I am extremely disgusted by the Michael Vick thing.  I am also disappointed to see the Falcons, the NFL and the corporate sponsors take so long to suspend Vick (although the sponsors are making some initial moves finally).

One of Vick's co defendants will be entering a plea on Monday an will likely turn against Michael Vick.

I do believe very firmly that Vick is innocent until proven guilty.

I also believe very firmly that regardless of his legal culpability, he had a moral responsibility to manage his affairs and property better.  If he had been spending just a fraction of his money to insure that no one was abusing dogs on his property or using his property for deviant behavior 60-70 dogs would not have been put to sleep and countless others would not have died on his property or soon after.

So I organized a site to protest Vicks suspension without pay.

What I am doing about it

1. The site is SackVick.net.  I've collected almost a dozen petitions from around the web where you can take action and make your own thoughts known on the subject.
2. I've established a blog carnival to collect other bloggers perspective on Vick.
3. I have collected close to 40 different groups that have hundreds of members each that are working to sack vick.
4. I've also collected dozens of video clips from news, to protest videos and a couple parody videos.  Plus, sponsor commercials of Vick including one with Vick and his Pitbulls in what looks like a dog fighting ring, the commercial is for Nike.

There is lots that you can do

• Please stop by and sign one of the petitions or
• blog about the situation and submit your article to the blog carnival. 
• You can also link to the site and we will include you in the blogroll of bloggers supporting the sacking of Michael Vick.

Should know it as well as I do, there's something about muscle milk.

The concept is simple.  Mothers milk is nourishing it helps an infant grow and develop muscles very very rapidly.  It provides all the sustenance that an infant needs from the age of zero up until three to six months and theoretically even longer. 

So when you combine that concept with the idea of building muscle mass, losing weight and getting into shape you're sure to have a winner.

Actually I'm not so sure that's theoretically true.  As supplements go, I'm sure it probably has many merits on the basis of the value of its ingredients.  However I suspect there's a big difference between a supplement PAC drink and real mothers milk.  Furthermore if mothers milk was so healthy I'm sure someone would found a way to hook a few dozen wetnurse is up to a milking machine to supply some professional wrestlers in Tour de France bicycle racers with all the help they would need to outperform their competitors.

Plus, I've had three children.  I happen to know that all the mothers milk that they drank tended to make them a little pudgy, called baby fat if you will.  That baby fat was rapidly worked office since they started exercising more and eating regular food.  I'm sure the exercise was the biggest part of that, but mothers definitely did not make them muscular. 

It strikes me that there are major scandals hitting almost every area of pop culture.

Baseball - Steroids and Barry Bonds

Football - Michael Vick and Dog Killing charges

Basketball - Referee's that bet on their own games

Political - Throw a dart board with the name of anyone in the Bush Administration and pick your scandal.  The only scandal that has found its way into the Bush administration is a scandal over Bush furniture.

Celebrities - Lindsay Lohan

Non-Celebrities - Paris Hilton

News - CNN broadcasting graphical sexual images during YouTube debate

Soccer - Bending it like a Spice Girl on a reality show

Wrestling - Double homicide plus a suicide and a steroid dealing drug ring

Church - Los Angeles Arch Diocese paying to make scandal go away

I never watch baseball.  But the last few days, I keep finding myself channel flipping and stopping whenever I happen Across Barry Bonds at the plate trying to make a new home run record.

I just watched him miss the shot in the 9th inning against the Braves. 

One Strike

One Fowl

One fly ball to the infield and he was out.

I've witnessed a number of tv moments live throughout the years.  For a non baseball fan I seem to have this feeling that I am going to witness this one as well.

In addition to the regular work I have to do, when I get home I need to start setting aside some time to catch up on projects at the house.

One of those projects include rebuilding my hot tub.  When we bought our house it came with an old seven or eight year old hot tub.  It was listed for zero dollars bought the house and really wasn't worth probably more than a thousand or $1500, but it does work well.

