June 2008 – third world county

June 30, 2008June 29, 2008

OOT/OOS/OOP

Post title cryptic enough for ya? 😉 I’ll be out of town, out of state and mostly out of pocket for the next few days, so play nicely while I’m gone. (Yeh, I’ll have some sort of internet connection, but likely not the time to blog.)

Meanwhile, from Issue 1 of an abortive start at issues facing the U.S. (the series will continue–later), a tip from The Beagle Scout to add to Newt Gingrich’s Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less campaign at Americansolutions.com:

Those who haven’t yet done it and who care at all about US gas and energy prices may want to sign an electronic petition urging the US House of Representatives to pass H.R. 3089, the No More Excuses Energy Act of 2007. Here is the petition.

Read The Beagle Scout’s post and consider clicking on through the links he provides.

The unborn will bless you. And you might just help yourself out a bunch, too.

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June 27, 2008

Time Warp: Bill Gates on XP in 2003

It hurts so much ya just have to grin (painfully). Bill Gates touches briefly (in a looooong email) on a few of the reasons why I have mostly avoided using Windows XP much, myself. Heck, I went through things like he details when folks called me up confused, distressed or simply royally ticked off at XP.

And then came Vista, which has managed to make XP look really, really good.

*heh*

Go, read. Bill Gates on his XP experience.

It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful.

Come to think of it, since much of the pain was Bill’s, maybe that’s not such a detraction.

😉

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie is Wired, McCain Blogs, Adam’s Blog, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

June 27, 2008June 29, 2008

While TWC Was “Sleeping”…

Well, the Supreme Court’s term this year ended with a bang, didn’t it? Some are unhappy that more well-armed criminals may face opposition from armed citizens as a result of the Supreme Court’s sudden turn toward sanity:

Washington’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, said he is disappointed. “More handguns in the District will mean more gun violence,” he said at a press conference.

Yep. More chance for goblins to meet their just reward at the hands of their erstwhile victims. Typical “keep the subjects defenseless” twaddle.

Have you seen Hulu? It’s not the only site out there doing this sort of thing, but its slick presentation of TV shows and movies it has available for streaming is pretty darned good. The pickings are moderately slim, so far, but I’ve watched a couple of episodes of TV shows I missed (for whatever reason–probably an “I don’t want to watch TV tonight” night–I have lotsa those) and found things to note for later viewing.

Speaking of TV, did the “So You Think You Can Dance” judges make the right decision on which “girl” dancer to kick off this week? My Wonder Woman and I think so. SYTYCD is one of the very, very few TV shows I have been willing to work my schedule around in many years. Discovered it about halfway through its run last year and have eagerly anticipated its return this year. It hasn’t disappointed. Good Stuff, Maynard.

Anyone want to get up in my attic for me today to run cable? It’s only going to be in the mid-80s outside (which means, perhaps, only about as hot as the suburbs of hell up in the attic) and about 2.000% humidity…

Woman gets 12-15 years for enslaving and torturing her maids. Her lawyer’s comment?

“I think it’s very harsh,” Hoffman said after the sentencing. “She has suffered dramatically.”

Yeh, well not as much as she will once she reaches her final reward in hell.

Oh, one more thing I miss in my now quotidian use of Ubuntu: the Windows “Toggle Keys” featurette. I loved having my computer *boop!* at me whenever I inadvertently hit the CAPS LOCK key. The spacings on this new keyboard (as well as the key travel, key height, etc.) have led me to hit the CAPS LOCK key more often in the last week than I have for years. Annoying. I may well resort to the old “pry off the capslock key, stuff high density foam into the cavity and replace the key” trick to make it exceedingly difficult to key in that DOS (OK, and other OS/language) abomination holdover. Yeh, later today after I put my dad’s computer back together (after a DeoxIT treatment and a “new” DVDROM drive installation–BTW, I get nothing for plugging it, but DeoxIT is Very Good Stuff. I probably need to try Stabilant 22 to make a comparison, but DeoxIT should avert some simple hardware errors for my dad for several years).

What to do with all the sandbags?

I’ll take some, thank you very much. Heck, even the “stinky” ones. I don’t care.

The underlying story here is “Dog Bites Man,” normal (government corruption) but where it takes a turn for the “man bites dog” weird is that… a government crook is actually being treated as a crook! Watch out for flying pig poop, folks, cos this is weirdness run amok. Think of it: instead of prosecuting government workers who are doing what they are supposed to for imaginary “crimes,” two government workers who accepted bribes from both legal and illegal immigrants to facilitate theri entry/habitation in the U.S. are actually facing charges!

