Katie came by just the other day.
Today makes it a month since she went away.
She came to get those things she wanted to keep,
And all the rest, well I guess they were just too cheap.
She talked very little,
But said that she's been OK.
She didn't have a lot to say, no.
She hurried herself to run away.
Cadence-wise, it seems like "And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the Moon..." should be on the heels of that, above, doesn't it?
Growing up is tough enough, without feeling like you have to live one life in front of your parents; and another life--the one you really want to run with--in front of your friends. No matter which life you find yourself living, you've always cut yourself off from somebody you care about.
It's nice to "pen" something that, despite my tendency to editorialize, helps others; and, sometimes these kinds of things have a way of zinging back at you from the relatively distant past. Case and point, an email I received recently:
Hello - I got my hands on a Gateway FLEXATXSTC Bro Essential 633c for even less than you did - it was given to me. That said, I have let it sit around long enough and need it to be doing something, or heading for the trash bin. I managed to scrounge some more memory for it (only 128mb right now, but that is enough to start with) and found a 60GB drive to put in it. I'm thinking fileserver, some variety of Linux will do just fine.
Of course, it does not recognize the hdd when I put it in. I know your question - "Is it a Known Good Drive?" - and the answer is "Um...maybe?". The drive is out of another machine and should be good, that machine's system board died a couple of years ago. I might dig up my Win98 laptop and see about making a BIOS disk and hopefully that will do the trick (as usual, it is very back level - thanks for the links to gateway's meager file listing for this system).
Hopefully this will do the trick and I will be in business. Otherwise it's outta here.
Rob N.
Thanks for touching base with me Rob. Yours is the second such email about that article in the past 5 days. Ebb and flow stuff, I know, but one wonders what forces are at work, when I look at the server stats.
A couple of obvious things to check if you don't mind my offering unsolicited advice:
1. Check the IDE cable. Maybe even make certain that it's an 80 conductor cable.
2. Forget Cable Select. Explicitly strap the drive as Master on the Primary channel.
3. Try removing the optical drive from the same cable for a boot cycle and see if the machine will boot to floppy and recognize the HDD.
4. If it's a Western Digital drive, remove all other drives from the channel and strap the drive as Single Master.
5. Yeah, you might have to replace that particular drive. I have a few (10 or so) throw-away Maxtor 4Gig - 6Gig drives here, if you need one. You're welcome to have one for the cost of postage, you know.
6. Why not D/L and burn a Linux distro (SimplyMEPIS 7.0 comes to mind for some strange reason.) that will give you a live CD boot and see if you can diagnose the situation from orbit?
Best of luck to you, and let me know how things work out.
Bill and I happened to be talking this afternoon about the economy, education and the state of the nation; and I happened to mention that it has been my opinion for several years, not, that George Bush should be impeached. Lo and behold! When Annie got home tonight, this is what she saw:
Is Impeachment Too Little, Too Late?
Less Than Six Months Before Bush Leaves Office, Partisan Debate Erupts
By TOM GIUSTO WASHINGTON, July 25, 2008—
Less than six months before President Bush leaves office, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing today on whether he should be impeached.
As could be predicted, the hearing was highly partisan. Democrats said they wanted accountability. Republicans called the hearing a show trial. People on both sides showed anger and emotion.
The hearing was about executive power and its constitutional limitations. The Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is concerned the Bush administration exceeded its authority in several areas including the following: improper politicization of the Justice Dept; misuse of presidential signing statements; misuse of surveillance, detention, interrogation and rendition programs; manipulation of intelligence and misuse of war powers; improper retaliation and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA agent outing case; and misuse of executive privilege.
There were 13 witnesses, including current and former members of Congress, most of whom accused the Bush administration of abuse of power. Democrats and Republicans on the Committee spent an hour on opening statements presenting their opinions either justifying Bush's actions or accusing him of being the worst president in U.S. history.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the committee, defended holding such a hearing while the president was on his way out of office.
"And we're not done yet," Conyers said. "We do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that the Congress is entitled to and the American people deserve."
Ranking Republican member Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, disagreed.
"This week it seems that we are hosting an anger management class," he said. "Nothing is going to come out of this hearing with regard to impeachment of the president."
But Democrat member Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida was angry at the president.
"Never before in the history of this nation has an administration so successfully diminished the constitutional powers of the legislative branch," Wexler said. "It is unacceptable, and it must not stand."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., didn't mince words in her feelings about Bush.
"It is my judgment that President Bush is the worst president our country has ever suffered," she said. "Making judgments that have jeopardized our national security, impaired our economy, and diminished the freedom and civil liberties of the American people."
Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., ridiculed the hearing.
"One wonders what we are becoming here. When I was a kid growing up, we used to watch Friday night fights. Now it looks like we have the Friday morning show trials," he said.
His colleague, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., agreed.
"It conducts a do-over hearing that amuses our terrorist friends greatly, and that would make Alice in Wonderland roll her eyes," he declared.
One of the witnesses, Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official, testified that he believes the president committed impeachable acts.
"The executive branch has vandalized the constitution every bit as much as the barbarians sacked Rome in 410 A.D.," he told the committee.
Vincent Bugliosi, a former L.A. prosecutor, agreed.
"Whether Republican or Democrat, all Americans should be absolutely outraged over what the Bush administration has done," he said. "How dare they do what they did? How dare they?"
But George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin tried to bring the hearing into perspective.
"You should all remind yourselves," he said, "that the rest of the country is not necessarily in this same bubble in which people think it is reasonable to describe the president as if he were Caligula."
Cathy Storch sent this link to me; which, on the face of it, really disappointed me, because I had thought she and Glenn to be a bit more cerebral about their political leanings. After watching it, though, I have to thank her.
Here's what I saw:
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Now, last week, I was pointed to the musings of another kindred spirit from the Orange Juice State; which tend to mirror my own, with respect to the subject of [legal | illegal] immigration and/or immigrants.
Much debate has been had over the United States position on immigration in the past; and I have to confess that I am not in agreement with Obama's position on [legal | illegal] immigration and/or immigrants. (Maybe I should call it "li2 a/o i" as an abbreviation?)
She basically says, "Why are you here, soaking up Welfare and committing crimes? This isn't right!"
My general position is this: Absent credibly documented political, ethnic or religious persecution, a person should be required to closely follow a codified process to apply for entrance to the United States. This process should specify that criminals and otherwise non-productive persons are not permitted entrance to, nor citizenship of, the United States of America. Short-cutting this process should be considered a self-disqualifying criminal offense, subject to immediate deportation or imprisonment and subsequent deportation.
Absent credibly documented political, ethnic or religious persecution, no non-American citizen should receive government assistance; such as welfare, food stamps or unemployment; nor should they be entitled to operate a motor vehicle (certain, documentable, exceptions may apply) or vote in any election. In other words, Freeloaders, go home!
I also feel that all H-1B paperwork should be halted and/or revoked, with the applicable visa holders being offered the alternative of citizenship within a window of time, or immediate return to their nation of origin. Moreover, all forms of labor outsourcing should be made illegal--the objective being that of stemming the tide of dollars flowing out of country, and keeping the labor pool and funding at home.
If a company/corporation conducting business upon American soil needs a certain labor pool, it must hire and train American citizens to fulfill the need on American soil.
Period.
America needs to start taking care of its own citizens. That's not xenophobia, it's common sense.
