Liberty's Blog

Loyalty.

2010-01-17T08:33:00.002-06:00

The first rule one must understand when running for office is to know your constituency. Martha Coakley called and insisted that Curt Shilling was a a Yankees fan. One has to understand that the state of Massachusetts takes their Red Socks very seriously and that Curt Shilling has earned a place of honor higher than any any Governor or other politician. To the folks of Massachusetts this is the same scale of blunder as calling George Washington a Marxist. No, it's even worse than that. Washington never gave Boston a World Series.

Coakley to the delight of conservatives everywhere can't resist opening her mouth on things she is clueless about She is kinda like Houston's Sheila Jackson Lee.

Curt responded on his blog.

But never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan. Well, check that, if you didn’t know what the hell is going
on in your own state maybe you could….

Google, putting Itself on The Line

2010-01-13T19:49:00.002-06:00

We have been harsh on Google for giving in to China's censorious ways. Google is proving to have charactor and Google is stepping up to the plate in the name of freedom.

Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country completely after discovering that computer hackers had tricked human-rights activists into exposing their e-mail accounts to outsiders.
The change of heart announced Tuesday heralds a major shift for the Internet's search leader, which has repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws requiring some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results available in other countries. The acquiescence had outraged free-speech advocates and even some shareholders, who argued Google's cooperation with China violated the company's ''don't be evil'' motto.
The criticism had started to sway Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who openly expressed his misgivings about the company's presence in China.
But the tipping point didn't come until Google recently uncovered hacking attacks launched from within China. The apparent goals: breaking into the computers of at least 20 major U.S. companies and gathering personal information about dozens of human rights activists trying to shine a light on China's alleged abuses.

We congratulate Google for doing the right thing, and present a tip of the hat to Sodahead who lays out a clear explanation of what this all really means.

What’s more, the AP story cites a Google blog post stating that the company “is no longer willing to continue censoring our [search] results.” This would mark a dramatic about face from Google’s previous policy of complying with the Chinese government’s insistence that they omit certain objectionable search results.

Finally, it seems, a corporation has learned a much needed lesson from doing business in China: playing by the “law of the land” isn’t always a guarantee of safe passage. Google thought that by being above-board in accommodating China’s “Great Firewall” it would be spared clandestine observation and manipulation by China’s Brobdingnagian internet censorship regime.

What this shows us is that no amount of appeasement is enough to satisfy the paranoia of China’s Internet Mandarins. Google’s getting burned so pointedly, and its equally pointed response, will hopefully serve as a rejoinder to corporations around the world that do business over Chinese servers.

Hopefully China backs down and maybe the good people in China will be free to explore what other folks think and believe around the world.

Titan Missile Museum

2010-01-01T09:40:00.003-06:00

We visited the Titan Missile Museum near Tuscon yesterday. A reminder of the cold war and M.A.D. It was a fascinating tour, and reminder of the Cold which was won simply because of American fortitude and demonstrations that we Amercans won't back down.
The dark grey capsule that caps this missile contains the 9 Megaton Warhead that could destroy a communist city somewhere in the "Evil Empire".

A Meeting on the Border.

2009-12-27T08:03:00.000-06:00

On Christmas day three of us, My wife Equality, her sister ruok I were near El Pasoo, on our way to Phoenix from our home in Galveston. We veared off I-10 near the intersection of Texas, New Mexico,and Mexico. I wanted a picture of the long fence line seperating two nations. I had seen the fence on an earlier trip to El Paso, the image fascinated me and I wanted to share it with the ladies.

There is a small shanty town divided by a fence. The Mexican side is not quite as beat up as the American side. .I noticed a group of people behind me where I took my picture and observed the long fenceline . I don't know what they were doing. I don't know if they were smuggling drugs, or just exchanging Christmas greetings. I do know the fence wasn't keeping any one out. and as far as this group of people were concerned it was only a minor obstacle. We didn't stick around to find out.

Health Care, Whether we want it or not.