Our hot tub is been sitting outside all this time only protected by its Spa Cover, which are replaced last year for about $400. I probably could've found a better deal if I jumped on line but instead I looked at local stores because I was in a hurry. You can almost always find a better deal on line especially for obscure items like hot tub parts and spa covers and things of that nature. As soon as you set foot in one of those high and fancies Bost ores you're going to pay a premium.

Here's a good example of a place that might help you find a better deal than what you might find at your local high end hot tub retailer. I might even pick up a new hot tub cover myself,last year we had a big windstorm and a big old Pine tree branch fell about 50 feet and got stuck in my brand-new hot tub cover like a dart in a dart board.

Duct tape solved that problem and a little vinyl repair kit it looked that afterwards, but it wasn't like a new hot tub cover to me anymore.  I also need to take a look atfew other options that we need to upgrade our hot tub.

I like sitting in a hot tub at night and reading a book under the stars,but there's definitely a price you have to pay if you keep your hot tub outside and you don't protect it with an actual roof!

TheCoverGuy does provide a 5 year warranty and they deliver anywhere in the US.  When you are talking about spa covers that's a huge bonus.  If I had picked up my first cover there it would have been covered under warranty and I would not have had to drive 90 minutes to the opposite side of Atlanta to pick it up!

I am to him in the several days ago, but I've been working from the lake for the last few days and now I'm preparing to head back home to Atlanta area.  I've been doing a lot of programming encoding over the last few days as well as a lot of business negotiations with some of my new advertising clients.  So today I'm trying to catch up on my writing before I head home.

So I will probably work until the wee hours of the nighttake a nap to wake up and drive home in the morning.I got a lot to do want to get backand I make her to do that but I need to get caught up on this writing thing.  Among other things I'm startinga new pro-blogging assignment tomorrow and be sharing more details about that days to come. 

For many years, decades and centuries the world has struggled with the concept of who is responsible for keeping the environment clean.

People point (that's a key concept) at the oil companies, the refinery owners, the transporters of the products, the gas stations, the automobile industry, the EPA, the national, State and Local governments and more.  They rarely point at themselves as consumers of that energy.  They complain when energy is not there, they complain about energy prices but they do nothing to curb their own consumption.

BP is receiving a great deal of attention in the Lake Michigan region after its Whiting refinery received a permit to discharge a higher level of particles in discharge water that goes into Lake Michigan.  The Chicago Tribune ran an article about the grass roots effort taking place to send an email of protest to the government.

Now, maybe you recall the gas shortages last year across the country resulting from a refinery bottle neck.  BP states that they are attempting to work within the laws to meet guidelines enabling an increase in refinery capacity for the Midwest region and that the Chicago Tribune has missed or over looked several facts(I'd describe this as 'Trying to sell Newspapers' by printing the things that get people stirred up.  I'm glad they are stirring people up, but the call to action is missing the mark. 

To highlight BP's facts they point out that they are

1. investing $3 billion total to modernize the Whiting Refinery
2. Directing $150 million of that $3 billion towards enhancing the wastewater treatment capability
3. and state that they only release treated water into Lake Michigan.

Now people are rightly concerned about any activity that would release a greater amount of anything into our lakes.  The problem is that people are attacking the Band-Aid (BP refinery) treating the symptom (gasoline shortage in US) instead of fighting the cause(dependence on carbon based energy sources from Oil to ethanol or coal sources of power).

*disclaimer.  I'm writing this article less than a mile away from a coal burning power plant that discharges hot water into Lake Wylie in North Carolina.  The lake is 4 feet below me while I type on a fishing dock.  I work from home and do not commute to work so I am taking steps to reduce my own consumption of fuel, but haven't eliminated it as much as I would like.

Stakeholder Approach

Its good that this issue has come up.  It gives all of the stakeholders a chance to work together and improve the situation specifically at the refinery and in general around the world.

The government does contend that they allowed an increase in the discharge level in their permit because its is impossible to remove all of the particles from water.  On the flip side environmental detractors polarize the debate talking about this discharge of 'sludge.'  As I see it both sides here are in the wrong.  The government needs to approach the environment with a 'can do' attitude.

