Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Cats, Dogs, and Porcupines

I don't mind saying that I didn't write this. But I wish I had. Oh, and I AM religious. Deeply so. I have a deep and abiding love of Jesus Christ, His gospel, and more importantly, His Atonement. Without that, I'd be dead about now.

So, on to the essay I found on Facebook, and which, because I found it there, it's more or less "public domain" material, and I like it any way, plus, this guy hits the nail on the head.

Why I hate the gay agenda.
(author unknown because some dipstick forgot to give attribution, or maybe he kept it anonymous.  Do you think I'm being harsh by saying "dipstick"? Well, what if you'd written something this good and weren't given credit for it? So, let the true author come forth, as has happened on my blog in the past. That was awesome, by the way.)
     Let me start by saying I don't hate gay people, I'm not particularly religious, so none of that has anything to do with my stance. But I do feel there is a "gay agenda," to push social acceptance of homosexuality in media and academia. And it bothers me. It doesn't obsess me and its not something I think about night and day, but it annoys me. The easiest way to explain why, I feel, is through analogy. Think of the following as a kind of analogical thought experiment, if you will.
     Imagine that gradually you start to hear an inordinate amount in the media about people who keep porcupines as pets instead of the more usual cats, dogs, etc. You might think, "huh, that's weird," but you'd probably shrug and go about your business. Live and let live, right? I mean, ultimately, who cares?
     But the topic keeps cropping up in strange ways, and with increasing (and inexplicable) frequency. You start to notice that on your favorite TV shows and movies, more and more people are shown with pet porcupines, and these pet owners are always fawned over as a discriminated-against minority. Every movie now has a porcupine-owner who is a caring, sensitive, wise person misunderstood by the mean, jeering, hateful cat or dog owners. Cat and dog owners, meanwhile, are increasingly shown as backwards rednecks or intolerant haters. There is always the implication that cat and dog owners are secretly jealous of the porcupine owners, but are too backwards and riddled with hate to admit their own repressed desires to own porcupines. You start to get tired of the way this plot device is unnaturally inserted everywhere, usually off-key with the rest of the movie.
     You start to notice something else weird: Novels and even children's books are being written (and in some cases re-written) to include porcupines. Your beloved childhood favorite "Clifford the Big Red Dog" becomes "Clifford the Big Red Dog and His Buddy Maurice the Porcupine." 
     You attend a college literary course and hope to learn about the great masterpieces of Western literature. In one course on Charles Dickens, the prof spends the whole time bashing Dickens as an evil hater because one of his books has a minor negative reference to a porcupine. You think "who cares?," and mention in class that you really like the book "Oliver Twist,"so Dickens can't be all bad. Suddenly the prof is giving you the hairy eyeball and everyone is accusing you of "hate." You receive a failing grade for the class. 
     Then you go to your art history class, hoping to learn about DaVinci's masterful use of line and shadow in his paintings. Instead, the professor spends the whole class talking about how DaVinci secretly kept a pet porcupine, despite the disapproval of his backwards society, and this inner struggle was the source of his sensitivity and genius as an artist. 
     You read in the paper that your town is spending a lot of tax money replacing a sign showing a man walking a dog at the public park because it might offend porcupine owners. The new sign shows a sillohoute of a man with his porcupine on a leash. When a a car runs over a porcupine in your town one day, it's given blaring front-page headlines and sobbing local well-wishers hold a candlelight vigil. When the same thing happens to your neighbor's cat a week later, however, nobody but the owner seems to care.
     When you tell strangers you have a pet dog, you find yourself compelled to add "...of course, there's nothing wrong with owning porcupines too." You start to feel that if you don't say this when you mention your dog, people might think you are a hater, and you might even lose your job. If you forget to add the little politically correct disclaimer, people scowl at you, call you a hick and a redneck and a repressed soul who bought a dog because he was too afraid to get the porcupine he really wants, deep down inside. You are annoyed at the way you are constantly having to monitor yourself and your language use. It's not that you have anything particularly negative to say about porcupines, but the need to monitor yourself verbally all the time adds stress and annoyance to your life. For example, it's no longer acceptable to say "it's raining cats and dogs." Now you have to say, "it's raining cats, dogs, and porcupines." Otherwise people will think you are bigoted and insensitive. You find yourself spending extra effort remembering little things like this whereas before you would have spoken more naturally.
     Being a little peeved by all this, you go online to your favorite Internet community to let off steam anonymously about the porcupine agenda. Some people are sympathetic, but you can't believe the amount of vitriol your mild disapproval generates. Comments include "Why are you so afraid of porcupines?" and "Come on man, just admit you really want to own a porcupine instead of a dog. It's ok, you can tell us." You try to patiently explain that's not it at all, but this is just taken as further evidence of your sad and retrogressive state of denial. 
     And so on. And on. And on.
     This is why so many people are sick and tired of the "gay agenda." For many of us, (aside from the religious fundies, I guess) it has nothing to do with the actual fact of gayness. Instead it's the feeling of being manipulated incessantly.
     I hope this makes sense to some of you, at least. For the rest of you, let the irrelevant and predictable comments abou "hate" and "being in the closet" begin...

