Category: FWIW

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Heigh-Ho…

Or perhaps, “Eighteen tons and what do you get… ”

Well, at least I have refuge from the word (and activity) that gave Maynard G Krebs heart palpitations every time it was uttered…

Yeh, that’s the ticket: home sweet home, refuge from a world gone mad. But then…

Lovely Daughter has planned on moving back into the twc central catacombs (finished basement), which means… the room that we’ve used for storage for the past five or six years must be cleaned out. Unfortunately, that happens to be the single largest room in the house, about 10 SF larger than the living room, in fact. And it is (was) packed to the gills.

*heh*

Sooo, in the past week, as time and energy has permitted, Son&Heir and I have been sorting and re-packing and throwing stuff out, no matter how appealing the junk may be. Including, but certainly not limited to, a storehouse of “ancient” computers and computer parts, 8088/8086/286/386/486 and old Pentiums/586/686 computers, stripped of usable (or even potentially usable) parts (which are now packed away and stored much, much more compactly) and hauled out for disposal. Eleven of ’em so far.

Oh, I’m keeping 6 of the older, rarely-booted 486 and Pentium boxes, primarily just for fun, although I do have some old files archived on a 486 I really ought to transfer elsewhere. Heck, it’s an old Win 3.11 for Workgroups comp I no longer even have a network card in… getting that thing on the network ought to be a buncha fun all by its lonesome. *heh*

And then there are all the peripherals. Most of them are sorted pretty well, but many of them just need to be tossed. Who needs a bunch of perfectly usable, but slow, CD read-only drives, anyway? (OK, I’ll hang on to the NEC CD changer drive, cos it’s cool, and I can use it building a media center. A six CD shuffler would be OK in a multi-drive system. Besides, the faceplate’s already painted black, which should match up well with the rest of my components.)

And, of course, the computer related junk is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were. Boxes of books that we want to hang onto are going in pastic tubs and then into the newly-emptied storage shed outside (and yes, that was a fun chore, too :-)).

More fun ‘n’ games? Yeh, what I want to do in that room, after a thorough cleaning, is reseal and “plaster” the walls, add a ceiling fan (have one) and ethernet cabling (2 of 4 of the other rooms downstairs already have ethernet, and I think the bathroom doesn’t really need it, do you? :-)). Oh, and a little work on the closet in that room might be in order. Already have a “new” door set aside for the place and Lovely Daughter will need to pick out her own paint color(s). Yep. Another two weeks from today should be about right.

So, who needs [that word that drove Maynard G Krebs around the bend] to stay busy?

😉

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Distrust Authority

This is a re-run from “I don’t know when; I’m too lazy to search” *heh*

I believe people today are too “credentials crazy” and rely too heavily on someone’s C.V. to provide validation for their opinions, including blog postings. While I have gone the university/grad school route (in a couple of different fields), I try to avoid citing those degrees or even my experience in those fields, as much as possible, to stamp “authority” over an opinion. If a particular personal experience (or set of experiences) can serve as support for other material from other sources, then that seems valid, but just saying “I have a (or several) degree(s) in such-and-so and work in the field” as an argument in and of itself for or against a position is just so much bullshit.

OK, rabbit trail (although this does indeed go somewhere, and will be revelatory). Authority has several faces, and several sources. Some legitimate and others not so (or not at all).

Two classes make religious authoritarian statements (although one denies it): actual, well, “religious leaders” and soi disant “scientists” who make religious claims about “science” (yes, there’s a good reason for the scare quotes).

In the area of relatively above board religious statements, there’s divine authority and human opinion. Wanna argue with God? Be my guest. (Glutton for punishment.) Some religious leaders claim divine authority. Tricky question. If one accepts the Bible as divinely authoritative, then a religious leader within Christianity (or I’d suppose Judaism) could claim to speak with authority if what he’s saying is… scripture. Otherwise, it’s just his opinion, and that’s only as authoritative as it is subject to reason, morality and scripture itself (we are talking about a particular set of authority here, after all). Any religious leader who simply asserts his opinion as authoritative because of his position within some religious hierarchy is playing at being the devil.

And yeh, if you wanna make an issue of it, I’ll argue that assertion from scripture.

