What I find interesting is that both the House and the Senate has standing committees representing both the majority and minority they are tasked with providing Congressional oversight of the following executive branch departments and agencies:

Office of the Director of National Intelligence , Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security’ Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Office of Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, United States Coast Guard, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity.

In addition, there is dedicted House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism/Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Analysis and Counterintelligence. These Committees are also tasked with conducting periodic investigations, audits, and inspections of intelligence activities and programs. So my question is has Congress been asleep at the wheel since 9/11? But wait, here is article from the the ACLU talking about President Clinton http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html and the use of redition during his time in office.

I think it’s time for the hard core Bush haters to call it a day and listen to their new President and begin looking forward and start spending time reading the Bills they are sending to President to become law.

The word “ringtone” comes from the English words “ring” and “tone”. It means an incoming call sound of a telephone. Nowadays it is almost a synonym of a melody set as a mobile phone ring.

The first ringtone.
It’s curious that ringtone appeared a little later than a telephone itself. The telephone invented by A. Bell in 1876 didn’t have any ringtone and a call was realized with a whistle. A ring was offered 2 years later in 1878 by T. Watson. But for a long time ringtone was an ordinary bell ring though electric.

The first mentions of the first real ringtones appeared in the middle of the 20th century when the Popular Eletronix journal in 1956 published the article “Telephones will call with melodies”. That article said: “Telephone users will be glad to know that The Bell Telephone Laboratories is working on a new device which will do away with the boring present-day rings. This device that uses transistors will produce nice sounds like ones of a clarinet”.

Probably, one of the most famous and recognizable ringtones is a “Nokia Tune” built into the Nokia telephones as the default ringtone. It appeared in 1994 (and still holds its positions).

What ringtones can be?
Ringtones have been developing gradually; therefore the existent types of ringtones represent the steps of their development.
Monophonic ringtones contain a notes set and any moment only one note can play. The first mobile phones had such ringtones. They were peeping really nasty.

Polyphonic ringtones can play several notes simultaneously. One of such ringtone formats is MIDI. This is the next step of the ringtones development. The phones that have high-quality MIDI sequencer utter melodies with a good quality of sound. These ringtones can play the sounds of different instruments, but they are almost unable to reproduce a voice.

Realtone is modern and the most commonly used format nowadays. The modern digital formats of music (AAC, WMA, MP3, Ogg, etc.) are used to store records. Thanks to them top-charts and other popular melodies are used as the ringtones.

How can you get a rington?
It’s a strange question, isn’t it? You can download it from friends, buy it (there are lots of different content-providers) or create it youself. You can create a ringtone online or by using the appropriate program – for example, SoundForge or CoolEdit.

It is important to remember that the usage of ringtones is restricted by the copyright law. So you can create, sale or exchange ringtones only in agreement with its rightholder, otherwise you may become even criminally responsible.

The most popular ringtones.
Nobody performed such a research, but the hit parade of the ringtones would look like this:

1. Perhaps the most popular ringtones are those ones installed on mobile phones by default. For example, the above-mentioned Nokia Tune. The most people are too lazy to change something.
2. Classical melodies, for example the immortal compositions by Beethoven “The 5th symphony” and “To Elisa”. They are very pleasant to hear and almost never annoy. Well, they may annoy some people only because there are too much of them.
3. Rock and pop hits.
4. Different merry, annoying, loud, unusual melodies like Crazy Frog or the voice-talker “Hello, this is your mobile phone speaking. You’ve got a call”

P.S. create ringtone online with ringtonizer.com!.?

The word “ringtone” comes from the English words “ring” and “tone”. It means an incoming call sound of a telephone. Nowadays it is almost a synonym of a melody set as a mobile phone ring.

The first ringtone.
It’s curious that ringtone appeared a little later than a telephone itself. The telephone invented by A. Bell in 1876 didn’t have any ringtone and a call was realized with a whistle. A ring was offered 2 years later in 1878 by T. Watson. But for a long time ringtone was an ordinary bell ring though electric.

The first mentions of the first real ringtones appeared in the middle of the 20th century when the Popular Eletronix journal in 1956 published the article “Telephones will call with melodies”. That article said: “Telephone users will be glad to know that The Bell Telephone Laboratories is working on a new device which will do away with the boring present-day rings. This device that uses transistors will produce nice sounds like ones of a clarinet”.

Probably, one of the most famous and recognizable ringtones is a “Nokia Tune” built into the Nokia telephones as the default ringtone. It appeared in 1994 (and still holds its positions).

