New Ramblings Laptops and Taxes

Wow, that title says alot. Well I have quite a bit I haven't said anything about lately.
I found a donor for a new Laptop! The US Govt., well the IRS to be precise. I don't know about you, but I like tax time. Always have. I struggle through the year, and pay a little bit too much, so that I get a nice refund each spring. I know, I know, you should set your taxes up so you don't have to pay, or get paid so the Govt. doesn't use the interest for free. Well, I have a theory on that. I believe that there's nothing wrong with letting the Government use my money for free for a year! Sorry about all you greedy, bitter people who are more worried about Government waste than you are your own waist. (Both are expanding! HA!) Anyway, I don't mind them getting to use what little extra I pay in a years time, for the ability to have a nice bonus to start each year off with, do you? I've discovered through looking at various interest rates that money would have earned me, and I found out that I have lost no more than 2 dollars a year. That's right, the MOST, I could be giving up is 2 dollars. BIG WHOOPEE! So, for 2 dollars the Govt. holds my money, and processes my paper work, and gives me a nice Check each year. Not a bad deal I don't think. Anyway, I'm getting enough back, along with what I've saved here, there and yonder, to buy a nice laptop. Now if HP would just ship it. :-D. I'll tell ya' about it when it gets here.

The nice thing about the modern age is HTML and XML, and SSL, and all the other L's that make doing your taxes online possible. I tried Turbo tax, and I tried TaxCut. Taxcut will let you run in Linux, if you setup the browser ID to fake being in Windoze. Turbo Tax will allow you to try to get in, but evidently they do something that's very Windows specific this year. Taxcut was very much a pain, very many things changed since last year, and I could never convince it to allow me to remove them. It was trying to get me to file a Schedule C and all that business stuff. However, we never made any money off of any of the business stuff (and didn't spend any in 2006 to make it worth fooling with on taxes) so I just shut the stuff down. Well, Taxcut never asked me if those things were still valid, never asked me how much I made off of them, or anything. However, considering they were in last years TurboTax file, it was determined to error out on it.
So, I go to Turbotax.com (after booting into Windoze YUK) and it works perfectly neting me an extra 500.00 dollars! It allowed me to clear out all the stuff from last year that I didn't want to repeat this year. Needless to say, as soon as the IRS will let me, I'll be e-filing my return and awaiting a direct deposited refund! Gotta love it.

Now, after ordering the New Laptop from HP ( a very nice one at that with [hint] the AMD Dual core TL-60 64 bit proc) I have the misfortune of having to wait. I know, boo hoo. I can hear you now, "you poor slob", "I'm reaching for ya' I just can't get there.", or "I feel your pain". However, I'm not alone in my misery (it does love company you know) my wife is waiting for the hand-me-down crapshiba I'm using now. She's still got full reign over the AMD 3000+ Desktop, with a 19" flat monitor, but now she'll also have this laptop. I don't know how much of a blessing that will be, but if she avoids using firefox 2.0 on Edgy Kubuntu she'll be fine.

By-The-Way: I found out that Firefox 2 is responsible for all the lockups I've had since converting to Edgy and FF2. I've been running Seamonkey for sometime now, and its running without a hitch. (SeaMonkey is Mozilla's latest Browser suite that replaced "Mozilla" proper, and Netscape). The problem is you can't get the Google toolbar to work, or the Forecastfox add-on to work. I really liked both of them. There is some suggestion on the Kubuntu user list that Forecastfox is actually to blame for the lockups which are caused by run away processes. I don't know, 'cause my browser / KDE session would lockup so fast I could never diag the problem. Another problem was that it would lockup so fast that it would never right any error info to any of my logs. That makes it difficult to figure out. Well, everything is fine now. I may try removing forecastfox to see if that helps any. I think forecastfox is a victim of Firefox's poor add-on handling.

Well, anyway that's most of the rambling. I have also found a fairly cool website for IMing in a web browser: Meebo the IM client. Check it out. Its like GAIM for Linux only in a browser.

Debian Printing

Now I remember why I left debian in the first place. Printing. I can't get my Brother printer to print now that I've switched to Debian. I'd like to rant all over both Brother (and their crappy support for CUPS printing) and Debian (for their non-standard way of doing things). However, neither is going to help me figure out what to do next. I'm thinking that going back to Kubuntu Edgy would be a really good idea, at least my printing worked there. I switched up my partition scheme to what it should have been for a long time. I partitioned off / from /home so that I can completely change out distros and keep my home dir intact. It'll be a sweet day when Linux can live up to the hype of some, and overcome the hurdles others create.
Well, I'm not sure what to do next, I've removed and reinstalled the drivers from Brother to no avail. My printer lights up like its going to print, and then nothing happens. (Kinda like Curly's "I'm trying to think and nothing happens!). Well, I gotta finish getting ready for tonight, despite being more discouraged for some reason than I've been in a long time.