Scientists as religious dogmatists? Global warming. There. That should be enough to tell any reasonable person to check the data, examine the processes, testing instruments and underlying assumptions at the very least before accepting any likely lie beginning with “scientists believe” or “scholars are in agreement” or any such crypto-cultic balderdash.

Oh! Lambasting “authorities”! Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan. Just buy it and read. I don’t claim Hogan’s an “authority” on any of the subjects he touches on (nor does he), but he does point out some serious holes in the (really) religious statements of faith in scientism. Anthropogenic Global Warmism? Neodarwinism? Heck, “Einsteinism”. *heh* All just sects of the religion of scientism. And none of them nearly so authoritative as scientism would have you believe.

But what of darned near all other authority?

First, I distrust ALL assertions of authority. Unless a person can prove by citation of verifiable fact and via sound reasoning that their assertions are valid, then I don’t consider their assertions to have any authority at all. Credentials don’t count with me.

That includes doctors.

Lawyers.

Preachers.

Teachers (of anything). Particularly, if a teacher cannot do–competently–what they are purporting to teach others, then I tend to write them off as blowhards.

I will always place more credence in a carpenter telling me “This is how it’s done” (cos the carpenter’s authority can be checked by looking at his work) than I would a politician telling me, well, anything (because a politician can be checked by looking at his work *heh*), but particularly, “This is just political reality.” “Political reality” is a self-referential construct, only as “real” as the power we give to (or is illegitimately seized by) the politician claiming it.

What of authority as exercised by various civil governments? More and more, if measured by the principles this nation was built on as articulated by the Founders’ generation particularly, civil government authority is illegitimate. Think Kelo or Martha Stewart or Ramos and Compean or Ruby Ridge or the TSA or… (yes, the list is long and growing)

In fact, the more powerful the government entity, the more abusive and illegitimate its authority seems to be. Which is why so many of the easy pickings in governmental/bureaucratic abuses are from federal exercises of authority.

In fact, if all I were to say about the illegitimate use of “feddle gummint” authority–indeed, abuse of citizens that is in exactly the same vein as those abuses the Founders decried in the Declaratiion of Independence–were “Lon Horiuchi” then that would be enough to demonstrate absolute proof of Samuel Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” label of bureaucratic/governmental abuse of authority.

And oh, my! did the Department of “Justice” cover itself in shame in the Ruby Ridge/Lon Horiuchi coverup or not? Department of “Jam-up-citizens” would be a more accurate name…

Authority: distrust it. Make it prove itself worthy of respect. Martha Stewart is my hero(ine). If only because her case made manifest the depravity of abusive “feddle gummint” turf-building anarcho-tyrannists. She was punished under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for “Lying to Government Agents”–according to testimony by the government agents in question AND a witness the “feddle gummint” persecutors later indicted for perjury for his testimony against Stewart. (Yeh, I don’t recall reading how that ended, but that they themselves indicted their own well-coached witness, the one who was THE critical nail in Martha’s coffin, says a lot, doesn’t it?)

At least some good, of a sort, has come out of the Martha Principle: “How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents.”

Read it. Somewhere, there’s a feddle prosecutor or bureaucrat who can nail you for breaking a law or regulatory rule you don’t know exists. All that’s needed is for a feddle gummint bureaucrat or prosecutor to set his/her sights on you and decide they want your hide. That’s an essential element of anarcho-tyranny: the ability to pick and choose among thousands of regulations and laws and selectively enforce them for personal gain–turf-building, career-enhancement or simply petty revenge.

That’s where abuse of Constitutional authority has led us.

ANY abuse of authority is just as evil. Yes, evil.

Distrust authority. Men lie, usually for short-term gain. Bureaucrats are more likely because they are petty, venal, corrupt and/or incompetent than not. Politicians are more likely to be all of those AND consumate liars than not.

