Linux has been around for several years and I have tried using it as a desktop platform many times in the past.  Each time having the system fail in one way or another.  Sometimes these failures were technical and other times they were simply because the platform was not user friendly.  Either way it has been at least a couple of years since I last tried to switch to a more open source platform like Linux.

For those of you who don’t know, Linux is a operating system that is an alternative to Microsoft Windows or Apple’s Mac OS.  There are many different distributions of Linux each with their own setup, but all based on the same underlying system core called the Linux kernel.  What makes each distribution different is the philosophies of system setup, software to include and update/release schedules.  For the most part though you can get the same software on all versions of Linux with a few exceptions.

Like I mentioned previously, I recently decided to give Linux another try.  This time I decided to go with a new distribution that I have never used before called Ubuntu.  The idea behind the Ubuntu distribution is to create a user friendly desktop platform for the masses based on the gnome desktop manager.  HUH?  That’s probably more then you wanted to know.  The important part of that is “Ubuntu” and “User Friendly Desktop Platform”.  So Lets see how they did…

During the install I was prompted with a few basic questions such as my timezone, keyboard layout, default language and my name.  Seems simple so far.  The install process also asked about how I wanted my hard drives setup/partitioned and being a advanced user I set them up manually.  For the beginners there was a simple “use entire hard drive” option they could choose.

Upon answering all the questions and giving the system a password for my login, it proceeded to format the hard drive and install the Ubuntu system.  There was a total of five screens that asked questions during the install and it worked very similar to a wizard setup screen in Windows.  This is great to help make it easy to convert the less advanced users from Microsoft.

Once the installation was complete the system rebooted and I was prompted to login with the user name and password I setup during the installation.  When I was finally able to enter those correctly (too many passwords in my head), the system dropped me to my new Linux desktop.

After the desktop loaded I looked around and was very surprised to find that all of my hardware was configured and working perfectly.  At this point I took a couple of minutes to poke around the system and menus to familiarize myself with the platform.  I was amazed at what I found.  All of the software a basic home user would need was here pre-installed on the system.  This is what I found:

• Calculator Application – Not a great program but it’s invaluable when missing.
• CD/DVD Creator – CD and DVD burning software ready to go.  Burn data or music directly to discs.
• Screen Shots – Allows you to take a picture of whats on your screen and save it.
• Text Editor – Equivalent to notepad in windows.  Stupid program but I use it everyday.
• F-Spot Photo Manager – A photo album program to organize and keep track of digital images.  The rise in popularity of digital cameras make this handy.
• GIMP Image Editor – Much better then Microsoft’s paint program.  More between the Paint Shop and Photo Shop programs.
• OpenOffice.org Drawing – Another image editing software.
• XSane image scanning software – Scan pictures and documents and save them on your computer.
• Dictionary – A computer based dictionary software.  This will be handy!
• OpenOffice.org Office Suite – Word, Excel & Power Point equivalents.
• Movie Player – A video file player.
• Sound Recorder – Record sound into your computer.
• Firefox – A web browser.  Better then Internet Explorer.
• Evolution – A email client similar to Outlook or Thunderbird.
• Pidgin Internet Messenger – A instant messaging client that can connect to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, IRC and Jabber networks.

Wow!  Look at all that.  It’s everything a normal person would use for day to day activities.  This is great!  From this point I starting setting up my personal options for software I have used before such as Pidgin and Firefox.  Once I was done I continued to play with the system and use it for my day to day work activities.  In fact I am writing this post using Linux right now.

I must say I was very skeptical about moving to Linux when I starting thinking about it a week ago.  After all I have tried many times in the past and it never turned out good.  However this time it doesn’t seem so bad.  So far I have been able to find everything I need with a couple of clicks of the mouse and everything seems to be extremely user friendly.  I have installed a couple of extra pieces of software such as TweetDeck and Adobe Acrobat and even those installed with no issues.

At this point I can see no reason why I couldn’t continue to use this as my work desktop.  Really I can’t see a reason why I couldn’t load this on my home desktop that my wife and I share.

For those of you that want to try Linux on your machine but are too scared to make the jump, Ubuntu has a nice live CD that you can use to demo the OS.  Download the installation CD for Ubuntu from their site and record it to a CD.  When you reboot your computer with the CD in the drive select the option that says “Try Ubuntu with out installing on my computer”.  It’s certainly worth taking a look at.

