QuickBooks-Blog

It's a Wonderful LIfe, Thank you very much

There was a very special reason for my being unavailable yesterday. It's a wonderful life.

I hired my first outsourced person, a Ukrainian programmer, 11 years ago. For several years, we suffered with his bad electric, phone and computer problems. Meanwhile, he kept not getting promised high-paying U.S. jobs, due to the dot com bust. This became especially important when he learned that his fast growing daughter was accumulating Chernobyl radiation.

I finally suggested I sponsor him. I would pay less than he would get from his unrealized job offers, but double what he had been earning. We felt that ending his bad electric, phone and computer problems would make this worthwhile. He, his wife, his daughter and their dog soon arrived, with a large amount of luggage. My computer friend and his son needed two vans to drive them to their very good, but inexpensive, rental house.

For years, my family and I took them to dinners, movies, bowling, fishing, museums, computer clubs and much more. I also arranged for higher paying work, as we always agreed he would take a better job as soon as he could.

He soon had his Green Card, a much better job and his own home. Yesterday my wife and I attended an inspiring ceremony, with him and his wife, as our good friends became citizens. We then celebrated this and my birthday, knowing that their daughter remains in perfect health and will soon join them as talented and well educated citizens.

I finally returned to the largest number of happy birthday wishes I ever got. I appreciated them all, so I hope this is a better thank you than a short individual thank you to each of you. It's a wonderful life. Thank you again very much.

 

My Son Makes Lunar Rovers Work Better

This was a recent top Google News post:

Boffins zap 2,000 bugs from Curiosity's
2 MILLION lines of code • The Register

I knew that my normally secretive son, Kenneth Robert Block    (high school picture/painting) was a lead programmer at the Coverity company mentioned. When asked about his involvement in this effort, he replied:

I don't make lunar rovers, but I make lunar rovers work better. The software I develop is in every product Coverity sells, so one would have to conclude that NASA uses software I developed.

This is not surprising. His high school programming won the county Science Fair and he was runner up at the International Science Fair.

Law of Accelerating Enjoyment

My new Law of Accelerating Enjoyment shows why you are increasing likely to enjoy yourself more, at an increasingly accelerating rate. I am not writing about this Law to feel better myself or to make you feel better, but understanding it has that effect. I am writing about this Law because it helps us understand why mankind has long been feeling better and why it will increasingly feel (and do) far better, at a rapidly accelerating rate. I also am writing because Google has no record of this very important “Law of Accelerating Enjoyment.”

Despite that, this is not a joke. I really believe that the Law of Accelerating Enjoyment will someday gain wide acceptance. That is why I do not want to explain further, until I can do so in a more orgainzed way (tomorrow). 

 

Stunning Alzheimer’s Research

Stunning Alzheimer's research, on a skin cancer drug, may offer an almost INSTANT cure for 5.4 million million U.S. Alzheimer's patients.

This stunning Alzheimer's research, at Case Western Reserve University, involved bexarotene and mice. It helped wipe out up to 75% of an Amyloid beta protein linked to Alzheimer's. The mice became normal THREE DAYS after bexarotene (sold as Targretin) treatment.

Gary Landreth, a Case neuroscientist and lead researcher, said, "No one, ourselves included, would ever imagine that any drug would work with this speed… It's stunning." Amyloid beta is common in humans, but Alzheimer's patients cannot clear it from synapses. If not cleared, the protein builds up as plaque, blocks synapses and kills nerve cells. Dr. Doug Scharre, director of cognitive neurology at Ohio State University Medical Center said, "The fact that this agent gets rid of the Amyloid is very positive… many researchers speculate that by the time drugs treat Alzheimer's patients, it is too late to halt serious problems... We cannot revive a dead nerve cell... If we could attack this at the very early stages of memory loss, we could have much better results."

Maria Carrillo of the Alzheimer's Association, which helped fund some of Landreth's research, said, "Other studies of drugs showing promise in mice produced little change in human patients… We are not sure that this is going to show the desired clinical benefits… We owe it to ourselves and our constituents to follow every lead we have." Landreth hopes to begin human trials, "within the next few months."

This announcement came only a few days after a second stunning breakthrough in Alzheimer's research. This involved a very small trial of a brain pacemaker, to treat Alzheimer's with a series of mild electric pulses,

I predict there will be an almost immediate underground market for bexarotene. Does anyone know where I can get it for deserving family and friends?

Republican House to Defund EPA (LIE!)

Did you hear that the Republican House voted to defund the EPA? If so, you, like my grandson, heard a big lie. Democratic Senate leader Reid compounded this lie by saying Republicans don't want clean air.

One story had the headline, Republican House to Defund Environmental Protection Agency." The second paragraph of the story proves that the headline and the first part LIED. It says, "The House amendment specifically (only) cuts funding for EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from stationary sources."

This Republican House Voted to Defund EPA lie did not survive the recent budget compromise, but it is crystal clear that the amendment had nothing to do with defunding EPA as a whole. It stops Obama carbon dioxide plans, already specifically rejected by both houses of Congress. Obama admits that this plan will "necessarily skyrocket" electric costs.

It seems far too many in Congress know we can use low tech hurricane busting pumps (big inner tubes with 600 foot skirts) and a few six-mile coal-plant baloon-smokestacks to end global warming. It also seems that an increasing number of us know that several planets and a Jupiter moon, which lack man-made global warming, are warming faster than we are. This shows the Sun, not man, is the main cause of global warming. Climategate scandals showed us that top global warming scientists lied about data to prove claims. There also are those that know there is little scientific concensus on carbon dioxide damaging us, as opposed to sharply incrasing crop yeilds in the way it did many years ago.

If you heard this big Republican House to Defund EPA lie, how many other big lies will you believe from the same sources?