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Don’t Hold Your Breath

This Is a fairly new bottle of air.

It is believed to contain Elvis’ Last breath.

Please do not let the breath escape if you decide to buy….It could come in handy some day when you only have one breath left.

Reply to this post if interested.

SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.

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Real Cheap

Up for sale I have a pair of Carvin TRx118N single 18″ subs. These are Carvin’s top of the line subs rated at 800 watts continuous/1600 watts program/3200 watts peak. These subs are made from real plywood and are covered with Carvin’s DuraTex weather-resistent finish …you can’t hurt these things.

I’m old enough to remember when plywood, real or otherwise, was not a selling point.

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Circular Explanations

Me: “Your son is up for a pre-trial hearing today.”

Defendant’s Mother: “What’s a pretrial hearing?”

Me: “It’s a hearing held previous to trial.”

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Christians Win – Tollboth Operators Cannot Celebrate Christmas in Florida

Because of complaints from Christians, the Florida Department of Transportation has determined that its tollbooth operators cannot celebrate Christmas while in their booths.

So why did Christians want to keep Christmas out of the tollbooths? Well, they didn’t. But they got exactly what they asked for.

You see, they originally complained about tollbooth operators putting up Halloween decorations. So the Florida Department of Transportation did a favor for those who are easily offended and banned all holiday celebrations in tollbooths. Merry fucking Christmas, indeed.

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Running a red light… with semantics!

It’s a automobile accident / negligence case. The person who caused the accident is testifying.

Attorney: “Did you run the red light?”

Defendant: “It depends on how you define running a red light.”

Another good one…

Attorney: “Where did your car hit the Plaintiff’s car?”

Defendant: “I don’t know, I wasn’t looking.”

And one more…

Attorney: “Was your car drivable after the accident?”

Defendant: “It depends on how you define drivable. Under my definition it wasn’t drivable.”

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Most Awesomely Ugly Piano Ever!!

A picture truly is worth a thousand gags. Click the pic if you dare to buy.

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Does the US really support free market capitalism?

Guitarist Jack White is being heavily criticized for the evil act of selling products at a fair market price. Wait, since when is selling products at fair market price evil?

Here’s a little background. Jack White has a record label. His label sells limited release collectibles. He used to sell them well under market value. However, some people would buy them and then resell them for significantly more on sites such as ebay.

White decided to cut out those middlemen and sell the collectibles directly on ebay. And because it’s an auction where people are able to pick the price they are willing to pay, we necessarily know the collectibles are selling for a fair market price.

But yet there a huge outrage that White is a money grabbing scum bag. Do these idiots work for free? When they last sold their car or house, did they sell it for vastly less than it was worth?

White is in the business of selling music. He’s selling music at a price people are willing to pay. If you don’t like his price, don’t buy it. But don’t bitch about it.

Bitching that you can’t afford a Jack White collectible is about as asinine and petty as bitching that you can’t afford a Rolex watch. Let’s put this in perspective. Try bitching about the high cost of Jack White collectibles to unemployed parents who have no idea how they’re going to feed or shelter their children.

This same erroneous argument is used against fair market concert ticket prices. The bands and concert promoters fight for tough laws against scalping. Unfortunately, scalping is simply buying low and selling high. There is nothing wrong with that. Our entire economic model is based on doing that.

The “problem” of ticket scalpers is that some tickets are priced way too low. Bands should follow Jack White’s lead and sell their tickets on an ebay type site. Since the tickets would be selling for a more accurate market value, there would be no profit in buying and reselling. Scalpers would be eliminated in a second without a single law being passed.

Why musicians don’t do this is beyond me. They have a choice. They should either sell their tickets at a fair market value or accept that buying low and selling high is a fact of life. If international corporations are allowed to do it, so should the little guy.

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Review: Ubuntu Linux 10.10

My son has an AspireOne netbook which came with Windows XP installed, but it ran like a dog. It was slow like running Windows 95 on a 486 with 4 megs of ram. (Remember those days?!) Plus, despite the fact that it had almost no software installed, XP took up nearly the entire 8 gigs of its internal flash drive.

I thought about installing Windows 98se or Windows 2000 Professional on it, but those OSes wouldn’t have the drivers to run the netbook’s hardware such as the networking, camera, blue-tooth, and touch-pad.

This past weekend I finally decided to try Ubuntu. I first tried the live CD of the latest version 10.10.

(I should point out that a live CD is a CD with the entire OS burned onto it. You simply boot to the CD and you can use the OS to test it out. I actually used Universal USB Installer to install the ISO to a flash driver and booted from there.)

Anyway, I’ve tried Linux before on other systems. The problem with Linux, in my view, is that its users treat it like a rite of passage. Nothing is easy. Nothing is consistent. No one is helpful. Their attitude is that since they had to suffer through everything, you should too. Something simple such as installing new software is a mess in Linux. In Windows you download what you want to install, double click it, and follow the prompts. In Linux it’s mostly a command based process. And of course it’s inconsistent. Some versions of Linux use APT, some use yum, some use tarballs, it’s a real mess.