Matching Environmental Responsibility and Accountability - A New Industry is Born

I do not buy the argument that it is not possible to remove all of the particles from the water.  I do not however put the entire burden on BP to clean it either.  If BP is not capable of getting their emission down to zero, then the government that licenses BP needs to step in and receive the water and the responsibility for cleaning it.

The government needs to take responsibility for our land and the licenses they issue to use the land.  That means if they will not require zero emissions, they need to clean the water the rest of the way themselves.

How can they pay for this?

Taxes of course.  Taxes would have to be raised primarily from income taxes and sales taxes.  A tax surcharge would be paid by businesses that operate in industries that create discharge relating to the production of carbon emitting energies.  And all of those protesting consumers would have to pay higher sales taxes at the pump to pay for the clean up of their discharge from utilizing the products that come out of that refinery.

Now, at the end of the day, the government is going to prove that they are not the best people to handle this type of work and they will likely outsource it to some sub niche of an industry that can get the job done and has experience at it.  The most experienced companies that will likely bid on these jobs will be companies like BP.

So BP and competitors in the same industry will win government contracts to clean the water the rest of the way.  The government will have oversight through the laws prescribed to prevent government contractors from abusing the government (more teeth than the EPA has) and our water will get cleaned up as we start to match up Accountability to Responsibility from the gas consumer to the government to the industry and beyond.

Personal Objective Disclosure - BP sponsored me to consider weighing my objective opinion on this subject. I have done that and my opinions are not necessarily those promoted by BP. If you are interested in my political beliefs, I consider my self a Republican with Libertarian tendencies. I think most Republicans higher up in the party are corrupt and I have very little in common with Christian Conservatives that were hijacked into hijacking the Republican party.

I run a lot and from time to time I will wake up in the middle of the night with a severe leg cramp in my calves.  Its agonizing and after almost 14 years of marriage I have slowly learned not to kick my wife on accident as I wake up from a deep sleep in excruciating pain and try to massage my leg back to normal (not to mention get to sleep).

Despite my running my circulation has never been great either.

So I was invited to try a product that you can apply to your legs before you run, or as part of your cool down or even prior to going to bed.

The product is called Freeze It and it comes in the form of a roll on or in a gel. I tried the gel form.  When I first massaged it in I immediately breathed in the heavy menthol smell as the topical medicine began to work.

For the first 2-5 minutes I could not tell if anything was happening.  My skin was cooler too the touch on the leg that had the gel than my other leg.

Right around the 4-5 minute mark, I started to feel the medicine kick in.  My leg felt like it was hot/cold at the same time in a relaxing way that kind of felt like a massage.  (Imagine the pulse of your own blood flowing through your legs massaging your muscles that's kind of what it felt like.)

I also used some on my foot that has joints that sometimes get a little sore.  It felt very cool there as well, but it seemed to have a greater impact on the muscles of my leg. 

I mentioned that my circulation isn't so hot and I think this may have something to do with the feelings in the foot.  I'm not exactly like Adam Sandler in Mr Deeds goes to Washington with a black frost bitten foot that can't feel much, but I'm not too far off.  Minus the disgusting looking black foot thing that is.

Overall, this does seem to help my calves quite a bit and seems to make the circulation feel stronger in the muscles.  I probably won't wake up in the middle of the night resisting the urge to kick and flail out with my wife as an innocent but all to close bystander.

I looked up the price on their website and it runs about $10 which isn't bad, but if you look on Amazon the price is higher($15 - $20) so its probably best to go direct.

I plan on trying this out in a few other situations as well.  I'll probably try it as part of my cool down routine in the future, and I might let my son try it too.  He tends to experience some painful growing pains in his legs, which is a little different than work out pains.

You will feel better about yourself.

That's what I did.  I have been pretty disturbed about the whole Michael Vick Scandal and even more so but in a less visceral way disturbed about the continual complete ineffectiveness of the POTUS George W Bush.

So I signed a couple petitions for the suspension of Vick and the Impeachment of Bush (More Petition details for both items here).

I feel a lot better now having done my small part for the world today and am looking forward to a chance to relax a bit this weekend, maybe even head to the driving range and swing a few golf clubs (standing sideways of course since I have a very dangerous right angle slice). 

