Enough with the facial Prophylactics: Aids and H1N1

Tonite I saw on Twitter that @jordanmitcheld tweeted:

@mrskutcher 90 people get swine flu & everybody wants 2wear surgical masks. 1 mill people have AIDS & nobody wants 2wear a condom

It’s perhaps the most honest appraisal of the Swine Flu situation in the U.S. and across the world which is why it made me take pause.

Why is this flu so bad that it’s suddenly the number one killer on the public’s mind? It’s certainly not the Flu’s mortality rate. The symptoms suck but it’s not as if you bleed out of every orifice! So why is the Swine Flu capturing our attention in such a way that smart citizens are rushing out and buying masks that in many cases only block 68% of the particles and work best when worn by the infected person?

AIDS kills a lot of people; that’s an understatement, car accidents kill a lot of people, AIDS is a mass murder of a disease, yet it can be stopped or at the least inhibited through proper education and wearing a thin piece of rubber.

So why isn’t there a constant run on condoms? It’s because AIDS is still the disease that affects gays, drug users, hookers and other “unmentionable” members of society. Upstanding citizens don’t get AIDS! Especially ones who aren’t lying in bed with strangers. But the Swine Flu. It’s named after a dirty animal! I could get it from touching a door knob; standing next to someone at a soccer game, shaking the hand of the president at a respected university.

Swine Flu could come from…gasp…anyone…anywhere!

That’s the problem. Right now, the majority of the public feels safe from AIDS; so long as they obey the rules they won’t catch AIDS. Play it safe and nothing bad will happen to you. For many people, H1N1 or the Swine Flu is exactly the opposite; it’s out there, waiting, to pounce from anywhere.

It’s sad disheartening that people still think this way about AIDS. I don’t care how much you claim to worry about it for the majority of our population AIDS is somebody else’s problem, just like Swine Flu would have been had it stayed in Mexico. This perception will be a hard one to change, and I don’t have the answers but until people start looking at AIDS as a problem for all of humanity, it will remain a problem that no one cares about until it hits close to home. And that’s what’s sad.

Trillian Astra handing out Beta invites- FOR REAL

Despite my love for Digsby and all the nasty comments from my fake Trillian Astra release April Fools prank in 2008 I was excited to learn that the Curelean Studios is handing out beta keys for the Windows Beta of Astra right now. If you go sign up you’ll get an invite instantly!

I had asked to be notified in the past but just resigned up and before I could switch to my Gmail tab I had recieved the download token.

Sign up for Trillian Astra Now

Via Lifehacker

Sponsor love - Spirit of Texas Salsa still rocks!

Just last week I got my second case of Spirit of Texas Salsa delivered and already I have two empty jars sitting in the trash and a half eaten bag of tortilla chips on the counter. This delicious salsa is shipped straight from the heart of Texas and you can tell from the taste. If you can remember the Pace commercial below then you’ll know what I mean, except that Spirit of Texas Salsa makes Pace seem like it was made in New York City!

As I mentioned the last time I got a case of salsa, Spirit of Texas Salsa Rocks! I’m not saying this just because they are a sponsor of this website either. The salsa has the perfect consistency and an amazing blend of flavors. I’m partial to the medium variety because it has just the right amount of kick. The Hot is exactly that, with a clean your sinuses out blast of heat that is good for all the caspsaicin addicts out there as well as an occasional winter warmer upper.

I prefer a good chip and a bowl of salsa but have on occasion been known to use it in cooking up something with a little kick in the kitchen. You can find a varied selection of recipes on the Spirit of Texas Salsa recipe page to spice up your next evening meal.

Even though I love my salsa about as much as I enjoy Yuengling beer, I’m willing to give away one jar of whichever heat level you desire to the 2 best salsa recipes left in the comments by April 20th. Just make sure you use a real email address when you leave the comment so that I can get your address.

If you don’t win or just can’t wait you can get a free jar from Gourmet food mall, just pay $5 shipping, and be sure to tell them Josh sent you.

Check out my wall mounted office

Even though I love using my HP Mini 1000 to blog on the go and my Tablet works out well at home, I’ve longed for a nice widescreen monitor and full size keyboard. Since we live in a small one bedroom apartment, adding a desk to our dining room/library/reading room was out of the question and so was setting up shop in full force on the dining room table.

Rather than purchase an Anthro eNook or an Ikea knock off I decided to turn our kitchen table into an office that had a zero footprint when we wanted to have people over for dinner and thus the “Wall Mounted Office” was born.

I purchased a wall mount from Telehook Articulating Mount for $45 from ProVantage (which ships extremely fast) a 19 inch widescreen Acer monitor and a Microsoft keyboard and mouse for a total cost of under $200 excluding the laptop I already had.

You can checkout the slideshow below and head to the Flickr page to learn more about each step.

Feel free to ask questions or share your thoughts in the comments.

Slow your scroll: Fix sluggish scrolling in windows 7

If you’re windows 7 installation has seriously sluggish scrolling when you connect an external mouse you may need to install the new Windows 7 Intellipoint software from Microsoft.

After installing the beta software my new Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 is good as new, which is a good thing since it is BRAND new.

You can find the full details as well as direct Windows 7 Intellipoint download links at My Digital Life.

Stay tuned for my attempt at a zero footprint home office coming soon.

Fix smtp sending issues on Windows Mobile

For the past 6 months I’ve had a major issue with sending email through my gmail account using the Samsung i760 running WM6.1.

While Microsoft hasn’t issued a fix the xda developers have come up with a registry edit and installable cab file to fix the smtp sending failure issue in Windows Mobile.

The issue seems comes up after your smtp server fails once. After that you won’t be able to send email until you delete and recreate the account.

With this new fix the problem should be solved. After I installed it I had to delete the old account that was failing but it appears to be working now.

If you’re looking for how to set up an IMAP connection on Windows Mobile check out my guide.

Targus Netbook Bag for my HP Mini 1000

Tonite I found a Targus bag that works great to hold my HP Mini 1000 netbook. The bag is a Targus DVD213US designed for portable DVD players.

I found the messenger style bag at TJ Maxx on the clearance rack for just over $5 thanks to the TJ Maxx customer appreciation day.

There is plenty of room in the netbook, power adapter, mouse, camera and even a book if I need to.

You can check out more pictures on Flickr.

So cold my boogers are freezing!

I just took the trash out and I couldn’t get, the above Calvin and Hobbes strips out of my head. It is seriously cold enough for Calvin to get frozen boogers out there people!

Full Strip originally run February 5th 1988.

I spent the next 20 minutes searching for an image online without any luck and finally found a site that let me search the text from any Calvin and Hobbes strip which told me what book it was in; including the page. So I pulled out The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
and captured it here for you.

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