Moving...

By the time you read this post, I will moved this blog to another site. The last post with it's screwy formatting finally did it. I can't find the problem, and that's it. I've had other mysteries as well with Blogger come up over the past couple of years, but enough is enough.
The new blog is Tom's Place. (tomsplaceblog.wordpress.com)
See you there!

Two Years and a Day Ago...

...Tom's Common Sense came into being by publishing the "mission statement" for what the blog was to do. By and large, I think it's lived up to that semi-bold goal. After 230-some posts, I might be slowing down a little, and contemplating moving the blog somewhere else. But regardless, I'm still going to hold true to my beliefs and thoughts. I just wish that I had more time to write and visit the blogs of others on the blogroll. But in the end, it's still about the content, isn't it? So keep reading, and keep commenting. I'll be seeing you around the Internet!

Decisions, Decisions...

As if we don't have enough to decide or worry about, it's always something new. So I'm faced with a decision...

What is it, you may ask?

Is it who I'm going to vote for in the primaries and general election? Will it be Queen Hillary, Breck Edwards, Baba Obama, Tepid Thompson, Grinning Guiliani, or Ramrod Romney? I'm not telling, but it won't be a Democratic candidate...

Is it going to be on an issue such as immigration reform, universal health care, Union activities, or defending my Constitutional Rights? Well, sorta, but not quite.

I'm thinking about moving this blog to another service such as Wordpress.com.

Don't get me wrong!! Blogger has been a great service for this exercise in free speech. But I'm always looking for something better, or maybe just different.

Blogger does have some good things going for it. Custom templates for one. As many of you know, this blog template has been tweaked, stretched, and dinked with for as long as this blog has been in existence. HaloScan adds trackbacks and well as a host of commenting & editing features. StatCounter adds loads of statistical information on who and where the hits to the blog are coming from. Adding the JavaScript coding for the neat scrollers and graphics makes this site unique from all the others out in bloggerland.

But there are some downsides. Currently, there is no way to back up your posts, so unless you keep copies of your posts somewhere, you could lose all of your work if Google/Blogger takes an unrecoverable dump without a way to restore the posts. With HaloScan, you do need a premium account to have the capability of exporting your blog's comments, so that is an option. But if you don't have posts to link the comments to, you're hosed anyway.

Another downside is that I like to write my posts offline and then upload them using Microsoft's Live Writer Beta. Even though it is made by Microsoft, it does a pretty decent job. The part about using this editor is that it will not allow me to add tags or categories to the posts that I'm writing. After submitting the post to be published, I then need to log into Blogger, access the posts editor, and then select the post just published and select the tags for that post. Just a bit cumbersome for my taste...

Last, to view all of this wonderful information from StatCounter and HaloScan requires that I log into each service separately. Yes, maybe I'm nitpicking somewhat, especially for what I'm getting for free, but I still need to see what's out there and may offer something better for the long run.

Wordpress.com addresses some of the above, but at a price. There are a number of standard templates to choose from with limited options for customization. Gone will be HaloScan and StatCounter as well as any Javascript scripts as the standard (free) part of the site will not allow this type of custom code. Wordpress.com does not offer the functionality of StatCounter's statistical functions and hit tracking.

On the plus side, posting with tags & categories is handled very well by Live Writer as well as other offline editors. Posts and comments can be exported to a XML file for importation into another Wordpress blog, whether it is another one on Wordpress.com or your own private website/blog (which is a long-term goal of mine). There is even the option of importing Blogger posts and comments (not HaloScan, though) into Wordpress.com, although there are some application notes for importing HaloScan comments back into Blogger and then importing everything into Wordpress.

So it comes down to a couple of questions: Is Wordpress worth moving to? And if it is, is it worth importing this site's posts to the new one and either manually or automatically moving the comments, or just start fresh?

More importantly, is it content that you are looking for, or the presentation, and will you link to the new site? (Personally, I think it's the content that's important, but that's me...)

Before I Go...

Mrs. Common Sense and I are taking a long and well-deserved vacation.  We haven't taken a vacation for a long time, and this one will be special.  We will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary next Wednesday.

But before we go to a place without Internet access or cars(!), there are a few comments about the past week's events:

Fred Thompson finally announced his candidacy for the Presidency.  It will be interesting to see if his bid is as well timed as he hopes it will be.

Osama bin Laden released a tape a week before the 6th anniversary of 9/11.  It looks like he is just as vain as the civilization he wants to destroy - he dyed his beard and eyebrows!!

