An Old War Dogs Satellite Site


Thursday, 31 January 2008
 

2008.01.31 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 31, 2008 at 12:12 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Wednesday, 30 January 2008
 

I guess the kids got to Alabama OK

I mentioned earlier that my sister's son in law had accepted a transfer to Alabama, his only other option being losing his job. They left town midday yesterday and got where they're moving too (Dothan, AL) late this afternoon; I guess it takes longer in a U-Haul truck  with a minivan full of kids following along behind than it would without the truck. I need to go to Wal-Mart long enough tomorrow to pick up the webcam I ordered. I'm sure it will be a day or two before my niece is online after the move but it's important to her and my sister to be able to video-conference; they've been using Windows Live Messenger in text mode for months but didn't realize all they needed was a couple of inexpensive camera's to be able to see and hear each other.

I think I'm still fighting some sort of bug. I slept a very reasonable amount of time last night, then took a four hour nap while my sister was at work tonight. I still feel like I won't have any trouble sleeping as soon as things settle down so I can.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 30, 2008 at 11:18 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Tuesday, 29 January 2008
 

2008.01.30 Politics and National Defense Roundup

I guess enough of the vote's in that I have to accept the fact McCain won the Florida primary. Maybe it's just as well. He may have the nomination wrapped up by a week from now but in the mean time there's still hope for a brokered convention and a Thompson candidacy. After all the mud that's been slung in the last few days I'm not real happy with the idea of seeing McCain or Romney at the top of the ticket (I just took the "Fredheads for Mitt button off my sidebar) but I'd rather see either of them elected than Billary or Obama. One the Dem side I'm hoping Hillary ends up with the nomination, because I think she's more beatable in November, but not till after Bill finally gets mad enough to come right out and openly call Obama an uppity nigger like I know he wants to; the uglier he gets, the fewer black people are going to vote for the Clintons in November.

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 29, 2008 at 10:16 PM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I didn't think that was supposed to happen in the winter time

Jan 29 and we had a storm a little bit ago that would do any month of the year proud. Thunder, lightning, some little bitty hail, the whole bit. I guess the National Weather Service spotted a tornado on radar but as far as I know it didn't touch down anywhere. Our high today was 57 and weather.com says it's going to be 17 by morning (it's about 30 now) so I guess the storm isn't a mystery, just a surprise. They were predicting rain but we only got a couple of hours warning on the storm.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 29, 2008 at 06:53 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Feelin' lazy as Hell at the Circle F

I don't know if I'm coming down with something or if I'm really just this tired.

I just sent my sister off to Vincennes for a used tire I'd have gone after any other day. I don't know why her son's so good at finding sharp objects to drive over but he came home on the spare again last night. I wish I'd known when we bought that car that it uses a tire size not too many other popular cars do. Finding used tires for it seems to get a little harder each time we need one and we can't afford to buy a new tire every time my nephew finds something sharp to drive over. The only one we could find today that's close enough to the original size to fit the wheel was at a salvage yard in Vincennes, then after we buy it we'll have to take it somewhere to have it mounted on the wheel and put on the car.  Maybe I'll perk up enough by the time she gets back to handle that part, anyway. I feel like I could go back to bed and sleep for a week. Maybe if I pour enough coffee down ...

***

OK, now I feel even more useless. My sister thought I looked bedraggled enough when she left here that after she bought that tire in Vincennes she went to Bridgeport, 4 miles in the other direction, and had it mounted on the car without even stopping by here first. I wasn't looking forward to going to have it mounted but I'd have done it if she's given me the chance.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 29, 2008 at 02:16 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.29 Politics and National Defense Roundup

I had too many other things going on yesterday to watch the State of Union address. The official transcript, with video, is available here. Uncle Jimbo caught the line of the night.

I missed it when it was fresh but it's still worth reading: Who Owns the Vietnam War?

Also worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 29, 2008 at 12:02 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Monday, 28 January 2008
 

2008.01.28 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 28, 2008 at 02:48 PM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Sunday, 27 January 2008
 

I know it won't last but ... (Multiple updates)

it finally quit raining long enough there are places in the pasture where you can put your feet down without getting your shoes muddy, and it's even warm enough I actually spent a few minutes in a lawn chair in the back yard just visiting with the horse. The warm weather's supposed to last a couple more days but the rain's supposed to be back tomorrow afternoon. Nice while it lasts, anyway.

February: The 90 day period between January and Spring.

***

My niece and her kids are here for the afternoon. As much as I love 'em, when they're all here at once I usually spend most of my time in my blogging corner with my hearing aid turned off; the noise level in the front room is just more than I can handle. The boys and young Ms. Madysson did help me feed and water the horse, which saved me quite a few steps. They're all leaving for Alabama Tuesday and will be missed a lot around here. Noah, the youngest one in the bunch, made the transition from "baby" to "little boy" sometime in the last couple of weeks (I just really noticed yesterday) so at least we won't be missing that.

