DavidHartley.com

Insurance, Obama, the medical industrial complex

2009-09-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

In answer to the question:

"Did the President's health reform proposal in his speech disappoint you?"

The insurance companies are only part of the problem.

It is with a mixture of hope & trepidation that I view what seems to assure that the medical industrial complex will continue roughly "status quo" (in other words: continue to be the USA's #1 direct leading cause of death) .. and just like the recent stock market crash and current financial depression was a direct result of insane / dysfunctional "economy" ... so to .. will the INEVITABLE CRASH of the medical industrial complex ensue upon the status quo ... bringing of course, much suffering .. but inevitably FORCING people to become responsible for their own health and well being .. essentially ripping the blinders off of the faces of the sheeple.. as grassroots & word-of-mouth show everyone how eating "death-eater corporate shit-food" and taking "death-eater poison medicines" lead to a DEADLY OBVIOUS lack of health ! "ALTERNATIVE" medicine will become 1000 times more popular than it is now, BY DEFAULT ! What seems like terrible news .. is indeed "a bitter pill" ... but it is the death knell of the system of DEATH/DISEASE-medicine .. which will usher in VITAL / LIFE medicine .. the many and various HOLISTIC alternatives to poisonous $pharma medical industrial complex.

Go Organic ! .. & go, go, go ... Cafe Gratitude :-)

2009-08-09T21:18:00.001-07:00

Organic food is FAR more nutritious, as well as being much less dependent on fossil fuel .. locally grown organic takes it another step along the road..
Raw food, takes the nutrition density another step along the road..

Cafe Gratitude incorporates all of the above, plus its intrinsic "sacred commerce" and "school of personal transformation masquerading as a chain of restaurants" approaches, which gives employees and management a gently structured manner in which to fully relate and engage on thinking/feeling levels as opposed to the tyical "shut up & get to work" restaurant HR attitude.
This results in service which is unique in dining experience =;-)
So unique is this powerful combination of delicious nutritionally dense food plus "the game" of Transformation .. that the small San Francisco chain is now Evolving/ sporing .. as a result of popular demand (which is being somewhat boosted by pop singer/star Jason Mraz & his "Gratitude Cafe Tour")

Cafe Gratitude is bringing their mostly raw & vegan restaurants to
New York City, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and San Diego ... groundwork is being laid now, it will take 1 - 2yrs for "opening day."

Recently Cafe Gratitude partnered with Whole Foods in Oakland, California, to open Cafe Gratitude inside of a very large Whole Foods, where a Whole Foods run "juice bar" had been not very successful... Cafe Gratitude is doing very well in that same location ... more partnerships such as this may be possible... ask your nearest Whole Foods to bring Cafe Gratitude to you !

If you're intrigued by the idea of bringing the "full on" Cafe Gratitude model (3 or 4 restaurants supplied daily) with prepared [juiced, chopped, blended, diced, sliced, soaked, made into nut milk, nut milk 'ice cream,' and other sumptuous desserts & otherwise ready for dish-up at the cafes] check out their website &/or drop me a line.

Oh yeah.. another "spore" of the Cafe Gratitude vibe is a small film company, with their first offering "May I Be Frank" in world premiere at the upcoming Sausalito film festival
http://www.sausalitofilmfestival.com/films2.html
trailer / clips:
http://www.myspace.com/mayibefrankmovie

by the way.. surely it's clear that I love this company (and the people . .not to mention the food :) I do some contract I.T. work for them (past 1.5yrs,) am not an employee and have no personal gain attainable in posting this.. just sharing.

I am also *personally committed* to current co-creation of a worker owned collective of doctors & alternative healers, which is loosely affiliated with the extended Cafe Gratitude family. It is likely that this will also Evolve / spore in NYC, KC, LA, etc., in service to those communities .. Services will include super nutrition / cleanse programs (and Juice Bar,) homeopathy, herbalism, yoga, craniosacral work, bodywork, and more - focus will be open to facilitating healing from anything from severe chronic disease to simply wishing to transition to generally healthier lifestyle.

warm wishes,
david hartley 510.859.4050
www.holistiq.com
I.T. support: www.cafegratitude.com
co-founder: www.GratefulMindandBody.com
web developer

2009-08-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

blogged here & then posted as response to some militant vegan cultists' running the "kill the messenger" game as I attempt to discuss their dogma at..

http://evolver.net/group/intentional_communities/discussion/what_should_our_intention_be_towards_animals_community

new

Colin (notably astray from satyagrahi) does not think

"Mr. Home was being really mean."

