Category: Uncategorized

My new machine arrived today. It’s a beast, fast and loaded, if not exactly portable. I’ve already got Fedora Core 2 installed, in fact, I’m typing this in on Opera running on Fedora. My first impressions of the two operating systems are as follows:

Windows is NOT as easy to get going as I expected. What is this registration nonsense? I can use XP, on sufferance, for 30 days, after which point apparently I am deemed unworthy. Sure, I’ll put in completely fictional information, but one’s system is still identifiable by Microsoft over said Internet, and presumably the serial number can be tracked back to the original purchaser. I’m wondering how difficult it is to remove XP and replace it with Windows 2000, or if that’s even possible.

Fedora is not intrusive, but its strange discomfort with wireless access is annoying too. I popped in my PCMCIA card, got the Internet working on the first try, then, when I rebooted just to check things out, the Internet was no longer working. I had to remove eth0 – a built-in network card – then create a new eth0 (which had been eth1) for the wireless card before it would work again. I rebooted to verify that this fix had taken; sure enough, I’m fully operational.

Now, here’s the problem. I can network to the other Windows machines in the house. But for some reason, I can’t get SWAT going, JAGS does not show the other Fedora machine, and to copy things from one to the other I have to pass them through one of the Windows machines. This makes no sense. Why is it easier to network to Windows than it is to another Linux machine? Anyone have any suggestions?

Still, even with the headaches, it’s well worth it. The tank isn’t exactly what I would call under complete control, but at least we’re not scaring the livestock anymore.

Don’t know about Wisconsin, but Minnesota regulates deer hunting by dividing the state into zones. Some zones are restricted to archery, handguns, and rifled shotgun slugs (NOT buckshot).

I don’t know where some of you are coming from on this. Obviously I know that shotguns can be, and are, used to hunt deer, hence the reference to rifled slugs. However, I also know that shotgun hunters are a small minority compared to rifle, bow and black-powder hunters, so the fact that Kerry mentioned a double-barrel shotgun in coordination with crawling on his belly cast serious doubt on his hunting experience.

I have been hunting far more times than I ever wished, as I am the son of a man who is an excellent marksman and a voracious killer of animals. My brothers and I are all good shots – I once outshot a Force Recon sniper with a .357 Magnum at the range – and my brother impressed the Marines at Quantico with his ability to paint it black at distance there when he was still in high school. We bought Dad a bow for Christmas last year, as he nailed four deer on the first day of the season claimed that the deer have gotten so plentiful that it’s too easy. Personally, I suspect he’s finally figured out that it’s warmer during bow-hunting season.

In fact, when my father was the Scoutmaster, we used to be the only pistol-packing troop in the area. We’d go off into the deep woods in January, without tents or much food, and have to build lean-tos and kill rabbits for food and shelter. I even got my Zero Hero when I was ten, which required being camping out by yourself without much in the way of supplies for 24 hours in below-zero weather up North. I think I had a sleeping bag, a thing of matches, a Swiss Army knife and a pound of raw, frozen hamburger. (I smuggled a pair of books in my sleeping bag, of course.)

So, you see, I know how to survive in the wilderness, I just don’t understand the point of subjecting yourself to it unnecessarily.

Mark Steyn observes, with some disbelief:

[Kerry] was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. “I’d have to say deer,” said the senator. “I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach… That’s hunting.” This caused huge hilarity among my New Hampshire neighbours. None of us has ever heard of anybody deer hunting by crawling around on his stomach, even in Massachusetts. The trick is to blend in with the woods and, given that John Kerry already looks like a forlorn tree in late fall, it’s hard to see why he’d give up his natural advantage in order to hunt horizontally.”

First, not many hunters use shotgun slugs to hunt deer. Second, you don’t crawl around on your belly, you get up at an ungodly hour in the morning, climb into a tree stand you constructed prior to the season, wrap yourself in a sleeping bag, and then sit there and freeze your extremities.

