BradPace.com

I hate spam (the email kind and the meat).  Almost as much I hate email that gets forwarded to everyone in a chain letter format.  I especially hate it when the email asks you to forward it to everyone you know.  I usually just hit delete.  But I liked this one.  So instead of sending it on am posting it to my blog. (if you must have the original email to send to your friends let me know )

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The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving

Irena Sendler

There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ‘ulterior motive’ … She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize … She was not selected.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

In MEMORIAM – 63 YEARS LATER

Please read the little cartoon carefully, it’s powerful. Then read the comments
at the end.

In Memoriam

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iraq , Iran , and others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a my th,’ it’s imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!

Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

As anyone who know me knows by now I purchased an iphone about a month ago. Now I am not an Apple zombie (never even used a Mac) but I have been a long time iTunes user and have loved my Ipod video. But as I tell my wife almost everyday, “I LOVE MY IPHONE!”. Here are a few thoughts now that I have used it for a while now:

What I love about the iPhone

1. It looks great. I love the UI and the design of the device. The first thing I did was purchase the super protective cover from Shield Zone. I hate cases and like to just have things in my pockets. This has kept it looking like new. Well worth the money. I also love the touch screen. You can do so much with it.
2. The internet rocks on the iphone. I saw a stat that iphone users use the web 3x more than on any other phone. That’s because it works! The safari browser goes to any website and it has worked on all of them. The only sites it does not work on are some video streaming sites. Like hulu.com and the streaming feature from Netflix. More on this on the salvation part!
3. I love the map, integrated youtube, weather, clock (I had to install a world clock on my treo), and the rest.
4. Email works! I was never able to get my treo to work with email very well other than webmail clients. I tried several programs and hated them. But the email is slick on the iphone. I setup 3 accounts (yahoo, gmail, and my familylink account) in less than 5 minutes and they all worked great. Yahoo has a great push feature for the iphone that is nice (but I since have turned off to save battery). Gmail also works very well.
5. iTunes integration is very nice. You can download music via a wi-fi connection and select which music, videos, and podcasts you want on your phone. I listen to many podcasts regularly and it works great.
6. Business can get done. With the great email and safari support I have been able to do a lot of business on my iPhone. I can access and respond to email. I can get to all our sites and use them. I can even use our facebook app on my phone. I have been able to get work done in the off hour and while traveling.
7. Wi-fi access. I always thought that my Treo should have just come with wi-fi built in. The iPhone easily connects to a wireless network and provides faster access to the web and to email.
8. Lastly is the upgradability of the iphone. They released a new version of the software a few weeks ago and added some great new features. This is what is going to make the iphone rule the world. No other phone I have ever had has actually added features. As Apple opens up the iPhone to 3rd party developers it will only be more popular. When that happens many of the things I don’t like will be fixed by Apple or 3rd party apps.

What I don’t like

1. Battery life is just OK. My Treo had a great battery life and often I did not even charge it for days. The Iphone I have to charge every day or it is dead. If you watch a movie and really use it for several hours the battery goes fast.
2. The headphone jack has a little indent. This makes it so you have to use their headphones or get an adapter. Even though the size is standard the headphone jack hole is set in the phone. This just bugs me and seems like a ploy to force people to buy accessories from them. I bought a $6 adapter and it works fine.
3. Chat is missing. There is no instant messenger client with the iphone. It just seems crazy to me! I am hoping this is fixed when 3rd party developers can get their apps on the iphone. But I have been using meebo.com and it works great. They have an iphone specific version and allows me to chat on all the different IM networks through the safari web browser. But if the browser is not open you cant get chats.
4. Every time I plug the iPhone into its cradle to charge it or to sync, I get a windows popup asking me what I want to do with the photos and files on the phone. I’m sure there is a way to get around this but it just bugs me.
5. iTunes non-music stuff is poor. With my Treo I had the Palm software on my PC. This allowed me to work with my contacts, calendar, and notes on my PC and sync them back to my Treo. No such thing in iTunes. Notes and contacts are kind of an after thought. I have had a hard time importing my contacts into my iphone because there is no feature to do this. The iPhone will do it via the web and a yahoo account. But I want to see them on my PC as well. This also makes the notes app on the phone almost useless. I have started using yahoo notepad and it works pretty well. I hope that Apple fixes this soon.
6. The ring tone scam! The iphone comes with a dozen or so ring tones built in. But there is no way to get a custom ring tone into the phone. You can make clips from many itunes songs into ring tones for $1. Even if you have already paid for the song you have to pay again for the 10 seconds of the song for the ring tone. And I hate ringtones from songs! But I would like more choices of just sounds for funny clips. They don’t even sell anything like this in iTunes.

Salvation through the iPhone

The coolest thing I have found so far is the phone’s ability to access LDS.org via safari. The LDS Church has a great site with tons of great info. They have recently been adding a bunch of audio and video to the site. All this is available via the iphone. The other day I watched a CES fireside video streamed directly to the phone. I also can watch or listen to general conference talks. Read the lesson materials and do searches. Just access to all the info on this one site makes the phone worth it for me.

Ok. It is 12:30 am and I have already added 2 posts to my blog tonight. But I just have to keep going. I had a few nick nacks I had to add before they left my mind:

1. I was shocked when I was driving to work the other day on I-15 and saw a large sign that read “BLOG for Lease”. What? How can that be? How would that work? My mind went into high gear thinking of new revenue models and reverse engineering. Then I saw that it actually read “BLDG for Lease”. I was angry. Spend the extra $20 to buy the vowels (and an N)!
2. You may have noticed I have created a rotating image in the header. If not just hit refresh on your browser and you will get a random new image. These are just interesting or striking images I found in my Internet voyages that deserve to be shown. I am also addicted to creating new images to use in this area. I have 15 right now but I can’t stop adding them. This is my artistic outlet at the moment.
3. I am doing another Fear Factor activity on Thursday for the young men in my ward (I did a fear factor party last year for Halloween for family and friends). I don’t know exactly what I am doing to do yet, but there is a wonderful feeling of power that comes with knowing that these young men will do anything I tell them to because it is fear factor. Eat anything, do anything! I don’t kid myself, this is pure peer pressure. Can’t look weak for the others. If I could only use this power for good instead of evil (like eating worms). It is interesting that peer pressure only works one way, to make bad choices. I think this is an example of Satan’s way of removing free agency. Forcing them to do something they don’t want to. But in this case it sure is fun! Anyway, here is the invitation I whipped up tonight for the event.