For those of you that subscribe to my blog, you know that I have the world's most dangerous slice and I could be convicted myself of torture if I tried to tee off like a normal person and ended up wounding some other golfer standing directly in front of me in the driving range line up.

For the last week and a half 2 of our three dogs have been nuts.  My wife's basset hound and my beagle have both become skittish for no apparent reason at all.  They don't want to go outside, they don't want to go for walks, they cower for no reason, and they have been nervously peeing.

Its that nervous part that has been nerve racking.  I think we might need to find a doggy psychologist or something.  Maybe a neighbor dog intimidated them.  The beagle is a female and the basset is a male and they are both fixed so I don't think its anything like doggy hormones or anything.

They are both great dogs in general.  Good with the kids, good with the baby, good with the other dogs, but all of a sudden they are a nervous wreck.  Our third dog is just fine, but she's a several years older.

I've checked a number of sources looking for more information on any issues with a Basset Hound or a Beagle.  All the information seems accurate, but nothing mentions anything about the potential for a temporary or sudden nervous fit of skittishness.

I'm multi-tasking late this evening.  I was traveling from Georgia to North Carolina this afternoon.  I drove and took a nap after the drive because I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night.

So tonight I'm raring to go and catching up on lots of good things.  Its been a great week for business in general.  Things are coming together nicely on many different fronts and that makes me very excited about this fall as people start getting back from vacation and start looking to make lots of money for Christmas.

So right now I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails 'The Fragile' Album.  This isn't one of my favorite albums by Nine Inch Nails but it is very good.  Its well produced and plays almost like a personal sound track when you let it go in the background.

The album came out in 1999 a few days before my birthday, but I didn't pick it up until about two years later just before we took a vacation to Disney with my son for the first time.  I briefly listened to it while resting my feet after the long Disney walk in our vacation home Orlando in that we had rented.  Then it got packed away in an obscure place and I didn't listen to it again for several years.  (thought it was lost and too stubborn to buy a second copy.)  So I never really had a chance to absorb this album like I have with many of their other albums.

Hey I just wanted to take a second and thank all of my readers and visitors for stopping by.  Traffic has really exploded here at There's Something About Harry and I do appreciate your visit. 

If you have not already subscribed, you can easily sign up for an a free email subscription to There's Something About Harry or you can pick us up in a Feedreader or something like your MyYahoo Pages by signing up here to There's Something About Harry

For even more irreverant topics and story you can also stop by a new little thing I'm starting (it looks like a blog now but will not maintain that form forever) over at

Regardless, Again, Thank you for visiting and I hope that you will come back soon. Drop me a comment anytime you like or shoot me an email if you don't want to be too public. I'm very responsive and always looking for feedback. I'm a blogger to be heard, not to talk to myself!

 I utilize Firefox for my browser and it has some excellent tools for protecting my computer while I'm surfing online.  However thing still slip through the cracks and sometimes they hit your registry and your computer.  At that point they've moved past your browser and there's not a lot Firefox can do about it.

You need a tool to help you clean up your computer after the fact as opposed to the preventative medicine the Firefox the far wall a number of other things can provide is an upfront defense.  I just read an article about UltraSentry, and a segment of that article leapt out at me but as a solution for this problem.

The user can set the native profiles (Total System Scrub, Log-off Clean up, & Privacy Guard) to completely erase not only your browser history, but the registry entries, swap file, and free disk space that can point back to your recently used documents, search history, and deleted email.

Keeping your registry clean and scrubbing your computer to free up disk space is one of those ongoing maintenance things that can drive you nuts if you're running a PC with Microsoft XP (I haven't tried beastie aside on off it's still a pain in the neck there too).  If you have found a better tool for keeping your registry clean and manage well drop us a comment and let us know what you're using.

UltraSentry: A Good Defense Against Cyber Bandits at Top 10 Tech Software

I'm kind of jazzed about the return of the Smashing Pumpkins.  I saw them perform during the LiveEarth concert.  The concert in general was less than average, but the Smashing Pumpkins despite their new members and rusty edges were one of the highlights of the concert, and one of the few acts that seemed to know how to play live.

