Category: Musings

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You know I was thinking about politics…

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Now wait, it’s ok.

I was wondering why a happy go lucky guy like me who’d been able for decades to ignore politics, taxes, and all the foolishness, of the government suddenly got interested.

It’s counterintuitive as hell.

Then I started thinking back, remembering my life before my interest in politics.

I was busy, I had lots of work, the companies where I was working were competitive and only cared if you could do the job, not the effete university from which you’d purchased your diploma.

For that matter diplomas actually held weight. A degreed individual was actually someone that you could go to for answers to real problems. Instead of the narrow-minded stovepiped “specialists” we have today.

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Time spun on, and I was still working, although the jobs were getting less plentiful. I didn’t often notice the politics and most of what I did notice was scandal or unbelievable stupidity. But politics was infiltrating my life year after year.

Five years became ten, ten became twenty, and well… you get the picture.

Flash forward many years to now, and I realized that politics has simply become all encompassing and intrusive. Its everywhere and there is no escape.

It’s not just politics it’s highly polarized politics charged with divisiveness and fueled by a willingness to ignore anyone else’s opinion regardless of the validity of a dissenting opinion.

And that’s whats drawn my attention, its this complete dismissiveness of the other guy that pisses me off.

So now I find I can’t look away even if I want to.  Its sort of like looking at an accident in progress, you want to look away but you just can’t bring yourself to close your eyes until after you see the horror.  That’s our political system these days a disaster in progress.

Kind of a sad commentary when you think about it.

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Islam is a religion of Peace and justice?

I was willing to buy Islamic fundamentalists were giving Islam a bad name… Then I noticed that people purporting to be Islamic, are all over the planet doing the most horrific things.  

Even the worst of Christian Fundamentalists aren’t running around burning, kidnapping, killing, and engaging in the slave trade. Most of the time they’re running their mouths and nothing else.

When I see stuff like the snippets below, I have to rethink my position.

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Boko Haram kidnaps schoolgirls to sell into slavery.

What can you say?

Islam says slavery is OK. I find it ironic that 300 – 400 years after the white man was being sold slaves on the Nigerian coast.

We have slaves being sold from a Nigerian Islamic to other Islamic countries as sex slaves.  Honestly, this makes my heard hurt. 

CAIR would say; “Islam is a peaceful religion. This is a group of fundamentalists. They don’t represent the mainstream of Islam.”

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For the record, I’m opposed to the US Military becoming involved in Nigeria.

My reasoning is this; our military would be encumbered by rules of engagement.They’d have journalists, and cinematographers and cameras of all types up their asses.  I’d suggest sending in Blackwater or another Mercenary group instead. 

No reporters, no photographers, no movie crews, and nobody is going to say anything about what’s done to boko haram.  The civilized world will look the other way. So any of those crazy mercs that need to get their freak on… This is the time and place to go let their killer instincts run wild.

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Give them the simple requirement. “Get the children back.” Pay them handsomely and if they happen to run across assets of Boko Haram like gold, or bank accounts, well, nobody needs to know about it do they?

The West would be be doing the peaceful followers of Islam a favor by wiping this aberrant group off the planet.

Then everyone could get to know Islam as the peaceful and gentle religion it is. 

Crucifixions In Syria

There’s the village in Syria where the people still spoke Aramaic.

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A village of christians who were terrorized by an Islamic para military group with the threat of crucifixion if they didn’t convert to Islam. Those who maintained their faith in Christ were in fact crucified.  

CAIR would say; “Silly rabbit, that old Convert or Die belief isn’t something Islam takes seriously anymore. This was obviously a group of deranged fundamentalists.”

Rape Victim to be caned

The woman was GANG RAPED. The rapists thought she was having an affair. They Raped her to punish her and then when the justice system of her country found out she’d been raped, Allah’s infinite mercy was to cane her for being a victim.

CAIR would say; “The woman must have done something requiring the punishment of gang rape.”

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Facebook insult to Muhammed, CITY on lockdown.

Yesterday, Bangladesh had trouble because someone insulted Muhammad on facebook. Apparently a muslim mob took to the streets pillaging and generally terrorizing everyone else.

