Anything for a distraction…

Dave Farquhar General ,

Politics. A local political activist sent me an editorial slamming the Sierra Club for backing down on its anti-Bush campaign during the war. The Sierra Club is arguing that being perceived as anti-patriotic/anti-American hurts its cause more in the long run than suspending for a while. The author takes them to task for not standing by their principles; I think it’s a wise move. They can sling all the mud they want after the fact without harming their reputation, and they’ll accomplish at least as much, if not more.
I often disagree with liberals, but I don’t think they’re idiots. On the other hand, I usually agree with conservative ideas, but I grow tired of seeing conservatives shoot themselves in the foot constantly.

Changes. My Linux box has been my main workstation for about three days now. Konqueror is a more than competent Web browser with some really nice features; KWord turns out to be an awfully nice word processor; it doesn’t do everything Word does but it stays out of my way, and it provides just about all of the functionality that Final Copy, my preferred Amiga word processor, gave me. And KWord’s desktop publishing capabilities put Word to shame. I suspect it’s close to being the equal of Publisher for light DTP work. I wish it had a word count feature and a means of handling footnotes and/or endnotes, but those aren’t features I use constantly. (I can always save the document as plain text and then run it through the standard Unix utility wc; which probably means word count would be frighteningly easy for someone who knew what he was doing to just flat-out implement–output the file in plain-text to a temporary file, pump it through wc, then pop up the output in a dialog box–but C++ scares me.

For mail, I’ve been using Sylpheed, a fast and lightweight client. It’s not feature filled, but it does what I need a mail client to do, and, again, it stays out of my way.

Overheard. “Women are always right, which makes for an interesting problem when two women disagree. So we each just walked away and didn’t say anything.”

I laughed.

“You do know the woman is always right, don’t you?”

“I learned that the hard way. Several years ago.”

(Later in the conversation. Much later.)

“Maybe I’m not quite as brilliant as I think I am.”

“That’s okay, you can keep on thinking you’re brilliant if you want.”

“I can? Cool! Can I have that in writing, so I can take it to work and frame it and hang it in my cubicle?”

“Only if you remember that the woman is always right.”

I expect her to have that sheet of paper written out the next time I see her. And you better believe I’ll be hanging that up if I get it.

The 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s: More alike than different

Dave Farquhar Society , ,

Optimism. In an effort to answer a different question, I found myself mapping out the significant news headlines for the last 40 years, and suddenly I understood something.
The 1960s were a decade of activism, international crisis, assasination, racial tension, and political scandal.

The 1970s were a decade of international crisis, massacre, racial tension, and political scandal.

The 1980s were a decade of international crisis, assasination, racial tension, and political scandal.

The 1990s were a decade of international crisis, massacre, racial tension, and political scandal.

I’m 26, part of a generation that’s notorious for being cynical. I wasn’t around in the 60s; the oldest of my peer group watched helplessly; unable to do anything about it or even understand what was happening in a lot of cases. The first of my peer group started turning 20 in the 80s. It wasn’t until the 90s that we were really old enough to have any real power, to make any real change. Few of us showed any interest, and some people wondered why.

I’d never really thought about it before, but we can look back at the last 40 years, see people trying to make changes, and note that for all the rhetoric that was being thrown around in the 60s, if anything, things are worse today than they were in the post-war era.

So that’s why we’re cynical and apathetic. Although, after this week, apparently an awful lot of us are going down to the recruiting office and asking if we can sign up to go kick some butt…

Drag racing!

Dave Farquhar General

My friend Sean is getting married. His fiancee, Brenna (it annoys her when you call her “Brenda,” but it’s funny, she reminds me of another cool person I know named Brenda) has already taken over.
I was over at Sean’s last night when he showed me. It was Sean, our buddies Jon and Wayne, and me, standing in Sean’s bedroom, doing our best to ignore the girly lavender curtains. I think the color’s called lavender. Whatever it is, it’s a girly shade of light purple.

Jon’s married, so Jon understands. I’m not married, or engaged, or even seeing anyone at the moment, so I haven’t had to cave yet on such things, but I know my day will come. Still, whenever I see it happen, a little piece of me feels bad.