2009-12-21T20:53:00.005-06:00

The senate presses forward with the new healthcare bill, whether the citizens want it or not. The problem is that no one seems to know what it it is. The whole idea of healthcare reform is supposed to be making it more available to the people. What we are hearing is that it will cause our insurance to go up. That some health care insurance is going to be taxed. If prices are driven up doesn't it make it less accessible?

"Voting 'no' and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.

They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one."

Senators and Reps are being bought off for hundreds of millions. Harry Ried tells us that such deals are a normal and expected way of doing business.

Senate Democrats said the payoffs are nothing unusual, and in fact typical.

"People figaht for their own states. That's the nature of a democracy," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnt., said on "Fox News Sunday," defending Nelson against withering attacks from the GOP.

"This is just part of the normal legislative process," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
As a measure of just how typical they are, a slew of payoffs and concessions have been struck over the past several months.

-- Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., won between $100 million and $300 million in additional federal aid for her state's Medicaid population. The deal, secured before she cast her critical vote in favor of bringing the health bill to the floor, was immediately dubbed the "Louisiana Purchase," though the actual Louisiana Purchase was considerably cheaper.

-- Vermont and Massachusetts got $1.2 billion in Medicaid money -- a change that was described as a correction to the current system which exempts those two states because they have robust health care systems. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also boasted Saturday that he requested and won an investment worth between $10 and $14 billion for community health centers.

Apparently the Democrats find nothing wrong with buying votes. Maybe reid really does stand a chance in 2010, if he can only buy enough votes. Conservatives Republicans and libertarians who dare criticize or question, and not fall in line with the the "Beloved Leaders" are attacked fiercely. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) speech on the Senate floor

"Voting 'no' and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.
They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one."

The Bill is projected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Who is going to pay for it? Probably not the Chinese, but even Obama seems to understand this.

"In the long run we can't continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like monopoly money, that's what we've seen time and time again, Washington has become more concerned about the next election than the next generation."

I wonder why he doesn't suggest to the Senators to give up the bill? Hmmmm ..

OpenOffice.org as HTML Editor

2009-12-13T12:51:00.003-06:00

I have pretty much moved off to Linux based systems, and as such I am finding I need to use different tools. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Open Office does a surprisingly good job as a WYSIWYG html editor. Being a program I use regularly anyway even before I I did the big Linux switch, Its been pretty easy to use. It doesn't seem to produce bad html, and the html editor is as good as any text based editor. There seems to be support for more advance functions, but they are more advanced than I.

Explosion at Bayport

2009-12-09T12:29:00.002-06:00

On the way to work on HWY 146, I heard an explosion looked up and saw a giant plume of smoke.

A large plant explosion near Seabrook early this morning sent a gigantic plume of smoke billowing into the air. No serious injuries have been reported.

The explosion occurred at an American Acryl facility at 11600 Port Road near old Texas 146 about 8:50 a.m., according to the Seabrook Police Department. A short section of Texas 146 near the blast site was closed in both directions, as is Port Road.

An hour later, firefighters appeared to have the fire out, and no smoke was visible from the charred wreckage at the plant.

I snapped a picture from the overpass at Port RD. Seabrook police for some reason blocked 146, compounding the incident with a traffic jam. I don't understand why any time these things happen the first thing the police think of is to block the road. There was no smoke on the streets in Seabrook.
The good new is no one was killed, no serious inguries, and the fire was out in about an hour.

Global Warming Fraud

2009-12-06T09:13:00.007-06:00

The global warming email scandal doesn't surprise most people. We knew it all along. Reminds us all of the old back of the barn joke.

There were three prim and proper matrons were walking down the sidewalk wearing their Sunday finest on their way to the church social. They happened upon brown substance in the middle of the sidewalk. The first dowager squats down low to examine the substance and pronounces, "Looks like dog poo" The second lady squats down and said, "Smells like dog poo". The third bends down smears a little on her finger and taste the strange substance, and pronounces " Yes dears, it looks like dog poo, smells like dog poo, and taste like dog poo. Must be dog poo. It sure is a good thing we didn't step in it!"

