Where are we now?

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , , , ,

It’s September 11, and I’m mad.
I’m not mad at the government for not finding Osama Bin Laden. The government sent him running. He’s weaker today than he was a year ago. I can be patient about the day he finally gets sent to the universe’s highest court.

I’m not even certain that I’m mad at Bin Laden. One of my college professors said you can’t get mad at a dog for barking. That’s what dogs do. Can I get mad at a raving lunatic with money and a bunch of guns and no guts for brainwashing some of his henchmen and making them hijack some airplanes on suicide missions? Just as dogs bark, that’s what raving lunatics with money and a bunch of guns and no guts do.

But given the opportunity, I’d still shoot him. Nothing personal. It’s my duty to my country. Raving lunatics with money and a bunch of guns and no guts brainwash henchmen into hijacking planes and slamming them into buildings. Patriotic Americans protect their fellow countrymen against enemies of the state.

No, what I’m mad about is the headline I read this morning that said church activity is back down to its pre-9/11/01 levels.

Osama Bin Laden hit a really easy pop-up to Christianity. And we fumbled it, let it squirt out of our glove. And then we didn’t even bother to run after the ball afterward and catch him off guard.

“This is not what the beautiful religion of Islam is about,” some said after 9/11. Here’s what the beautiful religion of Islam is all about: Do a bunch of deeds. When you die, Allah might let you into heaven. There is no assurrance. No security. You live your life, doing deeds, hoping it’s going to be enough.

Christianity can be summed up in two verses:

God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him will never die, but have eternal life. –John 3:16

I write these words to you who have believed in Him so that you may know that you have eternal life. –1 John 5:13

It’s not about deeds because it’s not about you. Believe in Jesus Christ, then let Him work in you. Deeds follow. But the deeds don’t get you into heaven–the deeds are just confirmation that you’re going to heaven. You’re saved before you’ve done your first good deed. Remember the story of the crucifixion? The thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom. And Jesus said, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.” How many good deeds do you think that thief did between the time he said that and the time he died? He didn’t exactly have the ability, did he?

Christianity offers all the beauty of Islam, and then some.

After Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani invited speakers from all faiths to attend a community prayer event at Yankee Stadium. A number of Christian speakers showed up. None of them mentioned Jesus. I guess they didn’t want to offend anyone. But without Jesus, Christianity is just another religion. Why would anyone want to have anything to do with it? I wouldn’t.

Well, actually one of the speakers did mention Jesus. His name was Dr. David Benke, a Lutheran pastor from New York City who also serves as president of the Atlantic District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Dr. Benke’s reward for doing the right thing–offering comfort and support to the grieving people around him who desperately needed it, and not just offering any comfort and support, but the very best comfort and support this world has ever had to offer in the form of the Gospel of Jesus Christ–was to be brought up on charges of unionism. Unionism is a fancy Christianese word that means watering down Christianity and making all religions look equal.

LCMS has been fighting amongst itself ever since. On one hand, you have evangelical-minded people like Dr. Benke and LCMS president Dr. Jerry Kieschnick who have dedicated their careers and their lives to reaching as many people as possible with the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. On the other hand, you have so-called “Confessional” Lutherans who talk mostly about something called “doctrinal purity.”

“Doctrine” is Christianese that can be roughly translated into “what you believe.” Confessionals like to use a lot of Christianese language. I have no idea why. And to be honest, if I were to take what my evangelical-minded pastor believes, write it down, and put it in a hat along with what Confessionals like LCMS First Vice President Daniel Preus and LCMS Second Vice President Wallace Schultz believe, you and I wouldn’t know the difference.

Now, maybe evangelical-minded Lutherans are more lax about what they require someone to believe. If you’re right about John 3:16 and understand that what Jesus did is the only reason you can go to heaven (and for that matter, the only reason you have any value whatsoever), you’re going to heaven. And an evangelical-minded person is more interested in getting as many people as possible right about that point than about making sure a smaller number of people believe the right thing about everything.

Yes, we have different priorities.

But I don’t think confessional Lutheranism is about doctrinal purity. It’s more about control. These are the hymns you may sing. This is what your church service is going to look like on any given day. These are the topics you are going to preach about each Sunday for the next year.

Unfortunately, you cannot anticipate the needs of the people around you months and years in advance. Different people in different places at different times have different needs.

