Saturday, May 9, 2009

Woof
My best friend is in surgery this morning to have the tumor removed from his groin/leg.

Not gonna have a biopsy - one way or the other the thing has to come out for his own good & comfort.

Prayers/good thoughts/whatever requested.

If all goes well can pick him up after 4:30. Gonna be a long day.



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Friday October 19, 2007 - 08:28am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
More Excellent Freeware
CamStudio, a simple tool that captures all the screen or a part to a video.

Cream, Cream is an improved version of Vim, that has all the features of Vim but is easy to use.

FileZila, is for FTP,SFTP,and FTPS

FreeMind, helps you to draw schemes of your ideas

GAG, is a graphical boot manager

JFtp, supports SMB, SFTP, NFS, HTTP. Its a Java program.

Kompozer, is another improved editor.

MegaPOV, This is a improved version of POV.

SEONote, organizes notes and files.

WinSCP, is a Windows program for secure FTP.

QuickRun, allows you to make list of programs,open them all that for you when clicked.

ArtRage artistic painting. Very easy.

Anim8or, you can not only models, render make videos of your animations.

Art of Illusion, 3d modeling

CBModelPro, is an organic modeling program. It h

CinePaint, a collection of video and image tools

CreaToon, is for making cartoon .

DataCrow, organize your data in different categories

DeepPaint, is an artistic painting program

FreeMorphing,

FreeSSHd Server,

gCAD3D, It's free CAD software for industrial design or architecture.

Miro, is a video player

The Gimp

Inkscape, a vector graphics editor

JKDefrag, JKDefragGUI,

Free Mp3 Wma Converter, is a sound tool

Sunbird, a calendar and events application

Mp3MyMp3 Recorder, record all that sounds in your PC to a mp3 file

TreeDBNotes Free, note organizer that lists your data in tabbed tree views

NeoMem, another opensource organizer.

Netbeans IDE, a powerful Java editor that you can use for developing applications and websites.

Notetab Light, a code editor

Texture Processor, a tool for easy making seamless textures of all kinds

Rainlendar, calendar, event reminder with alarms, and a "To Do" task list

RSSOwl, is a news feed reader

JR Directory Printer, prints a directory contents (names of files,etc) in a text file.

JR Screen Ruler

Wood Worshop, makes seamless wood textures.

TaskCoach, a task manager.

ScreenHunter 5 Free, screen capture



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Thursday October 18, 2007 - 10:13pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
For Pete!
For Pete! magnify
Typical MacUsers.



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Thursday October 18, 2007 - 10:09pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Strikes
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Thursday October 18, 2007 - 08:33pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Also Kind Of Scary
President Hilary.

Her stance on war is more hawk than dove. and the war money is betting on her.

These two items would scare the pants off me if I was a voter who counted on democrats being anti-war.

"I will make it very clear to the Iranians that there are very serious consequences attached to their actions," Clinton said.

"The defense industry this year abandoned its decade-long commitment to the Republican Party, funneling the lion share of its contributions to Democratic presidential candidates, especially to Hillary Clinton who far out-paced all her competitors."

This whole thing of politics is sickening. Instapundit says Libertarians should be heartened - both the ruling parties are equally corrupted and a lot of folks want a major change in the way things are run.



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My ideas Espoused - Unfortunately!
Classed as a documentary. Then again, Michael Moore's stuff was classed as such too.

"For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME."

Fact or fiction? Who knows? Us plebians don't for sure.



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Thursday October 18, 2007 - 02:22pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
No Comment
None

creepy

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Thursday October 18, 2007 - 01:23pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Call Me FootShooter
I wonder if all those perforations in the Lian Li case represent the times I have screwed up and caused myself problems?

This last one was a doozy! Suddenly my "upstairs backup" computer wouldn't boot, giving a "corrupt or missing hal.dll file" message.

My first reaction was a flashback to "I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Dave"....

Research time. Windows 2000 Pro on that machine. A 2000 Pro CD would not offer a repair, only new install as old op system was not found. Downloaded Spotmau, which is shilled as being able to fix most problems. No joy. Booted from floppy, no luck, no access.

More research. Boot.ini was mentioned. Hmmm - it's what windows needs to find the operating system. Well, last ditch resort, pull the HD out of the 2000 box, take it down, hook it up to the XP box so I can access it.

Okay, looks normal. Viewing boot ini gives:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

Okay, let's compare it to the boot.ini on this XP machine. Odd, it's word-for-word identical. Very odd, since the op systems and path are different on the two machines?.

OMG!! I remember backing some stuff up the other day from the XP machine to the 2000 and telling it to replace the older verions of the files. OMG!

Slap self for stupidity, scratch head, fire up text editor, try to come up with something that might work. Get this, which at least matches the 2000 paths and OS:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Shut down, trot the old hd back upstairs, install it, cross fingers & eyes, and - SUCCESS! 2000 comes up and runs.

Did I learn anything from this? yep - backed up all boot.ini files RO and new extensions.

Two seconds of stupity, hours of work, typical of PEBCAK.



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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 09:52pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Flickr Fans
Check out these apps and also these!



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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 02:07pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Did I mention The Britsh Crime rate?
Interesting article here.

Excerpts:

"After the North Koreans, the British are probably the most highly surveyed people in the world. Around 10,000 publicly funded closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras—to say nothing of the private ones—watch London every day. The average Briton, you often hear, winds up photographed 300 times a day as he goes about his business, even if his business is crime."

"The problem with the criminal law in Britain today is that it neither incapacitates criminals nor deters those inclined, for whatever reason, to break the law. The crime-inclined are probably more numerous than ever before, which makes leniency doubly disastrous. The huge number of CCTV cameras in Britain—perhaps as many as a third of all such cameras in the world—is an official response to the increased lawlessness of the population. But as with so much official activity in Britain, it achieves nothing. It is para-detection and para-deterrence rather than real detection and real deterrence."

Sounds a bit like our politicians and their "feel-good" laws. The law might not accomplish anything, but getting it passed makes the Pol look good in the eyes of his/her constituents.

Accessing BIOS setup
Just in case the message goes by too fast to read - here is a brief cheatsheet:

Acer - Ctrl+Alt+Esc or F2

Compaq - F10 or Del

Compaq Presario - Press Alt+Ctrl+Esc at boot when you see the "Compaq" log in big letters

Dell - F1 or Del.

Gateway 2000 - F2 or F1

Hewlett Packard - F1


IBM

Aptiva - Press F1

ThinkPad - F1 or Ctrl+Alt+S

Leading Edge

Fortiva 5000 - Ctrl+Alt+A or Ctrl+Alt+S

NEC - F2

Packard Bell - F1 or F2 or Ctrl+Alt+S

Sharp Laptop 9020 - F2

Sony - F3, then F2, or F1

Toshiba Laptops - Toshiba Utility, on the selected models you can hold the ESC key during boot which will then prompt you to press the F1 key to enter the BIOS




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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 01:21pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I Seldom Make Reading Suggestions
When asked what I recommend, I either say "Well. I enjoy this author..." or "This author has been very popular..." or perhaps "I notice that people who like that author tend to like this one...".

Reading tastes vary as much as tastes in anything else and maybe even more, and there are very few folks whose tastes match mine in anything, especially books.

The authors themselves put in another wild card in book tastes. The best authors are pretty consistent book to book, but all of them put out junk once in a while. They might decide to try something new, they might have to meet a deadline, or they may have to make a certain word-count, but whatever the reason once in a while all of them throw their readers a curve. Thus when someone says " I tried one of his/her books and I hated/loved it", they might not have a large enough sample to make a good judgement of the writer's quality. (political pollsters tend to do the same thing.)

A few folks tell me they tried some of the writers I listed as favorites and liked them, and there are a few combinations of author/series that almost everyone likes - like Janet Evanovitch & the Stephanie Plum series, which I rate as one of the funniest I have ever read. I don't think anyone I have mentioned them to has ever read them and not enjoyed them.

All in all, it is probably best to just ask me what I am reading...



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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 12:38pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Broomie!
Maybe I need this?
Broomhilda
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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 10:24am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Why I Like Chocolate - Or Not
I thought it was beacause it tasted good - but not according to these folks:
--------------------------
Scientists Explain Chocolate Cravings

Oct 12, 4:34 AM (ET)
By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that's because maybe it is.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people's digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's allure.

That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study. It appears Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Proteome Research.

Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. The food conglomerate Nestle SA paid for the study. But this isn't part of an effort to convert a few to the dark side (or even milk) side of cocoa, Kocchar said.

In fact, the study was delayed because it took a year for the researchers to find 11 men who don't eat chocolate.

Kochhar compared the blood and urine of those 11 men, who he jokingly called "weird" for their indifference to chocolate, to 11 similar men who ate chocolate daily. They were all healthy, not obese, and were fed the same food for five days.

The researchers examined the byproducts of metabolism in their blood and urine and found that a dozen substances were significantly different between the two groups. For example, the amino acid glycine was higher in chocolate lovers, while taurine (an active ingredient in energy drinks) was higher in people who didn't eat chocolate. Also chocolate lovers had lower levels of the bad cholesterol, LDL.

The levels of several of the specific substances that were different in the two groups are known to be linked to different types of bacteria, Kochhar said.

Still to be determined is if the bacteria cause the craving, or if early in life people's diets changed the bacteria, which then reinforced food choices.

How gut bacteria affect people is a hot field of scientific research.

Past studies have shown that intestinal bacteria change when people lose weight, said Dr. Sam Klein, an obesity expert and professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Since bacteria interact with what you eat, it is logical to think that there is a connection between those microbes and desires for certain foods, said Klein, who wasn't part of Kochhar's study.

Kochhar's research makes so much sense that people should have thought of it earlier, said J. Bruce German, professor of food chemistry at the University of California Davis. While five outside scientists thought the study was intriguing, Dr. Richard Bergman at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, had concerns about the accuracy of the initial division of the men into groups that wanted chocolate or were indifferent to it.

What matters to Kochhar is where the research could lead.

Kochhar said the relationship between food, people and what grows in their gut is important for the future: "If we understand the relationship, then we can find ways to nudge it in the right direction."



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Tuesday October 16, 2007 - 01:45pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
A Rational Response
A Rational Response magnify
... that she responded to irrationally??? No truly rational person would ever marry, would they?

Today was another foot in mouth day even before I posted this. The clerk at SA wasn't sure which till she was to use, said she didn't want to get into someone else's drawers. I told her I knew what she meant, I'd gotten in trouble that way myself.

Unfortunately she took it the way I meant it. Fortunately, she had a sense of humor too.



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Amen!
Amen! magnify
BT,DT!



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Monday October 15, 2007 - 06:20pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Books & liberty
Books & liberty magnify
I see that a young man in the U.K. has been arrested for possession of The Anarchist's Cookbook which is even available from the Brit's Amazon site and has been pretty well discredited as reference material here in the states.

Britain is a strange country - the epitome of the nanny-state - where recent years have seen the banning or firearms, martial arts weapons, and even large kitchen knives.

Of course, since those bans went into effect, the violent-crime rate has exploded, and even the largest inventory of security cameras and the least privacy of any country in the world hasn't helped in calming the situation.

(Back in the day when the Brit's epitomized the world "civilization", most of the citizens were armed, the police weren't, and violent crime was nearly non-existent. I read an interview a while back I wish I had bookmarked. The subject was an elderly English lady telling of her early life, and one thing that had stuck in her memory was her father and a group of associates gathered at a resort hotel. When the subject of self-defense was brought up, it developed that only one of the group was not armed and he was ridiculed for his lack of preparedness.)

I suppose that making it illegal to own certain books because of the information they contain is a logical extension of the legal trend there. but it bothers me. "Fahrenheit 451" can still happen. There is a lot of power in knowledge and information, and when those that govern start limiting access to that power it is time for their citizens to be concerned.



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Monday October 15, 2007 - 02:40pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Laughing too hard to type...
O.C., eh?

What do I have to say to that? First of all, recipes is mis-spelled. :P

Secondly, wouldn't a link to Flickr have been more appropriate? I mean, wouldn't folks rather see the photos than the photographer? :)

Thirdly. Thank you, Poofy.

Fourthly - stupid editor won't post the stupid emoticons like they show in the stupid edit box so I have to use these stupid ASCII emoticons - and there ain't one for blushing, which would actually go with the line above. Stupid editor!

Love, O.C.



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Monday October 15, 2007 - 01:40pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
FYI
"I’m a former tree hugger who was opposed to everything, every timber sale, but now I see that the worst thing you can do is lose it all to development."

Anne Dahl, the director of the Swan Valley Ecosystem Center in Montana,
The way it is
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Monday October 15, 2007 - 01:22pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Today is the Day
Today is the Day magnify
"On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future."

-------

Well, as far as I can tell, the only real solution to our world-wide environmental problems is to drastically decrease the population. I know that isn't a PC solution. but it is nature's way.

When a population of anything reaches a critical mass the checks & balances of nature go into effect and there is a mass die-off of some type, whether as odd as the mass drownings of the lemmings or as simple as a devstating disease or a decrease in the food supply. Fortunately or otherwise our technology & medicine have managed to keep that spectre at bay so far.

There are drawbacks to that - for one thing, it is like building a dam to hold back a flood. When the dam eventually gives way, the tidal wave that results is much more devastating than any series of floods. For another thing, we are giving overpopulation positive feedback by cutting death rates at all levels. Ask any engineer the end result of positive feedback - it ain't pretty.

Maybe I am pessimistic, but I think it is way too late to save the earth. All we can do is brace ourselves for the inevitable. The old saying "Party like there is no tomorrow" might as well be our motto.



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Entry for October 15, 2007
Entry for October 15, 2007 magnify

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Monday October 15, 2007 - 10:56am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
My First Attempt
My First Attempt magnify
... at a humorous photo. Took the picture down in the swan Valley today, added the caption for a birthday card for a friend.



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Sunday October 14, 2007 - 07:47pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Cory Doctorow
I have mixed feelings about him. Apparently Ms. LeGuin doesn't:

"SFWA, Piracy, and Serious Literature — An Open Letter

I'd like to correct some misapprehensions about Cory Doctorow's unauthorized posting of my short comic piece "On Serious Literature" on his boingboing.net site.

I originally sent the piece to David Langford for Ansible, because that's where I first saw the quote from Ruth Franklin that the piece riffs on. I also put it on my web site. (It's still there.) Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle then reprinted it entire in the Chronicle, without asking permission. My agent Vaughne Hansen and I immediately demanded an apology from Carroll, and immediately got one. Harper's asked to publish it, offering me $200.00, which I accepted (I love gravy.)

I then discovered that Doctorow had put it on his web site, without asking permission and without observing copyright, misrepresenting its purpose, and falsely claiming that it was under license by "Creative Commons" so that anyone could copy it.

My agent and I had just decided to ask the e-piracy committe of SFWA, which I had come to count on in similar situations, to intervene on my behalf — when we found that the committee had suddenly been dissolved, following complaints about unauthorized interference, issuing from Cory Doctorow.The irony of this situation is fairly visible. While Doctorow was making a huge fuss over an honest mistake, which when discovered was immediately redressed, he was publishing another writer's work without asking permission and in clear violation of copyright.

With my consent, Andrew Burt exposed Doctorow's piracy in a letter printed on Jerry Pournelle's web site. Doctorow scoffed, blustered, made no apology to me for misidentifying my work and using it without permission, and behaved as if his action was legitimate, although the Fair Use exception explicitly does not cover reprinting an entire article or poem no matter how short. But he took part of the piece off his site.

At the request of Michael Capobianco, President of SFWA, acting on my behalf, Doctorow has now finally removed the entire piece.

He has not apologised either to me for using my piece without permission, or to the people he misled with his pretense of a "Creative Commons License" into thinking they could reprint a copyrighted piece without violating the law. Nor has he offered to help them remove these many additional copies.

But, thanks to SFWA, he has taken the piece down. My agent is writing to request him to redress some of the other matters. I hope then to be done for good with Mr Doctorow. What I remain upset about is the confusion and destruction he seems to have effected within SFWA.

An overworked committee mistakenly identified a few works, among many, as infringing copyright; the mistakes were promptly admitted and redressed, with apologies; and President Capobianco invited any other parties who thought themselves wronged to contact him. Where is the cause in all this for dissolving a committee which has worked with extraordinary effectiveness to redress real wrongs?

In my view, the best thing that could come out of my brush with the Doctorow Doctrine would be this: the honorable reinstatement of the SFWA e-piracy committee, with an expression of appreciation from SFWA officers and members of the honest and effective work they have done for us for so long.

This letter is not copyrighted and may be excerpted or copied entire.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

October 12 2007


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Sunday October 14, 2007 - 06:21pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I Don't Live Up To Any Of My Friends
But some are true heroes. Here is the story of one, Bill Shires, who nearly made the ultimate sacrifice. He was my room mate, long ago at NNC.

Excerpted from the book "Their Fathers' Work", by William B. McCloskey:

No Promises

TerryTerry and his brother Todd were crewing for groundfish on the forty-eight-foot trawler Odyssey off the Oregon coast. When a strong southwester started blowing, skipper Gary Cutting decided to weather it out. The boat, a new one and well tested, slammed and rolled, but fishermen in northern waters have always accepted this as part of the work. Suddenly a big wave hit the boat broadside. Todd, on watch, had just made himself a snack. The skipper was dozing in a bunk near the wheel, and Terry lay asleep against the bow in the cramped fo'c'sle. A later investigation determined that the wave knocked off one of the six-hundred-pound steel trawl doors chained to either side of the boat, and the sudden weight loss on a single side tipped the balance.

No one had time to put on his survival suit. According to Terry: "It felt like the boat was immediately on the verge of tipping over. I jumped out of bed. By the time I got to the top and reached the radio my brother had shut off the engine. Then another wave hit, just immediate-like, and we rolled over. Didn't have time at the radio for a Mayday. It was like, for me, like being from a dead sleep to being upside down." Terry, thirty-five, was a short man with a kid's brightness. He discussed his ordeal a week later with such a quiet, steady voice that he might merely have watched it on TV.

"Then we kind of panicked, all three of us there. Tried to get the door open, the door leading from the galley to the deck, get out fast as we could. The door wouldn't budge. Water pressure, I guess. Then we tried to bust the window open, but it's got that bulletproof Plexiglass stuff. Beat at it with a frying pan." Remember, these men were now in a boat with everything tumbled into reverse. They stood on the former ceiling, with the deck they had walked upon seconds before now bumping their heads and every familiar object that had not broken loose hanging over them the wrong way. "Then Todd opened a drawer that had in it our really big frying pan-everything inside tumbled upside out-and beat at the window. Todd's a big guy. He broke off the frying pan handle but the window didn't budge."

