An Apple a day...

I've been a PC guy for a number of years -- 21 years if I'm remembering correctly. That was when the computer lab at Richland (where I worked as a Lab Assistant/Operator/Tutor) set up it's first IBM PC labs. Before that it was the somewhat inelegant solution used for the TRS80's in the first microPC lab, or the Apple ][+ my family had at home (and before that, the High school I went to). I actually knew the Apple pretty good -- I spent my last year in high school repairing them at the local vocational school. Plus, when my dad bought ours it had come with TASC (The AppleSoft Compiler) -- probably the only truly original and useful bit of software Microsoft has ever come up with. I'd even learned the trick to incorporating the binary library file into my programs so you could start the program with one simple command (even then Microsoft's programming was sloppy).

But the PC was something different. We started out with a couple dozen PC's and boxes of boot disks and software. Then, the big upgrade, several miles of Token ring cable, dozens of network cards, a couple of PX XT's with 20 meg hard cards for print servers, and a Model 60 file server with a 60 meg hard drive. Wow! We also added a couple of model 30's that came with a nifty little program called Windows (as this was the 1.0 version, there were no numbers after it). We thought it was really cool, we could open 8, basic windows, start counting programs in each window and watch the machine go from one window to the next stepping through the programs.

Time passed, and the PC's made way for 286's, then 386's, 486's, Pentiums, K6's, PII's, PIII's, Celerons, P4's , Durons, Athlons, AthlonXPs, and soon to either a XP64x2 or Core2Duo. Meanwhile Apple's were no longer on the menu -- until now. Computer Geeks was offering a free shipping weekend, and they had cheap prices on 600mhz G3 iMacs, so I took a chance and ordered one. So what do I think as an old Wintel guy?

Where's the right mouse button? You never realize how much you use it until it doesn't work anymore. I guess if I upgrade to OSX and find the right drivers I'll get the use of it back. Of course, in order to upgrade to OSX I have to upgrade my machine. Memory was easy enough, turn it over, open the door, pull out the old stuff and put in the newer bigger stuff. Going from the CDRW drive to the required DVD is proving a little more difficult -- first there's the matter of a nearly complete dis assembly of the lower part of the machine, combined with the fact that my first replacement drive was DOA -- let's just say that hasn't been awe-inspiring yet. The hard drive is whining bad too, so I'll probably swap it out too. I do like having it talk to me, although it doesn't do so good about listening. Then there's the matter of missing controls, I was playing a game (the kind that goes full screen) and it started playing some majestic music -- really loud -- and there's no volume control anywhere. Same goes for the disk eject. There is a reset button tucked into the side panel, but other than the power button, everything else is software -- not my idea of ideal for a machine where everything is built in.

I'm reserving judgement for now, once I get some more software loaded and the machine upgraded I'll give a final verdict...

Thanksgiving wrap up

Well, did everyone have a nice Thanksgiving holiday? Mine was fine, although since I work retail I had to work most of it. At least I don't work someplace where Black Friday is the worst day of the year. Still, I remember when I worked in the office at a manufacturing concern. For us, by time Thanksgiving came around, Christmas was done and over with. We were all ready to gear up for Valentines day when we came back from the extended weekend -- though it stayed quiet enough for all the office and company Christmas parties. No Christmas parties for us here, but we will be closed for a long weekend on Christmas, and I may take the whole week between Christmas and New Years off -- either take a short trip or just work on organizing the house more.

Definitely beats working the returns line...

A brief word from Madonna

On NBC tv just moments ago --

"You can call me sinner, you can call me saint"


How about we call you too damn old to be behaving that way...

Is Family Guy insulting me?

I watch Family Guy -- heck, I even like Family Guy. It's funny, irreverent, intelligent (although each episode seems to include one moment of pointless stupidity, just to be annoying) even musical. Of course, if you're a follower of the Judeo-Christian lifestyle expect to be the butt of the occasional joke (Jewish not to rough, Catholic pretty bad, protestants in between). Last night it was a slam against folks preaching Abstinence. They pretty much follow the Planned Parenthood propaganda on that one (while portraying the abstinence folks a mind controlling infiltrators). They also seemed to have read reports that while "Danger" sex is down, alternative sex is way up (on the show, it was portrayed as Ear Sex -- which is not only stupid and gross, but allows them to pretend the kids were having something other than oral sex, which we all know from former president Clinton isn't sex anyways). And when it came to the condom brigade, Lois (the same one who had problems hosting Brian's Cousin's gay wedding -- at least until Lois saw the light and changed her beliefs -- I mean her mind) was leading the charge. So Lois convinces the kids that safe sex is better than wait-until-it-means-something sex, Meg gets dumped by her boyfriend afterwards (gee, imagine that, a guy dumps a girl once he gets into her pants -- never see that in real life do you). Don't worry though, she wasn't a virgin anymore anyway, not after she lost it to Jimmy Fallon "live in new york" in a previous episode.

