Patrick’s Rants

This has been bugging me for a little while now and I just have to speak out. I’m sick and tired of the tea-baggers protesting the government spending. I’m tired of the conservatives bemoaning the fact that taxes have to go up – we have to pay for the last eight years of no new taxes but plenty of new spending.
“Keep the government out of my Medicare!” – what the heck do you think Medicare is?! It is government (citizen) funded and government run. If you want the government’s hands off your Medicare back the hell off the government program, pay for your own mufuggin health care. I mean it. Otherwise step back and let go of that government tit.

I know a guy who attended a tea party protest recently. He is working a government job, pulling in his government pension from a previous government job and he takes all kinds of time off to maximize his government check (Social Security). Buddy, put down the Palin 2012 button, get a job in the private sector and give up your government pensions. I hear Walmart needs greeters. Don’t want to do that? Then suck that government tit a little further into your mouth so I can’t hear you whine about the government and taxes. Now, nothing that he is doing is illegal, it just doesn’t make sense. I know the argument, the government took Social Security from me so I want it back. Except, by taking “early retirement” you will collect more than you contributed. By taking government pensions the return is more or less guaranteed – not like a 401(k) or IRA where you would have been on your own – a government guaranteed payment.

Back in the late 90s, early 2000s an Arizona state Republican drafted a law that was passed without debate. This law was supposed to allow someone who wanted to purchase a new vehicle could purchase an alternative fuel vehicle and have the state pick up a huge part of the tab. There was no requirement that the vehicle actually run on alternative fuel just that it could if you happened to find a station that could fuel it. I know many conservatives – who don’t want their taxes raised who ran out and bought trucks that they never intended to run on anything other than unleaded gasoline so they could get this huge state tax refund. Moreover, they don’t pay most of the value tax on that big ass truck and get to drive an empty vehicle in the HOV(car pool) lane. In Arizona, you pay tax on the value of your vehicle as part of the annual license plate fee. These guys pay around $10.00 to register their vehicles. It just cost me $100.00 to drive my old Hyundai. Again, nothing done here is illegal, only hypocritical. If you don’t want taxes and government spending to go up, put your hand back into your own pocket. Remember Actions speak louder than bumper stickers

Those were legal. This next one… well read on. In order to stimulate the economy, help people out purchasing their first home and maybe rebuild some of the demand for the slumping housing market, the federal government – through the IRS – created a first time home buyer tax credit. The credit is $8000.00 and can be used to help fund your purchase, if done right. And now, the government is investigating fraud. Fraud that I know how occurred. This is real. I know a conservative, keep the government out of my life, couple. She, of course, works for a government agency, his job keeps him working with (not necessarily for) the government. They purchased a home and titled it in their son’s name. The problem is that their son still lives with them and they collect a rent check. If they get caught, and it’s entirely plausible, there will be much moaning and gnashing of teeth about how the government is interfering in their lives. Well, if you would have kept your greed in check the future would have looked better for you. Fraud against the government? Good luck with that. If caught, she will likely lose her job and he will lose his ability to do his job, possibly lose the house they bought to rent out and have to pay back the $8000.00. And they were just so clever in buying this house.

And oh yeah, keep the government out of my life. Unless I can work for, get cash from or outright steal from the government. And even then, don’t raise taxes to make up the amount of money raped from the Federal Government by Cheny, Bush, Haliburton or little ole me.

In an article titled Windows 7 Vodka and the Microsoft Hangover, John C Dvorak takes Microsoft’s marketing to task. He laments the “personal touch” of years gone by. He blasts the Microsoft newsletter but touches little on the Operating System that could. I’m waiting for the reviewer whose panties are neither in a bunch nor soaked with excitement to give a true review of Windows 7.

Anyone? Bueller?

Actions speak louder than bumper stickers

Minivans are tangible proof of evil

Of course, it was on a mini-van.

James Arthur Ray, self help guru is quoted in the Telegraph as “being tested” over the deaths of two people, serious illness of 19 others and a woman who remains in a coma.

