How cool is this! My wife sends me an Instant Message this morning informing me that PBS is airing a repeat of a 2005 Warrant Buffett and Bill Gates meeting titled, “Buffett & Gates Go Back to School”.

I saw this last year but I wanted to watch it again.

In the message she links to Yahoo! TV which offers information on this program.

There is also a link that says You can record this program to your TiVo Learn more…

I clicked on the “Learn More” link which tells me that Yahoo! & Tivo have partnered up and ask’s me for my Tivo user name and password. After logging in, the next screen displayed the name of my Tivo box and asks me if I want to record this show for tonight.

Considering I work nearly 30 miles from home, this was by far the most cohesive use of technology for me.

Instant Messenger, Tivo – with wireless USB connected to Internet and a Yahoo! Account.

Here is the email I got:

We have received your request to record “Buffett & Gates Go Back to
School” on Channel 8 for Tue 10/17 at 10:00 PM.

Priority: Cancel other programs if necessary
Quality: Use the default on the DVR

Keep Until: Space needed
Start Recording: On Time
Stop Recording: On Time

The next time your DVR named “ShandyKings Tivo” connects to the TiVo
service, it will receive this request and send you another e-mail with
the results. You can always see the status of your requests by
checking your TiVo Messages and the To Do List or Recording History.

It is my understanding that the founding fathers of the Untied States of America, the framers of the Constitution, formed our government to prevent one person from having too much authority or control. This ideology was intended to be achieved by creating a separation of power via a series of checks and balances among our three branches of government.

In a time when both Democrats and Republicans are continuously changing their core philosophies leaving many die hard party goers to jump ship and claim themselves as independent. Is it good for Americans to have one party who has majority control of our checks and balances?

Over dinner last night I was discussing my previous blog post, Democracy at Its Finest Today, Roughly 23 Million Americans Left Scratching Their Heads Asking What the Hell Just Happened with my good friend who has a mind like an encyclopedia. For years the two of us have been going at it over politics and always he comes up with points that requires me to reevaluate my position. He raised the point that what happened yesterday with Bush signing the latest Safe Port Act with the Online Gambling Ban bill snuck in it is a direct consequence of having one party controlling all three branches of Government.

I recall during our latest elections how pleased many Republicans were when they took control of the House, Senate and Presidency.

I, like many people of my generation do not care to group ourselves with either one of America’s two main parties. There are many things we like and don’t like and until elections come we will then make our final decisions by outweighing the good with the bad.

Today, the Democrat’s and Republican’s fail to represent their founding philosophies. Do we really want one party having majority control?

Today, being Friday the 13^th of all days is a dark day for American politics. Americans will awake this morning hearing that George Bush has signed the SAFE Port Act, an act that will be used to advanced technology to secure our ports from the threats of terrorist smuggling nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

What most Americans won’t hear was that deception, deceitfulness, double-dealing, treachery, trickery, fraudulence, bamboozlement… what ever you want to call it was perpetrated on the American people and all for in the name of the Pro Family Movement.

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In a horrible accident, Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a New York City high-rise today. From reading the reports on CNN it became apparent to me that one of the claims made by the biggest 9-11 conspiracy videos floating around the internet, “9/11 Loose Change” stipulating somethings are just not believable has today demonstrated itself to be possible.

I actually remark on this exact point when I first wrote, “Please don’t tell me I’m the one drinking the Kool-Aid” on Sunday, April 2^nd, 2006.

And these are my favorite points the video makes… Oh man, this is just laughable if this is true. None of the black boxes were found, right! This is because there was so much damage and burnt rubble and just catastrophic debris from two of our nation’s largest buildings crashing down on the streets of NY. Well lucky for us, in the midst of all the violent wind that was caused due to the explosions and violent force of heat, one of the terrorist’s passports flew out of the plane and landed into the streets of NY. A FBI agent found the passport which lead them to confirm who one of the terrorist who died in the attack.

Well according to CNN “Yankees pitcher’s plane crashes into Manhattan high-rise” it was reported that “Emergency responders found his passport in the street below, the officials said”.

So to the folks who created 9/11 Loose Change, it appears it is possible a passport could fly out of a burning plane when it smacks into a high-rise!

About two months ago Dax created a Referral Feed plug-in for Wordpress. Well I installed the feed to work with Sage (RSS reader for Firefox) and I can’t stop looking at it.

Seriously, I must hit “Alt S” on my keyboard about 40 times a day looking at who is visiting ShandyKing.com with this live referral feed. It’s addicting!

On a side note, you may recall I switched from using Google’s Personalized Homepage to Sage but just recently I have learned that you can now use tabs on Google’s Personalized Homepage. This is a great way to organize my feeds.

So far the tabs I created for my RSS feed include SEO News, SEO Dudes, Friends, General News and Cool Crap.

I was invited to beta test SoapBox, a video sharing site developed by Microsoft with the hopes of competing against YouTube.

While browsing SoapBox’s small selection of videos I found they offer some excellent interviews and old archived footage of Microsoft. Go figure! I came across the “Biography: Bill Gates – Sultan of Software” which discusses Bill Gates’ from his childhood to where the video left off, Microsoft the mid 1990’s.

I actually saw a similar version of this video back when it first appeared on TV when I was in my first year of college. I remember after watching the video the feeling I had about Microsoft and of Seattle. I felt strongly that Microsoft was the place to be and that I wanted to work for them.

So with very little money and no place to live I tossed all my stuff into my car and made the drive from Los Angeles to Seattle. I lived in a motel for a while till I could afford an apartment and I just worked my way up till I got offered an entry level job with Microsoft. It took about 4 months or so to get my first job offer with them.

With all the talks going on in the news today about Google’s acquisition of YouTube, I found it was quite reminiscent watching this old video of Bill Gates.

So much has changed since the mid 90’s and it’s really hard to believe where things were. I hear countless times from people who talk of how Bill Gates as a lucky man, a man who was at the right place at the right time.

Well if you are one of the growing numbers of people who feel Gates rise to the top was luck, I would say read the book Hard Drive. You will see that he did more for the computer industry before the age of 30 then most of us combined will do our whole lives.

Video: Biography: Bill Gates - Sultan of Software

Since launching this blog many of my family and friends have told me that wanted to do something similar. There are many services on the web such as Blogger and Wordpress that offers users free blogging accounts and these accounts are excellent for people who want to try out blogging and are not interested in customization.

The blog you are currently reading right now was setup using Wordpress but as you can see I have it on a personal domain. This post is about creating something similar to this blog.

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Microsoft has a new security division that has created a competing product to McAfee and Symantec. Additionally, Microsoft has locked down the new version of their operating system, Vista, causing McAfee and Symantec to cry foul play.

This should be interesting to watch unfold over the coming months. It reminds me of the time AOL and Netscape got upset with Microsoft for being able to launch a new browser in the marketplace as a tie-in to the Windows 95 operating system.

Read More: McAfee and Symantec Confront Microsoft