Christmas

Christmas has become an interesting time of year for me. I guess I'm a bit grown up, because I was more excited to give my wife gifts than about what I might be getting.

My brother and sister-in-law were in from Portland Oregon and we had a blast. My aunt & uncle were down from Minnesota with their 3 kids. Its great, we played lots of Settler's of Cataan. Great game.

I held back and didn't give any presents to Katrina early, but I really wanted to.

I got a great game called Dominion. You build an empire with cards. Its easy to learn, fast to play and great fun for 2-4 people.

This Christmas was nice. I got to spend time with people I loved and I was very thankful for that. It helps me realize how truly blessed I am.

I'm so thankful for a family that loves and cares like mine.

I can't add...

Blessed are the land-mines
Stretched across the desert floor
God, bless the hands that formed them
Filled their shrapnel hearts with war
May You bless the companies
The goose that laid the golden egg
May they make a million more
Blowing off a million legs
Blessed are the black-tongued ravens
Substituting fear for reason
To hate war is to hate us
If you love peace, then you must love treason
Beat your plowshares into swords
Beat your pulpits, turn your tables
Blessed are the hand-grenades
Bless the church who rattles sabers

This house, is burning
This poison still is worming
This temple, will cave in
There's nothing here worth saving

Nail the gold up to the altar
Like Ahab taunts his crew to war
Blessed are the shareholders
Lack of faith is for the poor
Hold your wallets to the sky
A temple built to sooth yourself
Blessed is the church who tries
To help you build blessed wealth

"Blessed are the land mines"
Written by: Reese Roper
Performed by Brave Saint Saturn

The road to hell...

Will be paved with the proponents of the prosperity gospel. Yes, I'll say it. God will have more mercy on well, most anyone else.

Adventures in Computing

My wife's older laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1100, has been running slow for ages. Doing some internet research I learned those computers were notorious for overheating which lead to running slow.

To remedy this I replaced the conducting grease and bought a cooling pad. These helped keep it from overheating and shutting down, but it still ran slow.

I upgraded the ram from 640mb (yes, 640) to 1gb. This too helped some.

I stripped the computer of all but its essentials. Windows XP, plus maybe 3 gigs of other stuff was sucking up 13 gigs of HD space.

So, after copying an ubuntu liveCD and testing it, I decided that was the route to go.

Well, if only it had been that simple. I had forgotten that I experimented with ubuntu, and I installed Xubuntu. Very similar. In fact, from what I understand, the guts are the same, its just the GUI that is different with Ubuntu using GNOME and Xubuntu using XFCE.

Long story short, XFCE isn't playing well with this laptop. I wondered why a stupid Facebook game was sucking up so much memory (330mb? For farmville????) and processor power.

Well, it turns out, the GPU isn't doing anything. The CPU is running both the graphics AND the rest of the system. So, now I'm going to be on my 3rd (well, 5th if you count the times I reinstalled Xubuntu Karmic Koala) OS install in a week. BUT, this should speed up the silly games. I hope.

I'm just glad she's so patient with me.

Edit: Well, turns out the GPU IS doings its job, its just a grappy old Intel 845 chipset which essentially does nothing. I don't know why facebook makes their stupid little Farmville game so graphics intensive, but they do. So, pretty much, this computer won't go any faster for it. Looks like its time to start saving up for that netbook now!

The one good thing is, we do still have a stable laptop computer and its still handy for things like email and the like. Its a little wonky on startup, but it works. I suppose sometimes that's all you can ask.

Scientific "Concensus"

In case you haven't been following the story, the email and files of some prominent climate researchers was hacked and posted to the web. The emails contained some interesting statements, which of course as being explained away as "of course we weren't manipulating data."

See, the problem here is guys, it looks like you were. As much as scientists want to believe they've come so far, they are no different than scientists throughout the ages who "knew" something to be true.

Is pumping CO2 and toxins in the air bad? Yes. Should we try and stop doing it? Yes.

Is there a true "scientific" concensus on it? Heck no. Dissenting voices aren't heard.* Or are laughed off as quacks because there is lots of money to be had in grants if you have the hot theory.

This isn't just in climatology. This is in evolutionary study, physics, lots of different areas. Dissenting voices are quashed.

The issue to me isn't if the data was being manipulated. It is more an issue of these scientists aren't doing their work with an open mind. Because if they are not, they don't have to manipulate the data, they'll just miss the stuff that doesn't fit unconsciously.

I look forward to seeing this develop.

Also, I'm not saying its a good thing that hackers broke in and stole it...but...dang, this sure is nice and interesting!

*Helps when you put the "n't" on the end of the word so the entire post makes sense...

Its That Time of Year

Time for the "news" channels to "report" on holiday travel. Its going to be BUSY! WOW!!!!

You should plan accordingly! This is news? Honestly? Really???????

I'm sorry, to me, this is PROOF that TV news makes you stupider. Sure, even NPR does a little piece on holiday travel, but they at least aren't running the same piece every hour all day long.

I understand its cheaper to send a cameraman and a guy with a mic to the local airport to interview Jimbo about his holiday travel plans than it is to send someone to the Phillipines to report on whats going on there. But, honestly, its like this EVERY YEAR! Have you idiots not figured out its busy during the holiday season?

Bah, humbug

Mad Skillz

Or not. So, while my job's in a bit of limbo and the dealership is probably getting sold, I'm still working! YAY!

Everyone around here is rushing to do inventory, etc. and working off lots of old messed up invoices.

So, today, I got to show off my mad Paint skillz (yes, with a Z) and clean an invoice up. It was kind of fun. I scanned in the invoice, erased the lines that needed erased. Changed the total, and then erased the pen markings all over the place.

I'm not going to be asked to contribute to any amazing photoshop work anytime soon, but it looked much better than it did.

I was pretty proud of myself. I have a few computer skills left at least