If it looks smells and taste like poo than it likely is. Surely most conservative folks understood the man made global warming scare had little to do with reality. There has been some evidence that indicates we have been on a cooling trend, While some scientist claiming that the manmade CO2 emissions have very little to do with global warming. When those forwarding the claims tend to be socialist political type people , and the actual scientists seem to be split on the idea. A socialist agenda was always suspected by us in the moderate or conservative camps. Al Gores movie showed the dramatic rising water sinking our continents under the seas, had no scientific validity even if the global warming does continue.
Several items were presented as facts:

Global warming is happening now .. and will continue until life on earth as we know it doesn't exist any more.
Man is causing this global warming because of the use of fossile fuels generating increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The civilized nations with the advanced economy is the cause of the greenhouse gas releases.

The leftist fall in love with the idea, their plan is to reduce all the economies into a level playing field Where every man woman and child is allowed the same level of Greenhouse gas emissions. The idea that we are even in a state of global warming has been questioned by the non political scientist for years. Gary Sutton observes

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."
Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headImagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spendined for another ice age."

Even the most thick skulled of the global warmers will have to admit the data seems to be trending cooler the last 10 years. The global cooling folks never reached the religious fever of the current save the earth/global warmist. A culture within the scientist has has been about proving what they already believe they know, and they won't let the facts get in the way of what they are so sure is the truth. The climate change within the scientific community is born of government grants and a leftist intelectual community that is so ingrained within our universities.

Hackers mined the Climate Research Units email servers. To find that there has been a conspiracy to ensure that the any data released only confirms the theories the scientist have already accepted as fact:

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

This newest exposé was preceded by an scandal earlier this year.

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren't talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.g this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Yes, the data just disappeared. Like he says , The dog must have eaten global warming and it looks like someone is stepping in it.

Google Wave Invites

2009-11-28T06:57:00.002-06:00

If any of my good readers would like invites to Google Wave drop me an email.
Liberty at Libertysblog.com
Give me a good email address, I have several and its first come first served. When I run out I'm out.

Once you sign up though it may be a few days before you get an account.

Consumer Tip HDMI Cable

2009-11-24T06:44:00.003-06:00

Black Friday is coming up and the economy isn't so hot, so the retail big box stores are expected to have lots of sales on the big ticket items. I've noticed that some unscrupulous stores such as Best Buy and Radio Shack, attempt an up charge by pushing the need for their HDMI cables at $100.00 and more.

You don't need a $100 piece of wire. While HDMI connections are the way to go the cables can be bought at a reasonable cost. I've seen them under $20.00 at Sams, Fryes, Walmart and any where on line. There is no reason to let them sucker you in at at Fryes or at Radio Shack. Charging those prices is deceptive and price gouging. If you see the prices let them know you are offended at their gouging practices.

Remember its only a wire.

Abuse at the Texas City Dike

2009-11-17T17:58:00.002-06:00

The police are having a field day harrassing the good people and citizens looking for a place to go fishing. Texas City Police seem to enjoy their reputation of being the bullies of Galveston County. Seems as though when they aren't bullying people trying to salvage their hurricane damaged properys with their blockades or arresting people for enjoying a tournement of Texas Hold 'em. Texas city police believe that serving and protecting is bullying the citizens into submission. 81 John Ringer rode his bicycle up the 5 mile dike and back.

The 81-year-old Texas City resident said he rode his bicycle to the end of the dike Saturday. By the time he returned to the dike entrance, four police officers were waiting, he said.

Ringer said he knew it was against the rules to be on the dike, but with the pier closed, hundreds of cars of anglers who would normally be on the dike are now packed in along Skyline drive on the hurricane levee.

“I didn’t know I could cause so much trouble,” Ringer said. “But it wasn’t as dangerous riding my bike on the dike as it would have been on the levee.”

Ringer said three men who were crabbing in an area where the levee connects to the base of the dike also were ticketed.

Now why are they giving the tickets? It seemed safe safe enough for an 81 year old man to ride his bicycle. Maybe its the four hundred of tickets at $260 a piece is significant money. This type of money is worthy of trickery. Evangelos Koutougeras, got a ticket but he wasn't even on the dike.
“I took my kayak from the levee and went out to Mosquito Island and this cop he calls me over to the dike with his bullhorn,” Koutougeras said. “I had to walk in the water to meet the cop. He tells me ‘you are trespassing,’ I told him I wasn’t on the dike until he called me over.”

