Oh, Lappy – I hardly knew ye…

Just this weekend, my work laptop – a Toshiba (hereinafter “Trashshiba”) Satellite A215 dropped dead.

Yes, the thing won’t boot at all. Our technology cat at work tells me that it’s probably a hard drive issue meaning that a lot of the data I had stored on that thing is gone. Yes, another cheap, piece of crap hard drive is all I need to get it up and running again.

Ah, that’s a shame but it’s no surprise. As I’ve ranted about before I’d prefer to have a Macintosh. However, my employers love Windows PCs and my wife has blocked my attempts to purchase one for the house (she claims they’re too expensive).

The thing I hate about Windows is this – there are an awful lot of cheap Windows PCs and notebooks out there. There are some expensive ones, too, but Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money convincing everyone that cheap hardware is just great.

That’s the entire premise of Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign, isn’t it. “Don’t get a Macintosh! This cheap piece of crap has everything you need and it runs Windows! Don’t be a sucker!”

So people get suckered into buying substandard hardware because they’re convinced it’s just dandy. Take that Trashiba of mine. I asked for a Macintosh a couple of years ago and got a cheap Windows notebook instead.

“Look at what you get for the money,” I was told. “A Macintosh is just unreasonably expensive.”

So, instead of a durable Mac I wound up with something that dropped dead after a couple of years because I had the audacity to use it regularly. Hell, I even carried the laptop around and used it as a portable computer – certainly it wasn’t designed to be mobile, was it?

There’s a reason some Windows boxes are dirt cheap – they’re built with the shoddiest, crappiest components on the planet and fail in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is this – you can get certainly get a durable PC made with top notch components but it will cost about as much as a comparable Mac. Don’t think a $500 laptop can hold a candle to one that costs $2,000 one that’s running either Mac OS X or whatever flavor of Windows is popular this week.

Yes, Windows can be a good operating system – but you’ve got to be willing to buy some decent hardware and that costs money. You don’t hear Microsoft talking much about that, do you? If you take the “this computer is great because it’s cheap” argument from the company, what does Microsoft really have left?

Fight! Fight! Fight!

If you’re in a mood for a good old knock down, drag out fight, why not head over to a political chat room?

Whether you want to bash or defend Barack Obama, claim Islamists are being treated too harshly or not harshly enough or generally howl at anyone with an opposing political view, the boards over at the aptly named Argue With Anyone are for you. You’ll find the right, left, middle and more extremists than you can shake a stick over there and who wouldn’t want that?

Frankly, I love sites like that. Why? The site is moderated in only the loosest sense of the word, meaning that free and open political debate is possible (hell, it’s encouraged). There’s not a thing in this day and age where political discussions are either annoying polite or kept to people who all agree with each other.

I’ve always maintained that political discourse isn’t worth much if you don’t understand the point of view from the other side of the aisle. Head on over to Argue with Anyone and you’ll get an education in a hurry.

An entire year of worthless nonsense!

One year ago I opened the Natural State Hawg so that I might be able to bore and confuse people around the world.

Folks, it’s been a heck of a good time. I’ve met some fantastic bloggers and genuinely nice people through this little blog of mine – probably my favorite things about this project, actually.

Frankly, I am almost amazed that I’ve lasted a year. Who can prattle on about virtually nothing for almost 12 months straight? Apparently, I can do just that. Why? Because this world produces no shortage of things that amuse me, intrigue me or just plain piss me off.

Also, I make my living as a writer. I’m a public relations guy by trade (I still prefer the term “media cat”) and once made my living as a newspaper reporter. Evidently, there’s a lot of truth to the old adage suggesting that writers run around writing stuff at random because they can’t help themselves.

I figure I’ve got at least another year in me on this blog. I would like to thank my regular visitors – you cats are the best.

SEO Results – because it’s all about traffic

A few weeks ago we started a blog at my office. We use it to get our message out to the media, the public and our members (I handle public relations for a trade group representing Realtors).

Before we bothered with the blog, I did my research and found all kinds of advice about achieving what we wanted – a lot of traffic. Getting traffic has a lot to do with promotion.

If your site is promoted properly, then your ranking in Google will increase and you’ll find all sorts of traffic. Why? Because sites that are promoted well wind up on the “first page” of a Google search for terms related to the site.

When you do get to the point where you wind up on the first page of search results, you get a scad of organic traffic – the best kind of traffic there is if run a commercial site. Organic traffic, see, is made up of people who are very interested in your site because they have located it through their chosen search terms.

