Month: November 2008

Posted on

*pfui* VMWare Needs a Swift Kick Upside the Head

I really appreciate being able to use VMWare Server 2.0 for free. Really. My “office” (scare quotes because–confession time–here at twc central my office is known as my junk room *heh*) is crowded enough as it is without four more computers and either more monitors or a cumbersome KVM switch, etc. Being able to run several (fully licensed) versions of Windows, BSD and even a couple more Linux distros all inside one machine without multi-booting is more than just handy; it’s a sanity saver.

But. Every time there’s a Firefox update (yeh, I use Firefox for it, because 1.it now uses a web interface plugin for console management and 2.the #$*&%# plugin refuses to work with Opera, even though ALL OTHER MOZILLA PLUGINS DO just fine and dandy) the web management console stops workng and the ONLY way I’ve found to get the thing to load again is to… completely recompile, reinstall and reconfigure VMWare Server. NONE of the other so-called fixes (hacks, kludges) that’ve been around since the VMWare Server FUBAR at Firefox 3.0.1 have worked. ONLY a complete recompile, reinstall and reconfigure works.

Dumb, VMWare, really dumb. It’s the same plugin–no change there. And another thing: EVERY time I have to completely recompile, reinstall and reconfigure the thing, the scripting informs me I have a wrong version of this that or the other OS component, always asking for a down version and warning the reconfiguration will crash. It never does and VMWare Server always comes back up after the reconfiguration, finally working again after getting the willies over a X.X.1 point change in a FIrefox version.

*feh*

VMWare is squandering major kudo points for its better-than-most-others’ VM implementation with this kind of mickey mouse issue, caused by its insistence on depending on a browser plugin it apparently cannot bother to maintain properly.

Still, for 64-bit VMs across a wide spectrum of OSes, once the thing actually LOADS, it’s just fine. Minor issues getting VMWare Tools (for VMs sharing USB, sound, etc., with the host machine) working in some OSes, but no real problems and LOADS of pluses… once the assinine console plugin actually loads.

THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Posted on

Christmas Alliance 2008

This year, the Christmas Alliance will be hosted/managed by Kat, of Cathouse Chat. See the linked post for details.

Today’s welcome to the season of Christmas 2008 is the advent hymn, “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”–lyrics by Charles Wesley, tune by Rowland Prichard. The mp3 is a brief excerpt of the sadly OOP rendition of “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” by John Darnell. (You can probably find a used copy of Winterlude — Instrumentals for a Contemplative Christmas available at Amazon.com, though.)

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

Posted on

You Think You’re Grateful?

Along about this time of year, I usually cite the story of Martin Rinkart, the town of Eilenburg, Saxony and the Thirty Years’ War, using Rinkart’s hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God” as the punch line.

It’s still a good story and a good illustration of how shallow our own gratitude for our many blessings is, but I’ll just let you read the linked post and then refer you to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, in the New Testament:

1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.

3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him…. Hebrews 11:1-6

It does make a difference Who you are grateful to, and why.

Continue reading “You Think You’re Grateful?”

Posted on

Give Thanks

Yesterday was my first Thanksgiving post of the week. Just in case that slipped by you, I have a multitude of reasons to be thankful on November 24 every year, all tied up in the simple law of nature that states,

The uglier the man, the better the woman he ends up with.

Also stated as, “Beautiful women (also known as “gracious, kind, generous, thoughtful, etc., women”) are blind to ugly in their men.”

*heh*

So, yesterday was my first Thanksgiving post. Today I want to ask, Who are you thankful to? We all have blessings out our kiesters to be thankful for. Our society is overflowing with an abundance of good things, good circumstances, and even–despite their almost complete absence from the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, Congress, etc.–a large number of “good” people. (Yeh, ask me about the scare quotes on that one.)

So, I ask you, to whom are you grateful for the many blessings in your life?

The humanist is grateful to himself. The new age mystic or wannabe is grateful to “the universe” or some other such concept. And so on. Some folks are grateful to god. Oh, you noticed the uncial “g”? That’s because some folks (including some who call themselves Christians and go to churches that call themselves Christian) are grateful to a god who is indistinguishable from themselves or from the nebulous concepts of some universal force of various different new (old) age pagans or the gods of Druidic or Norse or Greco-Roman religion for that matter.

So I ask again, to whom are you grateful for the blessings in your life? If you are not certain whence your blessings come, you have no real reason to give thanks, nor do you have anyone to express those meaningless thanks to, now do you?

I’ll expand at length later this week on the topic simply exposited below, but for now, let me offer Don Moen’s simple exhortation:

Give thanks with a grateful heart,
Give thanks to the Holy One,
Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son.