Well, how is that not perfectly predictable ?
A pair of cultists operating in lockstep teamwork fashion will hardly be expected to fail to (publicly) "see" how their partner in the propaganda exercise "was really being mean" .. by attempting to inflict psychological cruelty on a person who, since the very beginning of the thread, has been asking for NON-VIOLENT communication, and has been met at every turn with WARFARE in the classic vegan cultist's psychological mind-programming campaign.

The fact, Colin, that you publicly claim to "not see" the cruelty intended by home's gratuitous personality based attack is PERFECTLY CONSISTENT with the psychological profile of the militant vegan cultist.

Since the vegan cultists ENTIRE propaganda campaign is BASED in inflicting psychological pain and CAPITALIZING on the miniature psychological breakdown which the VERY EXTREMELY VIOLENT films create in the sensitive soul, it would be completely unacceptable for the vegan cultist to "see" psychological cruelty ANYWHERE in the cult's films, dogma, literature, online scarification of "the opposition" .. etc.

Anyone who quickly reviews this whole thread will note that I have been calling for non-violent communication since post #4 or so, as it became clear that the cultists were and still are engaged in dogmatic psychological warfare.

Anyone who cannot see that insinuating a long laundry list of mental &/or emotional defects exist within a person who is opposing the violence / warfare by the vegan cultists ... IS violence .. IS warfare .. IS compPLETEly inappropriate ... probably ought to go & join the evolver.juniors web community.

Though it is challenging to be attacked personally while I am attempting to peacefully explore the nature of the militant vegan cult propaganda campaign, I hope I have not personally attacked anyone, and I apologize if so .. it is my intent to speak to the issues .. it is anti-evolved to take everything personally!

As I've mentioned several times, personal attack .. "kill the messenger" .. is a consistent hallmark of a psychological programming campaign when it is met with outspoken resistance.
The theory, of course is that if it can be successfully claimed / insinuated that the >> PERSON <<>> MESSAGE <<<>

I would expect people attracted to EVOLVER to be a little more EVOLVED than to VIGOROUSLY PROSECUTE such attempts at DEPERSONALIZING ... a PERSON .. who has an OPINION which runs counter h/ir own.

Indeed, the non-cultists in this thread have continually offered peaceful and loving commentary --sorry to be cast so stiffly into my anti-militant-cultist role(!) - Eureka, Alchemy Goddess, Alex -- I would much rather play with you than the boyz, but I strongly believe that it is important to explore the depth and breadth of the militant vegan cult dogma ---- since this is what we non-dogmatic ex-vegans, vegan sympathists, etc .. are "in the middle of" our wonderful amazing creative vegan friends on the one side ... this starkly militant and abusive cult on the other.

In terms of the original topic of this thread (something like) what should be our intention in community regarding animals --

We can now clearly see the folly of attempting to live in community (let alone have a written discussion on a web community of supposedly "evolving" individuals) .. with people who have militant dogmatic indoctrination... UNLESS we are intending to sacrifice our own compassionate & joyful humanity in order to take on the indoctrination !

Perhaps Colin & home should start another topic; what should be our intention in militant vegan community regarding animals ... I think their doctrine could be properly insulated from the rest of humanity that way ..

warm wishes,
david hartley 510.859.4050
www.holistiq.com
I.T. support: www.cafegratitude.com
co-founder: www.GratefulMindandBody.com
web developer

2009-07-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

'memory of water'

davidhartley — Jul 30, 2009

Masaru Emoto's work & the work of Dr Mae-Wan Ho
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SO_water.php
(as mentioned in the video you posted)
-have been noted as possible pointers toward a future physics/science explanation of the mechanism by which homeopathic medicines impart their healing impetus.

..and homeopathy, "the medicine of the 21st century" .. may well be an important deliverance from the $pharma medical industrial complex which is now threatening the entire human population with its bio-terrorist antics, including of course the pollution of the OCEANS with detectable amounts of $pharma chemicals.