Of course, none of it should matter anyway, right? It's a cartoon, it's not real. Of course, that's what they said about Murphy Brown -- and it's not like there's been a virtual epidemic of fatherless children amongst famous actresses in Hollywood since then...

WHO CARES??

Tell me, is there anything in the world less important than the fact that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes finally tied the knot? I mean, other than the fact that he's old enough to have fathered her?

So how long will this one last?

McDonald's is not out to kill you

On Slate.com, the same guy who inadvertently implied that European Caucasians were more intelligent than folks of African descent comes up with an entry titled Selling death through fast-food kiosks. Slate has articles telling you which steaks taste the best, which Oriental dumplings you should buy, and article after article about which booze is better -- but McDonald's is always associated with death. If you haven't looked at the article yet, the main point seems to be, by using the new and convenient self serve ordering kiosks will encourage you to supersize your death food without feeling bad. Those of us who actually eat at McDonald's know the real reason for these kiosks -- instead of having to pay 8 minimum wage teens to take your order and get your food, they can get by with 4. They won't need breaks, they won't insult customers, and once the customer learns where his particular favorites are on the system -- they'll get the orders in faster. They're not trying to con you into buying more death food, they're trying to get rid of a few more employees.

It's up to you to decide what's worse.

The grass is always greener...

Now that democrats have won control of both houses there's renewed talk of socializing medicine and making sure everyone's covered. It works so well in other countries -- they spend less, and they're healthier. Right? Heaven knows the amount we spend for our families health insurance is positively insulting, it's so high. Absurdly high fees for stuff that shouldn't have any fee at all. One price for people with one insurance, another price for people with Medicare, and another (even higher) price for people without health insurance. So socialized medicine would be great.

But....

My son was diagnosed in utero with a birth defect known as Dandy Walker syndrome. It's a fairly rare brain disorder, and most doctors know little about it. He has required some medical attention beyond that of a normal child, and he is a little developmentally delayed. He's also cheerful, happy, and despite being delayed in some aspects, he's pretty bright too. And, if we'd lived in England he would probably never have been born. This is not conjecture, this is from reports on the support boards from people in European countries with the wonderful socialized medicine programs. Sure they have lower infant mortality rates -- if you abort a child who might put a strain on the medical system before he's born, he won't mess up your high statistics. A lot of those European dandy walker kids have spent a lot of time in this country, and owe their lives to our outdated, inefficient, greed driven medical system.

Just something to think about...

What was that?

There are 2 articles on Slate.com that Have me kind of scratching my head right now. The first one, Thanks for the Brain, Stupid implies that we are smarter because our human ancestors interbred with Neanderthal and acquired a gene for brain size that made us smarter. The author then goes on to say the gene is missing from African descendants, because there weren't very many Neanderthal in Africa. Do you see what's being implied here? 'Cause it really sounds to me like he's implying that white Europeans are smarter than Africans. I sure hope that's not the case.

The second one is an article entitled Doctor, There's a Lawyer in My Womb which is about the supreme court and partial birth abortions. So what I'm wondering is, should we have performed partial birth abortions on lawyers?

Hmmm...

Playing Catchup

I've been going through my website lately, in preparation to actually doing the first real update in a year. Lately the biggest thing I've used my domain and server for are email accounts and file storage (I'm hosting the files for a friend's music site among other things). So last night was a hunt for missing files and dead links (the review for St Elmo's Fire seems to be missing, no big loss, but it leaves dead links). Once those are repaired, it will be time to update certain sections (the computer page, world of cars, and world of homes are definitely out of date), remodel others (find a way to better integrate this blog into the opinion page), and finally add new content (I've added a dozen dozen of movies to the collection, and really want to praise some excellent titles I've come across). After having this site up for 10 years, it's the least I could do...

Having a bad flashback

The page says I've been blogging for a whole month now. That's not exactly true, I've had a soap box page going for years (back to when I actually approved of the Clinton administration). I even had a blog set up with blogger when they first started. Problem is, the site was so darned unreliable it was too much of a hassle, so I stuck with the old way. So after getting curious about GMail and the other Google services, I decided to try it again. Soooooo

Imagine my annoyance this morning when, as I'm trying to do the earlier post, the system disappeared on me. It's been 3 years or more since my first attempt and they're still having problems? I hope it was just a glitch...

