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11/11/11

Once known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, we now call it Veteran’s Day. While I usually cite “In Flanders Field” on this day, today I’m eschewing that traditional notice to make note of the current scene and the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “remembrance” of those who died recently at Ft. Hood as a contrast to the kinds of remembrances that have gone before. It seems none dare call it terrorism; none dare note the clear and unequivocal connection to clear and unequivocal teachings of Islam; and none dare call it treason.

In time of war, a man who redefined his identity (he called himself Palestinian, though he was born in Virginia), prayed with a jihadist cleric, complained and preached to acquaintances, and may have contacted terrorists, shoots several dozen people, most of them servicemen and -women, and our commentariat wonders what is going on.

No, the politically correct, multi-culti response from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind is to call what happened a ‘tragedy” and to downplay or completely deny its connection to The Cult of Hate while fearing a (reasonable) backlash against Islam.

Once again:

Those who commit horrific acts of savagery and claim they do it to advance the cause of Christ are liars and not at all Christian, because their very acts contradict both the Nazarene’s life and His teachings.

OTOH, Those who commit horrific acts of savagery and claim they do it to advance the cause of Mohamed are clearly following the example and teachings of The Butcher of Medina, whose first “great victory” was won over the bodies of 900 men of the Ban Quraysa Jews of Yathrib (now known as Medina) who he gulled with a lying offer of truce into the massacre he had planned, followed by the pillage of the Ban Quraysa Jews’ goods and the rape and enslavement of their families.

Those who follow the example of this first “great victory” and all the other subsequent acts of savagery, betrayal, perversion and other evil committed by Mohamed (the Butcher of Medina), can lay claim to being genuine, true, honest and forthright moderate (mainstream) Muslims, just like Nidal Hasan, the Butcher of Ft Hood.

Federal law-enforcement sources have told the British press (which is where one has to go to get news about Islamist terrorism in America) that Hasan came to the FBI’s attention early this year when a blogger identifying himself as “Nidal Hasan” — a name bearing a striking resemblance to “Nidal Hasan” — posted odes to suicide bombers on the Internet.

But our “commentariat”–the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind–would have us not notice these simple things, and so they spit upon those killed at Ft Hood.

Great way to observe Veterans Day, eh?

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Trying Another Apple Cider Recipe

Update: 21:22 hrs. Both brews are bubblin’ away nicely, although the cider looks like it’s a fully carbonated, shook up pop, it’s fizzing so much. Ya think too much sugar? I actually used half as much as the new recipe I found called for, but it’s looking like something else… Oh, well. 🙂

It’s that time of year. Unfortunately, since I just started the cider today, it won’t likely be ready for Thanksgiving, but it’ll most certainly be ready for Xmas.

This is a really simple, easy-peasy cider recipe. Uses all stuff you can get off the shelf in most grocery stores, except for the wine yeast, which may not be available in your local store.

  • 2.5 gallons of apple juice
  • 1 quart “hyper-concentrated” apple juice (from frozen concentrate, made with 1/3 the water called for on the cans)
  • 4C sugar
  • 1 package Red Star Premier Couvée wine yeast

Heated the juice in a stock pot to 100-105 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 degrees Celsius). Simmered slowly at about that temp.

Took about 1C of the sugared juice in a clean crockery bowl and added the yeast. Covered and let sit for about 15 minutes.

Checked the apple juice. Turned off heat and let cool a bit.

When the juice had reached a clear 100 degrees F, added it a bit at a time to my primary fermenter. When I had about a gallon in the fermenter, added the proofed yeast (it was really bubbling away!) and sirred with a clean stainless steel spoon. Added the rest of the juice pretty quickly after that, then added the airlock and placed the fermenter in a warm place, covered from light.

I’ll check back in a day to see how it’s cooking. In about a week, it could be ready to rack. I may just skip secondary fermenting, save for some bottle fermenting, of this first batch. We’ll see.

Next up? Some “Nut Brown Ale”. That’s cooking away in the stock pot now, with yeast proofing on the side. In 30 minutes or so, it’ll be time to start cooling the wort down… which I’ll do “impatient man’s style” by adding a gallon or so of cooler water. I’ve found by experience that that works as well for me as just letting it sit–at least with these “kit beers” like this “Nut Brown Ale” is.

When Thanksgiving weekend comes around, I want to cook up some beer that’s more from scratch, but getting back into the swing of another season of beer brewing, this is an easy way to get some better than average brew going.

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Pray for Obama

Seriously.

prayer-for-obama

To place that in context, let’s see what Psalm 109:6-15 has to say

6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Amen.