And now let the weak say, ‘I am strong’
Let the poor say, ‘I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us’
Give thanks

THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Posted on

The Thirty Years’ War

No, not that one, though it may be featured in a post later this week. Thirty years, five months and ~3 weeks ago, my Wonder Woman had called me up from Twilight Zone, Colorado (she swears to this day that the town had never been there in any of her drives over that route and wasn’t there on her return trip) to say she’d been thinking over my “suggestion” and decided to marry me anyway. *heh* Then, thirty years ago today, I promised my Wonder Woman that I would be faithful in our shared struggle to build our lives together (hence, the “Thirty Years’ War”), and she simply gave herself to me.

(Twenty years and four months, to the day, after she had made her “miracle call” she participated in another miracle: dying three times in one day and nevertheless surviving. THAT was an interesting time… the ten years since that day have all been bonus years.)

We’ve had a good “Thirty Years’ War” life together, on balance–I’d say “gooder” for me than for her, but she slaps my hand when I start going there. 😉

So, today is our wedding anniversary. Flooded with memories of the day and memories of the intervening years. I’ll be busy today and not around twc, so play nicely, OK?

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Pink Flamingo – WordPress, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, DragonLady’s World, Rosemary’s News and Ideas, The Pink Flamingo, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted on

The Road Ahead, 1.4

As we face uncertain economic times, one thing to keep hammering on is being careful what we spend and how we spend it…

Over at Lucy’s Frugal Living, I ran into the meme-of-the-week:

I think people are just afraid to buy things right now, with all of the uncertainties…

Well, good! People (we all) buy too much stuff. Stuff is the bane of our society’s existence. We buy too much, hoard too much and throw away too much. Almost all of the “too much” is of the wrong stuff. Junk food and flashy toys that break and faddish clothes, etc., instead of staples and healthful food and really durable goods that we need and clothes that will last us for years.

And we–as a society, not all as individuals–have been buying this crap for years on credit! Maybe a few credit junkies buying crap with other peoples’ money will be scared straight by a crash. Maybe. One can hope.

Maybe congresscritters will grow some brains and rent some intestinal fortitude and allow big car makers who’ve made stupid financial decisions for years reap the whirlwind they’ve sown. Maybe. One can hope.

And maybe a few grups will actually GROW UP and act like adults for a change, putting away their irresponsible, childish pursuits of childish pleasures long enough to actually BE adults, begin eschewing spendthriftism for frugality and actually contribute to society. Maybe (but I doubt it).

*feh* Enough of this. Two or three tightwad, money-saving tips for the “scared straight” among credit abusers and junk hoarders:

Continue reading “The Road Ahead, 1.4”

Posted on

Lost Post…

I sat down here a couple of hours ago to do an extemp post on something that flashed through my head. Got a phone call. Off the reservation for a couple of hours and… I have NO idea what it was I was going to post.

It was probably going to be my best post ever. *heh*

Upcoming in the Road Ahead series: “Truth, Justice and The American Way” briefly discussed. Paring it down in bits n pieces of time.

Stealing 15-30 minutes here and there (w/o adversely affecting my schedule), adding up to about 2 hours’ time, I was able to save at least $100 today by doing five lil jobs on my lil econocar instead of having my mechanic do ’em. Of course, I still have to take it off stands tomorrow a.m. (Because I ran out of short bits I could rob from my day before it got too chill for my old bones and my light went. Yeh, I have artificial lighting available, but no I do NOT want to do it in the cold and with artificial lighting. 5 mins in the a.m. should do it.) The $100 savings is a conservative estimate. Glad to pay my mechanic for jobs I don’t have the tools for or can’t steal the time for (or can’t figure out or don’t have good enough wiring diagrams to deal with or… :-)), but why do it if I don’t have to?

Micro-mini-update: took ~15 minutes because…

1. Coffee-deprived brain didn’t reinstall serpentine belt. Almost seven minutes, mainly because I tried to use the wrong 14mm wrench on the tensioner pulley. Picked up the right one and it was a 30-second job. Oh. Well. Putting away ramp(s), jackstands, spacer 2″X8″X3′ board (used to make floor jack easier to use on the rough concrete of the driveway) and sundry tools n accessories (including two perfectly-shaped rocks i regularly use as chocks) < 5 mins. Wheel stuff < 5 mins. Still worth my time and effort, mainly because I KNOW I used the best parts available and paid detailed attention to doing the best possible job. Then there's the inestimable benefit of satisfaction from having done it myself. Always a plus (unless it’s something like balancing four Stromberg-Carlson carbs on a 12-cylinder engine–whatawasteoftime. How often does one need a skill set like that?).

Early sample of the “apple wine” is not bad at all. Nothing to write home about, but then I added two cans of concentrate to the secondary fermenter before I racked the brew into it, so I expect a lil more robust apple flavor in the finished product.