Now the aftermath...

Nancy Pelosi gets to be speaker of the house. You know what they say, you'd better be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. She's now the second biggest target for every conservative journalist in the country (right after Hillary), and if she slips up even once she's going to get hammered.

"The Has Been" on Slate.com was crowing his joy about the democratic victory, and blamed the republican loss like this:

In fact, the best news of the 2006 elections is the opportunity it gives Democrats to earn the lasting support of the independents and disgruntled Republicans whose votes just dropped in our laps. Tuesday was the death knell for Rovism—the quaint and now fully discredited theory that majorities are built not by expanding support with ideas that work but by mobilizing extreme minorities with ideas that aren't meant to be enacted and wouldn't work if they did.

Amusingly enough, the author seems to have forgotten that this was the main reason the democrats lost so badly in the past. But then again, lessons like this are easily forgotten in the political world.

In The Afterglow

Well, I voted -- did you? I ended up voting pretty evenly for republicans and democrats, though more of my votes seemed to be more against one candidate than for the other. But I guess that will be the big story of this election -- although that's been the growing trend in elections for the past16 years or so. Sad isn't it.

There is one thing that always struck me as strange -- the votes for judges. It's like the old communist party elections where you wouldn't vote for your favorite candidate, just yes for the man in power (unless you had a death wish, then you could vote no). I usually vote no on all judicial retention ballots -- I feel judges should be held accountable more than they are, and not having to be held accountable for thier rulings doesn't seem right.

But that's just my opinion...

Bad to the Bone

Since I have sirius radios in my car and truck, I can use the listen online function at work. It's pretty cool, and makes the day go by a little faster. Right now I'm listening to "Bad to the Bone", remembering the first time I heard it. I was on a date with Beckie Higgins, and we went to see the movie Christine -- I'd read the book, so I thought the movie might be cool (a delusion I've since grown out of). The only real scare of the film was at the very end: They've run the demon car through the car crusher, the hero stands in the bright sunshine with his best girl at his side watching the cube of metal come out. Then, all the sudden, a piece of metal pops out of the square, the theater is plunged into complete and total darkness, and the open chords of "Bad to the Bone" come booming out of the speakers...

Everyone -- and I mean everyone screamed. It was great.

Poll vaulting

Well, today's the day. Everyone go out and vote. I have to confess to a large degree of ambivalence today. I generally vote Republican for state offices, not so much because I think they're better than the Democratic candidates, but in Illinois a vote for a Democrat is a vote for Chicago. I don't agree with the theory that says "What's good for Chicago is good for Illinois" -- it usually means more of our tax money shifted to help susidize a city that can't support itself without help. The republican candidate for representative is such a bonehead though. He says he's the only prolife candidate -- good, so am I -- but he has no other ideas, and I know that it doesn't matter that he's prolife, he can't change anything. And his campaign keeps calling the house...

In a way, I hope the democrats win big tonight -- not that I think they'll do better than what we've got now, the entrenched leadership will be too busy pushing thier tired old agendas to actually make any real change. Plus, Slate.com will (hopefully) back off the 'we hate everything republican so much" rhetoric they've been printing lately. The site has been nearly unreadable for the last week.

It's hypnotic, isn't it

Did you ever go to the blogger home page, not sign in, but watch as the new postings go scrolling by? One right after the other, in an endless scroll. Occasionally something will catch your eye -- something in a foriegn language, something using alternate characters, or perhaps the phrase female ejacultion (boy, that catches your attention just about anytime, doesn't it?). And when I press the button to publish this, someone may catch my little comment about the scroll and stop to see what I mean.

Or not, what do I know....

OK... so that much works

Yeah, I know. I just did this -- just had to make sure it worked. The first posting ended up in my server logs. What can I say, my web hosting site is cheap, but a little strange as far as ftp settings go. Could explain why the page doesn't get updated as often as it should. Actually, it hasn't been updated at all lately. I went back and checked, and in the description of my current desktop PC it still has my old ti4200 card listed (as well as my old 15 inch flat panel). I need to go out on a big dead link hunt again, as well as needing to go and fix some missing files.

Starting anew

Ok, I've tried this before, and it didn't work out well. It seems I have a lot to say, but not enough interest to spew it out to the rest of the world. So we'll try it again. I'm at a different job where most of my day is spent in front of a computer. At home there are 3 sitting on my desk (my desktop, my notebook, and my iMac), so maybe I can find sometime to actually post at a reasonable interval.

We'll see