Homeopathy is way less energy intensive, needs no petrochemical inputs, and the amount of homeopathic pharmaceutical substance rendered from a single plant gives enough medicine to treat many thousands of people.

As the reality that $pharma medical industrial complex is a ruination of human health ( it is the direct #3 cause of death in the U.S. according do it's own statistics; according to less-biased sources it is the #1 leading cause of death)
and ruination of biosphere (factory farming for $pharma ingredients, huge energy inputs, pollution from manufacturing, pollution by drugs entering the world's water; drug threats against biodiversity, etc)
--become common knowledge, the oppression of homeopathy by the $pharma medical industrial complex will cease .. and a new age of human health will dawn.

The $pharma medical industrial complex is also closely affiliated with similar tremendously destructive/poisonous factory farming "agriculture" and their insane "GMO" threats to the entire food supply chain.

Sometimes it feels like we live in a bad science fiction movie with the evil scientists all plotting away to enslave the planet !
No "superhero" in sight, but:

WE are the ones we've been waiting for ..

warm wishes,
david hartley 510.859.4050
www.holistiq.com
I.T. support: www.cafegratitude.com
co-founder: www.GratefulMindandBody.com
web developer

2009-07-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Hi Dagny,

People in the U.S. (and many other places, I guess)
-are being trained from cradle to grave that they should UNTHINKINGLY
accept authority.

It is a well know fact that TV is a social control mechanism;
it inserts "world view" (German: Weltanschauung)
as an unquestioned set of values and unexplored/unconfirmed "facts."

Thus, people who are regular consumers of mass media (especially when
it is from an early age) have their "reality" ... "PROGRAMMED" (in the
U.S., the content on TV is actually called programming, in one of
those interesting twists where the truth is hidden in plain view.)

Social programming dictates that society respond fearfully to constant
bombardment of PANDEMIC scare tactics made up of partial/true &
partial/lies.

Many of us who are aware of the manipulations cannot help but see the
mindless herd-behavior of cattle being led to slaughter .. there is a
word used in the U.S. by cognoscenti (Italian: those in the know) - to
describe this human herd .. "the Sheeple."

You wrote:
What happened to good old sceptisism and questions to ask?
Such old fashioned ideas are not useful to the ruling powers of the
world (mega corporations & highest level of banking) super-wealthy
immortal corporations spend many $billions of their dollars/euros/etc
to influence and control legislature, political process, and "public
opinion" (all the way down to influencing what textbooks are to be
used in bending the will of youth toward social conformity as "good
little consumers.")

What happened to digging for the truth no matter what?
Some people still do. But the truths that they find are not publicized
by the people who own the means of publication !
TV station, ALL large newspapers & most other means of "mass media"
publication are very tightly controlled - very rarely letting out a
bit of information which detracts from the social
programming-in-progress.

Is the world satisfied by being spoonfed lies that cost lives?
In a word: yes.
Most of us in "industrialized nations" are living in gilded cages; we
have little REAL FREEDOM, but we have many choices as to what colors &
fabrics we wish to wear to our jobs as slaves to the mass-media
corporate consumer culture .. which is now on the brink of consuming
the entire planet.. without some pretty strong changes, the human race
could be extinct in less than a century.
It is likely that there are quite a number of the "ultra rich" people
who are more and more becoming convinced that the world is vastly
over-populated by "useless eaters" (Sheeple) and that a drastic
DE-population would be a very good and useful thing.
Apparently TO THAT END, we seem to have quite a lot of different types
of corporate crime involved in creating & testing various forms of
bio-warfare.
Persuant to the topic of this group.. of course- vaccines have been a
longterm assault on "the masses" .. who have been scrupulously
conditioned to worshipfully believe that vaccines are their savior
from disease .. the truth may well be that vaccines are now on the
verge of being deployed as "WMD" weapons of mass destruction ... it
would be quite simple technologically to wipe out 80% of the
population, and thus (in mad-scientist thought) alleviate all of the
pressures currently pushing very rapidly toward global meltdown.

warm wishes,
david 510.859.4050
www.holistiq.com
www.DavidHartley.com
I.T. support: www.cafegratitude.com
co-founder: www.GratefulMindandBody.com
web developer: www.iamResourceful.com

friends/singer/songwiters Makepeace bros: "Hero" http://twitc.com/P7nIongd

2009-07-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

posted in response to

http://transitioncalifornia.ning.com/profiles/blogs/taking-shorter-showers-doesnt

Derrick makes some good points, but I wonder how he/you think that suddenly "we" can have some huge impact on the corporate institutions which control & govern planet earth?

