We camped at Jellystone – Fun place, nice bathrooms/showers, good wifi signal to the campsites, nice swimming pool, arcade room, general store, lodge, etc. Neat old general store in Pine Grove.

Now I just might get around to installing Ubuntu or Fedora (Windows: bleh) and get around to installing a Shoutcast server onto my Linux shared server, more of a one-time thing; and so a VM Linux seems a better choice, sparing a re-partitioning hassle and the aggravation of booting in and out of Mac OSX and Linux.

XP is OK, but my experience is that most people abandon it forever after trying a Mac, simply liking it much better, oblivious to ROI, cost, etc. Of course, for most, a PC is a commodity like a toaster; and a really cool, different kind of toaster that can toast anything and do a bunch of other neat fun things, easily, effortlessly, reliably and elegantly, isn’t going to matter to them. It doesn’t process. The Mac is infectious, but the barrier to entry is pretty solid, as world view precepts can be.

My personal experience is that XP is inferior (unimportant) and unneeded (important). All the important stuff is cross-platform and on the Mac, with the exception of a few arcane, significant things such as CATIA, which is normally an aerospace-automotive-medical 3D with fullblown enterprise integration-automation, hardcore analytics, and a lot of automated design and intelligence, very different from the other 3Ds (available on Mac) that lack analytics and automated design, and are inexplicably discrete and disconnected from any fullblown enterprise automation. Well, now CATIA can run on a Mac computer.

Another minor thing is the lack of Bluetooth or wireless print adapters. I’d like to convert a great all-in-one, but so far it’s been fruitless. Bluetooth adapters don’t have a Mac installer, and even on the PC side, Bluetooth adapters only work with printers and not all-in-ones, and so there’s no easy way to install my drivers on the generic Bluetooth print device that shows up in the device search.

With 802.11 print adapters, again, most on the PC side only work with printers and not all-in-ones, although there are a few that work with all-in-ones, but enabling only printing, with scanning disabled. On the Mac side, they only work with postscript printers, but with scanning disabled, it’s really not worth getting a postscript driver to work. Again, a somewhat of a minor issue. If I really want to print wirelessly, I suppose I could ebay my hydra, or better yet give it away to a nonprofit and do some good and get a tax break bigger than the ebay price, and then get an out-of-the-box wireless.

Well, I’m rambling and starting to sound like a computer zombie (makes sign of the cross with index fingers).

What a beautiful day, after a couple of weeks of pretty much continuous, on and off and on again rain.

Peace to you and yours,

Ed

I disagree with that blanketing – There’s a few good cars that meet the metrics of excellence, but to no avail, Japanese relentless consistency has met the most important metric of all, that of perception.

They never abandoned quality, as did US companies after their brief flirtation with it in the eighties. At the end of the day, it’s the cheapest way to do business, but that day is way too long of a day for the dynamic ‘do’ American character that may always be shackled to a tactical business culture that must necessarily be overwhelmed by strategic cultures.

Been there, done that, with a company that spent $1.5B on quality consulting, but then threw more billions at another magic bullet, because quality wasn’t working from the bottom up, because its steps processed as waste to a ‘do’ culture.

(Sigh). Oh well.

Ed

99 Beetle. 03?/04? Volvo. No pickup – I do stuff, but don’t care bout wearin the identity – When I need a truck, I just rent, same w/landyachts – I don’t like to pay through the nose for crap that just lays around 99% of the time just suckin money and uglyin up the grounds. Plan to chop an airboxer VW camper, synergy drive, nothing fancy, just chopped, camping outfitted, iPod-Sat-DVD.

“Freedom is a disease which will conquer the world.”Spoken by a friend of mine in a conversation regarding world affairs, wars, rumors of wars, etc. At first the negative connotation of “disease” sounded strange and still does, at least a bit strange. Until, you look at it like a lot of other human nature issues which have limited scientific or logical explanation. i.e.- violence, genocide, love, hate…

His logic for this statement is to look at how many more people and nations have freedoms than when we were growing up in the ’50s & ’60s. One example, look at how China has developed with the help of the rest of the world and the application of free enterprise. Even the more socialist factions of the Chinese government cannot completely put the genie of freedom back into the bottle. His quote, “What happens when you let a caged animal out of the cage, does he go back in the cage?”