And that brings me back to a revelation. Yeh, I have some academic creds. They are all crap. At best. From my earliest years, I learned to tune out the bullshit artists who claimed to be teachers (though I was fortunate to have some at all stages of my formal education path who were able doers in their field, as well). I consider myself semi-literate. Not a day goes by that I don’t make a new (to me) discovery, a “Hey! I didn’t know that!” kinda experience. Not all are as shocking as picking up an uncle’s “Bible”… to discover that it was in Greek (“But, but, I just heard him reading a passage aloud in English!”). Put me in a mind to get me one-a those thangs, too…

No, not all my “Aha!”s open up what seems to be a whole new world, as that experience did, but daily I learn new things that remind me–daily–how much there is to know that I do not.

And that also makes me a bit suspicious of folks who say with “authority” that things are such-and-so, when not only can I see exceptions to their model, but once firmly held their (false) view myself…

Question authority. Give persons “in authority” only the respect they are due… which means, only when they are right or at least honestly attempting to argue from reason and verifiable fact. When they are wrong, blow them a big, fat, juicy-wet raspberry. Ridicule is the highest, best response to false authority, the most generous response false authority deserves.

Want my C.V.? Go suck on a rock. My C.V. is irrelevant.

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It’s Wednesday; Do You Know Where Your Summer’s Going?

Yeh, and what does Wednesday have to do with anything, anyway? I dunno, but the voices in my head told me to say that. 😉

The other day, I read the most hilarious “guest editorial” in a paper from a couple of countues north of America’s Third World County. The author accused averyone in politics except himself of being biased in viewpoint and speech. Now, by “bias” one can safely infer from the tone of this guy’s article that he means something very much like, “a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment” or “an instance of… prejudice,” but the hilarious thing is that the guy never even sees the huge, honking beam in his own eye.

Silly puppy.

*Tearing hair out* OK, so strangely enough, one of this curmudgeon’s fav movies of all time is Matilda. If you’ve not seen it, just do. It’s one of the very, very few movies of the last 25 years or so I feel is worth watching more than once.

So why the *Tearing hair out*? New comp. Decided to watch a bit of Matilda. No joy. Errors reading the DVD. *sigh* Check on regular old everyday DVD player. S’all right. Is it the drive(s)? If so, another $60 (or less) should fix that, but then I’d be moving over my target “Mr. Tightwad” budget for this thing.

Oh. Well. Some tests today (OK, much later today) should tell the tale.

What’s with the Obamassiah? Why are so many “idjits” under this snake oil salesman’s spell? Oh. Answered my own question, didn’t I? What I simply cannot get, in any way, shape, fashion or form, is why this stublebum speaker has the reputation as a powerful public speaker. His delivery alone (let’s not even count his almost complete lack of content) would earn him low “C’s” in my high school speech classes lo these many years ago, and I’ve heard better public speaking from some of the worst preachers I’ve heard over more than half a century. So why do folks think Obamassiah’s public speaking is the bomb?

Again, idjits. Very nearly absolutely illiterate bums and oafs and dummies making the assessment of Obamassiah’s speaking ability.

What marrons.

Then again there are the maroons on the other side of the disappearing “aisle” who have given the Repugnican’t nomination to Juan Mexicain. Brush up on your Mexican Spanish, folks, cos Juan Mexicain wants to surrender the U.S. to Mexico. Oh, and isn’t it sweet that he wants to drill for oil offshore? Of course, readily accessible sites with loads of infrastructure available for moving oil pumped to the surface? No to ANWAR (among others). Go ahead and gimme my $0.18/gallon forgiveness of “feddle gummint” extortion, Juan, but don’t expect me to see you as serious about energy and the environment until you simply say, “Drill Here, Drill Now” and “build those 200 nuclear power plants” and STOP saying silly and stupid things about CO2 and Anthropogenic Global Warming.

What a maroon.

Gee, supposed to hot up today in America’s Third World County. Had to use a light blanket with the windows open last night, though. Sleeping with a blanket in UNair conditioned space oward the end of June. In America’s Third World County. Never thought I’d do that. Must be global warming.

Speaking of…

Finnish Finish Global Warming

The Goracle needs to have someone read that to him… slowly.

The other day, in comments, Perri Nelson expressed a wee tad of surprise that I’m regularly getting better than 40mpg on my lil 11-year-old Saturn. Actually, he knows better. 🙂 Apart from simply not driving at all, the single greatest boost to fuelk economy one can make is to drive a stick. Manual transmission. No automatic tranny (unless one is talking about some of the new CVT trannies–they’re hard to beat) can approach offering the fuel economy of active intelligence applied to a manual transmission vehicle.

