Today, Friday, December 5th, the powers that be announced that the U.S. had lost over 500,000 jobs in November. On that news, the stock market went up a couple hundred points and home mortgage rates went up as well. What does that tell you about what the wealthy think of the rest of their fellow citizens?
Discuss this amongst yourselves...
I am currently reading Tom Friedman's new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded", and, while I haven't finished it yet, it has already given me a couple flashes of insight. First, I was reading his description of an address he gave to the China "Green Car Congress" in 2007. In this address, he was talking about the production of clean energy, but that is not what I suddenly saw. What I saw was that Mr. Friedman was describing a form of warfare; a struggle between countries for dominance. In the past this type of struggle has routinely been carried out by those quaint military contests we call wars. In the future, while we maintain a military presence, it appears that the actual contest between countries will be moved to the stadium down the street where economies vie for primacy. In case you hadn't noticed, right now China is, as Mr. Friedman describes it, "cleaning our clocks."
As Friedman so aptly states, we do have the opportunity to reverse this trend over the next few years. If we jump aboard, in a big, big way, the "green energy" (for want of a better word) revolution, we could end up selling this technology and associated hardware/software to the rest of the world. This could very well reverse the flow of money from "out" to "in", and we could go from the world's biggest debtor to being a creditor. And that would constitute a win in the ongoing war between global economic players
The price of a gallon of regular gasoline just hit 1.999 at our neighborhood independent station. This means, I'm sure, that somewhere in this part of New Jersey, I can get the Subaru's tank filled for somewhere around $1.90/gallon if I wanted to search for it. On the other hand, I shouldn't have to fill it until Saturday, by when the price could be down under $1.90/gallon at most of the local stations. I just checked one of my old car diaries (you know...a calendar where you keep track of what you spend on your car and when you spent it), and it tells me that we haven't seen prices this low since before 2004. Oh wait...we haven't seen prices this low since just before Bush took office. I wonder if anybody else thinks that this is just a little suspicious, hmmm?
Addendum (12/12/08): The price of a gallon of regular gas is down under $1.60/gallon. While I am chortling a little, I am also beginning to get a little worried about the signals the market is sending us. At this price, all those people who had parked their Hummers and Tahoes and other huge SUVs will be tempted to start driving them with abandon again. Also, all those investors who were thinking about investing in green energy systems are now probably rethinking their plans. At best, they are most likely putting them on hold until oil prices stabilize for a couple months. I know that's what I'd be doing.
I think that now would be a good time for the government to establish a floor price for gasoline. Let's call it $3.00/gallon for regular. If the price goes below that level, the US Treasury will get some added funds which Congress could use to support new energy technologies and mass transportation systems. If the price stays above $3.00/gallon, then there will be ample incentive for innovators to exploit that price in a competitive manner. Finally, we will all be encouraged by the cost to drive a little less, and that, too, is a good thing. As far as I can see, it is win-win-win with the only losers being the oil cartel and oil speculators. And that is an even better thing...
The price of gas at the local independent gas station (used to be a Getty, still has the Getty sign, isn't a Getty, though) is posted at $2.079 per gallon for regular. Now, I have been privately predicting that the price of a gallon of regular gasoline will be under $2.00 by Thanksgiving. I think the prices are right on to hit that target. I also think that, although we American's have reduced the amount of gasoline we are currently using, that reduction does not amount to a 50% cut. The price of a gallon of regular is now more than 50% less than the highest price I paid last summer (a Mobil station up in Mayfield, NY: $4.259/gallon). What this tells me is that the prices we were paying last summer were the product of speculators getting rich at our expense. I think it is time we did something about those people. They are wolves preying upon the rest of us, and they need to be stopped.
That was the famous misquote of Charles E. Wilson's actual comment before the Senate during his confirmation hearings after being nominated to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense. Although his actual statement was much less arrogant, the statement does have some validity. I read somewhere that every employee of the Big Three Automakers supports some 12 jobs out in the economy. And those are just in the local communities. If you add in all the jobs in the automotive sector of the economy, and all the jobs that those jobs support, the automobile supports at least 50% of the US economy. Now, if the Big 3 go toes up, it will not mean the endo of all those jobs in the automotive sector because other economic entities will step in to pick up some fo the slack. However, most the actual production jobs will end up off shore, and that will mean a huge hit to both the viability of our economy and our balance of payments deficit.
I gotta tell you that I get hugely irritated with jerks who go off spouting shit about letting the evil Automakers crash and burn without giving any thought to either the consequences of letting them die, or what would be needed to bring them back to vigorous health. A healthy automobile industry supports both jobs in the general economy plus their stock underpins a huge portion of investment capital in this country. I'm not talking about speculators (or, to use the current euphemism "traders") here. I am talking about all those pensions and retirement funds that have a huge chunk of Detroit's stock. If Detroit goes down, a good portion of the American workforce is going to see their hopes for a comfortable retirement go down with it.
So here is the real dilemma: Trying to rescue the American economy is such a hugely complex undertaking, that there is no way for mere mortals to actually come up with a set of plans that are guaranteed to work. Anything that we, as a society working through our leaders, do will be, at best, a dice roll--or, rather, a series of dice rolls. Some of them will work; will be sevens. Other initiatives will not accomplish what we hoped they would, and, for those, the best we can hope is that they are neutral...that they are not fatal mistakes...snake-eyes or boxcars. We can't let the sheer overwhelming complexity of the task freeze us, because that too is a dice roll.
I don't know what we should or shouldn't do, but I do know that we have to do something. My preference is to take actions that support the industry but do not reward the people who got us to where we are today. Personally, I think that the executives of the Big 3 should all be required to take a 5 year pay cut...to what the average line worker makes...as a condition of any help from the public sector. They are the geniuses who saw the SUV a cash cow. Now let them taste some of what they brewed. But no matter what, we must do something that attempts to work for a positive outcome.