There are many ways to get that organic traffic, of course. An established method involves making sure a blog is search engine optimized (SEO) – to make sure the blog is full of keywords that search engines will grab.

ThinkBIG is a company that promises to help step customers through the confusing SEO world by helping site owners set up those keywords that will attract traffic. Is ThinkBIG a reputable company? Read some testimonials from people who have achieved solid SEO Results through the company and decide for yourself.

What the hell is the government up to now?

I ran across a little fact the other day that has just bugged the hell out of me since then.

I was writing a story about interest rates for a small newspaper in Little Rock. It seems they’ve popped up over 5 percent and that has slowed down both sales and refinances. My task, of course, was to find out why mortgage rates are rising.

I should point out that it’s ridiculous to claim that any interest rate below 6 percent is high on a 30-year, fixed mortgage. Still, rates hovered between 4 and 5 percent for so many months that people got used to it.

Here’s the thing about those low interest rates – they are primarily the result of the Federal Reserve buying up mortgage backed securities on the secondary market. Now, mortgage backed securities are exactly what they sound like – you take a bunch of mortgages, package up that debt and sell it to investors. They behave rather like bonds.

On the day after Thanksgiving, the Federal Reserve announced it was essentially guaranteeing $500 billion in mortgage backed securities. The hope, of course, was that investors would then regard those securities as safer investors and buy them. Because the yields would drop, interest rates would fall and people would be motivated to purchase homes.

Additionally, buying up and guaranteeing those loans would give more capital to banks which would, in turn, lend money to people seeking mortgages.

That plan worked. Sort of. Mortgage rates dropped and capital started flowing a bit more freely. Ultimately, however, people started refinancing like crazy at low interest rates, thus flooding the market with more debt.

So, we’ve got far more mortgage backed securities out there than investors are willing to buy. Naturally, then, the yields on them have increased and that has caused interest rates to rise a bit.

Bear in mind, too, that the current mortgage rates are terribly artificial. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association of Arkansas, the Fed is buying $20 to $40 billion worth of mortgage backed securities per month.

A lot of that money has been borrowed from our good friends in China, of course. That causes a whole set of problems I won’t bother examining now. However, it should be said that being heavily in debt to your ideological enemy is a terrible idea.

The question, of course, is what happens when the Fed starts buying up those securities? Interest rates will likely go through the roof, of course, thus causing all kinds of problems.

What’s fascinating about all of this is that an alternative plan that makes a whole lot of sense (and may have cost less) has been watered down horribly. A couple of years ago, the National Association of Realtors suggested that the housing market would be helped considerably if the government gave a $15,000, non-refundable tax credit to everyone who purchased a home.

What we got was a $7,500, refundable tax credit to first time homebuyers last year. This year, of course, that credit was extended through Nov. 30, was raised to $8,000 and is non-refundable. The hope of a $15,000 credit for everyone is back before Congress, but who knows how that will do?

In other words, we’ve opted for a very expensive plan that artificially decreases interest rates and, obviously, can’t last forever. Had the government opted for a $15,000 tax credit to every homebuyer, it goes without saying that sales would have gone through the roof and the desired economic boost would have been in the works.

Further, people receiving $15,000 from the government after filing their 2009 tax returns would have provided an additional economic boost by purchasing things. Expensive things like cares (which would have certainly helped the struggling U.S. auto industry).

I can’t help but wonder why on earth that plan didn’t gain more traction. It couldn’t have cost more than we’ve already spent in an attempt to help the housing market. Furthermore, it may have actually been more effective.

So, what’s the deal? Are the feds afraid to turn that much money over to individuals? Are they afraid we’d just be “foolish” and save it?

The whole thing is confusing. Meanwhile, we’re spending billions trying to keep interest rates low. What kind of hell will be unleashed when the government stops spending that money?

A fantastic way to show property on the Internet

As I’ve mentioned time and time again, I make my living as a public relations guy (I prefer the term “media cat” but my employers won’t go for it) in the real estate industry.

As such, I tend to keep an eye on new developments in the industry. While putting listings on the Internet isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, the increasing sophistication over the past few years related to how properties are presented has been something to see.

One of the handiest Internet-based apps related to real estate I’ve seen lately is one through which you can search for homes in a certain city. Just type in a few search terms and you’ll be taken to a map which points out where available homes for sale are and some brief information is shown about each house when you scroll over their locations.