***

I guess now that I have that nice new scanner I'm out of excuses not to have more family pictures on my site, if I can just find them to scan; with Mom's Alzheimer's figuring out where they went when she "put them someplace safe" can be a challenge sometimes and the most recent pictures I have of my daughter and her family are the ones I posted right after they were up here for Labor Day. Anyhoo, here's the most recent family picture of the gang that's moving to Alabama; click it for a larger view if you'd like:

***

While I have the scanner fired up, I'm past due for a picture of the Circle F:

The picture's several years old but things haven't changed a lot. The hedge needs trimmed and the fence needs some work; I'll have that taken care of when I get my Social Security settlement. Except for the lane being ours our property line is about 10 feet in front of the hedge; the field in front of it belongs to a neighbor who bought it to keep it from ever being developed. When I get that Social Security money I'll have that wood fence extended north (toward the camera) to the property line and build one like it along the north side of the pasture.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 27, 2008 at 03:16 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.27 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 27, 2008 at 12:05 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Saturday, 26 January 2008
 

That wasn't supposed to be that much work (Updated)

... but at least it worked out OK. My old computer, the one I'm giving to my nephew the budding musician, didn't like that new sound card I bought, at all. I was getting audio out of it, but accompanied by a scratchy whine almost as loud. After a few hours of not thinking about it I moved the new card to my new machine, where it works just fine, and put the sound card from my new machine back in the old one, where it had been working fine for several months before I needed it for the new machine. I don't have any real good theories about why the new card and the old machine didn't get along, but at least everything's working OK now.

***

I hope it's just my imagination that my throat feels raw. My ten year old nephew's just getting over a case of Strep Throat that I hope I didn't pick up from him. With no health coverage except through the VA I don't know what it would cost me to see a doctor and get medicine locally but I have a strong hunch it would be more than I can afford, which means if I get to feeling bad enough I'll have to call the VA clinic in Evansville and try to get in there. With my sister's daughter and her family leaving town (as in "moving") for Alabama sometime Tuesday the earliest I feel like I could schedule a trip to Evansville would be Wednesday; too much chance of my sister needing the car Monday and Tuesday.

I don't think I mentioned that I cancelled my eye appointment in St Louis Monday, partially because I don't want to spend the gas money to get there, partially because of the reasons I mentioned in the above paragraph, and partially because I just don't trust the weather this time of year. I'm supposed to call them when I'm ready to come out. For now my eye seems to be doing better on it's own but I'm scared to do any serious lifting (anything heavier than a PC, such as 50 lb. feed sacks or 5 gal. buckets of water) until I get the problem fixed for good. I think I'll call about mid February and try to set something up for mid March.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 26, 2008 at 04:34 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.26 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 26, 2008 at 02:38 PM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Friday, 25 January 2008
 

2008.01.25 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Yeah, let's make the NYT editorial board happy by nominating McCain. Or maybe we can elect Rudy so he can have the Secret Service smuggle his next mistress in and out of the Lincoln Bedroom, or Hucksterbee so he can forgive all the jihadis at Guantanamo. Don't miss Bryan Preston's Florida Debate Highlights. I'd still like to see Fred nominated but I could learn to like Mitt. His Iraq answer in that highlight reel was dead on. I may or may not decide in a day or two to add a button like that one on the right just below the Fred buttons on my sidebar and hope he realizes what a great Attorney General Fred would make.

More thinking out loud: Mitt's taken some very non-Conservative positions in the past, but no worse than any of the others, and at least he's saying the right things now. Personally I'm convinced he's a man of sufficient integrity that he'll follow through on his campaign promises once he's in office, and I think he's smart enough to put together a good management team to help him run the country. I went ahead and changed my sidebar.

Worth clicking today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 25, 2008 at 12:01 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Thursday, 24 January 2008
 

Under the weather?

Can knowing it's down in the single digits outside slow your blood down even if you're inside where it's nice and warm? I'm beginning to wonder.

Either that or I'm coming down with something. As much as I'd like to be wrong, I think I'm probably coming down with something. My nephew's missed 3 days of school so far with Strep Throat and my sister had some sort of stomach bug yesterday and this morning. So far except for my stomach being a little queasy the only symptom I've had is a total lack of energy, but I've definitely had that. I managed to get out and around long enough to give the horse some grain and bust up the ice in his tub a couple of times, but that's it. I think he has enough water to last till morning but if someone else doesn't take him some by then I guess I get to carry some in a bucket again; the faucet in the garage is frozen and probably will be till sometime Saturday. I still need to put that sound card I ordered in the computer I'm giving my nephew but that's going to have to wait a day or two. ... I just saw my sister's husband go by with a 5 gallon water bucket; that's a load off my mind. That should get me out of carrying water till the faucet starts working again and I can use a garden hose to fill the tub.