It had to be the two-part Dutch door or nothing, even though it would flood them immediately and require a frenzied swim to the surface. "We tried to figure out which way to turn the handle from upside down. Just got it cracked enough to let water in. A wave slammed and crushed our fingers-a couple of mine still won't hold anything-but we held on 'cause it was the only way out. We finally got the door partway open. But by that time water was up to about our waist, and we'd got disorientated."

Soon, the water was up to their chins. "We were kind of floating. Sometimes we had to hold our breath when the water washed over our heads." The hatch to the engine room was a little trapdoor less than two feet square. A short ladder inside, built to lead down to the engine and bilge, now led up at least to a space above them that still had air. "Gary was still obsessed with getting out the door. But we had to go up. I said 'Let's go.' I'm not sure but I've been dreaming this, but I think Gary just shrugged me off. So Todd and I went up to the engine room, popped right up, and just stood there and waited, on like a little mantelpiece. Waited for the skipper to come up. We figured he was right behind us."

The Mason brothers made it up to the engine space none too soon. "We didn't have time to even look around when there was this big whoosh. The door had come loose evidently, 'cause the cabin below us got completely full of water. We figured Gary had got out. But then, in the cold water, we wondered what happened to him. Anyhow, I thought we were dead. Plenty of guys I've known, fishermen, they've been drownded. So, I figured, now it's my turn. Will I see God? Then we stayed floating, like gettin' a reprieve. If somebody found us."

They had capsized around 3 p.m. It was mid-June, so the days were long. Daylight, seen as a glow through the engine-room hatch, slowly faded. For a rescue to start, somebody first had to find them. But the Odyssey had been fishing alone. How long before somebody missed them, even their wives? (Both men were separated but, with children, were still in touch; fishing and an easy home life do not always go together.) There was no comfort except for being still alive. Terry had burned his arm against a hot engine pipe as they climbed to safety, and they could barely move their fingers after crushing them in the door. And, Terry added, "We were completely saturated with oil, black oil." At first the engine radiated heat, but the metal soon cooled. The sea temperature was fifty-six degrees. "We could crawl up out of the water on a ledge but it was still cold. We was only wearing sneakers, jeans, and T-shirts-you know, the cabin had been warm inside when it happened, we weren't on deck hauling nets. So we kept moving our hands and arms to stay warm." A broken vent pipe let in a trickle of fresh but frigid air, and also water. Alternately they plugged it with a sock or opened it for ventilation.

The brothers muttered contingencies to each other. If the boat hit rocks and ripped apart...if the waves rolled the boat to a new angle and flooded their prison...if nobody came to rescue them. . . . "The only answer to any of it was, to swim for it, under the water," Terry said. They practiced holding their breaths. "I had to go under once to find something to stick in the door. Scary." His voice tightened for the first time. "I don't like to swim, don't like the water that much."

By a fluke, some people on a sailboat lost in the same storm had radioed the Newport, Oregon, Coast Guard for help. The Coasties had their hands full escorting boats out of the weather, so they asked for an exact position to help them reach the boaters. The boaters thought they saw an orange vessel tossing in the waves and approached it hoping to get a radio fix. It was the overturned Odyssey, discovered against all odds before darkness would have made a search impossible until morning. The message, according to newspaper accounts, reached the Coast Guard at 6:27 p.m., three and a half hours after the accident.

The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter, the first of many heroic acts during the night, because this was no weather for safe flying close to the surface. The chopper reached the scene at 7:16 p.m., radioed the exact position, and began to shine a powerful light around the water, looking for survivors. A special Coast Guard self-righting lifeboat arrived from Newport at 8:10 p.m. In the furiously raining twilight, with whitecaps snapping over the water, Petty Officer Second Class Richard White volunteered to have the helicopter raise him in a harness from his boat so that he could crawl onto the Odyssey's rolling, pitching, slippery hull and tap on it for survivors. Terry and Todd tapped back strongly with a piece of pipe they had nursed for hours in hopes that someone might come. Except for the taps, the only sound that had filtered through the overturned hull had been the throb of the helicopter rotors.

In Newport, a close-knit fishing community, people began rushing supplies and equipment to the waterfront and the airstrip, much of it helter-skelter since nobody knew what the rescuers would need specifically. Some fishermen set out in their boats to see if they could help, while others prepared to go if the Coast Guard failed. The wives and ex-wives of the three men gathered in the Coast Guard operations office. Other family members waited by their marine radios. (Terry and Todd came from a family of thirteen.) Eventually word of two survivors reached the community, but no one knew which of the three they were. In town one of the churches opened its doors, and throughout the night people came to pray. And, of course, the media arrived in force with lights and cameras.

The Coast Guard reviewed the options, all of them dangerous in the storm and darkness. They could try to cut a hole in the hull, but the bubble holding the boat afloat might go in the process before the men could be pulled out, or the heavy equipment needed to do the job in a heaving sea might send the boat down. They might tow the boat to shallower water, but this would take a long time while the vessel might swamp and sink during the rough trip. Or, a diver could go in with breathing apparatus and take them out. A diver posed the least risk if a willing, qualified one could be found.

The first two divers flown to the scene studied the conditions and decided they could not do the job. Two commercial salvage divers, Bill Shires and Pat Miller, agreed to have a look, but they lived miles away. A local pilot flew them to Newport (dangerous in itself during the storm). "It was one of those eerie evenings," Shires recalled, "The wind's blowing about forty-five, rainstorms, squalls going back and forth." Everyone knew the importance of speed since the Odyssey could sink at any time, but steps had to be taken deliberately. After a quick briefing with the owner of a similar boat, Shires declared that he needed to assess the situation on site. One of the Coast Guard's two helicopters flew Shires and Miller to the scene. They wore wetsuits, ready to go. It was already past midnight.

Later, in the safety and comfort of a warm room, Bill Shires, a thickset man graying at the temples, remembered some of it. "Opened up the helicopter door, we're sitting there with a full set of diving gear on, looking down through the squalls at lights playing on this hull. You'd see the hull drop off the waves and go back up again and bob like a cork. It was frightening, nothing like I'd been into before. The chopper pilot says: 'You going to go?' I said yes, get me down within ten feet of the water. So Pat and I went."

In the dark and cold water, illuminated by searchlight beams from boats and aircraft, Shires discovered that a loose net on deck had encased the furiously surging boat like a bag. They cut through and swam under the deck (which was heaving over their heads). Half of the Dutch door swayed open. Evidently Gary Cutting in his desperation had succeeded. They tugged open the other half and tied back both sections.

Inside, debris tumbled in a chaotic stew-anything loose, from baloney and shirts to chairs. Shires tried to enter and explore, but the flotsam bumped his head and tangled his gear too dangerously. He passed objects item by item to his partner, who carried them to the hole in the net for release. "We got tangled up in a bunch of netting, in gear. I got vertigo because the boat...she'd drop off the waves and the hydraulic surge-pressure came up just like a plunger to shove you forward into the boat. Then she'd roll anywhere from sixty to eighty degrees. So I was inside this washing machine goin' around, tryin' to figure what next while I got nauseated, got disoriented, got wrapped three times in my own safety line." After clearing the cabin Shires searched but found no bodies or survivors. Despite a superhuman push by rescuers, more than four hours had elapsed since the young Coast Guardsman had heard the taps from inside. Possibly since then the men had died and been washed away.

Shires returned to the surface, exhausted. After a quick rest he pulled himself together for another try, this time on the exposed hull. He strapped a four-pound hammer to his belt and returned with Miller. "Now remember this thing is an upside down boat, completely slick, in probably fourteen-foot seas. Every time the boat drops off a swell she goes underneath. Pat's about six-one. He grabs the rudder shaft and makes himself a human ladder and I just crawled over his body. I hugged along the keel, tapping on the compartments. And at midships I got this response back. So I did it again. And all of a sudden I could hear this frantic tapping inside."

Inside the boat, crouched and shivering, Terry and Todd had watched the diver's light as it edged the rim of the trap door beneath them, but they found no way to communicate through the barrier of water. They had a curious illumination of their own, caused by phosphorescent plankton that emitted greenish, glowing speckles in the water sloshing against the hull. "That glow," Terry remembered, "it didn't make us feel any better, it was too spooky." A long dearth of action followed the glimpse of the exploring light. "We wondered if the guys outside had given up. When we heard those taps over our head, I guess we banged back like hell."

Shires, outside, returned to the support boat to prepare for a third trip. He had brought with him a load of dive equipment-"I mean I threw in everything, you don't know what you're going to run into." The survivors would be scared and tired, he assumed, and probably had no dive experience. Thus he couldn't risk "buddy breathing"-sharing the mouthpiece to his own regulator by passing it back and forth under water-which required training and discipline. He needed to attach an "octopus," a second breathing line, to his regulator. The only other equipment available to him was Pat Miller's. After Miller had stripped down his own regulator to provide the octopus, he could assist Shires only from the surface.

Shires had tied a down line all the way into the Odyssey's interior, and had attached underwater lights along it every ten feet. "I could watch those lights swing as I worked my way back in." He found the hatch to the engine compartment swollen shut from the water, its handle only a finger-hold lever. "Well, the air had locked and compressed it shut. I placed one finger in the crack of the door. It crushed the finger, but allowed the engine compartment to depressurize. I finally with a real strong sense of urgency, I got it pulled down. I started to work my way up. All of a sudden I saw this hand coming down. It had life, it grabbed me, it scared me. Then I had to work my way through this twenty-two by twenty-two-inch opening in a wetsuit, diving tank, all kinds of regulators. I work my way up. Just as I begin to break water I shine my light up. And I see two sets of eyes."

Up to their chests in water, in a mist of smoke and diesel fumes, the brothers received a brief course in scuba diving. "No mystique, scuba's just basic, a way to get to the work site. So I told these two guys: 'You follow instructions, you live; you don't, you die. Pretty basic course we're goin' to have here today, folks.'" The audience at the Seattle Fish Expo to whom Shires was recounting his experience laughed for the first time. They did it with a relieved heartiness. Most were fishermen, men with muscles bulging from plaid shirts. For the moment they sat agreeably close to food and shelter, but they could project themselves onto the storming dark water.

Shires gave Todd the regulator to demonstrate. "He puts it in his mouth, sucks it, says: 'I can't get no air.' I figured the guy was just stressed out. But he hands it back, and low and behold, I can't get air out of the bottle either!" He had ruptured part of the bulky scuba system trying to come up through the narrow opening. "My tank's empty. And now, the guy that's going to make the rescue, he becomes the victim. I'm trapped also inside this boat. Yes, if you're wondering. I felt a sense of real despair."

He did not tell the brothers, but merely said that he needed to go out for more equipment. "I had to make about a forty-five-foot run through the interior of this boat with no air. I'll tell you what, this was one time I prepared. I stripped the gear off, I opened up my knife blade...took three breaths, made a submersion, and started down that line. I can still see those lights swinging." There was a turn to negotiate in the cabin, then a hand-over-hand crossing under the deck to the opening in the fishnet, then a potential snare from cables that had been attached to the boat if he tried to surface before clearing them. He made it, completely exhausted.

Shires recovered himself as quickly as he could. The water in the compartment had risen a rung on the ladder from opening the hatch and time might be running out. Only the bubble of air kept the boat afloat. He decided to return himself since he knew the way in. Carrying individual air bottles and regulators from his stockpile, he faced the brothers again. "Inside there, I know if we lose the bubble we're all gone. I didn't ask who had the most kids or anything like that. I just said: 'You're [Todd] first, you're [Terry] second.'"

He strapped the gear onto Todd and explained how he was to follow the lighted line hand over hand. But, also: "Return to the refuge if anything goes wrong." Todd did panic. "But he made the right decision and went right back. We had a little discussion about get your act together, if you want to get out of here you've got to do what I tell you to. So once again we went down into the interior. I pulled him down by his legs, grabbed his hand." They groped through the net and to the surface.

Shires was sensitive enough to Terry's plight, left alone in the dark, half-submerged in oily water rising around him, to return immediately despite his own fatigue. "Well," Terry admitted a week later, "I don't remember much about that wait. Don't want to, I guess." Strapped into the gear and swimming out, Terry panicked and started groping toward the forepeak: a dead end. "So," said Shires, "I wrassle him back in and turn, made sure that I was in position. I'm prepared to drown him and hope that my topside crew'll be ready to rescue him."

Shires' listeners gasped. He knew he needed to explain. "That's a terrible terrible burden to place on anybody. But in a situation like this where that man's panic might kill you both, you've got to take control of him and hope that your topside crew's prepared." He looked firmly at the faces of fishermen watching him. "I've worked in this ocean. She's an equal opportunity killer." One large man nodded. "I've seen her," Shires continued, "I've seen her kill captains with all kinds of moxie as easily as the guys without brains."

Terry pulled himself together, although he remained disoriented. "Just as he broke the cabin," Shires concluded, "he wanted to go up, and up was upside down and there was the debris. He forgot his instructions, let go the line, and went right into the snare of nets. I pulled him back. After that he saw lights on the surface and headed toward them, hands on the line like I'd told him. You can count on it, the guy's always going to swim toward the light. And he made it."

Later that year the Coast Guard awarded Bill Shires and Pat Miller the Gold Lifesaving Medal, its highest civilian award for valor.

Back home in Newport, people rejoiced at the rescue of the Mason brothers and grieved at the loss of Gary Cutting, whose body was never found. "But you get tired of walking down the street," Terry said a week later. "Everybody wants to know the story, and you've got to tell the whole story." He talked to me the day of Gary's memorial service. After hesitating, he added quietly: "I didn't go. Didn't think I was up to that. You think you're OK, then you get despondent. I couldn't go to sleep last night. . . . But now that the memorial service is over. . . ."

I asked Terry if he felt any guilt and assured him it was natural. His voice came closest to breaking. "Maybe I could have pulled him...You know, back there, maybe forced him. . . ."

After the Odyssey disaster Terry declared: "Guess I'm just happy to be alive. I've been on a couple of boats when I thought they were going to sink, but nothing like this. Kind of ironical, my thirteen years of fishing, and thirteen hours down there." After a pause: "I don't think I'll go back fishing. I don't want to die that way." But Terry remained a fisherman, whether by choice or circumstance. Four years later his boat went down. This time he drowned.



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Sunday October 14, 2007 - 10:13am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Sanchez Report

From The Democracy Project.

"Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’ speech and Q&A session at the Military Reporters & Editors convention has unleashed a whirl of major media coverage and commentary. All are focused on his criticism of the Bush administration for inadequate strategy and prosecution of the war.However, neither the New York Times or Associated Press mention that over 40% of Sanchez’ speech severely took the major media to task. The Washington Post merely mentions it, and then underplays it at the end of its report, giving it 67 out of about 850 words in its coverage:"

Ask me if I am surprised. I still say, if we had the media in WWII that we do today, we would have lost that war too. Mainstream media reports what it wants, the way it wants, when it wants, and I think it is sad. Someplace back in the 50's or early 60's what little compulsion the media had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, disappeared.


Whether Sanchez was right or wrong in his criticism of the media, media's failure to report what he said was wrong.




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Africa Live
If you like watching animals, and have some patience, the National Geographic Wildcam Africa is pretty cool.

It is a live color webcam set up at Pete's Pond in Botswana on a game reserve.

It only runs during the dry season as the game is too dispersed during the wet season, and their day is our night so the best viewing times are early morning & late evening, but the variety of game you might see there is amazing. I have seen crocodile, elephant, giraffe, ostrich, lion, and a ton of the antelopes and other game.

Video quality is excellent for a webcam, and it is manned most of the time to track and zoom the animals.

CAUTION: Time warp involved - hours pass before you realize it!

Checklist of animals & scarcity:

Hoofed Mammals:
Impala (Aepyceros melampus) Five Paws - Very Likely
Blue Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) Five Paws - Very Likely
Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) Three Paws - Good Chance
Common Duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia) Three Paws - Good Chance
Eland (Tragelaphus oryx) Three Paws - Good Chance
Klipspringer (Oreotragus oreotragus) Two Paws - Scarce
Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) Five Paws - Very Likely
Steenbok (Raphicerus campestris) Two Paws - Scarce
Waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) Four Paws - Likely
Plains Zebra (Equus burchelli) Five Paws - Very Likely
Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) Three Paws - Good Chance
Warthog (Phacochoerus aethiopicus) Five Paws - Very Likely
Bushpig (Potamocheorus porcus) One Paw - Unlikely

Other Mammals:
Elephant (Loxodorta africana) Five Paws - Very Likely
Scrub Hare (Lepus saxatilis) Three Paws - Good Chance
Yellow-spotted Rock Dassie (Heterohyrax brucei) One Paw - Unlikely
Tree Squirrel (Paraxerus cepapi) Five Paws - Very Likely
Springhare (Pedetes capensis) One Paw - Unlikely
Antbear or Aardvark (Orycteropus afer) Zero Paws - Very Unlikely
Cape Porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) Two Paws - Scarce

Carnivores:
Bat-eared Fox (Otocyon megalotis) Two Paws - Scarce
Black-backed Jackal (Canis mesomelas) Three Paws - Good Chance
African Wild Cat (Felis lybica) Two Paws - Scarce
Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) One Paw - Unlikely
Leopard (Panthera pardus) Two Paws - Scarce
Lion (Panthera leo) Two Paws - Scarce
Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus) Zero Paws - Very Unlikely
Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) Two Paws - Scarce
Honey Badger (Mellivora capensis) Zero Paws - Very Unlikely
African Civet (Civettictis civetta) One Paw - Unlikely
Large-spotted Genet (Genetta tigrina) Three Paws - Good Chance
Banded Mongoose (Mungos mungo) Four Paws - Likely
Slender Mongoose (Galerella sanguinea) Three Paws - Good Chance

Primate:
Chacma Baboon (Papio ursinus) Five Paws - Very Likely
Vervet Monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) Five Paws - Very Likely
Lesser Bush Baby (Galago senegalensis) One Paw - Unlikely

Birds:
Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori) Four Paws - Likely
White-breasted Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) Three Paws - Good Chance
Natal Francolin (Francolinus natalensis) Four Paws - Likely
Helmeted Guinea Fowl (Numida meleagris) Five Paws - Very Likely
Hammerkop (Scopus umbretta) Three Paws - Good Chance
Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) One Paw - Unlikely
Yellow-billed Hornbill (Tockus leucomelas) Four Paws - Likely
Hadeda Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) Two Paws - Scarce
Ostrich (Struthio camelus) Five Paws - Very Likely
Red-billed Buffalo Weaver (Bubalornis niger) Four Paws - Likely
Meves's Starling (Lamprotornis mevesii ) Four Paws - Likely

Reptiles:
Nile Crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) Zero Paws - Very Unlikely
Leopard Tortoise (Geochelone pardalis) Three Paws - Good Chance
Water Monitor Lizard (Veranus niloticus) Four Paws - Likely
Serrated Hinged Terrapin (Pelusios sinuatus) Three Paws - Good Chance

Sorry - no commenting on this one!

