RICHMOND- Governor Bob McDonnell’s proposal to increase the speed limit in Virginia to 70mph in rural and less populated areas was approved today by both chambers of the General Assembly. The Governor’s measure received broad bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.  In the House, Delegate Bill Carrico (R-Galax) carried the bill. Senator Steve Newman (R-Lynchburg) patroned the bill in the Senate. Both bills are identical. Each bill must still be voted on by the other house prior to being sent to the Governor’s desk for his signature.

Speaking about today’s vote, Governor McDonnell remarked, “I thank Delegate Bill Carrico and Senator Steve Newman for their successful advocacy of this important proposal to speed up traffic in rural and less populated sections of Virginia. As today’s votes in both chambers demonstrate, there is broad bipartisan support for this common-sense idea. 32 states already have 70mph speed limits, and 13 allow motorists to drive 75mph. This slight increase in our speed limit will be safe for motorists and help get Virginians to their destinations a little quicker each day. This is an important early step towards our common goal of improving transportation in the Commonwealth.”

Senator Steve Newman noted, “Increasing the speed limit to 70mph on Virginia’s highways will help commuters get to their destinations more quickly and safely.  Virginia now joins 33 other states that have increased their speed limits above 65mph and I applaud Governor McDonnell’s leadership on this issue.”

Delegate Bill Carrico added, “I’m pleased that the bill to increase the speed limit on rural stretches of highway to 70mph has passed both houses of the General Assembly.  This is a common-sense reform that will make sure highway traffic moves at a more uniform speed on Virginia’s highways.”

HB 856 can be read here:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?ses=101&typ=bil&val=HB856

SB 537 can be read here:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?ses=101&typ=bil&val=SB537

Uncaught SoapFault exception: [SOAP-ENV:Client] Operation ” is not defined in the WSDL for this service

When using Zend framework’s soap client component, be sure to specifically set your soap_version to either SOAP_1_1 or SOAP_1_2.  I hope this hopes someone else out in the future since Zend has not made any official comment as to whether they are going to fix this or not.

FYI the Zend bug is here:

http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-8165

Many of us feel that there is just not enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things we would like to do.  We set goals in life big and small, have fantasies about being rich.  Try to pack in as many things and stuff into our daily lives as possible in hopes of reaching those ultimate goals of wealth and happiness.  The problem is that most of us find the road to those goals not so wealthy or happy.

Most, if not all of us want to be rich, and in most cases the reason is because we want more time and life to be happier!  The problem is that an unrealistic fairy tail goal is set so high up that its almost unattainable at your current rate of action.  What if you removed the rich part out of my first statement.  I want more time and a happier life, which sounds far more attainable and realistic.

The first step to reclaim your time is a simple yet important task.  Stop and I mean completely STOP reading/watching/listening to any news source or media information outlet.  This includes ALL newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and Talk radio.  The world is going to crumble around you regardless, and there is nothing you can do about it right now so stop trying to find out what is going on its consuming way to much of your time.  You could be spending that time with your wife and kids, learning a new hobby or allowing your mind to think relax and unwind instead of trying to burden yourself with the weight of the worlds problems.

Try this for one week and see how it works out, alternatively this can be a great icebreaker of conversation, asking others around you about what is going on in the world.  I bet you can gather all you need to know from a few minute conversations from those around you, freeing up countless hours in the day for other more enlightening things.

Let me know how your progressing in the comments, and subscribe to the blog for additional follow-up articles on regaining your time.

There seems to be quite a bit of sales propaganda out there deferring people from one technology or the other, stating that Plasma tvs will die faster or that LCD tvs need to have their light changed every few hundred thousand hours, but still no clear facts why I should choose one technology over the other.

The main deciding factor for me was the price and the fact that I recently found out that my wife’s TV, since before we met, is a Plasma TV and the quality and longevity is amazing.  She has had the TV for almost 5 years without any problems or loss in quality and no burn in.

Finding that Plasma tvs are almost half the price of a comparable LCD tv the decision was quite clear.  Over the holiday weekend I was able to pick up a 50 inch plasma tv for about 750 dollars, where a similar 50 inch LCD tv would have cost me well over 1500 dollars.  The quality is outstanding, combined with the price makes the TV in my opinion one of the best deals out there.  Even if the TV dies in 2.5 years I can still buy a second plasma TV and still pay less than I would have for the same LCD TV.

I’m guessing that the price difference has to do with simple economics of supply and demand.  If everyone wants LCD TVs because they think they are superior in every aspect, then suppliers are going to jack up the price and the opposite is true with plasma.  So thank you consumers for allowing me the ability to purchase a 50 inch plasma TV for under 800 dollars.

This happens in many aspects of our lives.  We are in a job that we hate but don’t leave because either we think there are no other options or are forced to stay because of self inflicted obligations such as over extended debt load or improper planning, the first probably being the cause of the second.  Maybe we are in a relationship that everyone knows is toxic, but we stay because change is hard.