I wish everyone else would hurry up and go to bed so I can.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 24, 2008 at 10:04 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.24 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Folks, the more I read up on Romney, the less impressed I am with him too. I'll vote for whoever the Republicans run against Clinton or Obama, but for now I've reinstated the Fred Thompson buttons on my sidebar. They'll stay there till someone has the nomination locked in, in hopes that won't happen before the convention and everyone will come to their senses and nominate Fred.

I have very mixed emotions about the economic stimuli the feds just implemented and are getting ready to implement. I think if I were capable of standing back and examining them unemotionally I'd probably be opposed to them. On the other hand, my daughter and her husband moved into a new home just before the housing market collapsed and are struggling with two house payments; maybe the interest rate drop will make their old place easier to sell. As far as the tax rebates that are apparently coming, it's been too broke around here for too long for me to say we don't want the money. I haven't read the details of the agreement yet but it sounds to me like between my sister and her husband, Mom, me, and my 21 year old nephew we could possibly be looking at as much as a little over $2K, which we can all definitely use. I just hope it gets here soon instead of a week after I get my Social Security back-settlement and we don't need it any more. --- Update: The information I've found so far makes it sound like at least June before the rebate checks go out, and it's not even clear that Mom and I will get anything since we neither one work any more. (Send me some and I'll spend it, I promise!)

Three links I posted yesterday but want to make sure you didn't miss:

Some other things worth reading:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 24, 2008 at 12:03 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Wednesday, 23 January 2008
 

2008.01.23 Politics and National Defense Roundup

There's got to be a morning after. I guess. The man I wanted to see elected President isn't going to be and I'm sure the web will be full of campaign post-mortems for a day or two. Rather than dwell any longer on what could have been, what should have been, I prefer to concentrate on "Where to from here?" I don't want to see John Kennedy-McCain-Feingold nominated almost as bad as I don't want to see Mike Hucksterbee nominated. Of the remaining contenders Mitt Romney looks to me like the least of several evils and as long as he has a chance of getting the nomination I'll do what I can to help. Life goes on.

Worth reading today:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 23, 2008 at 12:01 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Tuesday, 22 January 2008
 

Takin' the day off

... except for a little bit of blogging. Color this ol' dog still wore out.

I spent too many hours awake when I should have been sleeping, both getting that virus off my old machine and doing things on the family machine that I wanted to get done while no one else was wanting it, and it's catching up with me. I'll try to do a decent job on today's Politics and National Defense Roundup but except for that everything else can wait. The sound card for my old machine got here before I'd even finished my morning coffee but I don't even feel up to carrying the machine someplace where there's room to install it, let alone unhooking the machine I'm using now to hook that one up and make sure the sound works. Same for taking it to the other end of the house to finish setting up networking; it can read files on the family machine if I hook it up in here but I need to hook it up in place of the family machine to make sure it can read the shared partition on this one. If I was energetic I could also bring that old monitor in from the garage and find out if it works but that's going to have to wait too.

I guess the place my niece and her family are moving to is Gothan, Alabama. About twenty minutes north of Florida and about that much east of Georgia, pert near as far southeast as you can go and still be in Alabama. My sister did some online research and says it looks like a pretty nice place to live except for being so far from here. Low cost of living and close enough to the coast to not have any major temperature extremes. Sounds like the kind of place I wouldn't mind living if I just blew off any considerations of staying close to people I care about.

I guess with my daughter and her husband still talking about wanting to move to Washington or Oregon eventually I'll just plan on living out my remaining years in Lawrenceville and visiting them as often as I can manage, which should be a lot more often after I finally get my Social Security than it has been for the last four years.

I'm not sure if I'm just tired or coming down with something. My nephew's missing school today with at best a major cold and at worst strep throat; something that enough people in the area apparently have at once that my sister couldn't even get him in to see a doctor today; if it gets bad enough she'll take him to the emergency room but it hasn't yet.

I think it's time for my nap now.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 22, 2008 at 02:51 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.22 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Now hear this: John McCain is not a real Republican. That is all.
Seriously, folks, I truly admire the man John McCain was 35 years ago, but I really don't want to have to vote for him for President. Why? To name just a few: Keating Five, McCain-Feingold, the Kennedy-McCain Shamnesty Act, the Gang of Fourteen, the fact that he's willfully ignoring evidence there are still American POWs in Southeast Asia, the fact he sided with John Kerry against the Swift Boat Vets, the fact that he's opposed to drilling in ANWR,  the fact he's convinced Global Warming exists and it's our fault, the fact he's opposed to waterboarding terrorists ... [Help me out here. What am I forgetting?] I'll vote for him over Clinton or Obama but I really, really hope it doesn't come to that. *** Update: Henry Mark Holzer has much more here.