What are your thoughts on using Linux as a desktop platform?  Do you think its close enough that the masses could easily use it as a Windows replacement?  Leave your comments below…

Well being the system admin part of my job is to come up with new things that can save the company money using technology.  If i can increase productivity while doing it, that’s all the better.  So I decided to give Google a shot on fixing our little licensing issue.

Google has a semi-new service available to users calld Google Apps, or Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD).  The service includes access to Gmail for your email, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Contacts and Google Calendar.  All of which are fairly good services. Here’s a quick run down of what each does:

• GMail – Google’s email service.  Works via a website, commonly referred to as web mail.
• Google Sites – Allows users to quickly make websites and publish them on the net.  Lots of options for security, not overly flexible.
• Google Docs – An on-line document editing and storage system.  It’s like having a watered down version of Word, Excel and Power Point on the internet.
• Google Contacts – A simple yet effective contact management system.  It is integrated with Gmail so you can easily have a address book of email addresses.
• Google Calendar – A easy to use task & time management interface.  Schedule events and appointments via the web interface and it will email you reminders of upcoming tasks.

The great thing about the Google Apps service is that your able to use all of these systems with your own domain.  This means that your email address can still be rob@robertrolfe.com instead of rob12424@gmail.com.   This is especially great if you want to use the Google Apps service for your company communications, as having your own domain for email looks much better and more professional.

As I mentioned above the Google Docs system is a little watered down on features.  Due to this we were unable to solely use that part of the system for our tests.  To supplement this problem we decided to use OpenOffice.org as a office suite, which has far more features then Google Docs does at this point.  It is also much more compatible with Microsoft Office which is currently the gold standard.

So I gathered together a group of about 6 users in the office and moved them all over to this new experimental system to see if it could indeed replace the Microsoft software we were using at that time.  Well, It didn’t and in about two weeks time we ended up moving all the users back to the Microsoft based platform except one other user and Myself.

What ended up being the downfall was the Word document’s.  Microsoft Word has many different features in it that OpenOffice.org was unable to work with in a fully compatible manner.  Things like embedded documents inside of other embedded documents in a Word document didn’t work properly.  We also had 1 document that the OpenOffice.org program was completely unable to open at all.

Now this wasn’t completely the fault of the Google platform or the OpenOffice.org software.  Most of the problems that we ran into were extremely stupid things that users who sent us the document did.  Who really embeds a document inside of a document and then embeds that into another document?  Things like that should never be done, but Microsoft Word was still able to open it and operate properly.

It just comes down to the fact that no matter how good you make your software, and OpenOffice.org is good software, it still can’t compensate for stupid users.  The Google aspect of the experiment did however work perfectly.  All of the users were getting used to using Gmail rather then Outlook and there were no real problems with that.  However due to the Office documents not working properly, we still had to move back to Microsoft.

The cost savings to buy Office without Outlook combined with the cost savings of not purchasing new licenses for Exchange were not great enough to justify the cost of paying Google for the Apps server.  Especially not after adding the costs to make the email switch for all the users and teaching them the new interface.

As for me and the other user, we are both happily still using Google in favor of Outlook & Exchange.  We both use OpenOffice.org for managing our documents and have little to no issues.  In fact for me it has actually increased my daily productivity greatly.  We are able to still be using this platform because we are more open minded when it comes to technology then the others in the office.  We also don’t deal with the same level of users on the other end of our communications stream as the rest of the office staff does.

So as long as your open minded you could easily switch your personal or business communications to Google Apps and OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office and Exchange.  You simply need to look at your past communications and see if users who send you documents use any really proprietary features that words provides.  If they simply send you basic work documents with text and some pictures, it will be no big deal.  However don’t expect that things will be exactly the same as the interfaces are different and the platforms react differently, but with a open mind you can easily overcome these things.

I know of a few businesses that currently use OpenOffice/Google as their standard for a business platform.  It seems to work very well for them and is currently working very well for me.  In fact it has been able to free me from Microsoft just slightly which I very much like.  When it comes to technology I very much prefer to keep my options open.

