It used to be that all you had to worry about when you purchased a power supply was if it had enough wattage to do the job. With the last couple of generations of CPUs and video cards, that’s no longer enough. Now you need to worry about how stable the power supply is, if it has modular cables, if it uses a single rail or multiple rails, and how efficient it is — oh, and price.
It’s like that story about the guy who sleeps for a hundred years and is surprised at all that has changed around him. The Republicans have suddenly been startled awake after sleeping for eight years, during which their pride and joy, G.W. Bush, ran up the largest deficit in the history of civilization while doing his best to conceal all kinds of special deals for his buddies. He even went so far as to take the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq off the books. So, now that we have someone in office who isn’t Republican, spending is suddenly a bad thing.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of the crap. I’ll be happy to listen to honest debate about real issues, but the truth is that without a stimulus package there is no end in sight for this recession. I might be upset about how much this is going to cost, but I do recognize what the cost in human suffering would be if we sat on our hands and did nothing.
Of course, that’s not really what the Republicans want. That would be madness. It might cost some of them their cushy jobs and there might be a decline in support from their rich buddies. No, what the Republicans really want is to protect their own special interests from the axe that Obama is wielding in order to find the money to fix the problems he’s inherited without digging us so deep in the whole we’d never get out. So the Republicans will scream about spending on volcano monitoring equipment, about replacing federal vehicles that guzzle gas with hybrids and electrics, and about any other line item that they can spin into some kind of look-at-what-they’re-wasting-money-on-now!
Let’s talk about waste. How about sitting on our hands for thirty years after we were shown by the first Oil Crisis, just how vulnerable we were because of our dependence on oil? For all those years, the oil companies have drained money out of our pockets and put it into the pockets of middle-east high-rollers, some of whom like to finance terrorists. The money that paid for the attack on the U.S. on 9/11 came from the U.S., in payments for oil. Take a moment and think about what this country might look like if all that money hadn’t been carried off by the super-tanker load. We would have had money for road work, for health care, for improving the education of our children. We would all be better paid.
If we hadn’t paid for that oil. If we had refused to stay addicted and developed alternative energies, we would still have all that money, and we might not now be facing the climate change crisis that looms over us like a dark and dangerous storm that has yet to break.
Why didn’t we make changes? Because most of the politicians who’ve been in power over the last 30 years have owed allegience to Big Oil. The Bush family got their money from oil. Oil money helped finance Regean’s campaign and that of McCain. About the time it looked like Clinton might have gotten to work on the problem, Republicans suckered him into lying to Congress by questioning him about his affair with an intern. (You should keep in mind, that up until Clinton was questioned, he’d broken no law. He’d just been a cheating pig, which isn’t illegal in this country.) The Republican party managed to keep our former President busy with legal problems, so he wasn’t able to do his job.
That happens too much on both sides of the aisle, but lately, the Republicans seem to have made obstruction and obscufation a science. Even now, they are doing their best to slow the current administration. I dont’ think they have real problems with what Obama is doing. They all know that if they were in his place, they’d be forced to do the same things, but none of them have the guts to admit it. So, instead, they oppose him, for no reason other than he’s not Republican.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it often. If our politicians can’t begin to place the importance of good government before their own party affiliation, then we will fail as a nation. We will show the whole world what can happen when a democracy devolves into a mindless power struggle. The real shame of it is, we are needed. The U.S. needs to lead the way out of the Climate Change mess. If we don’t, it won’t just be our ideals that are lost, it might be our entire civilization, if not our species and most of the other species on the planet.
I used to think the Climate Change guys were exagerating, so I started reading the actual reports. I learned as much of the science as I could, and tried to determine who was giving me the straightest information. What scares me is that I don’t think the scientists have been exagerating. I think most of them are understating things. Scientists, unlike politicians, live or die based on what they say. The can’t go back and spin the scientific papers they author.
If we let things get completely out of hand and the Ice in Antarctica melts, our species may never see the Earth like it is now ever again. There is enough ice in Antarctica and Greenland to raise the seas at least thirty feet. That is high enough to flood over ninety percent of the populated world. People like to live near the ocean, and most of them do. Even though 30′ might not sound like that much, that would be enough to submerge most of Florida, all of the Florida Keys, most barrier islands, and all the pacific coral atolls. All those people would have to move inland, and they wouldn’t have any resources to bring with them. Couple that with a world population that is still growing and it’s a pretty bad picture.
So, here’s what I’d like. I would like the Republican constituents to have a chat with their representatives about honesty. I believe a healthy opposition party is a vital part of our system of government. That means we need a party that can argue based on the merit of it’s ideas, not on how much it can spin piddling nits into “issues.”
