Here’s what I’d appreciate for a birthday present:
Multiple packets, please.
🙂
Real Hope for Real Change
A quick drive by post…
Over at Moonbattery, I ran into this hopeful comment:
…if Jimmy Carter could create a big enough backlash to give us Reagan, four years of Comrade Obama should be sufficient to bring James Madison back from the grave.
By jove, I think there’s some hope there! *heh* (Heck, I’d “settle for” John Hanson)
Not Intentionally Offensive
OK, so I had some time at lunch I didn’t plan on.
[Please note the subjunctive mood.]
Thinking on the differences between a society where Sharia “law” is paramount and a free society where offensive opinions can be openly uttered and even more offensive questions asked, one wonders what would be the reception in each of those societies to someone who would ask an outrageous question such as,
If one were to desire such a thing, how would one say, “Mohamed was the offspring of a diseased dog impregnated by a drunk pig” in Arabic?
Just wondering, that’s all.
Also wondering how long it will take before Janet Napolitano’s deliberately illiterate goon squad will be by to give me a lobotomy for asking such questions…
twc Hiatus
This week, I may take most of the week off from blogging. Adding helping some young folks get a house ready to move in is going to take some extra time, and because of the rains (“May showers bring May flowers”? It’s a twist on the old “April showers” thing… :-)), I’m also way behind on yardwork. Those two lil added pleasures (OK, the helping with drywall, etc., is a real pleasure) will mean that most of this week will be a “Write your own twc posts” via linkfests. So, no snark, no politics, no compy posts, no music or YouTube videos, no railing against the coming of the night for Western Civilization. *heh*
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Whoo-Hoo! (a little joy in Mudville)
Bits n pieces:
Rainy, rainy day. Squirrels line-dancing on power lines, lots of lightning and thunder and hail and rain and nearby tornado… and the power only went down three times. Cable was out for what I believe was about six or so hours (I left after it went down and it was still down when I checked back in). But all’s well. Managed shutdowns on UPS-ed computers, so no real biggie.
Windows 7RC. What can I say? A mixed bag. Although with the ratings changes in the “Windows Experience” index this computer jumped up more than 3 points on the scale, Win7 seems much more sluggish. Notsogood. OTOH, everything works well overall, and… Windows Server Powershell is now included! (Whoo-hoo!) I had missed that before, although I assume it was probably in the earlier beta. Sure, most folks won’t use the command line much, but this is a power users’ command line. Like it. Some other good and notsogood things about this Win7 iteration, but I’ll either remark on them later or not. Who knows?
Mock stroganoff tonight. Just hamburger, onion, garlic, LOTS of freshly-ground pepper and some freshly-grated nutmeg with sour cream and the old standby shortcut, cream of mushroom soup. It’ll be fine over rice, and it’s a quick (less than 15 minutes’ prep time) and easy dinner. Some frozen mixed veggies steaming in a basket on top of the rice in the Wolfgang Puck rice cooker. Easy-peasy.
Gonna hit the sack early this p.m. Pooped puppy.
Hawaii’s Legislators Are Idiots
So, our 50th State (not 60th or whatever as The 0! would have it) has passed a bill to set aside a day in honor of Islam, because of “the rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions” that Muslims have made to the world.
Pardon me while I throw the bullshit flag.
Muslims are credited (falsely) with so-called “Arabic” numerals invented by folks in the subcontinent of India hundreds of years before The Butcher of Medina raped his first victim. When were they put into use by the Islamic world in general, instead of being merely a toy for uncreative Muslim “scholars” and superstitious astrologers to use? Not until well after the same system had percolated into the West by other means and started being used for real life applications.
Muslims are (falsely) credited with the creation of algebra. Well, in a sense. We use the Arabic word for it, but that’s all. The mathematical principles of algebra had been known for nearly a millennium before The Butcher of Medina ordered his first mass murder. And what, pray tell, did Muslims use this valuable tool for? Scientific purposes? Nope. It was used hand-in-hand with the soi dissant “Arabic” numerals in astrology–more superstition from a people who have never seen a scientific principle they could grasp.
And so it goes. Every single meaningful, positive “contribution” the Islamic world has made has been something it stole from another culture and squirreled away somewhere doing no one any good whatsoever… until Western minds put it to use.
