princeofvegas

I know a lot of you think I am crazy for posing a question like that but you wouldnt believe how many people out there (especially the ones in the higher income brackets) that feel the homeless should not be allowed to have cell phones until they are a functioning member of society. I completely agree with all of you that this should not even be a question. That just goes to show how messed up we are as a society that this questions has even come into existence.. lol.

There is a huge benefit to Open Source software that is still untapped for the most part. Yes there is a big problem with major companies like Microsoft coming in, grabbing it up and starting to charge for it. But let us face it, in today's economy(at least in America, I can't speak for the rest of the world), people love nothing more that something that is free, and that is what open source software provides.Take the osCommerce project for example I am going to use it as an example because I have actually assisted the development team on several occasions. Open source software is developed by a community for a community. It is a close knit group of people working for the betterment of the community project. People can submit contributions and add-ons for the osCommerce platform to the website as long as they submit it free without any kind of zend encoding or anything like that. osCommerce is a great example because it is still to this day active and has been so for over 10 years. The community is great and I have met a lot of great programming buddies in the forums. So yes, I am a strong supporter of open source and hope that developers still continue support the open source projects.One last short example that I would like to provide on the evolution of open source. No days, with platforms like linux under the ubuntu or other distributions, a person can have a completely functional operating system with word processing, plug and play support and even gaming without ever having to worry about paying for a licensing agreement. 10 years ago this would not have been possible or if it was it was very limited to professional programmers. This is how far open source platforms have come in 10 years and imagine where they will be in another 10 years if people keep supporting to open source platform.

I do not see a problem with hiring Felons. People are people and we all make mistakes. Those that have paid their debt to society I feel deserve a fair shot at life again. I have been doing a lot or research for an upcoming documentary I am filming about the homeless and have found that almost half of our homeless population are felons. The number one reason for this incredible homeless rate among felons is because most of them are unable to secure a job when they are released from incarceration.Some are bringing up the fact that people who committed crimes as a juvenile are unable to find jobs as adults. This should definitely not be the case. I got into my fair share of problems as a juvenile but as soon as I turned 18 I was able to seal my records and on a job application I was legally able to put that I had never been convicted of a crime.Now if you are going for a sensitive job, such as the money counting room in a major casino in Las Vegas, the employer deserves the right to know if they are hiring someone who has been convicted of armed robbery or another crime relating to money. At the same time though, that shouldn't stop someone who was convicted of robbery getting a job in the customer service center for a utility company or something that is unrelated to their area of crime. I am a firm believer that everyone deserves a second chance because I am living proof of this.I went to a group home when I was 14 years old and that was my second chance. I turned my life around and when I turned 18 I was able to step out into society on my own with no record of my past(and yes I committed some very bad crimes). I am now a successful business owner and producer and I probably would not have been able to get that way if it were not for the second chance that the system had given me.

There has been a debate rising in the last few years about homeless and cell phones. I couldnt believe how many people actually felt that if you are homeless you should not have a cell phone. I am on the complete opposite side of this issue and I would like to know where you guys stand. I have done my own research on this issue and have come up with what I think started this "pointless" debate in America. First Lady Michelle Obama, as I have seen on the news many times already, went down the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to help serve meals in Miriam’s Kitchen, a neighborhood soup kitchen. Bless her for doing so, for walking her talk. There, a gentleman snapped a cell phone photo of her at work and the uprising began with the first iteration of the photo’s broadcast in the nightly news. It is not clear that the gentleman with the cell phone – a “luxury item” – was even homeless. However, the firestorm whipped across the nation chanting. “A homeless man (or woman; no one is sure now) took a picture of Michelle Obama on a cell phone. How scandalous! How ghastly! The homeless should not be allowed to have cell phones! How can they afford them? Where do they receive their bills if they have no address?” Source AARP puts out a $10/month emergency cell phone plan that the homeless – many of them older people – might afford. T-Mobile offers a $20 pay-as-you-go phone with a free 10 minutes and the homeless purchase minutes as they are able. The homeless often do have SOME money. In fact, I know homeless folks that work TWO MINIMUM WAGE full-time jobs and cannot yet afford an apartment, but are coming close to that as they save their money in dormitory housing offered by area homelessness foundations. The currents of disaster are settling down for them and their storm-tossed capsized rowboats on the sea of life are righting themselves. Perhaps these toiling captains will recover their outboard motors as well.