I see "harm reduction," localization, DIY agriculture, and similar measures as valid & necessary.. even if only as some acts we can all partake in.. WHILE we are networking, searching for inspiration within ourselves & others, taking on the reality that drastic change MUST occur if "the masses" of humanity are to survive the probable attempts at thinning the herd.

I don't see the value of the strawman argument with self-extinction juxtaposed against some posited lack of sufficiently vigorous action against "industrial economy." In fact, as "an activist and the author of many books" I would suggest to him that he consider some editorship prior to firing off such an ill conceived and poorly executed paragraph =:-\

Since as he says, the corporate masters of the means of production and of the dollar .. have come to view "us" (and to depend on us) as "consumers" What better way (absent armed revolution) have we than to consume less of their products; grow our own food, harvest rainwater, quit taking showers altogether maybe .. though if we ALL stop eating factory farmed meat that alone would solve domestic "water shortage" -not to mention cutting down on "swine flu" and "bird flu" vectors.

Derrick seems to put faith in political process, where I see politics as the tail wagged by the corporation$$$.
Corporations have endless $ to pervert political process; (have we not just been witness to the abundant largess which the corps lavished on themselves via their elected (purchased) representatives ?) They have endless candidates to build-up & throw away as desired.

Our POWER .. our VOTE .. is "to spend or not to spend." That is the question.
By giving support (purchasing) only "least harm" products from the "most local" and "most green" and most "worker friendly" (etc) businesses .. I believe we do far more than we could spending 3hours every day trying to get some brilliant new Obama campaign promise energy bill passed, only to have corporate$$ cram a rider into it pulling its teeth in terms of dirty coal & oil.

In addition to voting with our money for the above local & "least harm" choices, we may also begin to get it together to make "our money" ... OURS. Local economies, with local currency will be able to circulate that local currency MANY times moreso than with FRNs ([non]Federal [no]Reserves Notes) which are the epitome of capitalist oppression blood money... every time you spend one of these bloodbucks you're buying into the megacorp military industrial endless war machine.

"Salvation" of the masses of humanity seem to me likely only in the event of some altogether likely quantum technological leap, which MIGHT be already stashed in some corporate vault, having been bought up as a patent likely to lead to unwanted ultra-high-tech solar cells (for instance) which can be made into slightly expensive house-paint in order to have off-the-grid homes.

It might be more fruitful to encourage patent repudiation (the corps will call it piracy) than to waste too much time getting bogged down in the naive hopes that "we the people" might re-take the political process from its current owners (absent armed revolution.)

If enough sharp minds were to tackle Tesla tech, there is another one-single-thing which could make global warming & coal/oil/nukes/etc go bye-bye in the figurative wink of an eye.

Funny, the mention of ENDCIV, given my bit of disagreement here plus the fact that I wrote some stuff about NEWCIV around 11yrs ago with some online friends..
http://holistiq.com/ncf/ncf01.html

warm wishes,
david hartley
www.holistiq.com
www.KarmaClinic.org
www.GratefulMindandBody.com
I.T. support www.cafegratitude.com

friends/singer/songwiters Makepeace bros: "Hero" http://twitc.com/P7nIongd

Zicam - lost sense of smell - cure by homeopathy

2009-06-20T00:16:00.001-07:00

Zicam was recently removed from the market by FDA due to fraudulent labeling .. which was discovered as a result of numerous complaints of loss of sense of smell.
The labeling was a fraudulent offering for sale "an unapproved drug" .. by claiming unwarranted OTC status as homeopathic remedy.Zicam IS NOT a homeopathic remedy...
-and luckily any loss of sense of smell caused by Zicam is very likely curable by homeopathy.

Searching 'loss of sense of smell' in the Radar 10 homeopathy software database, I find 106 homeopathic remedies listed.On the good side, that means that a professional homeopath will undoubtedly be able to cure a loss of sense of smell due to either high sensitivity to --or perhaps overuse of zicam, which contains Zinc, the active ingredient identified as likely cause of loss of smell.
On the downside .. so many choices means that it is much less likely that DIY use of homeopathic remedies will cure (this is basically true in almost any instance other than first aid; the most famous homeopathic remedy in first aid is Arnica for bruising & trauma; naturally loss of sense of smell is not your typical first aid situation.)