Swapped Back

Well, crow isn't so bad if you put a little ketchup and salt on it.

I finally had to come back and try Debian SID again. I ran Kubuntu for almost a year, which is a record for me I think. There are things I stand by as far as what I've said about a lot of Debian developers being cry babies. The problem is they make the best darned overall distro out there hands down. Especially if you like KDE. With Novell climbing into bed with Micro$oft, I wasn't about to run anything with "SUSE" in the name. The problem is right when I needed to be paying attention the most, Ardent's mail server decided to go all foobar on the SAN drives. I wound up setting on the phone till about 4 in the morning. Not only that, but due to my lack of pay attention, the whole upgrade I was doing to fiesty fawn went so far south I had to format and start over anyway. So, I decided to download the latest etch netinstall CD and try it out again. I'm going to have to do away with this STUPID "iceweasal" rebranded Firefox browser though, because its just getting on my nerves. There are a lot of places you can't do what you want because they only support "Firefox 2.0.x". The problem is that is EXCACTLY what you're running, but they don't know that. So, I installed a Firefox extension called, "User Agent Switcher". What it does is respond to Web Site Queries about what browser you're running. I had to setup my own "User Agent" because who would have ever thought that you'd run firefox and have to fake out a website so that it would know you were running Firefox? Anyway, here's the settings:

description="Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1"
useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061205 Firefox/2.0.0.1 (Debian-2.0.0.1+dfsg-2)"
appname="Firefox" appversion="2.0.0.1 (X11; en-US)"
platform="Linux i686"
vendor=""
vendorsub=""

The last two I just left blank. I thought about adding "Debian" for vender just to mess with folks. :-D But, I decided not to. Anyway, if you add a custom Agent and fill in the parameters with the above, the sites you go to will think you're running Firefox 2.0.0.1 (which you are).

Other than that things are going well. I have Debian up and running, and mighty fine so far. I used dar to restore the greater part of my home directory, along with unison, which I use to keep my home directory synced up to the main PC here at the house. Now that I've gotten weaned off of kdar (a cool graphical utility that the maintainer gave up on) I'm able to do just what I want via command line. I'll script it all out sooner or latter.

Anyway, looking forward to the weekend, even though I have to go to an Executive Board Meeting at 8:30 am tomorrow. YUCK. I hate getting up early on a Saturday.

May God bless your weekend.

Bye Bye Sugar Coating

Well, I've been preaching this kind of stuff for years. I have long believed that you CAN NOT win a soul to Christ using the flesh! A person will not be won to the Spirit after having the flesh appealed to first!! Why do I say that? Because for years now the SBC (at least the TBC) in their "Youth Evangelism Conferences" have used "Christian Rock" or "Contemporary" music to attract young people. Well, I read in the December 15, 2006 The Sword of the Lord an Article with the following Headline:

"Compromised Youth Ministries Now Admit Failure"

Imagine that? The first half of the article is a quote from Christianpost.com's article quoting Time's "IN Touch with Jesus" for November 6, 2006. whew, that was a chain to follow. Anyway, I finally find out that I'm not alone in my stand against Christianizing the World's music!!! Sorry, but I lived the Rock-n-Roll scene for real, AC/DC, Journey, Motley Crue, etc. etc. concerts, the whole nine yards. I have always held to the FACT that you cannot convert something of the world and call it Christian without putting it through the fire, melting it, and remolding it. THIS is exactly what modern Christianity has failed to do with Rock Music. Had they put it through the Fire of God's Word, they'd find out from its history, and its layout (the beat) that it is NOT healthy, spiritually or physically. The Word of God COMMANDS us to come out from among the World, NOT make friends with them, or appeal to their flesh in competition with worldly pursuits!! I especially appreciated this part from the Editor of The Sword of the Lord,

Over the past few decades churches by the thousands have caved in to the pressure of the culture. They compromised their values and capitulated to "what kids want." What they wanted was entertainment, a good time, fun and games, rock music, no work, no demands and certainly no standards. Now they are forced to "fess up" to their failure. The churches went along, and so did the kids (for a while).

So, now does anyone believe me? Those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will. Because they are more worried about glorifying Christ than they are about putting up good numbers for the associational report letter!!

The Summary of that article was to enforce the idea that true Bible Based Worship, was what gets kids, adults, women, men, boys and girls, into Church, and its what keeps them there! God centered Churches are what we need, NOT seeker friendly, or man centered Churches! I'm not here to please men, I'm here to please Christ!

