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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.

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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”

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“*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.

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Amen Corner

For Hugh, who invoked the tune in comments yesterday:

Amen

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

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“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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Continuing the Saga of Computer Fun

So, everything working on the new comp under Ubuntu 8.04 but the IR receiver and remote, but the driver search for that can continue for a while, since I still need to add an appropriate splitter and a new cable run for the TV card. The card itself is recognized just fine, but without a cable hookup or an external antenna (not very useful here in my part of America’s Third World County), actually tuning in any channels is not going to happen.

I guess I could hook up an FM antenna and have radio, but why? Sure, I’d not mind listening to Car Talk or Karl Haas or some such, but that’s not enough reason to play the radio through my PC when there’s a perfectly good radio already in the room I never listen to anyway.

This week: my DeoxIT Gold kit will be in, and I’ll disassemble the computer (heck, I’ll disassemble the one I’ve been tweaking and hardening for my dad as well) and treat all possible electrical contact points. (Heck, maybe I’ll finally clean up the pots n pans on an old AMR42 mixer I have sitting in tghe corner, too.)

On Ubuntu 8.04: Now that I’ve decided to make this my everyday comp, I’ll have to move my email stores on here and import them into Evolution. Yeh, this is the seventh or eighth different email client I’ve used in the past 15 or more years (not counting proprietary clients from MCIMail, AOL–yeh, I used it for a while back in the bad old metered proprietary AOL days before web browsers and regular everyday ISPs–Delphi or Compuserve) I think I’ll like Evolution. Reminds me more of Outlook (NOT Outlook Express) than Thunderbird or any of the other clients I’ve used recently. I’ll probably not be using the calendaring or group scheduling facilities much, since I have those built into my hosted account, and family members–the use I planned the thing for–can post their schedules any old time from any old where easily and securely. But as for its email functions: solid. Like it much.

As to setting up a media center comp that has several proprietary peripherals in Linux… not for the proverbial Aunt Tilly.

Still unhappy with WINE’s inability to run a couple of indispensable Windows apps, but that can fall to one of the Windows versions I’ve retired from other computers and installed in VirtualBox *heh*.

All-in-all, unless something unforeseen crops up, I see no real reason to have another Windows-based computer, unless, of course, “Windows 7” turns out to be a winner. But I’m not holding my breath.

Future (not so far down the road) changes to this comp:

Change out the 1GB of memory for 4GB. Pretty cheap performance enhancer.

Change out the power supply. I knew going in that I’d do ths, because the base comp has an inadequate power supply, and I knew that up front. BTW, this is probably one of the best things you can do to improve the reliability of any off-the-shelf consumer-grade PC. $50 will usually get you a decent power supply that’s at least 100% better than the one that came with whatever desktop you bought. $100 or so will get you a much better PC Power and Cooling power supply–a Very Good Thing.

I’ve waffled on the video card upgrade, and I’m kinda glad I did, because I’m gathering a LOT of info about what Linux in general and Ubntu in particular “likes” and the two I was considering… won’t make the cut for my final choice. In any case, a 512MB nVidia PCIex card will be it, but which one? The jury’s still out. Meanwhile, the 6100 6150SE series nVidia chipset onboard graphics is enough for some nice Gnome-ish slaps in the face to Vista eye candy. *heh*

Eventually, I’ll upgrade my speaker system. I’m using a venerable Harmon Kardon (HP rebranded) set now, but it’s not really surround sound capable, and with the media center stuff, I think I’d like to use the 5+1 Soundblaster card I added (pulled from another, now retired, computer) to more effect (or heck, even the 7+1 onboard sound).

Down the road a little further, I may look at a wireless networking solution for this comp. My Wonder Woman’s notebook does well here at twc central, working with our Netgear WPN824. It’s only b-g, but the multiple antennas mean solid connections, and the security features are more than we need here in our corner of America’s Third World County where the nearest other wireless network is wide open, unsecured at all, at all. *heh* Temptations. Still, the only wireless adapters I have to add to this one are old 802.11b adapters. Good ones, but slower than I would want. The Netgear WG111 USB Wireless Adapter is very good for some applications (when Lovely Daughter’s built in adapter went blooie, this was a perfect solution for her lil Vaio laptop), but the Engenius / EUB-362 EXT, though about 3X the price, seems more likely to be the direction I’d go.

Apart from those near term upgrades, I don’t see a lot left to do to this but tweak the software. I don’t necessarily want to learn how to write my own drivers for the IR input devices, but it’d be a learning experience if it came to that, now wouldn’t it? Well, at least the multimedia keyboard was recognized and configured w/o a hitch. That’s something, isn’t it? 🙂 Heck, even the “Mail,” “Search” and “Browser” buttons work, along with the “regular” multimedia buttons. That Ubuntu magic at work, I guess.

Still, again I’d say that setting up this computer using Ubuntu 8.04 hasn’t been a task for “Aunt Tilly.” But now that it’s (mostly) set up, anyone could sit down and do anything they’d do on another computer running another OS just about as easily as in something more common.