I was just watching the news and saw a spot on how the GOP is now saying that the United States cannot afford the Democrats spending policies. Here are a few facts about the debt. Remember Congress controls spending. President, Congress, Debt change per day (Public and Intragovernmental), Duration When Bush took office in 2001 the new Senate was split 50/50, mid year 2001 Jeffords switched to Independent, and caucused with the Democrats, giving them control of the Senate. Who are the spenders? Looks like as long as it is business as usual in DC the debt will go up. And for those of you who blame the current financial crisis on the Republicans alone, learn a little history. The majority of Democrats supported the changes in banking laws, and Clinton signed them into law, when Republicans could not even override a veto. It took both parties to get us here, it will take serious change to get us out of it.

Deja Vu is also knows as promnesia or paramnesia. It is in essence a feeling that your brain is telling you that you have witnessed a situation that you have not witnessed before. Kind of a contradictory huh? It is a phenomenon that scientists are still trying to explain to this date, however they have been unable to recreate it in a labratory setting.I have personally experienced Deja Vu once and it was probably the creepiest thing that I have ever experienced. It doesnt sound like what you are experiencing is Deja Vu, but more of a repetition of events, especially if you are doing the same thing over and over again. This can cause a loss of time mentally to where you do not really know what day of the week it even is.I do not even want to get into a debate about the capabilities of the human brain though because there are so many unknowns. It is probably on of the few things about the human body that is still almost 99% unexplained.

I agree with deadmad.. IF you are going for the security of information that you transmit to or from your website, then you definitely want to have an SSL certificate installed. Make sure any SSL certificate that you purchase is verifiable with most browsers and platforms, otherwise you are going to have visitors coming to your site an facing a security popup every time they click a new page.Second, if you are running script, you want to make sure that your scripts a re safe from the usual attacks such as SQL injection, which basically is a flaw which allows a hacker to inject information into your SQL database. There are scripts and programs out there that will check these for thes vulnerabilities for you.Another thing to look for is make sure that you do not have any open directories. If you do not want people to be able to browse sub directories on your site, which is another loophole that hackers can use to gain access, make sure that you put a black index.php into each directory that you want to protect. This will protect end users from getting a directory listing of your files.One more thing is not leaving vulnerable scripts open to attacks. One of the most commonly attacked scripts out there are mailers and most people do not realize how easy it is to protect those mailer scripts from attack. There is plenty of information on Google about this and I will be more than happy to point you to some great tutorials or help you out with it. If you have any other questions do not hesitate to ask me.

I recently had to take an accounting of my bad habits for a Written Analysis class. These are the habits that I came up with and honestly, it is quite hard to admit these to myself, however once admitted it is easier to recognize them. What bad habits have you guys found that you have suffered that you feel hinder your ability to think on the correct level? Notice from BuffaloHelp: Do not repost your institution's paper. If you must, use synapses and use QUOTEs

I wrote this paper for a recent criminal justice class. I think drug awareness is a great thing because I have personally seen so many lives destroyed by drugs, meth being one of the more influential drugs. Notice from BuffaloHelp: Please do not repost your institution's work.

Well as a proponent of the death penalty I think it serves as more of a crime deterrent than anything else. Knowing that there is the possibility of death for committing murder there is probably a less of a chance that the person will commit the crime in the first place. Could you imagine what our murder rates would be if there was no death penalty in the united states.