The greatest treasure of Lutheranism is not that great hymnal we have. You can tell because it doesn’t seem like anyone can agree which of our many hymnals is the great hymnal we have.

The greatest treasure of Lutheranism is the greatest treasure of Christianity: The teaching that God wanted to save you in order to spend eternity with you, so He did anything and everything it would take to make that happen, in the form of sending Jesus Christ to come show us how to live, then die for us and rise again. That resurrection, and the deeds we do once we start to believe in it, are our 100%, iron-clad, unshakable assurrance that we are going to heaven.

In Christianese, that’s salvation and grace.

After Sept. 11, that was the message the confused masses needed to hear. A few churches heard the call and ran with it. Others responded to it the way they respond to everything: With a confusing message only a committed, longtime Christian would understand.

But the committed, longtime Christian was the last person who needed that. Jesus did not come for the healthy.

One man dared to stand up and challenge the convention of being a doctor for the healthy. Dr. David Benke accepted the invitation and preached the gospel to all who would listen at Yankee Stadium. He is now standing trial in his denomination for that dastardly deed. LCMS has now been called the Taliban of American Christendom in the press. Is this what we want to be known for?

Our willingness to compromise the Gospel, our unwillingness to meet the needs of the unchurched, and our eagerness to throw bricks at one another are the reasons why Christianity in this country grew for a short while after Sept. 11, then dropped back to its previous levels. Meanwhile, Islam grew.

A large number of LCMS churches are doing special services today, in rememberance of the events of a year ago. Many of them promise to be beautiful services, with high liturgy and beautiful hymns. I won’t be going.

One LCMS church is hosting an inter-denominational prayer gathering, where large numbers of Christians with gather and, for a day, put their differences aside and pray for this country and for American Christendom.

There might be some non-believers there, wondering about what this Christianity thing is and what it means, and asking some really hard questions. I hope so, at least. I want to talk to them.

That church might be disciplined for allowing such an event to take place on its grounds. I might be disciplined for taking part in it.

If that happens, I’ll take comfort in 1 Peter 4:19, as I hope Dr. Benke and Dr. Kieschnick do:

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.

I’m in debt

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , ,

It’s official. I’m a debtholder.
And a homeowner.

And after the brouhaha around my downpayment, I understand why my mom’s whole side of the family hates banks. It’s my money! Not yours! Gimme!

So here’s what I learned:

1. Banks don’t talk to each other. That’s fraternizing with the enemy.

2. In this age of computer automation, it can–and will–still take days for a check to clear. Give your brain-dead financial institution a week to sort it out. Don’t count on them getting into the 20th century before your closing date. (Yes, I am aware that it’s now the 21st century.)

3. Try to keep your money in the same institution as your family members, just in case they need to quickly loan you what you put in limbo by writing a check (ha ha!). You know that computer system it refuses to use to quickly transfer money to and from other banks? It will use it to at least check account balances and verify that the money you say is there really is there.

4. Keep as little of your money as possible in banks. My stockbroker/money manager/whatever-you-want-to-call-him gets money to me faster than my banks do. And he beats the tar out of the interest rates a bank pays.

5. You say it’s your money? Possession’s 9/10 of the law, pal.

But anyway, that’s over. I signed my name a few dozen times and around 8 pm I got a key. I drove over. I had a few things with me.

My mom wanted to know what the first thing I’d bring in was. Well, I figure you’ve got two hands. So, since I’m the greatest writer who ever lived, I brought a bronzed copy of my book, Optimizing Windows, and the Nov. 1991 issue of Compute, which contained the first published article I got paid for.

Actually, several of my friends are under orders to shoot to kill if I ever do anything like that. And, for the record, the greatest writer who ever lived was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

So what’d I really bring in?

In one hand I brought in a pewter cross I received on March 18, 1999, the day my membership became official at my current church. (But its main significance is it’s the only wall-hanging cross I have.) I hung it above the fireplace. In the other hand, I brought a framed copy of my dad’s senior picture. I set that on the mantle.

Then I brought in some old stuff. I brought in the sign that hung outside my grandfather’s office (“Dr. Ralph C. Farquhar Jr., Osteopath”), and I brought in a box. The contents of the box:

An apothecary that had belonged to my grandfather
A medical instrument that had belonged to my grandfather (whatever that thing’s called that he uses to look in your ears)
My great-grandfather’s microscope
Dad’s camera (a Minolta) and a couple of Kodak lenses
Dad’s wallet
A can of Farquhar’s Texas-Style BBQ Seasoning

I arranged those on the mantle as well. They look good there.

