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A slow news day…

This morning over my morning coffee I noticed that the News feeds hadn’t changed their headlines much.

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The news lead on Google is about the botched execution where the inmate later died of a heart attack. 

While that’s an important issue I’m somewhat disinterested. The inmate died. That was, after all the desired result of the execution.

That the inmate died in a way that was not according to plan and obviously less than peacefully isn’t something I’m particularly worried about. I presume that his victim(s) didn’t die peacefully either. Perhaps this was simply Karma playing out.

I’m ambivalent about the death penalty.

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I used to be a staunch supporter, but now I’m not as sure as I once was. I’m not in favor of the death penalty today because there have been so many instances where the person convicted of a crime had their conviction overturned by DNA or witnesses recanting their stories.

Given these occurrences, I’m not sure that taking another persons life is truly the best solution. Death is final, conviction of a capital crime, on the other hand, may not be.

Regardless of where you stand on the death penalty, we as a society all bear the responsibility for throwing the switch.

Each of us is taking another person’s life by proxy. That responsibility is something that I am not convinced I should accept. 

As a result, I have voted NO in recent elections where the Death Penalty was on the ballot. Even with my NO vote, if executions are still being carried out in the name of the society (of which I’m a member) I still bear responsibility for taking another’s life.

On the other hand, if I were to see someone kill another human being during the commission of a crime with my own eyes… 

Sorry… Mr Killer, you’re a dead man.

My thoughts on this subject may be confusing to some, but this logic illustrates a point.

You don’t have to be 100% in either the liberal or conservative camp. You can use your mind and information to decide what you think is right or wrong from either side of the political coin.

In general I think our “News” organizations are failing us and that they have all become so biased as to be unreliable.

Cases in point

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Why hasn’t the media picked up on the recently retired Representative Keith Farnham (D) from Illinois being charged with possessing child pornography?

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From Breitbart, Why haven’t the Media Outlets reported the other cases of BLM overreach? There’s an interesting article here  discussing a “Land Grab” in California. Essentially the property owner has had his property value reduced to zero because he can’t build, subdivide, or sell the property to anyone except an organization that will then turn the land over to the BLM.

This guys had this kind of thing happen to him twice with two different pieces of land! 

There’s another piece on Breitbart about the BLM that further illustrates government overreach.

This stuff is Newsworthy. 

These articles are exactly why the media is supposed to be unbiased. Without the media, these kinds of abuses go on every day and allow our government to become more powerful, more abusive, and less American every day.

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Conservatism is no longer he ravings of a few disgruntled rich, fat, white men, or the lunatic fringe whose poster boy is Rush Limbaugh.

Each and every one of us should be concerned and taking notice. If a low level organization like the BLM can get away with this kind of thing, it begs the question;

What can higher level organizations get away with?

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It Begins…

High Winds + Warmer Temps + Long drought = Wildfire

The Etiwanda Fire appears to be the first of the season.

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Looks like we’re going to have a long fire season.

Nothing much to do but make sure that you have a bugout kit.

This particular fire isn’t too big a deal to us on this side of the mountain, some folks in the foothills above Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario have been evacuated

This does serve as a reminder that all of us need defensible space around our homes. Take out the dead brush and make sure that you have your evacuation plans and rally points well defined so that you & your loved ones can meet if you get separated.

Lots of folks left for work this morning and they’ll find they can’t get home tonight due to mandatory evacuations.

If you have friends in the evacuation areas, you might try giving them a call. I’ll be making some phone calls a bit later to offer my guest room to friends.

As of this time, there’s no air support because the winds are too high for the aircraft to take off.

Be Safe

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Public opinion and the NBA

Sterling Banned from the NBA over private racist comments??? Say What?

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While it’s not an excuse, he is an old man. He was probably raised steeped in racism.

When we discuss a kid who carjacks someone amid a hail of gunfire, we say “The poor kid. He’s a product of his environment.”

However when a rich white man makes comments in private we refuse to see that he is as much a product of his environment as the carjacking kid. What’s the difference? The white guy is supposed to know better?

When these events become public we demand punishment, we deprive the rich man of income, we sanction him, and force him to sell his property (in this case a franchise).

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Hell I remember separate water fountains, bathrooms, and diner counters that were off limits to any person of color. I’m 30 some odd years younger than Mr Sterling. There’s that old hackneyed saying about Old dogs & new tricks. Perhaps that’s a bit true.

I’m not suggesting that what  he said was acceptable.

The violation of his privacy was, to my mind more unacceptable. The news media running with the story, ginning up anger and public outcry is flat out wrong.

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The players and the team should be thankful that Sterling isn’t a scorched earth kind of guy.

He can’t do it now, but at the outset of all this insanity he could have fired the Clippers staff, then he could have fired the players. Effectively killing the team before the NBA had a chance to step in.

I don’t follow basketball. I honestly don’t enjoy it and don’t see the point. The after game interviews are nonsensical and I’ve got better things to do with my time.

What caught my attention was the manner in which everything came crashing down on Mr. Sterling.  How many federal cases has he been involved in over racist behavior? You know, refusing to rent to non-white people because they weren’t white?

Only NOW because a private conversation was publicized has the NBA decided it was important to punish this guy?

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It wasn’t about him actually being demonstrably racist in a public venue.

It was about him being perceived as racist.

If this is becomes the norm, we’re seriously screwed because this heralds the death of free speech.

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Weird weather

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70ºF One day and Snow the next.

On the other hand I am glad to have the rain, even if it turns into snow late at night.

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The dogs like it too. But they don’t really like having to pose for photos. Hence the nose and face in shadow.

I was hoping for a really long storm. It would have been nice to have the water and I’ll admit I’d have liked to have seen the wash flood.

I like the sound of rushing water especially if it’s reshaping the wash to it’s natural contours and filling in the gaping ravine that the flood control district created.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Grand Canyon, the one in Arizona. But the one behind my house is a really bad imitation.

Nonetheless, I don’t think I’ll be hearing the rushing of water anytime soon. All the predictions say that this year is going to be dryer than the previous couple years.

Time to rework the sprinkler system to drip water so that I can at least preserve the raspberries, blackberries & grapes. The landscaping in the front yard is mostly desert stuff so thankfully I don’t have to worry about it too much. 

I was planning on a vegetable garden this year, but given the drought conditions I’m rethinking that. I don’t know if the cost of water would exceed the cost of the vegetables I’d be able to grow. I suspect it would once the drought conditions get worse. 

Some places in California are already sending out the “Water Police” looking for wasteful people. I’m sure that Rationing is next and that we’ll see water prices shoot up along with penalty surcharges for any baseline overages.

It’s going to be a long dry summer. 

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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…