That information includes the price and, typically, a thumbnail picture of the home. Click on a home of interest and you’ll be taken to detailed information about the property.

If you were to take a look at, say, Miami real estate, you’d be taken to a map showing where homes are located and it’s easy to find out detailed information about them. That’s convenient as can be and oh so handy. What’s more, the information is pulled directly out of the multiple listing service (MLS) so the listings are recent.

There’s a site listing real estate for sale in Miami-Dade County that uses that handy tool. Nifty stuff. Check it out.

What’s all the fuss over snus?

This week a friend of mine at work bought some Camel Snus to the office.

Naturally, I had to try some as I’d heard a bit about it and had listened to the questionable claims that it is safer than my beloved Red Seal Long Wintergreen (yeah, you bastards just go right ahead and judge me – I’m an Arkansan, dammit). I tried some of the stuff and figured it wasn’t too bad.

Camel is pushing this stuff hard, folks. A couple of friends of mine went to Rocklahoma last weekend (lucky bastards – I missed it again) and brought back a ton of smokeless tobacco samples for me. I ought to have a tee shirt -- “My friends went to Rocklahoma and all I got was a bunch of tobacco.”

Anyway, there were six tins of Camel Snus in the bag of loot my buddies scored for me. After doing some research, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have opinions about Camel Snus. I, of course, want to add yet another opinion to the rest of them out there. Because – well – why not?

What is ‘snus,’ anyway?

Snus is a big deal in Norway and Sweden and it is a snuff that’s different from American chewing tobacco in that there’s no need to spit when using it. It’s different from American chewing tobacco in that it’s not fermented, sugar generally isn’t added and it is steam cured rather than fire cured.

Apparently, fire curing tobacco builds up a heck of a lot of carcinogens, whereas a lot of that is avoided in steam curing. So, there are some people out there arguing that snus is a “safe tobacco” as it’s less dangerous than cigarettes, American chewing tobacco, etc.

I’m not buying it, folks. Anyone who thinks this stuff can’t cause cancer or rot your jaw out is living in a fool’s paradise. You can’t tell me that swallowing a bunch of snus juice rather than spitting it out doesn’t do some harm, either.

There’s a debate raging over the health impacts of snus, of course. As with most debates these days, the side with the most money to buy scientists who are willing to advance a certain point of view will win.

Is that Camel Snus any good?

Actually, it’s not bad at all. It comes in pouches and there are 15 of those per tin. The pouches are to be placed in the upper lip and stay flavorful for around 30 minutes (a conservative estimate, to be sure).

The two Camel flavors – frost and mellow – are both very sweet. The frost one tastes rather like a perverted mint variety of Life Savers while the mellow snus tastes like a sissified form of Levi Garrett or Red Man leaf tobacco.

The advantage here is that you don’t have to spit this stuff, so you can (in theory) enjoy it anywhere. Bring some snus along to the movies, the office, on a date, while you’re the best man in a wedding or during a job interview. Camel has no doubt noticed that there are smoking bans anywhere and folks who show up spitting Skoal all over the place are generally shunned.

Here in Arkansas, however, spit tobacco isn’t uncommon (there are  three men in my office and everyone of us is a tobacco chewer). Seeing a spit bottle on someone’s desk isn’t exactly uncommon in this state, so the notion that snus can be “hidden” doesn’t go over as well here as it might in other parts of the country.

Besides, the little packets just plain bug me. They remind me of that rotten pouch tobacco that has never been overly popular around here.

Unlike those nasty pouch tobacco things, snus is actually quite flavorful and delivers a healthy (pun intended) dose of nicotine.

It’s worth mentioning that I’ve read quite a bit about snus in the past couple of days and have noticed there seems to be a bias against the Camel brand. Some folks don’t like the small quantity of snus delivered by Camel as compared to the “real” brands from Sweden. Others say the quality of the tobacco used by Camel is inferior and I’ve read that it doesn’t have much “bang for the buck” compared to other brands (15 packets per tin does seem a bit slight).

Those are all valid arguments, of course, but there is one bunch out there that should just shut up – the “snus snobs.” Yes, some folks talk about this Camel stuff like it’s a Chevrolet in a world full of Jaguars. We’re talking about tobacco, folks. Shoving snus is your head is never going to be sophisticated, folks. Quit acting like it is.

