08:44 – Boy, are we staying around home today. The Angelou funeral is going to be a zoo, with Oprah, Obama’s wife, and Bill Clinton attending. I would imagine that by now traffic is snarled everywhere near Wake Forest University. No one knows for sure if the Westboro Baptist Church nutters are going to show up. Either way, it’s likely to be a major media circus, with crews from all the network and cable news channels there, not to mention the local TV stations. I suspect WFU is now regretting providing Angelou with a sinecure for all those years.
We finished watching season seven of Heartland last night. We had time for one more episode. Since it was my birthday, I talked Barbara into watching season one episode one. And so the cycle continues. I figure I’ll be able to get through all seven seasons two or three more times before season eight finishes broadcasting next spring.
Barbara said she didn’t object to me storing food as long as it was stuff we’d actually eat. In other words, no raw grain, beans, etc. That was fine with me, because I’ve never believed in storing a bunch of dry grains, beans, etc. Instead, I’m storing a lot of canned goods, along with bulk supplies of rice, sugar, salt, flour, dry milk, etc.
Accordingly, I’ve been ordering stuff from Amazon Prime Pantry. We have quite a few cans of Bush’s Baked Beans in stock. Costco sells them in 8-packs for about $1.50 per 16-ounce can. But I noticed that Amazon Pantry had Van Camp’s Pork & Beans for $0.50 per 15-ounce can. Before ordering 50 or 100 cans of the VC Pork & Beans, I decided we’d better try them first. I’m glad we did. They may be about a third the price of the Bush’s, but they are, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible. Fortunately, Amazon Prime Pantry carries the Bush’s Baked Beans in two sizes. The 16-ounce cans are $1.48 each, but the 28-ounce cans are only $0.30 more. So instead of ordering 50 or 100 cans of the VC Pork & Beans, I’ll order 50 or 100 cans of the 28-ounce Bush’s. Not all at once, but in batches over the coming months.
I agree with the Bush’s being very tasty. You might also want to try these:
http://www.amazon.com/Pinquito-Beans-15-Ounce-Pack-12/dp/B001SB2G7A
Most of the BBQ restaurants locally and all those on the CA central coast serve them. I always order them when available.
Every time Obummer comes to Vegas, The Strip and the airport are impossible to get to. My wife has to fly frequently and the cops basically close down the airport as His Highness travels to/from. He should just fly into Nellis AFB. I guess the drive is 10 minutes too long.
Well, I think the president should travel commercial, with the government paying only coach fare. If he wants to upgrade, he should pay for it from his own pocket. And if he wants security, he should have to pay for that personally as well. Not just for the SS accompanying him, but for the actual costs of local police and so on.
For regular use, I make my own “baked” beans in the crock pot — bag of dried beans, water, some brown sugar, seasoning to taste, maybe an onion, ham bone or chunks of pork if I have any. Chuck it all in the crock pot and cook overnight.
For emergency preps, I have both dried beans and canned beans, as well as other canned stuff. I don’t have nearly as much stuff (food and otherwise) as I’d like, but I suffer under both financial constraints and a wife who doesn’t comprehend that emergency supplies are for disaster striking, not because you can’t be bothered to go to the store. What I can’t comprehend is how someone who grew up in the (deliberate) famines and shortages and rationing of Mao-the-asshole China doesn’t have a compulsion to hoard against the next famine.
I certainly agree that the security is totally over the top. If your country has a leader who must be that paranoid, something is seriously wrong. I can see maybe two body guards when the President is out in public, but that’s all that ought to be necessary.
I don’t travel the right routes, so I can’t verify this from personal experience, but: here it is apparently not uncommon to see members of government (including whoever is president this year) riding on the train with the rest of the business commuters. They do have government aircraft for travel, but not a whole jumbo liner like Air Force One – just normal, small business aircraft.
Well, I’d have no problem with him having two bodyguards, as long as he paid for them himself and they did nothing that was not legal for a private citizen.
Even the Great Eliminator, during the War Between the States, used to stroll alone in Mordor, giving Pinkerton fits. He paid for his nonchalance in the end, though.
We now have a huge empire, and our emperor must travel like the potentates of old, Xerxes, Kublai Khan, Nero, et. al. Make surprise visits to the front lines for the soldiers, drop by for a little pickup b-ball in South Central to show the red-black-and-green flag, all the speeches, all the golf vacations, and of course the endless luxury travel by the Mooch and her brood. This while the economy continues to slowly tank, the wars overseas and the troops coming back messed up, the national infrastructure crumbling, etc., etc.
Gorgeous day today so fah; house and yahd work. Halfway through Season Two of “Vikings.” I generally root for the English; I would have searched these pirates, rapists, brigands and murderers out, curry-combing the coasts, and killing them wherever I found them, leaving them hanging in droves. And while they moved to some other predatory grounds elsewhere, I would have sent raiding parties to slaughter their women and children in their homelands. They would rue the day they showed up on my Anglo-Saxon doorstep.