There is a simple pattern here, the simple need for change in a situation that requires some action to see improvement.  Maybe the relationship does not need a drastic change to see a drastic improvement, or maybe your job could simply be improved by changing your outlook and reducing the negative.  In the end bad situations require some sort of cause to have any sort of effect.

The question can then be simplified to, why does someone not change?  First, to change requires some sort of action and commitment to an action.  Without action there is no change, without change you will be exactly where you are today as you were yesterday.  Second if you commit to change, stay committed to that action until change has been accomplished.  The third and most important thing is to commit to actionable actions.  This means create actions that you can actually do, like wake up in the morning with a smile instead of hatred or complacency.  Instead of actions like be happy or loose weight.

Back on topic, in the case of couples, applying the topic of change, most cases (unmarried) couples stay together because they don’t like to be alone – fear of change.  Going from with something or someone, no matter how toxic, to being alone even though being alone would reduce stress and toxicity in your life is such a fearful change that it will normally take substantial energy to make it happen.

The same theories can apply to married couples however, in their case the change would have to be between both people to see if it is possible to save the marriage before it has gone to far in the wrong direction.  Because marriage is not the same as someone you are dating.  By the time you are married you have made a commitment to another person to stay with them through thick and thin no matter what.  So lets hope you found the right person before you decided to marry, which makes solving complicated relationship problems far more easy when you are both on the same track and lets hope you work out problems when they arrise instead of letting them build up for years and blow up when one of you leaves a dish in the sink and the other blows up.

I’m not sure if this topic can be answered in a single post.  Over the years I have helped out many people through their relationship issues and have realized that each situation, being as unique as each person, all have a common theme.  Change is evident so get ready, because if your life sucks right now you are going to have to start at the basics and implement changes before it can get better.

If anyone is having relationship issues and would like to have someone to talk to, please feel free to comment below and I can get in touch with you.  I don’t have all the answers but sometimes its just good to talk to someone that doesn’t know anything about you and can take things in a neutral perspective.

Cheers!

However, a few cards a more bulky than others and when opened falls a folded piece of paper and it only means on thing…Someone decided to write a holiday news letter about family and their goingz on during the year.  This is all good, however, sometimes its better to just stick with the halmark written letter.  Not everyone is a pro writer, but this isnt the worst part.  Sometimes it really lets you know that your house is a bit smaller and your kids are seemingly dummber than everyone else.

Within those few letters are daggers of braggery, knives of gloat.  Letting you know that little jimmy hacky sack made the deans list, AGAIN while attending little tikes preschool and little sally sack is on her way to the olypics (she is 4)…  Maybe the sack family could come a little bit down to earth and just let us know what is really goingz on in their livez instead of making us all feel all the bit smaller and less adequate than we need to be.

So we know what not to do, now I need to figure out what TO do.  I’m already a crippled writer to begin with, being a php developer.  Where do I even begin?  I don’t want to sound like those braggery letters that everyone so dreadfully reads, keeping their real thoughts to themselves, but I don’t want to put out a letter that sounds like a 4 year old wrote it.  No offense to the sack family, who let their 4 year old write the letter, which was published in the NY Times magazine as best Christmas letter of the year.

Ive already done my writing exercises, putting down nonsense on paper to get the words flowing, which is quite fun as long as you don’t let anyone else read it.  Now ive just got to put something together and see what happens.

Overall the theme was relatively easy to install.  I had a one major issue with a plugin conflict, but other than that, after deactivating the plug-in, everything was up and running Perfectly!After getting everything setup I decided that this theme was just to sweet to clutter with a bunch of different widgets.   Ive currently got my whole mess of sidebar widgets disabled so that I may enjoy this amazing Refraction RocketTheme!  The design is very clean and RocketTheme adds a few of their custom modules such as RokBox and RokTabs that have been proven in their Joomla themes many times over.

For those of you who hated the configuration and time it took to get things going with a Joomla template, you will find this whole process very refreshing.  The guys over at RocketTheme really deserve some credit for their work and well deserve the cost of subscription.

For those of you not familiar with RocketTheme, they create high quality themes for Joomla, Wordpress and phpBB. Their pricing plan is very reasonable for the individual user, and great for individuals who like to change up their designs every so often.

You have the option to purchase themes on a subscription basis.  This means that if you buy one month of themes you are able to use any of their currently available themes for the duration of your month.  With a year subscription, you are able to download and use anything they have now plus any new themes that might come out during the duration of your subscription time.  There are additional license agreements based on the total number of sites you will be deploying your themes on.  If you are a developer who is trying to resell their themes they have a plan for you as well.

Overall I have a renewed respect for the RocketTheme group.  I have always admired their theme’s they put out for Joomla, but was never able to use them because I was never able to justify the headache of implementing Joomla.

Thanks RocketTheme!