Here’s one:
Eaten by Locusts
Monday, Monday… Today is eaten by locusts… or maybe it’s voracious dust bunnies that’ve gathered on my “to-do” schedule. So, hit me with your best posts, so I can have a reading list ready made, OK?
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WordPress 2.5
Just upgraded to the “latest and greatest” WP, version 2.5/ Many things to like about it. Some things, not so. A couple of my fav plugins just will not even show up on the plugin page. They’re simply not recognized by WP 2.5. *sigh* That means digging around and finding new plugins to do the same thing, if such are available, cos I dimply don’t have the time to dig into learning to write WP plugins.
Oh. Well.
The new management “Dashboard” is nice, clean, easily navigable, which is a darned good thing, cos darned near EVERYTHING is moved around. *heh*
Oh, well, I’ll either live with it and learn how to deal with the changes or not.
😉
Some good things, though, to be sure. I like the media browser. The composition page is much, much cleaner. Had to give it quasi 3D buttons, but I can live with the eye candy, I suppose.
Words to Avoid Using
Following on my mini-rant against the sub-literate use of the word “liberal” (Liberals? Not) to refer to reactionary pseudo-communist/socialist tyrannical statist control freaks, here is a short list of terms that should be avoided, or used only with great care, by any rational person:
conservative–when used by or to refer to any reactionary pseudo-communist/socialist tyrannical statist control freak who does not actively practice the ethos of “the government that governs least, governs best” by seeking to reduce the scope and power of government, reduce the enormous burdens of taxation upon citizens, guard our borders, our rights (including our property rights), etc. IOW, about 99% of the current crop of lying, self-styled “conservative” politicians–aren’t. Don’t call such folks “conservatives”; call ’em liars.
gay–when used to refer to angry, neurotic, deeply troubled homosexual self-styled “victims”. Use the word to refer to happy, carefree people, instead.
black–when used to refer to a person (unless you are talking about a black-hearted villain of some sort). I have yet to meet ANY so-called “black” person who is black, even guys from Nigeria I knew in college.
Afro-American–another B.S. term. Also, ban any other hyphenated-American term. What? Am I a hyphenated-American because a couple of hundred years ago my ancestors came from elsewhere? By that measure, Eskimos, Cree, Sioux and all the other so-called “native Americans” ought to be called “Asian-Americans” cos that’s where they came from. We’re either Americans or something else entirely.
Update: I thought it good to include the following from a comment made by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915:
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans… There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
green–used to refer to eco-prop (ecological propagandist), an eco-propagandist or a supposedly “eco-friendly” technology. It’s become either a nearly meaningless shiboleth for leftist goons to use to ostracize people who simply want to live civilized existences or else a stupid-happy brainwashing tool. Use “green” to refer to the color, OK?
global warming–the proper term is “anthropogenic global warming hogwash”. Get it right, folks.
climate change–when used as an escape for AGW loonies, liars, fellow travelers and useful idiots who are confronted with inescapable proof that their AGW hypothesis is hogwash. When used in the context of, “Climate change? Sure, that’s the nature of climate; it changes all the time, whether we do anything about it or not,” it’s a perfectly good term. Just be careful how you use it, or you may be (justly) lumped in with the AGW loonies, liars, fellow travelers and useful idiots who use it improperly.
There, that’s a short list. Add to it in comments.
Trackposted to Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, , Rant It Up, The Yankee Sailor, and D equals S, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Heeeeere’s your sign…
Here’s a site that’s apparently been around since 2002 that I just discovered has some “tickets” for you to download, print out and leave on that car parked by a certifiable jackass the next time (like, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… ) you see one, perhaps like this:
The site has a gallery of nearly 150 such signs of barbarian invasion…
Liberals? Not.
I do heartily wish that those who know better would stop referring to reactionary pseudo-communist/socialist tyrannical statist control freaks as “liberals” when they are indeed the antithesis of liberal thought.
A real liberal would back to the hilt every single Constitutional right The People posess, including the right toi keep and bear arms (against a tyrannical government, among other dangers), the right of free association, and the rights not ennumerated, as mentioned in the 10th Amendment.