And my father wonders why I hate hunting. I didn’t mind killing the overgrown horned rats, but since we had them all over our backyard, I simply didn’t see the point in getting up at 4 AM just to see if you could shed blood before your own froze in its veins. One night, about twenty minutes after Dad and the gang had departed for points north in order to slay some quadrupeds, I nearly ran over three of them wandering down the street about 150 feet from our driveway.

If gutting them wasn’t such a painstaking mess, I would have run them over and strung them up, just to see the look on Team Gunga Din’s collective face when they returned. Did I mention I was driving a Suburban? Well, I was. Anyhow, if God meant for us to kill our own food, he wouldn’t have invented farmers. And restaurants, for that matter. What’s the point of civilization if you’re not going to use it?

But I digress. Kerry isn’t just a sleazeball, he’s a phony sleazeball. Fortunately for him, his core crowd is too ignorant to see how full of it he is. If the president was even marginally competent, he’d have this thing sewn up by now. I’m starting to suspect that both of them know that Wave 3 is going to hit with a vengeance in the next term and neither one wants anything to do with it

Some people have complained that the blogroll is pushed to the bottom of the screen. Others have lamented that the text at voxday.net is too small, and still others are agog at the green-on-black text in the archives there. I regret the unpleasantries.

But interestingly enough, only those running Microsoft Internet Explorer are experiencing these difficulties. I run Opera on Fedora Linux, Space Bunny runs Opera on Windows, and I also check things out on Mozilla and Firebird. Everything looks and runs fine, and not only that, but I have little control over how this blog relates to Inferior Explorer, since it’s all Blogger code and external Javascript.

The problem is that Microsoft pays no heed to the HTML standards. There are two options. One, we can kowtow to Microsoft’s arrogance, put up with their ridiculous refusal to block pop-up ads – and you don’t realize just how annoying they are until you never see them anymore – and change to suit them. I prefer to make my quixotic stand on the HTML standards and politely suggest that those of you experiencing browser difficulties consider meandering over to opera.com and downloading Opera 7.53 for Windows.

It’s not hard, honestly, it’s free, it has an imitation Explorer skin if you want familiarity and you can even import your old bookmarks with little difficulty. There may be many things in this life that one must grin and bear, but a lousy browser isn’t one of them.

IMMIGRATION OFFICERS are having to pore through naked pictures of hundreds of exotic dancers to keep impostors out of Canada. Foreign strippers planning to table dance in clubs here must now provide photos of themselves with no clothes on to qualify for a visa for Canada, immigration officials say. “Stage photos during performances are required,” said Sergio Mercado, of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico.

MEMO TO VISA OFFICERS

In a memo to fellow visa officers around the world, Mercado said if a dancer passes the no-clothes test, they may then require a police certificate or medical examination. The memo was obtained from access to information documents obtained by the Sun.

The potential dancers have to prove they can dance in the nude, immigration lawyer Mendel Green said yesterday. “They can’t be partially nude,” he said. “If they don’t have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada.”

Brilliant! I imagine the next step will be to ensure that high-price Norwegian call girls are properly qualified to provide their services as well. It’s good to know that Canada’s Finest are willing to put their eyes on the line for their country. At least we know that they’re not wasting their time as jihadists pour across the borders into their country.

It’s odd, but the NFL theory of market performance could turn out to be another factor here. I never subscribed to it; I thought that the NFC champion Buccaneers would put paid to the idea that an NFC Super Bowl winner meant a positive year for the markets. But, I was manifestly wrong. And since the AFC Patriots won this year, that supposedly suggests a down year, which has certainly been the case so far.

Socionomics considers the markets a measure of mass societal emotion. As the challenger is ahead – however slightly – going into the convention, conventional political theory has it that the sitting president will be defeated. If we reverse the socionomics interpretation that states a negative mood as indicated by a down market favors challengers, then we should assume that the markets will be continuing on their downtrend instead of trending up into the election as is generally assumed.

I have other, more technical reasons for my opinion on where the markets are going, but it’s an interesting thought. I still don’t see how the conference affiliation of a sports team could have anything to do with mass emotions, though.