While realizing that wars will still happen, he believes that most of the world has experienced enough economic freedom to know that we all benefit from helping each other rather than fighting each other. He also believes that the seed of freedom will be planted in the middle east with Afghanistan and Iraq. The election won by Hamas must be respected by the west and that Hamas must also live up to its responsibility to conform to peaceable solutions to be accepted by the rest of the world.

Obviously, peace is not breaking out everywhere just yet. But, the world being shrunk down in terms of communication and travel and will this help further the spread of freedom in the near or long term?

So, is freedom a disease that will conquer the world? I hope he is correct.

Chris

My comment:

Kindasorta:It will conquer the world, but many of the results will remain the same – There will still be the wars, WMD-Weapons of MisDirection, Phalse Prophits, narcissism, greed, avarice, the Politiks of Scarcity, the Politiks of Experience, etc.

Freedom is a desease that will conquer a mostly ‘Homo Econonicus’ world; from jungle to Joplin, MO, from bedroom to boardroom, from Esalen to Evangelical Church of Sanctimony, from cosmonaut to commuternut; unheroically driven by expediency, disappointment, fear, anxiety, precognizance of death, mortality, entrophy, etc. Few are the Homo Sapiens, the heroes of the epic sojourn that was the birthright and life, so little realized by so few, of everyman.

So, freedom is a desease that will conquer the world, a world conquered by the metamorphosis of Homo Sapiens into Homo Economicus.

Ed

Shooshie’s brilliant comment:

The problem with mankind is that man is a pack animal, with pack animal instincts. The invention of writing gave man an opinion, and suddenly he decided that he was not like the others in the pack. History has been the play between individual dissociating from the pack when he’s got food, and trying to rejoin it when he doesn’t. Government has been the act of the pack trying to get the individual to share his food, while trying to promote his independence when he’s got no food.That behavior promises to be around for a long time.

Shooshie

Ed

Americans only process strong identities, and a guy with a pickup truck would shout to America, “I DO things – I fish, I take my kids RTVing, I load up with cases of Cab for the cellar – I’m a simple guy but I’m not dumb. Au contraire, keeping it simple is how I built a multi-billion-dollar empire – I DO things. I can fix this.”

Unfortunately, Democrats just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, to an America that processes ‘do’ and not ‘think.’ Kerry talked about his war hero history to an America that doesn’t process history either. Luckily for GW, that was a bigger faux pas than Bush’s regular SNAFUs. But GW stays on track with what Americans want to hear. He might be vague and confused and a screwup, but he always promises to DO something, his way, no matter what. What exactly, doesn’t matter – He singlemindedly plugs away at “DOIN” this thang, and that processes. ‘His way or the highway’ certainly is offensive to many, but it’s very American and mythologic, especially in a contrived state of war.

Of course, there’s cracks, and stuff’s wearing thin (to the tune of historical debt and deficit by the “cut spending” blow smoke up your ass administration, Wiretapping/BigBrother will set you free, $284B in Iraq [as opposed to $150B estimate] and counting, lots of dead, burnt bodies, “nation building”, Halliburton, oil, WMD, etc), but it will be interesting.

If it’s not “tax and spend” Democrats, it’s “cut and spend” Republicans like crazed teenagers on a buying spree with Mommy and Daddy’s credit cards.

Ouch,

Ed

Americans “Do” things. We “do.” It’s our DNA, our history, our mythology. It’s what we “do.” We’re vital. We do things. We don’t screw around with impotent thinking. We don’t need to look before we leap – That’s for jack-offs that don’t get anything done. That’s what effete Europeans do, think, think, think, and all the while genocide happens in Serbville, and nothing happens, etc, etc. We get stuff done. We won world wars. We built the greatest industrial nation the world has known. We built Hollywood!!! We help our neighbors. We’re the good guys. We’re the great guys. You can do anything, be anything – Just do it.

“Just Do It” and live the mojo. Be the mojo.

Yeah, it’s just really a terrific fit, too, with the AMERICAN SENSE OF IDENTITY.