What ringtones can be?
Ringtones have been developing gradually; therefore the existent types of ringtones represent the steps of their development.
Monophonic ringtones contain a notes set and any moment only one note can play. The first mobile phones had such ringtones. They were peeping really nasty.

Polyphonic ringtones can play several notes simultaneously. One of such ringtone formats is MIDI. This is the next step of the ringtones development. The phones that have high-quality MIDI sequencer utter melodies with a good quality of sound. These ringtones can play the sounds of different instruments, but they are almost unable to reproduce a voice.

Realtone is modern and the most commonly used format nowadays. The modern digital formats of music (AAC, WMA, MP3, Ogg, etc.) are used to store records. Thanks to them top-charts and other popular melodies are used as the ringtones.

How can you get a rington?
It’s a strange question, isn’t it? You can download it from friends, buy it (there are lots of different content-providers) or create it youself. You can make a ringtone online or by using the appropriate program – for example, SoundForge or CoolEdit.

It is important to remember that the usage of ringtones is restricted by the copyright law. So you can create, sale or exchange ringtones only in agreement with its rightholder, otherwise you may become even criminally responsible.

The most popular ringtones.
Nobody performed such a research, but the hit parade of the ringtones would look like this:

1. Perhaps the most popular ringtones are those ones installed on mobile phones by default. For example, the above-mentioned Nokia Tune. The most people are too lazy to change something.
2. Classical melodies, for example the immortal compositions by Beethoven “The 5th symphony” and “To Elisa”. They are very pleasant to hear and almost never annoy. Well, they may annoy some people only because there are too much of them.
3. Rock and pop hits.
4. Different merry, annoying, loud, unusual melodies like Crazy Frog or the voice-talker “Hello, this is your mobile phone speaking. You’ve got a call”

P.S. make ringtone online with ringtonizer.com!.?

Fall marks harvest time, cooler weather, and the close of summer, but for many it is also the beginning. This is a great time to take advantage of this new beginning as a teacher when you actually have time to plant some seeds and let them grow, unlike the traditional springtime plantings that we leave to wilt come summer.
It is easy to do, and easy for kids to get excited about. All you need is a sunny window (or a plant light) and a little room for a big pot, One teacher I knew used a kiddie pool to grow sunflowers in. (she had a large room)

• Start off with a brown paper bag with some sunflower seeds in it. Bring it to class and see if the kids can guess what is in it. Shake it a little, give a clue, let them feel inside, lastly you can show them, but keep it suspenseful!
• Then, talk about what they could be. Some children may be familiar, perhaps they had their own garden this past summer.
• Follow this up with a story I like to read. What’s This? A Seed’s Story, by Caroline Mockford. In this book a girl and a cat, find a seed and decide to find out what it is. They plant it and wait, and of course it becomes a Sunflower. The story is a great length for young children, pre-K, K, and even first graders will enjoy this one in September when attention has not developed yet. (What’s This is a Barefoot Book )
• Let children plant seeds in cups at first if you like or just plant them anonymously into the large container.
o Try planting some extras to experiment witholding light and water. Let the children predict what they see, record their ideas on a chart and post it in the Science area. Spend time noticing with the children which ones grow best, what do plants need to grow? (water, light, soil)
o While the plants grow you can introduce measuring, which is taller, shorter? How many inches?
o If the children are really interested, there are many great titles about soil and worms. The class could start a compost aquarium, and then use the composted material to feed the sunflowers as they grow.

• Once the sunflowers have grown, there are many posiblities for learning as well.
o Show the children some paintings by artists who used sunflowers for their subject matter. Encourage the children to notice how the artists created their sunflowers, colors? Lines? Shades?shapes? Then provide children with paints (watercolor tablets, or liquid are great, but another idea is to use craypas, to outline big shapes then wash over them with water colors. Use BIG Paper (18×24 is a good size) or have children create a class mural on large mural paper.
o Encourage students to Study a sunflower head in the science area. Patti Grosse, a teacher I once knew, used a large framed mirror in her science area to place items on for study with magnifying glasses
o Use the sunflower seeds as a counting exercise. Group seeds into cups of ten, let children each have a chance to fill cups with ten seeds.
o Make roasted sunflower seeds for a snack choice.

