Category: FYI

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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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Internet Withdrawal

*whew!* Glad that’s over!

The last 30 hours or so have been… notsomuch interesting. But did have time to get a few more chores done around the house and such like.

A tornado and high winds thee counties north of America’s Third World County took a pretty big bite out of our cable provider’s infra. No TV (no big loss there), but also no internet service and no VOIP (until yesterday, our ONLY long distance service).

Oh, we still had local phone service, but… our backup dialup internet service bit the dust about three months ago, so no help there.

And Mothers Day. Had to call my mom. *heh* Had picked up a “throwaway” $20 cell phone (pay-as-you-go: came with two months/300 minutes, far, far more than I’ll use it in that time) juuuuust before our service outage, so Mother got her call from me. Was short. Just, “Hi Mom. My LD phone is out of service so all I have to say is, “I love you, bye-bye.” *VBG* (Couldn’t reach her until after 1:00, cos my dad had her out celebrating, I suppose.

Oh, well. I’ll call again in a minute or so and get the whole scoop.

Anywho, good ISP/cable company. Despite extensive damage, it’s back in service. Been very, very pleased with these folks.

L8R…

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/Blogging: Off (for the weekend at least)

Well, mostly. Last few days have been taken up by RW projects, chores and a to-do list that just needs to be finished.

Sunday? The Big Event is my Wonder Woman’s induction into a national honor society partly in recognition of her stellar performance in completing her grad degree. So, off to her (new) alma mater Sunday afternoon (just four counties and one state away–*heh*) for the induction ceremony and following events.

Oh, and a stop somewhere afterwards to look for a really nice frame to put her latest award up on her “I love me” wall, along with diplomas, other awards and recognitions. 🙂

It does me good to see her do so well.

Congrats, WW. You well deserve all the recognition you recieve.

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Taxes

Why do I do it to myself? Every year I buy TurboTax again, so I can import my previous years’ data. No longer. Next year, I swear to break the chains of this bondage.

What’s that? I’ve grown to hate TurboTax. Once, in the deep dark ages of tax software, I used Parson’s Taxedge and the the software was a dream to use. Easy, accurate, simple.

Then Bob Parsons sold out to Intuit. I bought TurboTax because it swore it could import my previous yea’s data seamlessly.

Almost did.

First gripe.

The next few years were slightly better, but every year for the past five years or so, TurboTax has gotten progressively worse.

Last year, it stumbled on importing data from its own format from the previous year.

This year?

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

First thing out of the chute, it refused to install un;ess I installed Microsoft’s abortion of a browser, Internet Exploder, the World’s Crappiest Browser.

Strike one.

Then, TurboTax wanted to update itself. Fine. Except… unlike ALL other internet-aware applications I have installed on the computer I installed TT on, it alone could not find an internet connection.

Quit TT. Opened it again. NOW it finds a connection! Stupid Intuit piece of crapware.

So, started importing/inputting data. Came to my Wonder Woman’s W-2. “Import!’ said I. Nope. TT can’t find an internet connection. WTF?!?!? It found it for updates, so what’s the deal? Called Intuit. Oh, had to

1. register to obtain an incident number.
2. get an email with a link to my incident number/telephone support number.

Kinda lame, but OK.

Called. 35 minutes on hold, switched to a support person and… CLICK… dropped!

Meanwhile, I’d finished my return. Hmmm… something funny. Several hundred $$$ more than I expected in a refund (I aim for having just the right amounts witheld, if possible).

Save return.

Exit.

Reopen TT. Wants to update again. Let it. Can’t find a connection.

Close TT.

Open TT (By now I’ve learned). Wants to update. Let it. It updates.

Open return. WTF?!?!? MANY hundreds of $$$ OWED, now (OK, within $7 of $1,000. You do the subtraction.)

From more tha expected in REFUND to nearly $1,000 OWED after a second update of the software.

Saved return. Closed TT.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Started a NEW return. Input same data. Now owe $115. Not bad. In fact, more in line with what I was expecting to begin with (a little, wee, tiny boost in income from non-witholding sources over and above what I’d allowed for leading into 2007).

OK, move on to State.

WTF?!?!? $1,100+ OWED? This can NOT be right!

