Schadenfreunde

I was looking for some domains for a side project, and noticed that godaddy has access to “.de” domains. My blog has always been Schadenfreunde, so I checked and sure enough, Schadenfreun.de was available! Yippee!  The old blog site,  http://weblog.techiesalumni.com now redirects to this domain. 

I also changed blog themes… while I like the Hemingway theme very much, it was a bit dark (even though some of the posts on this may be considered “dark”).  I changed themes to a simpler, lighter theme, rest assured, I’ll continue with the “darkness” on occasion. But this will also include topics such as music (I play guitar), and coral reef ( I’m into coral reef aquaria, especially the Acroporids and Tridacnids!).

I am writing an app that utilizes CommunityEngine. At first, Mongrel puked on the RAILS_GEM_VERSION=2.0.2, duh! I have Rails 2.1.0 installed. Make a quick changed and pow!

/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/module/aliasing.rb:31:in `alias_method': undefined method `initialize_schema_information' for module `ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::SchemaStatements' (NameError)


I gotta love this…. So I googled it… I didn’t find much in the way of solutions other than that there has been some of reports of this error. Since CommunityEngine is based upon engines, I checked that right away, sure enough the version of Rails engine that I was running was out of date and didn’t support Rails 2.1.0. So I updated my engines plugin, restarted Mongrel and voila, it worked!

I keep bashing the Dems (and will so, until my last breath leaves my body), but I’d like to make it very clear, that I’m no Republican, or at least not one to subscribe to the views of the Republican Party of late. Government in general has become so entirely corrupt and its politicians ineffective, self-serving and frankly dumb, I can not see why anyone would not be outraged.

As a model for Republican ideals, I look to Thomas Jefferson (though many recently point to President Reagan). For me, the modern Republican Party sticks to many closest socialist ideals, as exhibited in President Nixon’s quote “We are all Keynesians now!”, ok, let’s contrast the core Republican view held by Jefferson that “The government is best which governs least” with Keynes’ view that markets are at times unstable and so the government needs to intervene to fix things. Unfortunately, Keynesian economics are at the heart of the Republican Party.

Instead, we should look more to the Austrian and Chicago Schools, and understand the importance of the entrepreneur, private property, and the marginalist revolution. Americans need to wake up that the bigger the government, the less individual freedoms we have, but if that isn’t important, why not consider living in Cuba where the state controls everything.

I caught a bit of “Meet the Press” this weekend. The Dem’s chief Idiot, Nancy Pelosi, is changing her tune ever so slightly. Apparently, the Dems do understand a little bit of economics when she said that the key is to reducing the cost of gas is increasing supply. But yet, she apparently missed out on her finance classes, when she said that offshore drilling won’t cause the prices to decrease for 10 years. Classic incompetence. Brokaw also hammered her on Congress’ abysmal approval rating, something like 14%, and she, par for the course, blamed the President for not getting anything done, ie. getting out of Iraq.

The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves right now to see what a mess the government has become. The government has become nothing more than a means to steal from the taxpayers (mostly the Middle Class) to keep their pathetic excuses for lives in office, via their constant lies, inactivity, and apathy for the common man. Yet, all of this is our fault, we’re just as apathetic and uninvolved. It’s time for us to change this! A quote from Jefferson,

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.


I picked up Christine Comaford-Lynch’s book “Rules for Renegades” cause I’ve been in a funk for a while and needed a pick me up. A really good read, and am going to start to implement concepts immediately. “Growing up” in the tech industry, I loved reading about her early days at Microsoft and dating Bill Gates, and starting several ventures. I was surprised when I started reading Chapter 9, “Resign as General Manager of the Universe”. It was deeply touching to read of the experience of her father’s death. I can sorta relate when my Grandfather was taken from cancer, but also the fact that I’ve had as poor of a relationship with my father as she has. I was reading this at a Caribou and at a couple of points had teary eyes.

Back to the review, I’d highly recommend this to people that are feeling stuck or are in that period (that many, including myself are) when you are looking to take your career to the next level and are being held back due to your current employment situation. The most important is to start to act upon the many lists and plans included in the book.

One of my action is to start a new management consulting firm, initially focusing on helping non-profit organizations improve their operations, processes, especially in regard to obtaining donations. I’ll be doing this on the side, most likely at night, until I can leave my firm. I’ll keep you posted!

So yeah, Pelosi, the Socialist Speaker of the House, is not allowing an energy bill to be presented to the House which presumably includes lifting the ban on offshore and domestic drilling for oil. These goof balls in the Congress need to go, it’s too bad Jesse isn’t running for Senator for Minnesota. Even though he’s responsible for our money losing Light Rail system, I’d vote for him to stop Al ‘Stewart Smally’ Franken, and democratic in Republican clothing Norm Coleman.

By the way, if you so desire, you can call Pelosi at (202) 225-0100 to express your distaste with her BS.

I was having problems with a nested resource….
route.rb

map.resource :accounts do |account|
account.resources :contacts
end

contacts/new.html.erb

<% form_for(@contact) do |f| %>

..

I was getting
ActionController::MethodNotAllowed (Only get, put, and delete requests are allowed.)
fun. I tried a lot of things, I googled it, and didn’t quite find the solution….. After a good 30 minutes, the solution appeared below,

<% form_for(:contact, :url => account_contacts_path(@account) do |f| %>


Good luck!

In a grad school class, I did an analysis of the European banks. This was a few years ago, but a firm that caught my eye: BNP Paribas (EUR:BNP). The former state owned bank turned powerhouse due to its acquisition of investment boutique Paribas in 2000, looked to be the bank to bet on. Not only that, there is a lot of room for domestic (EU) growth. While a MOE (merger of equals) of Deutsche Bank, probably wouldn’t happen, I proposed that BNP Paribas buy the 3 or 4 top German bank Commerzbank. They just finished its acquisition of Bank of the West, but I knew they’d continue their American conquest. While the terms are undisclosed, they agreed to purchase the equity prime division of Bank of America.

My professor had an I banking background (when at citi, T Boone Pickens was one of his clients), and worked for SoGen. He commented on my paper/presentation that SoGen was the French bank to watch not BNP Paribas…

It’s not Kobe or Garnett that’s getting the full court press, it’s the USD! Funny, both Bernacke and Bush are spouting off about a strong dollar policy. Hmmmm, let me see here, our fiscal discipline is as much of a joke as our monetary discipline. The rise in oil is yet another asset bubble, fueled by the Feds printing money like it’s going out of style (wait, it is as Foreign Central Banks reduce their holdings of USD for other currencies such as the Euro, Yen, etc).

How about a fucking apology to the taxpayers?!? Why? The Fed is not in the business of bailing out business, is not the role of capitalism to weed out uncompetitive businesses?!? Is it the role of government to bail out private enterprises?!? NO!