Personal to Fred Dalton Thompson: Don't quit on us! Even if you have other priorities right now, and sick family members are definitely a good excuse for taking a few days off, leave your name on the ballot for the remaining primaries and caucuses. Even if you don't go into the convention with enough committed delegates to get the nomination on the first vote, there's still time for people to realize you're the best consensus candidate available. There are an awful lot of us out here who'd much rather see you on the ballot than Mr. Vote-for-me-because-I-wear-my-Christianity-On-My-Sleeve, or a cross-dressing Social Liberal like Giuliani, or an open-borders RINO like McCain, or ... (I'll try to pin down my reasons for not liking Mitt later; I think maybe he just strikes me as a little to slick and a little too rich to understand common folk like me.) Damn it! Romney/Thompson '08! I'm going to have to hold my nose to vote for any of the candidates still in the race -- my original dream team was Thompson/Hunter -- but Romney doesn't smell near as bad to me as anyone else still running. He'll definitely be a pro-business candidate and President, and I don't think that leaves him any choice but to be strong on defense. I'm not entirely confident he'll have the right attitude on illegal immigration but again I don't think he'll be any worse than I know everyone else in the race would be. I'll get my sidebar updated as soon as the shock wears off.

Today's worthy links:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 22, 2008 at 12:44 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Monday, 21 January 2008
 

Color this ol' dog wore out

I gotta start gettin' more sleep.

I'd probably have been better off not spending so much time recently on computer issues but I couldn't help myself. Once I made up my mind we were going to have three working computers in the house it turned into a matter of pride and when Norton spotted problems on my old machine I just couldn't set the matter aside till I had them fixed. Maybe part of it is that the day before I fried the video card in the thing I spent $40.00 to renew my Norton Live Update subscription and having done that not being able to put the thing online any more just wasn't acceptable.

I checked UPS.com a little bit ago and it looks like I'll have the sound card I ordered tomorrow afternoon. I need to install that and move my old machine into the front room long enough to finish setting up networking on it then I'll be out of computer things that need doing and ready to just get back to my regular blogging.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 21, 2008 at 10:36 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.21 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Help if you can:

I guess the Dims are having some sort of debate. I'm not watching; ain't no one on that stage there's a snowball's chance of me voting for. Jim Geraghty's watching so you don't have to. So's Michelle. It sounds like there was plenty of mud to go around (More here).

More worthy links:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 21, 2008 at 12:42 PM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Folks, I'm getting confuseder and confuseder (Two updates)

... and it ain't doin' my blood pressure much good either. By my best estimate the Social Security Administration owes me somewhere north of $90K, and amount that grows by over $1500 monthly. In the mean time I'm doing my best to nurse along two tired old PCs that are well past due for retirement. That nice New Year's gift I got was a lifesaver but between unanticipated vet bills and computer problems it's pretty much gone.

I'm about ready to admit defeat on removing those "backdoor trojans" from my old machine. I've disabled everything I can and still boot the machine and Norton still says it can't get rid of them. Apparently they're harmless as long as the machine isn't connected to the internet but my nephew is really looking forward to having internet access in his room and I may have to disappoint him. He'll still have a CD drive again and a much faster machine than he's been using but if I can't get those trojans off the thing I'll argue vehemently against connecting it to the net or our home network, which also means he won't be able to access the 40GB partition I have shared on my new machine. What I'd really had in mind was replacing the family machine with my old one and moving it to his room but if I can't get rid of those trojans that's out too.

Maybe it's my imagination but I think the family machine (which I'm using right now while a virus scan runs on my old machine) got noticeably faster when I ran that virus scan overnight. It had gotten noticeably slower recently and I'd been blaming the problem on too many startup TSRs. That may still be the problem; I had to reboot earlier to finish removing HP's "Smart Web Printing" software, which I'll never install to begin with again. It came with that printer/scanner combo I bought a few days ago but the thing works fine without it.

On the good news side, my eye problem seems to be getting better on it's own. I can actually read normal size computer print with my good eye closed, but I still want to get the problem fixed for good sometime reasonably soon. I have an appointment in St Louis on the 28th that I'm going to call tomorrow to reschedule. Aside from money being tight enough I need to put it off till after I get my next pension check on the 1st the long range forecast says that really isn't going to be a good day to spend on the road. About three years back I ended up just not going at all after my eye got better on it's own but I wish now I hadn't done that. I've really been worried the last few weeks that even if I had laser surgery to seal of the leaky blood vessel the blood that was already floating around in my eyeball might never go away. I got lucky this time but it's time to quit gambling, and it's time to quit living like an invalid because I'm afraid if I lift anything more than a few pounds the problem will get worse again.