We are completing today a process that began at least two years ago as Hilary Clinton began ramping up her run for the presidency. And, make no mistake about it, almost as soon as today's results are tabulated and verified, somebody out there will begin planning his/her campaign in 2012. It has always been true that presidential hopefuls started running, by speaking at political dinners and such almost as soon as their current nominating convention folded up the tents and went home. But today, the political campaigns are even more overt and ubiquitous. The newly elected sitting president has barely moved into the White House when he starts feeling the hot breath of the wannabe's on his back.
And while I don't expect it to be any different this year, especially from the Republican side, I think that the titular head of the Democrat Party has to back away from the tactical race he has run for the past year plus, and give some thought to defining just exactly what it means to be a Democrat. In other words, I think it is time to give some thought to political philosophy. The thing is, now this is possible without boring the hell out of the general populace. The Democrats have a number of email databases which connect directly to the active and involved rank and file. If Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton and other party leader could devote some time to actively working out and discussing just exactly what our ideals are, and give some straight talk about what an elected official can and cannot accomplish, I think that the shift in the body politic towards the Democrats could be solidified.
As I mentioned in the previous post The National Republican Trust has been airing some blatantly racist ads these last few days of the campaign. They have proven to me that the Republican Party is truly morally bankrupt and that it needs to be engaged in rational debate at all levels. I am sure that a majority of that party's rank and file will move to other political alternatives when they see how badly out of touch with this country's basic idealism the Republican leadership actually is.
Of course, to look at things another way, the Democrats have maybe three years to show substantial progress in cleaning up the mess left by George Bush, or they will most likely find themselves out on their ears and a new party assuming the reins of power.
The National Republican Trust PAC is airing an advertisement that, in effect, states that Obama is guilty of radicalism simply by his former association with the pastor of the Christian Church he was affiliated with. Now, Rev.Wright is surely outspoken in his condemnation of the racism that has been rampant in American culture. However, just because he is outspoken in his disgust with the hypocrisy of white America, it does not follow that Obama shares that level of outrage. But, let's face it, Obama is part of the black community...just as he is part of the white community...and, as part of that black community, he must have feelings about how people of his ethnic heritage have been treated in this country.
No, that Republican ad is not only dirty politics, it is blatantly racist in its appeal. That, for no other reason, should make the demise of the Republican Party one of the primary goals of all Americans of good will and open hearts. This kind of evil has to be found, exposed to the bright light of public scrutiny and then expunged, root and branch, from the body politic.
Yesterday, I checked a lady out of the store. Amongst her purchases were ten comic books (she was obviously buying for nephews or grandchildren.) Now, when I was a consumer of comic books, that purchase would have cost me one dollar. That would have been (when I was 12) a whole week's allowance. I could see myself doing that. Yesterday, this lady did not spend one dollar on those comic books, though. In fact, she did not spend ten dollars on those comic books. No, this nice lady ended up spending $29.69 plus tax on those ten comic books.
If the general rate of inflation kept pace with that of comic books, we should be paying about $30 for a cup of coffee at a diner...Starbucks et al would be up around $50 a cup. This is just another symptom of a much deeper malaise in our society. Think about it...
I am currently reading Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded". It is a good book, and I highly recommend it although I am currently only an eighth of my through it. What I have read so far, however, is enough to convince me that this is must reading for any American who hope to consider him(or her)self truly informed. I also have to note that some of what I have read so far could very well have been found int the Club of Rome's book, "Limits to Growth" which was publish some 35+ years ago.
So, right now I am reading about how the price of oil is directly connected to the growth and contraction of freedom around the world. What Mr. Friedman has yet to say is that it is in the interest of the oil producers to block the growth of Green Energy in any way possible. To that end, what this country really needs to do is institute a tax on imported oil that brings the price to about $50-100 per barrel above prevailing world prices. The money that flows into the government coffers from that tax should be 100% earmarked for the development and subsidizing of Green Energy sources until such time as those sources could compete on their own. I know that this is not a popular position for a number of reasons, but it is, I think, the best way to get these sources online in the shortest time humanly possible.
Following are some thoughts, observations and caveats regarding the economy.
>The smell of fear is almost palpable on both Wall Street and Main Street these days. This is truly disturbing because fears like these usually become self-fulfilling. Fear leads to withdrawal, and that will lead to further economic woes. Like I said, self-fulfilling.
>OPEC has watched the price of a barrel of oil tumble by around 50% over the past few weeks. This does not make them happy. As I write, OPEC ministers are meeting to discuss cutting production to raise those prices again. This will mean that the lower gasoline prices will be ephemeral, and that the winter heating season will be truly painful for most middle-class Americans. Neither of which will do the economy any good. However, there is a silver lining in this...at least there should be one: It gives the alternative energy developers an opening. If public policy (ie. federal funds) and private money both converge, maybe we could see our dependence on foreign oil decrease over the next few years.
>Over the years, I have had my own informal economic indicators for downturns in the economy. I look at the number of homes for sale in my part of the world coupled with the number of cars out in front yards with "for sale" signs posted on them. As those two numbers increase, the economy shows more and more signs of distress. Right now, those two indicators are going through the roof. For what it is worth.
>And, finally, from yesterday's New York Times Week In Review section, I saw a piece about Japan's Lost Decade and how we are in even worse shape now than Japan was at the beginning of that decade. That was bad enough, but the even more distressing thing to see in actual black-and-white (as opposed to having an idea that this was true but no actual proof) that we are borrowing about $2 billion per day to finance our spending. I have to tell you that a family compound somewhere in Costa Rica is beginning to look better and better. Buy the land, put up a couple of houses, smuggle in enough weapons to make it very difficult for human predators to mess with us, alternative energy (solar, wind, bio) to keep us off the grid and we are set to watch the US implode from a distance. *sigh* I know, I know...not do-able at this time...more fantasy than fact, but it does show me that the fear I referenced above infects me as well. What was that old Chinese curse, "May you live in 'interesting' times."? I think that about says it for us.