Unfortunately, since my dad was a radiologist, it’s hard to find anything that symbolizes what he did for a living. But soon I’ll be getting the OMT table that had belonged to Dr. Ralph and then to my dad. OMT is an osteopathic practice similar to what chiropractors do. Dad used to give OMT treatments to his friends after work in our basement. So the OMT table is going in the basement. Then, this house will be home.

Video editing on a shoestring

Dave Farquhar Video , , , , , , ,

When you go to a church like Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Dayton, Ohio, or St. John’s Lutheran Church in Ellisville, Mo., it’s easy to get overwhelmed with their video productions. They produce slick, professional, grabbing pieces that wouldn’t look out of place on broadcast TV.
Then you go look at their production studios, and feel overwhelmed. I know one of the computers St. John’s uses cost $10,000. That’s not counting the video decks and cameras. You can spend $50,000 to get the stuff you “need” to get serious about making movies.

I don’t have 50 grand and I don’t know anyone who does. If I were getting into this today, these are the things I would buy:

1. Computer. Get an IBM-compatible. All the critical apps for editing are available on PCs, and you can get a PC for next to nothing. Yes, you can edit on an iMac. I wouldn’t want to. At Faith Lutheran Church in Oakville, we edit on a P4 1.5 GHz. I can’t remember if it has 128 or 256 MB of RAM. It does have two 10K RPM SCSI drives. I suggest buying a PC with a gigahertz-plus CPU, DDR memory to be sure (yes, SDRAM is cheap, but speed of memory seems to be more important than quantity–you should be perfectly happy with 256 MB of DDR), and a couple of SCSI drives. Today’s IDE drives are fast enough for pure DV work, but you might not always have DV sources. Use some of the money you save by not buying a Mac to buy SCSI drives. A pair of 36-gig drives was sufficient to produce a 22-minute documentary with room to spare.

Hint: Get your SCSI drives at www.hypermicro.com. Fast delivery, good prices, great customer service. They don’t give me any freebies or any money and I have no affiliation with them. They just have the best prices on SCSI stuff I’ve found.

The budget varies. A $1,000 PC will suffice but you might want more power.

2. Pinnacle DV500. This card is very finicky, so go to www.pinnaclesys.com and look at their installation guides. Buy a motherboard or system they have a guide for. Follow their instructions precisely. I got the DV500 to work on a motherboard Pinnacle didn’t test, but it took me a week.

There are other boards from Matrox and Canopus. The boards look good on paper. I’m not familiar with them. If you compare them with a DV500 and their offerings look better, feel free to get one of them. I haven’t looked, because I was in the market a year ago and at the time the DV500 was the best. I don’t look now because I might be tempted to buy.

Whatever you get, make sure it comes with Adobe Premiere or Sonicfoundry Vegas Video at a minimum. Most boards throw in some titling software and other extras. You want them. Titling isn’t Premiere’s forte. Pinnacle’s titling app is so simple to use, it’s frightening. Remember, Premiere costs mosre on its own than these editing boards, and these boards accelerate some of Premiere’s functions.

I like Premiere but it’s what I leanred. Some people tell me Vegas is easier to learn initially.

The other thing these boards give you, besides acceleration of some video functions, is firewire ports and composite and S-Video inputs and outputs, which you’ll need at the very least for video preview, and for taking video input from analog sources.

Budget $500.

3. Monitors. A dual-head display isn’t a necessity but it’s nice if you can afford to do it. I use a 19-inch NEC Multisync (the model I have is discontinued), and Faith uses the same monitor. A pair of NEC or Mitsubishi monitors would be nice. Get a 19 and a 17 or two 17s if your budget is tight. But we survive just fine on single 19s. Budget at least $200.

A video monitor is a must because your video will look different on TV than it does on your SVGA monitors. A $70 13-inch TV from a local discount house will do fine as long as it has composite inputs, as most do today. I use an old Commodore 1702 monitor (the standard-issue monitor for the Commodore 64) and it’s fabulous, but those are in short supply today. A monitor with S-Video inputs would be nice, but I like to look at my video on lowest-common-denominator equipment. If the device has both types on inputs, hook them both up and check how your work looks both ways. Budget $99.