Are you using Google Apps?  How about OpenOffice.org?  How are they working for you?  Drop some comments below and let us know how its working out!

Warning: This blog post may/will contain strong adult language.  If you are easily offended, please do not continue to read the following post.

Everyone at some point in their lives have done something extremely stupid.  You know exactly what I am talking about.  It’s that moment you think about in your past where you think to yourself “What the hell was I thinking?”.  For most of us these moments were all when we were teenagers and in our early 20’s.  Why is that?  My theory is because teenagers are stupid.  Teens make up some of the dumbest people on the planet…  Here’s some proof!

Ghost Riding or Ghost Riding the Whip is a relatively recent idea originating from the Bay area that teenagers are using to entertain themselves and apparently others.  The concept of Ghost Riding is best defined as the act of when a person puts a car with an automatic transmission in drive or allows it to idle and then the driver (and passengers) of a vehicle exit while it is still rolling and dance beside it or on the roof.  Wait! What?

That’s right.. You read it correctly.  It’s when you exit a moving vehicle to dance beside it and on the roof while it continues to move down the road.  If your over the age of 25, you can already see the horror coming can’t you?  Now I can tell you that I couldn’t believe that this was real after reading a blog post about ghost riding the whip by Justin.  So I checked with several other 20 something employees in the building and sure enough.. they all confirmed that it is indeed a real thing.  Sure enough there is even a Wikipedia page on Ghost Riding.

Just in case you can’t grasp the concept of what I am talking about, here is a parody video of two senior citezens ghost riding a scion.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How fucking dumb do you have to be to think this is a good idea?  Who is the bright youngster that one day decided to remove himself from a moving vehicle so he could dance next to it like a moron?  It’s amazing to think that this is the future that we will be turning the world over too one day.  Even some of the men and women in the armed forces have decided to get on board the ghost riding wagon:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s another one of our brave soldiers serving his country well:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We can only hope that more situations like the following keep happening.  This moron was ghost riding his piece of shit car when a onlooker decided to jack him for it.  This is just too priceless.  Hey dipshit!  If you were in the car while it was moving then it wouldn’t have been stolen so easily!

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s also another new term I learned today while doing my research of Ghost Riding.  That new term is “Hyphy Train”.  This is apparently when a entire group of morons gets together to ghost ride multiple whips in a row down the street.  Like the idea of just having one car load of idiots in a area wasn’t enough, now we have to do it in larger groups?  You know that’s not going to turn out well.  Typically the larger the group the stupider the people in it get.

After being just horrified watching videos of these idiots ghost riding on YouTube, I decided to go check in with a part time co-worker who happens to be a law enforcement officer in the Portland metro area.  He also had heard of the stupidity that is called ghost riding and informed me that drivers caught doing it will only get a ticket for wreck less driving and/or endangerment.  Unfortunately after a few more questions I found out that they simply can’t lock these poeple up in the clink for a week under the charge of being stupid.  That’s too bad, It might have helped.

Parent’s need to be aware of this ridiculous phenomenon.  They need to keep an eye on their vehicles.  If your teen borrows the car, or has their own, and it comes back with foot prints on the hood or roof… you know whats been happening.  Teens are tricky little bastards too, you should be suspicious if they come back with a fresh car wash every time too!

If you find out your teen has been ghost riding the whip with your car,  might I suggest foot riding as a punishment?  That’s where they dance down the street and you kick them in the ass every few steps for being a idiot.  Hell make them go around the block a few times, invite the neighbors out to watch.  If you feel particularly inclined… lets the neighbors join in on the kicking!

As you can probably tell, my thoughts are that your a god damn moron if your participating in these kinds activities.  One can only hope that another driver comes by, with any luck at all it will be a over worked cop, and they “accidentally” hit you with their car while your busy dancing in the street.  Make sure you get a video of that and post it on YouTube as well jackass.  Now that’s a video I wouldn’t mind watching.

What are your thoughts?  Have you done any Ghost Riding?  Is Ghost Riding the Whip popular among your friends?  What would you do if you found out your kid was doing this with the car they borrowed?  Share some link love and give us your comments below!