Some folks are attempting to summon outrage for Ann Coulter’s unceremonious dumping by USA Today. I don’t see why, as our beloved Miss Coulter did take the opportunity to leap straight over the top in a rather unlikely forum. Sure, the comments by the USA Today editor were stupid – one hopes he was being disingenuous – but USA Today is for people who want happy silly news in info-nuggets, not snarling contempt, however deserved.

Jonah Goldberg, who is a little more ideologically squishy than Ann and has that safe hail-fellow-well-met sense of humor ala Tucker Carlson that allows liberals to pretend that maybe he’s just kidding about all that conservative nonsense, would have been a better choice from the start. The mainstream media tilts heavily left, and the sooner one stops expecting it to be even-keeled, the better. Ann is wonderful, but she is for the red-meat lovers, not vegetarians who might nibble at a little piece of tofu.

There’s a place for running roughshod over left-liberal idiocies, but one of the foremost left-liberal newspapers probably isn’t one of them. And besides, who on Earth would want to go to the Democratic Convention anyhow?

MW is close to tears:

I do not agree with your editorial regarding Bill O Reilly. I can see your hatred for him is so visible, if what you say has the slightest bit of true to it, it would be discounted because of your seething hatred.

Maybe if she knew that I was crying on the inside, thanks to the massive jealousy that another O’Reilly fan asserted I have for Brave Sir Bill, she’d feel differently.

JS, meanwhile, only managed to confuse me:

I understand what you mean by OReilly setting up straw men, and not standing solidly on the principles he espouses. I have been frustrated with his stand on many issues that seem to contradict his values. I however disagree with your assessment of his selling himself and having a hazy grip of political reality. I think he does stretch his views in an attempt to seem fair and moderate which comes across to me as weak and wishy-washy, but I think his grip is relatively solid and he aims his guns at real and important enemies. Three examples are France, the ACLU, and Rap Music.

JS had me at hello, but he lost me with that last bit. But who could disagree that without Brave Sir William standing in between us and the raw all-devouring lethality that is Rap Music, our civilization would have already collapsed into chaos, carnage and cannibalism. Someone please, please tell me that Mr. O’Reilly has uttered the words “Rap is crap!” No, that would just be too perfect, it’s probably too much to wish for.

So, Brave Sir William is all for the Patriot Act, abortion and homogamy, but he stands firmly against Foxy Brown and Public Enemy. Hoo-raa! The phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” springs to mind.

I got a letter from the Factor

The other day

I opened and read it

It said they were suckers.

They wanted me for their show or whatever

Picture me giving a damn

I said never.

RK muses cynically:

So why is Day attacking him? Could it be to draw a reaction and publicity

for himself? Akin to one Mr. Franken? Perhaps O’Reilly suspects just this. Shame on you Vox for sinking to Franken’s level.

Actually, I’m just following the Libertarian talking points laid out for me by the Other, Not-So-Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Somehow, I suspect RK missed the discussion here last week when I explained my lack of interest in playing the talking head game.

What would I do with the publicity anyhow? The irony of being accused of being secretive one week and self-promoting is rather acute.

Bravely bold Sir William strode forth from Studio B.

He did not fear to debate, O brave Sir William!

He was not at all afraid to be humbled in nasty ways,

Brave, brave, brave, brave O’Reilly!

He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,

Or to have his lies exposed and his logic broken;

To have his infinitives split, and his assertions blown away;

And his facts all hacked and mangled, brave Sir William!

His case smashed in and its heart cut out

And his proofs disproved, his polemic unplugged

And his talking points raped, and his claims disembowled

And his [what one can only assume is a very small] penis….

Brave Sir William ran away.

He bravely ran away, away!

When danger reared its ugly head,

He bravely turned his tail and fled.

Yes, brave Sir Bill, he turned about

And gallantly he chickened out.

Bravely taking to his feet

He beat a very brave retreat,

Bravest of the brave, O’Reilly!