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The good news is, your vehicle may be E85 compatible without you knowing it.

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Questions; CS UK; Music

Why didn't I answer any mail last night? Because I was getting cultured. My friend Jeanne was planning a trip to a natural foods market called Wild Oats and asked if I wanted to come along. Another friend had recommended I go there to get some soy powder when she found out I'd temporarily become a vegetarian. So hey, why not? I'll try anything once, right? Well, not quite anything, but what harm can it do?

An irony hit me, of course. The natural market called Wild Oats... A juice place in Columbia called The Main Squeeze... Why is it so many health-related places use double-entendre names? I mean, strip clubs aren't that provocatively named. Oh well.

So I got there and I noticed an awful lot of signs that said you had to pay before you started eating. Isn't that common courtesy? Sheesh. The first thing I set out to get was an eggplant. I know I can get eggplant at the regular grocery store, but hey, I was there, so why not? Besides, maybe organically grown eggplant is better for you. I just have a suspicion that eggplant would make a killer pizza topping. So I got myself a nice one-and-a-half-pound eggplant while Jeanne talked about this guy who used to wander around town holding an eggplant like a baby. Hey, I might be eccentric, but I'm not that eccentric.

Then I spied alfalfa sprouts, which I suspect would make a great soyburger topping. Probably even better on beef, but hey, I won't be eating that for a while yet. Unfortunately they only sold those in huge packages that'd probably last me a month, but I doubt they'd keep that long. Then I spied seeds. "Make your own sprouts!" it proclaimed. A 4-oz. package of seeds is supposed to make several pounds of sprouts. Hmm, $2.99 for that, versus $1.99 for a pound of alfalfa I'll end up throwing out because most of it goes bad, and I can make whatever quantities I want... Easy decision.

We walked down the vitamin/mineral/herbal aisle. I picked up some manganese because it's hard to find. And I found soy powder in some manly-sized containers. My friend Brenna had said to put a scoop in the blender along with some fruit. Cool. I had my powder, now all I needed was some fruit and a blender... Then I realized a manly man doesn't need a blender. Why blend with a blender when you can blend with a Dremel?

We walked down the snack aisle, where I spied Soy nuts. Barbecue flavor. "These'll be good for my image," I said, grabbing a bag. I'll keep the empty bag at work when I'm done with it. Cubicle decoration.

We walked up and down the store. In the pet food section I spied something curious: vegetarian dog food. I picked up a can. "Yes, some people force it on their dogs too."

"Forcing vegetarianism on your dog is just wrong," I said. "It's not natural." I half-regretted it afterward, seeing as there were probably a lot of vegetarians around, but I didn't get any dirty looks.

I noticed Wild Oats was very heavy on people with dreadlocks and tattoos. I noticed I got a few looks, mostly from girls. I suspect it's because I was dressed conservatively. Not that there's anything at all wrong with looks from girls, mind you.

"I bet I was the only Republican in there," I said as we left the store. Jeanne laughed. "I should have applied for minority status."

And after we walked out to the car in the rain and drove off, I realized I hadn't inspected the lot too closely. "Was that an SUV liberal place?" I asked.

"Yes it was," Jeanne said.

I said there weren't many things more hypocritical than a big, oversized SUV with environmentalist bumper stickers on it. She agreed.

Mailbag:

Questions; CS UK; Music

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Just out of curiosity, I tried my CPU stress test from last week on it. No matter what I did, I couldn't get CPU usage up to 100 percent. I'd top out at about 96 percent. I'm not sure if that's because of the dual CPUs or because I'm running Windows 2000 on it instead of NT4. I'm sure a complex Photoshop filter could max both chips out, but that's not what I do. I fired up Railroad Tycoon II, and it was unbelievable. CPU usage hovered around 60 percent and it was smooth as silk, even with the more system-intensive scenarios from the Second Century add-on pack.

Unfortunately, the golden age of inexpensive multiprocessing is over, at least for now. Current Celerons won't do SMP. I understand why--Intel doesn't want you to buy two cheap CPUs instead of one expensive one. Like I said, I'll take my dual 500s over a P3-733 any day of the week. A P3-733 costs about $200. My 500s were 40 bucks a pop. So, unfortunately, to get dual processing these days, you have to get a pair of P3s, which will start at about $140 apiece for a P3-667. The least expensive SMP board I know of is the VIA-based Abit VP6, which sells for about $140. So you're looking at about $450 to get into dual CPUs by the time you get the board, CPUs and fans. That's not an outrageous deal, but seeing as an Abit BP6 and a pair of Celerons with fans used to set you back about $350, it's a shame.