Cerberus has stolen or hired away a top gun at Toyota to run the sales and marketing for Chrysler.  Then the next day they hired GM's man in China to help with globalization efforts.  Does make you stop and pause and think about the future of Chrysler.

Volkswagen announced this week that they were moving their North American headquarters from Michigan to the suburbs of Washington DC.  Another blow to Michigan...

The Michigan Legislature wants to raise taxes on anything from telephones (cell, land-line, & Internet) to health clubs.  Just what a state in trouble needs - more taxes...

Another sex scandal in Washington.  This time, a Senator plays footsie in an airport stall.  Where are the politicians that actually stand for something besides themselves and their party?  Is there no one with integrity?

The financial meltdown in the mortgage industry continues.  Countrywide Financial, a major lender, is cutting 12,000 jobs from it's payroll in response to the flurry of bad loans, defaults, and the collapse of the housing market in general.  Who knows where this will end?

Luciano Pavarotti died this past week from cancer.  While not a fan of opera, his voice was one that would send chills down your spine with it's power and tone. 

Finally, the Surge appears to be working, but we'll see what General Patraeus has to say next week with his report.

Later...

News Bytes & Comments

Haven't posted for over a week, and that's just not good.  Son is graduating from high school, so there's all that to get arranged & taken care of.  He's also trying to get a job, and find a roommate for his assisted living arrangements.  We think he has found a place to live, but there are so many details that need to be worked out.

Then there's the job.  Have a project that's going to take up most of my time for the next 6 weeks.  It's good that I have a job considering the state of the automotive industry in Michigan.  It's bad that the OT will cut into what little free time that I have to write.

Upshot is that posting will be light or non-existent for the next few weeks.  Don't worry - I'll be back!!  Stay tuned and keep commenting.

But before I go, here's a few headlines and comments that have shown up in the past week:

Immigration Bill Pulled

The Senate immigration bill has been pulled from the floor of the Senate.  This just might kill this horrible piece of legislation, but there are those who state that it will be back.  I hope not...

Paris Hilton Out of Jail

Yep, she's out of jail, but not out of trouble.  Now it's house arrest for 40 days with a rather unstylish electronic ankle bracelet.  Why we care about what happens to this protected airhead is beyond me.

Democratic Candidate Debate

Verbal body slams were the on the agenda for this debate.  It was interesting that the candidates attacked each other as much as they attacked the President.  But there's no way I would vote for any of them.  Obama is becoming a Black Militant.  Edwards is bordering on the left-wing fringe.  Clinton is stiff and smarmy, and who really wants Bill back in the White House?

Democratic Candidates Express Faith

Faith in what?  Didn't hear anything on the sound bites that resembled anything but self-promotion.

Republican Candidate Debate

Much more agreeable debate.  Were at least courteous in their disagreements with each other's opinions, & didn't stoop to character assassination.

Republican Candidates Express Faith

At least there were a couple that stated that their faith was based on God and Jesus Christ, and done so in a way that promoted God and not themselves.

Jefferson Charged

William Jefferson (D-LA) finally has been charged with multiple counts of criminal activities.  About time.

Time to go.  Stay tuned!

This and That

Not really having the time to blog now that the weather has warmed up and yard work has commenced, let’s instead take a look at some of the headlines from this increasingly strange world of ours…

Virginia Governor May Close Loophole

Virginia's governor said Tuesday he may be able to close the loophole that allowed a mentally ill Virginia Tech student to acquire the guns he used to kill 32 classmates and faculty last week.

While I think that this needs to be done for the public safety, I also think that this is going to meet some opposition. Why, you ask? Just think of the outcry if mental health records are now going to be part of a public record. Instead of a safety issue, it will become a privacy issue.

Iran Arrests 300 ‘Insufficiently Veiled’ Women

Break out the burkas!! Iran is now cracking down on women (and men) that the mullahs consider to be under-dressed (or perhaps, out of uniform). Police are enforcing the regulations. It’s amazing to me that the National Organization of Women have not commented on these types of actions against and/or repressions of women’s rights (at least to my knowledge).

Al-Qaida Group Claims Killing of 9 GIs in Iraq

Anyone who thinks that Al-Qaida is gone should realize that they are merely biding their time to strike again.

The Case for a Global Carbon Tax

The (Bush) administration had several narrow-minded and callous reasons for rejecting Kyoto, but among its main arguments was that the accords did not include developing countries and thus were ineffective. To understand why that is correct, consider one simple statistic. During the Kyoto time frame (that is, by 2012), China and India will build almost 800 new coal-fired power plants. The combined CO₂ emissions from those plants will be five times the total reductions in CO₂ mandated by the accords.