Even as the best revenge is living well, so I believe the best way to deal with the commies now coming into power in D.C. is to rise above their interference in our daily lives. They may steal my wallet, but they’ll have a hard(er) time stealing my ability to barter, build needed items from castoff junk or grow my own food. Just sayin’.

Thanksgiving is approaching. Of course, MY “Thanksgiving” celebration begins in June (6-4), is accented (BIG time) in October (10-4) and celebrated every year on 11-24, regardless what day the national holiday is celebrated. I’ll clarify that a bit more as The Day approaches.

Had an “extra” 12-oz or so (actually a lil more) of the molasses beer to bottle condition the other day, so bottled it in a 12oz bottle (of course). It’s not really had time to condition properly, but chilled it anyway and had a taste. Pretty good stuff. The rest should be ready to start refrigerating in a few days.

Hmmm, my comp isn’t recognizing the memory stick from my camera. Guess I need to see to that. *sigh* My Winder Woman has the one USB cable that works with our cameras (the one that’s left–*heh*) at work, so it’d be nice to transfer straight from the camera’s stick. Ahhh *thumps head* insert properly, deadhead… Works just fine. Hey, Perri, here’re the “kitty litter” fermenters:

Just basic fermenting buckets with different approaches to airlocks.

Time to take an early break for the company of the rack monster, I think.

Posted on

Racking Out

Last year, I made a “keg” of about the same size as my “Mr Beer” nano-micro-mini-keg using:

1 plastic “kitty litter” bucket. (three cats; you do the math on how many of these things I have laying around…)
1 plastic water spigot–the kind you would avoid putting in outside for your water hoses/sprinklers, whatever (because it’s cheezy and easily broken) but which is better, IMO, than brass for a cheapo brew setup.
1-male/female threaded coupler to fit the spigot–and a rubber “hose washer”
1-male/female threaded 1/2″ PVC coupler
1-male threaded/female Unthreaded 1/2″ PVC pipe coupler
2-1.5″ sections of 1/2″ PVC pipe
1-1/2″ PVC “trap”

(The last four pieces are used in constructing the airlock for the keg/bucket fermenter.)

I cleaned the kitty litter bucket very, very well with dish soap and water, then rinsed it and filled it with clean water with 1/2 cup chlorine bleach (yes, I soaked the lid in the bleach water for a few minutes before putting it on the bucket). I let that soak over night.

Traced the size of the water spigot end and the male/female threaded couplers in their respective places—the spigot about 1″ above the bottom edge of the bucket and the male end of the coupler (to the airlock) traced in the center of the snap-on lid to the
bucket.

Placed all the plumbing parts in the bleach water to soak.

When the bucket and parts had soaked overnight, I discarded most of the bleach water (reserving about a gallon for cleanup after finishing construction), rinsed them and laid everything out on clean paper towels.

Next, using a razor knife, I cut the holed on the inside of the traced lines and threaded the male threaded/female UNthreaded 1/2″ PVC pipe coupler coupler for the airlock into the hole on the lid and secured it with the male/female threaded 1/2″ PVC coupler on the inside of the lid.

Then, I threaded the hose washer onto the water spigot and the water spigot into the hole 1″ above the bottom of the bucket. I then secured that with the pipe coupler that fit its threaded piece.

Next, I rinsed the rest of the plumbing pieces yet again in bleach water, then clean water and assembled the airlock as per the graphic.

I then filled the bucket with the remaining bleach water, topped it off, shook the water around and then drained all that would drain through the spigot, dumping the rest from the top. Followed that with a thorough rinsing with plain water. Placed the top back on.

Well, this year I made another, but spent all of about $5 on a plastic spigot and a 3-piece manufactured airlock. Tonight, I racked some “apple wine” (yeh, I know there’s no such thing, but I used wine yeast to ferment some apple juice for hard cider, so that’s what I’m calling it. So there. :-)) from its primary fermenter into the new “kitty litter fermenter”. Slick as goose grease. I only transferred about three gallons (it was a 3.5+a tad gallon mix) and bottled the other half gallon or so in Grolsch swingtops with a lil bit of priming sugar to hopefully induce some carbonation. I’ll check one of the bottles in about a week or so to see if it’s OK.

Fun stuff. On the schedule: brew another batch of beer tomorrow as a reward IF I squeeze in the water pump installation for the lil Saturn econocar and maybe bottle the molasses beer this weekend (I’ll sample it and get it bottled if it’s ready).

Meanwhile, I have some racking out of another kind to do.