Downloaded the interactive pdf from the state. Figured taxes in 10 minutes using data from my federal return. Nice REFUND (hadn’t figured some changes in state law into witholding plan in 2007, so we get some non-interest-paying money back from the brigands at the state capitol *heh*).

Never really figured what was going on w/TT, but after closing/reopening/(no internet connection for updates)/closing/reopening/updating/back in state return, finally TT agreed with the interactive state return.

Crazy.

If you’re doing your taxes with TurboTax 2008 and have more than one or two sources of income, you had better recheck your results with several different tools, several different ways, IMO.

Just saying.

Yet another reason to get behind The Fair Tax. Imagine: no more TurboTax! *heh* Almost as wonderful a phrase as “No more IRS!”

🙂

(Update & Aside: my state has done something right. If income taxes must be levied, at least make compliance easy. Just so: well-designed, fill-in-the-blank, auto-calculating pdf files that can be saved with the data one inputs, printed, mailed. Sure, I could have used one of the IRS-approved (or so it seems to imply) “free” tax sites to do my state taxes (my fed is too complex for any I looked into), but why, when I can get the material straight from the horse’s mouth? Good stuff. Well, about as good as income taxes *spit* get.)

Trackposted to A Blog For All, Faultline USA, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Miss Beth’s Victory Dance, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Wolf Pangloss, and ARISTO_GATTA, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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A Serious Recommendation

I’ve said this befoire, but: Go to Jerry Pournelle’s site. Read. Read some more. Think about what you’ve read. Respond (via email only: Dr. Pournelle reads all his own email and moderates the dialog according to what he feels is interesting or worth commenting on). After a bit, consider becoming a subscriber (there are benefits to you beyond simply supporting his work).

Here’s a sample of the kinds of provocative thoughts you may encounter there:

As time goes by, the purpose of government changes; and indeed it is due to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy that this happens. We have reached that stage here: the purpose of government is now to collect taxes and pay government workers, and hire more government workers who can be depended upon to continue to support expanded government and expanded taxation. Once that goal is accomplished, then government may do something else; but that is the first charge and the major purpose of most of our government, Federal, State, and local.

And indeed the subjects — formerly citizens — are in fact the property of the bureaucracies. Note that it is pretty well out in the open now. There is almost never an admission that government spends too much money; it is always that it has not enough to spend, and must have more. We have schools indistinguishable from an act of war, but there is zero chance that the education bureaucracy will release any students. Indeed they seek to take more control; and always to expand the school budgets. It is the same with every other department.

Now, I do not usually quote anyone at such length, and I have stretched the boundaries of fair use in quoting Dr. Pournelle’s response to an email in its entirety, but I simply wanted to give you enough of a taste of the site to whet your appetite. Go.

Note: while laying a somewhat legitimate claim to being “The Original Blog” (as much as he dislikes the aesthetics of the word, “blog” :-)), Chaos Manor Musings is not laid out in typical blog format. For one thing, it’s all aranged chronologically, not “nlogologivally”. And then there is the Mail section, which is often the most lively discussion area and the Current View area, where Dr. Pournelle simply jots down, daybook style, things happening at Chaos Manor, glimpses into his thoughts, etc.

But there is also a wealth of archived work (including Strategy of Technology, an Army War College text for the past thirty years or more) that spans the range from snippets of his science fiction work, essays on a wide range of topics, to essays by other contributors to his site and much, much more.

You could easily spend your days “lost” in the thickets of worthwhile reading there… and not regret the time spent, at all.

Dr. Pournelle is also, in View, sharing his daily health challenges–from the radiation treatments to the long walks with Sasha (beautiful Husky friend and companion to the Pournelles) and the struggles to maintain mental acuity and emotional health that accompany serious health challenges. He’s thereby helped me help my elderly parents with some of their challenges, and that alone is well worth stopping by.

So drop in. Wish him well with his treatments. Learn from him and from his wide array of correspondents. It’ll be more than simply worth your time.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Nuke Gingrich, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Miss Beth’s Victory Dance, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Adeline and Hazel, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Third World County Weather Note

I’m keeping a weather eye on the creek out back (yeh, yeh, pun intended), because, with the steady rain, it’s now closer to the house than at any time in memory–now “wetlands” about 125′ from our basement door. So, if twc goes offline in the next couple of days and your trackbacks/comments aren’t being approved, just bear with me, OK?