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Saturday October 13, 2007 - 11:54am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Rice Appeals to Turkey
That's the Fox headline just now - and my instant reaction was "Of course it does!", followed by "Thanksgiving! Roast turkey with rice dressing!" Not quite Fark material, but my warped mind liked it.



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Saturday October 13, 2007 - 11:10am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Sigh
When I was laying awake at four AM I laid out a nice four-point blog entry.

All I recall now is that there were four points. Oh well.

I don't stick a big bunch of personal stuff in here, but yesterday I had an email, followed within minutes by a phone call, from a graphic designer in Billings. She is doing a flyer for the Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund, was searching for photos to illustrate it, and stumbled on one of mine that her client liked. She asked if using it was all right with me and what I would charge her for the use.

The ego hit means more than the money would, so I told her she was free to use it as long as the photo was credited to me. She sent me a PDF of the flyer - view it here.

I do the photos for the same reason I do this blog - for my own pleasure - but it is always nice to find out your work has merit to others.



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Saturday October 13, 2007 - 10:55am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
If Only I Dared....
If Only I Dared.... magnify
Then again, I've probably done worse.

My mouth has this "Jim Carrey in Liar! Liar!" mode - no matter what I do, the comments gotta come out.

The little old lady who asked me if I wanted some plastic sacks to recycle. "Sure! I always appreciate old bags!"

Oopsy.

The day a neighbor asked my wife why she didn't swim in her birthday suit - and I remarked that it needed ironing.

The day a scantily dressed young tourist lady walked in. When I asked her if I could help her find anything, she said she was just looking. "Me too!" popped out before I could get my brain engaged. (She may have been the same one that stopped in a local building supply and asked the clerk where the sealants were. His awestruck reply - "The toobies are right over in that rack." Fortunately, he lived.)

A couple of weeks ago, in the car with my S/O, who was being quieter than usual. When I asked why, she said she had nothing to say. My less-than-thoughtful response? "When did that ever stop you from talking?"

Honest, there is a story like that or worse for every one of my scars!



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Friday October 12, 2007 - 01:28pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
What I Carry
What I Carry magnify
My Urban Survival Tool Kit

Whether at home or at work, I almost always wear a leather pouch on my belt and use its contents daily.

First of all, a Stainless Tanto folder: Smith & Wesson 3500 Frame Lock. The simplicity, strength & design are perfect for me. One-hand operation for opening and closing, and the tanto point is perfect for working with boxes & labels and strong enough for use as a light-duty pry bar. The 3550S, pictured, has the serrated edge & is a bit better if you work a lot with ropes & cords.

Next, a Mini-Mag flashlight with a Terralux LED conversion unit. Not as much brightness as the original, but MUCH longer battery life! I had dead batteries once too often and this conversion has paid for itself many times over in dollars and convenience.

Third, a Gerber Multiplier. One-hand operation, many tools, and the design doesn't usually pinch your hand if the pliers slip. Locking blades are a great bonus too. This is the heavy-duty tool of choice for gripping & cutting & crimping.

Last, a Victorinox SwissChamp knife. With two blades, Can opener with small screwdriver, Bottle opener with large screwdriver & wire stripper, Scissors, Pliers with wire cutter, Wood saw, Fish scaler with hook disgorger & ruler, Metal saw with metal file & nail file, Magnifying glass, Reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, etc, it is used for precise work.

If you noted that I emphasize one-handed operation and wondered why, it is because usually I have hold of something in one hand and can't put it down till I use the appropriate tool on it. I believe this is referred to as either stupidity, bad planning, or lack of foresight.

When I am boonie-bound, I add a sheath knife, lighter & compass to the above load. More on them later.



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Steampunk's Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse
Magpie Killjoy sez, "We (SteamPunk Magazine and Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness) have just released 'A SteamPunk's Guide to the Apocalypse,' which is Creative Commons, of course, and freely downloadable from our website, as well as purchasable. It covers most of the essentials that a SteamPunk will need when they recreate their lives and societies in the shell of our soon-to-be-ruinous civilization."

Download



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Thursday October 11, 2007 - 01:47pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Freecycle Flathead
I highly recommend joining yahoo and then joining this group!

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Welcome to the worldwide Freecycle Network (TM). It's a grassroots movement of people who are giving ( getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Membership is free. How does Freecycle (TM) work? One rule: everything posted must be free. Whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door to be given away, it can be posted on the network. Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself? Respond to the posting directly and you just might get it. After that it is up to the giver to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure. Non-profit organizations also benefit from the Freecycle Network. Post the item or items you want to give away and a local organization can help you get it to someone in need. Who can join our Freecycle group? Freecycle Flathead is open to residents of Kalispell, Whitefish, Columbia Falls, and Bigfork, and Lakeside, Montana (and all points in between). PLEASE NOTE: Our forum is not for dating or "Personals" type ads. Spammers will not be tolerated. Thank you for your compliance. Want to discuss things that are not allowed on the Freecycle site? Share ideas? Offer a tip or ask a question? CHECK OUT THE FREECYCLE FLATHEAD CAFE by going to freecycle-flathead-cafe Copyright (C) 2003-2007 The Freecycle Network (Freecycle.org) All rights reserved. Freecycle and the Freecycle logo are trademarks of The Freecycle Network in the United States and/or other countries.

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Thursday October 11, 2007 - 11:32am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Food Pun
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Thursday October 11, 2007 - 11:03am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
SAD
SAD magnify
But true.

Fox news is radically rightwing, the rest of our media sits on the liberal side, and the BBC isn't trustworthy any more. Everyone has an axe to grind.

The BBC, also know as "Auntie Beeb" or "The Beeb", was renowned for accurate, unbiased reporting, but started declining back in the seventies. It is still a major voice but inaccuracies, bias, and plain false reporting has hurt its reputation.

I kind of like to read the Instapundit, as I have mentioned. Reynolds seems to be about as objective as any voice and freely nails the bad points and bad folks of both parties.

Other than that, I guess a mix of Fox & CNN combined gives a sort of balance in news. What one ignores the other covers.



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Thursday October 11, 2007 - 10:59am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Time To Go Buy A Chocolate Bar
Too much fantasizing going on here

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On a parting note. however, the following is snipped from Wikipedia:

"The word "chocolate" comes from the Aztecs of Mexico, and is derived from the Nahuatl word xocolatl (IPA /ʃo'kola:tɬ/), which is a combination of the words, xocolli, meaning "bitter", and atl, which is "water". The Aztecs associated chocolate with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility. Chocolate is also associated with the Mayan god of fertility. Mexican philologist Ignacio Davila Garibi, proposed that "Spaniards had coined the word by taking the Maya word chocol and then replacing the Maya term for water, haa, with the Aztec one, atl." However, it is more likely that the Aztecs themselves coined the term, having long adopted into Nahuatl the Mayan word for the "cacao" bean; the Spanish had little contact with the Mayans before Cortés's early reports to the Spanish King of the beverage known as xocolatl. However, professor Michael D. Coe, coauthor of the book The True History of Chocolate, argues that the word xocolatl appears in "no truly early source on the Nahuatl language or on Aztec culture."

Chocolate has been used solely as a drink for nearly all of its history. The earliest record of using chocolate pre-dates the Mayans. Chocolate residue has been found in pottery dating to 1100 BC from Honduras, and 600-400 BC from Belize. The chocolate residue found in an early classic ancient Maya pot in Río Azul, northern Guatemala, suggests that Mayans were drinking chocolate around 400 A.D.. In the New World, chocolate was consumed in a bitter, spicy drink called xocoatl, and was often flavored with vanilla, chile pepper, and achiote (known today as annatto). Xocoatl was believed to fight fatigue, a belief that is probably attributable to the theobromine content. Other chocolate drinks combined it with such edibles as maize starch paste (which acts as an emulsifier and thickener), various fruits, and honey. In 1689 noted physician and collector Hans Sloane, developed a milk chocolate drink in Jamaica which was initially used by apothecaries, but later sold by the Cadbury brothers.

Chocolate was also an important luxury good throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and cacao beans were often used as currency. For example, the Aztecs used a system in which one turkey cost one hundred cacao beans and one avocado was worth three beans.

Part of the pleasure of eating chocolate is due to the fact that its melting point is slightly below human body temperature: it melts in the mouth. Chocolate intake has been linked with release of serotonin in the brain, which produces feelings of pleasure. A study reported by the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one's mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate that was more intense than that associated with passionate kissing, and also lasted four times as long after the activity had ended. Research has shown that heroin addicts tend to have an increased liking for chocolate; this may be because it triggers dopamine release in the brain's reinforcement systems — an effect, albeit a legal one, similar to that of cocaine.

Recent studies have suggested that cocoa or dark chocolate may possess certain beneficial effects on human health. Dark chocolate, with its high cocoa content, is a rich source of the flavonoids epicatechin and gallic acid, which are thought to possess cardioprotective properties. Cocoa possesses a significant antioxidant action, protecting against LDL oxidation, perhaps more than other polyphenol antioxidant-rich foods and beverages. Processing cocoa with alkali destroys most of the flavonoids. Some studies have also observed a modest reduction in blood pressure and flow-mediated dilation after consuming approximately 100g of dark chocolate daily. There has even been a fad diet, named "Chocolate diet", that emphasizes eating chocolate and cocoa powder in capsules. However, consuming milk chocolate or white chocolate, or drinking fat-containing milk with dark chocolate, appears largely to negate the health benefit. Processed cocoa powder (so called Dutch chocolate), processed with alkali greatly reduces the antioxidant capacity as compared to "raw" cocoa powder. Chocolate is also a calorie-rich food with a high fat content, so daily intake of chocolate also requires reducing caloric intake of other foods.

Two-thirds of the fat in chocolate comes in the forms of a saturated fat called stearic acid and a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. However, unlike other saturated fats, stearic acid does not raise levels of LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream. Consuming relatively large amounts of dark chocolate and cocoa does not seem to raise serum LDL cholesterol levels; some studies even find that it could lower them.

Several population studies have observed an increase in the risk of certain cancers among people who frequently consume sweet 'junk' foods such as chocolate. However, very little evidence exists to suggest whether consuming flavonoid-rich dark chocolate may increase or decrease the risk of cancer. Evidence from laboratory studies suggest that cocoa flavonoids may possess anticarcinogenic mechanisms, but more research is needed to prove this idea.

The major concern that nutritionists have is that even though eating dark chocolate may favorably affect certain biomarkers of cardiovascular disease, the amount needed to have this effect would provide a relatively large quantity of calories which, if unused, would promote weight gain. Obesity is a significant risk factor for many diseases, including cardiovascular disease. As a consequence, consuming large quantities of dark chocolate in an attempt to protect against cardiovascular disease has been described as 'cutting off one's nose to spite one's face'..

Studies suggest a specia lly formulated type of cocoa may boost brain function and delay decline as people age.

Small but regular amounts of dark chocolate were shown to lower the possibility of heart attack.

Mars, Incorporated, a Virginia-based candy company, spends millions of dollars each year on flavonol research.[citation needed] The company is talking with pharmaceutical companies to license drugs based on synthesized cocoa flavonol molecules. According to Mars-funded researchers at Harvard, the University of California, and European universities, cocoa-based prescription drugs could potentially help treat diabetes, dementia and other diseases.

Other research indicates that chocolate may be effective at preventing persistent coughing. The ingredient theobromine was found to be almost one third more effective than codeine, the leading cough medicine. The chocolate also appears to soothe and moisten the throat.

South American and European cultures have used cocoa to treat diarrhea for hundreds of years. A study done at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland, in collaboration with scientists at Heinrich Heine University in Germany, has shown that flavonoids can inhibit the development[clarify] of fluids that result in diarrhea.

Chocolate contains a variety of substances, some of which have an effect on body chemistry. These include:

* Sugar: Chocolate bars (as opposed to cocoa) contain large amounts of sugar.

* Theobromine: This is the primary alkaloid found in cocoa and chocolate, and is one of the causes for chocolate's mood-elevating effects. This mild stimulant belongs to the methylxanthine family, which also includes the similar compound caffeine, with which theobromine is frequently confused.

* Tryptophan: An essential amino acid that is a precursor to serotonin, an important neurotransmitter involved in regulating moods.

* Phenethylamine: An endogenous alkaloid and monoamine. Often described as a 'love chemical', it can cause endorphin releases in the brain.. However, unlike its synthetic derivative amphetamine, it is quickly metabolized by the enzyme MAO-B, preventing significant concentrations from reaching the brain.

* Caffeine: This stimulant is present mainly in coffee and tea, but exists in chocolate in very small amounts. The amount of caffeine in chocolate is roughly 6 mg per ounce (about 30 g) of chocolate bar. Compare with 100–150 mg of caffeine in a cup of coffee.

Current research indicates that chocolate has a weak stimulant effect due mainly to its content of theobromine. However, chocolate contains too little of this compound for a reasonable serving to create effects in humans that are on par with a coffee buzz. Chocolate contains only small amounts of the compound caffeine. There are 5 to 10 milligrams of caffeine in one ounce of bittersweet chocolate, 5 milligrams in milk chocolate, and 10 milligrams in a 170 millilitre cup of cocoa. There are 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in a 220 millilitre cup of coffee; it would be necessary to eat more than a dozen chocolate bars to get the same amount of caffeine as one cup of coffee. The pharmacologist Ryan J. Huxtable has described chocolate as "more than a food but less than a drug". However, chocolate is a very potent stimulant for horses; its use is therefore banned in horse-racing. Theobromine is also a contributing factor in acid reflux because it relaxes the esophageal sphincter muscle, allowing stomach acid to enter the esophagus more easily.

Some studies have described a condition called Hysteroid dysphoria, characterized by repeated episodes of depressed mood in response to feeling rejected, and a craving for chocolate.

Romantic lore commonly identifies chocolate as an aphrodisiac. The reputed aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate are most often associated with the simple sensual pleasure of its consumption. More recently, suggestion has been made that serotonin and other chemicals found in chocolate, most notably phenethylamine, can act as mild sexual stimulants. While there is no firm proof that chocolate is indeed an aphrodisiac, giving a gift of chocolate to one's sweetheart is a familiar courtship ritual.. Chocolate's effectiveness in currying favor with would-be lovers may have been the inspiration for its employment as a hacking tool in social engineering attacks."

Besides, it tastes good!



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World's Best Chocolate Cake Recipe
World's Best Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients for Cake

2 cups sugar

1/3 cup cocoa

4 eggs

1-1/2 cups flour

1 cup chopped nuts , " Pecans Work Best "

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 pint marshmallow creme

Ingredients for Icing

1 stick butter

1/3 cup cocoa

1 box powdered sugar

1/4 cup evaporated milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all cake ingredients except the marshmallow creme. Bake in greased and floured 9 x 13-inch dish for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. When done and still hot, spread marshmallow creme over top. Cool cake slightly. While cooling cake, mix icing ingredients together. Spread over slightly warm cake. This is baked in a 13X9 inch pan. And it is oh so good. Especially with a hot cup of coffee.

Optional:

Cool for 15 minutes. Poke top of cake every half inch with fork. Drizzle sweetened condensed milk evenly over top of cake. Let stand until milk has been absorbed into cake. Top with ice cream. Spread with cool whip. Sprinkle with toffee chips and pecans. Refrigerate if not serving immediately.

© thomas byers aka crazyhorsesghost



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Wednesday October 10, 2007 - 09:35pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Expert's Opinion!
What makes the perfect chocolate chip cookie? The dough-to-chocolate ratio? The number of eggs? The quality of the chocolate? The baking time? The debate goes on. But after testing 40 variations, Cook's Illustrated has come up with the ultimate recipe.

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These truly chewy chocolate chip cookies are delicious served warm from the oven or cooled. To ensure a chewy texture, leave the cookies on the cookie sheet to cool. You can substitute white, milk chocolate, or peanut butter chips for the semi- or bittersweet chips called for in the recipe. In addition to chips, you can flavor the dough with one cup of nuts, raisins, or shredded coconut.

INGREDIENTS

2 1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour (about 10 1/2 ounces)

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly

1 cup brown sugar (light or dark), 7 ounces

1/2 cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 - 2 cups chocolate chips or chunks (semi or bittersweet)


1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.


2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips.


3. Form scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Holding dough ball using fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Rotate halves ninety degrees and, with jagged surfaces exposed, join halves together at their base, again forming a single cookie, being careful not to smooth dough's uneven surface. Place formed dough onto one of two parchment paper-lined 20-by-14-inch lipless cookie sheets, about nine dough balls per sheet. Smaller cookie sheets can be used, but fewer cookies can be baked at one time and baking time may need to be adjusted. (Dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days or frozen up to 1 month -- shaped or not.)


4. Bake, reversing cookie sheets' positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes (start checking at 13 minutes). (Frozen dough requires an extra 1 to 2 minutes baking time.) Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.




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Wednesday October 10, 2007 - 06:17pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Tapering Off?
On posting? maybe - but it has been a bit hectic here business-wise.

I don't know what prompted it but I have been getting a lot of pure donations. Usually folks bring books in for credit, which means books go back out again, but lately I have been getting in boxes of books that are just "gifted" to me.

The problem is to find room for them. There is no such thing as too many books, but there is such a thing as lack of room. In my case, it isn't just lack of shelf space - I am way past that - I don't even have floor space to stack the boxes on right now.

The gloomy weather is bringing in folks too. The gloom is lousy for outdoor fun but about right for a warm fire, comfy chair and good book. Makes me wish I had a fireplace in here, even though books don't burn well.



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Wednesday October 10, 2007 - 06:01pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Summary!
Summary! magnify
I love working on my own computer, and with the help of Google I can solve most of my tech problems, but I hate working on other folk's systems. It generally seems like if they can't RTFM, they can't listen too well either.



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Wednesday October 10, 2007 - 10:18am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
doPDF
doPDF magnify
Dunno if I have mentioned this before, but I sure love this program. I often see a web page that has information I want to keep. but there is a problem with web pages - they disappear, move and change so bookmarking isn't a great option.

Saving the web page to your hd isn't too good a plan either - messy, and may or may not get all the components you want.

doPDF is the best solution I have found. It installs as a printer, so when you find a page you want to save, just tell your browser to print it & select doPDF as the printer. doPDF asks you where to save the file & what to call it. A few seconds later your PDF reader pops of with a view of the file for you,

The fact that it also works well as a PDF converter is a nice bonus too. Virtually any program can print to a PDF file with it, with one caveat - links inside the PDF are not preserved.