Note the qualifier: folks who are dumber than a bag of hammers (easily 80-90% of the drivers on the roads today) need not attempt this fuel saving measure. It does take an active, intelligent, constantly monitored approach to ALL driving conditions.

So if you are unable to chew gum and refute the dogma of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming at the same time, you should just pass this lil tip by…

OK, a couple more things I miss using Ubuntu/Linux (w/nice GUI) on a daily basis:

–middle mouse button/scroll wheel behavior in my browser of choice. In Windoze I can “CLICK” the thing and set a scroll speed and just let it scroll away. Nice for reading ebooks hands off.

–RIGHT-CLICK on desktop context menu is sorely lacking in options. Heck, RIGHT-CLICK context menu options in general are kinda thin

–I seriously need to find a better file browser than the built-in crippledware GUI file browser. Less than genuinely useful.

HAdn’t really missed those things in earlier uses of Ubuntu, cos my previous usage was more limited.

Apart from those things (and the probably hardware-related DVD issue mentioned above) and a couple of lil niggling things like HIBERNATION *heh*, Ubuntu is proving to be all I had come to expect of it: about halfway between Win98 and WINXP in ease-of-use. At least an order of magnitude more stable. Quicker than any Windows version (and yeh, I am discounting some for speed of newer hardware, since I’ve experienced the nimble footedness of Linux GUI distros for years on old, OLD hardware). As nice an experience, overall, as any Windows upgrade I’ve done in the past, save for perhaps Windows 2000 Pro (now there was a nice, stable Windows. Still a resopurce hog, but solid in my experience. When it did come apart, though… *sheesh!*).

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“DWUC”–Driving While Under-Caffeinated

Wandering through a disjointed, rambling discussion with the voices in my head this A.M….

It’s a good thing I was under-caffeinated this morning. Too many “driving while brain dead” people on the road. Had I been properly caffeinated (thus, awake), I’d probably have stroked out at the number of folks who let a little dampness (after a night full of heavy rain) turn them into Aunt Tillies on the road… But enough of that.

Ever think about the differences between stereotypes and archetypes? They have common roots in real world relationships and usefulness. Archetypes as theoretical models actually have less usefulness in our quotidian experiences, IMO. Stereotypes though…

Ever notice that stereotypes get a bum rap in the talk of Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass Media Podpeople, et al, and yet Academia Nut Fruitcakes almost universally stereotype stereotypes as “bad” and Mass Media Podpeople cannot utter two sentences in a row without using stereotypes.

Why is that?

Well, on the one hand, Academia Nut Fruitcakes despise anything that simplifies models to the point of actual usefulness, while at the same time unconsiously making sweeping generalizations (oversimplified assumptions) about the unusefulness of simple models, AKA, stereotypes, which they have come to characterize as oversimplifications of some observed or imagined trait of behaviour or appearance.

(Mass Media Podpeople, OTOH, are unable to think in complex terms at all, and so have nothing BUT genuine oversimplifications to offer. In their case, stereotypes really are a bad, bad thing.)

Why do stereotypes exist to begin with? Because humans are generalization machines and Occam’s Razor is one of the most powerful tools (I almost typed “forces”) of reason. Face it: most “jocks” are intellectually stunted boors. Yes, it’s true. Nerds are, by definition, socially inept. Latino men are almost universally dominated by machismo (natural public reaction to their basically matriarchal home life–*heh*), and American society is becoming ever more feminized day by day.

Sidebar: I don’t have to defend any of the statements above, because to any person who has more functioning brain cells than a head of cabbage they are self-evident. Stereotype-driven, because they are generalizations from the real world that are testable hypotheses that can stand against exceptional tests: they work.