Tell ya what. If you’re a Windows user, why not download and invoke Wubi and give Ubuntu a no-hassle shot?

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The Great Seal of Obamaland

Even the New York Slimes can smell the effrontery of Mr. I Sure Hope They Don’t See the Changes Coming! This ego trip by one whose deusions of adequacy are becoming legend would be laughable if he weren’t actually a presidential candidate.

What a Maroon!

Oh, forgot a tip o’ the tam to my Wonder Woman who clued me in on this first.

NOTE: TF Stern has some thoughts on this topic that are worth reading.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The World According to Carl, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Drive-by, virtualized

OK, new comp nearly finished… for now. Don’t (yet) have USB properly configured in the virtualized XP box running under Ubuntu/VirtualBox (yeh, got it running, anyway), so I’m not using Opera Portable to write this post but Internet Exploder. ‘S’all right. Anything I might “catch” because of its notoriously “holey” nature is confined to this virtual machine. Heck, maybe I could intall Sandboxie in this XP virtual machine and have things doubly sequestered from my “real” machine. *heh*

No biggies, just fun.

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Not Exactly Reindeer Games…

Warming up just a tad, but in the low 80s (as in 81 degrees fahrenheit in my no A/C, just windows open office) for the latter part of June? Not too shabby. Heck, the humidity is even in the low 1,000s% range *heh* (Yeh, it is humid enough to drown fish.)

Anywho, after much debate with the voices in my head, I ended up not building a new box from separate components. What I did instead was buy a “debranded” media center comp that I could seriously upgrade. Now, that does mean it came w/o the media center OS it was originally built for, and specific drivers for some of the components are “fun” to track down (drivers for the IR reciever and remote will likely be the most fun to hunt down). It also means I need to buy some more cable to build a new run to the computer (and not incidentally, another–better–splitter; split once into two, then again; one straight to cable “modem” and three runs to other places, for now).

Just more techie fun.

Still, for dirt cheap, an AMD 64X2 5600+ base system with a gig of memory (which I’m going to hand off to someone else–already selected, so don’t put in any requests :-)–and replace with 4GB), a competent sound/vid setup… which I will upgrade, and lotsa nice lil goodies including a nice TV Tuner card, bunches of media connections front and back and enough open PCI slots (one PCIex-1 is taken up already and the PCIex-16 is just waiting on a new vidcard). Oh, the 300W power supply is also scheduled for replacement. I have a nice 450W ps I can use in it until I get the PC Power and Cooling “Rolls Royce” ps I have my eye on, so I’m not screaming bloddy murder about a wimpy ps in my box.

Of course, no OS, media center, all that jazz, means it’s currently running Ubuntu 8.04 with MythTV, but as soon as I plop VirtualBox on, I’ll also install WinXP Pro-64 and hunt around for the usual stuff to use with it. Then, drag out some old software and install Win98 in another VirtualBox, so I can use Encore with it (cos it still doesn’t run under WINE).

UPDATE: *grrr* 64-bit CPU. 64-bit OS. 64-bit version of Virtualbox. Attempt to install 64-bit WinXPP, error: “Attempting to load an x64 operating system, however this CPU is not compatible with x64 mode. Please install a 32-bit X86 operating system.” The only XPP I have available that’s not been installed elsewhere is a 64-bit version. Looks like I’ll have to uninstall VirtualBox and go with VMware, instead. Sad, cos I really like the way VirtualBox sets things up. Oh. Well.

Other fun?my Wonder Woman’s Toshiba is at the “repair depot” for an LCD issue, so… have a desktop compy set up in the living room for her use. Kinda clunky solution, but at least she can chjeck her email and watch Stargate SG-1 reruns simultaneously. *heh*

Still getting above 40mpg in my lil 11-year-old Saturn. Even with “idjits” driving in front of me on two-lane roads that’re largely solid Ozarkian no passing zones.

Example: heading outa town (to another Third World County town about 10 miles away). Traffic stacked up for nearly a mile at nearly 30mph in the 55mph zone. Yep. Some 300 pound idjit on a motor scooter that he could probably push faster than it can carry him.

Now, at 30mph on a level road, I have to keep the lil car in 4th gear. That translates to about 1,500rpm. 45mph, I can use 5th gear… also 1,500rpm. 55mph is not quite 1,800rpm on the same level roadway.

But there I am lugging along at under 30mph, almost 1,500 rpm behind some idjit, wasting fuel.

Oh. Well. Lotsa those folks “driving” around, and I still got 42mpg on my last fill up (about 1mpg more than my porevious fill up–it’ll balance out, perhaps).

Imagine what kind of fuel economy I’d get if even a few of the idjits were to park their cars and attempt to master the intellectual challenge of putting one foot in front of the other…

😉

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Change

Via email (thanks, Hugh):

And you’d better hope he leaves you that much change…

While that doesn’t say it all by a long shot, it does say something genuine and important.

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