NIU, CBS2, and the Gun Control Debate

I want to start off by giving my condolences to the victims, family and friends of the victims of the NIU massacre. My heart goes out to you.

Chicago’s CBS 2 covered the story and interviewed a student who thought the incident would have been a lot less bloody if students and teachers could have armed themselves. They then cut over to Chicago’s Mayor, Richard M. Daily, who said this incident just shows that we need more gun control in this country. Richard M. Daily, YOU. ARE. A. IDIOT. You can not admit when something you push for so much isn’t working.

CBS2 was taking comments from viewers on this issue.  I was very happy to see that so many people in Illinois, one of only two states with no conceal carry laws, want to have the right to arm themselves in public to protect themselves, their families, and others.  Many people who were against it didn’t do their research.  One of the most common comments for gun control was that the people who were carrying in other stats were untrained.  Most states that have conceal carry weapons (CCW) permits require permit holders to go through training including both class room and range time.  This class room time includes firearms safety, legal considerations, and use of force training.

When you take away the right of law abiding citizens to carry fire arms, you take away their right to protect themselves and their families.  What are your thoughts about this.  Please leave them in the comments below.

New Computer

So, after doing a little research and money moving, I ended up getting a new laptop after the milk incident last week.  The wife and I picked up an acer for 499.  Not too bad for a AMD dual core processor and 2 gigs of ram.  I’ve been busy getting the crap off and putting on the programs that I need.  My only problem, the speed of Microsoft.  I’m currently downloading a Service Pack for Visual Studio 2005 at a ice burg pace of 88KB.  Time till down load is still over an hour…  Why can’t the biggest software company in the world with the richest CEO in the US get a little more bandwidth???

Still have a few more updates to get before VS will be 100% compatible with Vista (how I loath Vista’s compatiblility).   I was wondering who has used Vista and what their thoughts or problems were.  After having used if for a week, I will post my thoughts.

Milk vs. Laptop

The milk won.  I will need to send out my laptop for repair as my 2 year old daughter spilled milk on it.  I’m hopping it’s just the power supply, but I don’t know my way around laptops that well.  The big downside, my homework that is due tonight was on there, so I will have to redo it this after noon before class.

Funny Google search term

Factoid:  “cops cross dressing truck driver” as a Google search term returns my blog.  Where in the list, I’m not quite sure (searched the first 15 pages and didn’t find it).

Ditching Windows: Why I think Linux May Become More Popular

So, here is the scenario:

You are in charge of an businesses IT decisions and budget. It is time to start upgrading computers. Here are your options: Stay on XP forever, move everything to Vista, switch to Mac, or go with Linux.

1. Stay on XP forever: Every thing in the world of Windows XP is stable. Your employees know how to run it, all of your hardware works, and all of your software works. But XP won’t be supported forever, so eventually, you won’t have drivers for new hardware and the software you buy won’t support XP. This isn’t a next year thing, but within the next 5-7.

2. Move to Vista: I say move, because in my experience, it is not an upgrade. If you move to Vista, you will now have to train all of your employees on how to do many basic functions, as most of them are different then they are in XP. You will also probably have to hire developers, as any software that was created for your company will more than likely not run well, if at all, in Vista with out changes. All employees will also have to be trained on any changes here, as well. Much of your computer equipment will also have to be upgraded/updated. Printers that work fine in XP may not work at all in Vista, and even if it’s “Vista Certified,” that doesn’t mean that it will work flawlessly. Many computers that are not ready to be replaced may not be VISTA ready, so they will need upgrades or need to be replaced even though they work fine with XP.

3. Switch to Mac: Lets face it, Macs are expensive and most companies can not justify spending that much money on computers. You will also have to, again, redevelop most of your programs and train all of your employees.

4. Go with Linux: Training will be a big cost here. Lets face it, it’s not Windows and many users are scared when they get out of their Windows comfort zone. Your IT department should be able to put together a group of apps and a desktop style that is fairly close to the look and feel of windows. You will also have to redevelop many programs for you company. But much, if not all, of the code could be found else where, thanks to open source software. And a lot of hardware is fully compatible with Linux (yes, not all, but, like I said, a lot). Here is the big point, though. COST. Your company will no longer have to pay licensing all all of those computers running Microsoft Software.

I have not been using Linux for all that long, but I keep hearing that companies are scared to make the switch because of the training required and the need to re-develop their software. Most companies will no have to face this with Vista, as well, but Vista and the Office Suite are a heck of a lot more expensive than Linux and an Open Source word processor like OpenOffice.org.

