"I'm From the Government and I'm Here to Help"

That famous quote from Ronald Reagan, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

My very first important memory of Reagan's words played out in reality on a big scale was Hurricane Katrina. I watched as those who understand this quote and it's intentions lived out one side or the other of this quote. There really is no middle ground.

On one side, you have people that understand in their daily lives, the government is not prepared to be at the people's beck and call. Those were the people that evacuated early. If they couldn't evacuate, they prepared by stockpiling supplies, hoarding generators, and knowing every detail of how to survive a hurricane. Now does this kind of preparedness prepare anyone for the kind of hurricane Katrina was? Does it guarantee survival? No. However, we all saw these people on the news. They were the ones who had a newscaster's microphone in their face saying, "Yep, we have extensive damage, and the house is a loss. But we have tents in the backyard, cans of food, and two generators." They were fine.

There was no middle ground on this issue, there was only the other side. That was the side that got mad at George Bush for not getting the National Guard into the ravaged area within moments. I would contend that would have actually been a governor's and city mayor's job to beckon the President to make that call, which they didn't, but Bush suffered the consequences. Why do I say that? Because our republic has a system where state's rights are more important the Federal rights. The Feds just can't swoop in and take over, yet that is what this side of this issue believed would just happen with no question. It was amazing to me how these unspoken expectations, and serious lack of knowledge of a state's responsibilities, ended up harming people.

I saw the same newscaster put the microphone to these people, and I remember one man saying, "I have worked all my life, paid my taxes, and now I have nothing." I remember distinctly asking myself, "Since when does working and paying taxes guarantee you won't be hit by a hurricane and then guaranteed you will have compensation when you are?"

So here we are, years later, and this mindset is hitting us fast and furious, daily in the news. Here are a few examples:

*Friend of mine lives in Southern California. A city ordinance states there are to be no laser tag games in public parks because it might scare children because the laser tag guns look real. Well, I would contend, kids already know what real guns look like. I also contend it's not the government's responsibility to regulate if a kid gets scared or not. I thought that was a parent's responsibility? Do you see that once we abdicate it away to the helpful government, suddenly we don't have it anymore? As you read more, we probably want to keep the responsibility to ourselves and think twice before giving it up.

*In my city, last fall, city ordinance passed forcing me to compost. I was already an avid composter voluntarily before that, but that didn't count. Now, I have to compost. So since I have to compost, I only need garbage pick up every two weeks. Try keeping your garbage bin to one bin every two weeks with a family of four. Remember, the government is "helping" me here. Trust me, I didn't want to give that responsibility up, in fact, I was doing my part in spades. And in fact, shame on my city's council who shoved that decision through, foisted it upon the city, with little or no voter input. Sometimes the decision is taken away from us, and we should scream a little louder, but I digress.

*How about the countless stories I have heard (just google this kind of story and you will find them). Intruder in the house, home owner in the house is on the phone to 911 begging for the police to arrive and get this intruder out, home owner is terrified as they hear the intruder approach the owner's hiding place, and one of two things happens here. One, the home owner is armed and uses their right to defend themselves against their intruder. Two, the police don't make that fifteen minute drive fast enough, and the intruder wins, the homeowner loses their life. There is also one I know of in this scenario where the wife was against the husband having guns in the house, yet he did. Intruder is beating the husband and the wife shoots the intruder as he is beating her husband. The family of that intruder is still in litigation today over a wrongful death lawsuit. But they are alive.

*Or how about this funnier one in my community. My mayor seems to think we'll all put away our cars and ride our bikes hither and yon very soon. He wants to eradicate cars. So two years ago, to make things easier for bikes, he spent $38,000 to stamp bicycle symbols on our city's streets. I guess cyclists don't know where it is appropriate to ride their bikes and need a white stamped symbol to show them the way?? Remember, the government is helping. To show a cyclist where they can ride their bike to the tune of $38,000 isn't helping anyone. It's wasting my hard-earned tax dollars.

I could go on and on and on.

Here are my thoughts to you. Be prepared. I believe that as a member of a republic in a society that recognizes individual rights and responsibilities, we have to take our responsibilities seriously. Here's a few:

1) Be prepared for an emergency. Period. Does that mean knowing the location of the sleeping bags in your house? No. It means much more than that. It means each household needs to have supplies of everything to sustain their household for a week if that household were to suddenly lose everything in a disaster including shelter. It means you can take care of your family if Katrina hits your house. What does that mean for this family. Food supply for a week, water supply for a week, shelter enough to shelter all four of us, power supply, home defense (with disasters comes looting), sanitation, ability to reach outside family for help, fuel, clothing, ability to create heat and light, etc. It isn't just making sure we know where the Coleman stove is. We also need to make sure we know where these items are and also be prepared some of it could be destroyed in said disaster. This is serious business. Why? The government won't be coming in a few hours to cart us households away to our safe place. It doesn't exist. We, you and I, are the most highly motivated to take care of ourselves to the very best of our abilities. The governement cannot, and historically hasn't, taken care of it's populace as well as individuals can.

