Unbelievable

This is just totally impractical. What a joke! Microsoft - fix your software! Joe User - switch to OpenOffice.

Salsa

My in-laws just returned from Texas and, per my request, brought me back two more jars of Tejano Salsa (Native Texan Hot). My wife brought me back three jars last month. This is the best salsa I have ever had. Period. Those of you who know me know that this endorsement is a quite an honor for them. It tastes better warm than chilled, too.

(it's a) MythTV

I decided to build a Mythtv box (like a TiVo). Even though I have no need for one as I don't care enough about TV to record something that's on when I can't park my arse on the sofa. Plus, the only primetime TV show I watch is Jeopardy. I wanted to do it just for fun and because it seems the lobbyists in DC want Congress to pass all kinds of laws restricting what we can download and record in terms of music and television broadcasts; including a broadcast flag that might prevent certain transmissions from being recorded and saved on a hard drive.

Anyway, I downloaded the packages a I needed and then did the ./configure and make. So far so good. It's an old PC with an AMD K-6 so I knew it might take a while to compile. About 2 hours into the compile, I got an error message and the compile terminated. Well, back to the drawing board; I must be still missing a package.

Canned Meat

The email address I use when I post comments on people's blogs has recently begun to get hammered by unsolicited email. I don't give out that email address too much so I don't know what happened because usually the blogs don't publish the address on the site. I guess the email harvester bots are becoming more numerous or maybe some blog owner is harvesting all the emails from his/her posts and selling them.

Deja Vu

For the past few years, the second half of May in the LV has seen some lousy weather - wet, rainy, cold. We are now in a spell of rain and below average temperatures. The first half of May was nice, dry, and warm. The short term (next 5-7 days) shows showers and temperatures in the high 60's to 70. The average high for late May increases from 71 (May 16) to 76 (May 31).

In 2003, for example, from May 16 through 31, the LV saw three (3) days where the high temperature hit 70 or above (18, 29, 30). In 2005, from May 16 through May 26, the LV had four (4) days above 70 (18, 19, 21, 27); there was a string of days (22 through 26) where the highs were 64, 66, 58, 57, and 65). Now, 2004 wasn't as bad although May 31 the high was 62.

Like I've said before, the LV was seemingly the last metro area in the US to get a Taco Bell, Target, Starbuck's (still no Sonic, Hooters, or White Castle). Seems like we are the last to get Global Warming too.

Weather statistics from wunderground.com

Borgia

I was reading some random passages from the Prince yesterday; mostly just passages I had marked when I read it a few years ago. In Chapter III (Composite Principalities), Machiavelli noted something the Romans did in the lands they conquered:

"The Romans, in the countries they seized, did watch these matters carefully. They established settlements, supported the weaker powers without increasing their strength, crushed the powerful, and did not allow any powerful foreigner to gain prestige."

The line that stands out to me is "supported weaker powers without increasing their strength." As with much of Machiavelli's treatise, many principles can be applied to many facets of politics, policy, and power.

I have often said to myself that reading the Prince should be a requirement before getting into politics. It appears that some politicians have indeed read it and apply the tactic in the quoted passage to something else instead of management of conquered foreign lands. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to guess which party and which group of people (voters) I am referring to.

One more thing: since graduation time is around the corner and the MSM will surely publish a sob story about students somewhere who won't be graduating because they could not pass an exit exam on five attempts. Maybe we can heed the smattering of calls to scrap the exam. Give those students who can't pass in five tries a copy of the Prince. Have them read it and do a presentation on it. Not a book report - take a principle from it, discuss it, defend or refute how it can be or has been applied (or misapplied) by someone in history; something that proves a comprehensive understanding of the text.

More Trash

Forget math and science, kids today in America need to learn this. The irony here is that Sen. Sheila Kuehl appears to be a product of an education system that doesn't teach anything anymore.

How about a bill that promotes math and science or maybe even being able to read and write above a 6th-grade level? Kuehl should take a look at what the Indian, Chinese, and Korean kids are learning. You can bet it doesn't include the rubbish she's proposing. "Gee Mr. Interviewer*, I don't know anything about math or science and I can't construct a sentence properly, but I do know a lot about feelings, diversity, lifestyles, and empathy." And people wonder why jobs go overseas.


*While it would appear that dullards like this shouldn't even make it to the interview process, we must remember that failing to try to recruit stupid people is met with calls of discrimination.