BBQ Tweetup

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Overview

As some may have heard, we’ll be hosting a BBQ Tweetup at our house this summer. It will be held on Saturday, July 31st at 2PM. Food will be served around 4PM. There will be a $5 cover for adults, because (good) meat is, well, expensive. The party will be held at my house in Goldsboro, PA

Update

50% of all proceeds will be donated to the American Bird Conservancy to assist in oil cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Menu (What I’ll Be Providing)

  • Pulled Pork
  • Baby Back Ribs
  • BBQ Chicken
  • Corn on the Cob
  • Rolls
  • Cornbread Muffins
  • Soda (limited quantities, extra requested[Coke, Sprite, Gingerale])
  • Water
  • Plates, Napkins, Plasticware

Update: My neighbor will be donating a 30 pack of Coors Light, a 24 pack of Yuengling, and a (2)24 packs of Corona.

If you’d like to add to the menu, you can bring a covered dish, desert, chips, soda, etc. Alcohol is more than welcome, but it is BYO.

The Afterparty

As the sun goes down, we’ll get a bonfire started and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll have stuff to make s’mores if you’d like. If you’re coming from further away and wish to stay overnight, there will be an area where you can set up your tent and camp out as well as a few hotels 10-15 min away.

To RSVP

If you plan on attending, please email me at ryanduff [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know how many will be attending. Upon RSVP, I’ll send you the exact street address.

Other Misc Notes

  • Seating will be limited, but I’ll try and get as many tables and chairs as I can. If you have folding chairs, please bring them. We’ll need some for the bonfire as well, if you plan on staying.
  • I think I have a set of horseshoes, but if you have any other picnic games, feel free to bring them and we’ll find a place to set them up.
  • Since BBQ is cooked low and slow, I’ll only be able to make so much of each meat within the time frame. If it looks like we’re not going to have enough, I’ll also plan on cooking some hamburgers and hot dogs. As it stands, I’ll be starting the pulled pork at 7:30PM Friday night so that I have time to cook the ribs and chicken and be done at 4PM Saturday…
  • I could use a hand with prep and set up Saturday morning. If anybody would like to volunteer to help out in the kitchen, etc please let me know. As an incentive, there will be no cover charge if you volunteer and help out.
  • There will be no rain date. I will have covered areas so hopefully the weather cooperates.

Guest List (local tweeps)

  • @dziner
  • @imthegirl
  • @williamsba / @amber331 – Veggie tray, dip
  • @onefinejay – watermelon, salad, dressing
  • @hodgepodgery / @mdguzy – Spinach, strawberry, and pecan salad; baked beans
  • @mpthomas1
  • @privatestorm
  • @jgillette
  • @tyrannytierny
  • @edgrohl
  • @alobodig
  • @phillip_copley – (2) 12 packs of soda
  • @deuscain
  • @sandrasarcasm – veggie burgers, cookies
  • @rhoadesrage – chips, cheese dip
  • @sarah_sherrif / @asg_warlord – chips, guacamole
  • @bpolensky / @ljoreo
  • @dahcheet – chips
  • @mattheyfrey
  • @technog33k
  • @christinerobyn
  • @rycoco
  • @kulabk – pasta salad
  • @dani_pa – pasta salad
  • @kimparsell
  • [neighbors / family] – brownies (2x), watermelon, pasta salad, fruit salad, potato salad, baked beans

If Healthcare Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is

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Saw this in Linda Rhodes’ Our Parents, Ourselves column in today’s Patriot News.

Q: My parents saw an ad for a new health insurance plan as a result of the Health Care Reform law, but it sounded too good to be true. How can they tell?

A: The first red flag is that it’s “too good to be true.” Scam artists are savvy at telling consumers what they want to hear. Insurance fraud experts caution that if the deal seems too good — like you’ll get full coverage, no pre-existing conditions, cheap premiums, no medical exam or detailed questions to answer — then you are likely being scammed.

Now, I’m not sure if it was inadvertant, but it sounds a heck of a lot like what the democrats promised. In short, yes, the American people got fleeced.

I wonder why the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has not gone after Lord Obama, Commander Pelosi, Count Reid, et al. for this travesty they call “reform.”

Why the Government Takeover of Healthcare is Wrong

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So, you want a few reasons why the healthcare takeover is wrong? Here’s some for starters:

  • The 10th Amendment Prohibits It
  • One-Size-Fits-All Will Never Work
  • No Federal Government Program Has Been Successful

The 10th Amendment prohibits Federal Takeover

The 10th Amendment says that all powers not explicitly granted in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is reserved to the states.

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.

Nowhere in the US Constitution nor the Bill of Rights states that the Federal Government must provide healthcare to all citizens. Therefore it is a job to be taken care of at the state level.

Why One-Size-Fits-All Will Never Work

To further add to the argument that states should take care of these issues, is that “We the People” are a diverse people. Compare one region to another and they’re guaranteed to have different ideals or ways to do things. The Founding Fathers reserved powers to the states for just that reason. They knew that if they tried to make everybody fit the same mold, it would not work. At some point in time, we decided to allow the Federal Government to take over things and look where we are now… they want to take over everything.

No Federal Government Program Has Been Successful

Face it, can you name a federal program that works as promised? Social Security, Medicare, Department of Education, Department of Energy… they’ve all failed, yet we keep throwing more money at them to try and sustain them. They’re products of failed promises and failed budget estimates, usually because of government bloat and self-interest. Each and every program costs the taxpayer more and more money to run, yet we see no progress. At conception of the Department of Energy, we relied 35% on foreign energy, now its 70%. The goal of DoE never worked out, yet we keep funding it.