Here’s another example from Ubuntu. Changing your workgroup name is pretty simple in Windows. If you don’t know where the dialog box is, you can type in help for “change workgroup” and it’ll tell you how and where. In Ubuntu, as all Linux variations, you manually edit files for such mundane tasks. But you can’t simply just find the correct file, open it, edit it, save it, and be done. Nor can you simply right click on the file, chose “edit as root” to edit it. No, you have to use the command line because system files are protected against modification. That’s what makes Linux so secure… and so annoying.

The only luck I’ve had with Linux in the past is when some company, I think it was Mandrake, offered a free download of their professional version of Linux. That version came with a hand to hold onto. It had built in MP3 and DVD support. It had an easy to use interface for installing software. It had dialog boxes for changing your screen resolution and the like. I got pretty comfortable using it to the point where i could intentionally fuck it up, but still boot into the command-line to fix it. Unfortunately, I had to stop using that system because my dad wanted a computer to use, so I formatted the drive, installed XP, and gave it to him.

Anyway, I decided to try Ubuntu on my son’s netbook because it’s marketed and designed for idiots like me. And over all, Ubuntu succeeds as a replacement for Windows, but you still have to be a nerd to get it to work.

The live CD of Ubuntu set up all of my hardware. It automatically detected my wireless connection. It was much more peppy than XP. That was great. However, there were problems I could not fix without being able to edit files, and I couldn’t edit those files because it was a live version of the OS, not an installed version. In other words, nothing was saved from boot to reboot. Because it was peppy enough and because all the hardware worked, I decided to go for it and wipe XP and install it. The installation went off without a hitch.

One problem with Ubuntu is that it won’t nicely connect to Windows PCs on the network. When you navigate to Windows computers you’ll get an error saying that it can’t mount that resource. In searching for a fix for this I found this goes back way before version 10.10.

This is complete BS. Ubuntu is supposed to be a consumer OS. It’s going to be used by people with Windows systems on their network. I’ve never had a problem navigating Windows computers with any other version of Linux I’ve tried. So it seems to be Ubuntu specific.

I tried fixing it by changing the name of the workgroup Ubuntu uses to match my network. So I had to find the correct command to use, open the file, edit the file, and save the file. The command to restart Samba (software Linux uses to connect to Windows’ networks) didn’t work. So I had to reboot the netbook. That fix didn’t work.

To make a long story short, I ended up getting around the problem by using the Windows PC’s specific IP address. This is not a solution. I had to set up my Windows server to a static IP address which is not very consumer friendly. And most consumers would not have thought about using IP addresses or figured out by poking around on Ubuntu how to do it. And this is a netbook, so it should be easy to take with you and access other Windows networks without much difficulty. My work-around is sort of like using a crow bar to open the glove box in my new car and then closing it by using duct tape. Sure, it’d work. But it’s not a solution.

Anyway, my son loves Ubuntu. He agrees his system is much faster than before. He’s able to get on his flash gaming sites, e.g., Poptropica and Not Doppler. Skype works great. He’s able to download tons of free games such as Alien Arena and Freedoom. (Get it? Freedoom, an open source version of Doom. Those open source guys are so clever! Seriously, what’s the emoticon for rolling your eyes?)

As I said, XP took up nearly the entire 8 gig internal flash drive, despite having hardly any software installed. Ubuntu takes up about four gigs, and that includes its own office suite. That left plenty of space left over for those games I was talking about.

And the best thing about Ubuntu, is that they finally fixed printing. I use a network printer and Ubuntu found it and installed it. Anyone who has tried to print in Linux knows it’s generally a fricking pain in the ass. Thanks Ubuntu for finally getting that right.

What I’d like to do is install Ubuntu on my wife’s computer, which currently runs Windows 7 x64. Because it’s centrally located, everyone uses it, and because of that, it tends to get viruses. Ubuntu’s security would put an end to that. But there is no iTunes client for Linux, and my wife has a fancy new iPhone 4, so that option is a no-go for now. However, I’m still considering it. I could keep iTunes on one of the other computers for loading up stuff. I also have to find some easy to use graphic programs to use with my scanner which is connected to my wife’s computer.

What I find most interesting about this Ubuntu experiment is the discovery that we really don’t use software anymore. Remember in the old days when Best Buy had isles of Windows specific software? That’s almost all gone. Facebook, gmail, Twitter, bittorrent, etc. doesn’t care what OS you’re using, as long as you have a browser. Any cool software is usually open sourced and cross-platform, e.g., VLC. And anything that remains is still cross platform, e.g., Skype. This also makes it much easier to try alternative operating systems.

What’s interesting is that it was Microsoft which killed off the third party PC software market. Anytime a third party introduced successful Windows software, Microsoft would enter the market with its own product. It didn’t take long for companies to realize that writing software for Windows was a losing proposition. Even if you succeeded with a great product, Microsoft would simply enter the market and wear you down until you were gone.

So I have to love the irony. Because Microsoft’s greed killed off the third party software market, we are now free to stop using Windows. Thanks Microsoft! Thanks a lot!

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