The subprime mortgage meltdown which is threatening to tank the entire global economy is absolute proof that we, as a nation, have taken a fundamental wrong turn in our moral and ethical development. What we have done is empowered the social predators among us. We have told ourselves that greed is good and that it is OK to take advantage of our fellow citizens. We have made of the dictum Caveat Emptor an excuse rather than a warning. We have bent the saying to mean that it is OK to take advantage because it is the other guy's responsibility to make sure he is not getting screwed rather than to be a warning to watch out for predators.
Damn! Just watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers in "Roberta"(1935). Every now and then, one should watch one of these old flicks just to see what we've lost and how cool some of those people really were. Ginger Rodgers should make any male still above ground stand up and take notice. Jeez, the woman is absolutely amazing. And she keeps all her clothes on...and still is smoking. The flick has a couple great songs..."I Won't Dance" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" which are also worth the price of admission alone.
"Roberta" also showed some things our culture has lost, and some things that are the same now as they were 70+ years ago. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose...I think that is how it goes...Anyhow, it is worth the time and effort to watch if only to watch Rodgers and Astaire dance and to listen to the old songs.
I don't get it, how the Republican candidates for President and Vice-President, can stand in front of microphones and cameras everyday and basically lie about Barack Obama with absolutely no fear of being called on those lies. They attack and smear his love of country, and his character with mounting shrillness, and there is no counter punch from the other side. McCain has done so many truly rotten things in his life that is sometimes is hard to decide where to begin, but it seems he has a "get out of jail" card for all of 'em because he was a POW for seven years. Personally, his being a POW does not give him a free ride. In fact, I saw the film "Manchurian Candidate" and it does not make me feel real comfortable witht the idea that McCain could be our President.
There will be more on this subject over the coming weeks. I'll be away over Columbus Day weekend, but, other than the two days that I will not have access to the 'Net, I'll be posting daily. Somebody has to.
There are two very telling news stories today that go to the heart of the rot which is eating at the core of our society and which the Republican party and Mr. Bush have been guilty of supporting since the advent of Ronald Reagan. The first story concerns the virtual collapse of Lehman Brothers. Lehman was one of the giants of the financial community, and today it is barely hanging one by its fingernails. Over the past year, its stock has lost some 90% of its market value. That means that, if you purchased Lehman's stock last year, today nine out of every ten dollars you invested is gone, gone, gone. What has brought the giant so low is, surprise surprise, the mortgage meltdown crisis. Well, for what it is worth, another name for this could be "greed run rampant." Think about it.
The other story in todays headlines is an emerging scandal at the Interior Department. It seems that for most of the Bush administration's watch, the folks who were in charge of some ten billions of dollars per year of royalties owed the government for oil, gas and minerals removed from public lands have been playing fast and loose. There are allegations of ethics infractions ranging from acceptance of gifts (read bribes) through drugs and booze to sexual encounters between government overseers and people from the private sector who were supposed to be being watched by the public employees. Again, greed and its attendant vices of excess and moral laxity are being seen by the same people who are bringing us John McCain as acceptable behaviors.
Dear lord! According to the story I read, this has been going on for the last eight years. You can't tell me that nobody has noticed anything over the past eight years. What this tells me is that all of this was probably well known, but over looked as being...OK. This is what we are all trying to get to: expense account fun and games. Well, no. This is a cancer eating at our society, and, unless we get serious about treating it, it is going to be our doom.
The sword thrust was sure and true...the beast is dead. Yep, I have sent my copy of Vista into oblivion. In the words of Monty Python, "It is an expired Vista..." I am currently reformatting the prior Vista partition to ext3 (which is what Linux prefers), and I will be whiz banging around to expand my primary partition to about 140gig and my swap partion to 20 gig. My next bit of legerdemain will be to install Damn Small Linux on my old 233mhz P-2 box and get rid of Windows98. By the time I finish, I will have two boxes running XP...my desktop and my wife's laptop. I don't expect her to ever ween from Windows. However, my goal is to be all Linux except for her laptop within two years or so.
So, now I go back to tweaking Linux until it does all the nice things I know it can do without it giving me any surprises. Vista is dead, long live King Linux...
So, I am sitting here staring at the Linux (or, more truthfully, the Gnome) Partition Editor as I contemplate sending Windows Vista...away. Dumping Vista will give me about 80 gig more disk space on the laptop, and, truthfully, I haven't booted to Vista in over a month so it is not like I ever use it. However, the thought of doing something so final...so irrevocable, has me sitting here contemplating the actually doing it. Oh well, time for me to take a deep breath and pull the switch.
I think it is time to review the late, unlamented cold war, and think about who actually won. As I remember, we were engaged in a struggle with a totalitarian regime which granted its subjects only those freedoms which were convenient at the moment. If you think that the freedom loving people of the United States won that "war", you need to think again.
Here is a lovely little report about how U.S. Agents Can Seize Laptops belonging to its citizenry without any particular reason at all. Not only can the government seize your laptops, PDA's, cell phones, digital cameras and just about anything else they feel like seizing, but they can keep the stuff pretty much indefinitely. Home of the free? I don't think so. Sovereign, independent citizens? Not any longer.
This is a huge slide down the slippery slope towards a totalitarian state. The next things we will be hearing about are internal passports and inplanted RFID chips in...oh, wait, those are already in the pipelines. Federal authorities (mostly of the Homeland Security subspecies) are already pushing for these as a way to "combat terrorism". Frankly, if this is what our response to our enemies is, then they have already won. However, I think that the fascists amongst us, while draping themselves in patriotism, are actually using the threat of terror as a cover for their reach for power. If we let them succeed, then we deserve what we get.
Birthday card seen at Barnes & Noble:
"Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened."
So, the next time some old codger grumbles at you, just smile and say, quietly, "I understand, and I think it sucks also." It does help.
He tore down Mrs. Elder's house a couple weeks ago. "He" is the guy who lives behind my mother, and who is a (shudder) developer. My parents moved into their house slightly over 42 years ago. My father had a vision of himself as a country gentleman (on weekends) puttering around his estate, mowing the field and generally being the country squire. Unfortunately, he only got to enjoy his dream for three years before dying in an automobile accident. My mother, on the other hand, has been living there from the day they moved in. She remarried, and my step father lived there for about 17 years before dying himself in 1988. I lived on the property for the first five years of our ownership until I moved off to follow my own star. However, through all these years, the house on the corner has stood there, a welcome landmark telling us that home was only a few seconds away.
