Reality Check

Somewhere along the way, many years ago I started using various distros of Linux.

I’ve used Slackware, Redhat (several versions), CentOS, and recently started using Ubuntu 8.04.

My old laptop is a Compaq Presario 2170US and has been through a couple of hard drives, the original being a 40 gig drive that finally bit the dust after being used for XP, then XP professional and massive online gaming on the MMORPG Dark Ages of Camelot. (Wife and I moved on to World of Warcraft a couple of years back though and I built better computers than the laptop for that).

A few weeks back my laptop’s hd (which was now an 80 gig drive) died a violent, heat-related death and I replaced it with a nice, new 160 gig drive a few days ago. I installed CentOS 4.3 and had several issues trying to get wireless to work - and since I want to be able to sit on the deck this summer and browse the internet and read, I wanted to get the wireless components working with little or no effort.

I started searching and found several folks saying how Ubuntu would fill the bill, and sure enough, after downloading version 8.04 last Thursday, I’m up and running. In fact, wireless works like a champ, and I can switch back and forth on the wire to the router, or run wireless without reboots, or much other than check-marking a setting for the network. It’s awesome.

The one problem I found is that when I’m at the desk I can’t use the external monitor, but think I might have found a couple of solutions I’ll try soon enough. There are some issues with putting the right information in the /etc/xorg.conf file - and I need to do a bit more research to see if there is an “easy way” through a GUI and hopefully by this weekend I ought to be able to switch from the lap top’s screen to the big 19″ wide screen display I use for my Linux boxes.

So far, Ubuntu has been a breeze to use, configure and load new software. Last night, I loaded WINE as easily as if I inserted a CD into a windows machine. (I hate to compare things in Linux to Windows, but it’s not very difficult to load Windows software, whereas, unless you’re a real computer geek with some serious background in playing with OSes, you’re not going to take the average Windows user and hand him or her a Linux based machine and say “Go for it!” without some serious headaches on their part). On the other hand, Windows IS the “standard” in the Computer World and around the Planet at the moment. Besides, I might have a reason or two to use some Windows Applications.

I’m hoping that we can change that view of operating systems, and proprietary software, drives and operating systems some day. This will only serve to make things easier in the future and eventually force a more competitive atmosphere in the gaming industry to ensure that games like World of Warcraft will EASILY run under any Linux OS without major Geek-Head-Tweaking that is currently required.

The ONLY reason I keep a windows machine around is for playing online games - something I suppose a half-century-old man ought NOT be doing in his spare time, but hey, you know, I EARNED my gray hair and I deserve to live in whatever fantasy world I chose! All I can say to game manufacturers is “You folks REALLY need to wake up and smell the coffee - and the free money — if you can start making things work under Linux!”

Hey, here’s a quick video from Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal’s Science and Technology Journal… he’s not happy with Ubuntu - and this was done in Sep 2007. As he says, though, Linux still isn’t quite ready for main stream, non-technical users. Those with a bit more computer background and savvy though are certainly pretty happy. Especially if all you’re really doing is browsing the internet, listening to music and sending/receiving emails. So listen to him, and check out linux if you’re a mind too…

For anyone that would like to download the version I’m using go to this link.

FrontPage Magazine
America in Ashes?
By Christopher S. Carson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, May 23, 2008

The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike.

Folks… the time is coming when this won’t be a joke among some people, it will affect them directly and what will they do? Whine that the “US Government didn’t do enough to stop it” - or worse, “We deserved it, surrender”.

I’ll never surrender or think of terrorism as a joke, and I’ll not put down pen and paper, computer or my weapons until these terrorists are wiped from the face of the Earth.

Latest Articles

A very interesting phenomenon has erupted over on FR today. The site mods are removing any and all comments questioning the newest and most recent “signups”, ALL apparently from China in the aftermath of the 7.8 Earth Quake that hit Sichuan and Chengdu China last Monday.

It is disheartening and even in my opinion ridiculous of the Mods to do this.

Folks are questioning the dozens of new signups who are not asking for help, merely commenting on the problems in China. Yet, we question this sudden in-rush of posters and are having our comments summarily removed.

What has happened to the people at FR? Are they now under control of a bunch of Liberals? Is JimRob no longer in charge?

Stay tuned to see who gets banned next.