Koutougeras, 54, said he has been fishing in the area since 1992 and that while he doesn’t think the dike should be closed, insisted he never was on the dike when he launched his kayak for a day of fishing on Nov. 4.
“I took my kayak from the levee and went out to Mosquito Island and this cop he calls me over to the dike with his bullhorn,” Koutougeras said. “I had to walk in the water to meet the cop. He tells me ‘you are trespassing,’ I told him I wasn’t on the dike until he called me over.”

Koutougeras, 54, said he has been fishing in the area since 1992 and that while he doesn’t think the dike should be closed, insisted he never was on the dike when he launched his kayak for a day of fishing on Nov. 4.

Stanton said citations are supposed to be issued only to people who are on the dike and not in the water, on the levee or on sandbars such as Mosquito Island.

Koutougeras said he was so angry he threw all the fish he’d caught back in the water. He said would fight the ticket.

Stanton said citations are supposed to be issued only to people who are on the dike and not in the water, on the levee or on sandbars such as Mosquito Island.

Koutougeras said he was so angry he threw all the fish he’d caught back in the water. He said would fight the ticket.

“I took my kayak from the levee and went out to Mosquito Island and this cop he calls me over to the dike with his bullhorn,” Koutougeras said. “I had to walk in the water to meet the cop. He tells me ‘you are trespassing,’ I told him I wasn’t on the dike until he called me over.”

Koutougeras, 54, said he has been fishing in the area since 1992 and that while he doesn’t think the dike should be closed, insisted he never was on the dike when he launched his kayak for a day of fishing on Nov. 4.

Stanton said citations are supposed to be issued only to people who are on the dike and not in the water, on the levee or on sandbars such as Mosquito Island.

Koutougeras said he was so angry he threw all the fish he’d caught back in the water. He said would fight the ticket.

Yeah the cop called him to the dike on a bullhorn. This officer was surely thinking about "protecting and serving" .

Police all over deserve respect, but one really has to wonder about the bullies that call themselves police officers in Texas City. Who are they protecting and who are they realling serving when they harrass citizens? Maybe the people in Texas City would be better protected and enjoy more freedom with fewer police? Tactics lik this suggust the police are just looking ang inventing crime just to justify their existance.

A Heroine in Fort Hood

2009-11-06T12:48:00.002-06:00

While the media hasn't had much to say about the massacre at Fort Hood, except to try to explain why it wasn't a muslim terroristic attack. While it seems pretty clear that the shooter undeniably caused terror, and certainly was a muslim who yelled out Allah Akabar, as he mowed down over 40 people. The media also doesn't seem to pay much notice to the real story of a young lady who stopped the attack even after she had been shot. Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer stationed at the base undoubtably saved many lives while put hers in serious jeopardy.

Sergeant Munley managed to hit Major Hasan four times but was herself hit by a bullet that passed through both her legs, according to witnesses.

Colonel John Rossi, briefing reporters at Fort Hood this morning, said that Major Hasan's victims, who were killed in a part of the base used to process soldiers for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, had all been unarmed. Sergeant Munley had been the first armed person on the scene and had immediately taken him on.

"Her efforts were superb," he said.

Colonel Steven Braverman, commander of the base hospital and Major Hasan's supervisor, said that Sergeant Munley was in a stable condition in a nearby community hospital.

It's worth noting that the normal media hasn't found the story note worthy, They rather report on the cowardly actions of Hasan, than to report on the lady that stopped him.

Ubuntu and the Karmic Koala

2009-11-01T22:19:00.000-06:00

Ubuntu has a new release out 9.10 or the Karmic Koala. It may very well be worth considering for a lot of folks.

Some of the OS upgrade is about hardware sto askupport. Other enhancements may be about increasing performance. The new Ubuntu 9.10 release provides better better support for hardware, better Intel video graphics support and audio in particular. Some features that are getting lots of attention seem kind of lame to me. Ubuntu One is about off line data syncing. I prefer dropbox because it universally works with most Linux installs as well as Windows and Mac platforms. Ubuntu One does have syncing with their notes program and I think the address book of Evolution the email program.