Billy Corgan has seemed to fight off his personal demons and possibly fight off his personal angels from time to time.  But he seems to be some what refreshed and more grounded (if that's possible).  As a Smashing Pumpkins fan I'm just hoping that translates into a long future of more Smashing Pumpkins music. 

They were extremely creative and continually pushed the bounds of music and I hope they can continue to tap into that muse without self destructing. 

Smashing Pumpkins return to West Coast after seven-year patch - Los Angeles Times

I learned a very valuable lesson at the Podcast and Portable Media Exposition last year in Ontario California. 

Good voice over talent is Priceless!

When you are trying to convey a message, an idea, a story, an article or even an advertisement a good voice recorded with high production values can deliver a great deal of results.

When you go out to hire someone, you rarely think to your self, I want to hire the wrong person for the job.  However, too often people do not do their homework before hiring voice over talent and they end up with average or bad talent.

A bad voice will chase your customers away or possibly even harm your business.  A good voice will attract customer and encourage them to hear your companies pitch.

Don't settle when it comes to voice over talent and you will never be sorry.  Publishers looking to turn their written content into an audio production should also consider hiring the best.  Your readership hinges on keeping your readers attention and this can only be done with someone that has a great voice.

Yesterday I went jogging with my son and daughter.  It was the first time jogging with my daughter Zoe.  She turns five in October.

We stretched before hand and ran at a very slow pace.  That was still quite a thing for Zoe, but she kept up for the entire 2 miles of the run.

My son did great too.  He's 9 and has been jogging with me before.  He had just received a new pair of running shoes and was itching to try them out to see if they would make him 'run faster'.

Zoe has gone for 2-3 mile walks with my wife and I many times and she often runs during those walks so I didn't think this was too much of a stretch for her to try.  I didn't expect her to make it the entire way, but she did.

Maybe in a few more years, we'll even be able to get my third child, Mya out for a distance run.

Prince has got a new album out and I was talking with Andrew about it early this morning.  He mentioned that the album was a little on the average side.

It seems to me that my impression of quite a few of Prince's albums have been that I thought they were average when they came out, but over time I grew to think they were pretty damn good.  I think that has something to do with the fact that he is usually a good bit ahead of his time and it takes his audience a little time to catch up with him on whatever tangent of a musical experience he has veered off on this time. 

Prince is the type of person or artists that can eventually make just about anything work.  You may not get it at first.  You may not even get into it the first 50 times you hear it.  But if you catch him performing it live, even on TV something will probably get across and you will be converted.

He could probably do an infomercial selling auto accessories and you saw him performing live during the infomercial, you'd hit the phone and place your order. There are visionaries that see things and communicate ideas to other people and then there are visionaries that can make things happen. Prince can definitely make things happen.

I am sitting in a theatre waiting to catch the fifth Harry Potter movie.

I am here with three other reporter looking to review the movie and a theater full of kids and parents.

There is a thunderstorm raging outside and rumor has it that Lord Voldemort is close ......

Distance Learning programs are definitely easier to utilize for busy people.  Our sponsors Capella University offers many different types of distance learning degree programs and continuing education programs.  They recently provided a new press release about one of their professors Sara Orem that has recently published a booked on Appreciative Coaching, a sociology and teaching philosophy geared towards positive encouragement.

When you study or learn through an online program it is very important to leverage these concepts with short programs of 4-10 weeks.  This enables students to build up a history of successfully completing courses and building a foundation of knowledge and understanding for their educational path.  Programs that are extended online over a full semester are much more difficult for students to stay focused and on topic.  Online its much easier to get distracted or get lost in a course unless the professor guiding the students can help students stay on track and the length of instruction is limited to a short amount of time.

I was watching the Live Earth concert off and on yesterday afternoon and into the evening.  It seemed like a pretty boring concert all in all.  There were a couple decent performances from Madonna and The Police, but most of the acts were extremely dull.