Example: the feminization of America. 99%+ of America’s future is brainwashed in our society’s prisons for kids (disingenuously referred to by Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass media Podpeople and politicians *spit* as “public schools”). More and more kids are being drugged out of their minds because, being boys, they act like boys, and our prisons for kids are dominated by female teachers for whom boyish behavior is anathema. Take a typical playground event: bully picks on victim. If the victim does the female teacher-acceptable thing and “goes crying to surrogate mommy” all is well in the eye of the prison for kids. If the victim does the right thing and plasters the bully, he gets in trouble. OK, maybe both get in trouble, but the point is that to satisfy a feminine culture, a forceful personal response results in injustice: punishment for self-defense.

And this trait is, of course, permeating our society. Self-defense is equated with aggression at an increasing rate. By all meeans, lets talk with the crazy guy with the atom bomb…

And that is but one of many examples of the feminization of America.

And so it goes with many things slurred as stereotypes: they are reflections of a reality the politically correct simply want to deny, as they embrace instead their reality-based fantasies and tyrannical utopian/dystopian views.

As someone once said (something like :-)), “In much of [their] talk, thinking is half-murdered.”

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Continuing the Saga of Computer Fun

So, everything working on the new comp under Ubuntu 8.04 but the IR receiver and remote, but the driver search for that can continue for a while, since I still need to add an appropriate splitter and a new cable run for the TV card. The card itself is recognized just fine, but without a cable hookup or an external antenna (not very useful here in my part of America’s Third World County), actually tuning in any channels is not going to happen.

I guess I could hook up an FM antenna and have radio, but why? Sure, I’d not mind listening to Car Talk or Karl Haas or some such, but that’s not enough reason to play the radio through my PC when there’s a perfectly good radio already in the room I never listen to anyway.

This week: my DeoxIT Gold kit will be in, and I’ll disassemble the computer (heck, I’ll disassemble the one I’ve been tweaking and hardening for my dad as well) and treat all possible electrical contact points. (Heck, maybe I’ll finally clean up the pots n pans on an old AMR42 mixer I have sitting in tghe corner, too.)

On Ubuntu 8.04: Now that I’ve decided to make this my everyday comp, I’ll have to move my email stores on here and import them into Evolution. Yeh, this is the seventh or eighth different email client I’ve used in the past 15 or more years (not counting proprietary clients from MCIMail, AOL–yeh, I used it for a while back in the bad old metered proprietary AOL days before web browsers and regular everyday ISPs–Delphi or Compuserve) I think I’ll like Evolution. Reminds me more of Outlook (NOT Outlook Express) than Thunderbird or any of the other clients I’ve used recently. I’ll probably not be using the calendaring or group scheduling facilities much, since I have those built into my hosted account, and family members–the use I planned the thing for–can post their schedules any old time from any old where easily and securely. But as for its email functions: solid. Like it much.

As to setting up a media center comp that has several proprietary peripherals in Linux… not for the proverbial Aunt Tilly.

Still unhappy with WINE’s inability to run a couple of indispensable Windows apps, but that can fall to one of the Windows versions I’ve retired from other computers and installed in VirtualBox *heh*.

All-in-all, unless something unforeseen crops up, I see no real reason to have another Windows-based computer, unless, of course, “Windows 7” turns out to be a winner. But I’m not holding my breath.

Future (not so far down the road) changes to this comp:

Change out the 1GB of memory for 4GB. Pretty cheap performance enhancer.

Change out the power supply. I knew going in that I’d do ths, because the base comp has an inadequate power supply, and I knew that up front. BTW, this is probably one of the best things you can do to improve the reliability of any off-the-shelf consumer-grade PC. $50 will usually get you a decent power supply that’s at least 100% better than the one that came with whatever desktop you bought. $100 or so will get you a much better PC Power and Cooling power supply–a Very Good Thing.

I’ve waffled on the video card upgrade, and I’m kinda glad I did, because I’m gathering a LOT of info about what Linux in general and Ubntu in particular “likes” and the two I was considering… won’t make the cut for my final choice. In any case, a 512MB nVidia PCIex card will be it, but which one? The jury’s still out. Meanwhile, the 6100 6150SE series nVidia chipset onboard graphics is enough for some nice Gnome-ish slaps in the face to Vista eye candy. *heh*

Eventually, I’ll upgrade my speaker system. I’m using a venerable Harmon Kardon (HP rebranded) set now, but it’s not really surround sound capable, and with the media center stuff, I think I’d like to use the 5+1 Soundblaster card I added (pulled from another, now retired, computer) to more effect (or heck, even the 7+1 onboard sound).