]]> http://www.robertrolfe.com/blog/2009/ghost-riding-whip-decline-humanity/feed 1 http://www.robertrolfe.com/blog/2009/microsoft-windows-7-ready-pc http://www.robertrolfe.com/blog/2009/microsoft-windows-7-ready-pc#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:08:59 +0000 Robert Rolfe http://www.robertrolfe.com/?p=160 Microsoft Windows 7 is set to be put on retail shelves on October 22nd, 2009.  Since we are only a few months away from this date I have had many people asking whether or not Windows 7 is going to be worth the upgrade.  After all initial Microsoft operating system releases are not known to be the most stable and forgiving releases there are.  This was made extremely apparent by the release of Windows Vista.  Before I answer the big question on whether or not Windows 7 is ready, let me cover a little history so you can better understand my answer.

I am by far no Microsoft fan boy.  I have used Windows for many years and understand it very well.  The reason I have used it for so long is simple, the majority of software available today is only made for the Windows platform.  The two major types of software that tend to lock me into windows are business enterprise packages and games.  What can I say.. All the best games are on the windows platform and there’s no way I can give up my gaming.  Back to the point!  In my opinion there have historically only been three decent versions of Windows over the years.  Here’s a look at the previous Microsoft Windows versions for home computing and my opinions on each:

• Windows 3.0 – Not great.  Had to run on top of Dos and was horribly buggy even for the time.
• Windows 3.1 – Good!  Fixed a good deal of bugs that were in Windows 3.0 and was a decent OS for the time.
• Windows 95 – Fail!  Took Microsoft a couple of years to work out the bugs, even then it wasn’t perfect.
• Windows 98 – Good!  A big improvement over Windows 95.  Primarily because they took out the DOS underlay.  Wasn’t perfect but was still good.
• Windows ME – FAIL!  Massive FAIL!
• Windows XP – GREAT!  A huge improvement for windows.  Took about a year to get right but was worth the wait.  Many waited on 98 until this was ready.
• Windows Vista – FAIL!  Vista is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.. now.  It was when first released but about a year and a half after release Microsoft had it together.  Huge part of the problem was software vendors not preparing for Vista during the beta and RC phases.  Due to this all the blame was put on Microsoft when it certainly was not all their fault.  Should have been more like 50/50 blame.

The state of things today:
As it sits there is only one version of Microsoft Windows officially under support, Windows Vista.  On April 15th, 2009 the support for Windows XP (Still the largest OS share on the market today) was discontinued, leaving with no updates unless they move to Vista.  This was not a good choice for users as many of them did not want to move to Vista because of the horror stories from the early Vista days.  Now Windows 7 is due out in October and everyone wants to know if that is going to be the solution Microsoft promises it will be.

Windows 7:
Knowing that this question was going to come up, a few months ago I downloaded and installed the RC version of Windows 7.  My initial thoughts were that it was simply Vista with a new name.  This turned out not to be true.  As I continued to use the Windows 7 platform I found the system to be much more to my liking then Vista with all the latest patches.  Here are some of the reasons why:

• User Account Control – After installing Vista the first thing I ever did was disable UAC.  That annoying prompt asking if I was sure I wanted to do something was far too aggressive for me.  Every time you changed a setting or installed some software, there it was.  In Windows 7 I never actually turned off UAC.  Microsoft improved the settings for the system and actually made it a useful feature, which is good because many users actually need this.  Now UAC is a great feature to help ensure users are not accidentally changing system settings without being warned of the potential danger first.
• Memory Management – The memory management and requirements on Vista were crap.  To make the system run (at any decent speed) you needed 2GB of ram.  At the time of Vista’s release that was ridiculous when you only needed 1GB on XP.  Even with the 2GB of ram on Vista programs and operations still ran slower then they did on XP due to Vista’s memory management.  Windows 7 no longer has these problems.  I found Windows 7 to be much more responsive and use the memory much better then Vista every did.
• After Install Compatibility – One of the biggest problems with Vista was the compatibility issues with software and programs right after it was released.  Many of these have been fixed in Vista due to patches and the software developers fixing their code on the software.  These kinds of compatibility issues were not present in the RC version of Windows 7.  In fact I only had 1 compatibility issue with Windows 7 and it was not the fault of Windows.  The software is known to have problems in the past and the developer never bothered to fully fix it with Vista.