Mr Ray broke down in tears as he addressed the deaths. “This is the most difficult time I’ve ever faced,” he told the crowd of about 200. “I don’t know how to deal with it really.”

The most difficult time he’s every faced? How about the two dead people? How about the woman who remains in a coma? How about the families that lost loved ones? To be fair, is later quoted as saying that he’s “grieving for the families”. But if this story is to be trusted on its time line the first thing Mr. Self Help thought about was himself.
Luckily the 2005 incident turned out better.

It’s a radical idea, but a commentary titled Let the Red States Secede on Market Watch (via Yahoo!) says that the so-called Blue States would be better off without all those Red States dragging them down. I bet you couldn’t convince the conservatives to stop sucking at the liberal tit.

The Windows 2008 Server suffered an unexpected shutdown a couple of days ago and I blame UAC (Ok, so UAC and the tax software vendor). As I noted in UAC What is it good for? with UAC enabled I had to set all users as Administrators or hand out an administrator password. Prompting for a password every time a program is opened was not going to work so I set the users as Administrators, trying to keep the UAC security intact. And so, when the remote user chose “Shut Down” instead of “Log Off” the office screens went dark.

So. I changed the user to a regular user account and disabled UAC. Because there isn’t an option to save the administrator account for “this program only”. And despite what Lasse Petterrson says over on technet

UAC is a security feature that should be turned on.

Turning on UAC breaks too much other stuff.
You moved your mouse. <Allow> <Deny>?

It’s old news to most geeks, but the London Stock Exchange is dumping their Windows-based trading system for a Linux-based trading system.
Apparently the Windows solution just couldn’t keep up.

LSE to dump Windows
Open source makes big gains at the LSE
LSE buys MilleniumIT so all of the exchange software is now created “in house” in Sri Lanka.

In light of new and/or clarified FTC rules regarding reviews – if I review a book or movie or tv show and that review includes a link, and you click on the link, and you buy a book or movie from oh, say Amazon, then you should know the FTC considers that compensation for the review. Except in five years not one Amazon link has been clicked and so far no review should be considered a “paid” review – except that someday someone might click on a link and buy a book or movie that I have reviewed.

And to date, I have not received any books or movies for free. And Dan Brown still hasn’t called me about his geek characters

I’m in the process of migrating the tax office server from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 which of course caused me to start thinking about everything else that I eventually want to add or migrate. There’s the firewall – which will probably get a newer machine that most recently was a thin client. The firewall machine will probably be re-purposed as storage. The Windows 2003 server box will be decommissioned as a brick (meaning it will site quietly unplugged in the back room for at least a year to make sure we don’t lose anything in the transfer). Our K12LTSP server will continue to chug along as a K12LTSP server. Although it is the absolute base of our setup – and our oldest “new purchase” computer we lean much, much heavier on the Windows servers and the Windows 2003 server was actually creaking under the load we had on it at any given point in time. At some point in time I also want to add an Asterisk server, but I’ve wanted that for some time now.

Given all of these upcoming changes I was reading up on FreeNAS, something that I have read about before, but not had the chance to deploy. I don’t rush into deployments and try to hash things out and around with people that I know. One of the drivers had just finished up for the day and I casually asked him if he knew anything about computers (you never know what you’re gonna get). He told me that he could check his email and browse the internet – which is what a huge number of people can do – but that was about it. Another driver who had been standing outside my view jumped in asking what I needed; he might be able to help. He had set up his network at home and knew a little bit. I replied that I was thinking about deploying FreeNAS, based on BSD and was just nosing around for experiences. I could visibly see his eyes glaze over as what I just said was more than he had even heard of. At that point we both knew the conversation was over. Not that he’s not a nice guy who really thought he might be able to help with something that a mere radio dispatcher might not be familiar with, but he just stepped into the deep end of the pool. And he forgot his floaties.

Did you hear that? It’s the whoosh of the conversation passing overhead.