Even though crime rates today are as low as they have been in 30 years, a majority of Americans feel as though they are going to be the next victim of a crime. There are many causes and antagonizers in our society today that perpetuates this ever growing fear among us. One of the biggest reasons is that the media over reports on crime and violence and under reports on stories that show good samaritans and acts of kindness. Also, depending on the subculture that people live in, they feel vulnerable to crime for various different reasons. In their advertising campaigns, security companies are starting to make people feel like they are not even safe in their own homes. Lastly, people are poorly informed on crime statistics and do not lookin into any numbers that they hear to see if they are in fact, right. These facts are demonstrated across the United States no matter what part of the country or which end of a city you go to. The media is mostly to blame for today's fear of crime. When you watch the previews for the evening news, you will most likely see something about a murder or another violent crime. You will never hear about the man who helped the 90 year old woman change her flat tire. There is an adage that is still used by many newspaper editors. ?If it bleeds, it leads,? has been the motivation behind many news stories. Thus making reporters seek out the bad news instead of the good news. Many news announcers when they are about to announce the next segment, you will hear, ?The Masked Bandit burglurizes another house and you could be next.? This ?you could be next? campaign that a majority of the news stations use instills fear in us and has us feeling like we will be next, when in fact, the probability of this happening to you is VERY low. The media wants you to be afraid because they know you will ?stay tuned? to hear how you can prevent it from happening to you. The media is the root of societie's fear of crime. In every part of the country, people feel vulnerable to different types of crime for various different reasons. It doesn't matter where you live, you will always have some sort of crime to be afraid of, whether it is the neighbor kid messing up your garden or you were robbed while coming home from the local supermarket. There can be many reasons for this vulnerable feeling. In many places it is because there is not a strong police presence or because you have never talked to the officers that patrol your streets. There is a good reason that there is not a strong police presence in certain areas and it boils down to the fact that there is very little crime. In other areas, people have a legitimate reason to feel vulnerable. Maybe it is because crime really does happen on a daily basis or there are gang members that roam your street. It is your neighborhood and you chose to move there and you have the choice to stay there or not. When you feel vulnerable, that causes a fear and when you a afraid, you start to panic and give in to the public pressure that you will be the next victim of a crime. Security companies also contribute to the ever growing fear of crime in the United States. I moved into a new housing development about a month ago. Within a week I had a salesman from a security company knock on my door. The first words out of his mount were, ?You are not safe in your own home.? He then asked me if he could give a demonstration. When I agreed he told me to close the door and lock it. After a couple of seconds, he had picked the lock and reopened the door. After that, he wanted to discuss pricing to install a new security system. Now I know that I live in a safe neighborhood because it is a guard gated community. I also did my reasearch on crime rates for my area before I moved which showed little or no crime within a 10 mile radius. However, the salesman tried to make me afraid of crime and in order to sell me a secuirity system. That is how security companies are becoming all across the country. They want to instill a fear in you so that you will come running to them for a burgler alarm. This is how they sell their alarm systems. Advertising in this way just makes people more afraid that they will be next. People are also misinformed or do not look at the numbers realistically when they are told about crime, which makes them fear it even more. When all they hear is that the neighbor down the street was burglarized of her jewelry, they immediately fear for they own property and stop trusting close neighbors. What they did not hear however is that the jewel thief was her son who needed to sell the jewelry for money. When you dont hear the whole story, it can cause you to fear for no valid reason. When people are given a statistic by someone that states 5 out of 10 households were burglarized last year, they do not ask, they just become afraid. They do not know that this statistic is onbly true for downtown Los Angeles and was limited to only one square block. This kind of misinformation, while it is not damaging in any real way, causes fear in safe neighborhoods where there really is no chance of anything criminal happening. There are many aspects of our culture that causes us to fear crime. It is also in our nature to fear crime, because honestly, who wants to be the next victim of a robbery or murder? However this fear is overstated because hard statistics show that crime across America has been falling over the last thirty years. If we keep putting too much fear into crime it will consume us and soon we will not even trust our own family. Crime is not as big of a problem as people would think.

Me personally I prefer to use rapidshare. It is a great file hosting site with great download speeds. In my opinion it is worth the 10 buck a month that I pay to guarantee that my files are secure and will not get deleted. What can you expect from a company that hosts petabytes and petabytes of files. If you want security that your files will not get deleted then just spring for the extra 10 bucks a month. You cant expect them to store all of your files free forever in exchange for nothing from you.

Wow, I have come back to see that I have started a pretty heated debate. LOL. My belief in faith is a little bit different than that of most people. There is such thing as faith and then there is "blind" faith.I grew up as a scientific mind and I generally need to see some kind of proof in order to believe in something. (i.e. The Article that was just posted about the exploding gum.. lol). Even though I am not religious (too many things just do not add up for me personally), I do like to think I am spiritual. It is hard to have a scientific viewpoint and not believe that we are the only intelligent species in our vastly undiscovered and unexplored universe. That being said I believe that there is a higher power somewhere out there, maybe even a greater existence for human beings, but facts are facts. The oldest discovered *person* sapien remains date back almost 200,000 years ago, long before any passages of the Bible were ever written. Now I personally have read the Bible and if you read it without taking every translation literally, then it can begin to make more sense. You can see how though taken literally, the theory of intelligent design did come about.

