hda

The hard drive on my main desktop PC crashed on me and became unbootable. The drive is less than a year old, too. I have most stuff I need backed up so I am going to reinstall Arch Linux on it and start anew. Hopefully, that's all it needs. In the meantime, I'm giving Fedora Core 2 a go on two small spare drives I have. I might test drive FC4 with the possiblility of replacing Mandrake on the laptop. Fedora is a such a pain to get working right, especially if you want to play mp3's or use the mplayerplug-in with Firefox. With Arch, all that works easy as can be. I still like Fedora some but I still prefer Arch.

Globalony

I held out as long as I could but I can resist no longer in making another weather-related post. I left the L.V. in May and returned in March with a brief visit to July when I was in Texas. However, this weather is affecting the entire Northeast. The AP reported that this is the third coldest May on record for Boston - average temperature is 58 degrees but this year it's 51. Third coldest! A few years ago I remember seeing some hoopla about global warming because some place had experienced the second or third warmest year on record. What I think is happening is that more and more people are moving to warmer climate areas and justifying their globalony warming ideas by saying "it wasn't this warm when I was a kid" forgetting to mention that they used to live in Duluth or Erie. One thing I remember is that when I was a kid we didn't have springs this miserable. Yes, we had rainy springs but not so that we needed the heat on three days before Memorial Day weekend and I don't recall a series of two or three in a five year (2003, 2005, and 2000 was more of a dud summer than dud spring) period that have been duds like this.

Texas III

We went to the Rangers-Astros game yesterday and sat in a luxury box. While I sat outside for the game (temperature read 99 degrees for most of the game), most sat inside the box. The Rangers won, 18-3, and hit a club record 8 home runs.

Yes, it was in the upper 90's here yesterday. Officially, it was 96 in at the stadium when the game started and the time/temp display hit 99. The locals say this is very hot for this time of year, normal is low to mid 80's. I checked the weather for back home, low to mid 60's for the next few days. So, I go from 10-15 degrees above normal to 10-15 below.

On the way home from the game we drove by Texas Stadium in Irving. It looks like a sh*thole from the outside. However, Arlington is building a new stadium for the Cowchips.

That's all for now. Time to do a few things here then pack up.

Texas II

Driving around Dallas-Ft. Worth is so much easier than driving around Pennsylvania. For one, before you come to an intersection (sometimes several hundred yards if distance permits) there are signs telling you what the next road is at the next signal - Gaylord Ave Next Signal - for example. So, instead of slowing down near the intersection to look for a sign then finding out you're two lanes over from the lane you need, you already know in plenty of time if the next light is a turn you need. The roads are, as expected, wider and newer and in better shape.

We went to a place called Joe T. Garcia's yesterday in Fort Worth. Apparently, it's quite popular as they had an autographed photo of Dan "I'd" Rather "make up news instead of reporting it" and nice comment taken from a magazine from Jeff Bezos amongst other testimonials and thank yous posted in the lobby. I quaffed down a Dos Equis and had the mini chimichanga lunch. Beck had the tamale lunch and Julia has a quesadilla. Excellent food; worth the trip if you're ever in Ft. Worth.

Joe T. Garcia's is located just outside Ft. Worth's historic Stockyards District. Every day at 11:30 and 4:30 they herd some Texas Longhorns down E. Exchange St. which is the main street running through the stockyards. Tonight we are going back down to see a rodeo at the Cowtown Coliseum which is within the Stockyards District. Last night we saw a Frisco RoughRiders game and saw them turn a nifty triple play to augment their win. Tomorrow, we're going to the Rangers-Astros game in Arlington. We were supposed to go to tonight's game but we ended up with seats (thanks to Zoe's husband) in a private suite/box for tomorrow's game.

As for the weather - perfect. Sunny and warm, low 90's today and tomorrow. It will be hard for me to adjust to the weather back home.

Well, that's all for now. I want to sneak in a quick swim before lunch.

Texas

Just a quick post from Frisco, TX --

We're going into Dallas today and check out Dealy Plaza and maybe a few other sites. While we are here we also plan on going to the Fort Worth Zoo, a rodeo, and we have tickets for Saturday's Rangers-Astros game. That's all for now.

Lies

First, CBS; now Newsweek. No wonder people are turning away from the mainstream media. The irony of the Newsweek lie is that the liberals have generally been worried about our image abroad but liberal publications seem to have no problem stirring the pot. Fox News gets criticized for trying to stay close to center but CBS and Newsweek seem to be given a free pass to lie at will. The traditional mainstream media are not helping themselves one bit with running stories solely to attack the President. Newsweek is now no better than the National Enquirer. At least the Enquirer's stories are funny.

Whew

I finally upgraded the packages on my desktop PC. I did a pacman -Syu and went ahead with the 400 MB of updates listed. I even rebooted to the 2.6.11.7 kernel and everything works fine, so far. The only thing I noticed was the error that I used to get when starting KDE has disappeared. The error was something like "could not start kdeinit" or something like that. It never seemed to affect KDE though. Next up: another crack at GNOME 2.10.