From their page: "Freeware. Lightweight. No nags. doPDF is a free PDF converter for both personal and commercial use. Using doPDF you can create searchable PDF files by selecting the "Print" command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favorite web sites to PDF files."

The pic above is a screenshot of the doPDF webpage that's has been printed out by doPDF and is being viewed in a PDF reader - in my case, Foxit. (Hmm, dunno how to phrase that better. Oh well.)

doPDF is free, under constant development, and quite useful.

Since I mentioned Foxit, and since it is the other half of my PDF setup, I might as well go into more details.

To put it simply, think of Foxit as Adobe Reader with 90% of the bloat & system-hogging removed. Fast, Free & Easy - the way I like my ... programs ... too!

From their site: "Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.1 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and amazingly rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7."

I have a folder marked "Ref" that is full of dozens of PDF files saved by doPDF, everything from Interlake articles to illustrated How-To articles to game scores, and every time I refer to one, I appreciate doPDF more.



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100th Entry
100th Entry magnify
20 pages. 117 page views. 3+ weeks. I was going to insert an emoticon here but couldn't figure what was appropriate. It looks like I might have five regular readers.

Interesting stats on my website too. According to Google Analytics for this month, I got my traffic thusly: Search Engines 44.96%, Direct Traffic 40.31%, Referring Sites 14.73%.

Search terms? "louis l'amour bibliography" 6.90%. blacktail 6.90%, black tail magazine 5.17%, used books kalispell 3.45%, west of the pilot range louis l'amour 3.45%. Guess the other 75% were too scattered to list.

My photos do better than my writing. I average ten views per photo, overall.

I wonder, does this mean that on the net twice as many folks look at pictures as read? I am pretty sure if I put up pix of pretty ladies in few clothes I'd get 2X more hits on Flickr.

Given today's headline, I bet if I started posting pix labeled "Spears Sex Pix", my hits would go up.

As Fark put it "Burglars break into Britney Spears' mansion, steal homemade sex tapes, steamy photos, sex uniforms and personal photos. The Web will get mighty interesting over the next few weeks". <3 Fark.

Since this is a milestone post, I think I'll just ramble a bit. Making an appointment for Woof's surgery & hoping it works out okay and he gets in a few more good years. Took Dad to Macdonald's last night at his request. Saw 16 deer in the first mile coming home from the farm.

Finished the last unread Lee Child novel yesterday, finally started on the newest Dick Francis, looking forward to a new Hillerman.

Time to get some work done, probably past time to end the post. I need to find a good picture to post here and then I'm done.




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Monday October 8, 2007 - 02:29pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 3 Comments
Book Cataloguing Part Two
Book Cataloguing Part Two magnify
BookDB: No barcoding, no suggestions, but - no cost!

"With BookDB you can enter all your books with author, category, publisher etc and print them out in a variety of formats"

For the typist on a budget, this might be the best bet.



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Monday October 8, 2007 - 11:44am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Book Cataloguing
Book Cataloguing magnify
For a not-free, not-online, approach to keeping track of your books, Readerware is pretty highly recommended.

to quote the site: "The easiest, fastest way to catalog your books, music and videos. Nothing else comes close.Have a large collection? The unique Readerware auto-catalog feature lets you feed in a list of ISBNs, UPCs or barcode scans. Readerware then does the rest, automatically searching the web and cataloging your books, music and videos. Readerware can merge information from multiple web sites to build the most complete database possible, with cover art. Automatically and effortlessly."

For a lousy typist like me, the barcode option is tempting, tho many of my books predate barcoding.



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Monday October 8, 2007 - 11:30am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Sad But True
Sad But True magnify
I think overpopulation causes most of the strangeness in the world today. Like rats, too many living in too small a space induces insanity. For sure, if there were less people the earth would be a healthier place.

This is the contradiction of modern medicine. By lowering the death rate and extending/improving lives of individuals we hurt the overall population, and that situation isn't going to improve, though when there is literally standing room only I bet the birth rate drops off.



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Monday October 8, 2007 - 10:21am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
My kind of Job
My kind of Job magnify

Hello!
Hello! magnify
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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 09:32pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Speaking of Reading Suggestions...
Speaking of Reading Suggestions... magnify
LibraryThing is a new site for book lovers. It's basically two sites in one. LibraryThing helps you create a library-quality catalog of your books. LibraryThing connects people based on the books they share.
Members have cataloged more than nineteen million books.

Meet the world's largest book club. Find people with eerily similar tastes.

Catalog with Amazon, the Library of Congress or 82 other world libraries. Import from anywhere.

Get recommendations. Tag your books and explore others' tags.

Put your books on your blog.


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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 08:33pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Disarm The Cops?
Well, it didn't work in England, and stats say that disarming citizens there hasn't lowered the rate of violent crime, but something like this is scary.

A Wisconsin town is under lockdown after a suspect believed to be with the local sheriff's office went on a killing spree, gunning down at least five youths in a Crandon home early Sunday morning.





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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 01:42pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
WOW! A BOOK Post!
WOW! A BOOK Post! magnify
Dunno how well this works, but here is an automated book suggestion site.

Enter an author or title you like & it will suggest similar books that other folks have liked & suggested.

Register for better results. to quote the site "Registration allows you to build up a list of all the items you've read and then run custom searches against any combination of those items to get more accurate results.

You can come back to the site as many times as you like and your item list will be saved for you.To start building a item list go to the homepage and enter a item you've read. On the recommendations page, enter your email address and a new list will be created for you which you can then add to, remove from and revisit on future occasions. You can also add your own comments about the items for other users to see!"

I tried it with Lee Child, and the list that came back one author I liked - Tim Dorsey - and a number I haven't tried and at least one I never heard of. I may register & see what difference that would make in the results.

Let me know your results. I suspect YMMV.


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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 01:13pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Great Listening!
Musicovery

Tremendous interactive web radio site. Pick the mood, intensity, and genre of the music you'd like to hear and the site will give you a virtual web of music to explore evolving with every choice you make. Great selections of songs & moods to listen to!



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For Poofy
For Poofy magnify
A little late for Pirate's Day, But oh! What the Hey! Who cares about a little delay?

(sorry - bad poetry caused by sugar withdrawal)

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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 08:58am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Must Be A Dog Day
Must Be A Dog Day magnify
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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 08:49am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
PWNT!
PWNT! magnify
The revenge of the Hydrant.



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Sunday October 7, 2007 - 08:47am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Well, No Wonder!
Talk about competition!

"The blog rush has slowed down from 175,000 new blogs posted per day in July 2006 to 120,000 new blogs per day as of March 2007, according to Technorati, a blog tracking company."

This is kinda overwhelming. Oh well. Even if NOBODY reads this, I will keep it up for a while. It's fun to write and I am pushing no particular agenda - but I note that I need to start pushing BOOKS through here, just like I do at the store.

Speaking of books - someone is going to be happy! I just got in a box of new Hardy Boy books and some of the Boxcar Kids series, not to mention that the L'Amour section of the Westerns is full again.





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Saturday October 6, 2007 - 04:47pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Did I Mention True Adventure?
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PC from AMAZON? It's Scarry!
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Saturday October 6, 2007 - 01:49pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Comics I Post
are snipped from Darkgate.

If a comic strip is posted on the Internet, it is probably available at DarkGate. From 5th Wave to Zork, there are 340 strips listed. Just go in and select the ones you want, and whenever you visit the page your cartoons will be loaded.

XML & RSS2 are available also, as are choices of "Random" or "Suggest" to introduce you to other strips.



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Saturday October 6, 2007 - 10:18am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Sordid Details:
Compliments of PC Wizard:

<<<>>>

> Monitoring Chip : ITE IT8712F

> Voltage CPU : 1.33 V

> +3.3V Voltage : 3.28 V

> +5V Voltage : 4.76 V

> +12V Voltage : 11.61 V

> Processor Temperature : 31 °C

> Processor Temperature (Core 1) : 47 °C

> Processor Temperature (Core 2) : 45 °C

> Mainboard Temperature : 42 °C

> Power/Aux Temperature : 38 °C

> Monitoring Chip GPU #1 : nVidia Driver

> GPU Temperature : 58 °C

> GPU Ambient : 41 °C

> GPU Fan : 52%

> Monitoring Chip GPU #2 : nVidia Driver

> GPU Temperature : 58 °C

> GPU Ambient : 41 °C

> GPU Fan : 52%

> Hard Disk Temperature WDC WD2000JB-00GVA0 : 25 °C

> Hard Disk Temperature WDC WD2500JD-00HBB0 : 23 °C

> Hard Disk Temperature ST3500630AS : 30 °C

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Saturday October 6, 2007 - 10:01am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
However
However magnify
I still like my Blog.
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Saturday October 6, 2007 - 08:36am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
A Touch Of Reality
A Touch Of Reality magnify
I suspect a lot of folks would go Vegan if they really thought about what they were eating. Then again, if they saw the veggies being fertilized, they might not.

Being a Hillbilly is an asset - it makes you familiar with the entire food chain and its related processes.

Should I whine about Lowe's having Christmas stuff up already? The first week of October? Sheesh! talk about commercialism!



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What is Pending
If you are wondering what Congress is looking at, here is the current list. It is worth reading.

FIREARMS LEGISLATION IN THE 110th CONGRESS

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Friday October 5, 2007 - 12:50pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Temporary
Temporary magnify
Just a quick shot to show how the computer looks now, front & side. The circular grill is temporary



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Friday October 5, 2007 - 12:03pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Hopefully,
Hopefully, magnify
this is a bit more entertaining than that, at least to all three of my readers.

I gotta reflect my own interests, which tend toward books & computers & tools, though I haven't done much book blogging yet. I guess I am so immersed in the subject of books all day long that it doesn't occur to me to write about them - the "forest & trees" syndrome.

Of course anyone who wants to know some of my favorite authors can find out easily.

What is not on that list? The authors of the massive stacks of true adventure books that fill my apartment. There is a bit of everything there, from Josh Slocum to Robin Graham, from Jane Goodall to Bill Bryson. One day I will post pictures - MUCH easier than typing (and ReTyping) them into a list.

(I class Robin as a friend, by the way. I met him shortly after he moved here. There are two other local writers I would love to meet - Doug Peacock & Rick Bass.)



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Friday October 5, 2007 - 10:53am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Case Mod part 2
I took the aluminum side plate from the computer over to a friend who has a plasma cutter. It now has a 120mm hole that lines up with the new intake fan. Now I need to figure out what I want for a grill & filter.



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Thursday October 4, 2007 - 09:26pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Blog Wish
Blog Wish magnify
I wish this had a traffic counter. I'd love to know if more than three or four people are reading this.

Unfortunately, unless I get feedback via comments, email, or in person I have idea who sees it.

Oh well, I never have tailored my actions to public opinions or reactions, I doubt I'll start now. I do this for my own pleasure because I enjoy writing.



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Dad
is home, and doing well. They didn't find anything wrong.

Took him up by new High School to show him all the development and Kalispell's first traffic circle.
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Thursday October 4, 2007 - 05:35pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Just - WOW!

A liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all

By Jonathan Turley


This term, the Supreme Court may finally take up the Voldemort Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that shall not be named by liberals. For more than 200 years, progressives and polite people have avoided acknowledging that following the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion and free assembly, there is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Of course, the very idea of finding a new individual right after more than two centuries is like discovering an eighth continent in constitutional law, but it is hardly the cause of celebration among civil liberties groups.


Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Yet, two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience. The Supreme Court is expected to accept review of District of Columbia v. Heller and Parker v. District of Columbia, involving constitutional challenges to the gun-control laws in Washington.


The D.C. law effectively bars the ownership of handguns for most citizens and places restrictions on other firearms. The District's decision to file these appeals after losing in the D.C. appellate court was driven more by political than legal priorities. By taking the appeal, D.C. politicians have put gun-control laws across the country at risk with a court more likely to uphold the rulings than to reverse them. It has also put the rest of us in the uncomfortable position of giving the right to gun ownership the same fair reading as more favored rights of free press or free speech.


The Framers' intent


Principle is a terrible thing, because it demands not what is convenient but what is right. It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right. It is true that the amendment begins with a reference to militias: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Accordingly, it is argued, this amendment protects the right of the militia to bear arms, not the individual.


Yet, if true, the Second Amendment would be effectively declared a defunct provision. The National Guard is not a true militia in the sense of the Second Amendment and, since the District and others believe governments can ban guns entirely, the Second Amendment would be read out of existence.


Another individual right


More important, the mere reference to a purpose of the Second Amendment does not alter the fact that an individual right is created. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace.


Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.


None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that ... here's the really hard part ... the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.


Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.





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Thursday October 4, 2007 - 12:42pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Torture Test
Currently running SuperPi & Prime95 simultaneously as a cpu torture test. According to PC Wizard, the core temps are running around 50C, well within the safe range. Color me pleased!



Download links: Xtreme Systems SuperPi mod v1.5 Prime95



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Thursday October 4, 2007 - 12:08pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Woof
Woof magnify
My best buddy will be going in for an operation soon. The vet checked out the tumor under his leg and decided it needs to come out, benign or otherwise.

Is he worth the ~$500 it will cost? Yes. Is there a risk? Yes.

Bottom line - the vet said if it was her dog she would have it done. Even at the advanced-age-for-a-big-dog of eleven, his health is good, barring incipient cataracts and some arthritis.

I am going to miss him when he is gone, whether sooner or later. Smartest dog I have ever been around and the only dog I have ever had that emphatically chose me rather than vice-versa.

He was a stray, escapee, rather. He wandered into the store one sunny afternoon and laid down in a corner. I assumed he belonged to someone shopping so I ignored him, but as the store emptied out it was obvious he was alone.

I took him out and down the street and tied him to a pole, assuming someone was looking for him. A few minutes later he resumed his bed in the corner, trailing a ragged strip of wet rope.

I put him out the back door. He tore the screen out of the window and climbed back in. At that point, I gave up and let him stay. He has been here ever since.

(About a year after this, his original owners happened into the store. Kind of a long story, but the upshot was that I got to keep him because he constantly ran away from them. I learned from them that he was a pure-bred malamute.)

I named him Woof becuase I thought a dog of his size and prepossessing appearance needed a soft name. I didn't feel like I needed to own a killer dog to make up for my personal shortcomings.

Bonding with him took some time. He had been treated badly at some point and gaining his trust took a long time. I suppose it was a normal progression of events that after the trust was establisehd there was a discussion over who was Alpha Male.

He precipitated that when he took a sandwich off of my desk and laid down with it. He wasn't eating it, just guarding it. When I said "Bad Dog!" and took it away from him, he bit me. The next couple of minutes are between him and me, but they established a bond of mutual respect based on ME being the Alpha. From that point on he has been my devoted companion, usually close by me.

He has traveled with me through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona. When he leaves, he will leave a massive empty spot.

The photo was taken this fall, and is one I never thought would exist. For years he hated water.

Raining? Nope - won't go outside. Puddles? Avoid! Wet ground? Stop, look for the driest spots and then hopscotch across to shelter.

When I forced him into the lake when I was swimming, he stood with just his head out and did his best to shake the water off.

Times change, and so does life.

My buddy.



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Thursday October 4, 2007 - 11:37am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class magnify
The classic line says that power tends to corrupt, and in today's society money = power.

You can see it on a local level where a developer can get permits to do things that a private landowner is denied, and you can see it on a national level where lawmakers surrounded by bodyguards pass statutes keeping private citizens from carrying a weapon for self defense.

Money is an insulator, too, and the more you have, the more detached from the realities of life you become. Whether true or not, the old French bit of "let them eat cake" when they have no bread still gets applied today. It was an eye opener for a few legislators that actually tried to live on the $3.00/day alloted to welfare folks for food, but there are too few lawmakers willing to actually put themselves in the shoes of their poorer constituents.

There are a few rich folks I admire. John Wood is one. Steve Fossett was another. Unfortunately, Hollywood is loaded with dollar-laden people I have no respect for at all and way too many of them are political activists.





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Quake Wars
Hot computer games come & go. Some. like WOW, are huge with many thousands playing at once. Some, like the old Doom, are designed to be run on a small scale for a few players. In the case of First Person Shooters (FPS), usually the person buys the game, plays it at home, and then eventually begins playing it online against other folks for more competition and more fun.

Enemy Territory, based on the old castle Wolfenstein WWII-based games, was and is extremely popular. Part of this is because it was well designed, part is because it was FREE. Download it, set it up, find an online server & have fun. No purchase necessary, no monthly fees, very unlike World Of Warcraft whose current version not only must be purchased but has a monthly fee that must be paid if you want to play.

Groups of FPS players tend to gather together in groups called Clans, running their own servers for the use of themselves and others and enforcing good behavior on their servers.

Quake Wars is the latest/greatest game based on Enemy Territory, but is not free. There is a free playable demo of it though. You can play it online or offline and get a feel for the game. Amazon has the game for sale plus a video and more information.

I am curious what QW is going to do to ET. Usually when a new-but-similar game comes out players desert the old games. Much of the talk on the ET servers is of the new game, and I suspect a lot of folks are going to be dropping ET and playing QW instead. It is going to be interesting to see the effect of QW on the ET clans, to see which die, which grow, and which go on as always.



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Wednesday October 3, 2007 - 08:43pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Laffs Of The Day





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Wednesday October 3, 2007 - 12:27pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Case mod!
When I first got this Lian-Li case & Asus MB, I pulled the fan from the MB and put a Zalman fan & bracket over the video cards blowing down on the board.

This has worked pretty well, but then I spotted this fan. It is designed to work as a shrouded exhaust fan for the new Plus II Lian-Li cases. I ordered it, and when it came in replaced its fan with an Antec fan, reversed to pull outside air into the case. I know this isn't the way the factory designed it, but with all the vent holes in the case plus front and rear exhaust fans I hoped it would work. I pulled the Zalman setup out.

I plan on putting a grill in the aluminum side panel, but to test the setup I just put up a cardboard cover with a cutout for the fan. Rebooting with the fan & case mod resulted in the cpu temperature dropping from 33 degrees C to 27, and the GPU temps from 60 to 53 degrees C.

I also added a new black mesh cover plate to the top drive bay where I mounted the exhaust fan for some extra venting. This gives me Zone 1, the HD area, with an intake fan that pushes air over the drives and mostly out the bottom of the case, Zone 2, where the PSU sits, pulling air in from the bottom and exhausting it out the back of the case, and Zone 3, which now pulls air in through the side of the case and exhausts it out of the top front and bottom rear of the case.