Every time Obummer comes to Vegas, The Strip and the airport are impossible to get to
The jerk flew into Knoxville one time. Completely shut down all the roads within a mile of the airport and any point along the route. Paralyzed traffic for hours. This bum, who has not stopped for any traffic signals in the last 20 years of his life, fails to see any problems with the current system.
When the bummer arrived of course the local police from the cities, county and state all had to add to the motorcade. Apparently it is considered cool to be part of a presidential motorcade. So when the self appointed king’s parade passes you see about 50 police cars, several motorcycle cops, 30 or so secret service vehicles, a spare limo for his highness along with his limo.
Anyone wanting to protest is placed in protest zones which are far removed from the parade route. People with private property along the route are informed what they can, and cannot, do on their own property. Which to me is against the law but since when has Obummer and his royal entourage been concerned about laws?
It’s not only cool to be part of an official motorcade, it’s overtime. Can’t take the “beat” cops from sitting on their fat asses in the donut shop parking lot, so the off-duty pigs are brought in so there are enough warm bodies for all the “essential” duties.
See, that’s why you guys should vote for me for emperor in 2016. I might have a second phone line installed at my house, but otherwise I wouldn’t change anything. I’d seldom go anywhere other than maybe a Costco run. No security. Anyone who wanted to see me would have to get past Colin. Not to mention George and Martha.
I dunno about that. You’ve mentioned being made ruler several times, which suggests that you want the gig, which in my mind is a disqualification right there.
I like the idea of drafting people to be Prez, something like jury “duty”. Maybe three months would be a tolerable term of servitude. I used to figure we should limit the draft pool to adult citizens who aren’t obviously insane, but after five and a half years of the non-American imbecile currently infesting the White House, I figure a temperamental three-year-old couldn’t do any worse.
And as long as we’re changing things, I’d make one of the Prez’s main jobs be firing people — wander through any federal agency, department, or sinecure and fire people for any reason or no reason at all, with no appeal or recourse.
See, that’s why you guys should vote for me for emperor in 2016. I might have a second phone line installed at my house, but otherwise I wouldn’t change anything.
You have my vote! As your first political favor, can I be Gov. of Prostitution in Nevada?
I certainly agree that the security is totally over the top. If your country has a leader who must be that paranoid, something is seriously wrong. I can see maybe two body guards when the President is out in public, but that’s all that ought to be necessary.
Please, please, please do not let this man die in office. We will end up with eternal flames and monuments in every city in the USA. Over the top security is cheaper by far.
And as long as we’re changing things, I’d make one of the Prez’s main jobs be firing people — wander through any federal agency, department, or sinecure and fire people for any reason or no reason at all, with no appeal or recourse.
I’d vote for that!
Dear Leader came to Vermont once and gave a speech, where else? at the University; our daughter made the trip, to fall down and worship him, of course. Word was that there had been the usual traffic mess in and around our “Queen City” of Burlington but I missed all that, being at work that day.
The Mooch came for some kinda photo op with VNG troops before that, even; they managed to find the one African-American female troop in the entire frigging state to do the huggy thing on-camera. Rest assured this kind of thing is not lost on the other troops and regular citizens.
Not much reason for pols and hacks at the national level to come around here; it’s a Dem-ruled state, so they have it locked up good, and the Repubs have nobody. They can’t even find anyone in-state to run against the current governor. It’s a total joke throughout the Northeast and no one finds it odd or unusual that we’ve had one-party (allegedly one party and not half of the same party) rule for decades. Town meeting elections typically have candidates listed on the ballots that are 90% Dem with a few token Progs, Indies, communists, Nazis, etc. Maybe one or two alleged Repubs. Same deal in other Northeast states; and Repubs are assuredly total RINOs. Once in a blue moon, like every twenty years, some actual right-winger type will get some media attention and then they’ll dismiss him or her as a wacko fascist kook and that will be the end of that. One-party rule. Next up: martial law.
Please, please, please do not let this man die in office.
Amen.
May he spend the rest of a long life as the object of the mockery and derision he so richly deserves!
You mean like Clinton? I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Hell, even the previous holder of the “Worst President in History” distinction went on to a semi-retirement of prestige as a pseudo-diplomat and election monitor and distinguished statesman.
You’re undoubtedly correct, but Obama the after-dinner speaker is preferable to Saint Barack the martyr.
We note that of the living presidents, Shrub has maintained a low profile and we don’t see or hear much of him. Only Shrub. He is a puzzle.
Agreed on the speechifyer vs. martyr thing; we don’t need yet another holy libtard icon.
