Fear and Loathing in Washington

Can you believe it? Bushes cronies are afraid of Cat Stevens? The man who has preached peace and love his whole life. The man who is a respected member of the academic world, who supports numerious charities and still preaches peace might be a terrorist.

He scares them alright, but I bet it is not about his support of "questionable" charities that they fear. More like they are afraid of what he might stir up in the in the flower children and the current younger generation. As a voice for peace, he threatens everything the Bush bunch stands for. Loss of all that military industrial money from war supplies.? And the Saudi connection with their ties to the 9/11 killers. and the French, Russian and Americian arms dealers who supplied Iraq for years in spite of the brutality of that government (if you can call it a govenrment).

The Patriot Act. What a name. What an insult, actually. There is nothing patriotic about it. It is a means for the government to undermine the fundamentals of freedom in an effort to placate the fears of the weak at heart cowards among the Americian people. Come on Americia. Stand up and face the music. There is a price to pay for freedom. While the attacks on us in New York are horrors none of us will forget soon, they pale in comparison to Pearl Harbor, Hitler and many, many other insults to freedom our nation has endured over the years for it's freedom.

From the same musical era; Paranoria strikes deep, into your heart it will creap...

Come on America, get a grip. Stand up and be strong and true to the rights of people. All people not just to the ones the govenrment thinks we should. We are supposed to believe people are innocent untill proven guilty. We are supposed to believe in freedom of speech. For all people. Including Cat Stevens or what ever the hell he calls himself these days.

Murder and Mayhem

I am so disgusted with the brutal murder of civilians in the name of Islamic causes. Not just Islamic causes, but any cause for that matter. It is a form of blackmail. It is nothing more than common street crime. It does nothing to advance their causes, it only offends the common decency.

I think criminals such as these should be hunted down like dogs in the street and if necessary destroyed to prevent their escape. While I strongly oppose capitol punishment, I find myself feeling these people are basically sub-human and don't deserve the rule of law. I know, I'm wrong. I know that's what is the real difference in our system (or is supposed to be), that all men are equil under the eyes of the law. But, crimes such as these are commited by the lowest form of criminal and all effort should be expended to stop them.

How many more people have to be killed in the name of God? What kind of God could approve of this kind of action? By now we should all realize it's just a man's excuse to vent his hate.

None of the Above

Just a little note on the current political mess. It's too bad our founding fathers didn't have the fore site to require a "None of the Above" checkbox on all political ballots. It would put an end to the common current practice of choosing the "lesser of two evils."

As I watch the goings-ons, One day I think he has got to go! He has no respect for the Americian way of law, freedom, equality and Americian pie. Especially when it applies to non-Americians. One of the problems the settlers had with the British rulers was the practice of locking them up and throwing away the key. Particularily effective with vocal objectors. Our current President seems to think it is not necessary to apply the rules of proper fair treatment to those he holds in cages in Cuba. He does not see the need to rigidly adhere to the rules of war, hiding prisonors from the International Red Cross. These are things we suffered in WWII. How is it possible to be guilty of those things today.

Then the next day, I look at the alternative and see a man who has almost no understanding of the normal Americian's reality of life. He seems to change from day to day. I swear this man scares me worse than the other angers me.

I want someone who stands for Truth, Justice and the Americian Way. As corny as that may sound today, it is more true than ever. So I wish there was a None of the Above box I could check and make them start all over.

Progress at last

Well, I can finally see progress on the web site. I registered The Master Geneologist and Second Site. I used Second site to build a web site from TMG data and uploaded it with WS_FTP. It's not bad but has a few rough edges. The whole thing needs a face lift, but my main objective was to get this all working. Then I'll wory about the esoterics. While I was in the regisering mood, I registered GenStar Pro and now I have the complete family tree in my Palm handhld as well.

The data in the site is the origonal data from my research. There are over 600 more names to add from the Oakley family history I have yet to import. I will get to that as soon as I can. There is a mountain of work to do and it's hard to find the time and motivation to do it. I would like to get it cleaned up, updated and produce a snapshot view on both CD and paper that can then be updated periodically. Maybe by Christmas....

The new machine is working well. I am ready to move on. I want to ghost the current drive as a backup, Install a new drive and setup a dual boot Linux system. I want to rebuild the old machine as a Linux server on the network. Lots to do. Where will I find the time?