I call it "Mrs. Elder's house" even though she has been dead for decades. Mrs. Elder owned the house when we moved in next house down the road. She raised Springer Spaniels who sort of took over the property as she got older. The house itself was the oldest house in the immediate area. It was the original farmhouse for a huge swath of land. However, over the years (century plus) the succession of owners had sold off parcels until, when we moved in, Mrs. Elder was down to about 9 acres, and she could not spin off any more land since the zoning was then fixed at 10 acres. So, Mrs. Elder raised, and sold, Springer Spaniels. As she got older, and the walk to the kennels became more difficult, the dogs started living in the house. By the time her residency ended (I forget if she died or she was moved to a nursing home) the place was pretty rank.
However, maybe that was a blessing for the Rista's, the family who purchased the place and moved in about 30 years ago. When Mr. Rista bought the place, he must have been near 60. His kids we grown, although one daughter still lived at home. He and his wife were nice people who worked at cleaning the place up and making it livable. At least they did for the first 10 years or so. Then Mrs. Rista died. I don't think Mr. Rista ever really got over that. When his wife died, he sort of stopped taking care of the place. Of course, he was getting older too, and, I suppose, money was an issue. Anyhow, over the next 10 years, the place began to decay. The kennels started to sag, the barn leaned a little more to the right and nothing was painted...ever.
We would see Mr. Rista, a thin, small man taking his daily hike down the dirt road they lived on at least a couple times a week. We would wave at him, and he would wave back. And the house was still there, although it did look a tiny bit shabbier. Then about five or six years ago, we suddenly noticed that we hadn't seen Mr. Rista for a while. Inquiries were made, and it turned out that he had been moved to a nursing home. His son, who lives someplace in Arizona and his daughter, who now lives a couple miles away, were now in charge of the house. Well, she, for very good reasons, and he, for not so good reasons, did not much more than pay the quarterly taxes on the place. The deterioration of the house became more pronounced and began to accelerate. Gutters started to come loose, the porch sagged, then one corner gave up the fight and collapsed. Windows were broken and filled with plywood. The roof leaked. We all watched, and clucked our tongues, but there was nothing any of my family could do as none of us had a spare couple of million dollars hanging around.
Finally, this past spring, the daughter finally gave in and sold the place. But she sold it to the developer. Now, the house was in critical shape. In fact, it is possible that it was beyond saving, but I don't know that for certain. I do know that it was a Victorian farmhouse, which means it was close to 150 years old, and that the historic society should have been called in to do a survey. They weren't. The developer closed on the property, and within a week the bulldozers were on site. As far as I know, they didn't even attempt to salvage anything from any of the buildings. One day I went up to my Mom's for something, and the house was there are always, although there were all these large yellow machines parked in the field behind the barn. The next day, when I went back up to meet with some workmen at Mom's, the house was gone. The barn was still standing, but the house and kennels were gone. We thought the barn might survive, but even that hope was in vain. Now only a flat expanse of graded dirt covered by loose hay marks the corner. I know that within the next few months (or maybe next spring, but I wouldn't bet on him waiting that long) the foundations will go in and a new huge mansion, a paean to conspicuous consumption, will begin to rise on the site.
I will miss that old house.
I am in the throes of an online auction for an HP laptop. The auction site is UBid.com. And I have learned a life lesson with this auction: don't participate in an auction where the auctioneer also holds a fiduciary interest in what is being auctioned. This auction was supposed to end 45 minutes ago, but Ubid keeps "extending" the time limit. Fucking assholes! I thought I was competing with other bidders, but, no, it seems that one of the active players is the auctioneer itself. This sucks so big time that I am almost speechless...almost, but not quite.
**Arrrggghhh** Unfortunately, the auction is now closed, and I seem to have purchased a laptop. Damn! Well, it is what I promised my son for his birthday, last month, so it is good that I finally got something for him that works. The Compaq I got on eBay turned out to not have a battery and the shell had some very strange ridges swirled around. (Possibly somebody thought this was a cool design: we all thought that something bad had happened to the machine. I sent it back and Jose has credited back to my credit card.) This machine is supposed to be factory refurbished so it should be in pretty good shape...and the description says that battery and a/c charger are included. So, it should be what my son and granddaughter need at this time.
OK, so, after the fact, I go and read the fine print. It turns out that they automatically extend the auction time if there is a bid made within the last three minutes. They keep extending the time until such time as there are no new bids within a three minute span. At which time the auction winds down, I guess. I think that policy sucks. It's like the stock exchange saying they will extend the trading day if there are any new bids or offers within 3 minutes of closing. That kind of bullshit totally changes the dynamics of the auction. Fixed goalposts at the end of the field define the game of football. The same should be true about an auction site. As it is, I will never...let me repeat that; never...go to uBid again. In fact, I will now go see if eBay has an equally egregious rule, and, if it does, I will drop my membership there as well.
'Nuff said...
I've been up in the North woods for the past five days, and while we do have cell phone service, that is the only utility we have at the cabin. The cabin was built in 1880, and it is surrounded by New York's Adirondack State Park. Consequently, the only way to get in is by boat or by hiking (which becomes difficult when you're bringing in a case of wine and 60 pounds of ice for the ice box.) There is no electricity, no plumbing, no...well, you get the idea. We get drinking water from a spring; we get washing water from the lake; we have an outhouse (use lots of lime) for that necessary; we have a wood stove in the kitchen and a charcoal grill outside. Light is via a bunch of Coleman lanterns and there is a big fireplace if it gets chilly. I do bring the laptop with me, but I use it basically as a notebook, and I keep it charged using Xantrex Technology's Powerpack 600hd. All of which is an explanation for why I haven't gotten much further with my Linux adventure.
