Manny Ramirez is back to the Dodgers Tonight After a 50 Game Suspension

Manny Ramirez, the Los Angeles Dodgers' slugger and left fielder will be back in the lineup tonight against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park. This is news because Manny has been forced to miss the last 50 games due to a violation of the MLB's drug policy. Ramirez was caught taking a banned substance, specifically a women's drug known to be taken by athletes ending a period of steroid use. He has not yet been caught using steroids though, to be clear.

The Dodger's slugger bats third in the potent lineup which leads all of baseball with the best record in the bigs. Manny comes into tonights game with 533 career homeruns, 17th on the all-time list.

There are many positions on the steroid issue, and I for one am ashamed the game has been tainted by it. Having said that, since the era is tainted with performance enhancing drugs I don't think you can hold players out of the hall of fame because it must be the case that currently there are players in the hall that have not and will not be caught using, even though they did. So in my view, holding out players you did catch shouldn't make a difference. I don't think 'well you got caught' should be the tag line to hall eligibility.

I will be watching Manny tonight, but then again I watch most all Dodger games. I hate to say that it has become so widespread a problem, steroids that is, that I don't really care anymore. I'd just like to see the sport cleaned up and the issue to go away.

Download pictures from Picasa using DownloadThemAll

Downloading the original pictures uploaded to Picasa all at once is easy if you're using Firefox. DownloadThemAll is a plug-in for Firefox which can be used for many things but I have found it most useful for me when needing access to original pictures from Picasa.

1) Download the plug-in DownloadThemAll and install it to your Firefox browser.
2) Go to the Picasa album where you want to download the pictures from
3) Picasa provides the RSS feed for the pictures so all you have to do is click on RSS on the right hand side of that page to bring up the feed.
4) Still with me? Now just right click on the screen and click on DownloadThemAll.
4-a) Save the files in a directory you specify and select Images under the filters.
5) PRESS START

One thing I am still trying to figure out with Picasa is how to display a random image from the album using the RSS feed... Any suggestions?

Clean Installs Don't Have to Hurt

Yesterday a clean install was performed on my computer. The process refered to as a "clean install" means all your data is going to be wiped off your computer and your computer is going to be as clean as it was the day you purchased it, maybe cleaner.

In my case my clean install was prompted by the need to reinstall an operating system as my Windows 7 beta was going to expire and needed to be updated to Windows 7 Release Candidate 1. Other reasons to do a clean install might be to clean out the cobwebs and improve performance. Viruses and harddrive crashes as well as other hardware failures may also force a clean install.

The warnings to back up and then back up some more generally fall on deaf ears. When the question is posed to a group of people about their data backup strategy the room quickly divides.

In the first group you have your smug fellows who do backup their files, second you have your optimistic group who are sure such a catastophe will never befall them or they have this pragmatic confidence that while this could happen to them they will certainly have gotten their back up act together by then and will be prepared, the third group have lost data, they know the damage it can do and yet they know they do not have a backup and their heads hang in shame and maybe a little bit of fear.

But there is another group. A group that "Lives on the Cloud", meaning the information in stored on the internet and not on your harddrive. Life on the cloud is "hardware independent" because your harddrive will die and you don't want it to take out your data with it. Let me give you a taste of how this can work.

How My Gmail Account has Changed the Reinstall Forever
By using gmail for your domain my email and all the related attachments can be accessed on any computer with a username and password. So after a clean install has been performed I log in to my gmail account and there are all of my emails just as I left them.

• Log into my gmail account and access all my email.
• Reinstall my programs by searching gmail for program name to find activation code and download most recent version of the internet.
• My documents are all saved as Google Doc and are available upon sign in
• My iGoogle Page has my bookmarks to frequented sites and important information which I reference often.

And I am back working at my clean computer and I know that I have my data. Do you?

What is Social Media Anyway?

Social Media in the news. Creating and Commuincating with the people that matter.

Week two and again the tv is flooded with stories found using Social Media. CNN is replying to tweets from the viewers, and social media sites have become the hub of what is hot, right now.

What is social media anyway? In a nutshell it is user generated, shareable, embeddable, with commenting and voting added.