There are a few other Barefoot Books I like to group with this one.
The Gigantic Turnip, by Aleksei Tolstoy, is an invigorating version of this traditional favorite! Very fun, one of my favorites!
Jack and the Beanstalk, Richard Walker, is a great one we all know with NOT Scary illustrations by Niamh Sharkey.
Herb the Vegetarian Dragon, Jules Bass, wonderful story about conflict If only Herb and the others could solve the real worlds problems!, ( may be a bit long for the youngest listeners).
Whole World, Christopher Corr and Fred Penner, great remake (with singalong CD of an old favorite, endnotes informative on ways to conserve our natural resources.
The Sun in Me, contains poems about the planet.

“Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks.” These are some of the most relative, albeit a bit simple, words of Tom Petty in one of his best, but rather unknown songs, Walls. The meaning may be simple but there is a certain soothing to the poetic nature in which the lines are constructed. I catch myself saying these lines over and over when I’m having a rough day. Sometimes I’ll say them when I’m having a good day or even a mediocre day. There is just something soothing about them. I have been saying these lines to myself for afewyears now. Maybe it’s the attachment I feel with the song to my life experiences. Maybe it’s the meaning of the lines. Maybe it’s just that Tom Petty is one of the greatest musicians ever. Regardless chanting those two lines in sync with Mr. Petty over and over has helped me progress through the rough times of my life, knowing that someday will be a diamond. Consequently it’ll also keep me grounded knowing that someday will be a rock as well. But that’s just the way life works, some days are diamonds and some days are rocks.

Little did I know though, that I have been practicing a form of Mindful-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Perry Garfinkel outlines the different forms in his book, Buddha or Bust. The form that I was ignorantly practicing was similar to what Easterners practice, chanting a line or sutra repeatedly, clearing your mind and letting your stress go while bowing to some Buddhist significant – dumbly put. Though it is traditionally done a bit more formally than the way I have been going about it, with bows to a Buddha statue and other ‘religious formalities.’ Westerners tend to do a more scientific based meditation, but that is getting sidetracked…

When Garfinkel was in Hong Kong he noticed that the city had gone through a boom across the board in particularly the last 50 or so years; the city was quite modern, having the highest cell phone ownership per capita, the longest covered escalator system, the worlds tallest soft drink plant and not to mention, it is a multinational corporation hub for Asia as well as the world. He also noted though, that there appeared to be a lot of stress associated with this busy city. Everyone seemed to smoke, which I can relate to because, sadly, I smoke from time to time to deal with my stress and I hate it (another nasty side affect from a failed relationship). I admit it is kind of a Catch-22. When Garfinkel talked to Dr. Helen Ma who is an expert of MBSR, particularly Eastern MBSR, she said, “People are getting richer but not happier” and that “Hong Kong is becoming hungry for something spiritual.” This may have something to do with the largest Buddha statue being erected there and completed in 1993. These people are clearly vying for something, or at least the way that Garfinkel has described them. Dr. Ma states that Minduflness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), a variation of MBSR reduced the risk or recurrence of major depression from 78% to 36%.

This brings up the question, is MBSR a scam? People are paying a lot of money to learn how to chant formally through a ten week program, yet I chant lines to a Tom Petty song at my leisure and obtain similar benefits. The businessman would undoubtedly argue that if there’s a benefit and you can make money doing it, then why not? An ethicist might have a different opinion however. While Garfinkel may have had an open mind to this, and why the hell not, he is getting paid to do a story on it (note: in a businessman fashion), he didn’t seem sold on this style of MBSR. He had a conversation with an Indian man who was using MBSR to help him get through his rough career. The Indian was working for a multinational corporation, in a high stress environment. He learned this man’s pain and suffering and was able to relate to him through the MBSR. Garfinkel seemingly leaned to the statistics after this experience, but his attitude however, was not selling, and being an engineer I can tell you that 62% of all statistics are bogus – ha! Maybe it had something to do with the awkward experiences he had in these group type sessions.

One could argue that the entire ritual is just that, a ritual. You have to go through the motions to obtain the full effectiveness of MBSR. I have not experienced that, but it seems to me that I do essence of what MBSR is all about. I’d never pay to be able to sing or chant lines from my favorite Tom Petty song or any other song or sutra for that matter.

Some days are diamonds

Some days are rocks

You can create an avatar online by taking advantage of a magnificent online service picator.com.

Avatar on the Internet is a way of self-expression, a way to personalize yourself on boundless resources. Avatar is a way to make you recognizable. A memorable avatar marks out the owner from the crowd, attracts attention to the comments of the avatar’s owner.

Certainly, you can download an avatar, but a downloaded avatar can be downloaded by other people, so there may be many users with the same avatar. The best way is to create your own, personal, attractive and nice avatar.