I was flipping back and forth from Sundance to CNBC.  The sound quality on CNBC for the concert was extremely bad, so it sounded like crap.  However, the Sundance channel commercials were enough to make anyone want to jump off a bridge into a gigantic land fill full of running cars emitting carbon dioxide.  They seemed to have about 4-5 minutes of concert and then 6-9 minutes of the same damn commercials over and over and over again.

Madonna put on a good close the show act featuring some interesting gypsy punk band from the Ukraine that has been all over the US lately. Most of the performers seemed to be suffering from really bad sound checks, or they just couldn't carry a tune at all.

There were a couple acts that sang well, but only covered 2-3 songs and never really seemed to get warmed up.  Like John Mayer and Chris Cornell.  The Smashing Pumpkins reunited sounded pretty good. 

Obligatory Crowd chant

Every single performer that hit the stage seemed determined to get the audience to do something, like wave their hands, jump up and down, stand up, or not throw their plastic cups and bottles on the grounds of the events.  Almost all of the groups seemed to fail in this mission and after watching 20-30 groups/singers try this on multiple continents it got pretty tedious.

The crowd just wasn't into being herded around like cats.  Madonna succeeded in London, but Lenny Kravitz seemed to fail in Rio (he sounded the most consistent of anyone, but seemed to be half as stoned as Macy Gray).  

The Tokyo audience was the exception to herding angst.  They were going nuts for Linkin Park, despite the fact that Linkin Park sounded liked absolute crap as the only person in the group that could sing proceeded to screech yell at the top of his lungs like a death metal singer trying to sound punk.

Al Gore's Weight Meter

Al Gore looked like he had lost weight when he was introduced by Melissa Etheridge.  Then he was later introduced by Carmen "I'm a walking blond joke" Diaz and looked like he had put on about 50 pounds back stage.  I suspect that was an illusion of contrast between the leggy Diaz and the portly Etheridge.

The Bon Jovi Hypocrisy

It seemed a little weird that Bon Jovi would sing their trademark song featuring the lyrics "steel horse I ride" and "wanted dead or alive".  First, the Sundance channel had just featured a doom and gloom commercial about Pig steel and how its sourced through slave labor from the Amazon.  So riding a steel horse in Jersey didn't seem to fit in with the Live Earth theme.  Then I just couldn't help putting together the mental image inspired by the lyrics "Wanted Dead or Alive", the location - New York, and the timing - Post 9/11.  I had this warped mental image of Osama Bin Laden riding around on a steel horse harley with a sling of bandito bullets across his chest slowly killing off the planet by polluting the environment. 

The acts that I missed

I missed seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and thankfully missed seeing Spinal Tap.  A number of people after the show complained about the artists that flew in for the show on private jets.  The Duran Duran front man seemed pretty pissed off about some of his fellow entertainers that thought so little of the environment to forego a private jet.  Meanwhile has been band Oasis boycotted the event all together on principle and probably on drugs.

New Single Promotions and Stupid Songs to Save the environment

About every third entertainer seemed to be pushing a new single that sounded very bad live or pushing a catchy save the planet tune that they had come up with just for the show.  This really didn't seem to work for anyone, including Madonna who sang Hey You, which sounded like a bastardized version of the Pink Floyd song of the same name.

Speaking of Pink Floyd their lead singer sang in New York with several African American children standing behind him while he went though "We don't need no Education".  On the surface that would seem to be a nasty contrast as New York City school children need lots more help getting a quality education, but paying attention to the meaning behind the lyrics it almost rang true as none of us need a false political education.  Of course there was an obligatory Pig balloon floating around the audience during the Pink Floyd numbers with grafiti like images of a 'Wall' and the letters "SOS".  SOS was a consistent theme throughout the concerts, probably referring to save our ship - the earth, but spray painted on a blow up pig, it seemed more fitting to interpret it as "Save Our Sausage."  (Credit to my wife for that one)

I was good today. I did get out to run yesterday & I think I only did a little swimming the day before that. So I was over due & feeling a little lethargic after too much writing and coding.

So I got up early skipped breakfast and went running (not jogging). I ran close to 5 miles and then walked a mile.

I cooled down had a lite breakfast and swam about a quarter mile.

So now I am feeling pretty good and relaxed, more myself again.