"Be a lifelong student. The more you learn, the more you earn and the more self-confidence you will have." – Brian Tracy

I consider myself a Libertarian and enjoy reading the weekly “LP Monday Message” emails delivered by the Libertarian Party. This week’s email is of, in my opinion particular importance and therefore I chose to post it here on my website.

December 14, 2009

Dear Friend of Liberty,

Tomorrow, December 15, is Bill of Rights Day. I don’t know how much we’ll hear about it in the media, but you and I know how important the Bill of Rights is. The Founders recognized that it was important to be specific about what government must not do.

The Libertarian Party platform expresses support for the Bill of Rights in many places. For example:

First Amendment:
“We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion.” (1.1)

Second Amendment:
“We affirm the right to keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. We oppose all laws at any level of government requiring registration of, or restricting, the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition.” (1.6)

Fourth Amendment:
“We support the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, and property.” (1.2)

Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments:
“We oppose reduction of constitutional safeguards of the rights of the criminally accused. The rights of due process, a speedy trial, legal counsel, trial by jury, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must not be denied.” (1.5)

Of course, one of the most serious problems America faces today is that the federal government completely ignores the Tenth Amendment, which says the federal government only has the limited powers granted by the Constitution, and no other powers. Unfortunately, our federal government has usurped a long list of powers that are not granted by the Constitution — far too many to list in this email.

The Democratic and Republican parties, and their politicians, have very little respect for the Bill of Rights. The Bush and Obama administrations have been especially destructive, not only continuing the expansion of federal power far beyond what is allowed by the Tenth Amendment, but also trampling on due process, privacy protections, and free speech.

Most Americans admire the Bill of Rights, but I think many of them are unaware how much our government violates them. If you run for office as a Libertarian candidate, you can help inform people. We not only need Libertarian candidates elected, we also need to convince Americans to demand that the government must get back inside the limits of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Sincerely,

Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

This is not an endorsement of the Libertarian Party or the Libertarian National Committee. I am not a paid-member of the LP, just a concerned American interested in passing on an important message.

If you feel this post is in violation of copyright, or an infringement against the LP, or that credit has not been appropriately, or adequately given please email stephen@bruington.com.

This is a sample post using the Flickr Photo Album Plugin for WordPress. I’m hoping this plugin will allow me to post pictures directly from Flickr into an individual blog post. Here goes nothing…

Ha! It works. This is a picture I took while Sarah and I were in Richmond. This is a sign posted at Pony Pasture on the James River.

Well, with Flickr and WordPress fully integrated I can now use / abuse the Flickr app on my iPhone. The app is very powerful and allows you full functionality as if you were logged in online. You can create sets, add tags, categories, etc. The beautiful thing, which dummy me didn’t discover until last night, you can upload multiple pictures at once; it takes a while, but it can be done.

The real question now is, can I insert individual pictures in different parts of my post without WordPress forcing them into a ‘Gallery’?

I’ll continue the blog post with a favorite quote of mine,

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce aliquet luctus eleifend. In ut lectus at metus tincidunt commodo sed at metus. Sed congue ligula justo, sit amet pellentesque mi. Morbi mollis cursus feugiat. Duis lobortis risus eget nibh rhoncus eget porta magna ornare. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum fermentum mauris ac mauris dignissim ac aliquet elit tristique. Quisque enim risus, volutpat at dignissim sed, imperdiet a mi. Aenean enim elit, bibendum vel ultricies ac, lacinia a massa. Quisque tincidunt mollis lectus vel interdum. Proin nec accumsan diam. Proin imperdiet, augue vel eleifend eleifend, tortor tortor scelerisque justo, id adipiscing dolor libero a odio. Donec vestibulum velit a lectus consequat vel suscipit libero vestibulum. Vivamus egestas dapibus quam suscipit porta. Proin porttitor, elit at fringilla mollis, purus tortor molestie purus, ut lobortis dui dolor in enim.

I’m so excited that this works! Oh, by the way the last picture is the mansion at Maymont Park, Richmond, VA; if you haven’t been you need to go.

In recent news you may have heard that Google is brewing something awesome, behind-the-scenes: a Google phone. Now, don’t get this confused with other phones running Android, Google’s mobile operating system. Google is talking about releasing an actual Google Phone some time next year. I understand this phone is to supposed to be THE contender for Apple’s iPhone; we’ll see, but I digress.