AFP: Pandas safe at famous park after China quake: report

China is reporting that over 50,000 people are known to have been killed in the 7.8 Quake that shook Sichuan province on Monday.

On a lighter note, the Pandas are OK!

This, ladies and gentlemen is a reason why we will be at war with China within a few short years - because of this backwards thinking about life.

/sigh.

Someone on FreeRepublic said, “We don’t have a choice”. I vehemently stand against that statement.

Socialism; say Yes or No
Ladies and Gentlemen….

I beg to differ. America has a choice. While our choice in Presidential candidates has somehow been dictated to us by some lame-brained dumbasses in the various parties, we certainly DO have a CHOICE.

We have a choice as free Americans to NOT take what is handed to us, or shoved down our throats. However, we DO have a system in which we need to work first.

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m going to vote for McCain.

And then I’m going to oppose him every step of the way, and I would urge you all to do the same when it comes to things like raising taxes, leaving our borders open and pulling us out of the rest of the world.

Americans need to understand that WE ARE STILL IN CHARGE OF OUR COUNTRY.

Those leftists who are incrementally attempting to change our children need to be stopped, and they need to be stopped LOUDLY and pointedly.

Some day, this may come to violence with the opposition - and I hope it doesn’t but you should chose your side carefully and thoughtfully and not continue hammering on McCain because you don’t like him.

It’s time to vote for what semblance of conservatism we have LEFT and force the new President to move as far right as we can force him to go.

Don’t give up, don’t give in to all the nay-sayers and don’t be a nay-sayer yourself. Let’s get this in high gear, put a “Republican” (even if he IS a RINO), he isn’t B. Hussein Obama” who is a dyed-in-the-wool SOCIALIST. We’re one step from being “Europeanized” folks!

Do NOT let that happen.

Kick CAIR out of this country.

Tell the ACLU to clam up.

Stop the schools from teaching political correctness.

Put someone in office who MIGHT be a liberal but certainly isn’t a Socialist.

Stop your damned BITCHING and get to work LOCALLY like the rest of us are doing, pushing for conservatives in Congress and other offices.

Stop worrying so much about the President, elect McCain and NOT Obama.

And We DO have a Choice, God BLESS America!

Rick Donaldson

lgf: We Got Mail!

Apparently there are STILL kooks who believe that the attacks on 9-11-01 was a US Government Conspiracy.

Anyone with a lick of sense already knows this was a conspiracy, but it was a conspiracy carried out by terrorists, and not people in the US Government.

That ANYONE could believe the US Government was in any way involved shows that there is so much ignorance in the world and we continually need to combat this lack-of-intelligence on the part of the general population of the world.

The Truth, as a once-popular (and coming back) TV series “X Files” said, “Is out there”. Unfortunately, those who “believe in the truth” of a government conspiracy are buying into lies, and obfuscation and utterly refusing to see the facts — because they “want to believe”.

It is sad and frustrating that there are still ignorant people like this in the world. Below is the text of the letter sent to LGF.

Sad. Very, very sad.

Come on, tell me why you still believe it was possilbe for hijacked!? airliners to fly all over the eastern U.S. for hours without any meaningful response nor even any pursuit? Come on! (How could Osama bin-Forgotten do that? Or was that the work of Cheney?)

Our trillion-dollar air defenses were allegedly defeated by Osama bin-Forgotten & his 19 lackeys with box-cutters?

American Airlines Flight 77, having a 125’ wingspan disappeared though a16’ foot initial impact hole at the Pentagon. All clear video (at least 80 of them) of what blew-up the Pentagon being withheld to this day?

WTC-7 has small, scattered fires, yet it imploded in a controlled demolition later in the day on 9/11. Larry Silverstein, the over-insured leaseholder, said:

“I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

Etc., etc.

Everyone needs to do his/her own research about September 11, 2001! (A good start is to watch “9/11 Ripple Effect” free on the web.)

No one seems to know what is causing the disappearing bee problem.

Just over a year ago, I reported on this (http://realitycheck.blogsome.com/2007/02/28/honey-bees-dying-us-wide/) and I have heard people say I wasn’t reporting clearly, or was making it up.

Fox News carried a short segment today with a bee keeper from Pennsylvania who stated exactly what I stated many months back, that the bees are indeed dying, no one knows the cause, and we need to find the reason and try to mitigate the problem. Finally he stated that the disorder as they are calling it at this time, will indeed affect food prices in the future.