What kind of avatar should be created?
The avatar should attract attention, but shouldn’t annoy the site visitors. For example, eyes annoying high-contrast bright red square won’t be good to attract attention. The avatar should stick in memory – you can make several photos of your face with unusual mimicry and create an animated avatar on which you will wink once in several seconds. It may turn out more attractive than endless catlings and doggies. The avatar should be nice and good-looking. A negligent avatar just will alienate other users. A close-up face is good for avatar, and a many times scaled-down photo of you against the background of a large building is bad for avatar.

What you need to create an avatar
Actually, to create an avatar you need only a little time and desire. You can create an avatar online and without spending money on the Photoshop (or stealing it), without troubling over the poor Paint, offered by Windows for image editing. Also you need one or several photos.If you have no photos or you want to use images, you should look for images on the Internet. Popular search systems such as google.com or other offer searching for images service. You can search there and then create an avatar out of the images you’ve found (but remember that you can’t use every found image for avatar because usage of some of them is restricted by the copyright law).

You can save the found images on your computer or immediately upload them to the site and create an avatar out of them just by pointing at the image link (usually, you can get the image link by pressing the right button over the image in a browser and select an item with the text like “save link” from the pop-up menu).

What can I do with the selected images
Having uploaded images to picator.com you can edit them in various ways. You can move them to create a composition. You can rotate them by selecting the correct position (for example, to create a collage by placing friends’ faces in a circle). You can resize and scale them. You can cut out a part of the image to replace the cut part with another image. You can cut off unnecessary parts of the picture (for example, to cut out someone’s face and to stick it to another person).

To create an avatar
In general, you can create an avatar quickly, easily and above all free of charge. Use your imagination and creative thinking – and a nice and attractive avatar or collage will be your award. And if other people like your avatar, it means they like you too, so you attract their attention.

p.s. We wish you to create a cool and interesting avatar!.

You can make an avatar online using pikun.ru service. And, at that making an avatar is free, it doesn’t take much time, and the most important is that you don’t need to install any software on your computer.

1. Load a picture for the avatar

Enter http://pikyn.ru/. You can either load an avatar image from a file on your computer or provide a link to the image in Internet. Almost any graphic files can be loaded, such as.jpg,.png,.gif.

You can load a picture from the file (on your computer) by clicking on button “Browse” and select the file you need in the opened window. Then click button “OK”, the dialog will close and you will see the name of the selected file in the text-field on the left side of button “Browse”. Then click “Load” and the file will start loading to the server. The bigger is the size of the file, the longer it takes to load it – please be patient.

You can load an image also by a link in Internet. To do this, please open a page with the image or the image itself in your browser (to find images and photos you can use services like http://images.google.ru or http://images.yandex.ru). Move the mouse pointer to the image and click on it with the right button. A small menu will open where you should find an item with the name like “Copy image location” and click it. Then you should get back to pikyn.ru and in the field “or copy the link here” press the right mouse button and select the item “Paste”. If you’ve done all correctly, a link to your image will appear in the field. Then press “Load” and a file will start loading, please wait a little.

ATTENCION: you should copy a link to a picture, not a link to a page with a picture. Usually a link to a page looks like http://yandex.ru/about.html, and a link to a graphical image like http://img.yandex.net/i/logo95×37x8.png, i.e. Ends with a full stop and several letters, which indicate a type of a graphical file, usually these are.jpg,.jpeg,.png,.gif or.bmp.

LINK COPYING FAILED: If you failed to copy a link (usually in the browser Internet Explorer), don’t lose your hope, you can save the image to your computer and load it as a file. To do this please click with the right button on the image and select an item like “Save picture” or “Save image as” or “Save image”. In the opened window you should show where to save the file with the image, keep in mind the place, click “OK”, the image will save, and then load the saved file as a picture from the file.

After you’ve provided a file or a link press “Load” and the file will start loading to the server. The bigger is the size of the file, the longer it takes to load it – please be patient.

Making an avatar.

Wait till the image is loaded and an avatar making window will open (wait till the message “Please wait until loaded…” is disappeared from the opened page.

In a panel on the left you can select a desired size of the avatar (myspace.com, facebook.com, livejournal, qip, icq, etc.) by clicking on the appropriate menu item. And also select the desired background color by clicking on the necessary color.

On the right side there is a window to make an avatar. The area of the future avatar is marked with a red rectangle. Drag your image with a mouse to select the necessary area for the avatar. Also you can turn the image (by moving a slider near the caption “Turn”) or change its size (by moving a slider near the caption “Scale”).