I may be later than normal getting online "tomorrow" (Monday.) The only time I can use this machine without causing problems is at night when everyone else is sleeping and I need to spend a little more time messing with my old machine after I've had some sleep, then unhook it and hook my new one back up. I'm trying to think of a good theory to explain where those trojans came from to begin with. I got a driver CD with that new video card but the thing worked fine with just the drivers already on the drive and I haven't been to any web sites I don't visit on a regular basis. I also don't know how the things got by Norton, which supposedly looks at everything I download to make sure things like that don't happen.

***

Progress, maybe? It finally soaked in that if I clicked the right place Norton would show me the names and locations of the infected files it found. They were all in my Temporary Internet Files folder, which I wiped out the entire contents of and started a new scan. I guess I'll know after I get some sleep whether that did the job. I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about the situation than I was.

Assuming I get my old machine cleaned up, that still leaves the question of who gets it and who gets the current family machine. I'd consider my old machine a step up from the family machine from every viewpoint except that it doesn't have CD writer in it, which I know is important to my sister. If we put my old machine where the family machine is now the only way she'll be able to burn CDs is to copy them to the drive I have shared on my new machine and come in here long enough to copy them to a CD, which would be a bit of a hassle for both of us. That being the case I'm going to recommend leaving the family machine where it is and moving my old one to my nephew's room, but I'll leave the final decision up to my sister, who I'm sure will discuss it with my nephew.

***

Finally, Norton says my old machine's clean. I switched back to my new one as soon as I saw the results of the virus run simply because it works better. I still need to add a sound card to the old machine when it gets here and I need to hook it up in place of the family machine long enough to set up networking on it, then I'm done messing with it.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 21, 2008 at 12:31 AM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Sunday, 20 January 2008
 

2008.01.20 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Looks like Fred came in 3rd in South Carolina, not as good as I'd hoped he'd do but maybe good enough to keep him in the race. I'd say his best chance at this point is as a consensus candidate at a brokered convention. Duncan Hunter's giving up; he's a damned good man but he never really had a realistic chance of winning. I'll let you look up the rest of the results yourself if you're interested. *** PJM has a good reax roundup here.

Today's headlines:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 20, 2008 at 01:58 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This may take a little longer than I thought (Multiple updates)

OK, so I hooked my old computer back up long enough to post those Works documents and when I did Norton informed me it had been a while since I'd run a full virus scan. I knew how soon that would happen after I turn the machine over to my nephew so I started one, paused it, did the things I'd fired the machine up to do, then started it back up and took a nap, expecting it to be done when I woke up. Instead when I got up I found out Norton had found two trojans on the drive and wanted me to run a scan in Safe Mode to get rid of them. At that point I shut that machine down and fired this one back up. I also started a full scan on the family machine so it could run while everyone else in the house is sleeping and be done by morning. I'm also running a full scan on this one overnight. I don't really expect to find any problems on the family machine or this one but I want to make sure they're both clean before I go farther with trying to set up a network. I guess tomorrow night or sometime soon I'll hook the old machine back up and run the Safe Mode scan on it. Basically I've lost a day since I intended to set the network up tonight when no one was using the family machine and that's going to have to wait till tomorrow night, at best.

***

Color this old dog worn out from staying up late last night and getting up early this morning to get some time on the family machine without upsetting anyone.

On the plus side, Norton gave this machine a clean bill of health and didn't find anything on the  family machine it couldn't deal with on the first pass, and I got a partition on my F: drive to show up as Drive F: on the family machine.

On the down side, for some reason the family machine quit recognizing the printer/scanner combo I just installed on it a few days ago; it knows it's connected but asks for drivers. In general, that machine's a hassle to try to do anything with because of too many "important" TSRs running in the background and I'll retire it when I get my big Social Security check this spring. As much trouble as I had getting that printer/scanner to install on that machine to begin with I think I'm going to just give up on getting them to get along. I'll install the printer/scanner on this machine after bit and share it over the network and we'll go back to having the printer it replaced connected to the family machine.

Depending on how much the setup program for the printer/scanner slows this machine down I may not get much blogging done for the next couple of hours.

***

Dang this thing's fast! Installing that printer/scanner on my old machine took somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. Installing it on the family machine ended up taking around 8, counting having to uninstall and start over using drivers off the web. This machine? About 30 minutes, and about another 10 to get the scanner set up to put things where I want them to go. Color this old dog impressed.

We have my sister's youngest two grandkids here for the night. They won't be good for my productivity but I love them both a bunch and they're moving to Alabama in 9 days.

