...or maybe not.
Well, before installing Jaguar I wanted to get my PC's monitor hooked up to the iMac so that I could insure that Jaguar didn't drive the screen at the wrong frequency (the thing that kills iMacs, or more correctly, kills their displays). Well, it seems that the VGA port for some (idiotic) reason is placed behind a small grate that must be removed by plying it with a screwdriver. Okay, I don't like prying on things, but I can do that. Oh, but wait, I also need a new grate (according to Help) that has a hole in it so that I can connect the VGA cable. I don't think I need that grate, but just to be safe, I figure I should go get that grate first. There was suppose to be one in the iMac accessory kit, but one of the casualties of a used system is that these kind of things aren't included. Oh well, off to the “macstore”…
Jaguar Tonight!
Well, I'm hoping to, uhm, paws tonight to give Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar a try on my iMac. This is a moment of truth in several ways. First, and foremost, Jaguar has been known to kill iMacs. It seems for the most part this is caused by not upgrading the firmware before installing, but it still makes me a wee bit nervous. Secondly, it is a moment of truth in that I'll find out whether I made a big mistake not saving up some more to go for a faster Mac (I've heard mixed reviews about this system and Mac OS X). It is also a moment of truth in that I'll finally really be able to put Mac OS X head to head with Linux and see how the two stack up as *nix desktops.
All this truth and more… coming to soon to a blog near you. Stay tuned!
I'm Thinking Different Now...
I got it really for three reasons — (1) It'd be cool to spend some time playing around with a Mac. I do a lot of helpdesk work and I felt it was time I knew my way around a Mac, (2) I want to do a Linux vs. Mac OS X piece on Open for Business, (3) it should make a nice box to use in a previously uncomputerized room. Additionally, while not a priority, I will probably try LinuxPPC as an added bonus.
At any rate, as I said, right now it has Mac OS 9.0.4, but I plan to acquire a copy of OS X Jaguar soon (Amazon was selling it for $79.95, but I decided to wait until I had the system in my hands before I bought software for it, and now they are selling it for $109.95!). While I am more interested in Mac OS X than OS 9, one good thing about buying an older Mac is that it does still runs OS 9 so that I can try that out too.
Anyway, I'll post more experiences as I get them, especially once OS X arrives. My first glance opinion is that it's a very nice system with an elegant design (the Apple Pro mouse looks like a piece of art), although the way things are done in Mac OS 9 seems a bit awkward to this Linux (previously Windows (previously DOS)) user. For starters: gimme a shell!
Thanks and Thanks Again
I'd like to thank anyone who prayed for my grandmother. Things are going much better now, although your prayers continue to be helpful. Prayer is certainly powerful, at any rate, and I appreciate it very much!
In all of the commotion, life indeed did trump blogging (I think that is MeanDean from blogs4God that coined that phrase), and not only blogging but BlogShares activities as well.
It seems the BSEC election has come and gone, and even though I didn't win, I want to thank everyone again for your support. While the election certainly wasn't “real,” I really appreciate your real support. In reality it was a blessing I didn't win anyway considering how crazy the last week has been. Anyway, as I said, I really appreciate support. Because of my friends here in the blogosphere I still ended up in 7th place, not bad considering many of those running had far more name recognition than I did.
That actually is an interesting demonstration of how it would be very possible, if we as Evangelicals really tried, to make a much larger political dent than we do right now. In the BlogShares example, to the best of my knowledge, every regular reader of asisaid.com was kind enough to vote for me. They knew me, knew where I stood, and made an effort to go vote. On the other hand, while some of those who won have very popular blogs, none of them won by a large margin. The name recognition didn't really help them as much as you might expect. I was running without any name recognition, and for a time made it all the way to third place (out of six seats).
In the real political world there is similar power in unknown but well supported political hopefuls. If Evangelicals could focus our energies on promoting political candidates that we thought best represented our concerns and didn't automatically assume we didn't have a chance to influence the “system,” we very well could rally enough support as our people would have a reason to go beyond the average 30% voter attendance. Think about that: if just 30% of the country supports traditional values, and unlike the other 70%, it mustered 80% voter attendance on election day, that 30% could be more powerful than the 70% majority that only has 30% active voters.
This would be a major victory for traditional values! If we, as those supporters, did this, we could let candidates know that we wouldn't just vote for the lesser of two evils. We wouldn't compromise on positions concerning embryonic stem cell research just because the other choice is to compromise on the entire pro-life agenda. Instead, we would be able to hand pick the candidates that actually stuck to pro-life views across the board (while it was lost in the shuffle after 9/11, don't forget many leading Republicans — “prolife” ones — supported and continue to support destroying embryos to create new stem cell lines).
Even if it didn't work out that well, but like my BlogShares run, only placed the candidate at a small-margin loss, it would still serve to let the politicos know that name recognition alone wasn't going to keep them going — they must also remember the powerful force that Evangelical Christianity can be and should be.
Pray, Please.
