David-Blankenship.com

The spammers appear to be out in force recently — at least on my blog. Russian, Chinese, and Turkish folks (or zombies from those countires) seem to be hitting hit hard lately. Spam is such a difficult thing to understand. I mean, the work that these folks put into their creations is sometimes incredible. Obviously they take a shotgun approach in their efforts to scam people. But sometimes their efforts are really impressive. If only it could somehow be put to good use (looks up longingly to the sky with clasped hands).

So, the government, that is, the taxpayer — you and I, are going to bail out the American financial industry because they’ve made poor decisions while running their businesses. In addition, it also looks as if we’re going to bail out the American auto industry as well. This is definitely in the hundreds of billions of dollars and will very likely run into the trillions.

Okay, capitalism without risk for the big boys. Nice, but not surprising. It’s really just another (although blatant and very public) example of corporate welfare in this country. It’s not the single crack mothers on public assistance that are the financial burden — it’s corporate America!

Now, the pundits and politicians say that we must provide financial incentive to these industries (let’s not forget the insurance industry here either — AIG has received two nice checks already) in order to keep main-street above water. Okay. I’ll agree with that as long as there’s a qualifier. It’s needed to keep main-street above the same ol’ water.

Now, my big gripe with this post isn’t really targeted at the idea of bailouts to these institutions; rather, it is meant to ask a question. Why is it that we can send hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate America (who shot themselves in their own greedy proverbial foot) yet we (the government) can not (will not) provide direct cheap student loans to help produce productive American citizens who will help guarantee America’s future in the continuing and ever-increasingly competitive global market/economy?

People who don’t know any better think that a guaranteed student loan (GSL, Stafford loan) is a loan offered to the student by the government. Nope. The loan is given by a private institution and a guarantee is then provided to the private institution by the government that the loan will be repaid. Thanks, Uncle Sam! Again, we have risk-free capitalism at work for the lending institution will make their money back (plus a profit) no matter what happens. The student gets a PhD in underwater basket-weaving but can only find a job a McDonalds. That’s ok. The government will garnish his wages for what they can and then the taxpayer will make up the rest — to give a guaranteed profit to the bank. Nice.

If America truly cared about its future, if America really believed that the children are the future, if America really was what it claims to be…things would be much different. And much better — not just for America but for the rest of the world as well.

Two thoughts: 1) America as a nation is right of center, and this most certainly includes the upcoming Obama administration. Obama is no Marxist, Socialist, or Communist — he is right of center as well. 2) America can be summed up (in one way) as a greed-based system which rewards all the “wrong” behaviors.

Why do some professors, primarily English professors it seems, tend to treat their class as if they assume theirs is the only one a student is taking? This thinking does not lead to student behaviors which might help foster their success; rather, this type of thinking tends to lead students to produce what is sub par work.

Students can be likened to children and professors to parents. And what’s one thing that greatly aids in a child’s successful development? Consistency on the parent’s part. Back to academia now. Last week’s assignments from one of my professors (who I love to death — this is one of my favorite professors) included the first six chapters of a novel, a few related poetry selections, and a thirty-page online document (plus some online weekly writing assignments that the professor forgot to post). This seems reasonable for this level of class as well as relatively consistent with previous weeks’ workloads in this class. This week: the rest of the novel plus appendices (that’s twenty-five chapters + appendices), complete the online writing assignments from last week, and a nine essay question exam. This requires a major chunk of time — especially the essay exam (each is basically a mini-paper unto itself).

I’ve glanced over the essay exam (we have all week to complete it) and it’s not going to be easy. In fact, I think it’s going to be brutal.

Of course, as the semester is drawing to a close, my other five professors are asking for things as well: research papers, critical essays, exams, reading, reading, and more reading. Something has to give somewhere. My attempt to prophetize indicates a reduced quality in my upcoming assignments.

I think perhaps many professors get wrapped up in their work and forget that these particular classes are still at the undergrad level — and they’re remembering their own workload at the grad level and beyond.