A real liberal would seek at every turn to curb government intrusion into individuals’ lives.
A real liberal would seek to lessen the burden of taxation upon The People.
A real liberal would, in short, be the exact opposite of those lying bastards of Satan on the left who falsely claim to adhere to liberal principles.
And I’d like to see such reactionary pseudo-communist/socialist tyrannical statist control freaks stoned for false witness when they refer to themselves as “progressives” too.
(Yeh, yeh, I know: they’re probably already “stoned” eh?)
A grassroots movement to simply call these folks “liars” might be best. Liberals they ain’t.
OTOH, soi disant “conservatives” who are indistinguishable from the reactionary pseudo-communist/socialist tyrannical statist control freaks on the Left, save for a few cosmetic false declarations, are hardly any better.
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Yo Grandmama, Obama
After Obama’s racist speech last week, apart from one post (and a few comments elsewhere) I’ve been mostly speechless. Of all the politicians *spit* out there, surely Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey now lays legitimate claim to Clown Prince of Audacity.
Today, in partial response to Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey’s disgusting and disingenuous performance (throwing grandma under the buss, for example*), I’ve taken up Nuke Gingrich’s invitation to make my own BHO-W poster, after the disgusting Marxist P.o.S., urm crap (with apologies to turds everywhere) posted here. Actually, most of my slogans were too long for the linked page to process, so I just used a graphics program and inserte my own text.
In “honor” of Obama’s racist speech,
and
NOTE: In his book, The Audacity of Hope (I’ve been informed by a reliable source that the incident was “reported” in the pseudo-bio, “Dreams From My Father,” instead), Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey has been widely reported to have related the “grandma incident” as a one-time thing, when indeed she appeared to have had a legitimate reason for fearing a specific black man. In his speech, he transformed a previously-reported (by himself) one-time event into a generic “fear black men” whitey reaction. Liar, liar. Which was it, Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey? No matter which you choose now, you have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that your word is lies upon lies. And not very credible, crafty or deniable lies, as a smart well-seasoned politician would utter.
Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, InvestorBlogger, Leaning Straight Up, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, , Stageleft, Adeline and Hazel, and D equals S, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
“…ready to dump our schools…”
…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
And about time! Cringely’s of my generation (well a little younger) and makes his point well about the chasm between technology use by different generations. While I may sometimes chuckle and wrying shake my head when my octogenarian father describes his (do note: successful) struggles to master his computer and make it a useful part of his lifestyle, my children, I’m sure, chuckle to themselves and wryly shake their heads at my abandonment of my cell phone and lack of any desire whatsoever to “text”.
But Cringely goes beyond the obvious divide in different generations’ integration of new technologies as genuinely useful parts of their lives and notes a specific impact of the effect on education.
These are kids who have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. But far more important, there is emerging a class of students whose PARENTS have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. The Big Kahuna in educational discipline isn’t the school, it is the parent. Ward Cleaver rules. But what if Ward puts down his pipe and starts texting? Well he has.
Speaking about the shift from knowing stuff to Googling stuff–yeh, who hasn’t “put down” that eBook to do a quick search on “Albegensian” or whatever? *heh* I picked that because I already knew a bunch about that word’s historical implications from “old guy” stuff rattling around in my head… and still did a search on the term some months ago. Google is sometimes better than memory, you know–Cringely notes:
This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained – a view that doesn’t work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we’re getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.
Read the whole thing for a twist you might not see coming… 😉
h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Mail. Drop by. Read. And wish Dr. Pournelle well.
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Cruci-fix
A springtime day; a windy hill:
A man had come to die.
Torture done, the crowd grew still:
He breathed out one last sigh.
Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!
Then all the shadowed sway of earth
Groaned aloud in pain–
That God, who came in humble birth,
Had died for mankind’s gain.
Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!
But as the heav’ns in darkness raged
And oceans foamed and roared,
Christ, the Son, would not be caged,
So, from death’s prison soared.
Prince of Life; Creator-Son:
Victorious, the battle’s won.
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.