My major concern with Linux is with the download/installation of software. I have been able to get a couple of packages loaded, but most of them end up languishing on my desktop because 1) I have no clue as to where they really should be placed (Linux has all these stock directories which are supposed to handle just about everything...and would if I could get past my Windows expectations.) Anyhow, while I can d/l and unzip applications in Windows without even thinking, in Linux doing this has become a problem. Like right now I want to install Flash v9 as a Firefox plugin and, although it runs and says that it is done, the newest version of Flash does not appear as a plugin. And now I have a Flickr downloader that I want to put in service, but I can't get it to work. And I am getting frustrated. And that is not good.
I've finally figured out how to install software in Linux. Well, let me immediately qualify that statement. I can now insall software that is available to the Synaptic package manager. Package manages in Linux find and download software and all the associated software tha program needs to work. Package managers are great for loading compiled packages; they are not so great for downloading stuff that is not compiled for Linux.
I also got a copy of Ubuntu 8.04 on a cd from Linux Magazine and did a full re-install. I wiped the Linux partition and started from scratch. However, I did save all my user files by uplading them to my Yahoo Briefcase. Once they were safe, I cleaned out the Kubuntu installation and did a full, clean install. The benefits were immediate. I find that I like the Gnome desktop, and that installing the KDE desktop just did not give me anything so compelling as to make me want to switch from Gnome. About the only thing I miss is the Amarok music player (which, although optimized for use with the KDE desktop, can be used with Gnome). I am still having trouble with the hibernate settings, but that is a minor, minor inconvenience.
The major benefit of the re-install has been the resurrection of my wireless card. For whatever reason, the native drive included in either the most recent itteration of the kernel (2.6.24.19) or Ubuntu (Hardy Heron:8.04) is working perfectly. I get reasonable connection speed and it connects to whichever network happens to be available whether that is my home network or someplace like where I am now: at the Subaru dealership waiting for my car to go through a scheduled service.
So, I am now almost 100% settled in to Linux. And that means that I am about to leave the "absoute beginner category and move up one rung on the user ladder. When I get to the rung above this one, when I become an "informed user", I will delete Vista from it's place on the Hard Drive and become a fully Linux user at least on this machine.
My fellow New Jerseyite over at Last Chance Gas comments that there is some "irony" that a "flaming liberal" like our governor, Mr. Corzine, can give a speech about "duty, honor and patriotism". For the most part, I sorta enjoy reading the Proprietor's blog. However, every now and then he pisses me off, and this is one of those times.
For the record, there is nothing in the liberal dogma which precludes also being patriotic, dutiful and honorable. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the liberals amongst us are more genuine in their honor , duty and patriotism than are the self-absorbed conservatives who use those noble ideals to cloak their pursuit of venal self aggrandizement. There, I think that covers it...
Well, there is good news and not-so-good news to report. I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu as my Linux flavor of the week. Actually, the only difference between them is that Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop manager, and, so far I think it rocks...I have to say that I like it better than Gnome, although I thought Gnome did a good job. However, KDE comes with Amarok (audio manager) as part of its tool chest. Amarok has Shoutcast streams and Radio Paradise is a shoutcast entity, so I now have music on the laptop.
The disappointing news is that I still haven't gotten my wireless working yet. I know that it is possible to get this thing working, and, that once I do have it going, it will work well. It is just frustrating not to have wireless. *sigh*
On other fronts, I have reorganized my office, bringing the movable computer desk over next to me rather than sitting in the far corner of the room. One of the nice things about this is that I can now sit in my chair and have three or four (if I ever fire up the old Micron) computers at my fingertips. I currently have the laptop working off this desk since it has a hub I can plug into so at least this machine (ok, I'm writing this on the Gateway 'cause it is a new toy and I want to play with it...also I find it easy to type on this keyboard even though it is not ergonomic. But that is not what I wanted to talk about.
What I want to talk about is that my dear wife hasn't said a word about the laptop. She stood at my shoulder as I loaded Kubuntu on to it a few minutes ago, and she didn't say a word. I'm hoping that she is considering this my Father's Day present...and my birthday present...and maybe a Christmas present, and is going to let it go at that. Works for me...
I am still having trouble with my wireless connection. The culprit seems to be the Realtek RTL8187 USB wireless NIC and associated drivers. From reading the posts in the Launchpad and Ubuntu forums, there seems to be a work around available using NDISwrapper (he said, cluelessly), but I have to wait for tech support (ie. my son-in-law) to walk me through the installation process.
Other than the wireless problem (right now I'm hard wired into the router, and that works just fine) I really like the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. Boot times are about a minute which compares very favorably to the interminable boot sequence in Windoze. The more I learn about Linux, the happier I am. However, a note to the masses: You need to have a modicum of computer smarts (read skills) to successfully move to a Linux O/S. Either that or you need to be in an environment where you have a network admin person who can deal with things which need to be dealt with using the command line. Ah, the command line; makes one think back on the days of DOS. Now, don't get me wrong, you can do most everything you need to do in Linux without having to refer to the command line...unless you want to install new hardware or new software, and even there a great majority of the time you wouldn't need to access the command line. However, there are going to be times with Linux when the command line becomes a necessity. So, if typing arcane commands into a computer worries you, then you might want to hold off on leaping to Linux. In that case you will be condemned to the Windows dungeon, and you have my sympathy.
Yesterday I loaded Ubuntu Linux on my stealth notebook. (It is called “stealth” because my darling wife doesn't know about it...yet. I have to pick a propitious time to inform her of its existence.) Anyhow, it came loaded with Windows Vista, and I am one of those who is of the opinion that Vista sucks. So, after years of threatening to jump ship for Linux, I have finally made the leap, and as Delmar (I think) from the movie “Brother Where Are You” (check on this) said, “Come on in, boys, the water's fine!” My game plan is to run Linux for about a month, and, if it proves to be stable and I can learn its foibles well enough, I will then repartition the hard drive to dump Vista into the trash heap of history. If things keep going like they have been for the last two days, I would give that possibility about a 99% degree of certainty. My only concern right now is how Ubuntu is connecting to the wireless router; it seems to be sort of unstable in that sometimes it works great and other times it doesn't seem to be connecting. When I get that straightened out, I think I will be well on the way to conversion to a Linux geek.