So I suggested Sean needed something manly for his bedroom. Get a lawnmower engine, or a motorcycle engine, and start rebuilding it in there. Brenna shot me a dirty look. Sean liked the idea. So after we talked about it in the kitchen with the women around, we went back in and sketched it all out.

Sean actually has more than enough room in the corner for a big-block V8 on an engine mount. Jon and I started tossing ideas around. A big, rolling Craftsman toolbox where his dresser is now, a nail where he can hang his oily apron (he’ll wear an apron while working on the engine so that if Brenna comes over, he can just wipe his hands on the apron and go straight to the kitchen to make her something to eat), and…

“Right up there, over the bed, you can put a [turning to the other room and raising his voice] DRAG RACING poster,” Jon said.

Jon and Bethany are pregnant. Well, actually, Bethany’s pregnant. Jon, being Bethany’s husband, is just responsible. Whenever people ask what the theme of the baby room is going to be, Jon deadpans, “Drag racing.” Keep in mind they don’t know the baby’s gender yet. I can tell Jon’s rooting for a son, so he’ll have someone to play with again (most men never really grow up, you know).

Then we talked about interior decorating theory. Jon used to use a tire as a coffee table. No, this wasn’t a worn-out tire from a Honda; it was a racing slick. Jon and a friend drove up to a Trans-Am race in Iowa when he was in college, and someone said something about how you can go buy a tire for something like three bucks. Jon’s eyes got huge. “No WAY!” So they walked over to this fenced-off area, where a guy asked if he can help them. Jon asked if it was true they could buy a tire. The guy said sure. Jon asked how much. “Three bucks. What size do you want?” Jon said what any true male would say. “I want the biggest tire you’ve got!”

Later on, Jon also acquired a tire off one of Bill Elliott’s cars.

Years later, when Jon was dating Bethany, he put the tires away. (It was probably the night of their first date that he put them away. At least I hope so.) And one day, Bethany was helping Jon move, along with some of his other friends. Jon went down to the basement with one of his friends, got a twinkle in his eye, and said, “Watch this.”

He put a tire under each arm, then waltzed upstairs, right past Bethany, without a word, and put the tires in the back of the truck. Then he walked back in the house and walked past the bemused Bethany.

“Wha-What were those two black things?” Bethany asked.

“Tires,” Jon said matter-of-factly.

They talked about the tires later. Jon eventually gave the Bill Elliott tire to a coworker. But after driving the Trans-Am tire all the way back from Iowa in a Honda Civic (and there isn’t enough room in a Honda Civic for Jon’s 6’2″ frame, let alone Jon, a friend, a cooler, and two racing slicks), Jon swears up and down that he’s keeping that tire forever.

I know what room it would look great in, even though it’s not really a drag racing tire.

Day Three after everything changed

Dave Farquhar Society , , ,

On Day One, I reverted into news junkie mode. What I read, of course, sickened me. I undoubtedly have a few former classmates in New York, but no one I’ve seen or talked to in the last five years. Still, it wasn’t much consolation. They’re still my people.
When my dad died, I lost myself in whatever I could find around me. These days, when I miss my dad, I lose myself in work. I took a look around me, realized there was a lot of work that needed to be done, and did my best to lose myself in it. I didn’t get much done, and it wasn’t all my best work, but it was something.

I got home and realized it was the last place I wanted to be. I went to church.

When I got home, my mom had called. It was late, but I called her.

On Day Two, I got more information and more work done. It wasn’t a normal day, but I don’t feel the least bit guilty about the day’s productivity. Yeah, the world’s reaction to the previous day’s events made me weepy, and I talked to a friend from church who said he was ready to find out where to go sign up to kick some butt and I agreed with him.

I got home and realized it was the last place I wanted to be. I went to church.

Day Three was similar. People were smiling more–the previous couple of days made me wonder if I actually worked at a funeral home–and there was a lot to do. At the end of the day, there was more. So I stayed late and got stuff done.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I was thinking about going to church, and I knew my chances of making it on time were slim if I stopped. I stopped anyway, and I didn’t just grab a few things. I stocked up.