Let’s see… burlap bags filled with absorbant kitty liter around the base of the back (basement) door? Maybe…

😉

At least the cable and power lines aren’t being rained out. So far.

Update: Well, we were more fortunate than some of the folks downstream of us, and th waters pretty much passed us by. Although the flood warnings continue for our area (indeed, our town) and the low-water bridge a quarter mile away is still under water and the flood plains (where most of the new housing in town has been built in the last decade–*sheesh!*) is swamp land, the creek that’s about 200 feet to our west that had approached as closely as 60 feet from our basement door has abated. The river–about 1.5 miles to the south–is still cresting though, and the folks who “built their houses on sand” in the flood plains there are in for more fun with shovels, wet vacs, new carpeting, etc., in the next few weeks. It’s what flood insurance is for. Makes me not mind the annual premium so much. *heh*

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Still Avoiding Current Events…

…mostly.

Here’s another diversion.

Unnecessary confession: I use Windoze. Because I have to. (I also use PCBSD and Ubuntu, but that’s for pleasure… and some work/productivity.) So far, I have managed to avoid installing Vista on any twc central computers. *whew!* (Wipes forehead gratefully. *heh*) I have seen enough Vista computers “in the wild” to become convinced that, apart from the eye candy, it’s just not worth the hassle for most folks to switch from XP to Vista, if they must use Windows. And even buying a new computer with Vista installed can be problematic; I’ve already seen enough software incompatibilities in the workplace and problems with drivers for peripherals to know it just is not for most of the folks I know, including me. And this is quite apart from the fact that Vista–even installed new on “Vista-ready” computers is generally–from what I’ve actually seen “in the wild”–*heh*–a resource hog and slower than a properly-configured XP computer.

And, despite the monthly or more bug fixes and patches, Vista’s SP-1 is not really available for general installation–not that it is a definite improvement.

Still, there are a few things about Vista that are nice. The eye candy. 😉 But… all I had to do to get the “AeroGlass” look in PCBSD was simply download a skin. And for various versions of Windows, skinning and other Vista-like functionality is available for free via various downloads(free registration required for download), some of which also offer the 3D “flipping” of cascaded apps, etc.

The screencap above is on a Win2K machine with some of the functionality of PCMag’s “VistaMagicPack” (the first link above) enabled. Not half bad, and no discernable performance hit on a middlin’ old 1.3Ghz machine with only 512MB RAM and a tiny lil 16MB vidcard. Try running Vista with all the eye candy on that machine. Not.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Nuke Gingrich, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, , The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Adeline and Hazel, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Real Estate Bust? *yawn*

I’ve been avoiding “issues blogging” for the most part for the past week. (the choice in presidential candidates winnowing down to Hildebeast-ObamaWinfrey-MexiCain can do that to a guy), but one “issue” still turns my crank a bit: the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind’s rampup of economic woes with the mortgage crisis/real estate bust as its poster child.

As a poster child for economic woes, the mortgage crisis/real estate bust has all the appeal of a broken-down whore with leprosy. Firstly, the folks hardest hit by the mortgage crisis/real estate bust are those who went into debt over their heads to buy houses they couldn’t afford. Here are my most sincere crocodile tears for such idiots:

*Boo-freakin’-hoo–yawn*

To all such folks: you reaping what you’ve sown? Good.

Next hardest hit (sorta), the mortgage lenders who shouldn’t have loaned the money to begin with. Again,

*Boo-freakin’-hoo–yawn*

My Wonder Woman asked me what I though the impact would be on our home value. My answer? Who cares? Are we thinking of selling? (Yeh, we still owe a measly couple of grand on the place. Made a 25% down on it and got reasonable rates on a 15-year mortgage–thanks to my Wonder Woman’s money management skillset.)

Rabbit trail:

OTOH, our execrably bad “neighbors” who moved in less than eighteen months ago have their place listed for sale (Yipee and Whooray!). I asked my Wonder Woman how badly I could junk up the outside of our house to drive their selling price down on ’em… *heh* Hmmm… maybe I could buy a couple of junkers from the salvage yard and have ’em dropped in our front yard, ya think? It’d be a few months before the city would ask me to remove ’em, maybe long enough to drive thr price of our “neighbors'” seller down quite a bit…

Nah. Better just to get ’em gone.

