Metaphysx.com

on May 26, 2006

. 0 Comments

Maybe this is why I can’t keep a girlfriend, or perhaps it’s the girls who are interfering with my ability to keep a consistant, working UI?

Anyway… I’m formatting my desktop now… going back to XP… but with some hacks.

Windows free?

Published

on May 26, 2006

. 0 Comments

Ugh, I hate it. I mean, I don’t hate FreeBSD. I just mean that things are, admittedly, easier with Windows. There are cool things about the interface, and quirks that I don’t like. I haven’t decided yet, but I might be going back. I’m not realizing the benefits. I still have XP on my laptop, and I find myself using that more often simply because, while perhaps not as stable when I try to do weird things… is a bit more congruent across the O/S interface and applications. If I were doing a Six-Sigma project on workplace efficiency, I would definitely consider *nix over Windows. But for home… I dunno… I’m not a developer, so I’m not getting much of what it’s all about. And I found that a lot of the interface features I like are available for Windows via 3rd parties.

What’s the point?

Published

on May 24, 2006

. 0 Comments

I found this article: Senate Sets Stage for Immigration Bill Passage. Whatever it says, it doesn’t matter. The Bush Regime apparently isn’t obligated to enforce the laws already existant, and can circumvent those which they choose. It’s just stupid that we even fund a "congress" anymore, because Bush has "unlimited war powers" now and anything Congress says or does doesn’t really matter. Bush will continue to recognize the laws he likes and claim those he doesn’t don’t apply because we are "at war". He acted within the law and within the powers Congress granted him (vaguely) before invading and colonizing Iraq… deciding to ignore current immigration policies and ordering the NSA to tap your phone lines.

He’ll do the same when it comes to Iran. Right now he’s set the stage for a pissing match between Iran and Israel. Israel is just waiting for a renegade attack they can blame on Iran. Bush has already committed to "defending Israel" if they’re attacked. Once Israel gets the opportunity, they’ll blame an attack on Iran, which will incite the Bush Regime to react militarily toward Iran (in defense, of course), who will fight for ‘regime-change’ in the name of the "War Against Terror" and kill another few thousand American brothers, cousins, nephews and fathers who, like Iraq, had no business being there.

So I don’t know what the point is. I think, now, we should do away with Congress altogether, as they’re apparently powerless against a "war president", and cost us close to half-a-million dollars a year each. If King George W. is going to do what he wants despite the Constitution, we should save some money and let him, because the fighting is getting nowhere and only costing more.

I’m taking classes in Chinese. Are you?

Busy, productive weekend.

Published

on May 21, 2006

. 0 Comments

What a busy, productive weekend this has been. I washed the Miata and took it for a short spin. I love that car. I really need to sell it, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

I mowed up close to the house and other areas where the riding mower won’t go. That was a blast. Then I got the rider out and found the battery again had discharged. So, I let it charge up for a few hours, then managed to get about 30 minutes of mowing in before the drive belt snapped.

So, this morning I made my way to the nearest Tractor Supply and got a new belt, put it on and was ready to go when… yup… dead battery. That’s when I had a GREAT idea. While the mower was charging, I thought I’d take a motorcycle ride. So, I got out the bike, cleaned her up, put some air in the tires and was ready to go. I put in the key, made sure I was in Neutral, opened the choke, flipped the kill-switch and… dead battery.

I’m worried about riding now, as there’s only enough gas in the tank to get to the nearest gas station. I’m afraid the thing won’t start again once I shut it down. I guess I’ll be buying 2 new batteries this week.

Double-standards?

Published

on May 19, 2006

. 0 Comments

After giving Israel nuclear technology under the pretense of ‘peaceful energy’ which has resulted in Israel being one of the few major nuclear military powers in the world… and all the "stop and stop now" talk from the U.S. government toward N. Korea and Iran regarding their supposed peaceful use of nuclear technology…

Brazil Announced Nuclear Enrichment Plant… but no one else, the U.S. included, seems to care.

Ok, I know it’s complicated… but still…

Published

on May 19, 2006

. 0 Comments

I just read this article, stating that the Senate voted to allow immigrants who paid into Social Security are to be entitled to Social Security benefits even though they did so while working illegally using forged or stolen credentials.

I know I said it before, but we call them "illegal" because they are here illegally. In other words, they are committing a crime. According to the article, falsifying Social Security documents is a felony. As a nation of law, these people should be prosecuted and serve time, or at a minimum they should be deported. They should definitely NOT be given amnesty nor allowed to reap the fruits of their crimes.

Like I said in a previous post, it’s not up to the Police nor the President to decide which laws they are going to enforce and which they are not. If the Law is unjust, the Law should be changed. But until it is, it is still the Law. Too many people have worked too hard to get here the right way to have THEIR HARD WORK made pointless by granting amnesty to illegals. Is that fair to the legal immigrants?

Quote of the Day

Published

on May 17, 2006

. 0 Comments

This morning on the ‘Today’ show, Matt Lauer interviewed the cast of ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Responding to a question regarding how they feel about the protests and calls for a disclaimer at the start of the movie, Sir Ian McKellen (a.k.a. Gandalf or Magneto) responded,

"Well, I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction."

Priceless.

Yes!

Published

on May 14, 2006

. 0 Comments

This won’t mean anything to you, I’m sure, but it’s a personal triumph and I’m damn proud of myself.

After playing around with things, I decided not to run a full-fledged instance of Gnome. Instead, I’m running Enlightenment as my window-manager, and only loading Gnome-panel for the bottom-center menu/launch bar and for the bottom-right clock/weather display and volume control.

Side note: This my first blog post using the ‘new box’.

At the bottom-left is a cool feature of Enlightenment (and other WMs)… "virtual desktops". The first 3 small screens you see are, well, snapshots of screens I have. I don’t have to worry so much now about a cluttered desktop, because I can load, for example, everything you see in the screenshot on one screen, Evolution (similar to Outlook) on it’s own screen, and still have the 3rd one blank, waiting for me to do something. It rocks!

The 4th screen you see is the IconBox. When I minimize an app, that’s where it goes. It’s a bit tidier than Window’s Task Bar, I think.

At the bottom-center, is one gnome-panel where I included the default menus and some app-launchers for things I use most. It might be hard to see, but I dig the transparency option. If I could only do away with those gray bars on the ends. Same goes for the bottom-right. That too is a gnome-panel with the time, weather and volume control loaded. It’s set to 100% transparency… if it weren’t for those damn side-bars it would be cool.

Elsewhere on the screen, you’ll see I have "The Gimp", an image editing package loaded… editing well… the screenshot. The web browser behind that is Opera (I love Opera)… especially since the *nix version doesn’t have the mandatory ads. In the upper-right is Gaim, a universal Instant Messaging client similar to Trillian. I still like Trillian better, and maybe I’ll find something else that works just as well.

Oh, and something a lot of Windows users don’t see much… there is an Xterm open. It’s kinda’ hidden in the screenshot, but if you look at the screenshot of the screenshot… you can see the transparency settings.

Maybe I’m a geek… but I think this is cool.

Getting closer

Published

on May 11, 2006