If AMD can ever work through the problems they're having with the AMD 760MP chipset, it'll help a little but not as much as you may think. The AMD-based boards will be expensive--expect them to start at $200 or possibly even $250-- because they use a different bus that requires a lot more pins and a lot more added expense. So while you'll be able to multiprocess with $60 CPUs again, you're looking at higher up-front cost. The least expensive dual-Duron rig will only cost about $50 less than the least expensive dual-P3 rig. But the dual-Duron rig stands a decent chance of outrunning the dual-P3, because the clockspeed will be higher, and the CPUs each get their own path to all the relevant buses.

And I've reached a new low. Last night I had a craving for a burger. So I did what any self-respecting part-time vegetarian who didn't know any better would do: I went on a quest to find soyburgers. My friend Jeanne, who says I stole the idea of giving up meat for Lent from her (and maybe subconsciously I did) warned me they won't taste like meat. And I'm pretty sure my dad--whose idea of four servings of vegetables a day was the pickles and ketchup on two hamburgers, beef of course--was rolling his eyes at me from Upstairs (If God has a sense of humor, which wouldn't surprise me, He opened the portal so Dad could get a good look at the look on my face after the first bite).

And? Well, I guess soyburgers aren't too much of an atrocity. Better than McDonald's? Well, yeah, but then again so's the cherry-flavored flouride treatment at the dentist's office. They're somewhere between beef and imitation bacon bits in both smell and taste. You definitely want to put other stuff on it to distract you--I got some good pickles, some good mustard, and ketchup, and wished I'd gone further. Hmm. Lettuce and tomato, no question. And I'm wondering if alfalfa sprouts would be good on a burger? I'm also wondering where you buy alfalfa sprouts. Oh, and get REALLY good rolls.

I can probably develop a taste for them, but it will definitely be an acquired taste. There was a time, back before I realized I wanted to live past age 27, when I could eat real hamburgers two meals a day for weeks at a time and be perfectly happy--and jokingly wondering why I didn't eat them for breakfast too. That won't happen with the soyburgers. I think what's left of my package of four should get me through Lent.

Oh yeah. They aren't as good as the real thing and they cost a lot more. What's up with that? I thought stuff that was lower on the food chain was supposed to be cheaper. I guess that's only when it's not being marketed to SUV liberals. (Psst. Marketing tip: SUV liberals like unbleached paperboard. The paperboard that went into my packaging is definitely bleached. And lose the plastic wrap on the burgers. SUV liberals hate that. Good move on putting two burgers per plastic bag though--you're at least thinking a little. But you gotta go all the way. That's why they put two "Be Kind to Mother Earth" bumper stickers--printed on unbleached material, of course--on their Ford Excursions.)

I think I'll be eating a lot of mushroom ravioli for the next few weeks, if I can ever find someplace that sells it again. You'd think in St. Louis, of all places--where there are almost as many good Italian restaurants as there are stop signs--you'd be able to find mushroom ravioli. I guess true blue St. Louisans like beef.

The post 03/05/2001 appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Then, today, Dr. Lair's granddaughter e-mailed me to give some specifics. She confirmed that no, Dr. Lair did not commit suicide in the 1970s or anything else of the sort. To an extreme contrary, Dr. Lair was the ultimate survivor. He got his first pacemaker 38 years ago. He went through a total of three of them in his life. He survived six heart attacks. (Many of us don't survive our first.)

When he died, she said he struggled for each breath for half an hour before finally walking to the light.

It's unfortunate that those details aren't widely known. This sounds to me like a man who said what he believed and believed what he said, pubished it, and lived it. That kind of genuineness is rare.

Do yourself a favor and give Dr. Lair's I Ain't Much Baby, But I'm All I've Got a look if you've never heard of it before.

Once again, I am terribly sorry. (And when I get a chance later tonight, I really need to go find that page and change it, leaving only the retraction, to prevent that rumor from perpetuating.)

Thanks to Dan Bowman for finding the link for me. But the FTP server is now refusing connections. I hate my other frickin' ISP... Don't they understand, this is important!?

