Fortunately, I downloaded the backups beforehand, as you are supposed to do in the upgrade process.  I created a new 5.0 MySQL database, uploaded the backup (after a few tweaks to the SQL to make it work right), and reconfigured my WordPress installation on the hosting server.  After that it worked correctly.  I didn’t lose anything, nothing was corrupted, and I didn’t have to re-upload my files and photos for the links to work.

If you are going to have an upgrade failure, this is the one I would recommend.  It only took about 45 minutes to get everything working after it failed.

First off, as a phone it works much better than my old one.  I can get the volume loud enough to hear well when I’m driving.  It allows me to keep all the phone numbers and email addresses I need for people.

As an Internet-device, it suits my purposes very well.  The browser on this model phone reduces websites to fit on the whole screen, then you zoom in to see what you want.  Also, some sites have mobile pages and the zoom feature automatically turns off for those because they are already the right size.  I have almost completely moved to the BlackBerry for my email needs.  The qwerty keyboard has is it’s greatest feature in my book.

Finally, as an application platform it has a good start, but there is room for improvement.  The BlackBerry App World store has many applications, but not nearly as many as the iTunes App Store.  It also is hard to navigate on the phone.  There is no way to browse the store on the PC, which is a really bad idea.  I want to be able to easily buy apps from my computer, because it is easy to use for this.

Overall, I am very happy with this phone.  It’s not perfect, but it is so much better than what I had before.

I attribute the iPod as a leading reason for the decline in “howdy’s” that I hear.  The popularity of the Apple iPod and other mp3 players lead to people wearing headphones to and from class on campus.  Listening to music, Aggies are less likely to spout a brief “howdy” to the person walk by, and if you walk by someone wearing headphones/earbuds you are less likely to say “howdy,” as not to disturb them.

This is a sad trend here in Aggieland.  I hope the new classes admitted will push to bring back “howdy” to the levels it once was.  I’ll do my part and say “howdy” to everyone I pass.

As this week has come to a close, I’ve been thinking more about what I’m going to do after I graduate next year. I really don’t know. I think I’d really like to do technology consulting for small to medium businesses, but I don’t want to travel much. I just heard on a podcast about the digital information archival field; it has really piqued my interest, I’m going to have to do some research on it. So, I’m stressing about what I’m going to do in the future. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to get ready, the real world is about to be here. Well, I’d like to tell everyone, the real world is already here. I’m already in the real world. I never was anywhere but in the real world. If juggling college, work, and daily chores isn’t in the real world, I don’t know what is.

The growing trend for citizens to keep relying on the government for more and more is quite disturbing. FEMA, Social Security, welfare, and universal healthcare are programs where an individual’s responsibilities have been taken or moved over to the government to manage, as if it could manage it better. People need to step up and take charge. The government doesn’t need to do everything for you. It wasn’t designed to do that. If we are going to live in a nanny state, why would anyone want to work and provide for themselves? The incentive would be to take the government handouts and do nothing in return. This is completely wrong. It’s immoral, unproductive, and un-American. We are called to be the best we can be, both by God and by the capitalist system. If you live in America you have been give so many blessing by God, working your hardest is the least you can do in appreciation. In the capitalist system, rewards are give to success; leaching off of the success of others hurts the economy and reduces the incentives for hard workers (because they’re rewards will be taken by the government and redistributed to the undeserving “failures” in capitalism).

Let me make this clear, I do not think pure capitalism is the way we need to go. Welfare is very important and I’m not saying it should be abolished. However, I think it should be run by the states and should have a time period or some limit. This limitation would prevent people from staying on government welfare their entire lives. Private charity would play an even larger part than it does today, if you removed national welfare, the tax burden that causes, and the current state welfare systems and replaced them with a limited welfare program by the states.

National universal healthcare is appalling to me. It removes my right to have no healthcare plan and just pay for expenses as they come. Setting up a system like this removes everyone’s responsibilities. They’re saying you’re too stupid to go out an choose you method of paying for healthcare, so we are going to step in and make that decision for you. Look, you even get to choose a level of service! The supporters are going to say that the program is for the poor and underprivileged, so they can get health insurance. This may seem harsh, but it’s not the government’s job to bail out the “failures” of the capitalist system. By providing them with free or cheap healthcare when they cannot afford to attain it without government assistance, what incentives to work harder and move up in “class” does this procure?

Back down on the personal level, people always seem to find someone or something else to blame. Grow up! Be a mature individual and take responsibilities for any of your actions, right and wrong. If you make poor grades in school, don’t blame the professor or the test. Take responsibility for doing poorly and study harder next time. At work, mistakes happen, confess if you’ve done something incorrectly.

Financial responsibility has disappear with the arrival of the credit card. The amount of debt in this country is astounding! You people out there need to stop buying stuff you can’t afford! Be responsible and buy only what you need if you are in debt. Don’t purchase items on credit, save up until you can afford it. If you do finance something, pay each payment out fully or more. Don’t let the interest grow! Hard work and a tight wallets lead to prosperous lives. Be a responsible consumer.

This country has become, or maybe always was, a sissy state. Both on the national and personal levels people are lacking in responsibility for themselves and their actions. This is a major problem. If everyone is telling the government to take care of them, then no one is left to to take care of anyone, because we are the government in this country. We have to stand up and take responsibility.

I think they might be. Bill Vaughan said, “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” The problem with suburbs is that they constantly grow larger and larger, instead of growing up, or down. If suburbs continue to grow we will eventually run out of land suitable for construction. But before that, we will run out of land where a person can be completely alone in the wilderness.