There are many more things I found favorable about Windows 7 then what I listed above.  The only thing I really didn’t like about Windows 7 was the new task bar management for running programs.  XP had a simple 1 bar entry per program task bar.  Every time you opened a program the other icons on the bar got a little smaller and a new box was created.

Vista changed the task bar by stacking multiple copies of the same software into 1 bar entry.  You clicked on the bar entry and a menu came up where you could choose the instance that you were looking for.  Windows 7 decided to take that a step further and offer you screen shot previews of the windows under the stack.  I am sure many users will like this and find it helpful, I just wasn’t one of them.  From an I.T. admin stand point, this one little change will cause me lots of work because its a interface change and users tend to have problems with change.

Windows 7 Task Bar View

With all of the above being said, I think that Windows 7 is certainly ready to be used.  If the version that Microsoft puts on the cd is the same as the RC that I have been running for the last few months, then there is no reason not to upgrade.  At this point I am planning on loading it on every PC in our office within a couple of months within it’s release.  That alone should tell you my confidence in the Windows 7 platform.

Have you been running the Windows 7 RC?  What are your thoughts on Windows 7 so far?  Leave your comments below!

So armed with construction blue prints and a trusty Excel spreadsheet I proceeded to map out exactly how our computer infrastructure was to be deployed in the new building.  This took weeks to get done.  Going through all the drawings and trying to work out all the details in your head is very hard.  I spent a good deal of time researching products online trying to make sure I was going to be purchasing the correct ones.

Once I found all the products and got the entire office and warehouse drawn out..  I compiled a list of parts I would need in Excel and whom I would buy them from.  After all we do have to make sure this all stays within budget.    Once the list was complete and I verified it 5-6 times, I proceeded to order the necessary parts for the facility.  This took a couple of days to get all the orders in place.  Thankfully I got the last order in on a Friday afternoon because my brain was shot.

Since that Friday we have had a number of things change which effected the I.T. infrastructure.  So I have been spending all of my time dealing with those changes and making sure that everything is to come together properly.  This kept me extremely busy up until Tuesday of this week when we got the final details set.

So here’s my advice.  If your ever thinking of building your own facility, home, warehouse or office… Don’t.  At least don’t if you don’t HAVE to. Yeah its great that you would get exactly what your looking for and your able to customize it to your exact needs, but it’s a huge amount of work.  There are many details to go over with contractors and a overwhelming amount of decisions that have to be made.  Kind of a PITA.  Just keep it in mind!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yep!  Just as I thought… he didn’t take that well.  Another new video was posted showing a little more torture after he broke the microwave in the last set of videos I posted.  Here’s the footage:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s all the updates that have been posted so far.  I will try to post any new updates as they are made available on YouTube.  For those of you following along at home.. Wafflepwn was the original YouTube user name for the little brothers account.  Now he is posting new video’s under the user name DaSexSymbol20.  Yep.. seems like a user name that a teenage boy would choose.

Thanks!

The original purpose of twitter, which is still posted on the website, is to post small and frequent answers to the question “What are you doing?” throughout the day in 140 characters or less.  Your followers will then be able to see your answers to this question and will easily be able to keep up with what your doing and whats going on with you.  What a time suck idea!

Really I thought to myself, who could possibly want to know what I am doing at any given moment?  More importantly why would I want to waste my time reading what other people are doing at any given moment?  It’s not like I am a celebrity where people would want to read what I am doing and I certainly couldn’t care less what the real celebrities were doing.

I honestly didn’t think I would find anyone SO interesting that I would want to know what they are doing at any given moment.

So after signing up for twitter I managed to follow a whopping 3 people.  These just happen to be the same 3 people that I worked with at a previous job and still do a fair amount of  business with today.  Over time I continued to meet people with twitter accounts that seemed interesting and starting following them as well.  Now I am up to following 30 people.  All of which I now read every tweet, that’s what they call those 140 character posts, they put into their twitter accounts.

So What Changed?
That’s easy.  None of the people I follow were answering the question “What are you doing now?”.  Instead they were using twitter for a number of different purposes and all revolving around topics I am interested in.  This made it much easier for me to swallow the red pill and decide to fall further into the twitter rabbit hole.