Get your bumper sticker here, but be forewarned: illiterate boobs who dislike The 0! and think this bumper sticker is supportive of The 0! might respond rudely. Illiterate boobs who are supportive of The 0! might give you a “thumbs up”… until someone who’s not a libtard checks a Bible and clues them in. *heh*

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Ubuntu 9.10: Oh. Well.

*sigh*

It looks like I may semi-retire the Ubuntu “side” of this dual boot config in favor of a Linux Mint or PC BSD dual boot config with Windows 7. I’ve really liked most of the things about Ubuntu, but the consistently poor upgrade experience ever since 8.04 is beginning to wear me down a bit. Heck, I dunno. I do like some things about Ubuntu a lot. For one thing, I can run old Windows programs in WINE in Ubuntu much more smoothely than in Windows 7, even with “compatibility mode” selected for the specific Windows version. And there are three old Windows programs I really, really do not want to simply ditch.

But. I’ve fallen into the trap (well, I laid it myself) of having this particular computer act as the print and media server using Win7’s “Homegroup” facility, and there are other users on our lil home network who have come to rely on the ease of use that offers.

Sooo…. yep. Resurrect another old computer for use as an Ubuntu (or PC BSD or Linux Mint) standalone for use with those old Windows programs running under WINE. It’ll mean getting a really good KVM switch that’ll handle the digital line from my vidcard to my 23″ Acer monitor, since I’d likely need to have both computers running at once here at my desk, for ease of access to the old windows programs, and I’m really out of desktop space on this 3’X6′ desktop. (23″ monitor, one computer, 2 printers, “cash drawer”–serving as printer supplies storage–phone, speakers, 3 external hard drives and various detritus of daily use. No more room for another monitor, and I’ve done the multiple keyboard/mouse thing in the past–not again, thatnks. :-))

Oh, what may be the last straw for Ubuntu on my main machine? Got around to installing the “gold” upgrade to 9.10. Nuh-uh. Python broken, tracker broken, other dependencies for multiple apps broken. *sigh* Not good.

Maybe things’ll work better with a fresh install on another machine. Probably will, but if I do that, the computer I’m thinking of will be an old single core machine that’ll use the 32-bit Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu but slicker) pretty nicely, I think. Or the latest PCBSD, which is always a nice OS.

Just have to see.

Well, micro-mini update. Installed Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu 9.04) and Ubuntu 9.10 in VMWare-based VMs. Kinda quirky mousing in the Mint VM, have to see what that’s all about, but otherwise, it’s really nice. Ubuntu 9.10 installed fine as a clean install in VM. Should be workable. Next? NimbleX Linux, based on Slackware. It should be pretty cool, as the folks at NimbleX allowed me (as they would you) to specify what additional components I did/did not want and “built” an iso to my specs. There isn’t a world of choices, but I managed to have nearly everything I need for a basic Linux desktop included, including the latest build of WINE. Nice.

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“Mighty Mouse” Saved the Day

She may be small at only 120 pounds, but Sgt. Kimberly Munley is a “moderate Muslim’s” worst nightmare: a woman with a gun who refuses to back down.

In case you’ve been living in a box under a bridge somewhere and thus missed the news, Sgt. Kimberly Munley is the civilian police officer under contract to the Army as a part of the security services at Ft. Hood who is responsible for putting enough bullets into “moderate Muslim” Islamic terrorist, Maj. Nidal Hasan to stop his bloody rampage.

Good on you, Sgt. Kimberly Munley. And a big “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” to Islam and its view of women, too.

BTW, although Munley took three hits from “moderate Muslim” Islamic terrorist Hasan, she still took him down. From reports, she lost a lot of blood but is recovering.

“She said one of the bullets hit an artery and she lost a lot of blood, but she sounded in good spirits,” said country music singer Dierks Bentley, who met Munley at a July 4 event and called her Friday.

“She was laughing and joking.”

To her friends, relatives and former colleagues in North Carolina, Munley’s bravery was par for the course.

Hats off to Sgt. Munley. American woman vs. “moderate Muslim” Islamic terrorist. Moose-limb boys? you really don’t want to go there.

Oh, the title of this post? Don’t blame me. “Mighty Mouse” is the nickname Munley was saddled with after saving a fellow officer–a man–from an assault by a motorist at a traffic stop.

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Respect for Islam

Frankly, I have read the Muslim “holy books” (OK, in several translations, because I do not read Arabic) and done as much reading as I could stomach on the life of Mohamed, the Butcher of Medina, and I can find nothing of worth in Islam at all. Any morality in the life and teachings of Mohamed, the Butcher of Medina, is either lifted from elsewhere or twisted into a vile perversion and in any case is overwhelmed by the 70+% of Islam’s “holy books” that is simple, plain hate speech and incitement to abuse of “unbelievers”.

