frapuchinos

It was a pretty positive experience for me. I never really ran out of food ideas because I was always willing to just eat a vegetable and something else small. And I wasn’t craving meat during or after.

My first meal on Sunday consisted of BK’s breakfast burrito which I love. We also did steaks that night. I really did miss meat but I never like craved it. Shawns steak after a week without meat was the best, though!

This experience probably did change me a little. I noticed I don’t eat as much meat now, since we had ribs last night and I didn’t eat them all. Bri and I will probably eat more sea food now, like shrimp and fish. Being away from fast food probably did my body good, too.

See my entry in 43 Things!

Tags: Experiments // Add Comment »

Sorry it took me so long to post but after over two years of wanting to do it, I finally took and PASSED the Zend PHP 5 Certification Exam!

Although this has nothing to do with what I’m currently doing now, I feel it will help me in the future, plus it’s pretty cool since I can use the logo! Anyway, I started preparing for the exam around the beginning of March. I had previously bought the two books by PHP Architect  (Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide 2nd Edition and Zend PHP Certification Practice Test Book).

I first read through the Study Guide. Though full of mistakes, it really wasn’t too painful to get through. I took notes on stuff I thought I should know. All the while I was reading what others were saying about the test itself. I read any blog that I could in relation to the test. That’s where I got another recommended book (Zend PHP Certification Study Guide by Zend Technologies). I bought and read this book only to discover a few pages into it that it dealt with PHP4, not 5. I decided to skip the things that had totally been redone since 5, like OOP. I did steal a lot of the questions though.

Thinking I was pretty well prepared, I decided to take the tests in the Practice book. I burned pretty badly on a few topics (Dates, Security, Streams, and Regex). I also found a few free practice tests online. After wearing out all the test questions online, I pretty much decided to hit the Manual… hard. That was painful and grusom, if you have any idea how BIG the manual is. I spent most my days at work reading the PHP Manual and taking notes and preparing practice tests for myself.

After reading the manual, taking practice tests, and preparing my big ass function practice test, I decided to buy the practice exams offered by PHP Architect. On average I took two a week, starting March 29. I passed all of them, with the last three I took being EXCELLENT. It doesn’t give you the answers at the end, but it gives you the areas you need to improve. I was always bad at Design and PHP4/5 Differences. Google and Wiki helped me in these areas. All the questions I wasn’t sure about, I copied to a text file during the test. I really highly recommend these tests since it’s set up like the exam itself. 70 questions in 90 minutes.

I took the Friday before the exam off to study and took the test Saturday. It only took me about an hour and 15 minutes. They make it really nice for you since you can go back and review. My name was in the PHP Yellow Pages by Tuesday.

See my entry in 43 Things!

My Name In PHP Yellow Pages!

Tags: Goals, Work // Add Comment »

Tomorrow, May 17, 2009, I will begin my week of being a vegetarian. This choice is purely experimental and it’s basically just to say I did it.

I will not be eating meat of any kind, including fish or shrimp. I will, however, eat eggs, cheese, and milk (prohibiting those items means I would be a vegan).

Honestly, I think this decision is going to be hard and I’ll probably do it a crappy way and eat french fries, pie, biscuits and sauce, and basically B S my way through it.

It’ll probably be hard tomorrow because tonight I’m staying in Ocean City and will probably have to grab fast food tomorrow morning, but we’ll see.

My beginning weight is 154.

Tags: Experiments // Add Comment »