As I said, this isn't the way Lian-Li designed it, but it seems to work pretty well.

I'll stick up some pix after the final case mod is done.



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Tuesday October 2, 2007 - 02:07pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Maybe I Need A Notebook - Or Maybe Not!
It seems like I have my best blog ideas when I am away from the computer, and the very best ones at night when I awake in bed. The ideas comes, sketch themselves out (sometimes in great detail) and then fade away before I am at a keyboard.

Maybe the ones from the too-wakeful nights are best left unwritten, though. They are the ones that get into philosophy and tend to be depressing. I guess they reflect my worldview in too great a detail.

My gut feeling about life is either realistic or pessimistic - or both. The old saying of "going to Hell in a handbasket" seems to apply too well to society. Too many people, too much consumption, too much sense of entitlement, too much detachment from the basics of life, too much Nanny-state thinking, too much of everything.

You "need" air, water, food and shelter. Everything beyond that is a luxury, or is something dictated by society. The problem is, we live in an artificial world where the emphasis is on appearances more than basics. We feel like we "need" to be clean, to smell good, to drive nice cars, live in fancy houses, and. most importantly, to meet our neighbors expectations.

Talk to the "Greatest Generation", as Tom Brokaw labeled it. Ask about the depression years. Talk to the homeless on the streets. Talk to the folks at the bottom of the economic ladder in third-world countries. Talk to veterans who have served in combat. What you hear from them about what is really important will probably differ a lot from what you see on TV or read in the glossy magazines.

It seems odd to see businessmen and lawyers referred to as the "warrior class" of modern society, and the ability to make money as a basic survival trait. I keep thinking of the old phrase "where the rubber meets the road" and I wonder how many of these "warriors" would fare in a real survival situation?

I suspect that the average person today would be incapacitated by a broken nose or finger, probably go hungry if the only food offered was a live animal and die if placed in a REAL survival situation.

-------

Hmmm, all of the above came out of a late-night thought thjat I DID remember! Aren't you glad I forget most of them?



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Tuesday October 2, 2007 - 12:23pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
I Need to Keep This In Mind
I Need to Keep This In Mind magnify
When I run out of ideas, pick on the folks next door.

Yesterday
I took this, and the more I look at it, the better I like it.




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Monday October 1, 2007 - 03:01pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Wonderful FireFox links!!
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Monday October 1, 2007 - 02:59pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Strange Day
Went out to do some work for dad last night, grabbed a few pix to Flickr. Didn't sleep well.

Woke up at 6:30 with phone call from the Sheriff saying dad was being transported to the ER for chest pains. Went up, he was pretty ok, but heart beat is way slow so they are keeping him for observation. Dunno if they will ever let him go.

Went out to house, did some stuff he asked me to, then back to hospital. by then he was out of ER and heading for a room. Left a message I'd be back later. Not much I can do sitting there, and he was tired, hopefully sleeping now. I'll go back up tonight.

Tomorrow Woof goes to vet. Shots and checkup, and try to get an opinion on a big fatty tumor he has under his hind leg, see if they think it should be removed, then see if I can afford it. :(

I don't look forward to losing him - he is the smartest dog that ever owned me.

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Monday October 1, 2007 - 12:48pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
I Always Wondered...
I Always Wondered... magnify



One picture - worth kilowords!
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Sunday September 30, 2007 - 07:30pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
This Sums It Up!


NO COMMENTS

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Over-edited?
Over-edited? magnify
The PUNishment of the morning.



Since I am mostly using the junky editor and most posts can be commented on, I am going to start putiing "No Comments" on the ones from the other editor. Sheer laziness on my part, but IT'S MY BLOG!







COMMENTABLE

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Sunday September 30, 2007 - 09:07am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
My heroes!
My heroes! magnify
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Saturday September 29, 2007 - 07:48pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Life, TV & The American Way
The American Way, sadly, is to be unsatisfied, to always want more, to never have enough.

Capitalism is all right but our whole society emphasizes greed, and television, which started life as a means to entertain us, now exists to sell us things & the sales pitch starts by making us unhappy with what we have, telling us we need a new car, new clothes, new hairstyle, bigger house, more exotic vacations, all the things that are supposed to make us better - and don't.

What the ads don't tell you is that the pleasure of "new", "better", "bigger", is fleeting and no matter what you buy, you are still "you", no better and in the long run no happier than you were before. Truthfully, you will be broker, and that can increase unhappiness even more

The world's best self-help book would probably also be the shortest - one sentnce, saying "Be content with what you have" Unfortunately, if we all did that, the U.S. economy would tank in a matter of days.
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Saturday September 29, 2007 - 07:46pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Smart Man!
Smart Man! magnify


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Saturday September 29, 2007 - 02:56pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Satisfaction
Actually, computer satisfaction.

There were a few things that bothered me about the speed of my setup now, so I bit the bullet and:

Uninstalled the newer Nvidia drivers and reinstalled from the original disk I got with the MB.

Used Mozbackup and saved my Firefox settings, uninstalled FF, then did a fresh reinstall & used Mozbackup to restore my settings, extensions, etc. FF runs faster now.

Removed Clipmate & installed Clipmagic. Less bloat and more speed.

The combo above gave me a major speedup in browsing.



COMMENTABLE

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Setting Up A New Computer
download/install zonealarm & avast.(zaSetup_en.exe & setupeng.exe)

Set uup local network

Ztree

Firefox & a backup from old computer, then Mozbackup to install the backup

(Firefox Setup 2.0.0.7.exe MozBackup-1.4.7-ENG.exe)

Then the rest:

7z455.exe

cmsetup.exe

converber.zip

dopdf.exe

FoxitReader21.zip

irfanview_plugins_400_setup.exe

iview400_setup.exe

Miro_Installer.exe

OOo_2.3.0_Win32Intel_install_wJRE_en-US.exe

realalt160.exe

vnc-4_1_2-x86_win32.exe

winamp535_full_emusic-7plus.exe

etc.

Corel X3



COMMENTABLE





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Friday September 28, 2007 - 06:31pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2 Comments
Speaking of PC
Speaking of PC magnify
Have you heard the one about . . .



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Friday September 28, 2007 - 01:40pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Okay, and ... not okay. Sigh.
Like I posted before - this turns out, by the grace of Yahoo, to be two blogs. One is a Geocities blog, the other a Yahoo 360 Blog. Anything done in one is reflected in the other. Mostly.

This version, Geocities, has a CRAPPY editor, but anything posted with it allows people to comment. 360 has a great editor - but - no one can comment to a post created or edited from 360.

I guess the workaround is to post the fancy stuff with 360, then put up a special post from Geocities for people to use for commenting on the previous posts. It is a PITA, but I am not sure how else to work it. I have both blogs set for anyone to have permission to post to.

Confused? I am...

Anyway, this post is COMMENTABLE!



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Friday September 28, 2007 - 11:00am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
testing
commenting works if i post from geocities & the crappyeditor
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Friday September 28, 2007 - 10:15am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
What The Doctor Told Me
What The Doctor Told Me magnify
Humor of the Day.

Recycling Strikes Again.
I just upgraded my old HP Scanjet 4570C to an Epson 3170 Photo Scanner. It is like new and cost all of $10.00. Gotta love the thrift shops - they aren't as economical as dumpster diving, but the class level is higher and there are less legal hassles.

I think if the powers that be rethought liability laws and bought into the who recycling thing, a lot of waste disposal sites dumps would be close to self supporting. An amazing amount of stuff that goes into them is fully functional and certainly salable. Sort out the recyclable materials onsite, sell the books & appliances & such in a county-owned store & apply the income to the operating costs.

Liability is the flaw, of course. Scumsuckers Lawyers and the threat of lawsuits seem to set the patterns we all have to follow and CYA is the acronym of the day. Sad, actually.

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Thursday September 27, 2007 - 01:49pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Why Blog?

I don't know. I guess it is because I like to write and maybe educate or entertain with what I write. I suspect nobody really cares about my opinions, but they might enjoy some humor or get some ideas from my ramblings.

Long ago, I wrote as a stringer for a local weekly paper & was allowed to choose my own subject matter. It was a lot of fun, but the paper sold out when the publisher's wife died and the new owners didn't need any amateurs like me.

Then I sent an article off to Gun Digest on the art of collecting sporting books and they published it. Since I felt that GD was the top of the heap in outdoor publications, I quit writing while I was ahead.

Someday I am going to write a book on firearms, and I posted what may someday be the first chapter earlier in this blog. In the meantime, I guess this will be a Forum for me to ramble about whatever crosses my mind.

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Wednesday September 26, 2007 - 05:30pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
MSfortunate part two

Looks like Firefox folks can post comments again. Dunno if Yahoo is testing features or fixing bugs, but I guess if you want to comment you might have to try a couple of times if at first it doesn't work.

The good part is - IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!

PS: It took three tries for me to post this.

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Wednesday September 26, 2007 - 04:13pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
MSfortunate!
Yahoo changed something, I guess. If you want to post a comment to the blog here, you have to use Internet Explodrer. I hope this is fixed/returned to normal soon as it is an inconvenience for us dedicated FF users.
:(

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Wednesday September 26, 2007 - 02:07pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
RE:
RE: magnify
RE: The PUNtoon of the day - sorry, but I like it.

RE:cycling - since I sell pre-owned used books, add them up on a pre-owned used adding machine, put them in pre-owned donated plastic bags for the customers, put the cash in a pre-owned used register drawer, and write the figures down with a pre-owned used pencil on a recycled paper pad, then go back to work at my pre-owned antiquated desk, I guess I believe in recycling. (I don't believe, as you may noticed, in Politically Correct speech.)

RE:cycling invades my personal life too. From clothes to cars, from tools to toys, I buy pre-owned used whenever i can, partly out of belief, partly out of necessity. Running a book store in a small town has more spritual rewards than it does financial.

I guess adventure comes secondhand too, since I enjoy reading about other folks baking/freezing/falling/climbing fun a lot more than I do sweating through them myself.

I enjoy my secondhand life - but...

RE:incarnation - life is the one thing I hope to NOT recycle. One life is enough!

(Me) (Home)

Immodest?


I have several thousand wallpaper files on my HD, and each time I restart Windows it puts a new one on my desktop. Most of the pictures I have downloaded from the net, but I also put a bunch of photos in that I have taken. The "Huh!" part comes when I look at the desktop & really like the picture - and then realize that it is one I have taken myself.

I use two little freeware programs in a batch (actually .btm) file to do the paper-hanging. The two programs are Multiconv & Setdesk .

For the Gearheads in the audience, here is the file I run.
----------------------------------------START------------------------------------------------
:: This batfile takes a jpeg from a picture directory using a list generated
:: by "dir /bklfs c:pix\"*.*" >c:\wp.lst" & copies it to the c:\temp directory.
:: Multiconv coverts it to a bmp file & resizes it proportionately to 680 pixels high.
:: Then the file is renamed to wallpaper.bmp, and Setdesk sets it as wallpaper.
:: The original picture title is the window title & is also written to a file in the root.

@echo off
inkey /w3 Update List? %%UL
if "%UL" NE "y" goto step2
::if "%@filedate[c:\wp.lst]"=="%_date" goto step2
*del /eq c:\wp.lst
*dir /sbklf d:\pix\"*.*" >c:\wp.lst

:step2
cls
if exist c:\wpcp\wallpaper.* del /eq c:\wpcp\wallpaper.*
set currentpix="%@line[c:\wp.lst,%@random[1,%@lines[c:\wp.lst]]]"
*copy /q %currentpix c:\wpcp\wallpaper.jpg
del /eq c:\#wp_is
echo %currentpix >c:\#wp_is
multiconv /s:c:\wpcp\wallpaper.jpg /d:c:\wpcp\ /x:bmp /m:hr /h:680 /o %$>nul
setdesk c:\wpcp\wallpaper.bmp %$>nul
set do_it=%_date
echo %currentpix
inkey /w5 Keep? %%yn
if "%yn"=="" goto step2
exit
----------------------------------------END------------------------------------------------

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Tuesday September 25, 2007 - 05:25pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Tough Laws!
Tough Laws! magnify

I wonder what the real crime rate is over there in the Middle East when the Unabombing zealots are factored out? Is the harsh law a real deterrent to theft & rape & murder? Does the proliferation of weaponry there help or hinder the individual?
(Credit to Fox news for the photo)

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Tags: crime, arabs | Edit Tags
Tuesday September 25, 2007 - 04:53pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Did I Mention Puns?
Did I Mention Puns? magnify

Which reminds me of this one:
Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Sorry, couldn't resist the punning stuff. I am loving this different editor and having to resist the temptation to post more because a FEW folks complain about prolific posts.

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Tuesday September 25, 2007 - 04:30pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
TEST!
WAS USING http://us.1.p8.geocities.yahoo.com to access/edit this blog, TRYING Http://blog.360.yahoo.com/ . Looks like they BOTH access my blog, which seems strange.

Hopefully, but doubtfully, it will post w/o modifying the layout.
At least this link has a spell checker!
And if these lines post w/o spaces between, it was a success!

Excellent
It passed the test - and I find the blog also exists on the yahoo 360 blog site. Two for the price of one!
Now I need to see if 360 lets me fix the old posts.
Double excellent! It does!

Final test - will it let me link to a photo here in the body of the text? I note that it lets me do the top-photo bit.
And will it let me preview a post, and then post it correctly?

To all of the above - YES!

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Tuesday September 25, 2007 - 01:04pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
JOTD
Two Arabs boarded a flight out of London . One took a window seat and the other Sat next to him in the middle seat.

Just before takeoff, a Marine sat down in the aisle seat.

After takeoff, the Marine kicked his shoes off, Wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, "I need to get up and get a coke."

"Don't get up," said the Marine, "I'm in the aisle seat, I'll get it for you."

As soon as he left, one of the Arabs Picked up the Marines shoe and spat in it.

When the Marine returned with the coke, the other Arab said, "That looks good, I'd really like one, too."

Again, the Marine obligingly went to fetch it.

While he was gone the other Arab picked up the Marines other shoe and spat in it.

When the Marine returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight. As the plane was landing, The Marine slipped his feet into his shoes And knew immediately what had happened.

"Why does it have to be this way?" he asked. "How long must this go on?

This fighting between our nations? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and peeing in cokes?"

THE MARINES WILL ALWAYS WIN

KALISPELL
is still a small town, in some ways. Running a book store here is fun.

ANYONE you meet ANYWHERE might be a past customer.

Highlights: The game warden - who stopped me on the way home from hunting to see if I had any books in on training retrievers.

The waitress - who paid for my dinner because I had let her take books on a pay-later promise.

The policeman - who double parked with his pursuit lights on in front of the store so he could run in and get a book.

The tour bus driver - who double parked his bus in front of the store so he could run in and get a book.

The stranger - that stopped me on the street and said "Here - here's the ten dollars I owe you for those books" Not only do i not have a clue who he was, I have no idea what books he was referring to. (Actually, this is a recurring event. Since I have more books than smarts, its fairly common for me to let folks take books and tell them to pay me later. Drives my SO nuts!)

The doctor - who quizzed me about J.W. Schultz books while he was stitching my arm up.

The lady - who grabbed my arm on a street in Los Angeles and asked who was running the store for me in kalispell.

There are so many more similar incidents... I don't think I could have ever had a more rewarding career. Not much money, but a lot of fun & friendship & pleasure.



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Monday September 24, 2007 - 04:26pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Google Site Search
Google Site Search magnify
Playing with it a bit. It does not find all my pages, which makes me suspect Google web search doesn't either, which is leading me to revise the pages in question. This leads me to today's freeware selection, HTML Validator Lite. An on-line version exists too. They find the major mistakes you made in your coding.

Today's photo has nothing to do with the subject - I just happen to like stuff like this water-cooled Steampunk PC case mod. I have a love affair with wood and think Steampunk is pretty neat.

One of my Grandfathers was a machinist and the other was Swiss, so I blame them for passing on the gadget-loving genes.


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Monday September 24, 2007 - 03:11pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
ALONE
Small word, deep meanings, and wildly different emotional reactions.

The dictionary definitions: unique, unequaled, unequalled, unparalleled, only, exclusive of anyone or anything else, isolated from others, lone, lonely, solitary, entirely, exclusively, solely, only, without any others being included or involved, solo, unaccompanied, without anybody else.

Alone. Most people's greatest fear, some people's greatest pleasure.

I like being alone, sometimes crave it desperately, rarely dislike it. I suppose that if I carried the psychological burden of enforced aloneness instead of aloneness by choice, it would affect me differently, but there is a strange peace in being alone by choice.

Being alone means freedom, and is maybe the ultimate selfishness..



Hsup du jour:

HSU IS HSYMPTOMATIC



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Monday September 24, 2007 - 11:44am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
One More
PC Wizard

"PC WIZARD 2007 is a powerful utility designed especially for detection of hardware, but also some more analysis. It's able to identify a large scale of system components and supports the latest technologies and standards. This tool is periodically updated (usually once per month) in order to provide most accurate results.

PC WIZARD 2007 is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance, Video performance, MP3 compression performance."

Most important to me:
On Screen Display : when the program is minimzed to the tray the OSD shows Processor Multi-core temp, voltage & load, and GPU temps .

Since I have always had computer problems from heat buildup. this is a wonderful feature.




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Sunday September 23, 2007 - 12:53pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Hair
Hair magnify
It pains me to see folks abuse their hair. They should be treasuring it instead of torturing it as a personal statement. Sometimes I stare at the odder colors & configurations, sometimes I get static for staring. "What, old man, you don't like my hair?"

I can honestly reply "Really, I am envious of it." I don't add my thoughts on the personal idiosyncrasies (idiocies?)that prompted the wearer of said hair to do something so hideous with it, though.

At times, I wish I still had some. Rainy days are one of those times. Believe it or not, rain on a bald head is noisy, and the lack of hair means loss of insulation, so it is COLD.

Sunny-hot sunburning days are bad too - obviously. Who likes a flaky, itchy scalp that HURTS?

On the flip side, shampooing takes thirty seconds with a wash cloth & drying takes another 15 seconds. so the ability to sleep in longer is a good side benefit.

Besides, if I need to, I can always wear a cap - like the one my friends gave me. It doesn't have a business logo, just the message "I wish this was hair"!

Pretty well sums it up....



(Me) (Home)

I Don't know how to title this?
"Bitching"? "Wish List"? "gripes"? "Suggestions"?

I have a love/hate affair with this blog, or rather, with the software that runs it.

Type in a long entry, tell it to post it, and if Yahoo suddenly decides you need to enter your password, not only does it NOT post, it also clears the entry form. If you haven't got the text saved elsewhere, you have to redo the whole thing.