The checker asked how I was. I told her I was good and asked how she was. She said she was good. She called her son yesterday. He lives in New York. He had no reason to be anywhere near the disaster, but she had to be sure. She asked if I’d heard about the five firefighters rescued in an SUV. I told her I had. She said she just had to hear some good news from New York. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the latest on that, that the report had been mistaken. So I asked her if she’d heard about the guy who was on the 82nd floor when one of the buildings collapsed and survived. Her eyes widened. I said that guy must have been surrounded by a whole legion of angels. No doubt, she said. I swiped my debit card and started bagging my groceries. I told her his only injuries were two broken legs. She smiled and started checking out the lady behind me.

As I loaded my groceries into my cart, the cashier turned back my direction.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

And at that moment, I felt a whole lot better about being a human being.

Head for the forums…

Dave Farquhar General

I’m not posting for Thursday. If you want to talk about what’s happened the last couple of days, you can go here. I’ve set up a thread in my forums for just those purposes. I figure since that’s what all the morning radio shows are doing, probably people want to talk about it here too. If you find any good links, feel free to share them. I know a bunch of us are news junkies, so we’ll probably appreciate a new fix.
Registration’s quick and easy (required only to keep spammers out). You don’t have to put in a valid e-mail address–just type something–and you can use pseudonyms, or just your first name, if you want.

Applying Ezekiel to 9/11

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , ,

I was reading Generations, a book that tries to predict the future by looking at history’s cycles, just last week, reading about how certain generations have reacted in the past to crises–because, like it or not, every generation faces one, if not several–and wondering.
Yesterday morning, I was minding my own business, driving to work, noticing that traffic was annoyingly heavy on I-270 and mad at myself for not being in the far right lane where I can make the snap decision to exit onto Tesson Ferry and wind myself back to work over back roads. It seemed like a typical, ordinary day in St. Louis. The only thing unusual about it was that the sky was actually blue, rather than Missouri Gray. Then the DJs on the radio station started acting really weird after traffic. Something was going on in New York. I gathered that much. None of them seemed very eager to talk about it.

The details were sketchy. A plane hit the World Trade Center. They were trying to evacuate the building. The only detail was that it was a twin-engined plane. That could be anything–it could be a relatively small civilian plane, a cargo plane like a Beech 18, or an airliner. They didn’t seem to know. Then they started talking about baseball. I flipped the station. More details came in.

As I pulled into the parking lot at work, they started talking about another plane.

You already know the rest. My day at work was probably just like yours. We didn’t get anything done, we got our news accounts however we could; the big boss got on the intercom and briefed us on the situation (I already knew those details and a few more–I had better sources than he had) and he said a prayer (maybe your boss didn’t) and he told us he knew we were distracted because he was distracted, just get done what absolutely has to get done, and pray a lot. Actually I think he said we could pray constantly if we wanted. My big boss is cool like that.

He didn’t mention this, but as all of this was unfurling, I thought of Ezekiel 22. The story of Ezekiel 22 basically goes like this. God’s chosen nation had gone astray. (Sound familiar?) God went looking for a few men who would turn from their wicked ways and stand in the gap, providing leadership and praying for their nation. (Sound familiar?) If someone would stand in the gap, the nation wouldn’t be destroyed. (Sound familiar?)

No one stood in the gap.

I hope that part doesn’t sound familiar.

Then I recalled that when Abraham was having a little chat with God about a couple of towns that were situated where the Dead Sea is now, Abraham asked God if he would spare Sodom and Gommorrah if he could find a small number of righteous people there. God said yes. Then Abraham started nickeling and dimeing God down, until Abraham talked him down to 10. “What about 10? Will you spare those cities if I can find 10 righteous people there?” And God said yes, He would spare those cities for the sake of 10 righteous people.

Now, I’m pretty sure that Abraham could have talked God down to three–his brother-in-law Lot and his two daughters. But Abraham wasn’t that bold.

Late in the afternoon, one of the elders from my church called and asked if I knew about our prayer service that night. I’d heard. He asked if I’d be there. I said of course. I told him about those two passages. Then I pointed out that there would be more than 10 people there. We needed to stand in the gap.

Incidentally, there were closer to 800 people there. And a large percentage of them were under 30. So I have an idea now how my generation reacts to a crisis, and I’m glad to say I’m impressed.

