Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Things in the Bush White House are taking on more and more Watergate-esque elements, what with the chief law-enforcement officer in the land looking more and more like a pathological liar, and his senior staff's fingerprints all over the outing of a CIA agent, and...well the list goes on and on. Republicans in Congress are calling for Gonzales' head and saying the President is out of touch with Iraq. With subpoenas to Karl Rove and Harriet Miers now a distinct possibility in the case of the eight fired US Attorneys, George is talking tough, claiming executive privilege. Haven't I seen this movie before? I think it's called All The President's Men . This morning I read the word "impeachment" mentioned in the paper, in a story about Chuck Hagel no less. As much as I'd love to see George get the kick in the ass he's needed for most of his adult life, impeachment ain't gonna happen. In a word: Cheney. As miserable a loser as Bush may be, for all h...

Once our Fearless Leader starts telling people what a great job you're doing, can the walking papers be far behind? Alberto Gonzales, another in a long line of slimeball Republican Attorney Generals (John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft) who takes delight in wiping their asses with the Constitution, looks close to finally taking the rap for the current administration's latest assault on democracy. Let's see: Firing eight US Attorneys for blatantly political reasons Attempting to slide their replacements without Senate confirmation using a loophole in the Patriot Act (now on it's way to being closed) Lying about the above ...Not to mention eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, and the unprecedented and largely ignored stripping away of our civic freedom, all in the name of "fighting terror." Tony Snow's lukewarm endorsement the other day spoke volumes. No doubt Al's been packing the corrugated boxes in his office right now, awaiting ...

...Did you remember to change your clocks? If not...

Another of my yawn-worthy posts about my effort to escape Windows. Flee now or be geeked out. I've played with Linux at various times over the years but there was always an application I just couldn't bear to give up. Microsoft Office I could give up. Internet Explorer I could give up. Dreamweaver I could give up. Winamp I could give up. Photoshop...I can't give that up. Sure, people say Gimp is just like Photoshop. Sorry, close but no cigar. Enter Wine. To quote from the WineHQ website: " Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems. " In English: use it to run Windows apps on Linux. I'd tried Wine on various occasions in the past and it was impressive as a parlor trick but a tad flaky. So with my newly installed copy of Kubuntu Linux (Ubuntu with KDE) I installed Wine and messed with Photoshop over the weekend with decidedly mixed results. I could get it instal...

I'm tired of listening to myself bitch about Windows. Maybe it's my naturally suspicious nature, but the more I read about Vista, the less it appeals to me. I'm running XP on a couple of machines and it's bloated enough. Vista apparently takes bloat to a whole new level , and wraps it up with the worst Digital Rights Management ever. (An aside - notice how Digital Rights Management is never about your rights?) So I'm exploring two non-Microsoft options. The first is looking into getting a Mac as the family computer. I got my oldest son an iBook when he went off to college and he loves it. This after years of Windows. It's easy to set up and simple to use. Unfortunately, beneath its sleek, elegant exterior, Apple's corporate heart is as rotten as Microsoft's. The way I see it, they're both Nazis; Apple just has better looking uniform The other option is to go to Linux I started out with Slackware years ago, and since then have tried Red Hat, Mandrak...

A cool thing I am now using in earnest: portable apps. Applications you don't install on your computer and you can take with you to other computers. They live on a USB flashdrive. To use them, you plug the flashdrive in and start the frontend program. It then lives in the tray and is accessed by a single click of the mouse. An assortment of applications are available specifically for the system; all are open source and have been recompiled to write all their settings to the flashdrive rather than your registry. Among them are: Firefox - web browser Open Office 2.0 suite AbiWord - word processor 7Z - compression/archiving; like Winzip VLC - media player FileZilla - FTP program Other apps include an anti-virus program, Sudoku, and Instant Messaging client. I gather more are being added. So far, it works like a charm. Hearing the rumblings that we may soon have to remove Firefox from our company laptops has generated a great deal of interest amongst my co-workers. PortableApps : hig...

I just noticed I've whined for a solid month about my job. Is that pathetic or not? Anyway, I promise to lay off work topics for at least a month to get back on track. Or I had planned to, anyway. Then I got the email this morning that said no more non-supported (read: anything other than Microsoft Internet Exploder) would be allowed on company-owned laptops. Bye-bye Firefox. I asked our director (very carefully) whose decision this was, and without answering my question in a straight forward way, he let me know it was the work of Beany Countwell, our intrepid CIO (Chowderheaded Incompetent Obstructionist): Mister Smarter/Faster/Better himself. I put together an email stating how we used Firefox's web developer tools as an aid to productivity, but that ain't going change anything. The Microsoft Nazis have begun to goosestep.