Barak Obama has already performed two invaluable services for our country. By getting elected, he’s helped us take another giant step forward, away from our racist past and into a more accepting future; and he’s set a new standard for honesty and integrity in government. Let’s see if the rest of our politicians can rise to the challenge of practicing politics like a grown up.
One nice thing about Windows is the indexing service. It can be very helpful if you have a large body of material to search through. If you use Open Office or its commercial equivalent Star Office, you’ll soon discover that indexing doesn’t work on those files. That’s because Windows does not have a component called an IFilter for those files. The IFilter tells the indexing service how to read a given file format.
The same problem exists if you run Windows Vista 64-bit and want your PDF files indexed.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The IFilter shop provides filters for Open Office/Star Office documents, PDF documents, and a host of others. You can get the Open Office IFilter at www.ifiltershop.com/sofilter.html. There are links on the same page to a number of other useful filters.
Over the past thirty years, it seems that we’ve come to expect dishonesty in our politicians, employers, and everyone who is trying to sell us something. Instead of being outraged at the blatant lies we’re told, we just accept it.
Look at the mess that kind of thinking has gotten us into. Our economy is trashed, as is our reputation around the world, several thousand of our children were sent to die in Iraq on the basis of a lie, and we are facing a world wide environmental crisis.
To those of you who have something to sell to the American people, I’d suggest trying a little honesty. It would be refreshing. Even better, it might work. You might find that people are willing to pay a little bit more for products that are peddled using accurate information instead of ludicrous stories and obvious pandering.
On the other side of this equation, I strongly suspect that people are going to become quite vengeful towards those that they feel put them in this position. They are going to wonder why the guy who sold all those sub-prime mortgages has a nice house while they are being foreclosed on. They’ll wonder why the CEOs and CFOs of all these corporations are getting paid bonuses when the end result of the work they did is the collapse of their companies and the world economy.
It used to be that honesty was taken for granted. Maybe we need to work on cleaning up our act and making it possible to live that way once more. It won’t solve all our problems, but perhaps it will make the ones that we have a little easier to face.
I’m not an economist. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a single class in economics. But I think I’m reasonably intelligent and I’ve tried to pay attention to what has happened in our economy during my lifetime, so I think it might be possible that some of my ideas might work. If not, perhaps they’ll provide some amusement for those out there who actually do understand what’s going on.
I don’t understand exactly what has happened to collapse our economy, but there are some things that have been going on for a long time that I believe played a role. If they aren’t fixed, I think we’ll either fail to recover, or we’ll go on to have another enormous collapse at some future date that dwarfs this one. I’ll just list them here. See if any make sense to you.
It’s beginning to look to me like the GOP leadership wants a great depression. Perhaps they have decided that by sabotaging the economy, they will be able to get back into power more quickly. If so, they should be deeply ashamed, resign their positions and report to the nearest prison. I can’t think of anything more treasonous than purposely bankrupting the Big 3 automakers and putting millions out of work, in order to shore up the future of a party whose policies have put the entire world in peril.
Normally, I would oppose a bail out, just as the Republicans are doing. I don’t like the idea of bailing out the automakers. It’s become a bad habit. The leadership of the American automobile industry seems to be made up of people who can’t see past the next quarter and who are convinced that lobbying Congress is more important than making good cars. Frankly, we deserve a lot better than we’ve been getting from that group.
Many of us, if not most, have had to struggle with finding device drivers that would let us use the brand new bit of hardware that we just brought - that device that will complete our life. We are stricken when we discover that there’s no driver disk and the manufacturer site is down for maintenance.Why do we have to put up with this? Why can’t the industry come up with a standards, say PCI-Friendly, that forces the Manufacturers to add a little flash EPROM to their board that contains drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux, and/or the address from which those drivers can be downloaded by the computer, without making the poor confused user dig out disks or hunt down web sites.Read on for my suggestion. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I think the basic idea is valid. If it’s not, I’d like someone to explain to me why. Read the rest of this entry »
Despite the title, this article is as much a congratulations to the American public as it is to President-elect Obama. For the first time in a very long while, I believe we have elected the kind of leader we really need in this country. I believe Barak Obama demonstrated a great capacity for inspiration during the campaign and I hope he’ll use that talent to inspire Americans to pull out of this economic tailspin and once more take on the challenges that once made us the envy of every other country in the world.
During my lifetime, I’ve seen the U.S. retreat from being the leader in technology, production, science, education, medicine, and space exploration and turn into a twisted shadow of the nation I grew up to love. I kept hoping for that moment to come when we would realize that we had to resume our place in the world as a nation of adults. I would imagine us collectively straightening up, standing tall, and stepping forward to take on the problems we helped create - working with the other nations of the world as a partner, not as some presumptous bully. I hope that is what this election represents.