The final verdict

When all is said and done I rather like Camel Snus. It doesn’t deliver the same nicotine hit as my beloved Red Seal Long Cut Wintergreen, but it’s not bad at all.

Here’s the thing – it just doesn’t deliver that buzz-happy, slap to the face that comes with loose tobacco. And, I just can’t get over the whole spitless notion and the fact that this reminds me a lot of that limp-wristed pouch tobacco stuff. The pouches always seemed a bit sissified, you know?

“Be a man. Be a Klugman,” Zorak once said on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Some of that logic applies here. Who wouldn’t want to be manly like that gruff-but-loveable Jack Klugman?

Still, I figure I’ll buy some from time to time. It’s a change of pace, at least. and tastes pretty good. I’m curious to see whether Camel’s marketing attempts will be enough to make this product popular.

These folks get it…

As I’ve mentioned on here more than a few times, I’m a public relations guy in the real estate industry.

In my neck of the woods a lot of agents understand the value of being on the Internet, but sometimes struggle with what they want to achieve when they are there. In other words, if you’re going to open a blog or Web site, what – exactly – do you want to put on it?

What we’ve discovered here in Arkansas is that the sites that are “sticky” are the ones that deliver relevant, meaningful content to visitors. The National Association of Realtors tells us that most people start searching for homes on the Internet.

The trick for real estate agents, then, is to put up sites that not only attract some of those shoppers but make them want to stick around and get in touch. Good content attracts visitors and you can find a good example of some solid, useful information over at DROdio Real Estate.

While the site certainly attracts people who are searching for real estate, it goes quite a bit beyond that.

Indeed, that company – based in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. – offers blog posts and a heck of a lot of information that is useful. I’ve seen far too many real estate sites that are little more than a business card showing an agent’s photo and listing some contact information.

The folks at DROdio have figured out that people will stick around a site if they can actually interact with it and use the tools there. That’s an important lesson to learn.

Rot in hell, MasterCard!

I was watching television the other night when it happened -- a MasterCard commercial came on that had the Ramones in it.

That's right -- the Ramones. The detergent-voiced jerk narrating the commercial was saying something about jeans and referring to rebellion or some such rot when a short clip of the Ramones appeared (I didn’t show that hear, obviously – I opted for a great performance from the band instead of repeating MasterCard’s faux pas).

That kind of thing just drives me up the wall. How in God’s name can a soulless, evil bunch like the schemers at MasterCard get away with smearing a punk legend in order to get a few more people addicted to easy credit and high interest rates?

Companies like MasterCard are very responsible for the rotten economy we’ve got now. They’ve spent the past few decades trying to convince people that patience is not a virtue – buying junk we don’t have money for with credit is a lot more fun than saving up for things, apparently.

MasterCard and their ilk have played games with interest rates in hopes of squeezing some more cash out their overburdened customers, giving out credit cards to high school kids and setting up on college campuses and handing out cards to people with no verifiable income. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, MasterCard had to run out and use the Ramones to hawk their crap.

There’s just something inherently wrong with people intent on stealing our money using a bunch of rebels like the Ramones to further their insidious ends.

It’s probably just as well that three of the original four Ramones are dead and they didn’t have to watch the band’s legacy get tarnished in such a crass manner.

Now I remember one of the reasons why I don’t carry credit cards – I hate MasterCard, Visa and virtually any company that issues the things. If I could do without that debit card I’d be rid of it, too.

Oh, those wacky computers…

A quarter of a century ago, owning and maintaining a computer was a lot simpler.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer. Every device I hooked up to that thing was either made by Tandy (a.k.a. Radio Shack) or relied totally on the hardware in the system or the peripheral to run. An Epson dot matrix printer, for example, was pretty much plug and play – you might have to set a DIP switch or two on the printer, but software drivers really didn’t come into play.

The same was true of that old Apple //e I had in college and an early Macintosh II I had. Ah, but things have changed, haven’t they?

With the increasing complexity of computers, the lack of a real standard when it comes to hardware and a ton of peripherals available, finding and maintaining computer drivers has become a regular task. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to update video drivers and sound drivers over the years – a task that often involves hunting around for the things manually.

Downgrading from Vista to Windows XP? Get ready to search for drivers all over the place (I know from experience).

That’s where Driver Access comes in – head on over to use an application that will search your hardware and locate the drivers you need to add or update. The company has over 1 million drivers in its database, meaning the it's almost certain they'll have the driver you need. Worth a look, huh?