4. VCR. You’ll need one. The nicer the better, of course, but if all you can afford is a $60 discount house model or a hand-me-down, that’s fine. You’ll be asked for VHS copies of your work, and sometimes you’ll have to use VHS as a source. Budget $75.

5. Camera. I learned on JVC cameras so I’m partial to them. Digital-8 is cheaper, but MiniDV is the emerging standard. If you shop around, you can find a MiniDV camera for under $500, especially if you’re willing to buy a refurb. Nice extras are image stabilization and inputs for an external microphone. You can live without those, but it’s best if you can get them. And you definitely need a tripod. Get one with a fluid head for smooth motion. I bought the cheapest Bogan fluid-head tripod ($130 at a local camera shop) and love it. Budget $650.

6. Lights. Talk to a photographer. We haven’t bought any yet, and it shows.

Assuming you already have a suitable PC and monitor, you can get going for under $1,500. Later, you’ll want to add Adobe AfterEffects and a good sound editor, and more cameras, and more lights, and you’ll work your way towards 50 grand. But the most important thing is to have stories to tell. Tell great stories, and people will find money to fund your video work.

Problem children

Dave Farquhar Personal

Yep, I’ve been away. I’ve got a few problem children at work. Two of them are computers.
Yes, that means some of the problem children are human. Actually, they’re coworkers. I won’t get into that because if I do I’ll say a whole lot of things I’ll regret later.

I’ve got a problematic server that’s loaded down way too much–it’s the PDC and main file server for one of my clients. It’s also the DNS and the WINS server. And the print server. I know, I know. You don’t mix domain controllers and WINS. I didn’t set it up. I also know you don’t mix PDCs and file or print services. Like I said, I didn’t set it up. It’s been crashing and giving odd problems a lot lately. I’d like to bring up a BDC, promote it, then shut this machine down and bring up a file/print server by the same name and restore the shares from backup. If next week goes like this week did, I’ll probably be asked to do that.

I’ve also got an NT box running a really old version of Oracle. It’s crashed more today than it has in the previous three years. Right now my job is to put band-aids on it, and hope it makes it through the night.

So that’s why I haven’t been writing.

The truth about Butch and Eddie

Dave Farquhar net.culture

An Internet myth, propogated mostly by e-mail, of course, came to my attention recently. It’s a touching story, widely circulated. It’s even been reprinted in Navy newsletters and in newspapers.
It concerned the story of Ed “Butch” O’Hare.

If the name sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Butch O’Hare was one of the earliest heroes of World War II, and the Navy’s first ace. An ace, if you’re not familiar with aviation, is someone who shot down at least five enemy planes. But you probably know the name for another reason. We’ll get to that.

Pulled from his young wife and infant daughter at age 28 on the day after Pearl Harbor, O’Hare found himself flying Grumman Wildcats off of aircraft carriers, a real-life “Top Gun” against the Japanese. He even looked the part.

On February 20, 1942, O’Hare was stationed on the aircraft carrier Lexington, on a dangerous mission trying to penetrate enemy waters. A Japanese spyplane spotted the carrier and radioed back before U.S. fire could shoot it down. Soon, nine Japanese bombers were on their way. Six Grumman Wildcats took off, in a desperate effort to save the carrier.

Flying in a V formation, only two of the Wildcats were in position to get to the bombers. Those two planes happened to be O’Hare and his wingman. Two against nine. To make matters worse, O’Hare’s wingman’s guns jammed. He turned away, leaving O’Hare to take on the nine bombers alone. He dove into the bombers at full speed and took aim at the last bomber in the formation, tearing its engine off with a burst of machine gun fire. Playing to his strengths as a marksman and his plane’s ability to take lots of bullets and stay in the air (about the only redeeming quality the Wildcat had), he flew within 20-30 yards of the enemy planes and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition. He downed five of the nine bombers and damaged several others. O’Hare’s bravery bought the rest of his formation some time, and they came in and shot down three more of the bombers. The Japanese managed to drop a few bombs, but none of them hit their target.

The real story isn’t quite how the e-mail forward tells it, but O’Hare did save his ship. This was important, seeing as Pearl Harbor was not even two and a half months before. We weren’t exactly overflowing with ships. For his heroics, he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and awarded the highest decoration of this country, the Congressional Medal of Honor. He also got a little braise from FDR, who called O’Hare’s actions “one of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation.”

In 1943, O’Hare was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Gold Star, some of the Navy’s highest honors, for further heroics in combat.