Let me repeat that.
The government cannot, and historically hasn't, taken care of it's populace as well as individuals can.

Ask Katrina survivors.

2) Be prepared for safety on a daily basis both in your home and on your person. Why? Crimes happen in a split second, police and security take several minutes to arrive. That is the difference between life and death. So it should alarm us when we have our gun rights whittled away on a daily basis by our government that won't allow us to defend ourselves. Repeat Reagan's quote. No, taking away those rights isn't helping. In fact, it is deadly.

3) Here's an interesting story. Several years ago, in front of my in law's home a deer was struck by a car and was wounded. My father in law was a gun-toting veteran. Normally, he would have grabbed a gun and put the animal out of it's misery and possibly even checked to see if the meat could be harvested. It's a fresh kill after all. But of course, in Oregon, a law was passed......So he called the local municipality and said this suffering deer needed to be put down, please come take care of it. No one came. Deer suffered a horrible death, good venison went to waste, and rotted on the side of the road. He decided after that, if that happened again, he wouldn't be calling for the help that wasn't really there.

4) Example of a recent friend of mine who works for a car manufacturer. I am so guilty of this one. Your "check engine" light on your car. How many of us drive around with that thing on? I am raising my hand too. Did you know some municipalities are considering making a law where if you are pulled over by an officer, and your "check engine" light is on, you could get cited? Now, when my light goes on, do I panic and pass out? No, but I do get it checked eventually. However, we all know those people who drive around for years with that light on, and that is what that new law would be targeting. Let's just think for a moment, let's not let our "check engine" light go so long and maybe some brilliant law maker won't have cause to pass more helpful legislation. Oh, also have you noticed, when that kind of legislation passes, it's punitive with a fee attached to it that we must pay the helpful government.

So my point is to ask, which side of this quote are you on.The one where I expect my tax dollars to take care of all my needs, or that I respect that my government is limited and I have responsibilities? I also recognize if I don't take care of my responsibilities, I am just asking for the government to come and babysit me, take care of me in a way that isn't helpful, and is in fact, expensive.

Musings of an App Junkie

I have been the proud owner and prolific user of a smart phone for coming up on three years now. I have used all the major brands on the market starting with a Blackberry, next an Android and currently using an Iphone. I will say this, my parents have my three year old Blackberry and are loving it. I no longer have the Android and have no desire to put the money out for another one.

So in three years of using these phones, I have played with a lot of apps. Some are fun. Some are silly. Some are as useful as a corded phone. Some have been invaluable to me and I am a little shocked at how handy they have been in my day to day life. If you want to look any of these up, just do a web search or look in your app store on your phone.

Here are my favorites:
1) Kindle. Even if you don't have a smartphone, if you are reading this on a computer/laptop, you are missing out if you have not downloaded this app that is available on anything that plugs in. Thousands and thousands of books are free through the Kindle app. Not just classics anymore either. Many new authors cut their teeth in the market by making their first few books free. I have over 2,000 books in my Kindle app, and very few I have paid for. I love to read, and this is an amazing app. I also recommend downloading the Nook app (Barnes & Noble's version of the same thing). Free books as well. I rate this very high because I have six, yes six, devices in my possession that have this downloaded. I never stand in line bored ever, I always have a book with me.

2) Shazam. This is a fun one. How many times are you in your car, or just somewhere and you hear a song, you love it, you want it, and you have no idea who it is and no one else seems to know either. It is usually a new artist who has a great first hit and it takes you a month or two of hearing it to finally figure it out. I have to say it took me a year to figure out the difference between Vertical Horizon and Three Doors Down songs because they are so similar. No more! Shazam is here! Click the app, hit their listen button, it does a listening scan of the song and identifies it for you. No kidding. Just a head up on this one, it takes a lot of data. Your Android will start screaming it's low on data if you have, oh let's say four other apps (oh look, there was some sarcasm in that sentence).

