Month: October 2005

Time out yesterday was a good thing.

Yesterday was time out for more than just blogging. Was lotsa time scratching my head and pondering just how to make Lovely Daughter’s car “right”.  Finally singled out a portion of the electrical system that methinks was engineered by a pack of drunken monkeys. Time designing (all in my head—I don’t generally write or draw a lot when I’m in shade tree mechanic mode) a new subsystem, scrounging around in my spare parts collection, cobbling together something MUCH better than the OEM parts I was determined to replace.

Payoff?  I just got a call from Lovely Daughter as she’s on her way to work reporting all the stuff she hadn’t known her car would do that it can now do…  She’s gone from (an entirely understandable) “I don’t want to drive this car!” to a sound of bubbly joy.

heh

Accidental genius.  I love it when a plan comes together.

Catchup day today.

Well, I’m a bit slow off the mark, but do check out…

Now that’s called having your head on straight.

h.t. TMH’s Bacon Bits

An answer to the misbehavior of some in New Orleans after Katrina had passed being excused because of their so-called poverty…

Go read Fred Reed’s answer. Then tell me what ya think, eh? Here’s a sample:

“Poor, you see, is not the same as, nor does it imply, nor justify, passive, thieving, dependent, and benighted.”

Really? Who’d a thunk it?  And BTW, it doesn’t excuse ignorance, either:

“I note in passing that anyone who wishes can learn to read, short of the genuinely retarded. Illiteracy is a choice. So is ignorance.”

I disagree with Fred pretty frequently (not that he cares, of course ;-), but, IMO, this column is so bang on accurate it ought to be carved on bats and (oh so kindly) beat into the heads of congresscritters and Mass Media Podpeople. For a start.

Forget posting. Today’s nothing but white space.  Well, except for this.

sigh

I have no new insights, no new “angle” on Jean Fraud sKerry’s damnable character. Just a comment.

I hate people who are liars by nature. Let me be clear: I hate their lies, but a small character quirk of mine singles habitual liars out as contemptible, thoroughly hate-worthy individuals. And slanderers like Kerry (it’s a provable charge) are the most contemptible liars of all.

So his continuing lies—going on two years now, since the inception of the last election campaign cycle—about releasing his military records is just a piece of the whole cloth of the man.

If he were in my presence, I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good gob of spit on him.  I wouldn’t even sic The Boys on him (good doggies! Wouldn’t want them to eat tainted long pig). If he were on fire, I wouldn’t even roast weenies on the flame (toxic fumes, ya know).

Beneath contempt? Ah, that slanders contempt. 

Oh, and have I said that I don’t think he’s worthy of the breath he steals?

By now, given his lies, lies and more lies about just releasing his records (let alone all the other provable lies he has built his life on for more than 30 years) have led me to equate him with the description of human evil put forth by M. Scott Peck in “People of the Lie”

My only quibble with Peck’s description (which I believe fits Jean Fraud sKerry’s personality all too closely) is that Peck holds out hope for such people. I do not.

Jean Fraud sKerry, won’t you please go home (ya know,to Dante’s ninth circle of hell, reserved for the treasonous and for slanderers and their ilk)?

This is soooo hard… Where did I see this first? The Songstress (News from the Great Beyond) or Bou (Boudicca’s Voice)?

I dunno, but here goes:

You are HOBBES! My personal favorite. You like to
eat, sleep, and live a good life. Me too.

Which CALVIN & HOBBES character YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hmmm… I’d have thought Calvin, but that’s me.

Well, apparently Bush has picked O’Connor’s replacement on the SCOTUS.

Some are underwhelmed, disappointed, even angry. (And sadly, some are proving that not ALL the moonbats are on the Left. *sigh*) Stop the ACLU has a good roundup.

I’m at the point where I almost don’t care any more who is appointed to the Supreme Communists of the United States. Until Congress and the President (whoever is in those branches) grow the stones to say to the present day SCOTUS as Andrew Jackson reportedly said of the Worchester v. Georgia decision in 1832 (“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it”) we’ll continue to have a SCOTUS (and other courts) sticking their noses in where they don’t belong.

Of course, if President Bush had proposed the “flaming conservative” (*G*) polemicist Ann Coulter (“Off with their heads!” 🙂 for the position , I might be singing another tune. heh Ann Coulter. Supreme Court. At least it’d be fun! 🙂

UPDATE: Oh, boo-freakin’-hoo. Redstate is foaming at the mouth because back in 1987 and 1988 Miers apparentlygave a grand total (for the two years) of $3,000 to two Democratic candidates and one Dem-related PAC. 1987 and 1988. Gee. Can Stalinist style purges be far off? Grow up guys. That was in 19-freakin’-87 and ’88! *sheesh* What babies. Who cares? Other foaming-at-the-mouth rabid horses’ patooties? Bush could get a ham sandwich appointed to the court and it’d not change a thing. It’s self-castrated blowhard poltroon congresscritters and eunuchs posing as presidents that give the SCOTUS (and the other courts) their excessive power. OK, maybe I exaggerated a tad. It’s self-castrated so-called “conservative” congresscritters and presidents. The so-called (but entirely phony) “liberals” encorage the practice of judicial legislation cos it takes the onus of actually enacting their agenda democratically off the Democrats’ backs. /Irony.

Rabbit trail: Fav political oxymorons. Democratic Democrat. Conservative Republican. (Heck, republican Republican!) *sigh*

Kit Jarrell of Euphoric Reality is doing yeoman’s work with the Guard the Borders Blogburst.

