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Republican Primaries

In the strangeness that is this election season, it’s worth noting that after all the posturing and all the machinations Mit Romney still wins.

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It’s also interesting to note that the rabidly anti-gay, profoundly conservative Christian Fundamentalists are sucking hind tit.
Romney, is as conservative as all the others. He’s made his beliefs very clear.

The fact that he is a Mormon, and that the Mormon Church has funded almost all of the attacks on gay marriage legislation should make it damn clear that he’s not going to be supportive of any same sex marriage legislation. But of all the candidates at least Romney has been talking more about the real issues of the country.

The Financial issues of course being near and dear to the Mormon church. Why? Because the Mormon church has significant financial holdings in, or, owns several of the largest banking/credit enterprises in America. Of Course Romney has no interest in that little detail… Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Romney won NH because he was closer to addressing the real concerns of Americans.

This election year  the American People are far less concerned about so called “Hot Button” moral issues than they are about keeping or FINDING new jobs,Not losing their homes in foreclosures, and figuring out how to pay for the 2 wars we’ve been fighting for a Decade!


The saddest part, or perhaps the most disturbing part is that the GOP is so utterly checked out of “Normal” Americans lives.

Most of the Republican candidates know a whole lot about protecting the interests of the wealthy.

What’s amazing is that  they are so disconnected from their base, that they actually think they can win based on platform of Bible thumping, and Fag bashing.

I’m a cynic… I have a darker theory about what this system has become.

The debates have sounded more like tent revivals than discussions of solutions to the problems our country faces.

Several of the “So Called” candidates when asked any questions of substance have actually sounded like the Revival Tent Preacher who gets asked about the failure rate of his Miracles..

“Uh well, faith is powerful, and lack of faith is powerful… uhhh and Satan drives people to sin and sinners are punished. Uhh God is great.. uhhh… Next question….” as two big thugs hustle the questioning infidel out of the tent.

I think that Romney will be the Republican Nominee.

I’ve come to believe all the rest of the so called Republican candidates are there just to create the illusion of choice, while providing great reality TV.

After all, this whole process looks a lot more like “Survivor” than an actual process governed by the will of the people.

In November the election will pit Obama v. Romney… and Romney will win.

This will again be to convince the people that the Political system works and they have a choice….

Then in January 2013 Romney will take office and it will be business as usual.

And we’ll still be deep in the shit just as we are today…

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Republican Nominees Am I missing it or are they pretty much all the same?

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Alright, I admit it…

I actually sat through one of the New Hampshire debates. Well most of it anyway, before I had to go throw up.

Now that Ms. Bachmann has left the race I find that I’m paying more attention the the so-called “real” candidates. I just couldn’t help myself before. I kept focusing on ol’ crazy eyes and thinking to myself this woman is already a member of Congress representing Minnesota.

How the hell did that happen?

Now that she’s out of the race I was watching the posturing by the remaining candidates and discovered that if I closed my eyes i honestly couldn’t tell the candidates apart. There were two exceptions to this I could identify Gingrich and Romney.

Perry, Santorum, Huntsman and Paul pretty much sounded alike. I’m speaking here of their answers and their voices…

They all sounded like the background chatter at a really bad party. You know, the kind of party where everyone is just drunk enough to make complete asses of themselves but not quite drunk enough to leave.

I will say this, Romney “sounds” Presidential . He’s got a resonant quality to his voice that is compelling and commanding. By comparison Gingrich, sounds a little whiney.

Romney also has the classic “Presidential Look”. Gingrich by comparison looks a bit like the kind of guy who should be in the back room of a meat packing plant with a fat cigar making deals about who is going to have control of a trash delivery route.

I think it’s going to come down to a Romney nomination.
If we assume that President Obama is out, then I’m betting as people choose among evils I think they’ll choose Romney.

The thing to remember is that The President really has far less impact on policy than we give him credit for.

America is a very big ship, and like the Titanic it doesn’t turn on a dime. The presidential influence over a four year span is pretty minimal. If you consider that we ended up where we are after two terms of a fiercly conservative President and essentially 8 years of fighting wars on two fronts (Everyone knows that’s a bad idea…) then it’s completely unrealistic to expect a President to change the countrys direction in a single term.

Yet that is exactly what people expected of President Obama, and here we are poised to have the same unrealistic expectations of a New President.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of President Obama. But the reasons aren’t because he “Failed” to bring about Change or increase Hope. I have always been concerned that President Obama was inexperienced and that he’s way too much of an apologist.

As to his ability to govern, well that is directly related to how co-operative the congress is. I think we ALL know how that’s working out.

It’s a given that the current crop of Republican candidates are going to be conservative. If anything the Republican party is attempting to present an almost polar opposite choice to President Obama. This is typical thinking of the current Republican party. Most of the moderates have decided to shut up and sit this one out.