Does social media matter? Only if you think email matters, as internet users are spending as much time surfing social media sites as they are reading their own email boxes!

Welcome to the club gone digital, in a world where only a few love pickel ice cream those few can now find each other.

Need help finding your niche and fitting in? We can help.

iPhone 3GS Web Speed Test

The iPhone web browser speed test knocks the competition out of the water. The statistics of the tests were rather astonishing. Medialets ran the SunSpider test suite with Safari 4.0.1 on a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo White MacBook (the baseline for comparisons), Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v2.2.1, Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v3.0, Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS v3.0, the "Browser" app on the T-Mobile G1 with Android OS v1.5 (Cupcake) and the "Web" app on the Palm Pre with Web OS v1.0.2.

iPhone OS 3.0 on the same iPhone 3G yields nearly 3X the JavaScript performance in Mobile Safari vs. using iPhone OS 2.2.1. Which should make everyone who has not bought a 3GS very happy. The iPhone 3GS steps up another factor of 3, bringing JavaScript performance on the iPhone 3GS to 12X that of a desktop machine that has well over four times the raw processing power.

The T-Mobile G1 running the "Cupcake" version of the Android OS finished the test suite in about 91 seconds. It is about a third faster than the iPhone 3G running Apple's OS (2.2.1). The Palm Pre had speeds that closely rival the iPhone 3G running Apple's OS 3.0.

This Week We Are The World

This week we are the world. The world was all a twitter with tweets about the death of three American icons. These were three people from three generations.

On Tuesday our blogger honored Ed McMahon, who passed at age 86. McMahon was a gentleman that we welcomed into our homes for more than 30 years as Johnny Carson's sidekick among other roles.

Yesterday, our blogger honored Michael Jackson, who passed at age 50. This iconic legend who most of us have watched for the past 40 years, from a little boy to a grown man, always surprised us with his talent and creativity, among other things.

I will not let the week go by without honoring Farrah Fawcett, who passed at age 62. For those of us who are Farrah's peers by age, we remember her smile and her gorgeous hair. All the women wanted hair like Farrah and all the men wanted the women in their lives to have hair like Farrah. She was a fine actress and you would know this if you saw some of her more serious movies. Now she will be remembered as a brave woman who was willing to share with all of us her struggle with cancer to the end.

In this world filled with technology...twitter, plurk, tagged, YouTube, my space, facebook, emails, blogs...today is Saturday and it is just a day to remember that in January 1985 Michael Jackson collaborated with Lionel Richie and produced with Quincy Jones a song that touched us all. We are the World! (United Support of Artists for Africa) We listened intently, we bought the album and together we tried to help save a continent, most particularly Ethiopia.


As this day closes, I will remember that Dennis and I played this album with our children when they were quite young. The album is still in our home carefully preserved for whatever reason. Maybe because it made us think, hope and assure ourselves that we are all part of this world and this week We Are The World making a choice.

Enjoy this remarkable YouTube video of the studio recording of We Are The World. I'd would love to hear from you!



....change can only come...when we stand together as one!

Michael Jackson- The King of Pop, dead at 50

Michael Jackson was the 'King of Pop', even if you are not a pop music fan. There are few artists that change the way music is played, viewed or in this case danced to.

When I think to myself about the classic hits of Jackson's career, I think of never being able to go to a wedding without hearing at least 3 to 5 of his hits, which then immediately fills the dance floor.

Personally I am more of a rock n' roll guy, but I will admit I don't enjoy dancing to anyone else's songs much more. The way this guy moved on stage set the tone for all single pop acts after him. You look at one of today's biggest acts, Justin Timberlake who's career aims at the exact audience of Michael Jackson's. Timberlake has basically said that he is just trying to be like Jackson. Originality is rare and can be revolutionary.

Michael Jackson continues the line of troubled mega-stars like Elvis, or in a sense the Beatles. With all of his recent problems and physical difficulties, may he rest in peace.

My final note is from my rock n roll perspective- check out how Jackson incorporated a rock solo played by Eddie Van Halen into a classic pop hit- 'Beat It'.