Most people use their computers for a few Basic Functions.
Web Surfing, Email, Media and Playing silly games. So far I find that Ubunto provides the solutions for these better than or as well as Windows does. All without Purchasing any software. There is no point any more about which is best Windows or Linux. The question to ask today is "Do I need windows/Apple for this computer?"

There are those of us who need to run special software such as Autocad, or specific hardware that just doesn't have Linux support. But many of us also have computers that will run better, faster and for less money than for what Bill Gates or Steve Jobs has to offer.

Catching the Wave

2009-10-12T19:42:00.005-05:00

I got an invite to google wave, was pretty excited about it, You can only tell so much about a program by reading about it. I swallowed my pride and begged an invite. I think I swore off Beta testing years ago, in fact I swore off them several times. The beauty of Wave though is that none of it has to reside on my my computer.

I played with it and discovered the mapping function. It didn't really work to well on my machine Ubunto Jaunty 9.04 . with Firefox 3.0 Oh well Google wave is intended for use in browsers using HTML 5.0 whatever that is. It was pretty clear that I needed to upgrade my Firefox. I have been getting impatient with my current build any way. I like the snapyness of the newer Firefox and really missed the sticky notes feature that OpenOffice 3.1 has. Only problem is that I had never tried t0 upgrade Ubuntu before. Yes, The Karmic Koala is also in Beta. Well the upgrade went flawlessly and I was now able to start playing with Google Wave.

The Wave has come a long way since the unveiling in May. The demo consisted of a few crashes in the sand box. While it sometimes moves a little slow I haven't seen any lockups or crashes. I still haven't run it through all its paces, and I am not sure if the upload/download documents works yet there is a lot of potential here. This might be considered a social site for grownups. We can chat on line, but all the time we are creating a document. It takes the strength of on line chatting, social web sites and email and combines it all into one. It works just as well in real time as email like off line communications and like email every wave is a document.

Wave still needs a little polishing and a lot more users, it doesn't become practical until it gets universal availability. While Google seems to be claiming that Wave is the beginning of the end for email may be overstated it very well could change the way we communicate.
Those with wave access go ahead and look me up. I'm Liberty on google wave also

Shami Farouk Throws his Hat into the Ring

2009-10-08T19:24:00.002-05:00

Farouk Shami is running for Texas Governor joining Democrats Kinky Freidman, Tom Schieffer and Hank Gilbert. Everyone knows Kinky, and and the the other 2 guys seem like the typical everyday Democrat hacks. Farouk ( He is better known by his first name than his last) is unique in Democratic circles in that he is a self made man, and understands what it takes to run a business and meet a payroll. In his business dealings he is supportive of small business and understands their importance. This makes him unique among Democrats, and this may be what will make him a formidible candidate in the primarys, and a serious contender against the Republican Candidate.

Google Wave

2009-09-30T19:58:00.000-05:00

Anyone seen an invite to Google Wave?

4 Days of Introspect.

2009-09-11T18:39:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was Alexis first birthday.

Today 9/11/2o09 marks 8 years since the jihadist terrorists attacked our nation and killed more people than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.

Saturday and Sunday Mark the Anniversary of Ike the Hurricane that struck us at Galveston.

We have only seen Lexi once for a couple of days in January, She is a happy baby and brings joy to all that she comes in touch with. While our world seemed so full of despair, It was Lexi who helped us see through it. Nothing around us seemed all that important when your holding a little baby who is smilling and laughing just because she is with us. She is comming for a visit in a couple weeks and her Uncle Ray can't wait.

For a while after Ike hit It could seem like thee was nothing but despair. We had questions. Was our house gone how about the cat? where will we live? How will we pay for all this? Then there was Lexi. We got pictures, and lots of smiles.

We rebuilt from Ike and moved back in. Our home is nicer than ever. We enjoy it just a little more, maybe because we know what it is to lose it. Galveston itself is a bit more precious to us because we had to stay away.

Our country gathered its forces and we fought back, today we are more riled up about healthcare than we are about Jihadist. We are feeling pretty secure as a nation. Even while in rocky times.

