Hussien Executed

Just saw on multiple sources that Saddam has been hanged.  Say what you will about the Iraq war, but this man needed this to happen to him.  He’s now history.  The people of Iraq should rejoice!

Few more days….

I worked my last day in 2006 today.  2006 was a hard year in more ways then one.  Lots of political stuff as well as weird and wild web happenings.

On a personal note, by this time next year, my wife and I will be just MONTHS away from completing our chapter 13 plan.  I am excited about that because it now means we will have extra money at the end of the month as well!  Maybe….just maybe we’ll be able to start fixing some of the things around this house in 2008!  While it seems like a long ways away, it will  be awesome when we get there.

I plan on posting again before the year is out but on the 2nd it’s back to the grind!

Pit Stop

I was hoping to record a digital distraction and I may do that yet, but I did forget my Mic so I will have to do it with the laptop mic.

I am typing this early in the morning  at the hotel at our halfway pitstop between Columbus and Knoxville.  It’s a nice remodeled Ramada Inn.  You can tell it’s old, but almost everything is new and it even has a indoor pool which excites my son.  The High Speed access is wired and not very high speed.  It’s barely faster then a modem.  Anyway, I hope to post more and may even do a podcast on the digital distraction before I leave here.  It will be a no frills show….maybe one Christmas tune.

Why we celebrate Christmas

I am sitting here on my last day of work waiting for phone calls. How is that any different? I guess it isn’t. Anyway, I was thinking, why do we really celebrate Christmas? A lot of people seem to forget why. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ yet all I hear on the news and from people’s mouths is people shooting, punching, kicking and beating each other to make sure Johnny gets a PS3. People are paying sometimes 3 or 4 times or more of the actual cost to make sure that they have the latest in electronic wizardry under the tree. As much as I like all of that electronic stuff, it saddens me that the world is going down this path.

It’s funny if you actually read the appropriate Bible verses on this event. If you actually read it and do some study of it, you will see that it’s probably not possible that the birth happened on December 25th. Shepherds are not likely in the fields in the middle of December. They are probably holed up in the barn. So why is everybody grumpy if you can’t get that present under the tree by the big day? I don’t know. Maybe it’s dissatisfaction in their current predicament. Maybe spending money recklessly and tisking people when they get in your way fills a hole in their heart. This hole should be filled with the Holy Spirit, the spirit of giving and the spirit of forgiveness. A lot of people say they believe in God and follow the Bible but they are hypocrites when they act in this way.

It’s so bad out there that in Cub Scouts, my son’s leader said all kinds of wishy washy things when they talk about the Cub Scout Promise:

I, (say your name), promise
to DO MY BEST
To do my DUTY to GOD
And my Country
To HELP other people, and
To OBEY the LAW of the Pack

Duty to GOD! How many people forget this duty? Even I do at times. The simple fact is there was only one man who lived his entire life without sin. It’s that man’s birthday we are celebrating.

So when you’re gathering at the table for Christmas dinner and opening gifts under the tree, try to do the right thing and keep your ego in check. If something a family member says gets to you, just let it slide off. Too many people take every single thing that anyone says seriously. Sometimes it’s just their ego speaking out. Remember that.

After God, your family needs to come first. So, spend time with your families. Love them. Cherish this time. For this time together may never come again. You NEVER know when one of yoru family members may be hit by a car or struck down by cancer. Feel fortunate that you have your health and are able to buy even one present per person. Some people can’t buy any.

Merry Christmas Tech Show

I want to wash Linc, Dann, Pat and Allan and their families a very Merry Christmas.  It’s been another fun year listening to the tech show.  I love you guys and I hope Santa brings you all sorts of tech goodness!

Ok Roadrunner Sucks!