Only one picture per post, and it has to be at the top. Links to external pix aren't allowed - you have to upload the picture from your HD to post it.

It has its own ideas on formatting, and pasting in your html doesn't work too well.

Go back and edit a long post, and either it fails to post the new version or it messes up the formatting. Your only real option is to delete the post and repost a fresh one. Not so bad when it is your latest post, but beyond aggravating when it is an earlier post.

I am looking for a different Blog setup. I like the easy integration of this one into my website and the spam-proofing features and want to find one that has those advantages w/o the hassles listed above.

OTOH, this is something new for Yahoo, and maybe they will improve it if enough folks complain and/or make suggestions, things will change.
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Saturday September 22, 2007 - 11:36am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Oh, Hsu!
I see why Glen Reynolds is the instaPUNdit:

"Hsu gave you this money." "Who?" "Hsu!" "That's what I'm asking you!"

DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT HSU ON THE WAY OUT:

THE TIP OF THE HSUBERG?

EVERYTHING OLD IS HSU AGAIN: "

WILL THE HSUTH COME OUT AT LAST?

DO DO THAT VOODOO THAT HSU DO SO WELL:

CAN'T TURN HSU LOOSE

HSOCKING HSU HSECRETS?

Hsu-level background check
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Saturday September 22, 2007 - 09:44am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I Don't Understand . . .
I don't really have a sweet tooth, as long as chocolate isn't involved, but I sure have a weakness for home-made goodies.

Cookies, pies, cakes, brownies, I bribe easily when confronted with them. If they contain chocolate or huckleberries I do a great job of drooling and have even been know to sit up & beg.

Candy? Even homemade, i can kind of take it or leave it. Once in a great while I get a Licorice craving. but it is pretty rare. Hard candy? No thanks.

Fudge? OMG! FUDGE! ('scuse me while I mop the saliva off the keyboard)

Combine ANY of the above with fresh, strong, BLACK coffee and you own me. Just treat me kindly.

Skip the nuts, though. When I found out that I WAS what I ATE, I swore off nuts and instantly switched to JERKY!

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Friday September 21, 2007 - 03:20pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2 Comments
I Forgot One
The best HD defragger yet, much faster than the Windows defragger, more configurable than Norton.

JKdefrag

Freeware, and I use it daily.
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Friday September 21, 2007 - 03:03pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
From the DAILY INTERLAKE
Bear time: 10 griz trapped in a week

The Daily Inter Lake: Friday, Sep 21, 2007

During the past week, 10 grizzly bears intruding on rural properties in Northwest Montana have been trapped by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officers.

"I can't think of another time in recent years that there were this many grizzlies handled in one week," said John Fraley, agency spokesman.

Fraley speculates that a poor huckleberry season in the high country could be driving bears to seek alternate sources of food before they enter the hibernation stage in late October, but "it's not out of the ordinary for them to seek food in foothills areas," he said. "There are a lot of smells to draw them."

The ripening fruit on apple and plum trees always is a lure for hungry bears. And three grizzlies were captured at a business north of Condon when the bears were attracted to restaurant grease behind the business.

"These bears are so vulnerable to being drawn to any kind of odors," Fraley said. "They're looking to pile up calories to successfully den for winter right now."

The Condon restaurant was within two miles of nine cabins that had been broken into by a grizzly during the last week of August. DNA from hair samples from the captured bears was compared to the DNA from the cabin break-ins.

The first grizzly DNA did not match and that bear was radio-collared and released in the upper Goat Creek area. The second grizzly was a 2-year old male, too small for the cabin break-in. That bear was radio-collared and released in the North Fork of Lost Creek in the Swan drainage.

The third male still is being held and awaiting DNA analysis.

North of Lake Blaine, an adult female grizzly and her two yearling females have been targeting apple and plum trees. These bears were trapped and moved together to the Spotted Bear River area in the South Fork of the Flathead drainage. The adult female was fitted with a radio collar so the bear's movements could be followed.

And an adult female plus male and female cubs were captured south of Noxon near Pilgrim Creek, attracted to the area by plum trees.

On Wednesday all three grizzlies were moved back into the mountains near Marten Creek and released. The adult female was radio-collared and will be monitored closely.

These bears were captured and released outside the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear recovery area. According to Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife manager Jim Williams, the action is a reflection of the agency's new grizzly bear management plan.

"We will manage grizzly bears where they occur now and in the future throughout Western Montana, just like black bears and mountain lions," Williams said. "Even though these bears are outside the designated recovery areas, we will manage conflicts as they arise."

None of the captured grizzlies showed aggression toward people.

But it's very important, Fraley said, that people pick all the fruit they can off of trees and keep it off the ground to minimize the potential for conflict. Homeowners also need to secure pet food, garbage and other sources of strong odors.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks grizzly bear management specialist Tim Manley has provided additional assistance to landowners, helping erect electric fences in the Lake Blaine area to protect fruit trees.




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History in a Nutshell
Subject: HISTORY! (submitted by Gardiner Pearson)

For those who don't know much about history...... here is a condensed version.

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were:

1. The invention of beer, and

2. The invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer.

These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals

2. Conservatives.



Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish, but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men.

Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. The liberals crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history....... It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off....

"Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented immigrant" is like calling a drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist."



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Friday September 21, 2007 - 10:20am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
My System & it's evolution
The system:

Lian Li PC-V1000 Silver Aluminum Case

Asus A8N-SLI DELUXE MB

AMD ATHLON 64X2 Dual Core 3800+ cpu

Thermaltake XP90 heatsink with 90mm panaflow fan

2G OCZ OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K ram

(2) Nvidia GeForce 6800GT 256MB SLI video cards

(2) Sony DRU-830A DVD RW

ViewSonic VX2255wmb 22" LCD Flat Panel Monitor /Web Cam

OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU

Gateway 2000 Programmable AnyKey keyboard

Logitech MX518 mouse

Nostromo N52 controller



The evolution

I have owned a number of computers. Some were new (Tandy, Gateway, Micron), some were used, some were built from scratch. At this point, they are all dead & gone.

My office is small and, in summer, quite hot, not a good operating environment. I have experienced about every computer failure possible - and that DOESN"T include the toll from spilled coffee!

So, a couple of years ago, I decided it would be cheaper to build a new machine that was a little higher quality.

First, the case. All those nice little holes in the Lian-Li case make for good ventilation, and the upside-down design of the V1000 is supposed to help in cooling flow. As far as I can tell, it does.

The motherboard. I tried to push back the obsolescence factor by getting this board with it's dual video card capability and (at the time), state of the art cpu socket.

The CPU. The first one was an AMD x64 3500+ Winchester, but since dual-core prices dropped so much after the Socket 939 MBs were phased out, I replaced it with the AMD ATHLON 64X2 Dual Core 3800+. Not a lot of difference when single tasking, but the dual-core lets me do stuff like defrag my hd while I type this w/o any slow-down effects. I think it was a worthwhile investment, and I have my old CPU as a backup if this one fails.

The HS & fan were a gift from my friend Gus Fraiha, since the old stock unit from the old cpu was not good enough. This one keeps the cpu comfy no matter how hot the office has been.

The two gigabytes of ram let me handle the large graphics files I need to on occasion, and are guaranteed against any failure, even if overclocked.

The video cards. Originally, I used a single 6800GT, big enough and fast enough to run the current software. Since a few generations of vidcards have passed since then, I was able to pick up a matching card at a bargain price. This gives the ability to run the latest software/games with the increased speed.

The viewsonic LCD monitor replaced my old Dell 21" CRT unit, which started delivering an uncorrectable trapezoidal picture. The power & space savings are both nice!

Two DVD recorders? Yes, once again, going with belt & suspenders. they probably won't both die at the same time.

The 850 watt Power supply is the third in this box. The first one died after a year, luckily without taking anything else with it. (The last PSU I lost took the mb & cpu with it.) The second one is now in an older computer at home whose PSU died. I picked this one for size, price & features. Hopefully it will be fairly bullet-proof. This one is set up for SLI video cards, which the last one wasn't, which is why I did the switch instead of just getting a PSU for the unit at home.

The keyboard is wonderful. You can program any key to be any key and add macros to many keys, and it is all done in hardware, not special windows drivers. Invaluable, and somewhat irreplaceable as no equivalent keyboards are now being made. My daughter gave me the gift of a clear plastic kb protector which is coffee-proof and has extended the life of this AnyKey indefinitely.

I used a Microsoft trackball for many years, and wore out a lot of them. i learned to hate mice back in the day before optical/laser mice became available, but when the last trackball died and I found that a USED one went for well over a hundred dollars, i bit the bullet and went for a mouse. I had a Razer Copperhead for a few months, but it died, so I got this MX518 & love it.

The Nostromo compensates for my extremely-below-average uncoordinated typing skills and lets me play games with at least a modicum of control.

I haven't said much about the hard drives - they tend to come and go. I run three, and have any important stuff replicated on all three drives. I have in the past lost waaay too many records when a HD failed.

I am satisfied with the machine, It is not state of the art, but it is fast enough, and stable and dependable besides.



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Thursday September 20, 2007 - 05:04pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Shareware
Ztree, mentioned below, is Shareware.

Wikipedia defines shareware like this:

"Shareware is a marketing method for computer software. Shareware software is typically obtained free of charge, often by downloading from the Internet or on magazine cover-disks. A user tries out the program, and thus shareware has also been known as "try before you buy". A shareware program is accompanied by a request for payment, and the software's distribution license often requires such a payment."

There is a bit more to it than that. The best of the shareware programs, like Ztree, gives you unfettered use of the program for thirty days and then stops working. There may or may not be pop-up warnings when you start the program to remind you of your remining time of useage. This is great - it gives you a real chance to wring out the program and find out its faults & features.

Next, there are the programs that give you full function, but begin to put an opening screen up that is timed. You can't run the program till the timer stops, and usually the greater the number of times you have run the program, the longer the delay. These are usually ok, because they still let you give the software a real try.

The next tier down gives you the use of the program, but some or many of its features are crippled. This is poor. The disabled features may or may not be the ones that really turn you on or off to the program.

The bottom-tier in shareware? First there is the "demo" It lets you go through all the steps of the real program, but won't actually DO anything. E.G. - you can't save the drawings, it doesn't fix the problems it detects, you can't print the document, etc.

Next, there are rare programs that are so littered with pop-up windows, partially enabled feartures, and poor programming that they can acutally BSOD or lock your computer up.



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Thursday September 20, 2007 - 11:30am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
ZTREE - The Best of the Best
This is the first program I install on any computer In the days of DOS, Xtree was the first to be installed. Xtree was installed on my first computer - an old Tandy 1000. I have been using Xtree/Ztree ever since.

ZTreeWin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Developer: Kim Henkel Latest release: 1.61 / 16 July 2007

OS: Microsoft Windows Genre: File manager

License: Proprietary Website: www.ztree.com

ZTreeWin is an orthodox file manager for Microsoft Windows and a (heavily improved) clone of XTree. Like Xtree, it logs (preloads) filenames and attributes into memory so that search and sort operations are extremely fast, but makes use of the large memories of modern computers to allow the logging of millions of files.

ZTreeWin makes use of Win32 consoles, and is mostly key-driven, but can be used with the mouse as well.

The ZAAP architecture is available to allow integration with helper applications, of which several are available already.

Features

Complete keyboard support (as well as mouse)

Tree and/or file views

Split screen (dual-pane) option

Find-as-you-type search

File name search

File content search (hex, unicode, text)

File viewer with multiple view modes (hex, text, dump)

Duplicate file detection

Branch (or 'flat') file view

Tagged files (session-long selection, e.g. once tagged (selected), a file remains tagged until explicitly untagged)

Batch file creation using tagged filenames with parameters

Displays size or number of files of each folder or branch (total of all folders below it)

Powerful and flexible renaming of (multiple) files and/or folders

File comparison

User-definable scriptable menu

Integrated support for Zip and Rar archive files

Extensible support for other archive files

Can be run from floppy disk without installing

Session resume
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Thursday September 20, 2007 - 11:08am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Freeware I use
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Piracy
Piracy magnify
I have mixed emotions on the subject. I like to really try out programs BEFORE I spend the dollars for them, but the software industry frowns on that.

I have run into too many programs that did not live up to the hype, or that I simply ended up not liking or that did not do the job I needed done, and WAY too many games that would not run at all or ran poorly on my hardware.

In the old days, one could return the package for a refund, but now the buyer is just out of luck. I think that letting you try the software without a large investment is the positive side of piracy.

Most folks I know that download "illegal" programs from the net end up buying the programs they find that they like and discarding the rest.

I note that in some poverty-stricken areas several people might go together so they can afford the software, but this is classed as piracy also.

And there are the extremes: "A lone Quixote in Seattle is suing Autodesk for sending copyright infringement notices to eBay, where he is a professional seller. At issue is Tim Vernor's listings for used copies of Autodesk's AutoCAD software -- Autodesk says that when you buy its software, you only "license" it and so you don't get the right to sell it after you're done with it." Read more at http://aecnews.com/news/2007/09/10/2377.aspx

I realize that software developers range from the single programmer slaving over a programs he loves and is just trying to make a few dollars return on a huge time investment to the mega-billionaires on their mega-yachts, but it strikes me as odd that the richer the developer, the harder they pursue piracy. Human nature, maybe - the more you have, the more you want and the more fiercely you guard what you have.

Shareware/freeware programs fill a real need, and the advantage to them is the same as piracy, They don't require an investment that you might end up losing. More on this category of programs to follow...

BTW - today's post was inspired by the holiday - it is INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

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Wednesday September 19, 2007 - 10:56am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
PROGRESS
PROGRESS magnify
Updated some more drivers, slowly getting things smoothed out & up to speed. Averaging two steps back for every three steps forward, but at least it is progress.

Robert Jordan kinda summed thing up well in this cartoon from GU Comics, I thought.

I never read his SF, I suppose because I was a bit overwhelmed by the size of the books and the length of the series. I hope for his fan's sake that the family is able to use his notes and outlines to at least finish the last book of the series and wrap it up neatly.

I have never forgiven Stirling Lanier - he wrote a great post-apocalyptic novel, waited ten years and wrote a sequel which ended with the hero & heroine in mortal peril, and then he DIED!!

Thus, I think i will stick to series that end before the author does.
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Wednesday September 19, 2007 - 09:54am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Oh, Hsut!
More:

Hsu-pun syndrome. Once you hstart, you cant hstop . . . .

old-fashioned Hsu-leather reporting...

"SHE HSU'D HAVE KNOWN BETTER"

HSU, RECOBBLED

Hsu for the price of one



Sigh. I have this love affair with puns

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Tuesday September 18, 2007 - 02:38pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
To Look Forward To . . .
Upcoming books -via http://www.bookreporter.com

2012: The War for Souls by Whitley Streiber

A Christmas Beginning by Anne Perry

A Free Life by Ha Jin

A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign by Edward J. Larson

A War of Gifts: An Ender Story by Orson Scott Card

A Week from Sunday by Dorothy Garlock

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic by Joseph J. Ellis

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

Blonde Faith: The Tenth Easy Rawlins Thriller by Walter Mosley

Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell

Boom!: Aftershocks of the Sixties and Beyond Personal Reflections by Tom Brokaw

Boots on the Ground by Dusk: The Remarkable Life and Death of Pat Tillman by Mary Tillman and Narda Zacchino

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin

Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America by Jonathan Gould

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You by Judith McNaught

Caspian Rain by Gina B. Nahai

Confessor by Terry Goodkind

Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer

Creation in Death by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb

Crusader Gold by David Gibbins

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

Darkness Falls by Kyle Mills

Dead Heat by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

Death by Rodrigo by Ron Liebman

Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Long

Die With Me by Elena Forbes

Double Cross by James Patterson

Down River by John Hart

Emissary: Book Two of The Percheron Saga by Fiona McIntosh

Endgame, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II by David Stafford

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer by John Leake

Eureka by Jim Lehrer

Everlasting by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Fatal Revenant: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon

Ghost by Alan Lightman

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War by Stephen Berry

House to House: An Epic Memoir of War by Ssg. David Bellavia with John Bruning

I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny by Vivian Cash with Ann Sharpsteen

Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell

Intimate Relations with Strangers by David Valentine Bernard

Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell

Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler

Late Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Matrimony by Joshua Henkin

Midnight Rambler by James Swain

Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell

Mozart's Sister by Rita Charbonnier

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir by Clarence Thomas

Never Enough by Joe McGinnis

Night Work by Steve Hamilton

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99 by Ray Bradbury

Now and Then: A Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker

Odd Mom Out by Jane Porter

Of Lattes & Land Rovers: Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler by Wade Rouse

One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life -- A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard

Our American King by David Lozell Martin

Pandora's Daughter by Iris Johansen

Person of Interest by Theresa Schwegel

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor

Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn

Red Sea by Emily Benedek

Redemption Falls by Joseph O'Connor

Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event by James Cobb

Run by Ann Patchett

Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis

Shoot Him If He Runs: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods

Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein

Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy

Smart Girls Like Me by Diane Vadino

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture by Taylor Clark

Stolen in the Night by Patricia MacDonald

Stone Cold by David Baldacci

Terminal: A Burke Novel by Andrew Vachss

The 47th Samurai: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

The Art Thief by Noah Charney

The Bishop at the Lake: A Blackie Ryan Story by Andrew M. Greeley

The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Chase by Clive Cussler

The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

The Christmas Promise by Donna VanLiere

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam

The Collection by Gioia Diliberto

The Cry of the Dove by Fadia Faqir

The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz

The Death Trust by David Rollins

The Dilemma by Penny Vincenzi

The Florist's Daughter: A Memoir by Patricia Hampl

The Ghost by Robert Harris

The Gift by Richard Paul Evans

The Girl With Braided Hair by Margaret Coel

The Godmother by Carrie Adams

The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II by Andrew Nagorski

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

The Heir by Barbara Taylor Bradford

The Holiday Season by Michael Knight

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga

The Kingdom of Bones by Stephen Gallagher

The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever by Mark Frost

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin

The Queens of K-Town by Angela Mi Young Hur

The Race by Richard North Patterson

The Secret Cardinal by Tom Grace

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov

The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker

The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

The Tell-Tale Horse by Rita Mae Brown

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

The Used World by Haven Kimmel

The View from Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik

The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman

The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

Them by Nathan McCall

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda

Third Degree by Greg Iles

Tipperary by Frank Delaney

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

Tomorrow by Graham Swift

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Trespass by Valerie Martin

Turpentine by Spring Warren

Under Enemy Colors by S. Thomas Russell

Voices by Arnaldur Indridason

Waiting to Surface by Emily Listfield

When She Was Bad by Jonathan Nasaw

Where Angels Go by Debbie Macomber

World Without End by Ken Follett

Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

You Can Lead a Politician to Water, But You Can't Make Him Think by Kinky Friedman

You've Been Warned by James Patterson and Howard Roughan

Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett







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Tuesday September 18, 2007 - 01:59pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Computer woes and whoas
Well, it seems to be running fine now, except...

