Week of 9 August 2004

08:44 - I now have a new primary office system. It is essential that my primary system be dead stable, and that was not the case for leibniz. I could have tried to track down the problem and resolve it, but the easier and faster method was simply to replace leibniz with another Xandros system. I pulled hypatia, which was my den system, and put it in my office to replace leibniz.

Before I shut down leibniz, I copied the contents of the .mozilla directory up to messier. When I got hypatia connected, I did a clean bare-metal install of Xandros Desktop 2.0 Business Edition on her. Firing up Mozilla for the first time created the .mozilla directory. I exited Mozilla and copied the .mozilla profile directory from messier. All my bookmarks, user settings, mail accounts, passwords, etc. transferred over just fine. I reinstalled Microsoft Office 2000, Irfanview, and a couple of other apps, and hypatia was ready to roll.

(Incidentally, in case you're wondering, Hypatia is acknowledged by most who concern themselves with such things to have been a universal genius, probably the only woman ever who has belonged in that elite group with da Vinci, Leibniz, Newton, Goethe, Swedenborg, Wittgenstein, Sidis, et alia.)

Mr. Enderle has delusions of adequacy. Among other things, he refers to Linux as a "scam" and claims that he has "been ranked number one in influence for most of the last decade." Huh? Ranked by whom? No one whose opinion I'd take seriously. Not only is Mr. Enderle not the most influential analyst by any rational measure, he doesn't even rate a mention among those who understand anything at all. Mr. Enderle is a bad joke.

I was happy to see that Mr. Enderle has finally admitted that he is in the pay of Microsoft and that he has a "huge personal investment in SCO." Perhaps more so than he realizes. He's chained to the deck of the sinking SCO ship, and as it goes down, he goes down with it. Glug, glug, glug. I certainly won't be sorry to see him go. Mr. Enderle has spent all of his credibility. I hope SCO and Microsoft paid him well for it. Now if only Laura DiDio and Daniel Lyons would also 'fess up, I'd be content.

Dear Linux user,

Here is your copy of the Linux Honor virus. Because this
virus is for Linux, it requires your cooperation and works
only on the honor system. Please follow these instructions:

1: Forward this email to everyone in your address book
2: Become root
3: type: cd / and press <Enter>
4: type: rm -Rf * and press <Enter>

Congratulations! You are now a victim of the Linux honor virus.

Hurricanes Bonnie and Clyde are the major weather makers around here this week. Yesterday, the leading edge of Bonnie dropped lots of rain here. We no longer have a rain gauge, but I'm estimating we had at least 4" (10 cm) of rain yesterday afternoon. There's to be more tonight and then more again tomorrow as Clyde passes. Overall, we're likely to get two or three months' worth of rainfall in two or three days.

During a break in the rain, we met our friends Paul Jones and Mary Chervenak for dinner at the Chinese place last night. They've been on the run for the last month or so. Ten days in Europe, followed by a visit from Paul's mom, followed by business trips for both of them. They were planning to leave yesterday for a long weekend in the Great Smoky Mountains, but the weather forecasts dissuaded them.

Bonnie and Clyde have also wiped out our observing plans for this new-moon weekend. The forecasts had been for clear weather until the hurricanes showed up. Oh, well.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The Pope
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 14:40:48 -0400
From: Bob Sprowl

On a tour of Texas, the Pope took a couple of days off to visit the coastal area for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the sea wall on Galveston Isle in his Pope mobile when suddenly he notices a frantic commotion just off shore.

There was John Kerry struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 25-foot shark. As the Pope watched, horrified, a speedboat came racing up with two men aboard. One of the men, President George W. Bush quickly fired a harpoon into the shark's side while Dick Cheney reached out and pulled the bleeding, semi-conscious John Kerry from the water. Then using (autographed Round Rock Express) baseball bats, the two heroes beat the shark to death and hauled it into the boat. Immediately the Pope shouted and summoned them to the beach. "I give you my blessings for your brave actions," he told them. "I heard that there was some bitter hatred between President Bush and John Kerry, but now I have seen with my own eyes that this is not true."

As the Pope drove off, President Bush asked Dick "Who was that?" "It was the Pope," Dick replied. "He is in direct contact with God and has all of God's wisdom."

"Well," President Bush said, "he may have access to God's wisdom, but he doesn't know squat about shark fishing................how's the bait holding up?"