Join me in D.C. on Wednesday

Plan on being in Washington, D.C. for the “Hold Their Feet to the Fire Rally” on Wednesday, September 10th, and Thursday, September 11th.

Go to Congress and talk to your representatives, let them know how you feel about illegal aliens and the issues associated with their invasion of this country. Go to Senator McCain and Senator Obama’s offices to let them know. Watch talk show hosts from all over the country including me, Lou Dobbs, and Roger Hedgecock.

ADDRESS:
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 North Capitol Street NW
Washington, D.C. (Federal City Room-2nd Floor)

Link: OnTheIssues.org

OnTheIssues.org is a great place to find out just where the candidates stand on the issues of the 2008 General Election. You can also find tons of other candidates state by state, too! We have a link to them in the links section, on the-left-hand column of the site.

McCain's speech -- What did you think?

Gary would like your thoughts on Sen. John McCain's Presidential acceptance speech last night.

Governor Palin speaks -- What did you think?

I just simply want to ask your thoughts on Governor Palins Vice Presidential acceptance speech on Wednesday night. Let 'er rip!

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Freshen up Windows XP's look

As promised, today is about freshening up Windows XP's look (for free). Here's my XP desktop (click it to enlarge):



REMEMBER: This tip is for Windows XP users! Not Windows Vista, Windows 2000, or, God help us, Windows 95.

The theme. First, let's replace your blue default theme (the one that makes your start bar and windows look like they were made by Fisher Price). You'll need to download and install Microsoft's "Zune" theme. You can download it free from Microsoft here.

Save it to your desktop and run it to install it (you can erase the file when it's done installing). Okay, right-click on an empty spot on your desktop and select "Properties" on the menu that pops up. Your Appearance panel opens up to your themes tab. Select "Zune" from the drop down list for theme. Click apply, OK, etc. until the window closes. That's done.

The cursors. Second, let's pretty up your cursors with an anti-aliased Vista look. Download the Vista cursors from Alan Le's page. Unzip them, right-click on -- oh, just follow the directions posted here.

The wallpaper. My wallpaper is slightly modified version of Flora Nine by Delta 909. You can download the appropriate size for your monitor here.

Widgets. How about Vista-style widgets? You know, like a current weather widget, a stock ticker widget or even a today-at-a-glance widget that can pull info from Outlook? You can try the (free) Yahoo Widgets. Download Yahoo Widgets here. It will install a sampling of widgets. There are many ways to customize how widgets work and behave, so play around with it. Please note that this sits in your memory, so uninstall it if you feel your PC's speed took a hit.

That's it. And that's it. I like this freshening up because it's pretty innocuous -- no weird system hacks or anything (heck, the Zune theme is from Microsoft itself). I don't use Yahoo Widgets anymore (Yahoo Widgets is a pretty program, but I didn't need it), but the other stuff is straight-forward.

As always, let me hear your feedback as to whether this was helpful or you liked the tip.

New poll: Sarah Palin, yea or nay?

A new poll is up -- Sarah Palin, yea or nay?

Poll results: Who will be Obama's VP?

Evan Bayh - 7%
Joe Biden - 50%
Tim Kaine - 0%
Hillary Clinton - 19%
Other - 23%

Are the readers here prescient? Not so much. The poll didn't close until after the announcement and some readers had fun voting for Biden after the fact. Prescient, no, but funny, yes.