San Francisco bay area homeopath:
http://www.holistiq.com -referrals available in other areas.

Maxxim, makers of Zicam, have seen their stock drop +/- 80% prior to being frozen from further trading.
Hopefully, this will send a message to other pharmaceutical type companies who think it might be clever to try to take advantage of homeopathic remedies' Congressional approval as OTC medications within the strictly delineated labeling standards and in accord with HPUS, the U.S. Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia.

Homeopathy is a medical system with medical residencies & training in hospitals .. in India and other places where it is not rigorously suppressed by $pharma & AMA with all their 'skepdic' internet trolls; thanks to this suppression by $pharma, you have fewer choices in medical care, and thus are more likely to buy-in to the $300 Billion in annual $pharma sales .. all of which contributes to $pharma being recognized by health experts as #1 leading cause of death in the U.S. see http://www.iatrogenic.org

The FDA and Recommendations for Antipsychotic Medications in Children

2009-06-19T00:39:00.001-07:00

This discussion of the 40 times GREATER number .. of children being labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis for which the $Pharma industry pressures doctors into give dangerous psych-drugs .. is way overdue ! Thanks to the author Dr Lloyd Sederer for taking on the question: "Bipolar Disorder in Children: Why Are The Rates Rising?"

There is certainly a lot of truth in the observation that there has been an insidious push toward branding young children with psychiatric diagnoses which produce larger sales of $Pharma drugs.

Sadly, it is not simply a matter of greater pressure to do so (although that is undeniable,)

it is rather .. that there is an ACTUAL epidemic of psychiatric symptomology

-due to every greater amounts of vaccines being given to babies at younger and younger ages.

Vaccine damage!

Various health practitioners have been aware of this for many years; homeopathy has a great track record of reversing the symptoms in many cases .. many books such as "Ritalin-Free Kids" have been written about homeopathy's success in this area

see www.adhdnews.com/homeopathic-adhd.htm

also:

www.Fourteenstudies.org .. review of pharma-influenced vaccine studies that includes the conflicts of interest and scientific flaws.

www.generationrescue.org .. Vaccine Schedules, Autism Rates, and Under-5 Mortality (death by vaccine) shows the US Vaccinates more than any other country, has the highest vaccine rates and the under 5 child mortality rate.

JB Handley's CNN Blog, Autism is Preventable and Reversible.

Jim Carrey's organization www.betterufoundation.org
About Wellness
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

NewEgg.com SPAM on Craigslist

2009-01-13T13:03:00.001-08:00

Late in December 2008, I found a bunch of illegal & unethical spam postings ( spamvertisements ) on Craigslist (SFO) in the For Sale - computer stuff (cps) section.

I reported this to the overworked folks @ abuse@craigslist and also to Spamcop & tried sending email to newegg .. eventually I called newegg .. 3 or 4 times .. eventually got "a supervisor" who basically seemed like his job was to convince me that massive spamvertising leading to a product on newegg.com website ... was some kind of prankster, trying to smear newegg's good name.

Yah, right.

If anyone can help out with this?

It is illegal as hell, and newegg is a nice FAT TARGET !

any hungry lawyers out there ?

Meanwhile .. please do not patronize spammers / spamvertisers INCLUDING newegg.com !

POS software rant (point of sale & DIY = do it yourself?)

2008-12-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've been professionally building and supporting PC hardware since the very first Taiwanese PC clones could be built from parts bought from non-English speaking Taiwanese people who sold the parts out of the garages of their homes in the San Francisco bay area.

Well over 20yrs.

I've built and sold thousands of PCs, and currently build generic POS hardware systems, network fileservers, gigantic network storage arrays (my desktop PC has a 9TB [a terabyte is 1000 GB] doubly redundant RAID6 array that is blindingly fast and can be built for $1.5k plus cost of enclosure)..

= less than the cost to the cost of a crap-celeron IBM terminal from some of the POS software "authorized dealers !"

Back 1983 or so, when I got my hands on my first hard drive (5MB .. less than the amount of RAM in the cheesiest cellphone today) .. the computers had serial ports.