I did my thesis on the collapse and fall of the ancient roman empire. I am going to summarize it here because I think it is something that will eventually happen to us and there are already signs of it. It is inevitable that any great civilization must one day come to an end. There is widespread speculation and many theories as to why the Roman Empire faded away into history. Rome was a great Empire that in its time, expanded across the far reaches of Europe. However, like the great civilizations before it, it came to a sudden end. Some of the more mainstream theories include a loss of civic virtue to a shortage of running water. Other theories are a bit more complicated and involve the governmental operations of the Empire and invading Barbarians. Perhaps it was not one factor that caused the fall, but many factors that led to the inevitable end of Roman civilization. We must not forget the downfall of the Roman Empire because history will repeat itself if we do not learn from our mistakes. Many historians believe that the beginning of the collapse of the Roman Empire was attributable to the loss of civic virtue. For instance, Roman citizens began outsourcing their jobs, defending the Empire, to Barbarian mercenaries. In the Roman Times, you were considered a man once you served in the legions of Rome. With Roman citizens hiring mercenaries to perform their civil duty, there was an eventual decline of the civic virtue for which the Empire was built on. When the Roman Empire began, men had the idea that everything they did was for Rome, similar to the old British military slogan, ?For King and Country.? As time went on and more Roman jobs were outsourced, citizens became more interested in the welfare of themselves than that of their country. There was also another factor that contributed to the loss of civic virtue. The spread of Christianity in the Roman culture made the citizens less interested in the ?here and now? and more willing to wait for the rewards of heaven. This made them less concerned about the protection of their family and cities and left the Roman Empire wide open to many problems that would plague its downfall. A few notable historians contend that the way the Roman Empire was operated, was in itself the seed of its own destruction. First and foremost, the Empire had no budgetary system as it relied upon the treasures from conquered territories. The Empire was open to trade with very few countries and survived its entire time on the spoils of war. There eventually came a time when the Roman military had no more new territories to conquer because it had conquered them all. Slowly, the wealth of the Roman Empire began to trickle away as it did not have any other means of income. Secondly, the cost to operate the military increased with every new territory because they had to pay the soldiers who occupied the new territory. With every territory that was taken over by the Romans, soldiers had to remain to keep the peace and maintain the empire of Rome. Once the money began to run low soldiers stopped getting paid on a regular basis. For all they had done for their country, they did not want to be treated this way so many began to abandon the military in order to make a living. The Roman Empire's pattern of tax collection by taxing the lower class people heavily when money was needed caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. The government did not have annual taxes or wage taxes, they had what are now known today as necessity taxes. Whenever the Empire was in need of money, they started to tax the peasants and hard workers in the society and the rich never had to give up a single cent. This led to an eventual uprise from the peasants and their refusal to work which helped to contribute to the destruction of the Roman Empire. Without anyone to farm or herd livestock, everyone had to fend for themselves. One of the more mainstream theories as to why the Roman Empire fell is the fact that their supply of running water ran dry. Some of the underground springs and even above ground lakes eventually dried up due to the amount of water that was in demand across the Roman Empire. Unlike we have today, the Romans did not have a way to purify salt water into drinking water. With each new territory they conquered, the citizens that lived there demanded to have running water if they were to be Roman citizens. The Romans got their supply of running water from underground springs and lakes. With millions of people using these sources of water day in and day out, the water sources began to run dry. Dry lakes however, were not the only reason that the Romans ran out of running water. Towards the end of the Empire, their great aqueducts came under attack from the invading barbarians. Barbarian attacks on the great aqueducts caused a permanent disruption in their flow of water which also caused a permanent disruption in Roman life. All they had to do was demolish a section of the aqueducts and the running water that it was supplying would trickle to a quick stop. This was never an issue in the glorious days of the empire because they could easily send a team of engineers out an have it operational in a matter of weeks. As the Roman Empire was falling there was not enough money to repair the aqueducts and their once beautiful cities began to decay with filth. Eventually Roman citizens left the cities to find a source of water to live near and most of their cities were left abandoned. Most believe that the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the Barbarian invasions in the 7th century A.D. This is not mere speculation, but absolute fact that can be verified from many different historic references. Around the 6th century A.D, the Barbarians began attacking Rome in greater and greater numbers and with all of the civil wars and emperor displacements the city was defenseless. It eventually happened where the mercenaries that Rome was paying to protect the cities realized that Rome had a great weakness in its military adeptness. They seized this opportunity and began to descend upon the city. Rome was able to defend itself for almost 60 years. There is one turn of events that Rome was not prepared for. In the 7th century AD, the Arabs were conquering the middle eastern world and parts of Europe. Hearing of Romes weakness, they immediately sent thousands of soldiers to Rome and the city fell in a matter of weeks. Under normal circumstances, Rome would have been able to defend itself from attacks like this, but because of all of the other underlying factors, the Empire came to a halt. There is no one that knows for sure what led to the eventual end of the Roman Empire, there are however many accepted theories as to how and when it happened. The problem with each of these theories is that the theorists stand by their reason in singularity. I feel that each of these theories contributed as a whole to the fall of the Roman Empire having one thing lead to another. With problem after problem like this piling up, the Roman citizens could not do anything to alleviate the inevitable decline. The loss of Rome can probably be considered one of the greatest losses to the world as a whole. Rome made so many technological achievements in its time not only in engineering, but in medicine. When the Roman Empire fell, it was followed by a the Middle Ages, which was a time of no great technological advancements. Many believe that if the Roman Empire lasted until today, we would be at least 500 years more advanced technologically than we are now. If every great civilization since the beginning of time has come to an end, when will our time come?