***

I tried with no success to give the family machine access to the CD burner in this one; as near as I can tell burners just aren't sharable.  I did manage to send a print job from that machine to the printer/scanner attached to this one. Note to self: When you want to print over a network it helps if the printer is turned on, not always a safe assumption with cats in the house and an on/off button on top of the printer.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 20, 2008 at 12:40 AM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Saturday, 19 January 2008
 

Another tired, busy day at the Circle F

The faucet in the garage is frozen again and it looks like it'll be Monday before it thaws out. That means I get the privilege of carrying buckets of water from the kitchen to Sunshine's water tub again. I'll also be feeding him grain twice a day till it warms up instead of just once like we do in warmer weather.

I'm not nearly as close to done dealing with the computer swap as I thought. I started a blog for Marsha Burks Megehee a while back, then got sidetracked (was that about the time we got the horse or longer ago than that?) and didn't finish the job. I still have a bunch of MS Works files I need to convert to blog posts and the only copy of Works I have is on my old machine. I don't see much choice but to switch back to that machine for long enough to finish what I should have finished months ago. I'll try to stay on top of the news and do some blogging from the old machine but I need to stay after the job of finishing Marsha's blog so I can switch back to this machine sooner.

I finally realized that instead of trying to make space to set the old machine up in this room so I can set up networking on it I can disconnect the family machine long enough to hook it up in there. Probably better not to plan on doing that till Monday.

I checked UPS.com and saw signs they do move cargo on weekends, they just don't deliver them, so I'll probably have the sound card I ordered Monday.

Heather, did you get my email about the webcam? Write me! I ordered one for us a couple of hours ago and I'll be glad to buy y'all one if you don't already have one.

All in all, I'm not in much danger of running out of things to do for a few more days. Later.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 19, 2008 at 02:43 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Russ Vaughn: Electile Dysfunction

It’s abundantly clear and I charge without fear
Nor the slightest degree of compunction,
Proven night after night both on left and on right,
Our media have electile dysfunction.

While hoping to score they’ve become such a bore
With their overdone, nonstop production.
So we’re starting to balk at their unending talk;
We’re weary of endless seduction.

The hooray and hearsay, the pestering foreplay
Their tempting has lost its direction;
It will be with some glee when we actually see
The media finally get an election.

Russ Vaughn

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 19, 2008 at 01:58 PM in Poetry, Politics, Politics and National Defense, Russ Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.19 Politics and National Defense Roundup

I guess they're caucusing in Nevada today and there's a Republicans primary under way in South Carolina. I'll post some results when they're final but I'm not going to try to post a running play-by-play with only a small percentage of the votes counted.

*****

I looks like Thompson came in third in S.C.; he'd said earlier that's what it would take to keep him in the race.

Some post-primary/caucus links. I'll add to them as I get time:

*****

A couple from last night I want to make sure you didn't miss:

Other worthy links:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 19, 2008 at 12:20 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Friday, 18 January 2008
 

Back to being a little bored at the Circle F (Multiple updates)

I guess I have a bit of an enforced respite from computer repairs, upgrades etc. My body can use it but I won't know what to do with myself!

The sound card I ordered from CompUSA isn't showing up on UPS.com yet so it's apparently going to take longer to get here than that video card did. I'm not sure if UPS works weekends or not; I know they only deliver in this area 5 days a week but I don't know if things move between cities every day or just M-F. I need to add the card to my old machine before I hand it down to my nephew.

Contrary to what I was thinking before, I think it makes sense for the family machine to stay where it is and my old one to move to my 21 year old nephew's room. I looked at my old machine and decided I don't trust myself to replace the CD drive with a CD-RW drive without screwing up the front bezel. My nephew doesn't even have a working CD drive right now, or an internet connection, so having my old machine in his room will seem like a big enough upgrade that he won't grinch too much about not being able to burn CDs.

I guess if I get bored tomorrow afternoon I can bring that old monitor in from the garage and find out if it works. I think its one my brother brought here for us to use if we wanted it and give away if we didn't, but I think someone gave it to him and his wife with that same understanding, so I don't know when the last time it was even plugged in was. People are sleeping who probably wouldn't appreciate me opening the door between the kitchen and garage to bring the thing in tonight so I guess that's a daytime project.

I guess my sister and her daughter already use Microsoft Live Messenger for text chatting and it looks to me like all they have to do is add webcams at both ends of the line to have video chatting capability. CompUSA sells a webcam it looks like would work for $9.99; with about $7.49 added in for shipping (that's how much the shipping on the sound card came to.) Walmart.com has one I like the looks of a little more for $19.88 with free shipping to the store right across our pasture from where I'm sitting. I'll decide which one to order later.