3) There is also all the social networking apps that I use constantly. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Messenger, Pinterest, and Foursquare. You may use all, some or none of these on your computer already, but again, having it on your phone is invaluable. Especially as our culture's communications leans away from email (don't shoot the messenger on trends, I am just saying what we already know) and moves towards networking sites. I use them all for all kinds of various reasons. These are all available for free making it so I can use them on my phone and be mobile.

4) I like games...a lot. About ten years ago, I found myself just kind of foggy in my memory and really started to wonder if I was going crazy a little. I read somewhere that playing simple word games helps keep you sharp. So I found a silly little handheld game for Scrabble, which I love anyway, and played it. Sure enough, found the memory getting sharper, and not worse. With the onset of smartphones, I can play those games in spades. My favorites are Words With Friends (another company's version of Scrabble, and yes, Alec Baldwin is known for playing it), Angry Birds (Asteroids with birds), and Bejeweled (again, one of the games mentioned that keeps over-30-somethings mentally sharp).

5) Kids games. Boy is it nice to hand the phone or any small device to a kid who has been standing in the DMV with me for an hour and let them play a game. Cool games for kids include Angry Birds as well. But the same creators have a cool little game called Cut the Rope. This one is a dollar or two but it is fun! Picture a piece of candy hanging from a rope and it swings. It swings over a little critter that opens its mouth hoping to catch the candy. The player must cut the rope at exactly the right time to land the candy in the critter's mouth. Okay, now add in rubber bands, balloons and all kinds of variables to make this hard to do. I have stretched my geometry skills playing this game and the kids love it.

Lego lovers, oh the apps you can find. We have Creationary which is a Lego app game where you create a thing with Legos and others have to guess what it is.

I am sure I haven't even touched the kid game market for apps. Not sure I want to either.

6) Fitness apps. This is where I have found invaluable tools, for free, at my finger tips. I would not have made the progress I have made in my weight loss/regaining of my health in the last year without the apps. Here are the two I use, daily:

     a) My Fitness Pal (MFP) is simple yet genius. It is a simple calorie and nutrition counter with as huge database of calorie and nutritional information. I have always done good on diets where I count calories. This app is great, because it is on my phone. So I can sit at a restaurant or anywhere, have a meal put in front of me and count my calories. In the past, I had a huge paperback book with me and hoped what I was looking for was in it.

Now, for those who don't have smartphones, again, this is an easy program you can do online as well. You track your daily food intake, keep track of your weight/measurements and your progress, and share with friends. The thing about diets and plans. In my 43 years of wisdom, not everything is for everybody. You have to find your "thing" that works for you. Some of my friends have joined me (and we can connect and encourage each other on it as well) and it just isn't for them. That is fine. Once nice thing with MFP, it is free to try. If it doesn't work for you, you are not out money unlike huge diet plans.

 b) Endomondo. This has been fun with the running I have been doing since December. You need to have gps capability on your phone.. But no matter what the sport, running, walking, biking, skating....it will track your distance and calories burned. You take those calories burned and enter it into MFP and you now have a really efficient way to track your nutrition and exercise. So even if I do a power walk, which I have been doing lately, I have turned it on just to see what kind of distance I am traveling and what kind of calories I am burning. It's been interesting.

Side note. I want to inspire those of you who started like I did just over a year ago. Very discouraged, slightly scared, and concerned how to get my health back. I couldn't walk six blocks without serious leg/calf pain that made it impossible to do anything remotely fitness related. I decided to get some of the weight off first, and that made all the difference. Simple walks are a great way to get started. You can easily burn 100 calories walking a mile. It is great to see the progress, in numbers, officially recorded somewhere and see that simple actions create outcomes.

Okay, I will quit channeling Jillian Michaels, back to apps...

There is the simple free app for Endomondo that I used for a long time. I plunked down the $4 recently to upgrade it. But the basic app is great. Nike also has a similar app but I like my Endomondo very much. I use it almost daily.

 7) Real Estate apps. Those apps where you can look up real estate listings. The most popular one right now is Zillow. I use it so I can dream a little.

8) GPS. I use my GPS daily. And I mean daily. When I switched from the Android to the Iphone I lost my plan's GPS, which didn't set well with me. So I have had to go on the app market and find one that works, and it's been a challenge. Once I find one...or does anyone know one?

9) Radio stations now allow you to stream in their radio programs via free apps. Nice if you live right outside the listening area, or on vacation, you can listen to favorite programs. 

9) Then there are all kinds of little ones I use every now and then. I have a crockpot recipe app, a scanner for all those stamp sized bar codes you see everywhere, Netflix (login using your account, and watch movies on your phone) and the Weather Channel.

There is truth in the statement, "There's an app for that."