I thought I solved the problem with my crashing notebook (TX2110) by replacing the hard drive. Nope, I’m still experiencing hard crashes. So, I took the ram from my TX1127 hoping it was really a difficult-to-chase-down memory error. This was looking promising until last night: BAM! another hard crash. And although tempting, I can’t blame the crashes on Vista — the machine does the same thing under Ubuntu. So, last night I checked and it’s still under warranty. Well, that’s good. What’s not good is the upcoming experience. First I’ll have to wrestle with tier I techs reading from a corporate script. Once I finally make it through this gauntlet and get them to take the machine back, I’ll have to wonder what, if anything, they’ll do. It’s a very intermittent crash, and I really don’t believe they’re going to sit around and play with it until it crashes and then try to diagnose it. Maybe they’ll send my machine back to me with the explanation that “nothing’s wrong.” Or, they might send me another “refurbed” machine with other problems. But one thing they won’t do is send me a new replacement. Nor will they replace the motherboard with a new part — it would be a refurb as well.

Sigh…we’ll see. I really need the machine to finish out this semester. But then again, I can’t rely on it not to bomb while I’m working on some hefty assignment that’s due the next day…

We purchased a cute little GSP (Green Spotted Puffer) at our local Walmart earlier this year. Cute little guys is pretty interactive (for a fish — they’re suppose to be one of the more intelligent fish), and fun to watch. He swims around like a little helicopter and eats like a mad dog. Well, it turns out these little guys are born in freshwater and then eventually make their way through rivers to brackish and full marine environments.

Hmm. Well, if I took him back it’d probably mean an early death for the little guy, because most people likely wouldn’t try to provide the proper environment. I endeavored to do so. I put him in a ten gallon tank (along with some smaller black Mollies obtained from a friend who didn’t want them). I then went about the process of converting these little guys to a full marine environment. Each time I did a water change, I upped the salinity, keeping a close eye on their behavior. All inhabitants, especially the Mollies, seemed to thrive with the addition of salt.

I now have two of the Mollies in a twenty gallon full marine tank (they’ve been there for about  week and a half and seem to be doing fine.) Now I’m just about ready to put the other little guys in as well because the ten gallon tank has reached the salinity levels of the marine tank.

The little mutt we recently adopted from the local SPCA was listed as a Boxer-mix. Hmm, maybe. Depending on how she’s holding her ears, I can see several different breed possibilities including Boxer, Jack Russell Terrier, Pit Bull, Cattle Dog, and Boxer.

Based on her personality traits and physical characteristics, our curiousity got the better of us so we decided to opt for a doggice DNA test offered by our local vet. The vet takes a small blood draw and sends it to a lab for DNA testing. The test is supposed to be able to detect among 157 AKC breeds with 90% accuracy. It takes several weeks to obtain the results, and we’re still waiting. After we find out, I’ll post the results (I’m very curious how closely we’ve guessed).

Is there a better way to relax than booting up Nexuiz and blowing up a few friends online — if even for just a few minutes? I don’t think so! FOSS and cross-platform, multiple play modes (my favorite is CTF — Capture The Flag). If you haven’t already, give it a shot (pun intended).

Both President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain gave good speeches last night after the election was over. McCain’s came first and I felt it was both appropriate and sincere. I always want to like McCain, I just think he’s the wrong guy at the wrong time. Maybe if he’d been elected instead of Bush…

As for the speech given by Obama, I believe it was right on target. It was serious and not overly celebratory. He addressed the significance of the election as well as some of the work ahead that needs to be done. And he made it sound realistic, optimistic and hopeful, inspirational, and do-able.

I had Hardy installed on my old TX1000 series notebook with only a few things working out of the box (I had to do some massaging for several things to work like wireless and audio). Last night I installed 8.10 on my TX2110 (after replacing the failed original 250GB HD with a 320GB unit). Things went relatively smoothly and most things worked out of the box (including the webcam and, with a restricted driver, WiFi — although it didn’t want to connect until I set my router to broadcast its SSID). Exceptions to this are (most disappointingly) sound; interestingly, all three of the sound buttons seem to be recognized though. The touchscreen and digitizer don’t appear to work out of box either (never got the touchscreen working properly on the TX1000 series). I don’ think the sound will be a major issue, but I’m not going to hold my breath for the touchscreen and digitizer.

So far, so good with this distro and this hardware — but the name is sure a mouthful this time around, right? “Intrepid Ibex” I guess it could be worse though.