Dang gone! Doesn’t Road runner know it’s tech show night? What is it with this world that it keep pissing me off this week? The IRC and the stream is not resolving…..:P

Merry effin Christmas

Management Linux Fears…

If your my friend, and lots of you that read this are (all 2 of you), you know I love Linux and Open Source software. I have been using it for a long time and I wish it was exclusive use, but vagaries on the job prevent this from happening. Anyway, I recently was given a new Lenovo T60 Thinkpad for my work laptop. Once it got to my hands, I proceeded to do as I always have and resize my partition with Edgy’s installer and installed Ubuntu Edgy. As always, Ubuntu recognized everything on the fly and just frickin flew on this machine. I always talk about Linux when the subject comes up or when I find something that works real well with it and told my boss how well the new machine worked with it. Then the questions came….does anyone else know how to do this, is there anything PC Network support can do to make recovery easier for you….what happens if it doesn’t work….etc. Well, what he did not know is I DO have it dual boot and always do and I already talked to PC network support and in general, they are ok with it. In the last year, I have maybe called PC/Network support maybe 3 times and most of this was miscellaneous hardware failures (all covered under warantee). NEVER had a issue with the warantee support and if the hard drive goes belly up, I told him whatever they do to get it back to Windows only is 100 percent FINE by me. Luckily, he bought it.

Now I have assuaded the fears, but what if this happens to you when you try to use the tools you want/need/like to use? Well, try working through it like I did. Unlike most people, I don’t need support 99.9 percent of the time. Point that out to your boss. Rest assured, when I call support, it’s broke. It needs fixed and it’s not the software that did it.

Then I would also present a scenario like this….what if Microsoft updated the Windows Kernel and broke a device driver? Can’t happen? Well, you’d be wrong. The best thing with Linux is when something like this happens, it has likely happened to someone else as well and you can find a fix.

Installation time on my Ubuntu install took LESS time then my Windows setup. Now I did not even have to install Windows, but I did have to install all of the apps I use that are not on the default image. After instaling Windows updates and applications, I had about 2 hours into it thanks to the reboots some of this stuff requires. In Linux, if I wanted to install a new version of Open Office, I can and I don’t have to reboot. Try that with Microsoft Office!

Also, the more I am in the Windows world at work, the more I see some IT “policy” created as a bandaid for a bad OS. Windows is ridden with holes as big as a Mac truck and alot of this is all for the sake of making it easier for the user. Sometimes the holes are made worse because PC support reps want to be able to find out what the issue is when people aren’t around so they don’t use Windows user accounts. They also make bad decisions about giving users administrative rights. Virus scanners, spyware scanners and more are all because Windows and Windows Admin training itself is just broken.

Lastly, I did this thing that it amazes me more “tech savvy” don’t do….I learned to use the tool! If something breaks, I Google it. My first thing I do when something on Linux breaks is scour the Internet for the answer. Some people treat thier computers like cars. I don’t. I don’t like to have to pay to get this cool new piece of software. Am I against paying for software? No, but it amazes me what some developers out there will ask for simple programs that don’t hardly do anything.

It’s all just FUD. Now all you have to do is master the art of persuasion. Show your boss how good Linux is and how efficient you can be using it and then just maybe the Microsoft wool will be pulled from his eyes.

Walmart’s Zunes, now with more porn? – Engadget

Porn on the Zune? Nah. Someone got upset they could not share their porn on the Zune via Wifi without it going bye bye in 3 plays or 3 days. So they returned it and someone bought it. Message to Walmart….CHECK YOUR MP3/PMP players when they are taken back!! Better yet, work out a way to wipe them when they come in.

Walmart’s Zunes, now with more porn? – Engadget

Life in Ohio Episode 39

For those who have found the blog, please check out the latest podcast I did. Life in Ohio Episode 39 is out. Just click on the link to download the show or subscribe by clicking on subscribe.

To subscribe: click here

To download the show directly: click here

Nokia 770: The Best Linux PDA. Period.

Over the weekend I just purchases a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This runs on TI’s OMAP processor and runs a form of Debian Linux called Maemo. So far I have not found anything I can’t do with it yet that I wanted to do. I am waiting on my 2 GIG RS-MMC card from Amazon to get here before I really start to do things like watch video or listen to OGG’s on it. I’ll post neat things I find on the web here as well as I learn about using this new and intresting hardware platform. I think Nokia has a winner here and in a few years see this as being succesful. Nokia’s already hard at work on the sequal to this device, the Nokia 870. The 870 is reported to have switched from RS-MMC to MiniSD (thank you Nokia) and also has 2 of these MiniSD slots! One is internal (near the battery) and the other is externally acessible. This tells me that if it ships with a card, you will likely have it already loaded and it will be used for the swap file either in a swap partition or possibly just a swap file. Anyway, I am looking forward to this device.

I showed a geek accountant (is there such a thing??) my 770 and she was drooling and saying she wanted one! Anyway….stay tuned to the blog. More to follow!