Down the road a little further, I may look at a wireless networking solution for this comp. My Wonder Woman’s notebook does well here at twc central, working with our Netgear WPN824. It’s only b-g, but the multiple antennas mean solid connections, and the security features are more than we need here in our corner of America’s Third World County where the nearest other wireless network is wide open, unsecured at all, at all. *heh* Temptations. Still, the only wireless adapters I have to add to this one are old 802.11b adapters. Good ones, but slower than I would want. The Netgear WG111 USB Wireless Adapter is very good for some applications (when Lovely Daughter’s built in adapter went blooie, this was a perfect solution for her lil Vaio laptop), but the Engenius / EUB-362 EXT, though about 3X the price, seems more likely to be the direction I’d go.

Apart from those near term upgrades, I don’t see a lot left to do to this but tweak the software. I don’t necessarily want to learn how to write my own drivers for the IR input devices, but it’d be a learning experience if it came to that, now wouldn’t it? Well, at least the multimedia keyboard was recognized and configured w/o a hitch. That’s something, isn’t it? 🙂 Heck, even the “Mail,” “Search” and “Browser” buttons work, along with the “regular” multimedia buttons. That Ubuntu magic at work, I guess.

Still, again I’d say that setting up this computer using Ubuntu 8.04 hasn’t been a task for “Aunt Tilly.” But now that it’s (mostly) set up, anyone could sit down and do anything they’d do on another computer running another OS just about as easily as in something more common.

Tell ya what. If you’re a Windows user, why not download and invoke Wubi and give Ubuntu a no-hassle shot?

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When Will I Learn?

*sigh*

I shoulda taken Rosemary’s advice in comment Monday and had a long hot shower and a nap. Summer cold. Laryngitis. Can’t even speak in “head voice” (as my aeon’s-ago fav voice prof was wont to say, “If you can’t speak/sing in your head voice, just shut up,” or something like that. *heh*)

So, losing another day. Monday to my stupidity in leaving a car window open so rain could short out my horn switch; Tuesday (and at least some of today; we’ll see) to a lack of ability to communicate apart from computer keyboard.

Oh. Well.

Random observations:

To all you ignorant (or stupid; I’m betting many are both) drivers out there trying to save money at the pump: driving slowly does not always equal better gas mileage. Driving slowly in low gears is a real gas waster. Get through the lower gears quickly w/o “jackrabbiting” and up to speed, then drive more conservatively if you wish. Taking 1/2 mile to get from zero to 30mph is just stupid. Especially when you’ve turned on in front of me to drive slowly. Just quit it!

Oh, and unecessarily braking to way, way under the speed limit going DOWN a hill is stupid on more than three accounts. If you can’t figure that one out, return your driver’s license to the Wackers1 where you bought it.

Dumbasses.

(BTW, I average 40mpg combined local-highway driving–in an eleven-year-old car, no less–even when I get behind too many dumbasses forcing me to drive to their stupid criteria. Just think what I’d get if the 80%+ folks who don’t know how to drive at all were taken off the roads. *heh*)

1 Wacker’s Five and Dime was a step down from the old, OLD TG&Y or Woolworth’s dime stores. Think “Dollar Store” only cheap. *heh* I swear they must still be in business given the numbers of drivers who MUST have gotten their driver’s licenses there…
…

Is it just me or do most politicians (including but not limited to presidential candidates) show a complete and utter disconnect from the real world of their constituents? Is it time for a Constitutional amendment providing that NO congresscritter, president or their bureaucratic alter egos have income during their tenure and for 10 years following that in any way (in any combination of incomes, benefits, tetirement, etc.) exceeds the average income of their constituents? (As determined at each official U.S. Census–with no penalties to citizens for low-balling their incomes. *heh*)

I think it’s time for such an amendment.