I got a call from my mother this morning that she had called an ambulance to take my grandmother to the hospital. We don't know if its a stroke or what happened. My grandmother has been suffering from Alzheimer's for awhile and has gone down dramatically this week. Perhaps that has a connection to what was going on this morning — the only symptom I know at the moment was that her pulse was fluctuating from 60-120 fairly quickly and the Doctor decided she needed to go to the emergency room. Right now, I am just sitting here waiting to know where she is and what's wrong with her. Please pray for her.
Happy June!
Hey everyone… happy June! It's been a great month so far for me — I've made great progress on a client's web site and my article is still drawing reads. Ah, now if it was just warm enough to swim (but not miserably warm)…
Friday Five after the Fry
Well, before I dive into Friday Five this week, which is again a pretty good one, I must say Cracker Barrel's fried cod is delicious Yum.
Hmm… I'm not really sure I have one particular thing I want to be remembered for. I guess ideally, I'd like to be remembered as someone who tried his best even if things didn't always work out best.
2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
“Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed the passage with you?”
—Walt Whitman
3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?Really getting Open for Business to take off (including hitting ~ 200,000 page views for January!).
4. What about the past ten years?
Doing a 180 on my views concerning politics, life, faith, etc., seems like a good choice. I'm certainly not proud of my old views and I'm not really proud of this “accomplishment,” as I believe God did it and not me, but I guess that's true of many things (I give myself far too much credit on most things). Ten years ago, I was a relativistic, liberal “wacko.” I supported Clinton/Gore. 'Nuff said? Anyone who knows me knows that isn't the case today, well, except perhaps for the “wacko” part.
5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
“If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you jump off it too?” No, I'm just kidding.
Actually, I might stick to a similar theme to that. Namely, despite what others say or do, or what might be easiest or best for yourself, always “'[l]ove the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'” and “'Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Mark 12:30-31a [NIV]). If you succeed in these two things, you have taken care of everything else you ever need to do.
Good Day So Far
Well, it's been a good 24 hours, I would say. Last night I introduced a new library catalog system, using the KOHA Free Software library program, to our newly formed librarian staff and the Educational Resource Center committee. Things went very well — KOHA has allowed us to do virtually everything (and in some ways more than) a $1,000 library program for gratis. The system is now running a Mandrake Linux desktop customized to make exactly two programs accessible: KOHA and BibleTime.
I still have a few “battles” before everything is right. For instance, we still need label printing and I somehow need to link a label printing program with KOHA's MySQL backend. I'm hoping to accomplish this with KBarcode, but if that doesn't work, I bookmarked the site of another alternative.
Oh, for the first time in months, Open for Business also got Slashdotted… well, sorta. My current article about Lindows' announcement concerning the SCO-IBM case hasn't been picked up by Slashdot, but some Slashdot reader that liked it posted a comment on the latest Slashdot story on SCO and it has drawn roughly the same number of people as a “real” Slashdotting normally would. Fortunately, my PHP caching system, which dep was kind enough to help me with, is keeping everything running much more efficiently than during my previous encounters with Slashdot.
Well, that's all for now, except that I would like to give a great big “THANK-YOU” to Josiah and Christopher for both promoting my run for the BlogShares BSEC. I never expected anyone to actually do so, so it was a nice surprise. Thanks guys!
Don't forget to VOTE!
The first monthly BlogShares Player Securities Board vote has begun and will go for one week. PLEASE vote and let your voice be heard. I'd appreciate your vote in my “campaign” for a Free and Fair Market (just vote Timothy Butler on the ballot), but even if you choose to vote for someone else, it's good if you do exercise your cyber voting privilege.
Click the button to be taken to the BlogShares Voting Page
What a day
At approximately 10:00 A.M. Central Time this morning, Network Access
Corporation's (NAC) Site B datacenter in New Jersey, where Universal
Networks' name servers are located, had its fire suppression system activated
after what appears to have been the explosion of a [capacitor for a] uninterpretable power
supply located in the building. This resulted in the loss of power and
consequently the loss of access to Universal Networks' internet properties.At 11:00 A.M. Central Time the fire department allowed NAC personnel back
into Site B, however due to various circumstances, the section of the
datacenter housing Universal Networks' nameservers, and those of our hosting
affiliate, were left without power until after 6:00 P.M. Central Time.Everything now appears operational again.
Thank-you for your understanding.
-Tim
Then, to make things more interesting, the Linksys ethernet router I installed for my church was on the brink today (I think I have “collisions” going on with DHCP assignment). Between the two events I had to squeeze in some actual work.
And speaking of work, the most interesting piece of it was writing on the on going SCO-IBM conflict. That conflict now envelopes Novell and Linus Torvalds too. I was going crazy today not being able to put anything about it on OfB.biz (not to mention going crazy because no one could access the article I put on OfB.biz last night).
At any rate, hopefully things will calm down now. I haven't forgotten about finishing my trip summary (complete with traveling tips for those going to the Ozarks), but I didn't want to rush putting together the second entry. It'll be on soon, however.