I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. I remember that a cross was burned in my middle-class neighborhood, in the yard of the first black family who tried to move in to the area. I remember listening to class-mates parrot their parents beliefs that the only real solution to the “black problem” was to ship them all back to Africa. That our nation has matured enough that we can elect a man of African descent to our highest office - that is more deeply satisfying to me than I would ever have dreamed possible. I think it says a lot about the true character of our nation.
This was a race about prejudice. Some of it was racial. Some was prejudice about ideology. Let’s not forget prejudice against Islam, and against African-American Christian churches. And, of course, prejudice over political party affiliation.
Prejudice came out in different ways. We saw prejudice on Obama’s part when it came to small-town America. That was echoed by Palin’s remarks intimating that New York City and other big cities weren’t part of “Real America.” We even had the press telling us that white voters couldn’t actually be trusted to vote for the person they said they’d vote for, if that person was black. (Surprisingly, I had no trouble at all casting my ballot for Obama. It seems others also over came the evil mind-controlling power of the Bradely Effect, as well.)
Fortunately, this was also a race about hope. I believe that fifty-two percent of Americans cast a vote for Obama because they felt he was their best hope for a better future.
We’ve taken a giant step forward. Let’s hope it’s just the first of many.
I was spoiled growing up in Louisville Kentucky by Actors Theatre, one of the best regional theatres in the U.S.. I had season tickets for several years before I left, and really loved attending the shows. (For one thing, it was the one night of the month I was sure I could get a date.) Later I moved to Florida and later out to Colorado, and never found anything really comparable near where I lived. By the time I moved to Walpole, I didn’t think about going to the theatre as much. I believe that’s just changed.I ran into someone from the Footlighters, Walpole’s community theatre, at an a local art festival. It sounded interesting, so my wife and I went to see their latest production, Rabbit Hole, over the weekend. It proved to be really enjoyable experience for me, reminding me of the times I’d go to Actors Theatre in Louisville.The players, Amy Snodgrass, Shannon Lillian Hogan, David DaCosta, Sandi MacDonald, and Patrick Maloney all turned in wonderful performances. I could easily have seen them playing in Louisville.The story is about a couple that had everything until a tragic accident splintered their world. Over the course of the play, they have to navigate a blind maze of broken expectations in order to find their way back to each other.This coming weekend is the last weekend for the play. Don’t miss it.
I used to wonder why someone as woefully unprepared to be President as Palin would run for V.P. Given recent revelations, I now understand: it’s for the shopping spree! She went to New York, did the photo op at Ground Zero, and then hit the shops. In two months, she’s spent $150,000 on clothing. That’s just on herself. She also got new duds for her husband. You gotta love the perks.
All the shopping was paid for by the RNC. I’ll bet that’s going to make for some angry conservatives. But it doesn’t end there, not wanting to take advantage of her gracious hosts too much, she had her home state pay for the airfare and hotel rooms for her kids. One hotel room was $770 per night. Then she cooked the books a bit to make it look legitimate. Not a smart thing to do when you are under so much scrutiny. Especially when, upon digging a bit deeper, reporters discovered that she’s been charging the State of Alaska a per diem to allow herself to live in her own home. I guess she figures she’s renting it out to herself. But hey, it’s another $17,000 per year out of the tax payer’s pockets and into her own.
I mean, how foolish do you have to be to run scams while you’ve got every reporter in the world looking into your life? Either you have to be so naive as to border on brain dead, or you have to be so much in the habit of cheating your way through life, that you can’t tell the difference between what is ethical behavior and what isn’t. Either way, I don’t want someone like that anywhere need our fiscal crisis.
This is someone who pretends she knows what it’s like to be middle-class. How many of you would have the audacity to try that kind of stunt on your employer? You wouldn’t. Why not? Because you can be fired. You aren’t elected to an office that you merely plan to use as a stepping stone to an even better gig. You don’t have a job where you can just leave your responsibilities behind and go on the campaign trail for a few months. I realize that’s the reality for politicians, but it’s nothing like the reality for the rest of America. Politicians know they are safe in their jobs until the end of their terms. No matter how bad the economy gets, they’ll be just fine until the voters have a chance to boot them out. The rest of you have to worry that your boss will walk in at any time and tell you that they’ve just decided to cut back and your name is on the list.
It is Palin’s desperate hope that you’ll vote for McCain/Palin on November 4th because she looks pretty and claims to be just like you. But saying it doesn’t make it so.
When you get into the polling booth, think about the kind of leader we need and what happened the last time we got fooled by someone who claimed he was just like us. Can we really afford Sarah Palin?
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