In Nov. 1943, O’Hare volunteered to participate in a risky night mission. O’Hare and another pilot would fly Grumman Hellcats in formation behind a radar-equipped Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber. The Avenger would spot the enemy bombers and lead them to them, then the pilots would pick off the planes by following their exhaust.

It didn’t go as planned. The Avenger spotted two Japanese Betty bombers and somehow shot them down. Continuing for more than an hour, they looked for more. Suddenly the Avenger spotted a bomber behind the two Hellcats. The Avenger’s rear gunner fired. Moments later, O’Hare failed to respond on his radio.

No one knows whether the Avenger’s target was actually O’Hare’s Hellcat, or whether the Japanese bomber got lucky and shot O’Hare down, or whether O’Hare lost control of his plane taking evasive action. He was never seen again. A year later, O’Hare was officially declared dead.

O’Hare’s home town decided to reward his war heroics. But O’Hare wasn’t from just any town. O’Hare grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Chicago had an airport named Orchard Field. The editor of the Chicago Tribune led a movement to rename the airport, which ended in success in 1949. Orchard Field is now known as O’Hare International Airport. You’ve probably heard of it.

—

Eddie was a seedy character. He was a lawyer and a businessman. His biggest client and business partner was a used furniture dealer named Al Capone. Of course, Capone was into more than just furniture. Eddie ran Capone’s track and kept him out of trouble, successfully.

Eddie’s one love in life was his son and his two daughters.

The e-mail says Eddie had a change of heart and wanted to give his son an example. That’s hard to say, because by the time Eddie had his supposed change of heart, his little boy was 18. He graduated from Western Military Academy in 1932. In 1933, Eddie’s son went on to the US Naval Academy.

But for one reason or another, Eddie fessed up and told the Feds a few things. A few things about Al Capone, in fact. Some speculate he did it in order to get his son into the Naval Academy.

Whatever his motivation, within a few years Eddie’s son was a sailor in the Navy and Al Capone was in jail for income tax evasion. Did Eddie know he’d pay with his life? Doubtful. Eddie had a new girlfriend and was going to marry her as soon as they found a priest who’d do the ceremony.

In Nov. 1939, Eddie was gunned down by Capone’s men, gangland-style.

Supposedly, Eddie was carrying this following poem, clipped from a magazine, in his pocket when he died:

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.

Eddie’s son came home for the funeral, and afterward, he returned to Pensacola, where he had been learning how to fly.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Eddie’s son was Butch O’Hare.

—

The sad thing about this e-mail is that the real story is so much better.

Oh yeah, and even though Butch O’Hare grew up on Chicago’s South Side, Eddie O’Hare was from St. Louis and got his start here, and Butch O’Hare was born here.

Feeling cynical

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , ,

I went out looking for a fridge and washer/dryer.
I came home with the new Aimee Mann CD and Office Space on DVD.

Yeah, I’m feeling really cynical. Yeah, something happened at work Friday. No, I’m not at liberty to talk about it (but Charlie knows because he was in on the project too).

Aimee Mann’s Lost in Space is a very typical Aimee Mann record. She plays half a dozen different instruments and she’s as cynical as usual, though she’s lost the potty mouth. I went looking for this record’s “I Should Have Known”–the tune that reaches out and grabs your consciousness and won’t let go of it–but didn’t find it. This one will have to grow on me, like most of her records.

And Office Space… Well, I started building up a Windows box with my DVD drive out of some spare parts, and ran into a lot of problems. First, my junk Cirrus Logic-based AGP video card didn’t support DirectX, which my DVD app needed for playback. So I pulled it and replaced it with my old STB Velocity 128, which had nVidia’s first chipset. At the time, it was the fastest video card I’d ever seen. Seems really slow now. Well, that card caused any OS I tried to install to hang. I guess it’s the end of the road for that card. A shame, really.

So I figured I’d install Debian and see if I could figure out how to make it play DVDs. The Velocity 128 worked a lot longer in Linux than it did in Windows, but eventually it kicked into a corrupted text display similar to what I got in Windows. So I couldn’t just blame Windows. Rats. So the Cirrus Logic–definitely the Neifi Perez of video cards–came off the bench.

I couldn’t get any of the rogue DVD software for Debian to work, so I ended up pulling the S3 Savage4 card out of one of my working systems to put in there, since it supports DirectX. I need to order a couple of ATI Radeons from Newegg.com to replace some of these junk cards I’ve got. They’re solid and cheap–$42 delivered.