I still don’t get why people (especially wimmens) worship BJ Klinton. What a scumbag! Can’t imagine him as First Dude. His entire staff would probably be interns. He’ll have them wearing aprons and bibs to catch the “spray.” Naw, I don’t think he gives a shit at this point. He can do anything and get away with it.
None of them give a shit and all of them know they can do anything they want and skate; watch the AG, Holder, sometime, and note the constant smirk on his face. They know, alright.
When Larry Klinton was riding high, I saw countless women, and not a few men, vouchsafe online, and thus publicly, that they would joyfully drop to their knees and fellate him. It was said of him that he could saunter into a room anywhere and all would be in ecstatic shock and awe of his magnificence. The same has been said of the Incumbent. I confess I find it all passing strange.
We live in truly weird times and they are likely to get a whole lot weirder.
We note that of the living presidents, Bush #43 has maintained a low profile and we don’t see or hear much of him. Only Bush #43. He is a puzzle.
Not really. He is actually a low profile person and spends most his time on his ranch in central Texas. Or, visiting vets in the various VA hospitals. I think that you would be pleasantly surprised how many VA hospitals that he has been to.
Bush #43 is not a fiscal conservative but is hardly on the list of worst Presidents. Neither is Bill Clinton who is actually a reasonable man. That is, compared to our current President who makes many previous marginal Presidents look like saints.
I believe that’s what I said; he maintains a low profile. He is a puzzle in the sense that we do not know much of how and what he thinks about the Current Situation, unlike previous presidents, although I believe he has said he won’t criticize the Incumbents. He is a puzzle as regards those works of art he produced and which we have seen online, also. As for the VA hospitals, he and the other war criminal presidents ought to be thankful for the opportunity to be able to do that and should by rights do that until the end of their days on this earth. After that maybe he and they can explain to the KIAs and the others who’ve died since just WTF they were doing in all these wars and cui bono? by the way?
We will end up with eternal flames and monuments in every city in the USA.
And a street in every town will be name after him. Changing the name of an existing street with all kinds of fanfare and a crowd of welfare recipients on hand to clap and get a free coupon for a Big Mac. Jesse Jackson may even show up and cry on cue for the cameras.
BTW, all of the Bush’s canned goods are very good. I am especially fond of their black eyed peas and large butter beans. The wife is a big fan of their refried black beans for homemade tostadas and tacos.
Wow, nice collection of the salaries by college major: “From College Major to Career”, hat tip to Jerry Pournelle:
http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=
The STEM salaries are just about the best in the list with special emphasis on Engineering. The unemployment for engineers is mostly awesome. I am a mechanical engineer working in the chemical engineering field and can verify the low availability of people in both areas.
The unemployment for computer people is curiously high and approaching 10%. I guess that with so many projects being outsourced outside the USA that this is really affecting employment in that area. Also architecture is curiously high.
Yeah, the computer people have been ruthlessly cut out and their jobs off-shored or assigned to temp contractor drones. The contracts may be for a few weeks, months, or open-ended and last a year or two. Then we’re outta work again, like now, and the older we get, the harder it is to find another gig.
My tentative plan here is to work another year, or two or three in IT, if possible, and keep our two incomes rolling in here so we can accelerate mortgage payments and do renovations, as I transition into another line or two of work. If I don’t get something back in IT soon, we will have to move to Plan B.
Or Plan Nine From Outer Space.
The Mooch on Angelou:
Obama called Angelou “one of the greatest spirits our world has ever known” and spoke about how Angelou had such an effect on her life, from a young black girl growing up through “lonely moments in Ivy-covered classrooms and colorless skyscrapers.”
The last part is WTF?
King Obummer on student loans:
I will keep doing whatever I can without Congress to help responsible young people pay off their loans.
Time to go get a PhD ladies and gentlemen. Anybody responsible here?
The rest is WTF or “oh, bullshit”, too.
So, I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 10 to 12 today. Didn’t really want to — the laptop is ancient (older than my daughter, who’s about to finish first grade) and has only 2GiB of RAM. It’s good enough for most of what I need it for, so I didn’t worry about the outdatedness of the OS.
But Ubuntu (or Debian) had other ideas. I updated an app this morning, which brought in a required updated library, which attempted to bring in an update of libc… and all of a sudden anything having to do with audio or video no longer worked. This includes Flash, which was installed in Firefox, which meant that Firefox hung up when attempting to load any pages with Flash ads, and when exiting (because I had a plug-in which removed Flash cookies), and even when attempting to bring up any of the FF menus. Grr.
So, the upgrade of the OS took six hours or so, two hours to pull down the bazillion packages and three to install and configure them. It would have been half an hour less, but installing packages waited for me to click an OK button. Annoying, but no harm done.