I think this guy hits the nail on the head, and besides, I do hate porcupines. They are dangerous. Get it? No, there's no hidden meaning. I mean porcupines when I say porcupines. If you think otherwise, you just don't know me. At all. Zero bits. 

I'm Karl, and glad my wife loves me, and I love her. Tons!

If you want to know more about how that works,  listen closely to the lyrics. Very closely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIW5QU2lGe8

which is exactly how my marriage started. I knew I'd marry the lady the first time I saw a picture of her on the cover of a magazine playing her cello. That was many months before we even met.

Star-crossed you say? Nope. Foreordained.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Some Great Quotes

The oldest quote is from before the time of Christ and they span the ages from then until now. It is disturbing that for over 2,500 years we, generally, keep making the same mistakes. Does it seem like the biggest mistake of all is allowing liberal "takers" to continue to occupy positions of leadership and authority?

Yes. Yes it does.

So, when will we ever learn?

GREAT TRUTHS

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.-- John Adams

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. --Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. --James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Case, a contemporary of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University.

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat, French economist(1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. --Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! -- P. J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. --Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! -- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. -- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. -- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. --Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class, save Congress. -- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians --Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. -- Thomas Jefferson

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. -- Aesop

FIVE BEST SENTENCES

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

So why did I post this? Because I want to see these sentiments available for quoting by others. But more, so I can remember that at one time they were important to me.

If someone else is able to gain something from my efforts at preservation, then so much better.

The problem I have is that I'm losing hope. You see, there are "more on the wagon than what's pushing it" and that marks the end of personal liberty because the majority of people are wicked, and they vote for largesse from the treasury, which is incorrectly attributed to several different men, so I won't bother to put an attribution here.

One thing I will properly attribute is this Youtube video. It was put up by the creator, and this is probably the most concise, and accurate, explanation for why we are failing as a country right now. Briefly, it's because people have been fooled into believing we are a democracy. We are a republic. If not, we would have failed long ago.

But, we are moving to a democracy, which means the majority can force the minority to accept the unacceptable. And we will fall into civil war.

Types of Government Explained

I hope you have enjoyed your visit.

And I'm Karl

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Linux OS Anyone?

I'm constantly amazed at how arrogant Microsoft software users are. That includes inside my own family, but more, the men I work with, who have to use Linux whenever they are on a customer system.

You see, the company I work for, who is one of the largest employers around at over 55,000 employees worldwide, uses Microsoft on the desktop, but most of their products are built over Linux. Now to me, that just doesn't make much sense, until I consider the topic of my thoughts here. I've only used Linux on the desktop for the past 15+ years. It's superior, period.

We always hear how much Microsoft works to protect their brand; to prevent pirates from stealing their OS and proprietary tools they build to run on that OS. [okay. for anyone who is a computer neophyte, OS is short for Operating System; that part of a computer that actually lets you use the computer, and for short, I call it "Windows" like everyone else, but even that is dumb, because all OSes now use what anyone would call a window to run things in. But enough.]