Windows 2000 ran fine with the S3 in it.

I think this is God’s way of telling me I’m a better journalist than computer tech at this point.

Remember your first car?

Dave Farquhar Personal

The other night, the talk turned to first cars. And I sure remember mine.
“You miss it?”

No hesitation. “Oh yeah.”

I don’t remember writing any poetry about girls when I was in high school, but I remember writing a poem about my ’71 Plymouth Duster. You bet I miss it.

My mom and sister hated it. It was that gold color that was popular in the ’70s that didn’t take to oxidation very well, so by the time 1990 rolled around, it looked a lot less gold and a lot more like… something else. I saw beyond that, into this car’s soul. And believe me, it had soul.

It had manual brakes and manual steering. I hated power brakes and steering. With manual brakes and steering, I felt more in control. Plus it meant I got a workout driving to school. Real cars make you buff when you drive them.

Air conditioning? Yeah, it had that 2-55 kind. Two windows down, 55 miles per hour on I-255.

It had a Slant-6 in it. A Slant-6 is the perfect engine for a 16-year-old because it usually didn’t come off the line very quickly and it didn’t have a high top speed. That Duster’s top speed was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 MPH. Slant-6s were known for being good truck engines that didn’t break, not high performers. The classic Mopar muscle cars people remember had other engines in them.

But I still remember a Chevelle pulling up to me at a stoplight one day at the intersection of Gravois and I-270. He looked over at me, grinned, nodded, and revved his engine. I shot him a “whatever” look. The light turned green. He gunned it. I gunned it. And blew him away. I looked back and saw him pounding his steering wheel. I’ll bet money he had a lighter car, and we both knew he had the bigger engine. My Slant-6 just wanted to surprise me that day, I guess.

But that was its last hurrah. I didn’t have the Duster very long. It reached a point where it wouldn’t idle right so it was dying at stoplights and it developed steering problems to go along with it. The ’81 Plymouth Reliant that replaced it didn’t have half the character the Duster did. It may have replaced the Duster in my driveway, but it never replaced it in my heart, soul, or mind.

If I were ever out driving around and spotted a Duster for sale, I’d probably stop and buy it. You know, for old time’s sake.

What was your first car?

Jon, God just did something for me

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I just found out that one of my best friends was in a terrible accident on Wednesday. Traffic stopped on the Interstate for no good reason, like it does all too often. So they stopped. Jon was talking on the phone in the passenger seat when he heard this big screech. A semi plowed into them, sent them hurtling up into the air. They came back down, hit the back of the semi in front of them, and landed on the driver’s side. As they were in the air, Jon said, “God, don’t let us die.” He’s got a wife and a seven-month-old daughter. Bill, the driver, isn’t a believer. Well, Jon looked over, expecting to see Bill dead. He was conscious. His hand was really messed up, but he was coherent. Bill said, “Jon, get me the h— out of here.” So Jon opened the passenger-side door, pulled Bill out of the seat, picked him up, and pushed him up out the door. By then a couple of people who happened to be paramedics from New Jersey had pulled over and started to help Bill. Jon walked away with just a couple of scrapes and bruises.
A day or two later, Bill said to Jon, “You know I’m not a religious man. But God just did something for me.”

Will today ruin baseball?

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

Well, it’s strike day. I haven’t talked about it. I was hoping if I ignored it, it would go away. That strategy rarely works, but there’s always a first time.
Let’s face it: This is the Crybaby Billionaire Boys’ Club vs. the Crybaby Millionaire Boys’ Club.

Players complain about how they used to be treated as slaves. Well, they aren’t anymore. The league minimum–the minimum is more than some doctors make. Baseball players work nine months out of the year, counting spring training. They have to travel a lot, but they don’t have to work full 8-hour days, usually. When they do work, they do things I do for fun (and usually have to pay to do).

Yes, in the 1960s, there was a problem. Those problems have been solved for a very long time. Players’ greatest fears are that their salaries won’t necessarily double at the same rate they did before. Well, boo-hoo. Today a decent utility infielder makes what George Brett made at his peak, and George Brett isn’t hurting.

Now, the players talk down about the fans. Even Neifi Perez talks down to the fans. Neifi Perez! The worst everyday player in the majors. Mr. .257 on-base-percentage. Mr. Where-have-you-gone-Donnie-Sadler?, for crying out loud! “They’re just fans,” Neifi says. “What do they know?”