I am writing this little note on the OpenOffice.org word processor, which behaves almost exactly like Microsoft's Word or Corel's WordPerfect.}As an aside, I always thought that it was a sin that programs like WordPerfect, Lotus, and a raft of others were buried by Microsoft's less than perfect software. And I have to admit that I was one of the people who enthusiastically climbed on board with the whole Office suite concept way back when Windows 3.1 finally made its appearance. Of course, I was an old AppleWorks user who had (with the rest of the business world) migrated to the PC and was eager for an integrated software solution. If I had only known then what I know now...{
OpenOffice.org has a nice little suite of applications, or packages as they are known in the Linux community (actually, I'm not 100% sure about that: could be that you install packages but you use apps or software or whatever...I'll have to work on my jargon.), which does everything Microsoft's Office does and the major files can be read by either.
So, I'm running Ubuntu Linux which uses Firefox as its web browser (and I can get Opera for Linux if I desire), Pidgen for my IM/chat software and I am working on the rest of the software I use regularly (like a streaming music player and a graphics editor for my pictures. I can see that I'm going to need to get a portable USB hard drive so that I can put my music and my photos on that and easily move them between Windows and Linux machines. Actually, what I really need to do is set up a home network that has both Linux and Windows clients. I foresee upgrading one of my old boxes enough to refurbish it as a Linux network server. Then I get my Dell tower and my wife's Dell notebook to run whatever they need to connect to the Linux server. Of course, all this is predicated on the my ability to integrate my NetGear router into the picture. However, I figure that, if I can learn the skill set necessary to do this by the end of the summer, I can get Paladin Business Services up and running. Because having that skill set will actually make me a Linux guru, and it would be nice to be back near the cutting edge for a couple more years...
The other thing I want to comment about is this Gateway notebook I'm using. Gateway has had a terrible rep over the last ten years or more (now that I think about it, my brother was complaining bitterly about his Gateway desktop way back in the mid-nineties), but this little machine seems to be doing just fine. Admittedly, I have only had it for a little over a week, but it is a nicely designed and set up machine. Ooops, here is another little bump in the road to Linux; the touchpad scroll function is a little too sensitive. Hmmm, lemme see...Actually, I'm not sure its the touchpad's fault. Seems Ubuntu has two desktops that you can move between. On this desktop I could have my word processor and a couple other windows open, and then I could have porn running on the other desktop. Should somebody wander into the room, I could then switch between desktops and keep the porn out of sight. OK, so actually its Mahjongg, but the former makes me...I dunno...more dangerous.
And now to brave the Linux file system and store this in the correct directory...
Fear is playing a big role in my life right now. I am confronting fear on a number of different levels, and I am finding that it is sapping my energy. On the macro level, I have all the big fears, both legitimate and manufactured, that are confronting all of us; Global Warming, general environmental decay, overpopulation, the world economy, the national economy and the upcoming election. The manufactured fears created by the Bush administration which revolve around terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be addressed even though they are totally the product of our current occupant of the White House. On a more personal level, I am dealing with my fear of change in my personal life (I really, really have to move on from my current job in retail). And then there is my fear of fucking up my new computer when I install Linux.
Ah, Linux. On the one hand it is so far superior to Windoze as an operating system that the choice of intalling it should be a no brainer. On the other hand, there is that damned command line interface, and the need to be able to communicate with your computer on a more basic level than the GUI. All of that, plus the fact that I am about to do this installation on a laptop, which is the most difficult environment to install Linux into, leads me to approach this with trepidation. In other words, I am very worried that I am going to do something that will fuck up this machine irrevocably. (Well, irrevocably enough to require me to flat out reformat the HD and then reinstall the hated Vista.)
OK, I've already reapportioned the HD so there is a partition on it that is totally empty and ready to be reformated and loaded with Linux. What I really want to do is create a dual-boot machine so that I have a fall back available should something go south with the Linux installation. So, maybe I should read a little more just to be on the safe side...(dither, dither). Eh, there will be more to come on this. However, Redmond should be very afraid also because if this old man can dump Windows and move on to Linux, then a majority of the Windows users out there could do the same thing. And that should make the Evil Empire quake in its boots.
I leave at 5:30am tomorrow for Seattle, and it is now 11:10pm here in deepest, darkest central Joisey. So, I'll indulge myself in a couple of mini-rants and then I'm off to bed.
My first (and most obvious) target is the airline industry. Flying sucks! When I was a kid (shortly after Orville and Wilbur did their thing), flying was fun. Didn't get there as fast in the air, but the planes were actually fairly comfortable, the people staffing them and the ground facilities were not worked to within an inch of their sanity. And we didn't have to deal with the paranoia that has become SOP since 9/11. No, if I had any kind of an alternative...oh, like maybe trains...and could afford to take that much time, I would in a heart beat. But that alternative isn't really viable these days, so I subject myself to the horrors of modern air travel. It is just another huge, glaring example of how our quality of life is eroding away.
Then, also in a "transportation" sort of vein, there are the roads here in the Soprano State. They suck as well! What with deteriorating bridges, potholes that swallow smaller cars whole and a marked lack of new roads being built to handle the ever increasing traffic load, driving here in the Garden State has become an exercise in stoicism in the face of adversity rather than something one actually might want to do. Those Sunday drives of yesteryear are but a dim, fading memory 'cause there ain't nobody who actually goes for a ride in the country just for the ride any more.
Of course, it isn't just the roads that make driving suck here in the 'burbs. No, my slightly biased estimate is that at least 70% of the people the great State of New Jersey has awarded the license to drive are, in fact, not up to that task. OK, maybe not 70%...but the percentage is significant. These so called drivers wander from lane to lane; they drive 10 miles an hour below the posted speed limit in the left lane...and then have the presumption to look askance at those who pass them on the right. Only by some prodigious displays of vehicular control have I managed to avoid the fools who have been seriously trying to kill me of late. I do have to say that my Outback is quite agile for a station wagon, and I am grateful for that.
