First death in US from the piggy flu

This morning when I woke up I got a text waiting on my phone about the first U.S. death in this whole piggy flu thing. Well I am still on the fence of weather this is real or if this is a black helicopter spread the word and control the masses thing. Anyway I frankly don't care. The purpose of this post is to head off and answer all the "hey James why are you such an insensitive A** HOLE" emails and comments. Let me start by saying did you read the "about" section. Next if this is a black helicopter control the masses thing being constructed in a hollywood basement the goal would be to pull as many heart strings as possible. This means the announcement is on course for a proper propaganda campaign. Being that I am NOT a conspiracy theory nut job I will buy that it really happened and my heart breaks for the family who lost their child. I am still not going to give the swine flu any power as in the big picture it still doesnt matter. My heart goes out to the family's of the 15 kids who died yesterday from birth defects and the parents of the 3 kids who died last night from SIDS. You see death happens it is a natural part of life. Illness happens the world is full of small viruses and parasites we can't see. You cant sweat the microscopic stuff. Go play with your kids, go to work, get over it. Thousands of people get the flu every year and some die it happens.

Have I gone too far? I hope so!

My latest toy hopes to make light of the swine flu hype that has been floating around. Everyone is up in arms about the pig flu which is fully treatable and to date has killed 0 people in the us and a relatively small percent world wide. Think of all the ways people die:

- Over 1,100 people will die today in the US from smoking
- 1000 people will die from poor diet and exercise
- 230 people will die from Alcohol
- 72 From car crashes

So why are we getting wall to wall coverage of this swine flu.

I Created the piggy flu hot line which ultimately squeals like a pig in your ear though it should probably read off the above stats. Feel free to call it at 253-243-1726. You can also follow it's progress on twitter at http://twitter.com/piggy_phone

Marriage of twitter and Asterisk

As you may or may not know I spend between 50 and 168 Hours a week with Asterisk , Telephony, VOIP and Linux. I have been playing allot lately with the twitter API for personal stuff and I would love to marry Asterisk and Twitter in a useful manner. I have sat and thought about this and can't come up with anything overly useful. So far I have a watchdog that watches the Asterisk proc and tweets every few minutes when it is down. I would like to hear your thoughts on useful or Fun applications for Twitter with Asterisk.

The key feature I like is the ability to have Twitter SMS you and countless others. There are many ways to hack this and twitter has privacy settings to restrict the viewing of tweets.

Please comment with your thoughts...

Some wan't to repeal the 22nd ammendment!

As is with all partisan politics the one side will do whatever it takes to vilify the other. I am a LOUD and PROUD opponent to the whole 2 party system. The main problem with the two party system is one ideology can take over very fast and control everything. The magic number was three for checks and balances. Three branches of government to prevent abuse . Well we need at least 3 major parties if not more. That said I don't like Obama. I think Obama is an idiot and some of his ideas are very dangerous to America. I do NOT however make everything black and white (no pun intended) Because some of his ideas are stupid and just plane idiotic does not make him 100% pure evil. This is what the left did to Bush. People on the right complained about how bad the left was for being the way they were with Bush. Those same people from the right who were up in arms are now applying the same standard to Obama. Next comes the two wrongs blah blah. I think if the right wants any prayer of recovering our country they should act a little less like the crazies on the left.

Back on topic, well it is all sort of on the same topic of bad ideas and stupid people. There is a faction of folks who want to repeal the 22nd amendment. For those of you who do not play Constitution the home game, that is the one which says presidents should only serve 2 terms. Lets look back at the Bush thing. Imagine if 8 years of bush was 16 years of Bush. I realize Obama is the golden child at this point in the game with a little over 3 months in office but what happens when the honeymoon is over and things go bad. A few compromised votes and we are no better than Nazi Germany, Cuba, and most south American or terrorist countries. A leader who is in office indefinitely will lead to totalitarianism or a dictatorship. The problem with our country now is not because of Obama, Not because of Bush, nor Clinton or other Bush. Todays problems are not from Reagen or Carter. All of these guys came in and served the time alloted to them by lucky number 22 and got out. The problems in America today are the fault of a branch of government with no term limits. The United States Congress is full of folks who have been in office through all of the fore mentioned presidents. I say HELL NO to the repealing of the 22nd and it is time for America to stand up and limit the terms of congress. It was never the intention of our founding fathers for there to ever be career politicians. Unfortunately congress will never put any restrictions on them selves so America must!