Here’s a portion of Kit’s post for tomorrow’s today’s blogburst. Be sure to read the whole thing at Euphoric reality. Oh, and I have a bit to add below the fold…
Read more…

Kit speaks:

John Longenecker wrote an article last June about the Texas Minutemen. He hits the nail on the head in so many areas – not just the fact that “illegal immigration is bad”, but the reasons why liberals don’t understand our need to protect the borders.

Where liberals fail is, in part, in their refusal to see the consequences of their own acts of interference, but will hold others accountable for something as small as announcing their resisting. The Liberal mind-set cannot allow them to see how they are the cause of the problem they complain about, and their immaturity won’t permit them to see how righteous the resistance to their interference is.

He likens the liberals to children, and I agree.

The double standard of the liberals is that conservatives are held to answer because liberals think of non-liberals as adults, while liberals are not held to answer because they perceive themselves as kids. What they fail to comprehend in their teenager mentalities is that the response they object to (such as the Minutemen) is a perfectly healthy and normal adult answer to their unending intrusion, provocation and the injustice of their interference when people have had enough.

Exactly.

Also, after reading Kit’s post and cruising the blogroll (below), check out

Minuteman Civil Defense Corps

Minuteman Alert – Minuteman Watch Border 24×7!

“This country has lost control of its borders. And no country can sustain that kind of position.” – President Ronald Reagan

Record numbers of Minutemen from all over the country have reported on the southern U.S. border with Mexico and the northern U.S. border with Canada to once again gather to Secure Our Border and do the job our Government won’t do and Watch the Border 24×7 for 31 days!

They’re doing a great work, as well.

This has been part of the Guard the Borders blogburst. GTB hits Euphoric Reality every Monday, and seeks to promote awareness about the illegal immigration epidemic that our country is facing and the desperate need to curb the problem before it’s too late. If you’d like to join the blogburst, send an email to kit.jarrell@gmail.com with your blog’s name and URL.

Blogs already on board:

You may notice that I’m trying out yet another hack to enhance blogger: extended entries. Yeh, I’ve had folks comment on the length of some of my posts (very kindly in private email) and how shorter posts would enhance readership growth. And yeh, I have thought for months that I’d “get around to it”… but. I’m kinda pleased with the readers I have, you know, the kind who are willing to wade through my long, rambling sentences in long, rambling posts…

Readers with short attention spans.  Who needs em?

Heh

OTOH…
Read more…

There is something to be said for giving folks an easy option: read on or scroll on down the page to a (more interesting to them?) post. This blog is pretty much “organized” like my mind works—chaotically bouncing from one topic of (momentary, sporadic, periodic, passing) interest to another (ditto parenthesis).

In the past few months, a couple of gracious readers (you know who you are) have generously offered to rescue me from bloggers “posters purgatory” (also known as hackers heaven 🙂 with gift accounts with Typepad or WordPress blogs. Thoughtful, generous, really cool folks.

But. If you’ve been around a while, you have probably noticed that though I have griped about Blogger limitations, quirks and weird behaviors, I also enjoy the challenge of putting decent (some more decent than others—heh), readable content in a hopefully more and more user-friendly manner while using such a limited resource.

I guess being raised with this outlook has something to do with it:

Of course, the way granddaddy taught me the adage (by word and deed) was, “Use it up; wear it out, make do; do without.”

I’ve still not “used up” all the blogger resources I have available, so I’m way down on the road from seeing the end of that lil adage. Still, I am very grateful for the blessing of generous friends who have offered to rescue me from “posters purgatory” and I remain constantly conscious of their graciousness.  Thanks, folks.

Oh, and thanks also to Ogre for the blogger tip I used for this lil hack.  That’s me: playing script kiddie via Ogre’s generosity.

(Well, yes, I guess I am… ) Surely no one who reads this blog would have this kind of problem…

*sigh* Easy money. It was a small gig but satisfying on a coupla levels.

Let me describe it for you. A naïve user called me. “I think I have a virus or something. Can you help me?” Sure. Why not. Not gonna pay much, but they really were desperate. They’d already had someone “work” on it. Twice. (Second time, they said they didn’t pay ‘em. And I can sympathize. Even agree.) Picked up the comp and the “Oh, here’s all the software that came with it” box of disks (more on that in a sec).

So, what was the problem?
Read more…

Let’s see, un-updated WinXP Home. The comp really was slow. Their user profile was corrupted beyond repair (“beyond repair”—worst I’ve seen, absent a complete Windows crash). 85 trojans or pieces of trojans scattered in various places. 536 pieces of spyware (PLUS a fake anti-spyware program that was itself spyware and was encouraging more infestation).  More than 200 Registry errors that I could find, most concerning malware Norton had ineffectively dealt with.

And it only had 128MB of memory (that’ll make a WinXP computer crawl all by itself!) and had apparently never been defragged.

heh

Oh, and did I mention SP2 had not been installed and it was short 45 other security patches/updates?

Slapped some decent anti-malware software on, let them run sequentially, made manual repairs to various parts of the OS installation, installed all applicable OS updates, etc.

Oh, and I kept the CDR with the pirated copy of MS Office XP. The Setup file was infected with one of the pieces of malware I cleaned off the hard drive…

*sheesh*

Logged all work and returned the thing.

It’ll be a mess again in no time, I’m sure.

At least it was an amusing hour or two.