Now, that said, there was one genuine genius Muslim in the 12th century known for his analytical skills. He wrote extensively on Muslim law, Islamic philosophy (such as it is), art and music (if you can call Muslim noises “music” then you probably think rap is music too). But Averroès one great contribution to the world, THE one upon which his fame truly and genuinely rests, was his attempt to explain the thinking of Aristotle to the Muslim world. That’s right. His one truly great contribution was a commentary on the writings of the quintessential Western Civilization “unbeliever”. But make no mistake: his analysis and commentary on one of Western Civilization’s greatest minds is still worthwhile. Nothing really creative, though. Not a “contribution” that, given Aristotle’s surviving writings, the world could not have come to on its own, but still, a nice enough little thing for an academic to publish.
And what else has Islam “contributed” to the world? In emulation–direct discipleship–of Islam’s self-proclaimed “perfect man”, and in faithful adherence to his teachings, Islam has contributed mass murder, slavery, treachery, rape, pillage, pedophilia, and more, consistently, continually, without end from Mohammed’s first order to his followers to commit mass murder to this day.
Hawaii’s state legislators are idiots.
BTW, with a little homework of your own, you can debunk all of Islam’s “great contributions”–and if you do it yourself, you’ll OWN the knowledge that Islam’s “contributions” to the world are a sham, a big zero with the rim kicked off.
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Leaning Straight Up, Allie is Wired, The World According to Carl, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Managing Email
For some time now, I’ve been using Thunderbird Portable to manage my email accounts. For me, it has several advantages over other options:
With all my email from all my accounts gathered in one place on a flash drive (and backed up–usually daily, because the flash drive WILL fail eventually–to a hard drive by simply dragging and dropping the whole Thunderbird Portable folder), I can take it with me wherever I go and still not have to mess with the cumbersome nature of even the best webmail (a tossup between GMail and Yahoo Mail, IMO–Windows Live is for very sick, thought-to-be-extinct Dodo birds *heh*). Simple, and I can still use it whether in a Windows or Linux–or even PCBSD–session (as long as WINE’s installed in the ‘nix box). Really snazzy solution.
But. What about when an older OS or computer refuses to release a flash drive and getting it disconnected causes file corruption (even shutting the computer down may not avert that problem)? That’s a good reason to not only back the mail up every day but to configure T-Bird to leave the messages on the server, not simply delete them on download. Yeh, yeh, that could mean dropping in on some accounts and manually cleaning out clogged up mail folders every now and then, but that’s a very small price to pay.
Besides, with daily backups, it’s doubtful one would lose much mail even were T-Bird not configured to leave mail on the server. One corrupted startup and… simply reinstall over the existing installation, and if mail needed to be copied over from backup, no problem.
Another One Bites the Dust
or, Another One Under the Bus–depends on ones POV, I suppose.
Nuke has the scoop. (Go watch the video.) As The 0!* continues to flail away attempting to implement the socialist-communist policies that stem from his lifelong pursuits, he inevitably comes up against the conflict: keep his campaign promises to the millions of folks who campaigned for him, marched for him, voted for him or suck up to special interests, political power brokers and adhere to his genuine agenda of advancing statism while placing ever more strictures on citizens’ liberties and genuine hope for change (for the better).
No contest. In leftard thinking and behavior, evil wins every time.
At least it’s costing him some of his support from those who were actually stupid enough to believe what his teleprompter said but not quite stupid enough to miss it when he slapped them upside the head with a dead cod.
*Note: the “0” in “The 0!” is NOT an “O”. *heh*
Compouter Fun
No, that’s not a typo. At least half (the Ubuntu half) of my primary computer is “pouting” right now. The upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 was a tad rough, so I thought I’d put off the upgrade to 9.04. After all, it was working… OK (pretty darned well in fact). But. Yeh, you guessed it. I caught the bug and initiated the upgrade process.
Fragged my Ubuntu install. AFTER the upgrade “finished” the update manager warned me (AFTERWARDS!) that some packages had not installed correctly. Oopsie. Yep, my first really, really unstable Linux box is now on that “side” of a dual boot machine.
So… fortunately, I’ve been saving my data off in a couple of ways and have easy access to it on an external drive. The programs I can always just reinstall… and tweak and reconfigure and fiddle with, etc., until they’re the way I want ’em again. Notaproblem, really. Heck, I might just bag it on Ubuntu 9.04 on this machine and install an alternate Linux designed for more media-intensive computing. We’ll see. (LinuxMCE with add-ons, perhaps?)