Softening a bit

Well, I have to admit the new XP is an improvement over the old (Win98se). Crisper, cleaner graphics. The jump in speed is wonderful and this is not a super machine. But this new HP keyboard sucks. I suppose I'll get used to it. It takes a more firm touch than I am used to and it makes me drop characters constantly. The extra keys are nice in spite of my origonal skeptism. I like the AV controls in particular.

I have been doing a little work on the web site and the family tree stuff. The machine has performed well. I have only had to do the reboot thing once. For some reason, the Palm sync would not see the IrDA connection. Windows saw it, but Palm didn't. A reboot cured it, but it was a little dissappointing. I'm not sure that was Window's fault....

Under the full load of The Master Geneologist database program the system performs well. This morning, I worked on adding the digital pictures Dave and I made from Mom's stuff to the database. I did Mom first and it seemed to work well. This was one area where the old Family Tree Maker software failed miserably. TMG is serious stuff. I reccommend it highly.

The Initial Post

Well, here we go. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and had resisted, mostly because I expected it to be nothing but advertisements and because I was not sure where the value might be. After all, who wants to read my rants and complaints? Which is exactly what this could turn into unless I am careful.

I thought I might cover the home-front happenings, computer going on's and maybe some politics and other untouchables.

I suppose I should start with a couple of rants, just to get things going.

I hate Windows, Microsoft and Bill Gates. While I use his products (it is somewhat unavoidable), I am making every effort to dispose of everything Microsoft. This is an on-going thing that has evolved over the last 3 or 4 years, reaching it's peak around April of this year. I started seriously investigating a Linux alternative. Altho I had played with it as far back as Red Hat 6.0 and later 7.0, it was never really a serious attempt at replacing MS systems.

There is more detail on my web site, but the gist is the uncooperative attitude of Microsoft was finally too much and I cracked. Went Postal, so to speak. Sometimes it just stands out in glaring neon letters "I don't want you to do that, so I'm going to make it as hard as possible...." It revolved around FireFox, Intenet Explorer and Windows Favorites. It wasn't even important as I didn't really use Favorites, I just was trying to integrate FireFox with Windows and it was obvious that MS did not intend to cooperate. I seem to remember there was a big flap with the government over things like this. Leopards never change thier spots, so they say.

So, I started down the Linux path. With several years as a system admin for a small system running the Southern California version of UNIX, Linux seemed like a natural. Sure enough, I was immediately comfortable with Linux. It took a while to figure out whch distro, what programs I needed and how to configure the system, but I eventually got there. Just when things were running smoothly, my system crashed. HD failure. Oh, Damn.

My systems (I have 4 in my home network) are all home built out of mostly old junk collected from everywhere. Mine in particular is a big collection of salvaged junk. Only the motherboard and hard drive were purchased new and were cheap. I finally decided that was it. I had had enough. I wanted a new machine.

Anyway to make a long story short, I got a new HP referbed P4 3 GHz box at Fry's (Ugh, but that's another story). Now I was back to Windows and this thing had more trash on it than you could believe. I took me 3 full days of work to get rid of the trash. Everyone wanted their share of the action. From Microsoft trying to get me to buy Plus! (programs that should have come with Windows), HP trying to sell me accessories and every media company in the world trying to sell me music, It was frantic. I hate everything connected to Marketing, particularily misleading, money grubbing advertising. As Dylan said in the 60's, "Propaganda all is phoney"

Then I lost a file. I wasn't sure where the installer (FireFox again) had put the profile file, so I popped up the search screen. What was this? A fucking puppy, blinking his eyes and wagging his tail? Setting there scratching, trying to look cute, wanting to know what I wanted to do? Give me a break. Who's bright idea is this? It's a damn machine not a stupid puppy! I want a puppy, I'll buy a puppy. I bought a computer, not a puppy. Damn, things like this just prove they just don't get it. So, now I'm looking for some way to KILL THE FUCKING PUPPY! See what they've done to me. I spent over $500 for a stupid animated puppy and can't even find a way to get rid of it. I'm not even sure it's house broken and I sure don't know how to break it. It sure shit all over my day. God, I hate it. I'm gonna put in a new HD and load Linux as fast as I can Put Windoze in the back room and when the MS Police come, pretend I don't know what they are talking about . "I swear, guys, I never killed no puppies."