Soon Lexi will come visit and all the world will seem right. All is good.

Netflix Notes

2009-08-23T12:42:00.000-05:00

We lost most of our videos, ans DVDs in Hurricane Ike. Before we moved back home, Michelle was looking for bargains to replace our lost goods, She did find a $25.00 DVD player at Walgreens. The Coby DVD 224, We figured it would do the job. We figure we will be getting a blue ray and a nice TV for the living room at set some point. We moved back home in June, got basic cable and of course Hi speed internet. We are watching our money pretty close these days, rebuilding/ refitting our house and the market crashes have really cut deeply into our disposable income. So we didn't get all the extra movie channels we were used to getting.

Our niece Vanessa and her hubby tobe came to visit last month and she presented me a gift. A quart sized ziplock with cables small wall wart and an electronic box called a Roku. She told me how nice Netflix is and we really need to get it. I was apreciative of the gift, but I didn't really understand what this kewl little box was.

I have heard about Netflix, and everyone who subscribes really seems to like it. The price is reasonable enough, less than $10 a month for movie rentals. Delivery is next day and we don't even have to front a stamp. Cheaper than Showtime or HBO. I started looking at this Roku thing a little closer.

Its a rather unimpressive looking box. it is about the size of 4 of 5 CD cases stacked on top of each other. No buttons or switches. The only indicator is a small LED that flickers when the unit seems to be doing something. The back has assorted connections 5V @ 1.5 amps very lower power. Optical audio out. Component, and Composite video. HDMI and Ethernet I began to wonder what is behind this little box. I've seen garage door openers more complicated looking than this remote.

We signed up for NetFlix it was a fairly easy process and our 1st month is free. I selected some movies to instant view and a list for them to send DVDs as we viewed them. It all went pretty smoothly.

I then went to setup and configure the Ruku. My television has a free HDMI port, so it was just a single connection real easy. Powered it up. We configured it for my wireless WEP connection. My TV resolution and It was ready to go. Wow I already 278 films and series already loaded into the queue.But none of my own. We had Vanessa's old list! It was pretty simple to unsubscribe and resubscribe to our Netfix account. We now can watch watch movies. It all works by picking out what we to watch from the Netflix site from our PC it gets queued to our Netflix box and ready to select from a list. This is supposed to be just the extra service thrown in by Netflix to supplement their DVD service.

We got our DVD the next day, and we set up the player, the very inexpensive Coby DVD-224. By comparison the DVD player was a lot more complex looking. It had 4 buttons and a drawer in the front, but the little remote has 40 buttons, The Roku only has 9. While the DVD doesn't have either an RF output Jack or HDMI The Progressive scan output over the componant outputs provides a beautiful image over out HD TV. The remote is a little confusing, but once the movie is started all is good. and for $25.00 how can we go wrong.

All in all we are thrilled with Netflix, and it is a bargain for what we get. I am enjoying old TV series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Kolchak, The Night Stalker as well as all more movies than we will ever have time to to watch. Every couple of days we get a new new hard copy of a DVD to watch. I think this Netflix thing with Roku is a keeper.

Class

2009-08-04T05:48:00.002-05:00

There has been a lot said and lessons have been learned about the Harvard professor getting himself arrested. We have learned mostly aboput the man who is our president. He showed himself to be judgemental when he called the actions of Sgt Crowley stupid.

The photograph of him being oblivious to the handicapped man shows a lack of concideration. While Crowley helps Professor Gates, the man that he doesn't see eye to eye with, down the stairs.

A picture is worth a thousand words, I think this image says a lot about character. The American Thinker has more to say.

Marriage

2009-08-02T13:00:00.002-05:00

Megan McArdle asks, and gives some good reasons on why should we bother with this marriage thing. I agree it's all pretty worthwhile.

A New Ubuntu System.

2009-07-25T06:22:00.003-05:00

We lost 4 computers in hurricane Ike. We quickly bought 2 systems while we were still in a hotel. We bought a Sony VAIO VGC LT30. Its an all in one built into i nice glass frame. It served us well at the hotel and since we eventually were able to move home. We later bought a Net book an Acer One. I was impressed just how powerful this inexpensive little thing was.

