A few weeks ago columnist Andy Ihnatko shared a piece of wisdom that his father shared with him:  “The phone was created for our convenience” his father said. I’ve taken that pearl of wisdom to heart.  Every time we hear the phone ring doesn’t mean we should feel compelled to answer it.  If it’s truly important the person calling will leave a voice mail or try my cell phone.

Besides, most of the time it’s for Elaine.

1. Very Little Dialogue - the almost complete lack of dialogue (unless you count beeps and the occasional “Wallllleeeeee”) allows you to focus on what’s going on. You pick up on the stunning scenery and the characters’ little quirks. You actually enjoy watching the movie rather than hearing it.

2. The Environment - A theme that hopefully isn’t subtle for adults, but may not be picked up for kids, is that the Earth is headed for a fate similar to the one in the movie. If we don’t do something soon to save our planet, the garbage and pollution will force us to take to the stars as well. This is a clever way to ingrain this message in kids.

3. Health - Similar to the environmental overtones, the movie shows the humans who survived as fat and lazy. Adults should pick up on the similarity to the nation’s obesity problems, but hopefully kids pick up on the fact that when you don’t do anything you become fat, lazy, and powerless.

4. Eve - WALL-E’s love interest Eve was designed by none other than Apple’s own Jonathon Ive - designer of the iPod. Who doesn’t love a movie where Apple products are sleek, sexy, and user-friendly?

5. Easter Eggs - Before you go, check out this post on WALL-E’s Easter Eggs - hidden facts or pictures in the movie. This way you turn the movie into a game as you try and find all the easter eggs.

6. Adult Humor - And by “adult humor” I mean the non-dirty above-your-kids-head way. It used to be that Disney movies were all about the kids. But as competition for kids movies has heated up (read: Shrek) Disney has been adding little bits of “adult” humor into their movies. There were at least a few times during the movie when one of the girls turned to me and asked, “what are you laughing at dad?”

If I was going to recommend one movie to see this year so far… it would be WALL-E.

It appears from recent reports, that there are more effective ways of obtaining information or preventing further terrorist activities. Dan Carlin, in a recent podcast, told a story of a suspected terrorist who had information the US government wanted. However, instead of electrocuting his genitals, they paid for his wife to have surgery in Iraq. As soon as the wife came out of surgery and phoned her husband, the man began talking…

I tend to thing this form of obtaining information is more effective in the Middle East than torture. Why? Because the people of the Middle East remember. They remember every single attack, every single negative speech, every trade embargo… every wrong ever committed against them. They take Alma’s command of “O remember, remember my son” literally.

So if we’re talking about a people that remember everything, I believe that if we start acting with decency and a higher moral standard that they will begin to remember that. It might take a few years, or even decades. But I firmly believe that after enough time has passed, the balance between good and bad memories will tip in our favor and the radical Islamic children who are now told stories of American atrocities will be told of the woman who had a life-saving surgical procedure… courtesy of the United States of America.

Today was my first post-operative appointment with my doctor to check on the healing of the incisions and to make sure my foot hadn’t become infected and fallen off. The cast technician removed the temporary plaster cast that was put on immediately after surgery and I was shocked at what I saw… Frankenfoot. The doctors made two long incisions on each side of my foot in order to place two screws and some wire to fuse some bones, cut off pieces of a few bones, and place a piece of bone into another like a shunt. They also made a small incision in my heel where they places a large screw through most of my ankle to help stabilize it. And finally they made a medium-sized incision at the back of my foot where they cut some of the tendon to try and improve my flexibility and mobility.

So yesterday I was innocently walking around with a swollen foot, but today I learned the truth about… Frankenfoot! Since there was no infection in the incision, they replaced the heavy plaster open-faced cast for a pink fiberglass one (so I could match Kendall’s last cast). We’ll wait until next week to take out the two dozen staples and re-cast… something I’m really looking forward to!