Meanwhile, back on the Win7 side of the box, I’ve been having fairly good luck with the original, official, Windows 7 beta, 7.00. But the release candidate’s been out for a few days now–released to the general public today, though “developers” have had their hands on it longer–and I started downloading the 3.1GB DVD image about 15 minutes ago. About three quarters done now, and that means…
Back up this side of the dual boot. No, not a full backup, just a “files and settings” transfer to nail down my documents libraries and settings. No email backup, because I’m using Thunderbird Portable so each “side” of the dual boot “sees” the same thing. Handy. Oh, the “Easy Transfer” utility will miss my Opera profile, but backing that up and reimporting it is a snap. One folder and bob’s your uncle.
Soooo… what time I have to spare over the next few days will be devoted to:
Making sure everything I want from the Ubuntu side is backed up (only about a gig or so not currently shuffled off–that’s pretty good for me. :-)). *Mostly “Check”*
Back up what I want from the Win7b side. *Check* (ET utility saving that data now and Opera profile saved already)
Print the license keys for the Win7 RC.
Burn the Win7 DVD.
Do a clean install of the Win7 RC.
Import files and settings and reinstall all my applications in Win7.
Hunt down the Linux distro I want, burn the ISO and install it.
Why both? Well, frankly, because after nine months of almost exclusive daily use of Ubuntu on this machine, I found it fit almost all my needs almost perfectly (save for my gripes about updates and upgrades and just a couple of very small issues with apps I really, really wanted working perfectly under WINE). Then, after gaining a sense that perhaps Windows 7 wasn’t going to be the grinding pain in the neck (substitute a much lower part of human anatomy for more accurate wording–*heh*) that Vista has been, I decided to test it out on this same machine.
I was pleasantly surprised. I have only a very few small issues with apps and some small pains with computer management “the Win7 way” but overall, it’s running neck and neck with Ubuntu on ease of use and–until this last “upgrade” to Ubuntu 9.04–it’s close to Ubuntu in stability, even surpassing it now that the 9.04 upgrade has fragged that “side” of the computer. So now, at the very least, I’m going to keep Win7 around in order to be on top of the curve for early adopters who may call on me for help with the OS’s few quirks. And yeh, I have a “spare” XP on hand to try out the XP mode that is available for use on the advanced Win7 SKUs and on systems that have processors that handle virtualization natively (this computer qualifies).
So, for the foreseeable future, once I get these little niggling details worked out, this box will remain a dual boot box. I’ll probably “live” on the Linux side most of the time, but Win7 is certainly good enough to win a fulltime install on a new HTPC build I hope to do soon.
Nothing Says “Sinko duh Mayo” Like “I Won’t Listen If You Don’t Speak English”
Welcome to the alternative Sinko duh Mayo celebration at third world county. As long as the government of Mexico is actively encouraging its struggling and mostly subliterate poor to disregard our border and our laws and enter this country illegally, obtain false IDs via identity theft rings, steal jobs Americans WILL do, steal services they are not entitled to and avoid border checks for infectious diseases, well, as long as the Mexican government is going to actively encourage their citizens to do such things I’ll continue to mock Mexico’s big stinkin’ deal holiday. *feh* Celebrates what? The handing of rule from one kleptocratic oligarchy off to another (largely peopled by the same kleptocrats)?
Yep. That’s what Mexico’s answer to our Fourth of July celebration is really all about, folks.
No, I’m not going to link every factual statement above to support my opinion that Mexico is a prime example of the stinky, unwashed, corrupt armpit of Latin America. Frankly, I’m hoping some latino racists drop by and submits some more subliterate, idiotic rants calling ME a racist so I can have fun mocking the “mex-boyz” (and goilz) idiotic comments.
N.B. BTW, I have no problem with any LEGAL immigrant, you know, someone who’s played by the rules, waited their place in line and entered the country legally, no matter what their ethnic background. But since I abhor the filthy cretins who are invading this country in complete and absolute disrespect for our laws, I’m sure I’ll garner a few accusations of racism, as I have in the past. At least, I hope so. I like thumping on empty heads with a verbal ax handle. *heh*
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Leaning Straight Up, Woman Honor Thyself, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.