Aside from trying out that old monitor, I guess my next project is trying to get a home network up and running again. I had things set up at one time so people using the family machine could use part of the the hard drive space on mine. I'm not exactly sure what happened -- I think it probably happened when I had to run CHKDSK on the C: drive on the family machine after a power outage -- but even before I switched to the new machine the family machine and my old one were no longer seeing each other. The "Network Map" in the Norton Security Center on this machine knows the family machine is out there but ... Hold the phone! I just found out I can go into My Network Places on this machine and read files on the family machine! I'll still have to do some playing around on the family machine to be able to access the shared part of the hard drive on this machine from it but I'm a lot more confident than I was that I can let people using it use part of my drive now. (My youngest nephew and one of my sister's grandkids are asleep on a hide-a-bed between here and there so I can't do anything to that machine tonight.) I'll also need to do some playing around on my old machine to get it to see the shared space on this one. All in good time.

***

My old machine has a wireless network card in it I've never tried to use but understand was working fine the last time the guy who gave it to me shut it down. Until a few days ago we didn't have a wireless router, then when we got one I connected that machine to Port 1, the port a PC needs to be on to set up the firewall, etc. Now that I have my new machine connected to that port I guess I could get industrious and try my hand at setting up a wireless network. On the other hand we have an extra Ethernet cable long enough to reach my nephew's room thanks to ordering one that took 3 weeks to get here, ordering another one from a different place while that one was in transit, and then not being able to get our money back on it without paying enough postage to send it back that we decided to just keep it in case we ever needed it. I'll need to set the old machine up near this one for long enough to get the networking on it set up without too much walking anyway; I guess I can try my hand at getting it online via the wireless card but not be too stubborn about it since I know there's a cable available.

***

After sitting here thinking about it a while I think I'm going to buy at least one webcam tomorrow afternoon, and maybe as many as three. I need to find out if my daughter and her husband have one and buy them one if they don't. I think I heard someone say my niece and her husband (the one who's being transferred to Alabama) already have one but if they don't I guess we'll buy them one too.

***

I decided that since I have a bigger C: drive on this machine I can be more generous with the other drive. I brought a 60GB drive with me from Texas, partitioned into 40GB and 20 GB logical drives. In my old machine I had the 20 GB drive shared, which gave me (40 +40) GB on that machine for my use and the family PC (40 + 20 GB of available space.) Since the C: drive in this machine is 80GB I reversed the roles of the two partitions on the 60GB drive to share 40GB of it and reserve 20GB of it for my use. That gives me (80 + 20)GB for my use and the family machine (40 + 40), with the second 40 also shared with my old machine, and also available to me if I need it bad enough, which I'm very unlikely to. I'll probably use my extra 20GB for a backup copy of my My Documents folder and except for that the 80GB C: drive should be all I have any use for.

I ran the Network Setup Wizard and got everything set up to share the 40GB partition but I need access to the family machine to set it up to use it and as clumsy as I am these days I'd wake at least one little boy if I tried to go do that now. Setting up my old machine will have to wait till we come up with a monitor for it; I can hook it up in place of this machine for other purposes but to know if I'm making progress setting up the networking I need them both up and running at the same time.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 18, 2008 at 11:35 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tech Bleg -- Teleconferencing

Not really "Politics and National Defense" material but if anyone can give me some pointers I could use them. Details here.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 18, 2008 at 01:33 PM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Down day at the Circle F; Tech Bleg

A bit of a depressing day around here, with more to come apparently. We just learned last night that my sister's son in law has been given a choice between losing his job at Lowe's and transferring to Alabama; it sounds right now like he's going to accept the transfer. There's a raise involved and except for being so far from here Alabama's a nice place to live, but no one's having much luck looking at it that way. Other than ATS, where he was fired a while back over something he says he didn't even do, there's nothing else in the area that pays as well as his current job, let alone as well as the position he's been offered. The problem is 5  kids ranging in age from 3 to 13 who aren't the least bit thrilled about moving that far from here. I'm not sure who's most depressed about the matter, my sister, Mom, or my 10 year old nephew. I won't have as hard a time dealing with it as they will -- I've been dealing with living 800 miles from my daughter and her family for nearly 5 years now -- but I'll definitely miss the kids, especially the youngest two since they're the ones who'll change most noticeably between times we get to see them.

Tech bleg: I haven't started researching the matter myself yet but if anyone knows of any inexpensive (free's even better) teleconferencing software I'd love to hear about it. It's something I should have looked into a long time ago so I could have "face to face" conversations with my daughter and grandson but money's been tight and I never got around to it. Now my sister's declared it a "must have" for family budgeting purposes and I guess I'm in charge of figuring out what we need.