On other fronts, Hillary should read the writing on the wall and withdraw with some grace and in the best interest of the party. She'll get points for doing so.
The exciting news is that for the past few years I have been vainly scouring the shelves of America's retailers looking for a certain product. I finally drew up some very rough drawings and took them to a patent attorney who did think that it is an idea worth pursuing. So, $500 dollars poorer (me...he's that much richer) I am waiting on pins and needles for the result of the "art search". If that proves to be negative, I will file a provisional application and begin the process that could see me actually the possessor of a US patent. How cool is that? Plus, if I can patent it, I think I can sell it and make enough money to become semi-retired. (Meaning I'd still work, but only at things I actually wanted to do.) Further reports will be forthcoming as things progress.
And with that, dear reader (shrug...if there is even one of you out there) I am going to toddle off to bed and try for four hours sleep. I hate flying....
The current issue of Time Magazine (4/7/08) has as its cover story an expose of the biofuel (ie. ethanol) stampede. Basically, Time reports that ethanol actually adds to the greenhouse gases while diverting crops like corn from being a food source to being a fuel source. This diversion of crops like corn away from the feedlots and grocery stores to the ethanol plants means that the cost of many foods is going to go up. In addition, the rush to biofuels is one of the driving forces behind the accelerating destruction of the Amazonian rain forest.
One of the factoids that Time trots out in the course of the article is that the amount of corn needed to produce a tank of ethanol for a hybrid SUV would feed one adult human for one year. The fact that there are tens of millions of human beings who suffer from (at one end of the scale) malnutrition to (at the other end of the scale) fatal starvation, the act of diverting food to something as inconsequential as fueling one of our behemoth vehicles becomes a little macabre at best.
So, not only is most ethanol a net carbon emitter (only sugar cane based ethanol contributes, net, less carbon than oil based fuels), but its production absorbs resources which once went into food production. All that corn that is going ethanol plants is not going to the feedlots...and that means that those burgers on the grill this summer are going to become a luxury rather than a regular event.
Of course, what we should be promoting and investing research dollars and resources in is hydrogen. As a fuel, hydrogen emits no carbon (when you think about it, its major byproduct is water...). The rap against hydrogen is that it is hard to handle. Which is why we need to invest in research to find ways to make it easier to use. Oh, and I do note that many of the biggest boosters of biofuels are American corporate agri-businesses. Yes, Corporate America, smelling the opportunity for some quick profits has jumped aboard the ethanol bandwagon while loudly proclaiming themselves to be truly committed to to protecting the ecosphere. This loud self-promotion does lead me to wonder why American Corporations are almost always on the wrong side of those issues which define character. Hmmm.
But that is a rant for another time...
What is wrong with our leadership? What is wrong with Hillary and Barack? Don't they see that they are giving McCain a priceless gift? I am beginning to think that the party is not important to either Hillary or Barack. I am beginning to think that they care little that they are ripping the heart out of the party and that they could very well be giving Mr. McCain the keys to the White House.
It is one thing to have a sitting President as your known opponent. A sitting President presents a continuing target. A candidate like McCain, however, only has to go around making "meet 'n greet" appearances while he quietly, in the background, builds his campaign machine. So, the fact that Bill Clinton didn't clinch the nomination until July was not all that bad. After all, he had George the First tanking the economy and otherwise being fairly unpopular. This year's candidate(s) don't have that luxury. Sure, they have George the Second, who is a true disaster, but George the Second isn't running again. The American people can throw all the bric-a-brac they want at George, but he's gone anyhow.
What our two erstwhile candidates need to do is retire to a room somewhere and not come out until they have decided between themselves who is going to carry the standard. I don't care how they do it: play poker, Indian wrestle, dueling pistols at thirty paces...whatever. Just stop this internal bloodletting and start focusing on the true opposition. As an aside, this was one of the good points about having kingmakers like Richard Daley and others of the "smoke filled room" era: they knew who the opposition really were, and they made sure that the party didn't waste too much time and effort on internecine warfare.
I just checked my email, and there, sitting proudly in my inbox was an urgent post from TrueMajority.org. It seems that TrueMajority is appalled (with reason) by what is transpiring in Tibet of late. Anyhow, they want me to sign a petition to be delivered to the Chinese government calling for China's President to at least hold talks with the Dalai Lama. However, the letter they plan to deliver was obviously written by a true Sissy. The letter (in its entirety) says:
"We call on the Chinese government to live up to its international obligations and respond to the Tibetan protests with peace and nonviolence. President Hu Jintao, we call upon you to open up a direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama to work toward a long term solution."
What I want to draw your attention to is the part which asks China to "...respond to the Tibetan protests with peace and nonviolence." Yeech!! How wussy can you get? Jesus! Why not hit 'em where it really hurts...the pocketbook. "Stop beating up on the Tibetans or we will boycott all products made in China. Your economy will crash and you will have a billion angry peasants of your own to worry about." Of course, that would mean that Americans and Europeans would have to suck up and stop purchasing shit made in China, and that would probably throw a crimp into our economies also. On the other hand, manufacturers who were quick off the mark and moved their production lines to other cheap labor markets could score big.
Deliver that note to the Chinese, and all you do is risk a few cases of apoplexy caused by them laughing too hard. Sheesh!
I was at work last night when one of my cashiers started to laugh. She was reading (usually a no-no, but business was really slow...) a new book, Sissy Nation (which sounds pretty cool and is something I think I want to read) so I asked her what was so funny. Well, she proceeded to read me two exerpts, which made me both laugh and wince. The first was basically how the author, John Strausbaugh, defines "sissy" and the second is about the term "Stoopits". Well, a nerve was hit, a button pushed, and I had to buy this book.