Farquhar's Law. I should have some t-shirts made with this on it. Repeat after me. Cable connections are the last thing most people check. Make them the first thing you check.

Got it? Good. I bring this up because I had a CD-RW fail yesterday. The culprit was a poorly seated firewire cable.

That's it for computer stuff for the day. But fasten your seatbelts for a long post anyway. I rode a roller coaster yesterday, and now I'm taking you with me. (Hey, you agreed.)

Time to preach again. I'll keep it short. I know some of you love it when I do this. Some of you absolutely hate it. What writer could possibly resist a subject that stirs such strong reactions?

I was talking after church last night with a relative newcomer. She's been a Christian for about six months, she says. She was talking about her upbringing, and in trying to understand it, I used the word "hollow," and she agreed. She talked about how the past six months have turned her life around, telling story after story, and I just couldn't help but get excited. I was nodding and saying, "yeah!" a lot. The last person I talked to who was struggling so much and yet so happy was the man in... my... mirror. A few years ago.

And then she did a funny thing. She apologized for taking so much of my time. For one, I like being useful (that's part of the reason for this site, after all--if people stop telling me it's useful, it's history). The other reason should be obvious. God is a relationship. So think about other relationships. How many sappy love songs talk about love when it's new? Relationships just seem more exciting when they're new, for some reason. So here's someone telling stories that sound just like my experiences when my relationship with God was newer than it is now. You think I'm gonna get tired of listening to that? Not on your life.

If you're living Psalm 51:12 ("Restore to me the joy of my salvation..."), try talking to someone who's still experiencing the newness of theirs. It's contagious. You'll be singing a different tune real quick.

I got my Missouri Constitution Article X Distribution yesterday. That's also known as the annual Mel Carnahan illegal taxation refund. Mel Carnahan, in case you don't know, is the former two-term governor of Missouri, killed in a plane crash last month and elected posthumously to the U.S. Senate. He has attained something resembling sainthood here in Myzurah.

I try not to spout off about politics too much anymore, but this just makes me too mad. So, rant mode equals one, here we go.

I remember Carnahan for taxing Missouri citizens at levels deemed illegal by the Missouri constitution (forcing the use of state funds to return that illegal money, money that could be used for something else) and for demanding that Missouri representatives and senators fire their interns if they crossed him the wrong way. (I personally interviewed a fired intern who fell victim to Carnahan's rage for a story back in 1993.) Carnahan was Missouri's king of overtaxation and political dirty tricks.

Let's say my refund was for $50. (It wasn't, but that number works for this exercise.) That means the Missouri government willfully tried to steal 50 bucks from me over the course of the past year. Now, the kicker. I messed up my 1998 state taxes and got hit for a penalty. So for 1999 I had an accountant do them. He got my Federal return right, but my Missouri return was off by about 20 bucks. So Missouri nailed me for underpayment and charged a penalty. Then I got a check at the end of the year for considerably more than the amount I underpaid!

So, Tax Man Carnahan's thugs did steal the amount of that interest and penalty (whatever that was) from me. Who knows how many other people this happened to? The amount was fairly small, so there's no point in fighting it or whining about it any more than I already have, but I wonder how many people who aren't so well-off (whom Carnahan's cronies supposedly want to help) bounced checks or had to go without something because the government had stolen money from them and held it hostage for seven months? How many of them slightly "underpaid" (Carnahanspeak for paying something closer to the legal amount), then got slapped with interest and penalties that weren't refunded? What if some of them actually need that money? Do these limousine and SUV liberals know what it's like to be literally a couple of bucks short of being able to pay their bills? I understand that situation because I've been there. I work hard and live cheap and save to try to ensure I never will be in that situation again. I'd rather teach government to work hard like I do at being fiscally responsible, so as to not lay an overly heavy yoke of a tax burden on the poor (who, if they're making less than 15 Gs a year, shouldn't be paying any taxes anyway) or on anyone else.

Liberalism, particularly Carnahan Liberalism, isn't about compassion. It's about money and power--specifically, grabbing as much of it as possible, whatever the price. Even if it means breaking the law.

I'm sorry he's dead. I don't wish sudden death on anyone (or their families). But I'm not sorry he's not going to Washington. I am sorry the citizens of Missouri are too stupid to elect lawmakers with enough regard for the law to follow it themselves.

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