I guess I’m feeling cynical today after reading a Wall Street Journal article on how computer hackers (presumably from China) have hacked into and stolen sensitive material (but not classified) on the $300 billion F-35 project. Why cynical? Well, I can’t really think of a better reason to allow Pentagon and Congress members to cancel an over-funded, under-delivered, by-all-means crappy project without losing face nor firing anyone in charge than to stage a break-in of a military project. They’ll probably fire a few low-level IT people, implement a draconian, half-ass security protocol and call it a day.

Yes, I ‘m suggesting that it’s not beneath our ‘trusted’ officials to do such things rather than to take responsibility for bilking the American taxpayers for money under the guise of national security, squandering $300 billion, and really compromising security since more realistic, much needed programs went unfunded.

On another note, I’m betting the SDI ‘Star Wars’ project gets ‘hacked’ soon too so that we’ll be able to cancel that technically infeasible waste of money without losing face. Okay, maybe I'll actually be happy with that.

We're back in town now from our Easter trip to Louisiana to see my family there. A good time was had by all. Even though I got sick, I still enjoyed the food, rain, and time with the family.

I was struck by the smaller children and how much fun they were having. I remember when that was me some 30+ years ago. I enjoyed the Pâques-ing of eggs. Pâques is french for Easter. It sounds like 'pock' which is the same sound that two eggs make when you gently smash their ends together until one breaks. It's like a bilingual onomatopoeia. In any event, the winner keeps the broken egg and it's a great way to get the young kids to talk to the older folks. Plus, hey, who doesn't like smashing colored hard-boiled eggs together and hearing one crack? You are never too old for that.

From an email:

Life Lessons From Out of the Mouths of Babes

I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Her parents, both liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President, what's the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people." Her proud parents fairly beamed!

"Wow, what a worthy goal," I told her, "but you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and rake my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party." Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

My oldest son has been after me for weeks to play a joke on my wife for April Fools. I kept telling him no, mostly because his ideas weren't funny. Kid, bring me some good material... Heh.

So, last night (March 31st) as he's watching me do something on my computer, I turned to him and said, "So, today was April Fools. You missed it." He face lit up like fireworks on July 4th. "What?!" He stammered and stuttered. It was really quite cute.

I quickly said, "April Fools!" before he stormed off. He thought it was a hoot.

I recently bought Apple's Mac Box Set which allows for five licenses of their Leopard OS and iLife '09 and iWork '09. I doubt if I'll use iWork '09, but the other stuff is all good.

With three Macs in my house, I can now stay legal *and* up to date. I spent the weekend backing up our machines then applying the upgrade. Leopard is pretty cool. It has some nice eye candy and I like the expanding folder look in the dock.

iLife is even better. Its face recognition feature allows me to group photos by kid, spouse, and family members. Its Places feature allows me to put a pin on a Google Map and tell it where I took the photo then I can group all photos by location.

All in all, it's cool. After a few quirks are worked out, it'll only get better.

So, two geek thumbs up.

I joined Facebook. The end is nigh.

I learned something! I always thought the following was true:

Fiscal Fallacies: First, if money is not going to be printed, it has to come from somewhere. If the government borrows a dollar from you, that is a dollar that you do not spend, or that you do not lend to a company to spend on new investment. Every dollar of increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us to build more of both. This is just accounting, and does not need a complex argument about “crowding out???...

But after reading this, I learned that it's false. I guess it's never too late to learn something new. Heh.

On Sunday, my youngest came down with a fever and started vomiting. A trip to the doctor on Monday confirmed that he had strep throat. Last night, my oldest started vomiting, just as I thought the youngest was free and clear.

It looks like we'll be hunkering down this weekend and recovering. Please keep them in your prayers.

This video, "The Crisis of Credit Visualized," is the best explanation of the credit crisis you'll hear. It's a nice animated video about 10 minutes long.

The oldest screams, "Mooooommmm! He pinched me!" The youngest replies in a small voice, "Sowwy."

Yep, another bath time in my household.

That reminds me of this.