But there’s a side to the housing market/mortgage crisis/real estate bust that is getting little play in the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (and what play it does get is buried on inside pages or whatnot): “Some Cities Are Spared the Slide in Housing”–and this in the Neoo York Slimes, no less! Who’d-a thunk it?

In figures released on Thursday covering 150 metropolitan areas, the National Association of Realtors said that median home prices were falling in 77 markets — but rising in 73.

Real estate statistics must be interpreted with caution, especially when sales volumes are declining, as they are all over the country. But an analysis by The New York Times of three distinct data sets — mortgage data from the government, sales figures from the Realtors’ group and courthouse records from a company called DataQuick — produced a list of 17 metropolitan areas where all three sources of information agree that prices were still rising as of late last year, the most recent figures available.

For another 43 cities, two data sets, from the Realtors and the government, suggested that prices were still rising late in the year. DataQuick could provide no information on those cities.

Of course, since the article is in the Neoo York Slimes, the ariter spends quite some time making sure the reader doesn’t interpret these rosy facts positively. *heh* Still, facts are facts, and the housing market (and mortgage market) in my part of the country, for example, is strong to super-strong right now. Because of strong economic growth in other sectors, of course. Heck, it’s stating to get so built up in America’s Third World County that I might just have to answer my own question to my Wonder Woman (“Are we thinking of selling?”) with a “I want to live somewhere quieter. Wanna sell and move out into the piney woods?”

*heh*

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2009 Resolution-Per-Day #4

Develop a deeper appreciation for the people of our armed forces. I like to think I appreciate their service, but I doubt my appreciation is as deep or wide as it ought to be. Here, try this for a semi-musical thought-provoker (Thanks, Hugh, for sending this):

While listening to this, I was reminded of the (apocryphal, perhaps) “comment from a centurion” often referred to by Jerry Pournelle:

“We hear that there are tumults and riots in Rome, and that voices are raised concerning the army and the quality of our soldiers. Make haste to reassure us that you love and support us as we love and support you, for if we find that we have left our bones to bleach in these sands in vain, then beware the fury of the legions.”…” (Centurion in a letter home from North Africa, 3rd Century)

Now, I do not fear “the fury of the legions,” but I do fear our society becoming callous to their dedication, their service, their honor, their sacrifices*. A society that ceases to value such service is a society that does not deserve to survive.

Continue reading “2009 Resolution-Per-Day #4”

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Christmas Break

Peaceful Christmas afternoon. A nice lunch of my Wonder Woman’s Swedish meatballs on egg noodles and some snowpeas, notalot else. Lovely Daughter brought some ‘special” hot cocoa mix–no tedious boiling and frothing of milk and chocolate today: today is an official “Third World County Central No-Stress Day”–as we’ve tried more and more to make our family gatherings.

Wonder Woman, Lovely Daughter and Son & Heir (yeh, just wait til he sees what he “inherits” *heh* “S&H, You need to change your dad’s diapers again… ” *LOL*), listening to Christmas music that S&H made available, Just started another batch of beer (the wort’s at a boil and will steep and cool for a bit after a while), sitting here at the kitchen computer (a PC-BSD box) just letting the ambiance bathe my spirit.

*sigh* More days like this would always be welcome, ya know?

Oh, didn’t manage to keep the ECTV (the entertainment center box with a decent amp and speakers attached) off today. But we’re not watching the dam*ed thing (yeh, that’s a theological hypothesis). S&H hooked up his XBox 360, cos he loaded several hundred megs of Xmas* mp3s on it and is using it as a temporary media server shooting them through the sound system, managing the “jukebox” with the TV.

Nice of him. I used to just burn a couple of new mix CDs. I guess I ought to see about building a media pc and running some Linux-compatible media software/hardware with it.

Of course, I could attach a real sound system to this lil kitchen PC-BSD box and program Kaffeine with a playlist…

Well, that sort of thing will just have to wait for a day that’s not today. Need to post this, get back to just basking in the family glow for a while longer.

Merry Christmas!

Continue reading “Christmas Break”