Author: michaeldhaem

Only 16 days till Election

Only 16 days till Election Day … in this election campaign we failed to address any real issues. Instead, this election is about hate. It’s about the Bush hates and the Liberal haters. Each side blames the worlds ills on the other … and takes credit for the good. Why can’t we just discuss the issues?

In a discussion with a very staunch Democrat, I asked, “Why would you vote for Kerry when he promised to raise taxes?” There initial response was “Well he wont be raising my taxes.” I then asked, “So you think it’s OK to raise taxes as long as they are not your taxes?” There reply was “He won’t really raise taxes.” I quickly responded, “So you would vote for a liar?” They responded “No!” I asked once again “Why would you vote for someone who promises to raise taxes?” There was no response … they walked away with an over the shoulder comment of “I hate Bush.”

I contend, that the more money our government collects from us the more control they can exercise over our lives. This control is a direct threat to our individual freedoms. I urge everyone to get out and vote against the Kerry tax plan.

Monday morning bright and early

Monday morning bright and early we departed Mom’s house for Disney World. Arrived just as the parks were opening… and it was raining. In fact it rained most to day and it was great cause it held the temperature down to the low 80’s. We parked at Epcot and took the bus to MGM Studios. Our first stop was for some rain gear then it was off to the Star Wars exhibit and a star ship ride to the planet Endor. Then we watched the 3D Muppet Show followed by a Back Lot Tour that included Catastrophe Canyon. Along the way we ran into Buzz Lightyear and Woody. Stopped long enough for a chat and pictures. Our next stop was the Greatest Movie Tour. The best part of this ride is the Wizard of Oz set where robots replay the “follow-the-yellow-brick-road” scene including the green wicked witch of the east. Next we hopped the bus back to Epcot and had lunch. We next walked through all of the cities of the world followed by a ride on the Test Track. Sandy & Melissa then went on the mission to Space ride while Jayson and I visited Imagination and designed, built and raced a robot. The day ended watching fireworks & light show. Sandy wore a pedometer this visit … it reported that we walked 12 miles. No wonder we were so tired. Vacation pictures.

We had a great flight

We had a great flight to Tampa … with one stop in St. Louis. We adopted two kids for the flight who were traveling alone. With four kids it was a fun flight. I reserved a compact rental car for our vacation. However ended up with a PT Cruiser for the same price. With four of us on this trip ,we need the extra room. It was dark as we drove to Mom’s, so did not see much hurricane damage. Arrived around 8:00 PM. Talked until the wee hours of the morning catching up on all the events. Jayson, Melissa, and Mom managed to play 3 games of old maid before going to bed. Sunday morning the card games resumed. While Mom, Sandy, and Jayson played cards, I sorted and organized yesterday’s pictures. Today the plan is to just relax, visit, and prepare for our Disney World visit tomorrow. See latest vacation pictures.

Tomorrow it’s off to Florida.

Tomorrow it’s off to Florida. We will be visiting my Mom, in Winter Haven. This small community was hit by four hurricanes this year. Two passed right over the town. Mom sustained virtually no damage. Just lost a few shingles. Looking forward to seeing first hand how the town held up. We have a late morning flight, so won’t get to Mom’s until around 8:00 PM Florida time… Sunday we will relax and visit with Mom. Then Monday it’s off to Disney World. Plan a return visit on Wednesday. The balance of time will be spent visiting with Mom. Expect to spend a lot of time playing cards. She loves to play “hand-and-foot”, and is quite good at it. This trip we are taking our Melissa, our granddaughter and our grandson Jayson. Jayson traveled with us last June when we visited Mom. It was his first trip to Disney World… he is an old hand and expects to be his cousins guide. Jayson is five and Melissa is seventeen. Will post updates with pictures later next week.

Last week I picked up

Last week I picked up the Aaron Hillegass Cocoa Programming fro Mac OS X, Second Edition book. Thought I might work it through and gain some proficiency with Object-C. So far I have completed the first five chapters including the Challenge exercises. Most of my time has been spent working the challenge exercises in chapter 4 & 5. Actually, the time was spent looking at the class documentation and figuring out how to implement a Delegate. Completing the exercise really made me feel stupid. It was actually so simple, but took several attempts over a three-day period to get it to work. Part of the problem is that at work use MS Visual Studio and code .Net C#. In this environment I use intelle-sense and seldom need to look at class documentation. However, the xcode IDE does not have this feature.

Today I learned that if I made a connection between my application window and the instance of my application using the window delegate, added the delegate definition to the .h file

– (NSSize)windowWillResize:(NSWindow *)sender toSize:(NSSize)frameSize;

and implemented it in the .m file I could control the widow size as the window was resized by the user.

– (NSSize)windowWillResize:(NSWindow *)sender toSize:(NSSize)frameSize
{
frameSize.height = frameSize.width * .5;
return frameSize;
}

What it really amounts to is the adding the definition of the delegate and returning its frameSize in the implementation. The coding paradigm is so different in Cocoa.