Bailey Needs a New Home

Over the past several months since I started this blog, many of you have grown accustomed to the occasional sprinkling in of Bailey stories to lighten the mood in here.  Well, it's with great sadness that I'm telling you we need to find a new home for Bailey.

I know what you're thinking--how can you give up a dog with such great entertainment value?  The honest answer is that it's going to be best for all involved to find her a new family. We simply don't have the time, energy, sanity, space or yard size to accommodate a dog with her energy level.  In the nearly two years we've had her, she has eaten or otherwise destroyed two pairs of eye glasses, several plants, several pairs of underwear, dozens of pens and clothes pins, my new wallet and I'm pretty sure she ate a $5 bill.  That's just a small random sampling of the havoc she has brought to our lives.  Happy and well-adjusted dogs who are content in their environments are not that destructive.

On top of that, she will do anything to escape from our back yard including digging under the fence and jumping over the fence.  She has been really creative in her escape tactics including moving plastic chairs to the fence so she can get over and getting a running start and catapulting off the grill.  And as you have probably seen from a previous video I posted, she has successfully jumped a six foot fence to escape the friendly confines of our back yard.

The only way we have found that even comes close to dissipating her energy build up is to attach her to the bicycle and let her drag us through the neighborhood on a dead sprint for a couple of miles.  She barks the whole way and scares the bejeezus out of everyone.  I think she nearly gave a jogger a heart attack the other night.

So, Amanda and I have decided that we would like to preserve what is left of our youthful sanity and accordingly have sent her information to a Brittany rescue to try to find her a new home.  You can view her profile here (she's the 4th one down under Texas):

Please feel free to forward this link to anyone you know who may be interested.  We think she would make a great hunting dog or even a great family dog if she had a large yard to play in and probably another dog or two to play with.  Sorry for the sad news, but it needed to be said.

Posted via email from camplogic's posterous

Go Coogs!!!

I need to take a moment to congratulate and brag on my alma mater, the University of Houston Cougars. For those of you oblivious to the college football world, UH defeated the #5 ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys this past weekend 45-35, in Stillwater. This is the first time UH has beaten a top 5 team since 1984 and they have achieved their first top 25 ranking since 1991 (currently ranked #21). This kind of play is a far cry from when I attended UH (1998-2002). The best record the Coogs achieved while I was there was 7-4 in 1999. In 2001, they went 0-11. So you can understand my excitement at seeing my beloved Cougars not only winning games, but beating really good teams.

Here is a little highlight video for your enjoyment.

Bailey v. Garden Hose

Sorry for the length of this video, but there weren't really any parts I wanted to cut out. Bailey drives us nuts all the time, but it's times like this that we really enjoy her.

Obama to Circumvent Normal Congressional Vote on Health Care Reform

Our lovable president got on national TV Wednesday night and waxed eloquent about how Congress was actually in agreement on about 80% of the ideas needed to pass health care reform and that the bickering needed to end so they could get something done. He talked about his grand ideas to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans without adding a penny to the deficit, despite the fact the Congressional Budget Office, using the numbers given to it by the White House, predicted a $220 billion increase in the deficit over the next 10 years as a direct result of Obama's health care plan.

The president made a noble request for bipartisanship to get this reform done "because something has to be done." And less than 48 hours after his speech on Wednesday night, he's laying the groundwork to use the budget reconciliation maneuver to circumvent a true congressional vote on the bill.

So much for listening to the people who turned out in 10s of thousands at town hall meetings in August to express their concern about this health care bill. We the people can state our opinions all we want, but our leadership simply doesn't care. According to a recent Gallup poll, 39% of the people polled said they would direct their representative to vote AGAINST Obama's health care plan as opposed to 37% who would direct their representative to vote for it. The other 24% had no opinion. 64% of the people said their vote in 2010 would be directly affected by how their representative votes on health care.

Despite all of this, Obama continues to ignore the citizens. In the article above talking about use of the reconciliation measure, Obama is quoted as saying, "there are a lot of politicians like that who, all they're thinking about is just, ‘How do I get reelected?’ and so they never actually get anything done." That quote was followed by this one from an administration official:

“I think getting something done is paramount here," a senior administration official said before Obama’s address to Congress. "We want to bring along everyone who’s willing to come with us, but the fact that not everyone is willing to come with us is not an excuse to fail in dealing with what is really a fundamental issue that has to be done."