SADLY, most POS software has technologically buried its head in the sand.

(POS ... rhymes with DOS =;-)

For DIY, and for anyone who wishes to be able to self-support OR FARM OUT support to a reasonably priced I.T. support professional (vs. the insane $250/hr - $800hr rates charged by many of the POS dealers !)

RULE # 1

DO build or buy GENERIC (not cheap crap, but definitely avoid IBM and other "POS terminal" JUNK. I would avoid EEPC also, as it it not generic, and only serviceable by Asus) Generic means, standard replaceable RAM, CPU, plug-ins commonly available such as extra I/O ports, video cards, EASY to implement RAID (can keep system up & running even if a hard drive stops working) .. a mainboard that can be ordered off the Internet & shipped same day for $100 - etc.

Rule # 2

DO purchase only Ethernet or USB devices wherever possible (you may want to purchase PCs or mainboards to build them which have 4, 6, or more USB ports, though an external powered Hub is another option.)

RS232 serial interface has been OBSOLETE in the rest of the computer world for mmm... around 10yrs or so (!) and many new PCs will not even have an RS232 serial (com1) port,
as serial has joined the floppy disk at it's well earned place in the computer museum.

Inspecting the code of some of the POS software out there reveals Frankensteinian mish-mosh of ancient DOS subroutines with a thin veneer of Windoze GUI.

This is the only reason for any recommendation to use long-obsolete RS232 Serial ports.

USB devices are much easier to set up; equally available; and will work BETTER than serial ports with software which was written in THIS DECADE as opposed to ancient moldy code which is hanging together with rubber bands & other myriad "patches."

Rule # 3

Do demo as much POS software as reasonably possible AFTER attempting (not easy.. lots of obfuscation even bordering on prevarication in the POS industry ! If you sense they may not be telling you the whole truth, you're probably RIGHT !)

.. after attempting to verify that the software has been designed (re-designed 2nd choice) from the ground-up to be WINDOWS software.

(unless you're a LINUX guru, and want to go 110% DIY with opensource freeware)

.. (speaking of which there ARE "open source POS" software projects for Windows as well, just google it if you're wanting to go entirely DIY .. and ready to take on the whole project with little or no support.)

Rule # 4

Do insist on as much written or PDF documentation as you can get your hands on .. either PRIOR TO the sale or as a CONTRACTUAL condition of the sale ... 'cuz after the sale you will get ZIPPO, as once you're "ON THE HOOK" with most of these companies, the will want to bleed $100 bills out of you for every few minutes of "support" ... and a lot of this software seems designed to require support; "user manuals" are NOTICEABLE IN THEIR TOTAL ABSENCE in many if not MOST cases.

Rule # 5

Get used to the fact that most of the software vendors DON'T EVER want to hear from you;

most of them are part of the oldskool technomafia mindset, where information is power, and they want you to have exactly NONE.

If you can find a software that you can purchase DIRECT from the software vendor TOGETHER WITH reasonably comprehensive written support materials ... you are a better man than I. In any other industry, this is "THE WAY THINGS ARE DONE" .. in POS, there is still this way of "doing business" where the POS industry is a LEECH hanging on your leg, sucking blood ALL THE TIME.

Failing the seemingly impossible (well documented POS software that any computer savvy guy with 10 or 20yrs experience would EASILY be able to setup & maintain :-)

FIND an "authorized dealer" who'll be willing to work with your "DIY" angle (many of them will simply ignore you if you don't appear to be an excellent leg-target for them to fasten their leeching hooks into.)

Please feel free to flame me via email, as I'm not into checking forum PM's

email dh_AT_davidhartley.com (you know what to do with the _AT_ hopefully =:-)

Any info gratefully accepted on software vendors who might operate according to a model in which a tech-savvy DIY guy could minimize, according to his abilities, need & cost for excessively expensive (anything over $100/hr is nutzo imho) tech support.

Any info related to documentation on any POS software which you may be wiling to share, trade, or sell could be of interest. (pls no offers of copyright infringements)

Anyone interested in forming a loose-knit online group of non-brand-specific POS support people, perhaps with an ultimate view toward standardizing on some OPEN-SOURCE software to which we could "add value" .. drop a line.