The GOP is all about an almost binary logic (On/Off, Right/Wrong, Belief in God/Atheist). They’re sadly missing the point that a large majority of America is actually pretty moderate.

I’m increasingly having a hard time forcing myself to believe that our system is still working…

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New Years Eve

As I’m scanning & shredding documents, backing up computers, and trying to collect all the little bits of flotsam and jetsam that will be required for my tax guy, I’m struck by a number of things from the year gone by.

We came into this new year with 2 wars raging.

The housing crisis was, and still is with us. Government propaganda not withstanding.

The people (as in We the People) are learning to flex their muscle using social media and I was surprised to see in the latter part of the year corporations yielding to pressure from consumers. I sincerely hope that more corporations and especially the United States government agencies take note.

The TSA is still strip searching folks based on racial profiling. (Yes, think about it… think about the demographics of the TSA abuses…) This is an organization that needs a major overhaul but they also serve as an object lesson in how Power corrupts absolutely.

Our Economy has taken some serious hits, so has the world economy. I was watching the news the other night and the reported mentioned that China was experiencing an economic downturn. I blew my drink out my nose. The reporter almost sounded like they were trying to spin it as “Poor China” which was annoying… But the more interesting thing is that since so much of the stuff in the stores is Made in China… What does it mean if China is having a manufacturing / economic slump? One would hope that it means Americans are buying American goods. Somehow I doubt that is the case since it takes time for manufacturing companies to move factories and supply lines.

Occupy Wall Street was a good and a bad thing. On the Good side… It demonstrated that Americans are getting fed up with greed and obscene abuses of wealth, power, and their good will. I’m actually glad to see that happen.

On the bad side, There wasn’t a lot of coherent thought in the Occupy protests and I think Occupy… wore out it’s welcome in the minds of the American People.

We lost some good people this year. Classic actors, thinkers, and creators. I hope in 2012 we’ll see people step up and fill those voids in our culture.

It seems that everyone is ready to have this year come to a close. I’m personally right there with them.

I don’t know what 2012 will bring (Other than a Presidential Election, which is sure to be a major embarrassment for America) but I, like all Americans am built to be optimistic.

For an American, a new year is opportunity and it must be better than the previous year.

As you all head out to your New Years Eve revelries please remember…

Be safe, enjoy your parties, your families, and your friends. Lets make this new year a good one.

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RAID Array is toast… (Update)

My Buffalo LS-QL R5 8TB started failing in September. Since that time I have re-formatted the unit, tested the drives (no problem found), re-formatted again, re-flashed the firmware (Lots of fun finding that..) And through it all been completely unable to get any response out of Buffalo Tech.

I thought I had everything squared away but the unit died again after 10 days of operation.

Report Last night at Midnight

Running Time
: 10 days
, 15:34:32
[HDD Usage Status]
RAID Array 1 Usage Rate
: 747128112 kbytes / 3890505728 kbytes (Usage Rate
19%)
[DISK error status]
DISK1 0
DISK2 0
DISK3 0
DISK4 0

Report This morning at 5am

HDD error occurred
Disk(s) the error occurred
:UnknownDisk()
(sda) WRITE sector:12016445 count:1
Disk writing error
Some data may not be recoverable.
Immediate change of disk is recommended.

I’d happily change the disk IF I COULD FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE!

“Unknown Disk”??? How is that possible?

NAS Navigator for Windows appears to be accurate (more or less)

NAS Navigator for Mac reports:
“Unformatted / Unconnected” at the same time the drive is in fact running. and also reports “E13: An error has occurred on RAID ARRAY 1”

But that’s it! Nothing specific enough to actually diagnose or correct the problem.

I’m really not up for doing the math to figure out which drive that sector is on.

All the drive indicator lights are green and the drive is doing a disk check after powering down due to the error. I was hoping that at least one of them would be flashing red.

Buffalo Technology is not interested in providing products that are reliable or serviceable. This can be easily illustrated by reading their support forums, if you can… Some of the comments from the buffalo support team are far less than customer oriented and in some cases downright nasty.

Their software is buggy, and they do not appear interested in updating anything to correct their deficiencies.

If I had to do it again, Buffalo Technologies equipment would not be anywhere on my list of potential purchases.

If you’re looking for a NAS… Look at another manufacturer.


————– UPDATE —————–


After fooling around more with the Buffalo unit and at one point “BRICKING” the array and it’s enclosure entirely. I have identified that 3 of the four drives consistently fail. This is after having formatted and tested the drives on another computer and each of the drives reporting no errors. I did figure out that (sda was drive 1 buy moving it to slot 2 where it became sdb.) You know… I didn’t want to guess about that and with 3 drives reporting problems I wasn’t wanting to make any assumptions. It appears that Disk 1 is sda, Disk 2 is sdb, and so on through sdd. That might have been bloody useful to actually PUT IN THE FAQ on the Buffalo Web site. Even a simple “yes that’s the way we report a failure.” would have been helpful.