And Islam’s “contributions” to civilization? A big fat zero with the rim kicked off. Algebra? Nu-uh. Been known and used for millennia before Islam and the form reintroduced with so-called “Arabic numbers” was stolen from the same place the Muslims stole their maths: India–and BTW, Muslims castrated the maths they stole from the Hindu mathematicians, because negative numbers were “theologically” repugnant to them. Typical.

And so it has gone with all the great Islamic “contributions” to civilization. Omar Khayyam’s “Rubaiyat”–among the very the best of Islamic lit to come to the West–is a. full of things that would get poor Omar killed by genuinely devout Muslims and b. just so-so as literature. Western lit is FULL to overflowing of much better stuff. In fact, so full of “much better stuff” is Western lit that Averroes, the greatest of Islam’s “scientists” (though the term didn’t exist then, really) wrote his greatest work as nothing more than a commentary on… Aristotle.

Whoopee! Nothing original, just a glorified study guide.

And that is the BEST of what Islam has had to offer: mediocre literature that is not very Islamic at all, stolen philosophy and technology, and rehashing of the great thought of WESTERN thinkers.

Everything else? Pretty much either worthless or of highly NEGATIVE “value”.

And contrast so-called “Christian” acts of barbarity with Muslim barbarity. FACT: People who claim to be Christians and who commit mass murder, rape, pillage, slaving, etc., CLAIMING to do so in the cause of the Christ are liars, for all these things are diametrically opposed to the life and teachings of The Nazarene.

OTOH, FACT: Muslims who commit mass murder, rape, pillage, slaving, etc., claiming to do so in the service of Mohamed’s cult of hate are smack dab in the middle of Islam’s teachings, for these things are central (over 70% of Islam’s so-called “holy books” deal with exhorting Muslims to do such things or providing permission to do such things) to Islam. In fact, both “holy lies” (al taqiyah, deceiving the unbeliever) and mass murder are central to Mohamed’s–the Butcher of Medina–first “great” victory: the mass murder under a flag of truce of ~900 of the Banu Quraiza Jews at Yathrib (now known as Medina), followed by the pillaging of their goods and the rape and enslavement of their families.

If Mohamed were alive today and just starting out, he would be seen by those with eyes to see and ears to hear as several orders of magnitude more evil than Jim Jones and his words as more toxic than the Jonestown Koolaid.

So, there you have it: all the respect for Islam I can muster.

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Change Desktop Background in Windows 7 Starter Edition

Microsoft has clearly stated that changing the desktop wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition, the version that comes preinstalled on most new netbooks now, is NOT ALLOWED. I confirmed this by checking multiple sources (including Microsoft) and by checking it in person when Lovely Daughter brought me her new netbook complaining she couldn’t change the wallpaper.

It’s true, although why Me$$y$oft would do something like that that’s sure to irritate thousands of users is beyond me.

OK, so solution? Can’t just rename the file that’s used for the background and substitute one of your own. Nope. M$ has embedded a security hash in the theme dll to prevent that. So…

Stardock’s My Colors to the rescue. Seriously. Stardock’s Windows Blinds has been a powerful app for folks who want a LOT more control of the GUI than M$ seems to want folks to have, and it provides that power with a well thought out GUI of its own. My Colors is just a small subset of Window Blinds, but it does manage to give folks with Win7 Starter Edition a way to change their desktop background.

Just download and install one of the four FREE themes at the link and then run the app. It’ll change your entire Windows theme. You’ll then be able to select a background of your own choosing from within the app.

Voilà! Simple, effective and free. Lovely Daughter was able to change her background. Dad was once again the tech hero of the family. And M$ got a big fat raspberry. 🙂

BTW, HP is also offering a BUNCH of My Colors themes with some of its netbooks. Apparently all the HP Mini-110 models can download and use this.

BTW, in case anyone’s wondering, I’ve not installed Ubuntu 9.10 yet, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, I discovered after some reading that most of the bugs I was displeased with in the alphas and betas are still present. *sigh* That and an apparent 90% problem rate with upgrades. Oops. Bad Ubuntu! Bad!

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Guy Fawkes Night

Think about it. While I don’t advocate violent overthrow of government, the Gunpowder Plot is exactly what happens when unjust government pushes people too far. (It’s not advocacy of violence to simply note history and the fact that those who do not learn from history… etc.)

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Leaving, Not on a Jet Plane

twc central has been largely silent this week, and will continue to be so for a couple of days. Heading out to put some sweat equity into someone else’s house *heh* today and tomorrow (‘S’all right. I “sweated” some into our home earlier this week *heh*).

Read some back posts for a while. Yes, that link is to a whole category of posts, Mending Walls, for a reason. Coming soon to a twc blogpost: a Take Back Your Government/An Ordinary Citizen’s Guide to Our Government push.