Having purchased said tome, let me quote for you the first 4 sentences of this book, and then you tell me if it doesn't strike home. Page 1, line 1:
America has become Sissy Nation. A culture of fat, soft, stupid, fearful, whiny, infantile, narcissistic, fatalistic, groupthinking victims. Once we were warriors. Now we're just worriers."Strausbaugh goes on to state that by "sissies" he does not mean "girly man". Rather, he defines "sissy" as "...lack of courage and conviction, spine and balls". Later on in the first chapter, he writes "There's an episode of Star Trek where members of a mildly retaded alien race, let's call them the Stoopits, bumble around the galaxies in spaceships they can barely pilot, buying or stealing what they need from smarter species. I've always taken it as a metaphor for us. It won't be long now before American is Planet Stoopit."
That part about bumbling around in "spaceships they can barely pilot" immediately made me think about traffic in the fair Garden State. I would swear that the above description applies to a majority of the drivers on New Jersey's roads; they are piloting vehicles they can barely handle.
Ah well, like I said, I have purchased this book, so you, gentle reader, can expect a number of quotes drawn from said book that will serve as my starting points over the next few weeks (months?). When you think about Stoopits, we can start by thinking about l'affaire Spitzer and then yesterday's bailout of one of Wall Streets largest brokerages, Bear Stearns. *sigh*
In an act of pure whimsy, I signed up for a free course at Sony's My 101 on Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Turns out, however, that I've already learned a couple things I didn't know and that I've been mildly inspired. Seems da Vinci's notebooks, those that still exist, are the surviving pages of a journal he kept for over 40 years. During that time, he averaged two pages per day. Now, sometimes those pages only held a single sketch or a couple lines of text, but other times the pages were crammed with everything from grocery lists and daily to-do lists to profound insights into how things work and why.
So, Leonardo's work covered some 40 years from his late 20's through his late 60's. If I start try to emulate him, at least in keeping a journal, he'll have about a 30 year (shut-up, "serpent's tooth" *grin*) head start on me, and I don't see me actually getting two pages a day done...But maybe I can average a page a day of some sort. Some of it will be here, and some will be hand written in real ink on real paper, some will be on my other site (still unnamed, s.t.), some will be sketched (I hope) and some will be in spreadsheets. My hope is that by making a commitment I will actually post here at least a couple times a week. Who knows, I may actually build up an actual online following...
And this counts as a page...
It is now over a week, and there is still water in Mom's basement. This house is beginning to wear on me! Now, as of Wednesday, I had the water down to about 3/4 of an inch, but I was working on Thursday during the day, so I couldn't get up there. And then Thursday night/Friday morning in finally snowed here in Central New Jersey. So, I spent Friday using my new snowblower which I was gifted with for Christmas. (It works great...I cleared out the driveway and walks in about 1/2 the time it usually takes me to shovel...and with far fewer complaints from back and arms...). Then I got to help a small person build a 
So, Saturday (yesterday) I go up and find that there is now about 4 inches of water down there. Not only that, but the hoses attached to the pumps were frozen solid. After another trip back home for one of our hoses, I got it going again. On the way home from dinner at Tom and Georgina's we detoured so I could turn the pump off. I was gratified to find there was only about 3/4 of an inch of water down there. But, I'm not going to get up there again until Tuesday AM, which means, I'm afraid, that there will be another 3-4 inches of water down there as all the snow begins to melt. I am truly getting tired of this.
I know, I know...how can one develop a readership if one only posts occasionally. And I understand that once every two months or so isn't even occasionally. I have posted a little more than that over at my top secret blog (read totally anonymous so I can really say whatever I want, no matter how...ahhh...inappropriate), but even there I have been less than prolific of late. You know, I've been writing on the Internet in one form or another since 1991...I think my 17th anniversary was in January...but I have never touched the zeitgeist necessary to develop a decent readership. I know...there are a couple of you out there who check in from time to time...and my daughter gets a feed, I think, but that's about all I have been able to build over 17 years.
Aside: Growing old sucks...You get aches and pains where there were none before. It is your body's subtle (as a sledgehammer) way of letting you know that the clock is, in fact, ticking. Right now I have a sharp pain near the knuckles of my fourth and fifth fingers of my right hand. My pinkie hurts when I type. Like I said, growing old sucks...End aside
It is now about 12:45am, and I have been going since 7am what is now yesterday morning. And I have to be up and ready for my granddaughter at 7:25am this morning. And why do I have the duty tomorrow, you might ask? Well, let me tell you: My wife, who usually has the granddaughter duty at that time of day, is upstairs, in bed, with a good case of pneumonia. Not only is she down for the count, I am trying to get the inch plus of water that currently is lapping around my mother's basement outside where it belongs. However, doing that entails numerous trips up to her house (which is about 12.5 miles away) because she is no longer capable of going down into the basement to check on the pump. So, that means I can't leave it running until the water is down to about 1/8 inch...
Another aside: So, the pumps the plumber put down there on Saturday turned out to be pretty worthless...one of them only works sporadically--very sporadically and the other just doesn't move all that much water...so I went out and bought a 1/4 horsepower Rigid pump. In the instruction packet, it says that the pump needs 1/4 inch of water to prime itself...that it will remove water down to 1/8th inch of the surface upon which it (the pump) is sitting and that it should be unplugged when the water level is at 1/2 inch. My question has to do with which one of those numbers is reliable. The outside of the box mentions the 1/8th inch number, and that is why I bought the damn thing. However, it could be that the 1/2 inch number is actually the relevant one, and that would suck big time. If this pump can't bring the water level down to under 1/2 inch, that means I'll have to get rid of the rest of the water using the wet/dry vac, and that would not be a lot of fun.
So, as I was saying, I have to be there when the pumps are running...or at least I have to be able to get there within a few minutes to check on the water level so as not to burn them out by running them without enough water to cover the impellers. This is beginning to burn both my energy and a lot of gasoline (25 mile round trip 3 or 4 times a day). Thus, between work, keeping up this house, acting as general contractor for the restoration of Mom's house and all the other stuff I get roped into doing, I have little time and even less energy to devote to writing online. And the thing is, writing is one of the things I really enjoy doing. All I can do is hope that external circumstances change enough to allow me the opportunity to start devoting time and energy to this avocation as well as the other things I enjoy.