There you have it. This administration has an agenda and they couldn't care less what you and I think. We need to "get something done" because we the people are apparently too stupid to decide what's best for us. We need some out of touch elitists in Washington to make those decisions for us.

In summary, our president thinks that a representative or senator who votes against health care reform because his or her constituents have requested him or her to do so is purely an act of selfish desire to get re-elected. Sounds like a classic Catch-22 to me--represent your constituents by voting against health care and be smeared by the president and his democrat buddies for playing partisan politics, or ignore the majority of your constituents and vote for health care, thereby ensuring you don't get re-elected.

Experimenting with Posterous

For those of you who don't know me very well, I'm always on the look out for new technologies, even if they aren't particularly useful for me.  Free technology is my Achilles heel.  Today I found a pretty cool free technology and am trying it out to see if it will be useful for me.

Posterous let's you post to your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc by emailing content to certain email addresses.  You create an account and set up your linked accounts like your own blog and then use certain email addresses to post to your various linked accounts.  For instance, I'm posting this to my blog by emailing all the content to blog@posterous.com.

I'm still not sure how useful this will be, but I wanted to give it a shot.  Posterous has some other cool features that I'll be trying out in the near future.  I'll keep you updated on whether it's worth it or not.

Posted via email from camplogic's posterous

The Twitter Experience

As most of you have probably seen, I have a "Follow Me on Twitter" button on my blog. I've been using Twitter for several months now and I must say I'm really enjoying it. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking medium. In other words, it's a replacement for (or supplement to) your Facebook status updates.

But what non-Twitter users don't really understand is that Twitter allows you to do so much more than simply update your status. By using a common language made up of hash tags, you can keep track of trending topics. You can also follow your favorite people just like you can friend them on Facebook.

As an example, I'm a UH Cougar alum and I follow Cougar Athletics religiously. Football season is inching closer and closer and I want to make sure I get breaking news updates on all things Cougar football. So, I follow @UHCougarSports and @campbellcoogs, 2 Twitter users who focus on Cougar sports in general and football in particular. But, I want to see if there are other people out there talking about Cougar football. So I use the hash tag system to search for #UH, #UHCougars, #UHfootball, etc. There I can find all the people discussing UH football in real time and can choose to follow those people if I so desire.

It's also great to use as an educational and networking tool for your occupation. If you're a small business owner, in marketing, sales, or whatever your profession, you can find people on Twitter doing the same thing and exchange ideas with them.

Finally, it's a good way to market your wares. Let's say you like to sell things on ebay. Create your listing in ebay for your item and then post a short description and link to your item on Twitter and use the #ebay hash tag. This lets people find your listing when they search Twitter using the #ebay hash tag. The same can be done for Craigs List entries or anything else you want to sell.

I hope this helps. I know there are lots of people out there on the fence about Twitter because they like Facebook and don't care for another social networking tool. Just remember that Twitter and Facebook can be used in completely different ways. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or have some other ideas for Twitter usage.

If you decide to sign up, you can follow me by clicking the button on my blog or going to www.twitter.com/TyCamp. Also, check out this Twitter guide book put out by @Mashable. It will tell you a lot more about how to use Twitter and get the most out of it.

Have You Changed Your Mind?

Ok, we're 8 1/2 months in to President Obama's first term which has given us plenty of time to observe what his policy ambitions are, how those ambitions may or may not differ from his campaign promises, how he intends to handle congress, whether any of his campaign promises are coming true or likely to come true, whether he can be trusted in general, and whether he is leading our country in the right direction.

Having had that time to review and reflect, would you change who you voted for in this past election? This is not aimed solely at those who voted for Obama. If you voted for McCain and wish you had voted for Obama or someone else, I'd like to know why. Likewise, if you voted for Obama but have changed your mind about him, I'd like to know your reasons for that too. All too often people get married to their choices even if they have come to realize they were bad choices. It's ok to change your mind as long as you have a good reason for it.

So, leave a comment and let me know what you think. I know most of my followers are conservatives and I certainly want to hear your opinions. But if you have any friends or family who voted for Obama, please send them the link to this post so I can see what they have to say, regardless of whether they have changed their mind or not. Once I get a good amount of comments, I'll create a new post summarizing my thoughts.

Thanks for helping me satisfy my curiosity!