If you’ve performed all preparatory actions to make the avatar, now press button “make” on the left side of the page and we’ll make your avatar in several seconds.

The avatar is ready.

After you’ve pressed “make the avatar“, please wait several seconds while the avatar is being made. Shortly you’ll be automatically forwarded to another page where you will see your new avatar. A ready avatar can be downloaded, send by email to yourself or your friend or published in a gallery, where other users could appreciate and comment it.

As you see, makeing an avatar is easy and nothing to be afraid of.

p.s. We wish you to make a nice avatar that you and your friends will like.

The way i see it…

the relationship between men and woman is very complex…

When a woman loves a man she starts to doubt everything he says. Does he REALLY love me? ect. because she thinks its too good to be true. She starts doubting herself and when does she does, her lover uses that without meaning to (well hopefully without meaning to). All she wants to hear is that shes worth something and then mabey she’ll start to belive it. She clings to him to make herself feel lke he needs her.

Men are looking for a woman who reminds him of his mother. Does she cook like my mother? Is she as loving as my mother? Is she going to be as good of a mother as my mother is? He trys to himd that one woman who makes him feel as safe as his mother does.

OK, if you are getting offers that come back as denied or stay in pending forever, here are some things you can try…

1. Go to ccleaner.com and download this. All it is is a cookie cleaner for your computer. It’s a FREE download. Once you download it, open it and look where it says “Cleaner Settings”. Click on the tab for Windows and under where it says Internet Explorer the only things that should have a check by them is “Internet Explorer” & “Cookies”. Leave everything else checke din the other categories. Leave everything under advanced UNchecked. You should be good to go with those settings.

2. When you do an offer you should complete the offer, run ccleaner, then submit the offer. Make sure you clean your cookies after every offer!!! This is very important!!!

3. If you are signed up on multiple GPT sites, DO NOT complete the same offer on 2 different websites. They look at this as cheating or fraud (for some reason) And will delete your account and not pay you. If it happens a couple times they look at it as an accident (it’s hard remember all the offers you have completed from each site!!) but if it keeps happening they will probably delete your account.

4. Switch up your email address. I use gmail (register for free at gmail.com). And use what I like to call “The Dot Trick”. Lets pretend you make your email address ksgirl8165@gmail.com …. you can use k.sgirl8165@gmail.com or k.s.g.i.rl8165@gmail.com , etc. You can put as many periods in between letters and all will go back to the same email address. On a side note…I signed up at squishy with my real email at bellsouth. It doesn’t matter that you use a different one when completing the offers. Just make sure that when you submit your offers for credit you copypaste the email (your gmail address that you used specifically for that offer).

5. I always keep the screen up of the offer I did for at least three minutes. I just minimize it while I move on to the next offer. I personally think this makes a big difference because it gives advertisers the chance to track your offers.

6. A common question is do you have to fill out the second page on the one submit offers? No…. (unless stated otherwise) they are one submit so you only have to do the first page which asks you for an email or zip. After you submit it takes you to a second page that asks for your shipping info…you do not have to fill that out on the one submit offers. This is the screen I leave up(but minimize) for tracking purposes.

I hope this list helps with getting your offers to credit, as I come up with new “tips & tricks” I will list them!! Happy money making!!

My heart Aches.. My Shoulder is starting to hurt again from last year when i tore the muscle tissue in it, my gut hurts.. I hate how i feel… My life is going straight down the shitter lately, and like a spider its unlikely to crawl back out..

Nothings gone right.. With my emotional breakdown.. people being douche bags.. Me getting sick.. me getting sick of me.. things between friends.. I shouldnt care as much about her as i do but i do… For some reason every single Fucking time her ‘friend’ comes up in anything i want to punch something… i dislike this kid with a burning passion of a thousand dying suns and i dont even know him… and then another one of her friends, i know how he feels.. never gonna get the girl.. it hurts man.. Peace to you.. hope things work out..

But things suck.. i hate how i hate the kid that i dont know but i just do.. i want to punch him in the fucking nose.. but i wont.. because im not that kind of person.. but GAHHH

everything sucks.. I’ve ruined so much for people.. and im a douche bag and a half.. i hate who i am.. i used to think this was the best Me i could be.. But i might be wrong..

I’m thinking of trying to change.. start fresh.. not have the problems i have now.. get out of peoples way.. stop being a douche bag..

I’ll let you all know if i change or not.. or if i even try..