Finally, someone has pointed out that one of the reasons that the Kyoto Accords was rejected was because of China and India. While cutting down CO₂ emissions would be a good thing for everyone (not just because of “Global Warming”), the author correctly points out that these CO₂ emissions come from coal, which by itself has a whole host of environmental problems. What the author gets wrong is that the US is supposed to get China and India to not build coal-fired power plants. And that will be difficult because China and India are trying to build their economies the fastest (and cheapest) way possible. The author’s idea is to implement a global carbon tax to reign in these countries. I wonder if Al is listening…

Kim Basinger Hires Security for Daughter

After hearing the daughter’s father (none other than Alec Baldwin) rant on a voice mail, who can blame her? Oh yeah, Rosie defended Alec’s rant – go figure? One angry person defending another… And speaking about Rosie…

Rosie Leaving the View

To which I ask – What took so long?

I’ll be working on a long post, so it might be a week or two before the next post. This one is a continuation of Energy Independence, which was posted over a year ago. It’s a subject worth revisiting considering the events and topics of the past year (Global Warming, the Middle East, Environmentalism, Energy, and so on).

School Shootings

At this point in time, there are 33 people dead (gunman included) at Virginia Tech University.  No other details as to why the gunman did it or who he is.

Our prayers go out to the victim's families, and the people who witnessed this tragedy. 

Light Posting

The posting will be very light for the next couple of weeks.  We are trying to get the son set up for assisted living before the end of the school year & graduation.  So all the paperwork needs to be filled out in advance & approved beforehand.

It's also difficult to visit everyone on the blogroll list.  I will try to pop in every now & then to everyone's blog & try to leave some rational comments.

Later...

Must Be Global Warming....

I lost a post that I was working on.  Poof!! Evaporated like a puddle in the middle of the desert.  And it was a good one too...

The wife (Mrs. Common Sense) wrecked her car.  Actually, someone did it for her - the moron was driving too fast and instead of slowing down to avoid an accident, took the front end off her car.  She is OK, mad, depressed, POed, frustrated...you get the picture.  Also her cell phone was a casualty of the accident, so it had to be replaced.

Since Global Warming is being blamed for so much, I think I can safely blame it for losing the post, my wife's accident, and not being able to post for a while between the two events...

Blasted eco-nuts...

Just In Time for the New Year!

Yes, that's right, you may not have asked for it, but here it is - another new look for Tom's Common Sense!

I hope everyone likes it, and if not, let me know what you would like to see changed.  But positive feedback would be appreciated!

My thanks to Benning for letting me beg/borrow/steal his flag background for the title.

Revised Plans...

Well, I guess everyone's plans change.  Mine are.

On the good side, it looks like Christmas came early to the house.  Just finished wiring & hooking up a broadband connection to the house.  And it is nice and fast!  Better than dial-up any day.  Reasonable too - special through the cable TV company.

On the bad side, any of you looking at the Index will find that it's out of date.  With the recent sickness in the house and yours truly playing nurse (no catcalls out there!), plans for getting much of anything done in the way of blogging & updates went way by the wayside.

Trying to figure out how to modify this template to work with Blogger Beta is just not worth it.  I'll probably change this template to one of the canned ones & work from there.  Not happy about it - put in a lot of work on the template, but the new ones definitely have some advantages.  Just need some time to do it, and make sure Haloscan works with the new template.

Changing to a new blog hosting site probably isn't worth it either.  Awardspace may be a free server, but hosting a blog is not good on that site.  All that needs to happen is for the database portion of the server to get overloaded, and poof!! no blog.  The web portion of the server is OK though, and haven't had any problems there.  So if any of you want to play around with making up your own pages on a free server would work.  Besides, most of you are tied into Blogger anyway, and I've found a decent offline editor for Blogger, so I'll probably be sticking with Blogger.

So if there are changes to the site, don't panic!  It's just another work in progress.

Thanksgiving 2006

Thanksgiving this year, well, has been different.

My son has been sick, and didn't want to make the trip down with us. So we came down ourselves after making sure that he was supplied with soup, crackers, telephone numbers, etc. He knows how to take care of himself, so that wasn't the concern. After all, he is 18...

We get into Indianapolis last night around 7:30, check into the hotel, and went over to the mother-in-laws. Before anyone dings her, she is one of the sweetest persons I have ever known. Everything is fine, until...

My wife wakes up, and wouldn't you know it, is sick. On Thanksgiving day, after 6 hours on the road, a night in a hotel, and my wife is sick, sick, sick. Not the Thanksgiving we were wanting, nor expecting. You know how hard it is running around Thanksgiving morning trying to find medicine, crackers, Gatorade, etc.?