The oldest of the kids involved would like to move in with us till the end of the school year and it sounds like there's a good chance his mother and his grandma are going to let him; all the more reason I need to figure out teleconferencing.

***

I may or may not have answered my own question about teleconferencing. It looks to me like all we need is a $10.00 webcam and a free copy of Windows Live Messenger. Anyone have any experience with such things? Is there something I'm missing? If I'd known there wasn't anything more than that involved I'd have bought a webcam for my daughter in Texas a long time ago.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 18, 2008 at 01:27 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2008.01.18 Politics and National Defense Roundup

Today's headlines:

In my email. Thank J. D. Pendry:

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 18, 2008 at 12:01 AM in Politics and National Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack


Thursday, 17 January 2008
 

Lookin' at another slow day, I guess (Multiple updates)

[I spaced out and posted what was supposed to be below the fold here and lost what was here originally. I'll try to more or less recreate it but I may not do it very accurately.]

I need to devote a substantial part of the day to computer repairs and upgrades, beginning with finding out if that video card I ordered fixes my old machine. After I find that out I need to move the hard drive I brought from Texas when I moved home to my new machine and add some RAM to it. I'll try to find some time for blogging about my normal fare along the way.

[That's probably not even very close but it's the best I can do. It's been a long day.]

***

Some days you're a bug and some days you're a windshield. Today I guess I'm a windshield. I still feel stupid for frying that video card but at least it worked out well in the long run. The video card was all that was wrong and I'm posting this from my old machine, the one I was afraid was down for good. At this point I'm out $106.something for my new computer, about $26.00 for some RAM for it, and $34.97 for a video card to fix the old one. The old one needs a $10.00 sound card to replace the one I transplanted to the new one and we need to pick up a keyboard and a cheap monitor (there's a small one in that garage that may still work) somewhere, but when everything settles out I'll have faster machine than I've been using for the last year or so and my sister's oldest son will have a decent machine, complete with internet access he's never had, in his room. All for less than the price I was ready to spend for a refurbished machine from CompUSA if I couldn't fix the old one; not a bad day, overall.

While I have both machines out where I can get to them I think I'll go ahead and transplant the extra hard drive out of the old one to the new one. Maybe if I get real lucky UPS will show up with my RAM while I still have things out where they're easy to get to. I'll get back to normal blogging as soon as I can.

***

I just closed the hood on my new machine for what should be the last time. I just thought it was fast before; it loves that additional RAM. I had a bit of a scare along the way; apparently the beast has at least one dead USB port on it and after I transplanted that hard drive I naturally got lucky and plugged my mouse into that port.

WTF,O? Before I added that RAM module Windows was seeing the hard drive I transplanted, now it isn't. I guess I haven't closed the hood for the last time after all.

***

Huge sigh of relief. I felt pretty sure than must be it but it's nice to have it proven. I had to shove an IDE cable around a little to have room to work to seat that new RAM module and I pulled the cable part way loose from that transplanted drive.

Once we figure out who's getting what's now "the family machine" and who's getting "my old computer" it might make sense to reverse that transplant. I currently have (80 + 60) GB of hard drive space and both of the other machines have 40. At one time I had a home network running so part of my 60 GB drive was accessible from the family machine but it quit working (due to a power outage?). If I can get the network working again what I'd prefer to do is keep the extra drive in my machine physically but let the other two machines use part of it. If I can't we'll deal with the question later.

I also have a mystery to solve on the old machine, but not tonight. When I booted back up after installing that video card and removing that hard drive it started trying to install some sort of HP support program of some sort and asking for the CD it's supposed to be on. If you click cancel it tries to start right back up. You can ignore it and go ahead and do other things but to shut down the computer you have to go into Windows Task Manager and kill the program before it will accept a Shut Down instruction. I'm sure I can fix it from msconfig but I'm not going to mess with it tonight.

***

I'm back on my old machine long enough to try to figure some things out.

Mainly I couldn't remember whether the CD drive in was a burner or just a reader; all it does is read. That makes a difference as far as deciding who gets my old machine and who gets the existing "family machine" now that I have a new one and we have three that work.

Turns out he CD that mystery program (HP Product Assistant) was asking for was the one that came with that printer/scanner combo. I'd rebooted enough times after I installed it and before the trouble started that I don't know why it just now got around to wanting the CD again but letting it look at it seems to have solved the problem.

***

I'm back on my new machine. It doesn't take me long to get impatient with the old one after being used to this one.

I'm totally wasted physically. It's only a little before 10:00 but this is probably the end of my blogging till morning. I need to stay up and around till I'm sure Mom made it to bed safely but once she does I won't be far behind her.

Contributed by Bill Faith on January 17, 2008 at 02:23 PM in Around our place | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Older »