And that’s why I don’t really know what to say now. Not because I’m impressed, but because I was too busy standing in the gap. And no, I’m not sorry. And no, I don’t really give a rip how many people I’ve just offended. Some of you won’t be back. Others of you will try to sabotage this site, because some of you have tried in the past when I’ve used the G-word for something other than swearing. But I can live with that.

Oh yeah. Jesus loves you.

Yes, I know there are many who will say that praying doesn’t do any good, it won’t make our problems go away, God is dead and no one cares and if there is a hell I’ll see you there and more garbage like that.

But I’m gonna go back to that stand in the gap thing for a minute, just in case I haven’t annoyed you enough with it yet. There’s no sin in the United States of America? I can’t stand to turn on the blasted tube because that’s all that it fills my living room with. The only useful purpose my TV serves is to give me something to set my stereo on. And since I know God will forgive me for saying something blasphemous just to make a point, I will. Let’s say it doesn’t matter that it hurts God. Fine. It hurts us and it hurts those we love. Or should love. I argue that if we truly loved our spouses we wouldn’t do half the things we do to them. A big part of me is really glad I don’t have a spouse because I know living with the awful things I’ve done the last few years would have hurt her more than any human being should be hurt.

But what’s that have to do with foreign terrorism on U.S. soil? Everything. With friends like us, who needs enemies? We treat each other like the stuff we scrape off our shoes, and we treat foreigners even worse. Dmitry Sklyarov is a political prisoner, under house arrest in California by special interests, being persecuted (yes, persecuted) under an unconstitutional law. Folks, we are no better than Red China, who held our servicemen for no reason. I’ll say that again. The sin of the United States of America is just as bad as that of Red, Pinko Commie China.

Now, if this is how we treat Russia and Russian citizens, then it’s likely that we’ve offended other people. Well, we know Europe hates us. We bailed the Allies out of World War I and then we came in and won World War II, and we even paid for a lot of the rebuilding effort, and they still hate us. We must have done something really wrong somewhere. And the Middle East, well, they don’t like us because we acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. But they’ve probably got some other grudges against us too.

Regardless, somehow, at some point, knowingly or unknowingly, whether we’re in the right or in the wrong this time, we offended someone to the point that he decided it’d be a really good idea to hijack some airliners and crash them into some high-profile buildings.

That ought to give us some pause and make us examine ourselves a little bit. Chances are we’re right and this guy’s wrong. But it helps to be sure. And a little reflection puts us in the right mindset.

And let’s face it. Even if you’re not so sure there is a God, if you’re willing to admit even the slightest possibility that He does exist, He is all powerful, and He does care about us, isn’t some small part of you glad there are people who want to seek Him out, and make sure He’s on our side this time?

A few words of St. Paul seem really appropriate here. “Each of you should look out not only for your own interests, but also the interests of others.”

If we all did that, we’d make heaven obsolete, folks. We’d have it right here.

I’ve got just a few other things to say, then I’ve got an overdue appointment with my pillow.

Yes, there needs to be retaliation, once we know who perpetrated it. The retaliation must be swift, effective, and harm as few innocent people as possible. What happened yesterday was a tremendous atrocity. Taking the high road isn’t enough. We need to take the very highest road.

We’re unified. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, home of one prime suspect, there was firebombing last night. Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom behind his Join or Die cartoon holds just as true today as it did some 225+ years ago. We need to stay unified. We’ve become a nation of special interests ever since the end of the Cold War, and we’re the worse for it, in every possible way.

This will not destroy our country. We will do a fine job of doing that ourselves. I love to fly, but right now the idea of hopping on board a commercial jetliner has negative appeal to me. My first thought after this happened was that we need to have two or three, or two or three dozen, armed Marines on all domestic flights, under orders to shoot first and ask questions later. Countries who resort to similar tactics don’t have problems with hijacking.

We can arm this country to the hilt, and we’ll have very few problems with safety. Police states have their problems, but safety generally isn’t one of them. We can trade our freedoms for safety, but in 20 years we’ll be wondering what happened to our Republic, or what’s left of it.

