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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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T-13; 2.X-repeat: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS

tax_slave.jpg

This is an easy one, except for the part about limiting it to thirteen things…

1. The taxpayer is always guilty until proven innocent.

2. Withholding. See #1 and add in, “Where’s the interest on the money stolen before it’s really due on April 15?”

3. The forms, the forms… *arrrrrggghhhh!*

4. About #3… I’m sure the IRS can make the print smaller and the paper of crappier rag, but I’m unsure whether they chose the ink for its ability to cause an allergic reaction leading to total mental breakdown or if that’s just a psycosomatic reaction…

5. “Advice” from the IRS. First, can ya think “Conflict of interest”? Then, go ahead: ask the same question of three (or four) folks with the IRS. You’ll probably recieve four (or five) contradictory answers, most of them designed to cause you to get a nastly letter down the pike from someone else (or sometimes the same dumbasses) saying you are in error for following their counsel. Catch 10648 (that’s Catch 22 cubed).

6. Following on 5, if the IRS makes a mistake, IT IS YOUR FAULT. Remember that one: IT IS ALWAYS YOUR FAULT. It’s a simple corrollary of number 1.

7. Paying the borg for the priviledge of being financially and mentally raped. Thank you, Mr. Revenooer… We pay the IRS’s wages, exhorbitant operating expenses (and screwups associated with “updating” the RS’s antiquated computer systems, etc.). So, naturally, as with other feddle gummint bureaucracies, those who pay the costs are the slaves of the servant. Figures. (See the Kipling cited in “Read more here” below *sigh*).

8. The lies I. The taxes you pay to the IRS on or before the April 15 deadline every year reflects your effective tax rate to the feddle gummint, right? Nope. That’s a baldfaced lie. You also pay ALL the taxes on ALL the goods and services (added up all down the supply chain to the end user/consumer) of ALL the businesses producing goods and services you purchase (on those goods and services you purchase). Your effective tax rate is really more like at least double what you see on April 15 every year.

9. The Lies II: Pictures like this at the smarmy IRS website:

happy_taxpayers.jpg

Instead of the more honest:

slave_driver2.jpg

10. The very thought of IRS drones feeding at the public trough. Just think: if even half of them worked at productive jobs instead (while the other half went on the public dole), we’d be far, far better off.

11. Tax courts. See #1 again.

12. Damned snoops! (And I think I may well be using the term with theological accuracy–*heh*) Even friends of tax collectors get their own place in Dante’s Inferno, IIRC…

13. The ultimate indignity: being forced, by a monstrous tax code, to pay one shark (or more!–tax lawyer, accountant, TurboTax *spit*, whomever) to snatch a small portion of one’s carcass from the jaws of a bigger shark.

I could rail all day, but then I’d probably be singled out (may well be already) for harrassment by the IRS.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Democrat=Socialist, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Continue reading “T-13; 2.X-repeat: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS”

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Semi-Random Wednesday

Just a few things that have crossed my mind today (some of them moving like The Flash!, so I only caught a brief glimpse as they passed *heh* Yeh, even that link’s moving so fast it’s a couple of years in the future already… )

In the mid 60s here in my twc central office. A/C? No, just a window open. In the third week of June. Hugely atypical temps for America’s Third World County in June, let alone 2/3 of the way through the month and toward July… Must be global warming, eh?

Ya know, I could average much better than my typical 40+mpg in my lil ’97 Saturn if the “idjits” would just pull over and park. *sigh* Once again, let me remind you of Lovely Daughter’s GREAT idea: take the cars away from those who are dumber than a bag of (rusty) hammers and just give ’em to folks who can drive. Sure, it’d wipe out what’s left of Detroit, but would that be a bad thing?

Building and testing and tweaking this “new” computer for my dad has reminded me that it is too possible to have a stable, moderately nimble Windows XP computer. It just takes a lot more work than consumer computer manufacturers are willing (or economically able) to put into a box. Most of the value added to this box is in the “blood and toil and sweat and tears” *heh* spent in chasing down lil issues before they can become bigger ones. Like, installing a much better power supply than a Dell or HP can “afford” to use in a machine (cos cheapo consumers won’t pay for it); using a good anti-corrosion/contact-enhancement treatment on cards, chips, etc. (materials-expensive and labor intensive); cleaning all the crap out of a standard WinXP installation and making a restorable disk image of the OS (with programs and data being on a separate partition, as much as possible), etc.