…

62 degrees fahrenheit in my lil twc central office this a.m. No A/C, just an open window. (Yes, it rained in, but the mini-blinds I had strategically positioned kept in draining OUT, not in or even onto the sill :-)) According to an outside thermometer reading, it’s about 58 degrees fahrenheit outside this a.m. at 8:30 a.m. on a June day in America’s Third World County in the Missouri Ozarks.

Must be that d#$%&* “global warming” eh? As to that…

NOAA reports on our cooler than normal spring

I thought all the “excessive” CO2 humans were emitting/causing to be released had “caused” a disasterous 0.6 degree celsius rise in temperature over the last century, no? Isn’t that one of the tenets of The CHurch of Anthropogenic Global Warming?

Oops.

(Just CLICK on the image to see the full size graphic)

That’s right folks, from January 07 to May 08, the much touted if even true) 0.6C increase over a century was not only wiped out over a 15-month period, the it’s even .175C cooler than the cherry-picked starting point of the global warmists.

Of course, that coincides with low sunspot activity, something The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming refuses to believe has any significant effect on Earth’s climate.

Dumbasses.

…

Coffee or a nap? Hmmm… that’s a tough one. How about both? Yeh, that’s the ticket!

…

I still haven’t made a good coffee beer. Need to get to work on that one Real Soon Now.

…

Having fun building a “hardened” XP machine for my dad. No, he doesn’t want a Linux machine. Wants one that’ll run some software he’s found that requires XP. Hmmm… must call him (when I get my voice back). Maybe I can get hold of the software he wants to run and test it out under WINE or in a virtual machine running XP under Linux. Or find a Linux-based substitute that’ll do the same. Of course, that’d take me all the way back to the drawing board. Oh! My! Please don’t throw me into that briar patch! *LOL*

…

Data point: I usually see a large number of terrapins crossing the road (or remains of terrapins who were–as all their kind–too slow to avoid drivers of cars who were too “slow” to avoid a turtle on the road) in April and early May. This year, they didn’t start their activity–such as it is, “activity” being their slow migrations across the highways *heh*–until June. Cooler than normal temps?

Hmmm, another data point. I have some daffodils that have in the past bloomed in time for St David’s Day (March 1) but which didn’t even emerge from slumber until the middle of March or bloom until April this year.

…

Well, just about used all my words up. Oh, I have more, but I think this is my “finger quota” for today. Must have another nap, soon.

😉

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Bob Doles Out a Slap Upside the Head to Scott

Bob Dole v. Scott MCClellan: Junkyard Dog v. “Step-on-it” Chihuahua.

Dole:

“If all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job.

“That would have taken integrity and courage, but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”

Of course, McClellan will have the full force of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind behind him when he responds with, “Waaaaah!”

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Skeptical Thought for the Weekend

Some might consider the following quote to be an example not of skepticism but of cynicism, but the differences between the two outlooks cannot be more profoundly illustrated. The cynic will habitually believe ill of whatever object or subject he regards. The skeptic will withold judgement until the weight of evidence is convincing one way or another.

I submit that the author of the following had enough evidence by the time he said such a thing to have arrived at a thoughtful assessment. I’m about the same age as he was when he said it, I believe, and I have, after much kicking and screaming and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, been dragged forcefully by facts to believe the same:

“As Democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”–H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956

I submit for your consideration the current crop of presidential candidates. “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right… ”

Who’d-a thunk it? Steeler Wheel as the prophets of doom?

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Adeline and Hazel, Faultline USA, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Wolf Pangloss, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe

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Whatta day…

Today started out wonderfully. First up: dragging my allergy-aching joints outa a finally-attained REM sleep cycle.

Oh, well. Another chance for real sleep tonight.

Things to do, things to do… must I really do them?
(“Yes,” comes the answer, loudly and clearly. *heh*)

Thankfully (or not, depending on the viewpoint–I voted mostly “Not” :-)), the winds of fortune blew cold on my internet connection today. Ongoing repairs to the repairs on damage from recent heavy storms took out our cable connection (and TV, too–on my Wonder Woman’s first day officially out of school–“officially” I say, because she has piles and piles of work to prepare for next year’s onslaught of piles and piles–and even more piles and piles–of bureucrappic jiggling required to keep her libraries “certified”. ‘S’OK, the cable was out cos she really does need to keep cranking for a while before decompressing ).