This post is about Google Voice which is currently available by invite only. Of course, I requested an invitation as soon as the door was open and I’ve had an account ever since. Basically, Google Voice allows you to manage incoming calls to one phone number. You may be thinking, “Whoopdeedoo. Why would I need that?” You may not need that, but it’s really awesome how it works. I would write all about it, but don’t take my word for it – go visit Google Voice and find out for yourself.

I began with the Google Voice number 540.238.0880, but (for one reason or another) had to change to a different number which I have decided to keep private. If you already have a Google Voice account/number and want to change, Google wants to charge YOU $10.00 via Google Checkout, go figure. Here’s what you do – create a new, arbitrary account, for example: my FIRST Google Voice account was setup under ‘stephenbruington@gmail.com‘; I setup the new phone number under the account ‘i83.stephenbruington@gmail.com‘.

One really awesome feature about Google Voice is the transcription and email of voicemail messages. If someone calls you and has to leave a message, Google will transcribe their voice into an email and send it to your Gmail inbox!

Okay, now to the good part – Google has created, and made available widget

which can be posted on your website/page. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you haven’t figured it out keep reading.

• Click on the image
• Enter your ‘Name’ and ‘Number’
• Choose whether or not to keep your number private
• Click ‘Connect’

Now, what happens? Google Voice automatically calls you at the number you entered in widget. When you answer the phone you’ll hear it dialing, that’s because it’s dialing the Google Voice number attached to the widget. When the Google Voice account holder/widget creator answers the phone they have the option of accepting or rejecting the call. Boomshackalacka!

Check it out. Don’t wait. Everyone needs Google Voice, you’ll never have to change your phone number again.

This seems to be the busiest time of the year, hands down. In spite of all the running around, it’s nice to take time together as a family to begin, and carry on important traditions; our family is doing just that!

Sarah and I were married on November 28, 2009 which makes this our first Christmas as an “official” family. Although we first started talking early December last year, we spent Christmas 2,000 miles apart in UT and VA, respectively. (Read more about our story, aka. The Beginning)

Yesterday Jennifer, Sarah, Laura and I left the house in search of a Christmas tree. I’ve always wanted a (fraser) fir tree, but was never so lucky as this year. We found a tree for a reasonable price of $34.95 just up the road from our house. It didn’t take long to find the perfect tree, get the bottom trimmed and loaded onto the car. We came home and attempted to set up the tree, but we were 2 branches too many on getting it to fit in the stand, so we waited until today and finished installing the tree in it’s stand.

Laura has been part of our early Christmas activities for which we’ve been very grateful. This evening we finished the tree setup and began to decorate. Sarah showed us a great way to place the lights; she started with a few hundred, and I finished with another strand or two. In total, I believe we have 600 lights on our little tree!

Jennifer was excited to begin decorating with ornaments, but we held off so she could setup the  advent calendar. My Mom, aka. “Grandma” made a wall-hanging advent calendar which we’re using to keep track of the number of days to Christmas. We had to play catch-up tonight and place 15 ornaments on the advent tree. Jennifer had fun counting, adding a few more, and counting again. We told Jenn that her job will be to post the ornament each morning before the bus takes her to school.

Once the advent calendar was updated, the 4 of us began putting real ornaments on the real tree. Jennifer was so excited. Laura was very helpful. Sarah was instructive. Stephen was patient. We had a good time, and look forward to more family activities this Christmas.

Stay tuned for our First Annual Family Newsletter.

I just downloaded, and installed the Publish-to-Facebook WordPress plugin on my website. I want to determine it’s effectiveness in posting to Facebook.

I’ve been using bit.ly to shorten the URL/permalink for each of my posts because I can track the number of times the URL has been lengthened, ala. the number of times someone has visited my site. I want to be able to view these metrics, and I’m fairly certain, by posting directly to Facebook (using this plugin) I’ll lose that ability.

If you’re using WordPress and want to use this plugin, follow these instructions:

1. Download the plugin here.
2. Upload the file ‘publishtofacebook.php’ to your WordPress plugins directory folder: wp-content\plugins\
3. Activate the plugin from your WordPress admin console: Dashboard\Plugins\Installed
4. Modify settings to publish Posts, Pages, or both: Dashboard\Settings\Publish to Facebook

Good luck.

The original instructions, by the plugin author are available on his website.