The Pledge of Allegiance

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all."

That is the pledge that I grew up reciting everyday in school (K-12). I continue to recite the Pledge at appropriate moments and get a great sense of pride from doing it. In my mind, the Republic for which it stands is not the bureaucracy in DC, Columbus, or (*ahem*) Urbana. The Republic for which it stands are the people that keep this country going strong. I am not oblivious to the current economic issues facing OUR country, I am just optimistic that history will and always does repeat itself. We have survived, we will survive, and prosper as only WE can. Naive? Maybe, but if someone can prove me wrong, then WE ALL have something more to worry about than someone not reciting the Pledge.

The notion that the Pledge is somehow flawed because it was originally written by two Socialists is ridiculous. People who claim that the Pledge is a forced vow of obedience to the State have a skewed sense of patriotism. The word allegiance has many meanings, but in the framework of the Pledge, allegiance is synonymous with fidelity (faithfulness). Have you ever met a US Marine? Try explaining to them why you think they are upholding 'Socialist' ideals. Semper Fi

Want to know more about the Pledge than you ever thought possible? Start with my favorite jumping off point... Wikipedia

"Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made."

It is not everyday that one has the opportunity to quote Mel Brooks, but in this instance it could not be helped. While you will not find any < blog > Smack < / blog > t-shirts, lunch boxes or flame throwers here, you will certainly notice the block ad to your right containing often helpful info regarding the topics this blog tends to discuss. As someone who does not particularly care for captive audience advertising, I considered not putting any kind of ad space on my blog. Then it struck me that if any revenue was actually generated (that should be a 82pt, bold, italicized, underlined if), then I could simply slip the funds into my daughters' savings accounts.

Then a "Snap Shot" caught my attention. I was browsing some website and a link popped up showing me a thumbnail of the targeted site; interested, I followed through to the Snap Shots home page and set up an account. They recommend in their "Best Practices" section, that anyone introducing the tool to their audience include the following snippet:

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

In any event, these items have been installed on this blog, mainly for my tinkering and for your information. Assuming that most people are desensitized from this kind of advertising anyway, nobody should be offended by their inclusion. If I am wrong, you know what to do.

Back to the Beans

As I continue to learn and develop my programming skills, I have found that I really prefer the NetBeans IDE [ www.NetBeans.org ] over the Eclipse IDE [ www.eclipse.org ]. When I first started using an IDE for my Java code (about two years ago) , I found NetBeans to be very user friendly. One of the main reasons for this perceived ease of use was the frequent distribution of "how-to" videos, blogs, articles, etc. by members of the NetBeans developer community.

The weekly NetBeans newsletter provides continuous updates and introductory instructions for the newest or often overlooked features of the IDE. While Eclipse is the "industry standard" IDE for Java development, Netbeans is gaining ground and now allows users to import Eclipse projects.
More later...