First impressions: Unity sucks. It’s possible I’ll warm to it, but I’m not betting on it. I have a dozen and a half apps that I use a lot. In Gnome, all were available with a click on a menu, drag down, drag right to the submenu, drag down to the app name. In Unity, there’s room for about half that many on the sidebar. The most-recently used few are visible from the “Dash Home” button, in an ever-changing order. Or I can type the first few letters of their name, but in Gnome I could do that with Alt-F2. If I’m going to have to remember all of my app names, I might as well be using xfce.
Second impression: yup, the new versions of OS and desktop and apps need more memory. As expected. The computer isn’t unusable, by any means, but the slowdown is obvious.
Third impression: A big win in that Rosegarden (a music writing and playback program) works reliably — on this laptop, with this OS and app version. It was extremely flaky with the combination of Ubuntu 10 + old QSynth + old Rosegarden, with it producing sound maybe one in six starts.
As to the question of why I don’t buy a newer computer: money. I’m running pretty close to the edge, between mortgage and family expenses. Moreover, every time I manage to scrounge up the money for a laptop, some crisis comes up, most recently my van dying dead, with no prior sign of trouble, in my driveway. I screwed with it for several days (and a hundred dollars of parts that I ended up not needing but couldn’t return) before giving up and having it towed to a shop. -sigh- Could have been worse: the day before it died, I’d driven a couple hundred miles to pick up Son#1 from college. It would have been really irritating if it had died there rather than in my driveway.
I’m a white man. I have it on good authority that I’m responsible for all the ills of the world.
The Mooch got a basically free ride and was coddled all through her university (Princeton) and ditto on through law school. Her life of ease and subsequent life of Reilly around the world at our expense are well documented. She’s even more full of shit than her “husband,” and will easily snap up that seat in Illinois, I reckon; voters dead and alive, will make certain of that.
SteveF; I hate Unity, too; you can easily put back whichever Gnome shell you want; I stick with the Classic and it will give you that choice on login and stay that way if you want.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/58172/how-to-revert-to-gnome-classic-desktop
“I’m a white man. I have it on good authority…”
Also straight, married, breeder, and veteran. I’m sure there’s more we can add to your list of crimes. Check your privilege!
The Second Amendment is getting some discussion elsewhere…
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The liberals want it amended (the bit in italics) to read:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”
Treated just as a piece of English writing, which side is right? Did the people way back intend individuals bearing arms only as part of a regulated militia, or was that just one of many legitimate reasons they had in mind?
The primary purpose of the 2A was for the people to serve as the final check on overweening government. It should be obvious why supporters of overweening government are uncomfortable with an armed populace.
All anyone need do is look at the writings of the prominent Founding Fathers on this issue and the Amendment itself; clearly the people is the militia. The libtards try this nonsense periodically; they can go piss up a rope. If anything, we the people should be armed with at least as effective weapons as our soldiers and police and trained accordingly. And many millions now are so armed and trained.
Cue up the usual response: “Well, you guys with your AR’s and nines are no match against jets and tanks.”
No shit, Sherlock; no one in their right mind intends to go up against such weapons, nor can we defend, in our isolation, against sustained fire-team assaults and crew-served weapons. Resistance and defense is enabled in many other ways besides frontal infantry operations. One way to resist an overweening State is to simply stop cooperating in our subjugation, to stop enabling the bastards. Like refusing to participate in the election charades; withhold taxes; do home-schooling; get off the Grid; use alternative currencies and barter; and when the Hurt starts kicking in real good, escalation.
Of course they may be willing to lose or have killed off 3/4 of the population, and in that case, all bets off; we’ll be in entirely new territory for American history.
war criminal presidents
When one has a USA military that is such a hammer, everything looks like nail. The temptation to use it is probably overwhelming.
And remember, war is just the final stage of diplomacy. It does seem that we like to skip a few stages nowadays.
As with our cops, lethal force is the default setting, and yes, a few stages now get routinely skipped that were supposed to be in effect; such as little stuff like the approval of Congress for military adventures.
And when our adventures result in high losses via civilian casualties as either deliberate or negligent policy, then yeah, we’re war criminals. Especially when those adventures are unwarranted and unjustified.
Steve,
Is Xubuntu still around? It was designed to be lighter weight than Ubuntu and to run on smaller memory.
Seems to be. However, I think I’ll stick with Ubuntu, solely because Rosegarden works reliably. I’m going to use the Unity interface until next weekend, to give it a fair shake, then probably switch back to Gnome as OFD suggested.
Yeah, Xubuntu and other variants are still available. I tried the Unity interface on several Linux distros, to “give it a fair shake,” and fair shake concluded and I went back to Gnome Classic. I have Lubuntu as the base o.s. running Santoku Linux on a netbook with only 2GB of RAM. On Windows 8.1 Pro I only occasionally use the similar Metro interface and revert mainly to full-time desktop.
There are also lightweight variants among the Fedora family of distros.