Protect your car

Here is info worth the price of your car.

Smart car thieves peer through the windshield of your car or truck, write down the VIN # from the label on the dash, go to the local car dealership and request a duplicate key based on the VIN #.

I didn’t believe this e-mail, so I called Chrysler-Dodge and pretended I had lost my keys. They told me to just bring in the VIN #, and they would cut me one on the spot, and I could order the keyless device if I wanted.

The Car Dealer’s Parts Department will make a duplicate key from the VIN#, and collect payment from the thief who will return to your car. He doesn’t have to break in, do any damage to the vehicle, or draw attention to himself. All he has to do is walk up to your car, insert the key and off he goes to a local Chop Shop with your vehicle.

Don’t believe it? It IS that easy.

To avoid this from happening to you, simply put some tape (electrical tape or duct tape) across the VIN Metal Label located on the dashboard. By law, you can’t remove the VIN, but you CAN cover it so it can’t be viewed through the windshield by a car thief. I urge you to forward this to your friends before some other car thief steals another car or truck. I slipped a 3 x 5 card over the VIN NUMBER.

Educational resource for parents of special ed kids

Came across this great site for parents of kids of all ages and found the special education area of more value than most that I’ve come across. If you’re a parent with a special needs kid be sure to check this resource out here: Special Needs Education

Happy Easter All

It’s not too late to send a nice eCard to a friend or loved one to let them know you care. Visit Cross Cards and pick from a wide variety of religious cards.

Dusting: A Police Officer Writes About His Son’s Death

My mom forwarded me the story below and because I have 3 teen Sons it really hit home. If you have boys it’s worth a read. A police officer shares his heart wrenching story about his teenage Son.

Talk to your kids! Beneath the story you’ll find links to more information about this problem called “dusting”:

One Dad’s Story:

First, I’m going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were #2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn’t allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won’t.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn’t have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer. On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn’t move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust Off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM. I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It’s called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn’t hurt you. It’s just compressed air. It can’t hurt you. His best friend said no.

Kyle was wrong. It’s not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It’s a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out that’s why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can’t hurt you. IT KILLS YOU!

The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It’s not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT’S NOT AN OVERDOSE. It’s Russian Roulette. You don’t die later. Or not feel good and say I’ve had too much. You usually die as you’re breathing it in, if not you die within 2 seconds of finishing ‘the hit.’ That’s why the straw was still in Kyle’s mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open.

The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don’t believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn’t fit here. And that’s why it’s more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn’t follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known. It’s easy to say hey, it’s my life and I’ll do what I want. But it isn’t. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family’s life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can’t describe it. There’s nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don’t ever cry. I do what I’m supposed to do but I don’t really care. My kids are messed up. One won’t talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can’t even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don’t have a drug problem there. They don’t even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this ‘new’ way of getting high they found, they hid it.

The probation officer told the media after Kyle’s death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn’t have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn’t new and some ‘professionals’ do know about. It just isn’t talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it.

April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can’t help but wonder if I died and went to Hell.

To verify the veracity of this story visit: Snopes

Link to MSNBC’s coverage of the problem on the Today Show: Dusting

Link to the actual manufacturer of Dust Off: Dust-Off

10 most amazing pictures taken by the Hubble Space telescope

Astronomers selected the ten most amazing pictures taken by Hubble Space Telescope in last 16 years.

“…they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful.” Michael Hanlon/AH (Nov 25th, 2006)

After correcting an initial problem with the lens, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating astro-observatory began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the “final frontier” it was perusing.

Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from the Daily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos “illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful.”

Hubble telescope’s top ten greatest space photographs:

Voted #1

The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

#2

The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes. The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.

#3

In third place is Nebula NGC 2392, called Eskimo because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.

#4

At four is the Cat’s Eye Nebula

#5

The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a pinched-in-the-middle look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre.

#6

In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).

#7

The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as ‘a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements’.

#8

Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.

#9

The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.

#10

The Trifid Nebula. A ’stellar nursery’, 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born.