Finally, she feels better to make it over to her mom's, and we have a decent dinner, although she is not feeling like eating much. After dinner, she sleeps the rest of the afternoon. Makes for an interesting Thanksgiving, that's for sure!

We're now back at the hotel, wife is feeling better & ready to sack out. Hopefully, I'll stay well, at least enough until we get back to Michigan tomorrow.

Hope that everyone has experienced a Happy Thanksgiving, and has enough turkey for a week's worth of turkey sandwiches!

November 06 Drive By Blogging

Haven't done one of these for a while. Just nothing really jumping out at me to pound on in depth, so just a little something to write (and think!) about.

First of all, I would like to wish everyone (all 6 1/2 readers of this blog) a Happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone arrives at their respective feeding station (i.e., relative's house) safely, not make an obvious pig of themselves, and return home stuffed but not mounted. At least that's my plan (sorry, Teresa - looks like I'll be in Indianapolis too...)

Have you noticed the Democrats toning down themselves? Now it looks like they are not going to proceed with impeachment hearings, raising taxes, repealing the Patriot Act, NSA listening policies, and pulling the troops out immediately. Have they come to their senses, or is it just politics as usual, waiting to slip a fast one in without anyone noticing? I hope that the moderation is not an act, and that they will do the right things for the country (and us!).

The item that's still on my political radar is Pelosi trying to get an impeached judge (charged with soliciting a bribe) appointed head of the intelligence committees. That just doesn't make sense, especially since the Dems ran on a platform of "hate Bush because he and his administration are corrupt," and yet want this bozo in one of the most sensitive positions in government. Makes you wonder if someone offers this guy a big enough bribe that he would give up everything. But then again, all they would have to do is look at the New York Slime to find out the latest sensitive information that we don't want the bad guys to know...

Has anyone noticed that the figures for the economy are being reported in a better light than before the election? I have, and it just indicates to me that the media is biased toward one political party. What really bothers me about this is that freedom of the press was supposed to provide an independent but fair reporting of events. Editorials belong on the opinion page, not the whole damn newspaper (or TV/radio news broadcast). While censorship to keep things balanced is never a good thing, I am happy that there are other news sources out there that slant things the other way to keep things balanced out.

John Kerry thinks that he is still a contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination dispite his latest episode of foot in mouth disease. John, hang it up - HRC will cut your throat before that happens. Think "Manchurian Candidate" with one of your past associates from Vietnam (you were there, right?), and you should get the general idea.

And did you see that HRC's blast from the past health care plan got axed by the Dems? Surprising to me, but then again, they might want to save it for HRC's run for the Presidency. At least that's my take on it.

I'm going to be doing a little housecleaning over the holidays. First of all, The Stickman Chronicles will be deleted off Blogger. I don't have enough time to write for one blog consistently, much less two. I know that I haven't promoted this blog very well, and for a good reason - just no time to keep it updated. So take a last look before it fades not so gracefully into history. Second, I'll be working on Tom's Common Sense @ Awardspace, trying to get it up to snuff. Please visit there & let me know if you like it or not. Last, there will be one last update to the template on Tom's Common Sense @ Blogger to put a few things into order before the eventual migration to Awardspace (or other spot). This will include (hopefully) some Blogger Beta tags for catagories and an updated index.

UPDATE: Tom's Common Sense @ Awardspace is having problems - just might have to find another host. Anyone out there have any suggestions for a cost effective host? Thanks!

Again, Happy Thanksgiving!!

New Blog Created

Well, I've created another blog at this location:

tomscommonsense.awardspace.com

The plan is to dual post at both this blog and the one listed above until next year. That will give me time to shake out the bugs, and review any comments anyone has on this blog and the new one.

Visit the new blog & let me know what you think!

Thanks, Tom

Blogger Beta Woes

Have you ever thought that you were making things better and then find out that all you did was shoot yourself in the foot? Yep, I did that here on this blog...

Blogger Beta is supposed to be better in the long run, but that's to be seen. Yes, it lets you have "labels" for you to search & categorize your posts for easier searching (for you & me), but I've discovered a few "uh-oh"s along the way.

For those of you who use Haloscan & like the feature that Haloscan has of noting which comment goes with which post by title, that feature will not work when you've changed to Blogger Beta (BB). That's because that BB uses a Google account password, and it just can't navigate through to the blog's postings. I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to wade through it, but it's a pain for the moment.