Meanwhile, with my broadband out (and our backup dialup dead, defunct, iced, whacked, gone baby gone), I had no option but to actually, well, get some things done that I’d been deferring. (Yeh, finally back online in late afternoon.)

In the mess of things (still managing to avoid a buncha things, of course–practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does afford interesting ways to make mistakes) was a teensy lil project for my Wonder Woman–transferring the main elements of her primary office’s “brag wall” to the wall by her desk here at home. Nothing much, just some diplomas and her Phi Kappa Phi membership cert. Looks nice. My own “brag wall” is bare by comparison; I have managed to lose some diplomas (yeh, yeh, I know they’re probably in boxes somewhere) sometime in the last few moves. No sweat. Probably in a box marked “dung” somewhere. *heh* (That’s what the file Dad-Dad kept all his diplomas and “honors” in was labeled as, and I seem to recall having affected such a convention at one time.)

No, I am NOT mowing the lawn this evening. Maybe tomorrow evening, sometime before my Wonder Woman and I watch a video she’s been waiting for. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the garlic popcorn and the company, and that’s enough reason to “watch” a video with her. (Heck, I watched Ratatouille with her, didn’t I? And yes, the garlic popcorn and the company were great. :-))

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Monday, Monday… Every other day…..

…every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah…

*heh*

Meanwhile, gratefully taking a break from Monday (and a break from Dhimmicraps, Repugnican’ts and other evils) to jot a post.

A cardinal principle to remember when purchasing anything: price is not cost. Sometimes (often, in fact), a lower price will mean a higher cost down the road. Sometimes, not all that far down the road.

Example: I haven’t mentioned before how much I despise a certain vintage* of eMachine “computers” have I?

Just a mild warning: if you happen to have allowed yourself to be sucked into buying one of the eMachine cheapo pieces of crap

1. Never trust ANY important data to one
2. Replace the power supply FIRST THING, as soon as you get it out of the box, before turning the *&%^#* thing on. Just sayin’
3. Get some real surge suppression between the thing and any electricity, cos the MOBOS aren’t much better than the power supplies.

Today, I had to tell another person who brought their eMachine to me that it’d cost about what it originally cost him simply to repair the thing… cos the cheapo power supply failed and tooik the motherboard out with it.

If you already have one of the things (shame on you for buying strictly on price!), back up your data and start putting money back to buy a new computer. Or build one from parts.**

*“certain vintage” to mean… darned near ALL of the *&%^#* things. *heh* Of course, this is only one guy’s opinion, but… based on at least some experience over the years.

**June micro-mini-project for America’s Third World County Central: build my first completely new computer in several years from parts. I’ve tended in recent years to take discards and upgrade them to make them useful for my personal use. Nice computers, but I need to do some consolidating, streamlining of my office: just too many boxes and monitors jamming things up. So, my next computer is just awaiting assembly time.

AM2 motherboard (choice is now down to one of two).
Athlon 64X2 (dual core) 5600+ (nice sweet spot)
4GB Crucial memory (my preferred brand)
500GB Seagate HDD
Plextor DVDRW
512MB PCIex vidcard
Nice steel case and good (but not best, which would be PC Power and Cooling) 500W power supply

And a few other goodies, including an external Seagate to match my onboard storage.

To run the thing: testing out several flavors of Linux this month to see which I prefer. So far, even with stiff competition from Linux Mint and PCLOS, Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is still looking pretty good to me. Run the 64-bit version on the 64-bit Athlon based comp; VirtualBox (or VMWare–still testing these) to allow running Win98 (for my music transcription software), WinXP and maybe even PCBSD 1.5 in virtual machines inside the Linux OS.

That’d give me most of the computers I really need to run right there in one box, without the need to use the clumsy KVM switch I now use for several boxes.

Heck, maybe I’ll even switch out my 61-key MIDI keyboard for a smaller controller so I can save even more desktop space to spread my other mess out on. *heh* I like this one (even though I have this one sitting in a box somewhere *heh*)

Well, back to the salt mines.

Riiiiiight… (Cue Moody Blues: “Lazy day… “)

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