Burger King takes it on the chin

That dorky King you see running around in those lame Burger King commercials really takes one on the chin from Joe Prah over at JoePrah.com.

His post really blasts Burger King and he backs it up with some interesting info. I found it to be very timely as I had a double whopper about a week and a half ago, which is very rare for me as I have high cholesterol and I know better. What happened after that fat filled feast is worth mentioning as it may save someone else from going through the same multi-day digestive process.

A couple of days after shoving that double whopper down I became… er… well constipated. At about the same time I began having cramp like pains to the left of my heart. Actually felt like I was pregnant with a lil’ kicker in there periodically letting me have a good kick in the ribs. This went on for several days and frankly I was concerned because heart trouble runs in my family on my dad’s side.

After 4 days of this kicking sensation and feeling bloated I broke down and decided to see a doctor. So the next day I went in to try and figure out what the heck the problem was.

As we ruled out heart trouble we began focusing on my diet and we quickly narrowed it down to eating that double whopper, as well as, hundreds upon hundreds of shelled peanuts courtesy of Costco and years of being told they were healthy. It’s worth mentioning that I was not drinking enough water either. Maybe 2 cups out of the recommended 8 per day.

So at least the ordeal ended without a stint, pacemaker, or worse. Needless to say I’m off of fat filled feasts and peanuts and feeling better now.

Check out the post over at JoePrah.com and think twice before you take your kids or yourself to Burger King in the future.

To your health!

Possible help for your mortgage woes

If you have a mortgage that was larger then the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac maximum loan size of $417,000 then this post is for you.

President Bush signed a law in February that is going into effect right now that allows Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans as large as $729,750 in some markets and between $417,000 and $729,750 in others.

What does this mean? This means that these quasi-government lenders can make loans that will be backed by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) making it easier for homeowners in these markets to get a jumbo loan or to refinance if their current mortgage if they’re in between a rock and a hard place.

Here in Northern Virginia the new limit is at the new maximum allowed, $729,750, and there is hope that this will begin to turn the tide in the right direction for the local real estate market. Turning this financial blood bath around is in all of our interest as the amount of money that is evaporating is is enormous and threatens to drill our economy into far worse then a typical recession. Let’s hope it helps.

For more information on the new law you can visit the government site at: Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)

For details on what the new higher limits are in your area visit: FHA Backed Jumbo Loan Limits By Area.

For keeping track of interest rates, mortgage news, calculating payments in different scenarios I use this great site: BankRate

For two years I worked as an Account Executive for a large mortgage lender so feel free to ask questions via the comments. In the near future I’ll be launching a new blog called Loan Aides for people looking for advice on getting a loan.

Cheap mosquito deterrent

Came across this tip from one of those emails that makes its way to thousands of recipients. I haven’t tried it, but I have tried many other far more expensive “solutions” so I’m looking forward to trying this one. We have a pond in our backyard, as well as, some soggy areas a few hundred feet from the house so mosquito control is serious business for us.

The secret tip? Listerine. That’s right, Listerine. If you spray Listerine around the area out back where you’re going to be or around your doorways into your home you should notice a dramatic decrease in the number of mosquitos buzzing around. Please let me know if you’ve tried this and what the results were. I’ll do the same in a couple of months when mosquitos are trying to invade again.

Site for the organic babies in the crowd

If your baby wants only the best organic products and insists you don’t buy him or her anything but, then you need to visit: Go Natural Baby

Go Natural Baby manufacturers a line of organic baby clothes they’ve dubbed the ‘Zah Collection’. They also offer other organic product such as; baby gifts, baby products, handmade items, and unique boutique gifts. All organic and natural of course.

Parenting news site for dads

NewsForParents.org is a great site for parents. They offers hundreds of well written articles on a wide variety of topics of interest to a dad. Some of the main topics include; latest parenting news, family and home, babies, pregnancy, special needs children, and several other topics for moms and dads at all stages of parenthood.

(Some of you have asked if the picture was my family… no, but thanks for asking. Just a randomly selected happy family.)

- This site has been added to the Dads Directory for future reference. -

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