CAIR would say; “ ?????”

We won’t even talk about what most islamic countries do to gay people!

At the risk of CAIR calling me names…

This isn’t aberrant groups within the fabric of the religion. The IS the fabric of the religion. As proof I submit to you that these atrocities are happening worldwide, on a daily basis. The only common element is that the people are followers of Islam.

These aren’t independent fundamentalist terror cells. These are average people with a threshold for violence that’s set so low if they can’t find an enemy to kill, they’ll apparently kill each other at random for the slightest reason.

This behavior begs the question for me, what exactly are these people hearing from the Imams in the Mosques?

The only answer that fits behavior is something like “everyone hates you, they would deny you your religion, everyone else is evil and would eat your children, they’re coming to get you, when they do these evil people will rape you, your wife, your children, and then they’ll burn your home to the ground.” Hell after hearing a message like that all my life I’d be pissed off and ready to kill too!

(Wait, I do hear a message similar to that in this country. Only here it’s being said about conservatives and the Republican party on every news cast and Presidential press conference!) Another commentary for another time.

It’s been said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”

I can no longer buy into the repeated lie that Islam is a peaceful, just, religion. It can’t be, at it’s foundations its a religion based on a “convert or die” philosophy.

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Peaceful religions don’t explode into violence when their prophets are; Drawn, Insulted, or portrayed in a negative light.  

If this behavior were the norm,  Islam wouldn’t be a problem at all. The West would have already nuked the fuck out of Islamic countries for insults to Christ.

Its time for us in the West to stop attempting to delude ourselves. 

This is no religion of peace.

At best, this religion will leave it’s neighbors alone.

At worst, this is a religion that sanctions violence in all its many forms in the name of God.

The question for the West, is how to handle a ticking time bomb now embedded in every city of every nation?

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Another one bites the dust…

NewImage.pngMy Aunt received an iPad today.

This is to replace the samsung Galaxy Tablet she’d been struggling with.

All the lady wanted to do was print some of her emails occasionally. And with the addition of a new printer AND 12.99 piece of software she could more or less, from the Galaxy.

NewImage.pngI say “More or Less,” as long as she remembered how to access the software and waited long enough for the software to wake up the printer. Then remembered not to send the item to be printed several times because of the time it took for the Samsung OS to be overridden by the $12 piece of software.

Part of the software’s function is to allow the Galaxy to see that the printer was in fact ready, and had been available the whole time.

NewImage.pngApparently, she was overjoyed when she asked the iPad to print something. And it DID without her having to fiddle with anything.

I’m unimpressed with the Samsung tablets just due to the experience I had with hers.

Android is an open OS and it’s a smart system. What Samsung did to the Android OS as they implemented it in the Galaxy Tablet is a crime.

NewImage.pngI can see making changes to the OS that are specific to the hardware, the OS is running on.

I can’t see purposely limiting basic functionality in the hopes that you’ll force customers to buy your printers. Yes! I call printing basic functionality.

Arguably Apple engages in a similar closed system with FaceTime, AirDrop, and a number of other features. I recall that Apple took it in the shorts with the first generation iPad because it wouldn’t print.

Unknown.jpegI also recall that 1 or 2 IOS updates fixed that deficiency because people were flat out pissed off.

I wish FaceTime could interface with Skype so that I didn’t have to have two pieces of software that did the same thing on my systems. I wish AirDrop and Bluetooth file sharing worked across devices regardless of the OS.

I’m a big believer in choosing a machine because I like its specs, looks, and comfort rather than what OS it runs.

Seamless connectivity is one of those things I believe in.

I ought to be able to make a video call from my iPhone to a friends android.

I should be able to do this WITHOUT having to turn on Skype, determine if the person I wanted to talk to is online. Text them if they’re not online, telling them I’d like to talk to them, then wait for their Skype call.

After all of that, hell it’s easier to just call ’em on the phone and burn cellular minutes.

Apple, with FaceTime has in fact made calling another Apple customer as simple as clicking on the video camera icon and the FaceTime application doesn’t have to be running at the receiving end. The new FaceTime VoIP feature is very nice too.