This is not the apocolypse. Don’t get in the gas lines, don’t rent a U-Haul and then go to the grocery store and try to fill it up with milk and toilet paper. People in St. Louis today were acting like the disaster had happened here. Nothing has really changed. A terrorist with limited resources crashed a bunch of our resources into some of our other resources. There is no direct connection between this and the supply and demand for gasoline, milk, and toilet paper. The U.S. economy will keep on chugging away, if anything, at a better rate now that people are thinking more about survival than about how to turn 20 bucks into a million by investing in the right technology stock.

I’ve only got one other thing to say. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. He knows we need it. Desperately.

Boycott Adobe… And your congressman.

Dave Farquhar General ,

Need reason not to buy Adobe products? This oughta do.
At work the other day, I wondered aloud if, since I don’t buy things from totalitarian countries as a matter of principle, if that meant I couldn’t buy American-made products. One of my co-workers said, “You’re such a radical,” in an at least semi-admiring tone.

That scares me. These days, when you oppose an unconstitutional law, have principles and stand by them, you’re considered a radical. Since when is it radical to believe that the Constitution should be followed, rather than only being used when you’re out camping and run out of toilet paper?

(added later)

You know what? I’m getting madder and madder. You know what I should have done a couple of weeks ago? And still need to do? I know that of my congressmen, the only one who has any interest whatsoever in what someone like me has to say is Sen. Kit Bond, but I need to write to Rep. Dick Gephardt, Sen. Kit Bond and Sen. Jean Carnahan, send them a copy of the Constitution, a copy of the DMCA, ask them to read both of them–THEMSELVES–and come to the same conclusion I did. Unconstitutional. Point out that a Russian citizen is being prosecuted like a common criminal for doing nothing wrong, that the criminal in this case is none other than the United States government. And then I need to tell them that, as fellow citizens of Missouri, they represent me, not the RIAA, not Hollywood interests, and not the big software companies. Their job is to protect me, not them. And, if charges against Dmitry aren’t dropped, and the DMCA isn’t repealed, I am holding them personally responsible–regardless of how they voted on the issue originally or vote on the issue in the future–and exercising my rights as a U.S. citizen to vote them out of office.

A small part of me still lives under the delusion that a few thousand carefully-worded letters to that effect might have a difference.

Anyone else interested in finding out?

Meanwhile, tell Adobe where there’s a painful place they can shove their software. None of it ever was all that good anyway.

Mac upgrades the right way.

Dave Farquhar Macintosh

On Tuesday, 768 MB of Crucial DIMMs arrived, earmarked for an old Mac G3. I know, Mac OS can’t make intelligent use of 64 megs, let alone 768 megs, but Photoshop and Illustrator can–especially when used together. Just allocate 256 MB to each of them and get it over with.
Nice thought, except the DIMMs were too tall. When I put them in, the case wouldn’t close.

I tracked down the problem. Older Mac desktops have a grill over the fan that protrudes out about 1/8 inch, and that, combined with the layout of the G3 motherboard, prevents what’s now a standard-sized DIMM from clearing. I figured the grill was aluminum, so I went and got some wire snips and figured I’d just go snip snip, remove the grill and leave the fan unprotected, and let the Mac have its full 768 megs of allowable memory. Well, it turned out to be steel, so my little wire snips barely even scratched the grill. Just then one of the building maintenance guys walked by. I told him what I needed to do, so he went and got a humongous pair of tin snips. What he did next was more of a snap snap than a snip snip, but it got the grill gone, regardless. After that, the case closed properly, and the Mac booted up and recognized its full 768 megs without any sparks flying.

You have computers… You have really big manly tools. Why not put them together?

September stress starts with a bang

Dave Farquhar General

I spent the day yesterday teaching executives how to use their new laptops. It was a full day, one that wore me out. And on the radio driving home, on the first workday of September, I heard September is the most stressful month. The reasoning: days getting shorter, summer ending bringing the start of school and end of summer vacations, thus everyone back and projects getting back in full swing. I can buy that. And it explains something. I always try to start new things in September. I probably ought to cut that out.
I’m working on a magnum opus for here, but it’s not ready, and won’t be for today. I’m too tired.