The argument between evolution and intelligent design has been a heated debate for thousands of years. There are two sides to the debate that offer very valid points that fall within their perspective. I personally on the side of evolution because from my viewpoint there is much more evidence to support the fact that humans evolved. From where I stand, this is just a giant argument between science and religion. Creationist theory states that a higher being created man in his current form sometime in the last 10,000 years. That is very hard to believe when there have been fossils of *person* sapiens discovered dating back to almost 200,000 years ago. The carbon dating method used to date these fossils back that far is the same method that creationist scientists use to date their religious artifacts back to earlier times and is a scientifically accepted method of dating bones and artifacts. I am one to look at the facts of a story and I see no real way to dispute the fact that humans existed almost 200,000 years ago. Is that really possible if a higher being created man within the last 10,000 years? I would not go as far to say that there is no science in the theory of intelligent design. I do however feel that the science that is applied to the intelligent design is selective. For example, intelligent design scientists will use carbon dating in order to date artifacts that they believe come from times in the near past. They rely on these results to successfully place an artifact within its appropriate timeframe. When a evolution scientist finds a human fossil that is 50,000 years old and uses the same method to date the fossil, the creationists say that there was something wrong with the test, or it was not conducted right. It is not right when scientific facts are used and twisted in order to suit an ulterior purpose. Solid facts, whether evolutionism or creationism, must be relied upon to draw a conclusion that cannot be debated. Even noted creationists have stated that there is no science to intelligent design. Statements that are made are out of religious faith, not scientific fact.

OK this was a very interesting topic.. lol. However it just doesnt make sense to me. If it was some kind of explosive it would have needed an ignition point. I do not see how just putting it into your mouth would cause an explosion big enough to kill you.

Yes contactskn, but have you ever heard the saying, you can take the dog out of the fight, but you cannot take the fight out of the dog? In all of my research there have been numerous statistical surveys conducted on this very matter. To be honest, statistics are against repeat offenders. What happens is they become used to a life of crime and it keeps escalating where the crimes get worse and worse. There was a man who was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn't commit in Louisiana. He spent 28 years in prison knowing that he was truly innocent of the crime in question. However, after his 28 years of prison life he ended up becoming very violent and then committing a murder. It is all about how you grew up and how you lived your life that influence your decisions and it is very hard to teach an old dog new tricks.Let me put another question out there. I think we all can agree that Hitler was one of the most evil men in our history. Would you want to see him sent to the electric chair or the gas chamber? If yes, then why is he so different from other people on death row blatantly guilty of first degree murder.

I wrote this essay about a week ago for one of my criminal justice classes and I thought I might bring it up in here because I saw the debate going on about the death penalty for rapists. This critical analysis shows both sides of the issue and I hope will spark a good debate in here. The death penalty is ALWAYS a hot topic.