My point is this: If Microsoft were serious about their anti-pirating rants, they could easily build into their OS the capability to block any unauthorized use. It's not rocket science. Game designers have done it, to some extent, but fail at it for the same reasons.

If someone can get their hands on some operating system, and a game, then use them without paying for them, they are crooks. Yes, dishonest slugs. But, the company they are stealing from wins anyway.

Why? Because that crook is still using them, which gives the providing companies a little boost in their user base, plus another lackey who is learning, and therefore, pushing their products.

So there you are, a reason why there isn't a lot of criminal prosecution among the pirating ranks.

Now with that said, I know that Microsoft has a large team of employees whose sole job it is to call and offer on-site consulting to help companies learn how to better use their products. What for? 2 purposes.

1. Actually point out where the victims can spend more money getting more Microsoft-centricity inside their walls.
2. Find out how much pirated software is running behind the firewalls of that company.

When I was an I.T. Director, I had a couple calls from Microsoft offering me their help. I declined the first call because I was the new I.T. Director and I had been hired by a bunch of crooks who had, on 25+ desktops, 2 legal copies of Windows. They had pirated those 2 copies on all the other desktops, which they had bought at cut-rate prices without an OS installed, then installed those same 2 copies; one Windows 98, and the other 2000 Professional.

The second call came after I learned why they had called the first time, and though I had brought the company into compliance, didn't want to have my time wasted in a sales call when our inside servers were all Linux and Unix (IBM AIX). [A postscript to that is they let me go after over 6 years there, and within a few years had been bought and are now gone away as a part of a much larger company. That company does their business above-board, so once again, dishonesty pays only the owners who made off (literally) like bandits. Why did they let me go? Control. They hired one of our consultants who was late finishing a project that had already cost over $45,000 so they could force him to complete the job... They paid me more than my annual salary the first year in consulting fees. then kept paying me for another 14 or 15 months, but needing me less and less.]

Now to Linux.

I read an article tonight by an author telling me what I already knew. Linux is neither archaic, nor hard to learn. The ones who believe that are just ignorant.

I think it's been about 7 or 8, I started the process of moving my sweetheart off Windows. The first thing I did was move her off Outlook Express by installing the Windows version of Thunderbird. Then I weaned her of using WordPerfect, which was easy enough because by that time Microsoft, with the help of Novell, had destroyed WordPerfect's place in the word processing world. That's another story, however, so not more than this: It's documented in court cases and WordPerfect won, but by then it was too late.

I had already gotten her off Internet Explorer, which is a very weak browser, so she never missed it. Firefox, and now more so, Chromium Browser, are far superior.

So, once she was off those products that required Windows, she didn't care about the underlying OS. It just needed to work.

So, what distributions did we switch to? PCLinuxOS, then after that distribution fell on tough times, Linux Mint. I've used many more than those, such as DSL, Fedora, Redhat, InSert, BackTrack, Knoppix, JoliCloud(defunct) and some others, but I use Linux Mint now, as does Betty. It just plain works out of the box.

Why isn't Ubuntu there? I just don't like it. That's all. Nothing personal. I don't like Canonical, the company that owns Ubuntu, nor do I like their business model. It's free, yes, but when you download it, they ask for money in a manner that looks like you are insulting them by using it free. Every distribution asks for donations, but not that way. So you see, it's me personally. Oh,  and I don't like that Ubuntu doesn't support everything out of the box like both PCLinuxOS and Mint do.

So, if you want to learn anything about Linux, ask. I'll tell you how to find out, because that's how you learn. You do it, and learn to ask the right questions, and where and how to ask.

I learned by doing. You can too. But you have to want to, and I was sick of how poorly Windows worked. Just too many inconsistencies in too many places. Would I ever go back? No. I don't have to worry about viruses. I just don't. Cool, huh? Yes very. I can ignore those deceitful ads from companies like "MyCleanPC.com"...

Okay, enough, and I'm not going back to read this again.

I'm Karl... to the annoyance of more, and the ignoring-ness of more.