I video chat to my Apple enabled friends a lot more than my Skype or Google Hangout friends, precisely because of the seamless integration.

Seamless, that’s what I want and, as it turns out that’s all my retired parents and Aunt want too.

Before you write me off as another Apple fan.

I’ve worked with and owned PCs for years. I spent the last five years dealing with Blackberries and Androids. I’ve used Skype on the Android, I even thought that Google was going to make a unifying seamless application that would allow the user to call, or video chat, or use VoIP.

They do kind of, as long as you’re running their application in the background, and it hasn’t crashed, and you have a Google account.

So I know how that stuff works and how it doesn’t, especially if you’re running on limited internal memory on your device. When it works, it works pretty well.

However, the Apple solution works better.

That’s why I’m overjoyed that my Aunt has an iPad.

I’m hoping that in short order she’s going to have an iPhone too. I like the thought that she can walk into any Apple Store and get assistance. Unlike the situation where she walks into an AT&T store and is lied to or cheated, or “up-sold” to something she has no use for, but will have to pay for anyway.

I’m also jazzed that my Mom and Aunt will be chatting face to face more often.

After all, the technology was designed to bring us together, wasn’t it?

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Pity the poor Microsoft Software Engineers.

th2TKQPARXI’ve been transitioning from Windows XP. I didn’t use it very much anymore, but I decided to move to Windows 7.

I know, lots of you out there know I like Mac systems.

Hey how can you go wrong with a Mac?  At it’s core it’s running BSD UNIX. You can even set the system up to just present you with a command prompt.

VMware Fusion allows you to run practically any other operating system you’d like on your Mac. Red Hat Linux? No problem. Windows? Which version would you like?

Mind you, it’s not like I have Windows running all the time. But I have some applications that don’t have Mac equivalents. Those applications are important to me, so it’s worth it to me to have the option to run Windows.

Recently, I converted my 32bit Windows 7 from my old netbook to a Fusion Virtual machine. It worked OK but was so large (40 GB) that I found myself rethinking the merits of keeping Windows around.

After tinkering for a couple of weeks off & on, trying to trim the size, I was about to chuck it and keep using “Old Faithful” (My Windows XP) until it became useless or I no longer needed Windows.

Then I happened to notice Amazon was selling copies of Win 7 Professional 64 bit at a very reasonable price. “Hummm, I said to myself, that could be a solution to the problem.”

After some research and soul searching I ponied up the cash to Amazon. Yesterday I received my shiny new Windows 7 disk. Less than one hour later I had a working version of Windows 7 Professional.

The Win 7 that I’d transferred from my netbook to Fusion was 32 bit and slow. It was what Microsoft called Windows 7 Home, I’d upgraded it to Windows 7 Home Premium and even then I wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t back up to my network drives. Windows contains a backup utility, but it was crippled in the Home edition so that it would only backup to DVD or some kind of physically attached storage.

Sorta makes the backup utility useless and meant that I didn’t have a backup of the netbook. Sound familiar?

After seeing what Windows 7 Professional is like I realized what Microsoft had done and that’s when I felt compassion for the Microsoft engineers.

The software developers created a very nice operating system with Windows 7.

It’s obvious that they worked hard and tried to correct issues that people had complained about with previous versions of Windows. At the same time, they clearly worked hard to advance user convenience and make a robust feature rich system.

They succeeded! Dare I say it, Windows 7 Pro is actually pleasurable to use.

That will get me excommunicated from the Mac world!

thV76JZMNHIn the case of Windows 7, I think what we have here is a case of marketing run amok.

There appear to be no less than 4 different versions of the OS.

I remember looking at the versions when I got the netbook and thinking really? There were all these versions and they all had different price points. ALL EXPENSIVE! and it was unclear what you got from one version versus the next version.

The average user doesn’t give a damn. But their experience with the OS is unsatisfying when they find they can’t change their desktop backgrounds, or that they can’t backup to their network drive unless they upgrade. 