My new HDTV and what I’ve lost

A tragedy happened last month – our trusted 29” RCA tube television dropped dead.

My wife and I have had that thing for about a decade and we hated to see it go. Still, we saw the death of that television as an excuse to go out and buy a 1080p, 42” LCD television so that we could take advantage of the wacky, wonderful world of HDTV.

The television is a thing of beauty. The picture looks great on it and the TV fits very well in our living e.

There is a major, major, major damned problem with HDTV sets, however. My NES, Super NES and Sega Genesis look pretty rough on that set. I figured I’d mod those systems to S-video one of these days so as to improve the picture.

Ah, but the SNES is connected with S-video and the picture still isn’t great. Drat. It seems that the native, 240p signal those old consoles put out doesn’t play well on a 1080p set.

That, folks, is a major drag. Sure, I could plug my old systems into the television in the bedroom (it’s a tube TV), but that wouldn’t solve my problem of playing games late at night in the living room.

I can get buy on my Sony Playstation, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Wii on the new television, but those systems will never touch the appeal of the classic systems as far as I’m concerned.

By the way. That Nintendo Wii. Don’t buy one. Once the novelty wears off, you’ll realize you’ve got a system with the graphical capability of a Nintendo Gamecube but with a worse controller. Yeah, I know that Wii remote is innovative, but so was the Atari 5200 joystick. A suck controller is a suck controller whether it’s innovative or not. The Wi-Fi support is terrible, too, as the main purpose of it seems to be using it to buy Wiiware – terrible, nasty little games that hog up the system’s pitiful amount of internal storage. The only system I’ve owned that was more of a personal disappointment than the Wii was an Atari Jaguar. That’s saying something.

I suppose that’s to be expected. I mean, come on –  my dog likes to wee on bushes in the backyard. Whenever I hear the word “Wii,” I think of my dog hiking his leg up on a fence post. Somehow that seems very fitting.

Here’s a tip for those of you with Wiis, by the way. The crap games that go to that system sell much better on eBay when they are unopened. Keep that in mind the next time a well-meaning relative gives you a Wii game – it’s not a total loss because some sucker out there will be willing to purchase it on eBay and will pay a premium if the stinky game is in its original, factory shrink rap.

At any rate, I’m kind of mad someone out there could have designed an HDTV television set that could reproduce signals from old video games, VCRs and DVD players. The HDTV we bought is great, but I had no idea I’d be stuck playing a damned Wii unless I wanted to plug in, say, my Genesis and hope for the best.

So, what’s up with Myrtle Beach

For one reason or another, most (and I’m not kidding) of the people I know have taken a vacation have headed to Myrtle Beach this year.

I really need to find out what all the fuss is about as I, too, would love to take a vacation. I haven’t had one since 1994 and that’s a true shame. Myrtle Beach seems to be popular right now, so why not try there?

Since I know nothing about Myrtle Beach (I’ve never been), I’d have to find one of those Myrtle Beach resorts or Myrtle Beach Hotels, wouldn’t I? As I’m a fan of doing research on the Internet for – well – just about anything, I could head to Google and type in a search phrase like “Myrtle Beach resort” and see what happens, right?

There’s a problem with that approach, however. If I type in the aforementioned phrase, I wind up with 99,200 results on Google. Which ones are worth looking at and which ones are not?

Or, I could save some time and head over to the Avista Resort site and read up on one of the newest condominium resorts in the Myrtle Beach area. That, folks, seems like a good place to start a search.

The Bandit Run? Sign me up!

I ran across something the other day that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun – the Bandit Run.

What is the Bandit Run? Back in 2007, some fans of Smokey and the Bandit got together in their Pontiac Trans-Ams and retraced Burt Reynolds’ legendary trip from Texarkana to Atlanta. The Bandit Run has become an annual event and the participants spent a week in May running all over the South and having all sorts of fun. If you aren’t familiar with the fine movie that is Smokey and the Bandit, you either weren’t alive in the 1970s or you’re completely ignorant of pop culture.

At any rate, I – your old friend The Hawg – would love to take part in that fine event. I’d need a Trans-Am, of course, but I’ve always wanted one of those. I found one yesterday for sale near here that is available for the low, low price of $6,500 – a bargain when you consider that sum can get you a 1999 Trans-Am with one of those Corvette LS1 engines in it and an exhaust system specially tuned to frighten your neighbors.