A 75% drive failure in the same enclosure is interesting as hell to me especially where there has been no abuse, vibration, or other factors outside of normal operation. This is well beyond what the MTBF numbers say should happen. Nonetheless, when the drives are all put back in their array, they fail I’m now two for two and am calling the 3 drives toast.


I think it’s suspicious that the failure occurred on all three drives at the same time. But then again I’m a suspicious kind of guy.


So now I’m left with spending $165 per drive to replace them, thereby bringing the Buffalo unit back online and wondering if there’s something else going on… Or I could just bite the bullet and replace all 4 drives and hope the problem isn’t in the enclosure itself….


OR I can purchase a WD 3TB Mybook NAS. It’s non-raid but apparently Buffalo Technologies RAID5 array isn’t as redundant as its supposed to be. 


On the upside… I have significantly LESS data to worry about now anyway.


If I could buy 4, 3TB drives and put them in my existing Buffalo enclosure I’d consider it, since it would be an upgrade. BUT Buffalo technologies isn’t updating the firmware on my enclosure so that’s not an option.


TO BestBuy Boy Blunder! …………………………………..


I now have a nice happy WD 3TB My Book Live plugged into the port the Buffalo Tech unit used to occupy.  I paid 200.00 for the new machine. I have several ports open on my maser switch so If I need additional storage space… I’ll buy another 3TB and move on.


Yep, no RAID but as long as I’m going to have to backup the data to another media anyway who CARES?

I noticed some variant OS builds on the net for the Buffalo enclosure. Maybe if I get really bored I’ll flash one of those to the unit and see if someone else’s FREE implementation works better than the factory build. I’m going to have to be REALLY BORED!

By really bored… I mean so bored that masturbation is off the table… AS IF!

Again if you’re looking for NAS devices… Avoid Buffalo Technologies.

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As we head into 2012…

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First there are the doomsday cults expecting the world to end 12/22/2012. If the Mayans got it right…

Personally I’m curious to see how these cults deal with the end… or the lack thereof.

I remember a young man, his wife, and their children who had quit work and spent their savings expecting the rapture some pastor had predicted. They had no fall back plan if in fact the pastor was wrong and I re-member wondering what on Earth they were going to do if they weren’t “Raptured”.

I guess we’ll find out what happens on 12/23/2012.

Then there is continuing unrest in the middle east. (Humm maybe the Mayans did get it right)

We’re coming up on a presidential election year. That means that we’re going to have to endure the mud slinging and stupidity of a bunch of politicians that really don’t deserve the nomination of their parties.

But again if the Mayans are right… well, whoever we elect wont take office because the world is going to end. Perhaps that’s a mercy.

As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not at all impressed with the Republican Candidates. I’m hoping that a decent shake-out will improve the pool but I’m not holding my breath. I’m confused as hell as to why these nut-jobs are campaigning so hard against gay anything.

Gay marriage is the least of their worries, if elected they’re going to inherit an almost completely dysfunctional government and as President, frankly they’ll have little they can do to fix it. The key isn’t so much the President… It’s the House and Senate, There’s where the real power lies.

A small lesson President Obama has learned the hard way, much to his dismay.

Forget about the President folks… Keep your eye on any senate or house elections that’s what will make or break us.

I had to laugh this morning at Newt Gingrich saying that as President he’d ignore Supreme Court decisions that he didn’t agree with. WTF???? That’s how you create a regime like Saddam Hussein’s.

Oh and Newt… FYI this uneducated backwoods HICK from one of those red states KNOWS that you can’t do what you’re suggesting without dismantling the constitution.

I suspect that the folks in this country would have a serious problem with a President that attacked constitutional protections or sought to simply toss the constitution out the window.

Of course my fellow citizens said nothing when the patriot act was passed and even less when President Obama extended it another four years. So I could be wrong… perhaps the American People are ready to be subjugated under the rule of a despot. Maybe Gingrich has a point.

I’d like to think that my fellow citizens would be marching in the streets if a President tried to disband the constitution. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep that fantasy in the upcoming election year.

I’ve been working on my New Years Resolutions.

Get Stronger

Get Healthier

Become a little more social

Have a LOT MORE SEX! (I can make this doomsday stuff work for me… “Hey Baby, the worlds gonna end soon so lets just fuck.“)

Oh and Get a JOB! Then use the money from the job to build a survival strategy and lay in supplies… Hey nothing wrong with a little planning 😉

Stay tuned, I may be adding to this list.