Seems like life always has an "except" or a "but" (or a "butt").

Firefox seems a little slow, ACDSee has little hitches when viewing photos, and when I play ET there are certain moments when the game totally hangs and requires a 3-finger salute to get out of.

All of the drivers are the latest version, except the video driver. The latest video driver for the Geforce video card dropped my in-game frame rate by 75%, which is a baaaad thng!

So - maybe I need to look at BIOS tweaks again? At least now it runs well 98% of the time, but I keep striving for that 100% mark.



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Puns...
So, when Connie Chung dies, if she is buried in an exotic wood casket, would it be safe to refer to "Chung In Teak?"



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Monday September 17, 2007 - 06:37pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Another one gone
Wikipedia:

Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (October 17, 1948September 16, 2007), under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the name Reagan O'Neal. He died September 16, 2007 from complications from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (cardiac amyloidosis).



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Monday September 17, 2007 - 08:51am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
If you like puns...
Check out all the tongue in cheek references to Norman Hsu in the news.

Instpundit (http://instapundit.com) has the best

A big Hsu to fill

A boy named Hsu

A game of Trivial Pur-Hsuit

A Hsuicide note

Blue suede Hsus

Deja Hsu

Democrats hit by Hsu-nami

Eager Hsu Please:

Hsu for the price of one:

Hsu loves you, baby?

Hsu socked!

HSU THINK?

Hsu, Hsu, Hsusie goodbye

Hsuicide watch

Hsu-leather express

Hsu-per California

Hsu's yo (sugar) Daddy

HSUT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER

Is it possible there is a Hsu-Trie connection?

It's a Hsu-nami!

It's as if the whole thing was a Hsam

Keeping his mouth Hsut

Something else to Hsu on

Strange Brew Hsu.

Strange but Hsu

Sweet Hsu:

Tangled Hsu-strings

The Hsu School for Social Research

Trying to prevent further Hsunanigans

Tugging on some Hsu-strings

Waiting for the next Hsu to drop

You wouldn't want to be in their Hsus



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Sunday September 16, 2007 - 10:29pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
SATAn Defeated!
Problem solved, mystery over.

The redundancy in this MB gets, um, repetitive. Not only does it have two network controllers (the native Nvidia and also Marvel), it also has two built-in RAID controllers. The Nvidia controller sits in the RAID protion of the BIOS settings, and is easily found & disabled. The Silicon Software RAID controller is listed under PCI devices as a simple SATA controller.

Discovering that amd turning it off fixed the problem nicely!

Thank God for Google!



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Sunday September 16, 2007 - 09:42pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Caveat!
Obviously, this is not just going to be my meandering thoughts, but also a mirror of things that catch my interest, tidbits of technology, and various ramblings. I invite comments, criticism, suggestions, whatever...

A bit frustrated tonight. My computer is disagreeing with me - it says I have a RAID controller while I insist (and the BIOS backs me up) that I don't.

See, this all started a few days when I picked up a second cheap video card to put in, which required power connectors I didn't have - then the spare computer upstairs needed a new PSU, so I pulled the PSU out of this one to put into it and got a new heavy duty power supply that had the needed connectors installed.

Since computer componenst are assembled with the interdependance of a house of cards, it seems like disturbing one part of the unit affects all the other parts. So putting in the card & PSU also meant I had to install new drivers for the sound card & the PCI bridge, as well as new video drivers, etc.

Many hours - and MUCH tinkering - later, the machine has great graphics, but also has sound that freezes up at inopportune times and a boot process that insists I configure the non-existant RAID controller. At least it boots - that's more than it did for the first four hours after I made the PSU switch. The first 1/2 dozen times I put the video card in & fastened it down, I managed to overlook some plug or card or wire it needed and had to redo the whole thing, Then it "lost" the boot drive, which caused it to freeze up on every boot.

This is all typical of working on a computer - something that saves you one hour actually costs you 12 hours. Is it worh it when you get done? Ask me that after I solve the RAID problem and maybe have time to USE the machine.





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Balsa, for REAL Hummers!
Balsa, for REAL Hummers! magnify
Army testing Humvee made of foam, balsa

The Associated Press

Posted : Friday Sep 14, 2007 5:44:07 EDT

The Army said Tuesday it will begin testing a composite, nonmetal Humvee utility vehicle that is 900 pounds lighter than its conventional counterpart so it can carry extra armor to better protect soldiers against roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The prototype vehicle’s frame and body is made of nonmetal composites — a combination of fiberglass, balsa wood, foam and carbon reinforcements all held together with resin.

The body of the tan composite prototype has a sandpaper feel. The fenders are pliable and can be easily bent by hand, flipping back into place when released.

“We can put the strength where we need it,” said Steven Lockard, president and CEO of TPI Composites Inc., which built the prototype.

The chassis, for example, has extra carbon for added strength and stiffness, while other composite parts of the vehicle are lighter and more pliable, he said.

“Every pound of weight we save, that weight is being added back to the vehicle in armor and mine-blast protection,” Lockard said.

Roadside bombs are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. A conventional Humvee weighs between 10,000 and 12,000 pounds.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that follows military issues, said composite vehicles would have some advantages, but will likely cost more to make. And he said the soldiers would have to get accustomed to using them in combat zones.

Crystal Cockerell, 39, of Gahanna, Ohio, was injured in Iraq on Aug. 10, 2004, when a dump-trucklike vehicle in which she was riding went over a roadside bomb. The Army guardsman suffered hearing loss in both ears and still has shrapnel in her leg.

Cockerell said adding armor weighs a Humvee down and makes it ride lower to the ground. A lighter vehicle that rides higher even with added armor might have a greater degree of protection if it runs directly over a bomb, she said.

“We need something that’s going to be thick but lightweight,” she said.

The vehicle is the result of an 18-month research-and-development program with AM General Corp. and the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, a laboratory for military automotive technology.

Matt Ociepka, a spokesman for the Army research lab in Warren, Mich., said he didn’t know when tests on the vehicle would begin.

Lockard said the composite vehicles would be slightly more expensive than conventional Humvees. He declined to say how much that would be. He said Army officials haven’t committed to buying any of them. If they do, he doesn’t know how many they might order.

“We could ramp up pretty quickly to most any volume that would be desired,” he said.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, whose congressional district includes the Springfield plant where the vehicles would be built, and who is a senior member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, said he would like to see the vehicles on the battlefield if they work as envisioned and improve soldier safety.

The Springfield plant currently employs 40 workers. TPI plans to add 300 production and engineering jobs at the plant over the next three years to produce a range of composite products for the military.



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Saturday September 15, 2007 - 03:27pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Fred Thompson speaks against gun control
Thompson speaks against gun control



BY MARC CAPUTO

mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

On the day South Florida mourned a slain police officer, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson stopped in Miami and stuck firmly to his guns over what he says is the unnecessary call for limiting the right to bear arms.

''I do not think that abrogating Second Amendment rights is a good idea,'' the Republican said at the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana.

''The amount of violence created on the street by these kinds of weapons is very, very small,'' Thompson said. ``It's too bad. It's horrendous. Any kind -- whether it's a knife or an IED or a gun -- innocent people, especially law enforcement officers, are vulnerable all the time; we know that. But on balance, you've got to ask what is good for society and what does the Second Amendment say.''

Though such a position after the Thursday slaying of Miami-Dade police officer Jose Somohano will make Thompson the target of gun-control advocates, it's all but guaranteed to shore up his already strong support among gun-rights supporters. Gun-show promoter Victor Bean, for instance, is granting Thompson's campaign exclusive access to his shows.

Thompson, a former actor, lobbyist and U.S. senator from Tennessee, tours a Lakeland gun show Saturday. And he headlined a New Port Richey Reagan Day Dinner Friday evening, where a Colt .45 was to be raffled off.

Thompson made his remarks concerning guns to reporters and not supporters at Versailles. He later mentioned the need for strong Second Amendment rights during a speech in Cape Coral, on the Gulf Coast, where the crowd applauded.

In Miami, Thompson's tone was also less sharp when it came to curbing illegal immigration. He went to extra lengths to laud immigrants before he called for stronger border security, winning applause. The candidate couldn't say how much it would cost to stop illegal immigration from Mexico, which he has repeatedly singled out.

''Yeah, I've got it down to the dime, but not to the nickel yet. But I'll let you know when I do,'' he said in Cape Coral when asked about the price tag for his plan. He also told reporters he favors some type of ban on allowing undocumented migrants to gain preferential treatment for U.S. residency if their child is born in the country.

Thompson, running second in many Florida and national polls behind GOP rival Rudy Giuliani, blamed Democrat Hillary Clinton for what he said was unfairly hyping a comment he made in June suggesting Cuban immigrants were carrying ''suitcase bombs.'' He had clarified the statement to note that he was referring to potential spies.

At each campaign stop, Thompson mentioned the need for more energy independence and later told reporters he would consider approving oil drilling off Florida in addition to encouraging more nuclear power, ''clean coal'' and biofuels. Throughout the day, the candidate stressed his campaign themes of ''Security, Unity, Prosperity'' by serving up detail-thin promises of less taxes, a smaller federal government, less spending and more support for the war in Iraq and against terrorists.

In comparison to his smooth campaign speeches Thursday across the state, Thompson, 65, seemed wearier Friday, fumbling for words more often in Miami and breathing heavily in the wilting humidity near the Caloosahatchee River at Jaycee Park in Cape Coral, where the crowd numbered in the hundreds and was heavily enthusiastic.

The reception was warm in Little Havana, though a few groused that there wasn't enough Spanish translation. Miami Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who said Thompson inspired him to become involved this election, was asked by the campaign to keep the Spanish-speaking to a minimum.

At Versailles, Thompson told the mostly Cuban-American crowd that he would maintain the embargo and other sanctions against the Fidel Castro government.

Thompson began his day with interviews on Spanish-language radio station WAQI-Radio Mambí, where he was asked if he would, as president, move to indict Raúl Castro, the head of the Cuban armed forces, for the shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over the Florida Straits in 1996. The incident led to the deaths of four Cuban Americans.

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Dick Francis Rides Again!
Due out this month!

From Publishers Weekly

MWA Grand Master Francis's first collaboration with his son Felix, a former physics teacher who researched many of his father's previous bestsellers, introduces an engaging hero, though longtime fans may find certain plot elements, like an unlikely love interest and sinister figures somehow connected with shady racetrack doings, less than fresh. The reputation of Max Moreton, a young wunderkind chef with a restaurant in Newmarket, England, suffers after guests at an affair he caters fall ill with food poisoning. This calamity nearly jeopardizes another job—feeding several dozen attendees at a major horse race. While that meal goes off without a hitch, a terrorist's bomb decimates the crowd at the track. Despite the official theory that an unpopular Middle Eastern ruler at the event was responsible, the chef wonders whether the bombing is related to the earlier food poisoning and turns amateur sleuth. Crisp writing and well-paced action help offset the routine plotting. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description

After a six-year absence from the bestseller lists, Dick Francis roared out of the gate with 2006's Under Orders, demonstrating once again every ounce of his famed narrative drive, brilliant plotting, and simmering suspense. Hard on the heels of that triumph comes Dead Heat, set against the backdrop of Britain's famed Two Thousand Guineas Stakes.



Max Moreton is a rising culinary star and his Newmarket restaurant, The Hay Net, has brought him great acclaim and a widening circle of admirers. But when nearly all the guests who enjoyed one of his meals at a private catered affair fall victim to severe food poisoning, his kitchen is shuttered and his reputation takes a hit. Scrambling to meet his next obligation, an exclusive luncheon for forty in the glass-fronted private boxes at the Two Thousand Guineas, Max must overcome the previous evening's disaster and provide the new American sponsors of the year's first classic race with a day to remember.

Then a bomb blast rips through the private boxes, killing some of Max's trusted staff as well as many of the guests. As survivors are rushed to the hospital, Max is left to survey the ruins of the grandstand-and of his career. Two close calls are too close for comfort, and Max vows to protect his name-and himself-before it's too late.



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The Greatest .22 Pistol Ever Made
The Greatest .22 Pistol Ever Made magnify
Second Series (1947-1955)

The Second Series Woodsmans are the only models that have a push button magazine release, as on the Government Model 45.

Beautiful fit & finish, perfect ergonomics, well named.



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Friday September 14, 2007 - 02:06pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Original Blog
Abandoned, for many reasons. ressurrected now.

----------------------------------------------------------

Sun, 03 Sep 2006

The Summer of the Blog

Maybe that should be "The Summer of the No-Blog", I've neglected it a lot. And Blog-spam has been nasty.

There are reasons for this: partly, this has been a hectic summer with too much going on; and partly, I have gotten a little discouraged with this project.

I can't seem to get Google to catalog the whole site, and the pages it always misses are this blog and the page of books I have listed for sale. Every other search engine I have tried has found and listed my entire site, but Google hasn't. Since the big "G" is used for the majority of web searches I feel a bit like an exile at the edge of civilization. (Which "I" might be, but there's no call for my site to be in the same situation.)

If I could sell things from this site, and express opinions that are read by more than family & friends, I would probably be putting more effort into it.

Ah, well. I keep experimenting with sitemap submissions and requests to Google, and won't give up for a bit.

If you want to help, and have a site, I'd appreciate if you would link me here at http://www.blacktailbooks.com. It might help. :)



Tue, 01 Aug 2006

When authors die...

They can sure leave an empty spot.

Not so bad when it is a one-shot author or someone that writes stand-alone books, but when it is the author of a series it is different.

Imagine J.K. Rowling dying before she finishes the Harry Potter series, for example. There would be world wide furor.

Let's look at a worse case - say an author sells his first book in his early twenties, and it is a best seller. (Publishers and readers both like those.) Then, because a smart person doesn't want to spoil a good thing, she/he writes another book with the same protagonists, and then another and another. A series is born.

Now, most authors pump out a book a year by contract, (except for Louis L'Amour, who rolled out 4 new books a year, albeit short ones), and with any luck can have a 50 year career, or longer. So you bought that first book, got acquainted with the characters, got hooked on the series, and found the high point of your year was the release of that author's newest book. So Spenser or Nero Wolfe or Travis Magee or Nancy Drew or Dirk Pitt or whoever got to be a part of your life, you knew their habits, their mannerisms, their friends and family and adventures.

Then the author dies, and something that has been a part of your life is gone too. No - it's not like losing a spouse or a parent or a child or even a pet, but they do leave a vacuum.

Sometimes another writer attempts to pick up the gauntlet and carry on, but that's rare, and rarer still for it to work. Robert Goldsborough took over the Nero Wolfe series after Rex Stout died, and I liked the results,but apparently not enough other people did as the series finally died. The same held true for Gardner, who resurrected James Bond after Ian Fleming died. Dirk Pitt may achieve immortality, though, as Clive Cussler's son Dirk is now writing the series with him. Louis L'Amour's family is still bringing out westerns under his name and they are still selling well, but I don't think they measure up to the originals.

So, after 10 or 20 or 40 years, you bid goodby to an old friend and move on, but the empty spot is still there.

Travis Magee (John Dann Macdonald) died in 1986. After twenty years I still miss him and wish someone would take over the series.

Who do you miss??



Fri, 21 Jul 2006

Building a web page.

Visitors might notice that these pages keep changing, usually a little bit every day. That's because I broke one of the cardinal rules for web design.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!

Before you start building anything, you should know what you want the final product to look like, this is why people hire architects before they hire carpenters. I started out on this project with no visual destination in mind and have been wandering ever since.

I have always looked more at function than form, so when I started I wanted function. Building for function was quick and easy - and butt-ugly. Now I am trying to mold the function into a form I like. The problem is that I still don't know what I want.

I have no image in mind for this to look like and haven't seen any pages I liked well enough to try to duplicate, so successive approximations seems to be the name of the game now. Every revision brings me a little closer, and MOST of the revisions are never seen by anyone but me. Some of them have been so messed up they look like they were done by an Escher on acid.

Another problem is my bull-headedness. I want to do this on my own, so I am not accepting tech help or even many suggestions, though my daughter Rebecca and my friend Chris have both given me some helpful design hints.

I am learning as I go, which adds complications. Anything I know about HTML, I learned while working on this. When I get an idea, I have to start digging into references to find out how to do it. "Ludicrous" is probably too mild a word for some of the things I have tried.

A third problem is my choice of Firefox as a browser. I dislike Internet Explorer intensely so I test my pages in FF. The problem is that FF & IE don't always interpret HTML the same way, and what looks fine in one sucks in the other. Designing for FireFox is okay, but unfortunately Explorer is still used by 75% of the internet. Opera? I think the fat lady already sang, and FireFox was the tune.

So, please bear with me as I improvise.



Sun, 16 Jul 2006

Janet Evanovich: Twelve Sharp

Yes, its out!

And I bought it in hardcover, as usual.

And its funny, as usual.

But having Ranger Manoso as the bad guy is a little odd...

I like to take my time reading her books, but this time I need to get it finished so the four people who are lined up to borrow it from me will stop pestering me.

:)



Pet Peeve #2: Obnoxious customers.

99% of people that come in here are wonderful. The other 1%, well, not so wonderful.

Drunks and punks, no big problem. Most of them can find the door when requested or assisted. The very few that are worse than that seem to have a lot of respect for a 130 pound malamute or a S&W. I've never had to resort to 911.

My biggest customer headache: obnoxious old ladies. They question, they argue, they interrupt, they repeat, they get mad if you try to wait on someone else no matter how long the other person has been in line with overloaded arms. They are convinced that they're right and the rest of world is wrong.

It seems like my last resort is rudeness, and all too often that doesn't work.

So - there is a reason that the sign on the wall here says "prices subject to change according to customer's attitude"...



Thu, 13 Jul 2006

Tony Hillerman: Shapeshifter

Amazon Price: $17.79 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.

Availability: This title will be released on November 21, 2006.

Impatiently counting the days...

This will be a Leaphorn/Chee novel - two of my favorite characters.

And of course I'll get it in hardcover....

The best authors don't write them fast enough, and quit too soon.



Pet Peeve: The new paperback size.

7/8" taller! It badly messes up the shelving arrangements.