First of all, the district cuts stem from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to cut at least $4 billion in overall education spending as a way to help make up the state budget deficit. Now I’m no genius, but here’s how I see this scenario playing out (yes, I know I’m making some sweeping generalizations with the following scenario):

As the funding to schools decrease, kids become dumber. Not having after-school sports, music programs, or other extra-curricular activities makes otherwise smart kids do stupid things like join a gang or light bags of dog poop on fire on the neighbor’s porch. These kids grow up with a sup-par education, don’t qualify for college, and end up working at McDonald’s 7 days a week at minimum wage where they earn just enough money to get married and have more kids who will have even LESS money for schools… and the cycle continues. Sure, that $5 million bike overpass their building by my house is looking pretty sweet, but my kid is dumb as a post! And since there’s nobody with a decent education in this state, there’s nobody smart enough to fix it later on!

If Governor Schwarzenegger really wanted to solve the state’s budget problems he would put money into the programs that are going to fix it for him! Dump as much money as possible into education so that those graduates can eventually help you balance the state’s checkbook! Stop funding bike lane projects and start to focus on the things that actually matter! Once the budget is fixed and the kids are educated THEN let’s focus on bike lanes and funding state-sponsored research projects.

I told my coworker about RSS and was really surprised he hadn’t heard about it before. My Google Reader (feed reader of choice) is essential to my daily routine. I even have a link to Google Reader on my iPhone so I can check it from anywhere!

So this post is my encouragement for anyone and everyone out there to start using a feed reader to help you keep up-to-date with what interests you. You want to keep up-to-date with politics? Subscribe to your favorite political blog or even CNN’s political news feed.

You prefer to keep up to date with iPhone rumors? There are plenty of blogs that you can follow with only a click or two.

So, to help you get started with Google Reader be sure to check out Andy Wibbels’ How-to Video. But in reality, it couldn’t be easier to get started with Google Reader… so get going!

Most other people afraid of the Internet are afraid for one of the following reasons:

• It’s new and unfamiliar (where’s the send button again??)
• There is too much violence, pornography, etc.
• Big Brother is spying on me
• Hackers are stealing my information as we speak

None of that scares me. In fact, I believe with the right parenting, my kids will grow up to be “Internet experts” and be able to avoid the Internet slums, sidestep Phishing schemes, and find the truth among the millions of splogs.

Nope, none of that scares me. The people behind the Internet scare me.

And I’m not talking about the tinfoil hat wearers who claim that there’s a secret society of rich oil tycoons who run the Internet only to spy and steal from you. I’m not even talking about the ISPs who throttle your bandwidth and refuse to let you use Bittorrent or even stream IP TV at an acceptable speed.

I’m talking about the normal people behind personal websites, blogs, Usenet groups, and forums. These are scary people. They’re scary for a number of reasons:

1. The Internet feeds their anonymity - If nobody has to see your face, or even know who you are, you’re more likely to say things you wouldn’t normally say. Your local forum member battlestargalacticafreak can say whatever he wants online because he’s sitting at home safe and sound in his Lazy-Boy eating a hot pocket. If you don’t like what he has to say you can send a nasty email, but in the end he doesn’t care because you don’t know who he is, where he lives, and can never do anything about it. This power of anonymity makes people inconsiderate, rude, mean, and scary - when they might normally be very nice people. battlestargalacticafreak might even be the nice 15 year-old boy who mows your lawns on Saturday… but online he can throw out rude comments, profanities, or even threats and never care.

2. Your information isn’t as secure as you’d like - It’s always a little unnerving to receive an email with the subject “WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW!” I made a decision a long time ago not to hide my identity online. When I blog or post to forums, it’s with my real name. And anyone with some decent Google skills could probably find out more information about me.

3. Law enforcement is unprepared - My favorite example of this is one of my own. After writing a blog post about a local MLM company and warning my readers about the dangers of MLMs, I began to receive threats. At first the threats were mildly funny, with mention of my mental retardation and obvious lack of intelligence. However, when the threats started to involve my life and the life of my family, I decided to get the local police involved. I presented them with printouts of the emails containing the death threats, and even provided them IP addresses of those that had written the emails and commented on the site. What did they do? Nothing.