Ah, yes. I could see it now. I’d be motoring down that open highway in my Trans-Am with my Arkansas “THEHAWG” vanity plate and absolutely killing off about a week. What could be better than that?

I’ve always wanted a Trans-Am or at least a Firebird. In fact, I was about to get a piss yellow Firebird before I went to college (I’d dubbed it “The Male Machine” and everything). My parents told me they’d either buy that car for me or they’d give me a 1981 Cutlass they were about to trade in and buy me a computer.

I chose the Cutlass and the computer because I’m a damned moron. Gearing up for the Bandit Run, however, would allow me to correct that error. Of course, I’ll never be able to convince my wife that I need to buy a Trans-Am so I can disappear for a week and drive it all over the South with a lot of other Smokey and the Bandit fans.

Still, I can dream. Besides, I’ve been working solid since 1994. That’s right – The Hawg hasn’t had a real vacation in over 15 years. I’ve wasted my youth on college and working, so I ought to be able to do something utterly ridiculous and totally fun now that I’ve hit middle age, right?

By the way, if the Bandit and the Snowman started their run in Texarkana and were bound for Atlanta, how the heck did they wind up in Fayetteville? That’s all the way up in northwest Arkansas! That discrepancy in the film has driven me nuts for years.

You, too, can love satellite television

A few years ago, we were cable television customers.

One day, my wife got fed up with the rotten customer service provided by the unnamed cable company. She cancelled our service and we had a Dish Network satellite on our roof the following day.

Folks, we love our Dish Network setup and heartily recommend dumping cable and getting a satellite instead. The prices are better, the picture is outstanding and I haven’t had a rate increase in years.

Of course, the question is which satellite company should you choose? We love Dish Network, but there are some Direct TV Packages that are mighty attractive. In the whole Directv vs. Dish debate, it’s good to have a site that compares the companies and makes it easy to find the best packages and incentives offered by the country’s two major satellite TV providers.

That’s where Kaptain Satellite comes in. It’s a resource, folks. Use it.

‘Where have you been, The Hawg?’

For some reason, it occurred to me that I’ve been slacking in visiting and reading blogs as of late.

Why? Ironically, I’ve been wrapped up in a project at work that is partially the result of what I’ve learned by running this blog full o’ nonsense.

Yes, I started The Arkansas Realtor a few weeks ago with the help of the fine folks at Positive Real Estate Professionals – a great little site that is home to a growing real estate community.

Here’s the thing – I’m a public relations guy by trade and it’s in my best interest to use every outlet available to get my employer’s message to the public. A blog that is on a network that gets a lot of traffic is an ideal avenue, right?

Of course, the debate has been raging over the past few years about whether traditional media will be rendered obsolete by blogs and the Internet. I’m in a great position when it comes to that – a lot of people still read newspapers and we public relations cats want to reach them. A lot of people wander around blogs and we want to reach them, too.

So, I have the luxury of not having a dog in that fight. That’s a good thing, really. I’m a former newspaper man and, as such, my sympathies lie with the papers in that regard. I’ve seen a lot of friends and acquaintances laid off from newspapers over the past couple of years and that’s a damned shame.

I was visiting with another PR guy who is a former newspaper man about the state of print media in Arkansas. He pointed out that the old model which sustained newspapers for years is broken. We can’t go back to how things were. Something will have to change.

I hope the boys in the press figure out how to adapt and do it soon. An objective, independent press is vital. Why? Without professional journalists around, we’ll get the bulk of our news straight from the government, corporations and other groups with a vested interested in what is reported and what is not.

That’s not a pleasant prospect, is it?

At any rate, I’ll be a frequent visitor to my favorite blogs again soon. I’ve got to get the aforementioned blog off the ground first and I’ve got another project I’m working on that’s taking up a lot of time (more on that later).

Need a ceiling fan?

Ah, ceiling fans – like the heck out of them.

We’ve got five of the little darlings here at Casa de Hawg and keep them running all year long. They keep things cool in the summer (a necessity in Arkansas) and circulate warm air in the winter (not really a necessity in Arkansas, but dandy just the same).

Need a ceiling fan to enjoy the level of comfort to which we’ve become accustomed around my house? You can run around from store to store or save some time and head on over to Hanson Wholesale Ceiling Fans and find the largest selection around and shop right from your favorite Internet connection.

The great thing about the Internet is that you’ve got everything right at your fingertips regardless of where you happen to live. Wonderful stuff, yeah?