It feels like Microsoft is nickel dimeing them to death for simple and realistically expected features. (This is especially true when Apple distributes a fine robust operating system for $20 or as they’ve done most recently for FREE.)

The software engineers probably built two versions of Windows 7, a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. They probably built some ad-on packs that made the security more robust for corporate America.

They tested it and called it good. Then marketing came along and said “It’s nice but we’d like to charge for features that the ‘Average’ user will never use. so we’re going to need you to remove all this nice stuff and create a Home user edition.”

thAA1L8H7OThat’s when the butchering began.

Think of it like this, You’re lying on the operating table and the doctor has just finished surgery for some illness. Then the accounting people from the hospital come in and tell him to remove one of your kidneys, one of your lungs, perhaps one of your testicles or ovaries, and oh, one eye. After all they’ll preserve these things and should you decide you really need them, they’ll charge you to put them back in.

I’m sure that the Software engineers were pretty bummed out. There’s nothing worse than having to butcher your creation in the name of dollars. Especially when the changes you’ve been told to make are tantamount to hacking the shit out of it. (Interesting side note, The number of security fixes for Win 7 Pro, is significantly less than for Win7 Home Premium.)

thH2BFDT2SNow that I’m using a version of the OS that is probably close to what the engineers intended I’m actually impressed.

I’m glad I got a copy of Windows 7 Professional to replace my old Windows XP. Hopefully, I’ll get 6 or 7 years out of this version.

It also occurs to me that in this age of bring your own equipment, I’ll potentially have an OS that will work just fine if I end up at a company that does the BYOE thing.

The other surprising thing was that this installation of Windows only takes 12GB. I’m happy, it’s fast, small, and really a pleasure to work with.

Oh, by the way, The VMware folks produce a product that is absolutely awesome. If you’ve got a Mac and need to run Windows, buy their product. If you’re thinking of buying a Mac but are afraid of leaving Windows, VMware has you covered and their product is worth the price.

Microsoft, you really should reconsider the complications you’re creating. Have a couple of Operating Systems NOT 90! It will make it easier for you to maintain, and it will make it easier for us to decide what we’re willing to buy.

Just Sayin…

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I read this article, then in disgust, I watched Idiocracy

Draining reservoir after urination incident show tenuous grasp of science.

Idiocracy made more sense, and I felt better.

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David Shaff of the Portland water bureau should be fired immediately.

This is the guy who’s decided to toss 38 million gallons of water from an open air reservoir because one teenager pissed in it.

By the way this is the second time in three years Portland has done this over urine.

Let me stress, this is an open air reservoir.

As in open to the sky, as in open to birds flying over it; we all know what our cars look like during bird migrations. Not to mention all the dust, plant debris, dirt, insects and anything else that may fly over the reservoir and fall in.  I don’t even want to think about the mess that ducks & geese leave behind, you do know that most all birds void their bowels prior to taking flight right? Mr Shaff should be a hell of a lot more concerned about that.

Lets not forget the algae, and bacteria, that inevitably live in this body of water.

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 Even if this body of water wasn’t open to the sky, let’s assume is was somehow sealed and sterile.

The concentration of urine distributed across that volume of water would be so small as to be irrelevant. In fact, Mr Shaff would get more urine in his mouth performing oral sex with his spouse.

But, and I must stress this, this reservoir is open to the sky.

Since I have no doubt that there is an ecosystem of microscopic plants & animals in the reservoir I suspect that the material from the teenager’s few ounces of piss have already been metabolized into a generation or 100, of paramecium, or caused a minor algae bloom. In other words, the urine is gone, long gone. Consumed by the natural processes occurring in any large body of water.

The Portland water bureau should be more concerned about treating the water for waterborne illnesses than whether one guy pissed in it.  

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This whole stupid mess begs another question.

How do people with this level of idiocy manage to keep their jobs?

I’m sure Mr. Shaff has all the right papers, and diplomas. Clearly he learned all the fact and figures to pass his exams, what he apparently didn’t learn was common sense.

Instead of calling for people to be fired because of their honestly held religious or political beliefs, perhaps a better use of our time would be to call for the firing of people that demonstrate repeated incompetence.

Just Sayin…