Don’t get me wrong, I love developments and futuristic fantasies, such as Coruscant, but I also love the isolation created by the vast expanses of nature without any human feature or touch. No roads, power lines, radio or cellphone towers; the flawless creation of God. If we don’t examine our urban sprawl and look to developing a smarter growth solution, it might be a very gray world with a few, small perfectly-pruned and watered patches of green.

A quick Google search and you’ll find many organizations and articles fighting urban sprawl and promoting smart developing methods, yet I live in the exurbs, at the moment, and the signs of growth are still building. Do you want the world to look like this picture on every piece of stable ground? What can you or I do to promote smart development plans? I don’t know, but we need to do something before it’s too late; before we are looking at trees in a museum.

Just the other day on Texas A&M University’s campus, I was walking to my car when two bike cops pulled over two women on bicycles. I don’t know what for or what happened, but they did ask for a driver’s license. From the looks of the students, they were headed to the Rec Center to workout, so they might not have their id. Before the pull-over, the officers on bikes where just standing around waiting for something to happen. I’m not saying that the girls got a ticket, but if that is what happened, the officers where on a stake-out. Do two women on bikes pose such a danger to society that two officers should spend their time watching people and bike move by? Couldn’t they be doing something else more productive or at a level that requires their skills, like say, investigating a robbery or assault that happen frequently on the North Gate side of campus? (North Gate is a strip of dance halls and bars, that have had a few assaults aimed at foreigners and minorities in the past couple of years.) I think that instead of focusing on alternative revenue gaining, the police force should be doing their job: enforcing criminal laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws are written to increase revenue instead of protect the public wellbeing. A shift in law-making and a review of current laws would need to occur to make a difference.

This morning on my drive to class, I saw an unmarked car that had pulled over what from all indications was a speeder. That is a complete contradiction of the goal of speed limit enforcement. By driving an unmarked vehicle, the police officer blends into traffic, allowing individuals to drive as they would. When he/she pulls over one speeder, the government will get the ticket revenue, but for the majority of the other cars on the highway will continue to drive at higher speeds. It’s like a wolf in sheep’s wool. However, when an officer is driving a patrol vehicle, it stands out and traffic slows to the appropriate speed. This accomplishes the goal of speed limits (“safer” driving conditions), but does not boost the government revenue. There is a conflict of interests when the law enforcement adds to the government wallet. The officials will be encouraged to “enforce” more and the legislature will be encouraged to write more laws to be enforced, and judges would be more likely to find cases in more the way of the government.

I’m not saying we live in a country that is corrupt, but to prevent corruption takes a vigilant populous. We need to be the moderators of our government, not the other way around.

Everyone talks about becoming energy independent. Well, it’s not going to happen if oil companies aren’t allowed to drill off the East, West, and Gulf Coasts and/or Alaska. We also need more refineries.

Taking more taxes from the oil companies recent profits is not going to help the situation nor would it be good precedent in our country. Private business is a cornerstone in functioning society. If gas becomes socialized bad things will happen. Most socialized programs fail miserably.

U.S. Congress, do not even consider taxing the oil companies to get their profits or even think about socializing gas!

One fun, radical idea to fix our oil problem is to invade Canada! We’d get more cold weather croplands, more timber, more oil & natural gas, and only a little more than 30 million people. California has about 36 million. The U.S. would double in physical size. Canada has lots of fossil fuel opportunities. It would be a great economic boost. They don’t have much of a military. They can still have their provinces, but will now become states.

A less radical plan would be to slowly start buy their land right out from under them. Then, the landowners would be American and they could force the parliaments to join the Union.

All we have to do next is move south. Western Hemisphere domination!

1.) Celebrities are treated like they’re so special; like they are another class of people. They’re not; they have just as many if not more problems than the rest of us. One of their problems is paparazzi. I don’t have to worry about getting chased by camera toting peeping toms. Do you?

2.) So many people look up to them as role models, but they aren’t very good ones. Their marriages are a joke. It’s amazing if they last 10 years and unbelievable if they are over 20 years. Is that characteristic you want to spread across the country, because the divorce rate is already at least 50%. I’d really like to see that come down, how about you?

3.) Celebrities, directly or indirectly, promote physical attractiveness, which can make a lot of people uncomfortable with the way they look. Vanity, cosmetic surgery, and low confidence levels are effects of this beauty aspect to celebrity.

4.) Why do they deserve awards every year? Did they do anything other than work for a living like the rest of us do? Should we all have awards like the best wall painter or the best assistant?

5.) The final reason I’m going to present is how celebrity is detracting attention away from more important issues and events in our lives. Anyone who watches TV knows that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split up last year, but how many people know the name of the position that Alberto Gonzales holds? People retain all of this information about so many “celebrities” but they don’t care to know about the people who hold power in our country, in the world?

Celebrities aren’t an upper race of people. They have many problems, some we have, some we don’t. Celebrity creates the feeling of inadequacy or imperfection for many people. They don’t do anything other than work for a living like the rest of us. Finally, celebrity-centered culture is dumbing down our citizenry.

Don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy movies and TV and I don’t want to end that industry. I just want to bring the actors/actresses off of their pedestals.

Norton Internet Security is driving me crazy!!! It pops up firewall messages asking me if I want to block, allow temporary access, or always permit a program to access the internet. The thing that bugs me the most is that it is one of Norton’s own programs, it’s the email scanner, I think. Everytime there’s a LiveUpdate it asks me about the program again. I always tell it to permit always, but that doesn’t matter. One would think that Norton would write the firewalls to exempt it’s programs for being subject to these pop ups.