Has Satan ordered an ice rink constructed in hell or what?

North Caroliona: WTF?!?

And from the “Driving TWC Central Crazy” department: What’s that funny clickin’ noise, anyway? *sigh* Three things have conspired to help me earn my Stupid sign, recently.

1. My turn signal doesn’t always turn off after a right-hand turn (to be fair, I sometimes manage turns–especially right hand turns–in such a way as to not engage the mechanical CLICK OFF , whatever it’s called).
2. Despite the fact that I can still hear the mosquito ringtone, between the tinitis, road noise (I often drive with a window open–just like “2-60 air conditioning”– and a strange “hole” or flat spot I’ve developed somewhere slightly north of 1Khz, I am often unable to hear the clicker.
3. Then, when the sun’s on my instrument cluster, I often cannot see the darned visual indicator, either

So, there I am, driving along with my “clicker” on. *sigh*

Somebody give me a sign, wouldya?

Well, that’s all from the voices in my head today. Why don’t y’all give me some more things to think about, eh?

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June 26, 2008

The Post Left Intentionally Blank

*heh*

I am not here; this is not me,
No matter what you think you see.
I am not here; this is not me.

Day with my Wonder Woman. Her cardio appointment, shopping, bumming around. Amuse yourselves. Pick up your own mess before you leave.

🙂

June 25, 2008

A Reason for Obamamania? Perhaps…

Reading a compilation of Howard L. Myers stories recently, I can across a comment that may explain part of the Obamamania that otherwise inexplicably dominates some portions of our society. It can’t be the whole reason, but it implies at least part of the cause(s). From “All Around the Universe” this lil gem:

I chuckled at the memory of old Uncle Buxton. When he talked, his tongue wagged his brain! By which I think I mean his brain was foolish enough to believe what his tongue said.

“…his brain was foolish enough to believe what his tongue said.” Hmmm, folks who believe three or four foolish things before their feet even hit the floor in the morning would have no problems with letting themselves believe the empty and often downright evil balderdash Obama spouts.

For that matter, perhaps Obama has sold himself his own bill of goods. Sincerity is hard to fake convincingly, but once you have that down, nearly anything is possible.

Then again, both Dhimmicrappic and Repugnican’t voters seen bent on embracing fantastic lies, idiocies and slanders of reality from their candidates, nowadays.

Is there no force willing to resist against the fall of night?

Guess not.

*sigh*

June 25, 2008

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!*).

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, , Conservative Cat, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

June 24, 2008June 24, 2008

Compy Update/Stuff

The folks over at WINEHQ are proving themselves to be champs. Dan Kegel posted a couple of replies to my post mentioning WINE directing me to submit (and what to submit) bug reports on those issues that were putting me off using it for “critical” (to me) apps. Actually, it really just comes down to one uber-critical app for me.

And the contributors there have been patient with me as my sleep-deprived, under-caffeinated brain failed to check the docs more carefully for such things as classifications of bug severity and lil notices in emails that say, DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL *LOL*. (Of course, a “Normal” bug that chops out major portions of an app’s functionaity doesn’t seem “Normal” to me, but I’m just as WINE user with ~~little~~ no experience in how “Major” bugs affect things. I’m sure I’ll learn. Or not, epending on how many brain cells are left and how much time I have left to learn… But at least one of the developers was kind enough to send me a link to the bug classification list. *DUH* The link was right next to the dropdown list for bug severity classification. Major case of The Stupids here. :-))

Continue reading “Compy Update/Stuff”

June 24, 2008

“heh” of the day

Speaking of our options in presidential candidates,

“I know the temptation: Write in Cthulhu. Why Settle for a Lesser Evil?”–Jerry Pournelle

*heh* indeed…

Of course, he does go on to point out one of the (very, very few–like, maybe two? Three?) positive things Juan Mexicain brings to the table that Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey lacks.

Put on your hazmat gear before you approach the voting booth come November and go ahead and pull the lever (or hang the chad) for the lesser evil, I suppose…

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, The World According to Carl, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

June 24, 2008

Amen Corner

For Hugh, who invoked the tune in comments yesterday:

(For reference, see yesterday’s rambling post, “DWUC” for what Hugh was “Amening”)

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June 23, 2008

“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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