After we moved in though It became pretty obvious that I needed another good desktop. I picked up a developers kit that had a D945GCLF2 board. This board is powered by a tiny Atom Duo 330 processor. A cheap low power mother board that has the processer built in. The board lists for around $89.00 I put it all together with an inexpecive 22 inch Samsung monitor, 2 gigs of DDR ram A terabyte drive ( $100 bucks at Fry's) and a DVD reader. Put it all together and booteded up Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 install disk.

I initally tried to get it to boot from a thumb drive .. I couldn't get it to work, but other than that hitch it only took 30 minutes from on switch to up and running and on the net. Everything went in with ease. Found my printer with its drivers. Matched up to my monitor at 1920 x 108o. Some more tinkering I got Flash and Acrobat working installed Flash and Acrobat. Configured compiz to get the twirling desktop cube. All without a hitch. I figure I might at some point want run a windows aplication. So I installed VirtualBox and XP pro into it. This isn't Dual boot but it runs within Ubuntu and at the same time. It took about 2 1/2 ours to install XP compared to the 1/2 hour to install Ubunto along with its assiated Apps.. Microsoft gives us notepad in the install while Ubuntu gives us OpenOffice.

This system is fast!! It boots in under 30 seconds, loads and runs applications at lightning speed. This isn't a ghaming system. While it does a great job playing movies, and running most desktop apps. The Dual processers are each dual hyperthreading. Effectively resulting in 4 simultaneus and somewhat isolated processes. Ubunto does seem to take beter advantage of this than XP or even Vista.

There are some issues I have run into. I couldn't get my system to boot onto a thumbdrive that was created by the LIve CD. I don't know whether it was Ubuntu or my hardware. I had a false start with the 64 bit operating system because I couldn't find 64 bit Ubuntu files on Adobe's site for flash and adobe reader. Because I am well under the 4 gig memory limit of 32 bits system, I don't see any advantage to the 64 bit system.

I am using older versions of Openoffice and Firefox. The automatic upgrade process won't support OOo 3.1 or Firefox 3.5 until the next version of ubuntu.

I haven't got XP to coperate real well with my network. It sees the Vaio but not the net computer or the network printer. I believe this will be easy to resolve.

I have 4 USB ports in the rear I could bring 4 more to the front. There are only 2 SATA ports and 1 IDE connection ( 2 units could be hooked up there).

Sound is a little on the weak side.

So far I'm pretty happy with the set up. Its an deal system for Websurfing and running Openoffice and other everyday tasks. It works well for downloading and viewing movies or mp3s . Its an inexpencive system to build.

Hitting Some Folks Pretty Hard

2009-07-12T17:14:00.002-05:00

Some People are taking this Michael Jackson thing pretty hard.

Just a Few Pointers

2009-07-06T06:41:00.002-05:00

Glenn Reynolds and Rick Perry have some some suggestions for states that are going broke like California. They should become more like Texas.

CALIFORNIA ON BRINK OF issuing IOUs. Maybe they should consult a state whose budget isn’t a pathetic travesty and see if they can pick up some pointers.

They would rather blame it on Bush than admit that they simply are spending more than the state can pull in, particularly in bad times.

Beware of What You Ask for

2009-07-03T09:05:00.000-05:00

This video that is being circulated by KickThemAllOut.com

Funny how the one person they highlight speaking out against such excesses. Is one of those darn Congress critters that they want to get rid of. They should realize some are keepers even if most are not.

Google to Assist developing Openoffice.org

2009-06-30T11:17:00.002-05:00

It looks like Openoffice.org is going to get some manpower support from Google

Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense.
OpenOffice has its roots in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice suite of programs. Five years ago, Sun turned its proprietary software into an open-source project. Only recently, however, has the competitor to Microsoft's Office attracted serious attention.
Now Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size, said Chris DiBona, manager for open-source programs at the search company.
"We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better," DiBona said.

While this is good news, I believe that Open office could use a little more support from the more traditional open source supporters, from the educational and volunteer communitity.