At first I was upset that the police weren’t doing anything to help me out. But after thinking about the situation, I can’t really blame them - they’re just uneducated and unprepared to deal with Internet “crime.” We read stories every day about cyber-bullying or cyber-stalking, but those stories usually only emerge after someone has been hurt or after a physical altercation has taken place. There’s usually no action taken on the threat because “it’s just an email.” And even with the right information (like IP addresses) the Police often have no idea what to do with it. Sure, if someone really wanted to keep their identity a secret they could (enter TOR), but most people making online threats are doing so from their home computer. And a quick phone call to Comcast could provide them with a home address. The police need to be informed and trained in how to deal with Internet crimes, before they become “real crimes.” It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many “real” crimes began with online threats or other online actions.

I believe the longer you spend online the more you realize what kind of “power” the people behind the internet have. And when you begin contributing or participating in a specific niche of people, such as I do through my blogging, you begin to tap a very passionate group of users. And for some unknown reason (at least to me) their passion knows no bounds. With some twisted belief that the internet will keep them safe people believe they can say whatever they want without recourse, and without a thought as to what that does to actual people.

I believe it was Dvorak (John C. that is) who told a story about a rude commenter on his blog. The person had written some rude or nasty comments with the belief that nobody would do anything. However, John sent a quick email to the person introducing himself and asking him why he was so rude… and the person’s tone changed completely. He was so surprised that John had called him on his rude behavior that he was immediately apologetic and took back everything he had said.

After hearing that story I often wonder what would happen if I tracked down all the people who track me down and showed up at their door and explained to their mom that their 27 year-old son living in the basement spent all day saying things he wouldn’t ever say to another person face to face. Hmmm…

Prevent iPhoto from opening when plugging in your iPhone - any iPhone user (including myself) that one of the most annoying things about the iPhone (and I guess OS X’s reaction to it) is that every time you plug it in, it launches iPhoto to import the photos you’ve taken. It wouldn’t be annoying except that it starts iPhoto EVERY time you plug it in, or even switch between users. The easiest fix is to turn off the feature to start iPhoto when ANY camera is plugged in; however, I still want iPhoto to run when my digital camera is plugged in… just not my iPhone. Enter this script, from 37 Signals, which solves world peace and ends world hunger (ok, maybe not, but it does fix this annoying “bug”).

.htaccess Editor - I’m a little cautious, as well I should be, about messing with my .htaccess file. This little utility helps you create a proper .htaccess file with many of the most requested features (error pages, redirects, etc.) using a slick online menu, and then export the finished file… brilliant!

Caffeine 1.01 - I’m not a coffee drinker, so luckily this little app has nothing to do with actual coffee. Caffeine is an app that does one thing - and does it well. Caffeine prevents your Mac from dimming your screen, activating your screensaver, and going to sleep… and now all from the menu bar.

9 to 5 Laptop Sleeve - This has to be the coolest laptop case I’ve seen in a while!

• Did Terrorists Cause the Housing Mess?
• Top 10 iTunes Smart Playlists - I’m of the opinion you can never have too many smart playlists.
• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers - I also believe that everyone needs a good supply of wallpapers. I can’t stare at the same wheat field for more than a day or so.
• The Accounting Behind iPods - because I can’t stand people blaming accountants for everything!

Developing a Wordpress Theme - a nice little step-by-step tutorial on how to start creating your own Wordpress theme.

What To Do When Someone Steals Your Content - since I found out another site was scraping my content, I found this information very useful!

Top 100 Essential Mac Apps - as if I didn’t have enough apps.

Portrait of the Fraudster - an interesting piece about the the alleged rogue trader at French bank Societe Generale, who has apparently left the firm after building up over $7.2 billion in losses over the past year.