Education is another great example. We try and fit kids into a mold, yet at the same time we preach that each person is their own individual. Do you learn the same way I do? Not everybody does, yet we try and force all kids in public schools to learn the same way. In the end, we handicap the smart kids just to try and make children with disabilities meet the same bar. What sense does that make? If local governments could manage education, and the taxes to support the local schools, they could vote, and determine what gets taught. In the end, everybody would get a better education.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Founding Fathers prohibited the Federal Government from taking over things for a smart reason, one size does not fit all. Every case where the Federal government has taken power over an area, it hasn’t worked and its for that one reason alone. Let the state and local governments take care of your issues, and we’ll all be better off.

2010 Resolutions – 1 Month In

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Today is February 1st. Where are you as far as your New Years resolutions?

I’m not one to make a whole list of resolutions, but I have one major thing I wanted to accomplish this year. Form my consultancy and make it profitable by the end of the year. I’m still working on the website, but I have gotten my business cards done and handed some out. In return, I do have some clients and potential clients. I hoped to have my website done weeks ago, but due to other circumstances, that has been delayed. So, I am making progress, just not at the rate I would like.

With a baby on the way… April 1st if she decides to stay in until full term, I do need to get working on getting things done now. I also need to finish the nursery– sooner rather than later.

How have you been doing with your New Years resolutions? Are you on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule one month into 2010?

Mailman Stops Working in Plesk 9

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I just noticed that Mailman stopped working about 6 weeks ago. I have a (dv) server at MediaTemple and it runs Plesk 9.x. This has been an issue for a while now, where it randomly stops working. If you have the same issues with Mailman under Plesk, here’s a fix for you. Run the following command:

$ /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/mailman_conf_init  /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py  qmail

This will force a reconfiguration of Mailman for qmail. After that, restart qmail and Mailman

$ service restart qmail
$ service restart mailman

Found and modified via Plesk forums

Victoria’s Secret Sleazy Credit Card Language

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Recently my girlfriend got a notice regarding a change in terms to her Victoria’s Secret credit card agreement. Victoria’s Secret store cards are held by World Financial Network National Bank. In reading these terms, I found some oddly worded sentences, that made it seem almost as if they were trying to slide changes past their women card holders. It mainly pertained to finance charges. (Emphasis mine).

14. FINANCE CHARGES

D. The Daily Periodic Rate of FINANCE CHARGE applicable to your Account will be computed by adding 21.74% to the value of an “Index,” and dividing by 365 (The corresponding ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE will be the Index plus 21.74%). The Index in effect for each Billing Period shall be the highest “Prime Rate” of interest as published in the “Money Rates” section of The Wall Street Journal for the calendar month preceding the month in which the Billing Period begins, rounded upward, if necessary, to the nearest .001% (“Index”). The corresponding ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE will not decrease below 24.99% nor increase above 24.99%. An increase or decrease in the Annual Percentage Rate will result in a corresponding increase or decrease in the amount of Finance Charge.

Effective July 1, 2010. The 24.99% maximum Annual Percentage Rate will be removed from your account. This means that the Annual Percentage Rate on your account can increase above the 24.99%, upon an increase in the Prime Rate.

In plain English, the APR on your Victoria’s Secret card will be 24.99%. That is, until the rate cap is removed on July 1, 2010 and it can be further increased. Better pay off that card each month unless you like paying 24.99% interest on all those fancy bras and underwear.

Oh, and you better opt out of receiving monthly paper statements or they’ll charge you $1 for each of those you want to receive.

Upgrading Multiple Subversion Copies of WordPress With a Script

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I run all my WordPress installs as Subversion checkouts. This makes it easier to upgrade since there’s no FTP involved and I can choose when to upgrade as well as to what version. Since I have multiple blogs, I created a script to facilitate an easy upgrade all of them at once when a new version is released.

As a Christmas present to the WordPress community I’m making my script available to the public.

The only requirement is that you’re using subversion to manage your WordPress installs already. Other than that, the script is pretty simple to use, there’s just one line of paths that needs to be updated.

To use this script, start by creating a new bash script on your server:

vi wpupdate.sh

Press “I” to turn insert mode in vim and paste in the following:

#! /bin/bash
# Copyright (c) 2009 Ryan Duff <http://ryanduff.net>
# This script is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0 or above
#
# This script upgrades (switches) a subversion copy of WordPress to a tagged version of your choice
# List of Current WordPress tag versions can be found at <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags>

# Set your paths
paths=(/path/to/install/1/ /path/to/install/2/)

clear

echo WordPress Update Script
echo ------------------------
echo
echo -n "Please enter version number and press [ENTER]: "
read version

for path in ${paths[@]}
do
cd $path
svn sw http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/$version/ .
done

Move your cursor up to the paths line and change to match the full paths to your WordPress installs.

Save the file. (Press Esc to exit insert mode. Type :wq and press Enter to save the file and quit vim)

Make the file executable:

chmod +x wpupdate.sh

To run the script type:

./wpupdate.sh

When prompted, enter the version tag you want to update to and press Enter. Current WordPress version tags can be found here.

If you have any questions or problems, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Phone Carrier Religion

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At the November Harrisburg Tweetup, a discussion started regarding cell phone carriers. As usual, it became an all out war. Why do people defend their phone carrier like its a religion and fight anybody that’s on a different carrier? Seriously!

People seem to have no problem spending hours defending their cell phone carrier. For what reason? Just because it works for you, why does it have to work for everybody else? I’m tired of people trying to shove their opinions down everybody else’s throat. I choose what works best for me, you choose what works best for you. If I have an issue with my phone carrier, I’ll change to a different one. If you have an issue with my phone carrier, bite your tongue and keep it to yourself. I’m tired of hearing about it.

Of course, the whole Verizon/AT&T dispute only makes things worse for everybody.