Category: FWIW

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Well, THIS Is Gonna Be Fun

Well, for values of fun that include making finicky repairs on small electronics with arthritic fingers. *heh*

Hardware fault on the lil lappy I’ve been using for the past six years for casual Internet browsing, email, etc. while away from my primary computer (which is any time I’m sitting with my Wonder Woman and she’s on her lappy). So, backup lil lappy. And this time, when I say “lil” I mean :tiny”–a discarded netbook I rehabbed and installed Linux Mint on. Works surprisingly well, apart from

1. Cramped keyboard *feh* that makes typos almost certain, and
2. Crappy, tiny mushpad, and
3. Difficulty disabling the crappy, tiny mushpad, making typing even more of a chore–strictly “Biblical method” typing (“seek and ye shall find” *sigh*)

I will figure out that last one. . .

Meanwhile, decision time: definitively diagnose and repair the other lappy or replace it? I don’t really want to purchase a Win10 laptop, so pickings might be slim. For a casual use lapptop, Win7 works pretty well, shich is the reason I had kept that one at Win7 Pro. I like the way Linux Mint works just fine on this lil thing (apart from the obscurantist nature of disabling the touchpad–although it’s probably a simple task and I’m just missing something that’s staring me right in the face. Only one cuppa joe and all that.*heh*)

Anywho, at least most of my data from my regular ole lappy is secure elsewhere, apart from recent bookmarks and the like. The only really irksome things about replacing it with a Linux or Win8.1/10 compy would be

  1. The PITA of putting Win7 version of Freecell on one (it has a more attractive look than any other version I’ve seen out there for other OSes, and I use it for “Freecell Zen” mind-clearing)
  2. Transferring the record of nearly 10,000 to 0 win-loss would be nice, too. *heh*

Yeh, like that is such a big deal, eh? 😉

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I Should Have Content Editing Privileges

When Roger Simon wrote, “We don’t need elegant words, Republican John Kerry’s slavering all over us with diplospeak” in a recent column, I thought to meself, “Self, that would read much better with ‘dildospeak’ than ‘diplospeak.'”

Thatisall.

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Occasionally. . .

*sigh* Every now and then, I find myself reading five or so books at once. This is one of those times. (Plus a new Bible reading plan I’d not tried before.) I know how it happens. Books that are just barely well-written and interesting enough to continue reading, but not well-written and interesting enough to read straight through are the usual culprits. Every now and then, a book I need to put down and think about, or just absorb, for a while before continuing makes my reading list as well.

Now? One hardcopy book. A book on my “non-fiction Kindle” and another on my “fiction Kindle” plus three more in different instances of Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader. Between the six, they hold my attention. *sigh*

And then there’s that new Bible reading program. Ten chapters/day, each from a different book with specific instructions to just read them straight through without stopping to think on the text. Tried that. Can’t. So, I generally read half the day’s readings and then go do other things, while the chapters I’ve read percolate. Then, at the end of the day, I finish the readings.

In between, my daily work/chores/activities and. . . the other books.

I prefer keeping it to just one book at a time, but sometimes. . . nope. Not happening.

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Little (Fun) Things

#8,634

Feeding (unsalted, roasted in the shell) peanuts to Son & Heir’s dog, one at a time. No, not many, just a few. He’s just nuts for the things, though, and it amuses me. He’s also such a very polite beggar. Just sits and stares with ears and head cocked, almost daring me to deny him a “PEANUT, PLEASE GIMME A PEANUT!” Waits patiently, sometimes licking his chops, while I shell another peanut and either share with him or not.

Makes me smile.

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Trump Jumps the Shark

Ted Cruz responded to Trump’s “birtherism” with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ZGKI8vpcg

Just the right touch, wouldn’t you say? *heh*

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Fundamentals: Ethics v. Morality

“The ethical man knows it is not right to cheat on his wife; the moral man will not.”~Ducky Mallard

Parenthetically, I’d say remaining faithful to one’s wife is easier when one loves her and is convinced God has definitely joined one with one’s wife. Nearly four decades with my Wonder Woman has deepened my understanding of her beauty and irreplaceability.

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The Joys of “Not Getting Lost”

Nah, this isn’t some think piece with the “directionally challenged”/”directionally gifted” as metaphors for anything. This is just about NSEW orienteering. 🙂

“Not getting lost” in America’s Third World County™ is more fun than not getting lost in Boston or Dallas or wherever. For the first ten years after we moved to America’s Third World County™,navigating the back roads was. . . interesting. No names apart from informal names that could (and did) change according to family or neighborhood tradition, or simply an individual’s idiosyncratic choice. The road “system” also reflects the fact that this is a geographically rugged area (Ozarks, and all the hills, valleys, streams, creeks and rivers that implies) that was settled (more or less) before the idea of section lines really took hold, so, while other rural areas in other parts of the country might give directions by section line, etc., not so here. NSEW and geographical features were the primary means of providing directions to places within the county that fell off the map of state roads.

The official county map was not a lot of help, either. Many roads didn’t even appear on the map of county-maintained roads and the roads that did had designations not acknowledged by those who lived on them. Rural postal routes were more useful as directions than the official county designations. Made my “hobby” of driving the back roads more fun.

Then, when the county began instituting a 911 system, roads started getting names (including the street in town that we had lived on for 10 years with no address), names that usually reflected longstanding tradition. Now, Gobbler’s Knob, Granny’s Branch and Pine Log Road (which Internet mapping services still often get laughably wrong, despite more than a decade having passed since it was formally named) are all easily found on a 911 map, though I know lifelong residents who have NO idea where they are located. Not their neighborhoods.

I’d like the gig of being The County Guide. *sigh* 😉

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Just One More Reason to Deplore the “New Truckers’ Version”

I’ve seen a few citations of John 3:16, as mistranslated by the “New Truckers’ Version” (NIV), in the run-up to Xmas:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I deplore the “New Truckers’ Version” (NIV) in part because of rather gross mistranslation like this. My only gripe with this is that “monogenes” does NOT mean “one and only son” but “only begotten son”. The two are rather profoundly different.

“One and only” is easily impeached by other scriptural passages, even without simply translating “monogenes” correctly. Adam is called a son of God; Israel is called sons of God, Jesus calls peacemakers sons of God; the resurrected, those who have faith in Christ, etc.: all “sons of God” according to scripture. Jesus is the only BEGOTTEN Son of God: unique, no other like Him.

Yes, I know more and more commonly illiterate folks nowadays might stumble on “begotten,” but that’s just another reason for Xians to be more literate, so we can explain things like the virgin birth, the miracle of the Incarnation.

Or heck, give ’em a dictionary.

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Upgrade Denial

Mixed house: Windoze, Linux, Android, etc. “Upgrades” of Windoze boxes? *shrugs* Eventually, Win10. . . maybe (with some more being transitioned to a ‘nix OS). I’ll probably keep one computer at Win7(Pro) for aye, simply because it’s my current “Freecell zen” box with 7700 wins/0 losses. Yeh, yeh, I could copy the score over to another box (I think it’s just a registry key, IIRC) or even a VM, but the compy’s really only good for “Freecell zen” and light web browsing, anyway, so. . . Anywho. . . after the first few thousand games of Freecell even a slow learner like me starts to notice, semi-unconsciously, the same games coming up again and again. Makes it even easier to zone out and play mindlessly.

I had an earlier Windoze 2000(Pro) box with well over 10,000-to-0 racked up, but that became a Linux box, then morphed into a PC-BSD box, then finally got shuffled off into a corner.