Posted on

I’d say that’s a problem…

Here it is, 9:00 on a Wednesday morning. I’m looking at a full plate of “work” to do (why the scare quotes? Because it’s all “work” I can approach as play… when I finally get off my fat… fundament and do it), and yet here I sit with four browsers open in three machines (one “real” and a couple of VMs hosted in it), with something over 100 tabs open among the four browsers…

Now, that’s a problem. I’m not doing real multi-tasking but semi-background serial semi-multitasking in a major ADHD/schizo fashion. Sure, things from nearly all the tabs are perking in the background while the foreground is being dealt with (as I write this, things from John Ringo’s rants page and thoughts from Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Musings are mixing it up with Thomas Sowell and John Agresto over at NRO, while some XBox geek is whispering in my third ear about XBox modding and my gripping hand is grappling with the weird pre-emptive sound problem that’s cropped up in Linux again and my first and other hands are juggling a Mercedes Lackey book and a Dean Koontz book and an Ann Coulter book–offline/online, mix n match).

I think I need to take a break from the computer. Except part of the “work” I need to do is right here sitting on my fat fundamental.

I blame it all on the fact that this is the most comfortable chair in the house. Riiiiiight. *heh* (Well, maybe some of it is due to the fact that I seem to have developed the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. NEED MORE COFFEE!!!)

Maybe it’s time once again to look to Wordsworth (open another tab… ;-))

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Political Byline, Faultline USA, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Rosemary’s News and Ideas, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted on

The Road Ahead, 2.2: Live and Learn…

I used to say (probably stolen from Lazarus Long *heh*) that you live and learn, or you don’t live long, but in today’s rubber-bumber society, that no longer applies. It’s be more accurate to say “You live and learn, or you don’t really live at all.” Or perhaps,

“‘A learning experience.’ The traditional three-word preamble to a burial.”

*heh*

I had occasion to sit down the other day with my parents–both in their mid-80s. They live a few hours away, so I don’t have a sit down with them all that often, though we do chat once or twice a week on the phone. One thing that struck me during our chat was that each of my now elderly parents are still learning… and using what they learn in productive ways.

Over the course of our conversation, it turned as it often does with them to the time when they were the most active in my life as parents. After all, that period does contain the most mutually shared memories. And yes, school came up, and, as usual, my status as the family changeling entered the conversation. *heh*

Now, unlike most Mass Media Podpeople, politicians *spit* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, all my siblings easily have more intellectual capability than a head of cabbage. In fact, no dummies need apply at our family reunons. Still, I’m the odd one out among my sibs. For one thing, I’m almost certainly the only one that’d go back to school at the drop of a hat, were time and money pressures a tad different. Oh, not for a degree. Have enough of those. For the pleasure of sitting in a class taught by someone who knows more than I do and likes to share that knowlege with people who want in on it.

Oh, and I like taking tests. Just a wee tad competitive. No, not with fellow students, my competitiveness usually manifested itself in striving to outdo my teachers in some way. If it showed up to party at all. *heh*

Still, my sibs and I caught the learning bug from our folks, to one degree or another, and so learning new things is just what we do, even if not in formal school settings. Not all the same kinds of things, of course, but curiosity and imagination have made us into lifelong learners.

Some people aren’t like that, though. Some folks have to have new information crammed down their throats, packed into their heads like sand into a rat hole, poured into their stopped up ears and then hammered. And still they refuse to think about what they’ve (not) “learned”.

I think that’s a large part of the political and societal mess we’re now in: a large population of sheeple who have a hard shell of stupidity wrapped closely around a cotton candy fluff of contrafactual “truths” they’ve been drip-fed, NG-tube-fed, by the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind after long and careful enstupiation (with the sheeple’s mostly willing cooperation, of course) by Academia Nut Fruitcakes’ and remote educrats’ Prisons for Kids, enstupiated parents (yes, it’s a generational thing, now), “edumacators” and real teachers who’re trapped in the machinery of “public schools” and dumbed down colleges, forced at every turn to surrender teaching to “edumacating” (lobotomizing) young minds.

What to do, what to do?

1. Don’t attack directly. Chip away at the hard shell stupidity covering the cotton candy ignorance with humor, ridicule. When the enemies of The People are shown to be fools, the sheeple may be open to being fed real food. Dennis Miller’s biting sarcasm comes to mind. Oh, you’ll not be able to reach a True Believer in Leftardism with Miller’s material, but those who are just among the common enstupiated sheeple might find a bit of the hardshell stuidity eroded by his ridicule of Leftardism.

2. Once you find any crack in the hardshell of stupidity, start pouring facts through the cracks. Facts are stubborn things. Amazingly, once facts can be brought into juxtaposition with the “reality-based fantasies” of Leftardism’s many lies, the lies begin to unravel. The difficulty is in finding the cracks in the hardshell of stupdity into which one can pour a bit of the antidote.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Unceasingly.

THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis