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My wife emailed this to me today.  Since I work part-time at the Mega-Mart, she thought that it would interest me.  By the way, this may be cute and stuff but talk to any Greeter and they have tons of similar tales to tell!

A very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into Wal-Mart with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance.

The Wal-Mart Greeter said pleasantly, “Good morning, and welcome to Wal-Mart.  Nice children you have there. Are they twins?”

The woman stopped yelling long enough to say, “Hell no they ain’t!  The oldest one’s 9 and the other one’s 7.

 Why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just stupid?”

“I’m neither blind nor stupid, Ma’am ,” replied the greeter. “I just couldn’t believe someone would sleep with you twice.

   Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.

Hi Folks..  Randy here…

I’ve been trying to learn CSS.  For those who don’t do much HTML coding, it the method for styling your pages.  Colors, borders, widths, and so forth, can be individualized within the CSS stylesheet.  Anyhow, it’s been a bear for me to learn ( you know… Old Dogs & New Tricks ).  I’ve gone to W3C’s website and studied their tutorial, which is great, but I never found a great coding aid until recently.

I’ve used Dreamweaver© for years and loved it.  I still do.  But for working with both page views and stylesheets it leaves something to be desired.  I’ve used Programmer’s Notepad; another great tool.  I love it too, but I needed an app that helped me with the blank spaces in my CSS knowledge mental database.

Here’s what I found.  It’s called Aptana Studio 1.1.  It’s free… repeat FREE…. for the Community Edition.  That’s what I downloaded.  There is a Pro Edition.  There is a price on that one and if you choose you can upgrade from within the Community Edition.  The blurb below is from their website.

Aptana Studio is a powerful, free and open source Ajax development environment which runs stand-alone or within Eclipse. With over 2,000,000 downloads to date, thousands of developers a day are discovering why Aptana Studio is now the leading choice of web professionals everywhere. Why? Aptana Studio offers unparalleled tooling for Ajax including HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript editing and debugging, plus support via additional free plugins for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR, Apple iPhone development.

Here’s what I like about it.  You can work on your page view and your stylesheet at the same time.  Not only will Aptana Studio validate your CSS on the fly but help with your HTML syntax on the page view.  It lets you view your work in both Firefox© and in IE© without leaving the program.  I actually checked how accurate this feature was by openning the same view in both IE© and Firefox© browsers and compared the output with the internal view.  They matched!

What I like most about Aptana Studio is their CSS editor.  I don’t know about you but I don’t code every day.  So I need a little help remembering the values of the properties I’m trying to use.  I can remember properties like ‘width’ and the values for ‘width’ but some of the other properties I don’t use so much.  Ergo, I need a mental push.  Aptana Studio does that for me.  Just type in a property and it shows you all the values available that you can use.  Neat huh!

Aptana Studio also has plugins for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe© Air, and iPhone©/iPod© Touch development.  Cool!  The PHP was the only plugin that I needed for now.  I’ll play with the others later.

For those who care, Aptana Studio has Ajax tools build in.  It comes with their Aptana Jaxer Server integrated into the application so that development of end-to-end Ajax applications requires no further installations or server setup.  It works with most of the Ajax libraries.

Bottom line… This is a great tool for anyone who needs to code or style their webpages.  Two thumbs up for the Aptana crew for this one.  It gets five stars from me.

Hi Folks.. Randy here…

I got this in an email from Joe Jr. who is a cousin of mine.  We have a family newsletter and he sends me stuff of interest.  This time I thought that the subject was to important not to share with everyone.

His email follows….
 

Blood Clots/Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator, the Tongue.

Early treatment of stroke can minimize damage and aid in quicker recovery time.

Stroke

 
STROKE: Remember the 1st Three Letters…. S.T.R.
My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word  I agree.

If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.
Seriously..

Please read:

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) ….she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food.  While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.)  She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.  Some don’t die…. they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this…

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke… totally.  He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the ‘3′ steps, STR.  Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster.  The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.  Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

1. S * Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. T * Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) ( i.e. It is sunny out today)
3. R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke ——– Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE:  Another ’sign’ of a stroke is this:  Ask the person to ’stick’ out his tongue..If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to
10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

Hi Folks… Randy here..

My sweet wife Sherri forwarded this video to me and I wanted to share it with you all.   This has to be the coolest choir presentation yet.  I don’t know from whence they are from or from which group they belong.  I just appreciate creativity when I see it.

No matter what religio-philosophical entity you belong, this is just darn cool!  Kudos to the anonymous crew that produced this goodie!

Hello bloggers… Randy here..

I decided to upgrade my 2 year old version of WordPress© yesterday.  I started through the whole back up your blog and database routine.  I thought that there had to be a better solution.  Not that my skills weren’t up to it.  It’s just a matter of why do something longhand when someone out there has a nifty solution for the problem/issue.

I poked around the WordPress© upgrade info webpage and found that nifty solution.  It’s a plugin called the WordPress Automatic Update .  This thing works GREAT!  The instructions are simple.  You don’t even have to disable your existing plugins.  It backs up your files and database.  Allows you to download them to your local machine and then upgrades to the latest version of WordPress©.  In my case that was V 2.6.

I’m sure that you could possibly screw it up somehow.  But if you follow the instructions and the screen prompts your outcome will be golden.  It seems idiot proof.

If you’re contemplating an upgrade to your WordPress© blog, then this is the plugin for you.  It’s a gem.  Visit the Techie Buzz website for the complete scoop on the plugin and the download.  It’s one of those plugins that you would be grateful to pay for, so give them a donation.

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Internal Customer Service or Employees are Customers too.

All of us have visited our local large retailers. You know the ones, the Mega-Marts. I had an experience at one recently that brought out issues of customer service. Not the obvious issues regarding the shopping customer but the issues with the employee customer. This has to do with Internal Customer Service.

Please take the time to read my article, “Customer Service in a Retail Environment” at the ITM ServShop website. If you have any interest in customer service or employee relations, this is a good read.

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I was thinking the other day about the number of people in this country who are allergic to peanut butter. Not just peanut butter but gluten, soy, lactose, etc… Why, in the span of one or two generations, do we have people allergic to all these food components? I think I know, but I don’t like the answer.

We have become genetically diluted. There are genes in the pool that weren’t there 40 years ago. Maybe it’s because more people are surviving infancy. Maybe it’s because we’re using more immunizations to protect ourselves that we were 40 years ago.

When I was a kid. When the measles or chicken pox broke out in our neighbor hood, my mother, who was a nurse and a very good one, would send one or all of us over there to play. Knowing full well that we’d get infected. But she also knew that, if we got it early, we’d get it over with and be immune for the rest of our lives.

It worked for everything but smallpox. We had to get immunized for that. Sometimes I think that her method of immunization was head and shoulders better than all the piddly shots our kids are required to get. We got the real disease. We worked our immune systems. It’s like lifting weights in the gym. If you work hard you get lasting results and benefits. It’s like immunization shots are immunity lite.

Now here’s the hard answer to the allergy question. Why are so many folks allergic all of a sudden to food products that we have been using for years? Why are they dying or going into anaphylaxis if they eat eggs, milk, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, or soy products? I believe that they got a second chance at life as an infant and are paying the price. There are so many medical techniques available that allow Doctors to increase the survival rate of newborns. Newborns that wouldn’t have survived even 40 years ago.

Now we have in our gene pool a larger number of genes that would have been weeded out. Defective genes from people who wouldn’t normally in the pool at all. Those genes are spreading through the pool and are affecting us as a body.

For those who would like more information on food allergies, go to The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network.

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We all know by now the tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. I would like to pass along my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy and condolences to all of those affected by this terrible and catastrophic event.

That being said, I wish to comment on some of the news coverage regarding this horrible incident. I have heard almost as much from the “powers that be” in New York City and environs about the Virginia gun laws as about the tragedy itself. So the folks in New York City have different views about gun control. That’s fine. I’m not trying to start a debate about gun control, per se.

I am commenting on one group meddling in the business of a sovereign entity’s right to exercise the choices of their constituency. The people of Virginia voted for the gun law. They’re the ones who have to live with it. If New York wants to keep guns out, fine. Let them. Don’t tell Virginia or any other state how to conduct their business. If Virginia wants to pass a law that gives out firearms to any person over the age of 15, it would be their business. If they wanted to pass a law making gun ownership a felony, that’s their business. It ain’t anyone else’s!

No matter how you feel about firearms, this is a matter of freedom of choice and states rights. If you don’t live in the state then you’ve got no business sticking your nose into their business.

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As I told you, Family Matters has started up.  It’s a family newsletter sort of thing but everybody likes reading about other folks so there’s no telling who might be interested.

If you’re curious, visit http://www.familymatters.itmservweb.com  and check it out.