Here’s how it will affect us.

Bees pollinate many of our food crops, in fact something like 80% of our crops use bees as the source of pollination. While I have heard people say things like “Plants have been being pollinated for a long time before people were here so there is no problem” they fail to realize that a good portion of the crops we grow in the US were introduced here by Europeans more than 400 years ago.

Of course this is only the “European Honeybee” while not native to the US originally is one of several thousand species of bees that live in the US, but they are the bees that produce the honey we use in food (and in my case making mead).

Bees are moved, usually by truck along areas where crops need to be pollinated. Many of those bees are dying, and thus those truckers, and the bee keeper’s livelihoods are being affected. Farmers’ crops are not getting the pollination required to either form seeds or help to bring crops to maturity.

This will increase the cost of food not only locally, but world wide.

With rising fuel prices, we’re in for a serious problem over the next couple of years.

I already predicted a rise in food prices in 2007. Now that is being confirmed. I make mead, which is wine made from honey. The cost of honey is already increasing, but not drastically, yet. I suspect that it will become more and more scarce over the next two or three years. I don’t see us able to easily produce mead without it costing a lot of money in the near future - and with me, working on setting up a business to do just that, I’m having second thoughts about this economy right now and putting so much effort into doing so.

Bees have suffered close to a 33% destruction rate in the past 2-3 years according to the Fox News segment this morning. (I did capture that and will attempt, no promises, to get that put up online soon and link it in this article.)

I’ll update this more as I find more information.

In summary:

1) CCD is NOT a parasite infestation. While there are parasites that kill bees and they do indeed wipe out whole colonies, this is not a yet-known parasite.

2) 33% of the bee population in the United States is ALREADY GONE.

3) There is nothing to show this Disorder is slowing or declining.

4) There is nothing to show that bees are emerging stronger.

5) There is going to be an effect on prices of honey, and crops that depend on bee pollination.

6) Readers who are skeptical are asked to do some research before they “pooh-pooh” this situation, but I welcome comments from people who actually know something about this situation and who are affected directly like beekeepers, meadmakers and those who use honey, or run farms with crops.

Update Thursday, 12 May 2008 0830

Here’s some links to help you understand more about the bee problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
Video
The Silence of the Bees
USDA article
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/ColonyCollapseDisorder.html

As opposed to the Socialist Party in America and other parts of the world, May Day, or as it was originally known, Mayday - the first of May denotes not “solidarity” with the Communists of the world but rather an ancient practice of ringing in the Spring time.

In the ancient world, Beltane (spelled in several different ways) was considered “the first of Spring time” and was planting season, and ’twas the new day for new life to come to the world.

Many years ago our Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) fighting group took on the persona of various Irish and Scottish fighting persons from ancient times. We worked out our histories (of the assumed-persona) so that we might “live in the time of those who went before us” and we fought on the field of battle in armor against various and sundry foes. During all of this we learned much of the history of the real Irish and Scottish ancestors of our families. We also learned, and spent time living in the woods of Virginia and Pennsylvania to practice these “rites”.

Now, of course we had our real lives, our work and families (most of our families were part of this so as to participate in the battles and see first-hand how medieval persons might have lived). Over the course of twenty-five years, some of us today still practice some of the “rituals” that we learned of to this day. I think the learned public might call us “Neopagans” - though most of us are Christian in faith.

In truth, we are all conservatives but, we do harken back to the days of yesteryear where a Spring Festival was a time of renewal, planting time and at night to break open a bottle of mead and to drink of the Nectar of the gods… thus have these practices brought my wife and I around to the skill of making honey wine, or mead.

Today - this evening for us, will be both a day of celebration for Spring and a sad day in the passing of another part of our lives. Three of our grandchildren will leave the state and move on to another state today with their mother, our son’s ex-wife and her new husband. Between them they have seven children from both families and one more on the way.

For them this move perhaps will be a good one and all my wife and I can do is hope and pray that our grandchildren will again return to visit us some day or that we may visit them in their new home in the future. So, tonight we visit with the children for the last time before they leave and we will, with the rest of our remaining children and grandchildren celebrate the coming of a new Spring and planting season… and what the hell, open a bottle of mead and raise it to the heavens in thanks for another year on this planet.

May you all have a Happy and Blessed Beltane!

(Or)

Bealtaine Shona!