It's supposed to be easier to read and easier to hold - but the type is the same size, all they did is increase the spacing between the lines. They are heavier and harder to hold.

I think the main motive was to give the publishers an excuse to raise the price 20% - which they did.

When I first saw one, I hoped that it was a fluke,but all the new best-sellers are in this format now, even Harlequin romances!

Bottom line: waste of paper, marketing gimmick, pain in the butt.



Hello

Now that I have an idea of how this works, I guess I can start using it.

But I see no real advantage over just editing/posting a new HTML page, except for the date thing that I would have to do manually.

And I need to check into prettying this up to match the other site pages.

Hmmmm.

------------------



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Stolen from http://copterchick.blogspot.com/
Musings of an unknown Helicopter Pilot

Anything that screws its way into the sky flies according to unnatural principals.

You never want to sneak up behind an old high-time helicopter pilot and clap your hands. He will instantly dive for cover and most likely whimper...then get up smack you.

There are no old helicopters laying around airports like you see old Airplanes. There is a reason for this. Come to think of it, there are not many old high-time helicopter pilots hanging around airports either so the first issue is problematic.

You can always tell a helicopter pilot in anything moving, a train, an airplane, a car or a boat. They never smile, they are always listening to the machine and they always hear something they think is not right.

Helicopter pilots fly in a mode of intensity, actually more like "spring loaded", while waiting for pieces of their ship to fall off.

Flying a helicopter at any altitude over 500 feet is considered reckless and should be avoided. Flying a helicopter at any altitude or condition that precludes a landing in less than 20 seconds is considered outright foolhardy.

Remember in a helicopter you have about 1 second to lower the collective in an engine failure before it becomes unrecoverable. Once you've failed this maneuver the machine flies about as well as a 20 case Coke machine. Even a perfectly executed autorotation only gives you a glide ratio slightly better than that of a brick. 180 degree autorotations are a violent and aerobatic maneuver in my opinion and should be avoided.

When your wings are leading, lagging, flapping, precessing and moving faster than your fuselage there's something unnatural going on. Is this the way men were meant to fly?

While hovering, if you start to sink a bit, you pull up on the collective w hile wisting the throttle, push with your left foot (more torque) and move the stick left (more translating tendency) to hold your spot. If you now need to stop rising, you do the opposite in that order. Sometimes in wind you do this many times each second. Don't you think that's a strange way to fly?

For Helicopters: You never want to feel a sinking feeling in your gut (low "g" pushover) while flying a two bladed under slung teetering rotor system. You are about to do a snap-roll to the right and crash. For that matter, any remotely aerobatic maneuver should be avoided in a Huey. Don't push your luck. It will run out soon enough anyway.

If everything is working fine on your helicopter consider yourself temporarily lucky. Something is about to break.

Way back while I was flying Huey gunships in Vietnam, Harry Reasoner wrote the following about helicopter pilots: "The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously.

There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

"This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble.

They know if something bad has not happened it is about to. " Having said all this, I will also tell you that flying in a helicopter is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences I have ever enjoyed.

What I miss most is skimming over the trees at 100 knots + in a light observation helicopter.



And remember the fighter pilot's prayer:

"Lord I pray for the eyes of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the balls of a combat helicopter pilot."



Many years later I know that it was sometimes anything but fun, but now it is something to brag about for those of us who survived the experience.



Basic Helicopter Flying Rules:

1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.

2. Do not go near the edges of it.

3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.



By: Unknown


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Thursday September 13, 2007 - 06:08pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
If I wrote a book
. . . it would look like this

I have two great addictions: books and .22's. Both hooked me before I ever mastered first grade.

I grew up an only child on a Montana farm in the 1950's, surrounded by people who both read about fishing, shooting & hunting and spent a lot of time practising those arts. Those early days warped me into the book dealer and gun accumulator I am now.

My first exposure to reading and outdoor sports came while sitting on my father's lap as he thumbed through outdoor magazines and told me what the pictures were.

I suspect he was a gun nut too, though he died while I was quite young. Family tradition and friends tell me that he owned one of the first .22 Savage Hi-Powers in the area, as well as an early Colt Woodsman and a 12C Remington with a scope. He also owned an old "Nitro Special" 16 gauge single shot that I inherited and used as a cap gun in my cowboy & indian days.

At some point in his teenage years, he got a hard lesson in firearm safety from that old shotgun - after a duck hunting expedition, he made the mistake of grabbing the loaded gun by the muzzle and pulling it out of the boat. The hammer hung on a seat edge and then released, firing the shell. Luckily most of the charge missed him, but a lot of the shot went into his arm and he carried the scars and some embedded shot for the rest of his life.

Photos show him posed with various Whitetail bucks and an old Winchester model 94, probably in .30-30.

I have no idea what became of these guns over the years, though the Savage, the Colt and possibly some others were disposed of by an uncle who did my Mother a "favor" by buying them from her and then reselling them.

When Mom remarried a few years later, one of the things her new husband brought to the farm with him was an old bolt-action single-shot .22, a model 68 Winchester, the peep-sighted and less-common variant of the popular model 67. It occupied the spot most farm guns did in those days, just inside the kitchen closet, handy for use.

He was like many of the farmers then: a gun was a tool, like a hammer or saw, to be treated with respect and used carefully when needed.

The "ammo du jour" of most of the farms was the little .22 short, usually of the Winchester / Western persuasion, though for shooting gophers (Columbian Ground Squirrels) they often opted for the hollow-point version.

My step-dad gave up on .22 shorts after the night he wounded a skunk that was raiding the chicken pen. The one cartridge he could find didn't do the job and he ended up killing it with a shovel. After a tomato juice bath and the ceremony of permanently burying his favorite slippers he headed into town to stock up on Long Rifle ammo. For the rest of the summer both he and the yard reminded us of the episode whenever the humidity was high.

That little .22 attracted me like honey draws bears. Every time I went by the closet I wanted to handle it, but kids in those days were taught that touching a weapon without their dad's consent was a sure route to death or great pain - inflicted by their parents!

Not being allowed to touch it didn't mean I couldn't talk about it, though. I suspect I made a real pest of myself for a long time because he finally gave in to my pestering and let me shoot it.

One lazy Sunday afternoon he tacked a target on the side of an old doghouse and set up a box about 20 feet back. After a quick run-through on the basics of trigger & breath control, he sat me behind the box.

After puzzling over my contortions while I was trying to hold the rifle to my right shoulder and aim with my left eye, he stepped up and rearranged things. He made sure my left hand was under the forend, right hand on the grip, right cheek pressing into the stock. Then he loaded the rifle and cocked it for me.

I fired.I missed the paper.

I reloaded & fired. I missed the paper . . .

I reloaded & fired. I missed the paper . . .

After repeating that WAY too many times, we were both stressed enough to take up knitting as a hobby.

The fog of time hides the exact decision and who made it, but as a last attempt, he let me shoot left handed. The result wasn't a bulls-eye, but at least it was on the paper and somewhat close to the center. From then on, I was a right-handed south-paw shooter, reaching over the top of the action to work the bolt and drop in another cartridge.

It wasn't until many years later I realized I was one of those cross-wired folks whose master hand and master eye were on opposite sides. (This actually worked out well, as I taught myself as a teenager to use my right eye and am now fairly ambidextrous with rifle & shotgun - shooting with equal (in)accuracy off either side.)

The old rifle accounted for a lot of farm pests. The folks gardened and raised chickens and pigs on a fairly large scale, and both furred & feathered freeloaders congregated in the hedgerows and creek bottoms around the farm.

Hawks and owls (unprotected in those days), feral dogs & cats, bobcats, pigeons, magpies, crows, occasional ravens, skunks, porcupines, weasels, mink, coyotes were all on the hit list of unwanted vermin.

An old bachelor uncle who lived a mile or so away owned a nice Winchester model 72 with a Weaver B6 scope. He won it on a punchboard game at the rural bar where the farmers gathered for cool beer and fresh gossip. He had problems with pigeons in his barn, and in an effort to keep the hay stored there clean, he made me my first business offer - the use of his .22 and free ammo if I would thin out the pigeon over-population.

I still remember the excitement of that first box of ammo - the then-new Remington Golden Bullets in long rifle hollow point. I enjoyed looking at them and polishing them almost as much as I did shooting them, and hoarded them like they were made of real gold.. That first box still went fast though, but after it was gone I spent more time waiting than shooting. The birds learned too quickly that sitting smugly on the barn roof was dangerous and were airborn a the first hint of danger.

The pigeons I shot were not wasted, either - my thrifty German Grandmother had me gather them up to be cooked, along with the occasional pheasant that tarried too close to the barn.

Using his .22 led me to my first major purchase - a summer's worth of saving invested in a Weaver B4 scope installed on the Model 68. The scope made a major improvement in my hit/miss ratio.

This combo served me well and I learned a lot about both shooting and hunting using it, but the itch for a repeater kept growing. It wasn't just the model 72 and the capacity of its tubular magazine, either. Several of my classmates had their own rifles. I was particularly envious of the Winchester pumps two of them had. If memory serves, they had visible hammers and round barrels and fed all sizes of the .22 shells we had, so I assume they were probably early model 62's. The tube-feed Mossberg bolt-action of a close buddy even made me envious.

When another uncle moved back onto the old family farm, one of his first purchases was one of those new Remington Nylon lever-action rifles. He did not own it more than a few weeks, but he let me shoot it while he did. I loved the combination of old-west lever and the light weight of the nylon.

Unfortunately, those rifles had some problems. I don't remember what exactly went wrong on his, but in an action typical of our family, he carried it down to the bridge over the creek and gave it his best discus-style sidearm throw downstream,then went to town and got a new Remington model 12 Nylon bolt action.

He pretty well decided my actions by doing that. In my first case of "keeping up with the Joneses", I begged, borrowed, bartered and bargained until I also had one - but mine had a new Weaver B4 on it!

I loved that rifle and thought it was perfect. Over the next year or so, I shot everything legally shootable with it, and probably some that weren't. But then, like the Snake entering the Garden of Eden, the Devil entered my private paradise and my Age of innocence ended.

In this case, the apple was a gift subscription to Outdoor Life and the Devil was an acerbic Idaho writer named Jack O'Connor, with a gospel called "minute of angle".

I read virtually every word in the magazine and loved the vicarious thrills and solid information I found there. I even read (and memorized!) the ads. It was the O'Connor stuff I loved the most. I still think he was the best writer of all the outdoor scribes, and I still read & reread things he wrote.

His columns certainly destroyed my private Eden though. The "one inch group at 100 yards" that he extolled as a standard was beyond my capabilities.

My beloved rifle was capable of "minute of gopher", "minute of pigeon", sometimes even "minute of sparrow", but not the neat "minute of angle" that he preached. Not at 100 yards. Not at fifty yards. Sometimes not even at 25 yards!



(to be contined)



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Thursday September 13, 2007 - 03:35pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Friends that are Gunsmiths
Friends that are Gunsmiths magnify
Built this for me:

Classic Super Grade Model 70 Winchester, 375H&H.

10.5 pounds of beauty.

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Thursday September 13, 2007 - 02:55pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
What is it?
What is it? magnify
License says "62 RCR", resembles a 1962 Vette, but the interior & running gear are 2006-2007 Vette.

So - what is it? Who makes it? HELP?

(First car I have seen in a long time I want!)



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Thursday September 13, 2007 - 12:14pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
My daily visits
Thoughts on guns, England
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2409817.ece



From The Times

September 8, 2007

Wouldn’t you feel safer with a gun? British attitudes are supercilious and misguided

Richard Munday

Despite the recent spate of shootings on our streets, we pride ourselves on our strict gun laws. Every time an American gunman goes on a killing spree, we shake our heads in righteous disbelief at our poor benighted colonial cousins. Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls?

The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects. Virginia Tech, where 32 students were shot in April, had a strict gun ban policy and only last year successfully resisted a legal challenge that would have allowed the carrying of licensed defensive weapons on campus. It is with a measure of bitter irony that we recall Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, recording the words of Cesare Beccaria: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

One might contrast the Virginia Tech massacre with the assault on Virginia’s Appalachian Law School in 2002, where three lives were lost before a student fetched a pistol from his car and apprehended the gunman.

Virginia Tech reinforced the lesson that gun controls are obeyed only by the law-abiding. New York has “banned” pistols since 1911, and its fellow murder capitals, Washington DC and Chicago, have similar bans. One can draw a map of the US, showing the inverse relationship of the strictness of its gun laws, and levels of violence: all the way down to Vermont, with no gun laws at all, and the lowest level of armed violence (one thirteenth that of Britain).

How worried should we be about gun crime?

Serious gun crime is concentrated in particular parts of England; internationally, the country has a low death rate from guns

America’s disenchantment with “gun control” is based on experience: whereas in the 1960s and 1970s armed crime rose in the face of more restrictive gun laws (in much of the US, it was illegal to possess a firearm away from the home or workplace), over the past 20 years all violent crime has dropped dramatically, in lockstep with the spread of laws allowing the carrying of concealed weapons by law-abiding citizens. Florida set this trend in 1987, and within five years the states that had followed its example showed an 8 per cent reduction in murders, 7 per cent reduction in aggravated assaults, and 5 per cent reduction in rapes. Today 40 states have such laws, and by 2004 the US Bureau of Justice reported that “firearms-related crime has plummeted”.

In Britain, however, the image of violent America remains unassailably entrenched. Never mind the findings of the International Crime Victims Survey (published by the Home Office in 2003), indicating that we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States; never mind the doubling of handgun crime in Britain over the past decade, since we banned pistols outright and confiscated all the legal ones.

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Brontë recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

If armed crime in London in the years before the First World War amounted to less than 2 per cent of that we suffer today, it was not simply because society then was more stable. Edwardian Britain was rocked by a series of massive strikes in which lives were lost and troops deployed, and suffragette incendiaries, anarchist bombers, Fenians, and the spectre of a revolutionary general strike made Britain then arguably a much more turbulent place than it is today. In that unstable society the impact of the widespread carrying of arms was not inflammatory, it was deterrent of violence.

As late as 1951, self-defence was the justification of three quarters of all applications for pistol licences. And in the years 1946-51 armed robbery, the most significant measure of gun crime, ran at less than two dozen incidents a year in London; today, in our disarmed society, we suffer as many every week.

Gun controls disarm only the law-abiding, and leave predators with a freer hand. Nearly two and a half million people now fall victim to crimes of violence in Britain every year, more than four every minute: crimes that may devastate lives. It is perhaps a privilege of those who have never had to confront violence to disparage the power to resist.

Richard Munday is editor and co-author of Guns & Violence: the Debate Before Lord Cullen



(Me)



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Thursday September 13, 2007 - 10:25am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Zane Grey ...
Zane Grey ... magnify
would be spinning in his grave if he could see what the artist did!

Grey lived in the old west, knew some of the old timers, and knew firearms. This artist didn't.

The cowboy might be okay, the smoke is pretty authentic, the pistols are pretty good, thumbs on the hammers to cock them is okay . . .

BUT . . . Cap and ball pistols like these might be converted to shoot metallic cased ammo, but they sure weren't designed to function in full or semi- automatic mode and eject the empties as they were fired.

This is the equivalent of the cowboy using LED tail lights on a chuck wagon.
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Wednesday September 12, 2007 - 02:26pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Warning
Southside Speedy Lube



I made a point of changing my own oil in my 1993 Dodge Dakota till the hassle of disposing of the old oil made me start going to South Side Speedy Lube, choosing them because of their handy location. I was always careful & know that the plug & pan were in good shape when I first went there.

On at least three occasions over the next year the workers at the South Side Speedy Lube damaged the threads in the oil pan of & had to install oversize plugs. Each time it happened, I mentioned it to the manager,

The last time this happened was 07/06/07. The manager of the South side location (Paul?) was doing the actual work & I heard him call for an oversize plug. He was handed one, but said "no - the next size bigger". He installed the larger plug.

The following Monday, after driving for well over 100 miles, I found oil dripping steadily from my oil pan. The plug was only finger tight and was too badly stripped to be tightened properly. I was very lucky to catch it before my engine lost oil pressure and was damaged.

I added oil, took it back to the South Side Speedy Lube, and talked to the manager, who apologized & accepted responsibility. He showed me a two-piece metal plug and said he would install it and change the oil. He also gave me oil to replace what I added.

I left my name & number with him with a request to talk to the owner. I also called the east side location and did the same thing with the manager there.

Two days later, I still had not heard from the owner (Gerald Friesen) so I repeated the process, including leaving a business card at the south side location.

The next day, still not having heard from him, I looked up what was apparently his home phone number (though he answered it as "Friesen Enterprises"), called him and spoke to him. He said that the businesses had notified him of the incident but not given him my phone number (very odd, if true). After a short discussion he arranged to meet me at his business.

I did that 7/17/07. He looked at the pan, stated that it was too old for the threads to be in good shape, and told me that his manager had installed a rubber plug instead of the two-piece metal plug (so the manager lied to me - basically, what they had installed was a rubber twist-in plug). He said that it was normal for the pan threads to be worn out after 10-15 years.

I mentioned to Friesen that it seemed a bit hard to believe that a nicely-machined & lubricated steel bolt could not be removed & inserted into a matching hole more than a few dozen times without damage .

He also told me that my truck was so old that most lube places like Walmart would not even change oil in one of that vintage. (another lie - I called and NO other lube place refused to offer an oil change, saying that age of the vehicle was irrelevant..)

Talking to most of the other lube places and a number of mechanics I was told that age did not matter as long as the plug was started properly, not cross-threaded or over-torqued, and that damage like my oil pan received was strictly due to carelessness on the part of the worker.

When I stopped in and point-blank asked the manager why he lied to me, he just said he didn't have to listen to me and I needed to deal with the owner.

I feel that the company owes me a new oil pan, but they refuse to install a good pan or reimburse me for having the damage repaired, only offering to replace the rubber plug every few years when it wears out.



I will not be doing business there again, nor will I suggest going there to anyone else.v
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Wednesday September 12, 2007 - 11:31am (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 3 Comments
Book Covers
Book Covers magnify
I think I am going to air a few of the book oddities I have stumbled upon in this blog, and these covers are a good place to start.

Different sizes, different publishers, different authors, different titles, different stories, different BOOKS, right?

... And the same (virtually) artwork!

I don't know what the backstory is on this, but I am a bit curious.







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Tuesday September 11, 2007 - 05:03pm (MDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
First post - September 11, 2007
Once again, a Blog. This time, the preformed, canned, love-it-or-leave-it Yahoo Blog.

It seems to be simple to use, looks pretty good, and the price is right. This is going to be a place for book stuff, gripes, whines, and general news.



Enjoy.

1 comment:

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