The problem I have now is that there are those who are wrapped up in their sin of selfishness, and pride who will refuse to accept these facts regardless of what the Bible says, and facts show. They'll point to the very few who keep attending Church to "prove" they are right. I remember way back, before I went to Bible College, I left the TBC's (Tennessee Baptist Convention) Youth Evangelism Conference and swore to never return because it was nothing more than a Rock Concert with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled on to make it look good! Why? Because while the hectic music was playing I saw all manner of godless behavior, and NO worship coming from the youth attending, and because as soon as the preaching started, they became restless and uninterested. Imagine that? If the music was what those who push it on us say it is, WHY does it not draw these young people to a full commitment to Christ? I have long held that music should move your heart to bow before God, to praise His greatness, and think of all His benefits as the Psalms tell us. I have also used as a guide to the music I listen to, the Bible. If a song isn't Biblical in its message, its of the Devil I don't care if Billy Graham sings it himself!

Finally let me finish with one more Quote from Dr. Shelton Smith of the Sword:

Youth groups that are entertainment based are destined to fail. Kids need to get a steady diet of Bible teaching and strong preaching with an emphasis on Scripture, salvation, sanctification, separation, standards, soul winning and the surrendered life!

Amen.

Sundays Good, Mondays bad.

I love the weekend. It has Saturday, which is my general purpose only real day off. It also has Sunday The real first day of the week, Church day, and football day (If you like to watch football). Anyway, today was our Church's Business meeting and we scheduled out our Valentine banquette, Vacation Bible School, and Revival. The Revival is especially interesting to me, because I've been mulling over setting it up as a Bible Conference, where you have a different preacher each night, and either leave it up to God, or assign them topics, or Bible passages (Like a book of the Bible, etc.) and then turn them loose. I really liked the ones I have attended, and since our last Associational Crusade, its really been on my heart. The dates are for the Revival the week of the 15th of July through the friday of that week, and for Vacation Bible School, it starts June 11th and goes through Friday of that week. I'm really looking forward to both. Before I go to bed I'm going to update the schedule and the Web Site for the Church.
Oh, today was my Sister's 39th Birthday, hehehehe. Not that I would tell you how old she is or anything. I try to call her every year, or go see her, but today being Sunday going to see her was out.

Well, that's a short one for today. I'll post more later.

Kubuntu Breakdown

Well, it appears that my work was in vain, or worse. It seems that now, whenever I come out of hibernation my PC just forgets how to access the hard drive. It will slowly begin to lock up, and then eventually get to the point of being so hosed, that I have to power it off! The problem is that now, I don't even have to come out of hibernation, as it could do it any time. I got so frustrated just before new years because I had just finished balancing my checkbook in KMymoney, and the whole system seized up when I clicked the "save" button. ARGGGHH! I had to go through the whole process again later. I never had this problem with the ReiserFS, but now it seems to be very regular with ext3. What gives?
Anyway, I'm looking at putting another distro on here just because I want to try another one. Actually If I could get someone to donate about 2,000.00 dollars I'd get me a new laptop :-D! Yea, I know, that'll never happen. However, as soon as I can get off this lousy Toshiba Crapillite the better. (Oh, did I tell you I can't stand Toshiba's laptops?).

On another note, I discovered yesterday that my license plate was 3 months out of date!! I've been driving my truck around on expired tags since September! So, I went to the downtown location to get my tags renewed, found out they are still in the 60's and only take cash or check, so I had to go find an ATM. So, now I'm kinda like Kevin in Home Alone, "I"m not afraid any more!"

As you may know I work with Ardent Health here in Nashville. We just got in some shiny new P590's from IBM. We're going to put our AIX systems on those things, running most in HA mode. The problem I have is they want to put TSM on them as well, and I'm not real keen on that idea. Its not that I don't trust the 590s, or whatever, its just that I think it puts too many eggs in that basket. I've always run TSM as isolated from the systems it backs up as possible, maybe having the TSM box in the same rack would be about as close as I've ever gotten to that kind of thing (and I didn't really like that much). I don't know, maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it just doesn't seem wise to me. Well, I'll go with it if I have to, but what I'm lobbying for is a couple of mid to high end Series X servers with Linux running on them. I think if we could use hardware thats easy to obtain, and an OS thats easy to setup, our DR could start much faster in the field. We have a get together scheduled tomorrow so we can hash out who's going to do what this year. We'll see what we run up against there. I've heard of folks running TSM on Windows servers with it all tied into the same AD tree. How crazy can you get? I mean if a virus gets in and attacks your environment, your TSM server is going up in smoke right along with the rest of your Windoze servers. No, I believe your TSM system, or whatever backup system, should be isolated from the systems its meant to protect. If you need to restore, you don't need the headache. I mean think about it, how will you restore parts of your AD tree if you can't get into TSM because the AD tree is down? Sounds foolish but take a minute, you'll get it. Oh, I'm a Certified Directory Engineer, so I know you can get the AD up enough to do what you need, but why? When you can run TSM on the same x86 hardware with Linux, and cut your DR time in half!

So, anyway that's my rambling for today.