Each of the people I follow use twitter a little differently, however they all seem to use twitter for one of the following purposes:

• News/Information Sharing – It doesn’t matter what kind of news your deciding to share.  It could be industry news, personal news or even main stream media type news.  Using twitter for the purpose of sharing news is easy because you can post it once on your twitter and others who follow you can all be notified at the same time.  Some of them may actually re-tweet your news and share it will all of the people who are following them.
• Micro Blogging – Everyone knows what a blog is.  Your reading one right now.  People use twitter for the purpose of micro blogging because the it’s just easier to write 140 characters of content then it is 500+ words or so.  Whether this is interesting content or not is in the eyes of the reader.. That’s always something to keep in mind.
• Blog Notifications – This is a great purpose for twitter.  Until twitter and Facebook status updates were available people had to rely on RSS feeds to notify readers of their new blog posts.  By now you could be scratching your head wondering what an RSS feed is.. Well that’s exactly the point.  The masses don’t know what these are or how to use them.  By using twitter for the purpose of blog notifications your followers can now get notified of your new blog posts with little to no effort just by reading your tweets.
• Link Sharing – This is another great one!  Using twitter for the purpose of sharing links with others is a great idea.  You come across a funny YouTube video or a interesting article written by someone else.  Send out a tweet and let other see it’s greatness.
• Human Computing Power – I have seen this happen a number of times on twitter with the people I follow.  The general idea is to send out a tweet with a question in it and your followers help you out and try to answer it.  A friend of mine did a tweet 20 minutes before I started writing this post to find out  if there was a “beer and blog” event happening in Portland tonight.  Within minutes he was able to get multiple answers letting him know he was on the wrong side of town and was already missing the event.  This is probably the most powerful purpose of twitter and certainly the most amazing.  This generally only works if you have lots of people following you though.
• Advertising – This is great idea for businesses.  They can use twitter to offer their followers “twitter only” specials, good deals they have available and even announce new products.  If promoted correctly offline their good customers will certainly follow them on twitter when they are notified that twitter is where the company will be posting the best deals they are offering.
• General Nonsense – Of course this has to be listed.  Many many many users use twitter for the purpose of posting random general nonsense that you will care absolutely nothing about.  Probably because they are trying to answer the question “What are you doing now?”.  The only thing you can do with these is decide whether the good things they post out weigh the garbage posts you don’t care about.  If they don’t.. you always have the nofollow button to help you.

While the above may seem easy for some to figure out.. It certainly took me a while to figure out.  Since I signed up for twitter I have been fairly quiet on posting new things to the network.  Now that I figured out the above from watching other people use twitter, I will certainly be using it more in the future.

What do you think?  Are you using twitter or avoiding it like the plague?  Have you found any other purposes for using twitter that I missed?  Share your twitter knowledge with the masses below!  Also be sure to follow me on twitter as I need to increase my human computing power network!

Freak out #1:
This one is kinda strange.  Apparently his mother canceled his World of Warcraft account and he lost all of his stuff.  It’s a huge over reaction, however it’s funny as hell that he calms down after his father yells at him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Freak out #2:
Either the kid got his World of Warcraft account back or this video was the first one made.  His brother sets up a video camera and proceeds to torture him online from the other room.  The way this kid starts talking to his mother is insane.  It would be better if she walked in and smacked him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Freak out #3:
It’s the kids birthday and he’s turning 16 today!  what does every teenager want when they turn 16?  A Car!  This little shit’s parent happen to be nice enough to get him one.  He turns out to be less then grateful about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Freak out #4:
Ahh.. The parents are gone for the day and things seem calm.  For a minute.  The kid decides to take out his father’s guitar and play it on the porch.  Over reacting to his brother giving him a little flack.. he trashes dad’s guitar.  By now this is like a train wreck.. you just have to keep watching don’t you?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Freak out #5:
Well.. Now we are hungry!  Lets put some food in the microwave and make something to eat.  Based on our previous video’s here I am surprised the kid even bothered to try and make his own food.  I half expected him to demand that someone else make it for him.  Either way.. the microwave doesn’t work as well as he would like….

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s all we have for now.  I am sure his brother will post more videos in the future of him freaking out over stupid little shit.  If you want to find them on YouTube then they are being posted under the username wafflepwn.