YAWC

Yet Another Weather Comment (or Complaint)

A story in Monday's Morning Call discusses the cooler weather we've had so far in May. Apparently, "Unseasonably lower temperatures credited to stationary system." I see. When it's cooler than normal, it's a stationary system. When it's warmer than normal, the econuts tell us it's global warming.

Schedule

Well, one down, one to go. I'm done with class at LCCC until the Fall term. I finish up at Northampton this week with one more class meeting then I give the final exam on Wednesday. Then, I get a week off, then go back to teach during Summer I which runs May 23 through July 5. July 6, Julia is scheduled for surgery and they said we can figure on her staying 2-3 days in the hospital so it looks like I'll have to get those exams graded and the final grades submitted on the 5th. Last I checked I have 19 students registered too so I'll have a good heap of paperwork to grade. As usual, I'll have all the grading done except the exam by the 5th so all I'll have to do is plug in the exam scores and submit the final grades.

Thanks, BRRRR

From the New York Times today:

"Creation of Jobs Surged in April, and Income Rose"

That's great. In addition to creating a strong economy, President Bush may have solved the global warming problem created by Bill Clinton. Let's take May 5 for example. For the Lehigh Valley the averages are 67/44, 56. I found no data for years 1994-1996. Data taken from wunderground.com

Year hi/lo avg
1993 71/59 65
1997 66/33 56
1998 66/57 62
1999 78/55 67
2000 86/55 71

2001 75/50 63
2002 70/38 54
2003 59/39 49
2004 66/37 52
2005 63/32 48


As we can see with the provided data, only 20% of the time the temperatures were above average during Bush years. However, during Clinton years, 80% of the time our temperatures were above average. It is clear that Clinton caused global warming and Bush fixed it. Those who lived in the Lehigh Valley remember the dearth of snow in the late 1990's too. 1996 had a massive storm but after that until Bush became president, snowfall was scant for several winters. The past three winters (according to Dr. Joe Sobol from Accuweather) the Lehigh Valley has had above average snowfall. Well, I have to run and take advantage of yet another day with temperatures barely getting to 60. I love turning the heat on at night in May when temperatures are in the 30's. Looks like if I like warm weather I should vote Democrat.

News Item

Google is in the news today.

I fear that one day nothing will be considered true unless one can find it using Google. The "if Google can't find it, it doesn't exist" attitude will become common. If Google controls content, then we should be wary of putting too much trust in Google's ability to find something. Sure, this is advertising but their advertising returns results based on the search. If they can control advertising 'hits' surely they can control general query searches too.

Solution

I heard on the radio yesterday morning that the Lehigh Valley has had above normal snowfall for the past three winters (by the way, it seems like we got a lot less snow in the late 90's when Clinton was president); this coming on another day where our temperatures are below normal and look to be for the few days. Forecasted high today is 58, normal is 66. Lows are in the 30's every night, normal is 44. In fact, it looks like we'll have to wait until Friday or Saturday to hit the normal high temperature. However, I have found a solution for the global cooling that has affected the Lehigh Valley.

What we need to do is drive more and emit more greenhouse gases. That's right, folks, get out there and drive! Drive! It's a simple solution, after all, the econuts are telling us our cars are causing global warming so it should be just as easy to warm up our little slice of earth by taking an extra spin or two around the block everyday. It might sound far-fetched but if the econuts tell us that our cars can warm the entire planet, certainly warming up a little area like the Lehigh Valley should be easy.

Double Standard

As I was watching the Phillies' game yesterday, I was thinking about the rare occasion when someone runs out onto the field. Usually, the person doing this is immediately tackled and arrested. The TV stations do not show the person doing this either and, thus, deny the person any free publicity. I am not talking about people who run on the field and attack umpires or players, I'm talking about someone just running out there as a prank.

I wonder if the ACLU gets involved when someone runs out onto the field. I saw someone do this once and that guy was tackled and cuffed. After all, if the ACLU can get all worked up over citizens observing the border for illegal aliens crossing, surely, if a U.S. citizen is arrested for running onto the field of play, he or she should not be punished and should expect the ACLU to stick up for him. The trespasser on the field is breaking the law, as is the trespasser on U.S. soil. Way too many people and special interest groups seem to be more concerned with how non-citizens are treated than how we treat ourselves. It's OK to tackle and jail a man for running onto the field at baseball stadium, but it's not OK for citizens to report illegals crossing the border to the Border Patrol. By the way, I do not condone running onto fields and I think the person doing so should be punished. But, if we patrolled the borders like the field of a baseball game is patrolled, we would not have as many illegals crossing over. People don't run into fields because they know what they are in for. Illegals know what they are in for, too, when they cross over - sympathy from special interest groups. Personally, I would love to see someone tackling and arresting a person illegally crossing our border after he/she gets a couple of yards in.

Maybe we hold ourselves to a higher standard, maybe we should worry more about how we treat ourselves then about phantom rights of non-citizens.