Who cares what the fans know? (What I know is that Felix Martinez isn’t the worst shortstop in Royals history anymore.) They pay your salary. Though it’s certain Perez won’t be back in Kansas City next year, and questionable whether he’ll be playing baseball at all. Serves him right. He’s a lousy player and a jerk. Kansas City deserves better. For that matter, Baghdad deserves better.

I don’t have any sympathy for the players.

The owners complain about competitive imbalance and salaries rising too quickly. The problems are largely their own making, but at least most of them recognize there is a problem and are trying to solve it. As recently as ten years ago, there was no way of knowing who was going to be a contender. You could take a good guess, but several teams would always surprise you. Is anyone really surprised the Yankees and the Braves are the teams to beat this year?

Now Oakland and Minnesota have proven you can create a winner on a budget. They spend smart. That’s good. Not every small or medium-market team spends smart. But when New York can spend five times what a small-market team spends, there’s a problem. Oakland lost Jason Giambi to the Yankees; in a few years they won’t be able to afford to keep both Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada either. Who cares about the players or the owners–that’s unfair to the fans.

Most of the owners are on the same page. Even Tom Hicks, who can’t seem to spend his way out of last place but not for lack of trying, wants a luxury tax and revenue sharing. He sees the need for rules to follow. George Steinbrenner won’t be happy until every team but the Yankees is bankrupt and the second-best team in baseball is the Columbus Clippers, the Yankees’ AAA affiliate. But he’s in the minority.

The owners are being the more reasonable of the two. That feels weird to say. Isn’t that kind of like saying Ayatollah Khomeini was reasonable about something?

A lot of people are saying if there’s a strike, they won’t be back. Some of them will make good on that promise. I know I’ll be back. Baseball’s broken. I see this strike like a car crash to an alcoholic. You don’t wish the car crash on anybody, but if the car crash leads to the person finally seeing the problem and doing something about it, then the car crash can do some good. With some people, it takes a car crash. But with some people, even a car crash isn’t enough.

And the players and owners are just like that drunk behind the wheel–not giving a rip who gets hurt as a result of their irresponsible actions. Who cares about the people who make their living selling concessions at the ballpark? Not the players and owners. That’s an established fact.

I’ll be mad if they can’t come to an agreement before the deadline. But I’ll be madder if the strike doesn’t accomplish anything. There’s only one thing worse than a drunk, and that’s an incurable drunk.

I know what we need. A few good men who love baseball–who love baseball more than money–need to step up to the plate and do the right thing. And no, I don’t really care if that happens tomorrow, or if it happens during a lockout in spring training while Jason Grimsley and Johnny Damon and Todd Zeile and Steve Kline sit at home.

I think it might be refreshing to watch a bunch of guys who’ve never touched steroids, who are actually glad to be getting paid to do what we used to do at recess, and who play every inning like it’s the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series, don’t you?

But there are no promises. So we wait. And I’m fully aware that if the worst happens, I might be the only baseball fan left.

That’s OK by me. I’m a Kansas City Royals fan. I’m used to being alone.

Replacing my IDE CD-ROM with a SCSI CD-ROM

Dave Farquhar Linux ,

I pulled the IDE CD-ROM drive out of my main Linux box today and replaced it with a SCSI model, mostly because I like to keep a spare IDE CD-ROM drive loose and I had a couple of Toshiba 4X CD-ROM drives in my closet. I don’t use the CD-ROM drive in my Linux box very much, so a 4X is fine. Plus, making my Linux box into an all-SCSI system means I can compile out all the IDE support in my kernel if I ever feel ambitious.
I can never remember how to tell Linux I’ve swapped drives though. I’ve had to do this a number of times because not all my SCSI cards support bootable CDs, but all of my systems can boot off an IDE CD-ROM drive, so all too often I do my Linux install with an IDE drive.

The trick is to remember that SCSI CD-ROM devices are named srx, where x is a number. So when I installed a single SCSI CD-ROM, it became sr0.

So I went into /etc/fstab and found a line that looked like this:

/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noauto 0 0

As far as I can tell, /dev/cdrom is a special device Debian creates during installation. I changed it to this:

/dev/sr0 /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noauto 0 0

Now I can mount a cdrom from a command line with this command:

mount /cdrom