As for my thoughts.. these videos are somewhat funny but something needs to be done about this kid.  My only hope is that his father somehow stumbles across this blog posting so he can read the following:

Sir,
Your child has no respect for you, your wife or your property.  He is either a spoiled little shit or has a serious anger management problem.  Please get the kid some therapy before sending him out into the real world where the rest of us have to deal with him.  I will let it be your choice as to what kind of therapy that is..  be it professional or a good old back yard ass kicking.  It obviously shows he could use a good ass kicking just for the way he talks to his mother.
Thanks,
Rob.

Until next time guys!

I first caught a glimpse of this story this morning on the news while getting ready for work.   The whole idea was so outrageous I just had to find the source story and write about it.

The was reported by Komo News of Seattle Washington.

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — Too much bare skin – even if for a good cause – is not OK, according to some.

A local bikini car wash stand offers just what you’d expect — bikini-clad women scrubbing your car clean. But the concept is proving to be offensive to many, including the stand’s intended beneficiary.

The stand’s owner and manager had planned to donate half of the proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but the organization doesn’t want the money. The group says it doesn’t want to be affiliated with the women in bikinis.

“We would never want to engage in any sort of partnership or activity that could be perceived as offensive to some of our families,” said Jeannette Tarcha of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

But some don’t see what the problem is.

“They should take any type of money,” said “Kira,” one of the employees. “Those kids would be happy to receive anything even if it comes from a bikini car wash,”

The girls work for Ronnie, an entrepreneur who owns an online Web site that offers fully-dressed poker hostesses. Ronnie has been advertising the car wash on his site as well as on Craigslist.

Ronnie planned on teaming up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to raise $3,500. He had good intentions, but some say it was a bad idea.

“I’m a little upset about it. We contacted them first. They got back to us right off with a ‘no.’” said Ronnie.

The nonprofit group admits donations are down by as much as 10 percent compared to last year. It decides who they want to partner with on a case-by-case basis, staying away from what’s could be perceived as adult entertainment.

“If a dying kid is getting their wish to go to Disney world in two weeks, and you come to them and say that money is not available because we declined to accept it from girls a bikini, that kid wouldn’t care where the money would came from,” said Ronnie.

Ronnie said he plans to go forward with the bikini car wash anyway, then donate a portion of the proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation anonymously.

The original story

Let’s start of by saying that the Make-A-Wish foundation is one of the best organizations on the planet.  They spend their donation dollars towards granting the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions.  The ideal behind this organization is nothing short of awesome.  With that being said, the fact that the Make-A-Wish foundation refused the donation above also makes them one of the stupidest organizations on the planet.

The idea that the organization won’t accept the donation because it comes from bikini clad women washing cars is ridiculous.  The person who made this decision at the organization needs to resign or be fired for putting their personal beliefs in front of a sizable donation to help grant the wishes of a dying child.

I can certainly understand not wanting to accept a donation from adult entertainment fund raiser for a foundation serving children, however this is different.  This is a car wash.  A car wash that can be found on almost any street corner during the summer months for any number of good causes.  I would think that a cause such as the Make-A-Wish foundation would qualify as being good enough to throw a car wash for.

It really shouldn’t make a difference that the women were wearing bikini’s.  As I previously said.. It’s a car wash.  What would the Make-A-Wish foundation like these women to be wearing while washing cars?  Cocktail Dresses?

Really I can’t count the number of times I have driven by a local high school cheer squad doing a car wash as a fund raiser.  Almost every time there are girls out there wearing bikinis and washing cars.  If its good enough for them.. why isn’t it good enough for the dying children?  You can’t tell me that the people of the  Make-A-Wish foundation are more up tight then the soccer mom’s of the local high school’s PTA.

Honestly the whole thing saddens me.  The Make-A-Wish foundation has failed the people they serve in epic proportions this time.  In a year when the economy is down and donations are off by as much as 10%,  the foundation should be happy that people can and are willing to make any donations.  Maybe it’s time the Make-A-Wish foundation got over itself and took at look at what is really going on around them.

After all, I could understand if you were PETA not wanting to accept money from a car wash where the women are wearing animal skin bikinis.

What are you thoughts on this?  Has the Make-A-Wish foundation done the right thing?  or Should they have taken the money and been grateful?