Takes time and expertise: both things consumer-grade computers will NOT have invested in them right out of the box.

For the non-tech-savvy, Logmein is a really cool way to make sure your tech-savvy friend(s) you ask to “help you out” (fixing the problems a non-tech-savvy user creates–*heh*) can access your computer remotely to do maintenance. It’s not so cool if said tech-savvy friend(s) only have Linux boxes, cos Logmein is only for Windows/Mac environment (but hey! if the tech-savvy Linux users don’t have a Windows install running in a virtual machine on their boxes–just for things like this–then they’re not all that tech savvy after all, are they? :-))

In other thoughts flashing before my eyes (or being babbled about by the voices in my head)…

So, Barry Hussein Obamasiah-Winfrey has a foreign policy advisor who thinks we ought to mold our foreign policy after the philosophy of Winnie the Pooh, eh? It makes a certain sense, you know. First, anyone else notice that the beloved children’s icon is named after “Number Two“? Sure, it’s a variant spelling, but number two=poo=pooh, as far as I can tell.

So, with so much poo (or pooh) being spouted daily by Barry Hussein Obamasiah-Winfrey (and his minions) in place of anything of substance, it only makes sense that any “foreign policy” issuing from the same pie holes would be just more bovine scatological effluent.

Heck, the Barry Hussein Obamasiah-Winfrey campaign will NEVER need any SHAMpoo the way it’s generating the real thing in such prodigious amounts…

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Allie is Wired, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Democrat=Socialist, , and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Issues and Answers 2.01

Energy policy. No matter how much we work to reform tax policy to get the “feddle gummint” out of savings/investment policy and level the international trade playing field a bit, with the energy lashup that passes for “feddle gummint” policy we now have in place, our economy is hamstrung, our billions are being sent OUT of this country, largely to third world thugs, and we face a future of spiraling inflation.

The answer is complex but can start with one simple thing: learn some commonsense steps we can take NOW… and take them.

See American Solutions for more.

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Issues and Answers 1.02

Yesterday, I posted a video intro to The FairTax as an intro to the idea that real tax reform can have the single greatest ameliorative effect on our economic woes by introducing The FairTax. Today, part two:

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Issues and Answers 1.01

Of the many issues facing citizens nowadays, it’s easy to say that the answer to “What’s toward the top of your current concerns?” would be “It’s the economy, stupid.”

And, beyond simple concerns about oil/gasoline proices and the closely related rise in costs of concumer goods, that’s a very good answer. But it’s important that we understand that our economic problems go far beyond percieved consumer pain caused by rising costs and relatively stagnant wages. Think of several even more important, deeply embedded issues:

The primary “weapon” with which the U.S. used to bring down the Soviet Union was to sucker the soviets into attempting to compete with our economy. And still today, our best largely unused weapon against enemies such as Islamic terrorism is our economy. That’s something even a noncom fighting in Afganistan recognizes (a long read, and the economic observations are buried well down, but a read wll worth your time. h.t. Rosenary’s Thoughts).

Suffice it to say, every effort made by our politicians *spit* to weaken our economy both in obvious ways and in obscure, structural ways, is working. The dollar is at its weakest in decades; our trade imbalance is growing; our indebtedness as a nation is worsening. What to do?

Let’s start with some common sense steps. Step number 1 (even more important than Drill Here-Drill Now): Embrace the FairTax.

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The Ten Commandments

Via email:

T H E 1 0 C O M M A N D M E N T S
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this:

You cannot post ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal,’ ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,’ and ‘Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness’ in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, because it creates a hostile work environment.

Yeh, poor babies. Wouldn’t want lawyers, judges and politicians *spit* to feel assaulted by *shudder* moral standards of behavior.

(With apologies to the few honest, decent lawyers, both judges and the politician who do observe decent moral standards. OK, so I’m assuming there’s a politician somewhere who is still a decent person fifteen minutes after becoming a politician. And, actually, there may be more than that, since there are so damned many of the critters–and no, I am not using profanity when I refer to politicians–as a class–as “damned”. Think about it. )

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, , Adam’s Blog, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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It’s Not THE Answer…

…but it’s a step in the right direction.

Then, of course, nuclear power (I like PBRs), space-based solar, TDP plants and more–all very nearly “off-the-shelf” technologies–to round out an approach to energy independence from Middle Eastern (and other foreign) thugs (yeh, Saudis, I’m talking mainly about YOU).

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