Samsung Galaxy S III

I finally upgraded from my old Droid X 3G phone to a new Galaxy S III 4G. The tipping point was Best Buy selling the phone for $49.99 (regular price $99.99) along with a $50 gift certificate which was applied to the cost so that I essentially got the phone for free with a 2-year contract extension. The new plan gives me unlimited talk/text minutes with double the data, wifi & hotspot connections at 10 times the speed of the 3G network for about the same price as the previous plan.  All in all, a pretty good deal!

The phone, itself, has exceeded my expectations. The screen resolution is outstanding and it is loaded with free features. One built-in app that I am playing with is the ability to take a photo and then have it automatically uploaded to my online Google Picasa Album. Traditionally, when I make a credit card purchase, I keep the receipt to match-up with the next billing statement. Now I snap a picture of the receipt, it is automatically uploaded to Picasa and I have no paper hard copies to fool with. Wonder what they will think of next.

National Park Service

Quote from The Weekly Standard: “It’s one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It’s another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party.”

National Park Closures

Whenever the current administration wants more money, they try to inflict as much pain on the public as their bureaucracy will allow. They did it with the sequestration and now they are doing it again with the government shutdown. Consider the following examples by the National Park Service:

• On Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II Memorial, an open air, unguarded site in Washington, D.C. One NPS employee was operating a forklift. There usually are not any NPS employees working at the World War II memorial. It cost the taxpayers more to close the Memorial than to keep it open.
• The NPS has closed the Grand Canyon National Park even though the State of Arizona has offered to pay for it. A similar offer by the State of South Dakota to keep Mount Rushmore open has been rejected by the NPS. Considering the revenue normally generated by these two parks, their closure is costing taxpayers more money, not less.
• Lastly, here is a quote from an angry Park Service ranger taken from an article by the Washington Times: "It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation. We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

The gates at the WWII Memorial have been wired shut to keep veterans from moving them...

Update (10/7/13):  Click here to see a list of government actions that are designed to inflict pain upon the public.