I would love to hear your positions on this historical and landmark case. Being a Criminal Justice major, I come across these every now and then and I figured it would be a great case to talk about in here. Wikipedia - Regina v. Dudley and Stephens The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens is considered one of the most groundbreaking cases in which the necessity defense is used. Dudley, Stephens, Brooks and Parker (the victim), were stranded in the middle of the ocean on life boat. For twenty days, they sustained themselves on two one pound tins of turnips and a small turtle that one of them managed to catch. On the twentieth day without any food or fresh water and no rescue in sight, a decision was made to kill Richard Parker, a seventeen year-old boy, so that the others could feed upon his flesh to survive. The reason given for killing the boy instead of one of the other crew members was because the boy was so weak that he could not have survived any longer on his own. Also, this decision was based on part that the boy Parker was the only one of the lot that did not have nay family waiting for him back on land. Mr. A. Collins, defending the prisoners, made many compelling arguments in defense of Dudley and Stephens. Even citing an American case from 1842 where American passengers were thrown overboard of a lifeboat in order to reduce the weight on board, thus saving the remaining passengers. The court passed judgment against Dudley and Stephens. They backed up their judgment by stating that by killing Richard Parker they stripped him of any remote chance of being saved by a passing ship. They made the argument that what if they had killed Parker and then been rescued the next morning by a passing ship. Then is would have been unnecessary to kill Richard Parker. The court sentenced both Dudley and Stephens to death. This sentence was shortly commuted to six months imprisonment by the Crown, the reason being that they had no other choice but to kill Richard Parker to survive. I have several mixed feeling about this case. In one respect I can side with the court that they had no right to kill Richard Parker without his consent or knowledge. As the judge said, a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse. Dudley and Stephens may have been pushed to the limits of temptation due to their weak state of mind and great hunger that they were suffering, but it is still no excuse for murder. There have been many cases prior and similar to this where the necessity defense was used, but it was also under different circumstances. In prior instances, the survivors of a shipwreck who were beyond hunger made a pact that one of them be sacrificed to save the others. They then drew straws to determine which one of them would be killed. The person who was killed went into the pact knowing full well that they could be the one to be killed and they agreed to it. This was not done in the case of Richard Parker. The boy had no idea that he was going to be killed nor did he agree to it. There are other arguments however where I would be more inclined to agree with the side of Dudley and Stephens. I do not think it is at all possible to imagine the hunger that they were feeling. They must have been delirious with famine when they committed this act, because no reasonable man would have made a decision like that. I do not think I will ever understand the complexity of this unless I was to find myself in the same situation that they were in. Dudley and Stephens defense was built around the necessity to commit the crime in order to survive. The argument that Mr. A Collins made was that Necessity will excuse an act which would otherwise be a crime. Necessity is still considered today to be a controversial defense. The reason being that the accused did commit a crime to survive for one reason or another, but at what cost it came to for the victims of the crime, which does not make in excusable under any circumstances. There have been other cases in recent years where the necessity defense was used where someone was forced to commit a crime because they were being made to by gunpoint or otherwise. In these cases again, it comes back to my original point that they still had the choice to not commit the crime and spare the victims the suffering.

I would probably give it a try for just the experience, that that is just my adventurous nature coming out. I mean I have eaten some disgusting things in the past such as snail. Probably the most interesting food I have tasted is desert scorpion. It has a very unique flavor that is not found any where else. So in short, yes I would give it a shot and would not expect anything in return.

I feel so missed... lol.

Hello,I have had my mycents sitting in the ready state for the last 24 hours. Is there something wrong and how I should I go about getting this resolved? Please advise.Thank You

My children RARELY watch TV anymore unless it is an educational show. I try to keep them involved in activities that will keep them active and away from the TV. I even have my kids at the point where instead of a sugar snack they prefer to eat fruits like strawberries or something of that nature. It is all about how you spend your time with your kids and what they come to "learn" as being fun from you. If you sit around and watch TV .. your kids are going to end up sitting around and watching TV. This is the biggest reason that I am divorced now was because I would come home from work and my ex wife would be sitting there watching TV while the kids were in their room watching TV. Once I got custody, I obviously changed that. In short, just spend quality time with your kids that does not involve television.

I too have 5 invites that can be given away right now so if anyone needs one I will be more than happy to supply.

Another great trick if you are boiling noodles for an italian dish is to boil some boneless skinless chicken breasts in a large pot of water. Then remove the chicken and add the noodles and a generous amount of salt to the water. Once the noodles are done, strain out the water as normal and you will have the nest tasting noodles you have ever had. :-)