Another item that bugs me that's related to the above is being able to write posts offline & post them from an editor such as w.Blogger. Again, the Google account blocks that as well. Sure, I can write stuff, log into BB, and post it using the editor, but that's just a pain. And emailing posts is not really an option - the posts could take up to a day to show up. Frustrating, it is...

I'm sure that someone way smarter than me will be able to figure this out, but I'm really starting to look seriously about moving Tom's Common Sense to another system. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to export the posts to another location because Blogger doesn't have an export function, nor with the Google account stuff in place, the usual export/import functions in systems like Wordpress will not work.

Of course, this was all done to increase security of the system, and improve it. And by the way, the Blogger accounts will eventually be moved to using Google accounts. In the meantime, I'm just a little upset. Oh well...

130 Posts & A Year Later...

Yes, this is the 130th post of Tom's Common Sense, and exactly one year after the first post. It's been an interesting ride.

I originally wanted to post about my concerns with the business situation at Delphi, but soon was drawn into other subjects - politics, social issues, humor, Iraq, terrorism, and others. Some things have stayed the same, others have changed.

Also, not being content with the standard Blogger templates, the look of Tom's Common Sense has changed several times, and an index of past posts by subject was created to allow you, the reader, to see what I've had to say about various subjects. Hopefully, this has helped some of you, although this might change in the future. Blogger's Beta looks promising in allowing each post to have a subject, similer to Wordpress and others. If anyone has switched over to the new Blogger Beta, please let me know what you think of it.

Other improvements to the template most commented on have been the Points to Ponder as well as the Notable Posts. I'm looking at changing these slightly as it requires that I modify the template each time these need to be changed. And that's a pain at times.

The biggest change is that I'm having problems visiting everyone else's blogs - life is busy between job & family. I'm not on the road as much, and this has reduced the time that I once had (I would write posts and visit everyone else's blogs instead of watching TV). Hopefully, I will touch base with everyone once in a while, and I thank everyone for visiting this blog. Your comments and support have been overwhelming.

Last, I would like you, the reader, to tell me what you like or dislike about this blog. Subjects, look of the blog, or what you would like to read about. Any additional Points to Ponder that you would like to contribute and what your favorites are. Same goes for the posts that would appear in the Notable Posts. Operators are not standing by, but the comment section and email address are open for your comments.

Again, Thank You Everyone!

New Index Posted

For some time now, I've been wanting to have a better index to the posts rather than Blogger's archive by month/year. Finally, I think I've got it!

Kindly follow the link on the right, and let me know what you think. Thank you!

Bill Whittle Quotes

Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! is always a great read when he has time to write. He posted the following back on June 18 (I'm a little behind in reading everyone's posts):

Socialist intellectuals will tell you that Cuba is a model nation: universal free health care, near total literacy, and essentially no gap whatsoever between the rich and the poor. They call it an island paradise where brotherhood and compassion reign in stark contrast to the brutal inequalities of the heartless and racist capitalist monster to the North, ruled by its Imperial Nazi King, who is the devious mastermind of all manner of Conspiratorial Wheels and is also a moron.

Capitalist intellectuals -– and there are not many, since most of these people have jobs -– argue that Cuba is a squalid, corrupt, poverty-ridden basket case, a land of oppression and secret police and torture chambers run by a megalomaniac who practices the most idiotic, inhuman and degrading economic system ever invented.

Well, ask yourself what it would take to give up your home, your country, your family and all your friends. Ask yourself how desperate you would have to be to sneak out in the night, and strap your family – your grandmother and infant son – to a collection of inner tubes lashed together and set out in the dark surf across 90 miles of shark-infested water in the dead of night, hoping against hope to make landfall. We can all agree, I think, that that kind of desperation could only be driven by a fairly passionate first-person opinion of such things. Surely this goes beyond what you or I would do to win a map argument at Starbucks.

So. Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself:

Which way are the rafts headed?

Which intellectual are you? Socialistic (Liberal) or Capitalist (Conservative)? Think about it.

Delayed Posting

My apologies to everyone for not posting for a while. I've been on 10-hour second shifts for the past 3 days, and this schedule will continue for another week.

I am working on a post, gathering some info & research so I can sound somewhat informed. Hope to have that out in a week (maybe less) if everything works out timewise.

In the meantime, feel free to browse through the Index of past posts, and comment freely on those posts, and if you really want me to write on a subject, comment on this post or send me an email. Take care, everyone.

Index to Posts Published

Having just a little bit of time on my hands, I thought I would create a page that lists almost all of the posts published on this blog. It will be listed on the right sidebar for easy access, and will be updated with new posts. Enjoy!