What are your thoughts. I haven’t researched the numbers, but in my logically based mind, it makes sense. I would really love to hear from some people in the field to see if my ideas are that far fetched.

How to survive driving in the snow

I have had to drive in a snow storm three times since last night.  Had to go to school for a quiz last night, which was canceled by the way, then had to fight home so I could get some sleep before battling the snow on my way into work this morning.  I had to remember many driving techniques I hadn’t had to use  in a while.  Just as a reminder for anyone who has to drive in the snow today.

1. SLOW DOWN.  This seems obvious enough, right?  But too many people don’t.

2.  Follow from a distance.  Again,  obvious.  4 wheel drive doesn’t help you stop, and ABS only can do so much.

3.  Don’t slam your breaks.  In the snow, your wheels stop very well, but if they stop, your car won’t.  Come to a stop slowly.  If you feel your car starting to slide, instead of hitting the breaks harder, let off of them.

4. Don’t make sharp maneuvers.   If you prevent your wheels from locking up, you will have traction, but only so much.  That traction has to be spread out to your turning and acceleration or breaking.  If you request more traction than you have available, you are going to slide.  Just the basic laws of physics here.

5.  Don’t drive unless you have to.  The middle of a snow storm is not the time to go to the movies or go grocery shopping.  That can wait until the plows have cleared the road.

6.  Avoid stopping in deep snow.  Last winter I saw a car in the ditch.  I pulled onto the shoulder, which hadn’t been plowed.  She was OK, but when I went to pull out, my car didn’t want to go anywhere.   Learn from my mistake, don’t pull over to help unless you are sure you won’t get stuck too.

Have any tips of your own?  Please share them in the comments.

Giving KDE another try

I have been using Linux for about a year now.  I started off using OpenSuse with the KDE desktop environment.  I wasn’t all that impressed with most of the user interfaces in SUSE, so I quickly switched over to Ubuntu, which uses the Gnome desktop environment by default.  I was much more pleased with Ubuntu than I was SUSE and never looked back.  Being relatively new to Linux, I was never relay sure if my preference was from changing desktop environments or from changing distributions.  After feeling conformable with the majority of task I have been doing lately, and hearing about all the great news with KDE 4, I decided to give it another try.  So far I like it, except for on problem, I can’t get KDE 4 to load right.  Worse case scenario, I’ll have to wait for April for Ubuntu/Kubuntu 8.04.

Finding Chuck Norris

Ok, I have 3 steps I need you to do:

1. Go to Google. (easy enough, right)
2. Type “Find Chuck Norris”
3. Click “I’m feeling lucky” button.

I must give credit where credit is due.

What happened to the Internet???

I was having some strange problems with my local ISP last night. Many websites I went to did not load. Some would load a login page, but when I tried to get past there, I couldn’t. Google wouldn’t load, but 9 rules would. I play an online game called Triabal Wars. I could get their login page, but when I tried to log into the game, only the ad on the right side of the page would load. I had been messing with programs that “optimize” the Windows registry, and thought that could have been my problem, although that didn’t make sense. So, I tried both my desktops, and they were also having the same problem (one Linux, one windows). I talked to Nick, who lives in same apartment complex, and he said he was having problems loading gMail. “OK,” I thought, “So it’s not a problem at my end.” So, I gave up on surfing the web for the night and kicked back with Guitar Hero instead. I’ll have to check if good old Comcast has fixed the problem by the time I get home.

DVD Drive Access via a Network

So, I ran into a little problem while I was trying to install some software onto my Windows box.  You see, I don’t have a DVD drive on my Windows box.  I have one on both my Linux box and my laptop, though.  So, my options were to try and access the drive via the network, rip the DVD to CD’s, or uninstall the drive from the Linux box and pop it into the windows box.  Accessing the drive via the network sounded complicated, especially because I am running two different OS’s, so that was out.  The software I was trying to install was a MS product, so without even trying, I knew ripping was out of the question.  And moving the drive was out of the question because I’m lazy, and it would have taken me half the night just to get the two computers out and open.  So, I was back to trying to get the drive shared over the network.   I use SAMBA on my Linux box to do file sharing with all my other computers.  Samba makes it really easy to share folders over the network, just a right click.  I tried a right click on the optical drive, but didn’t find the share icon in the list.  Oh well, time to head to Google.  With a little searching, I found the 7 lines of code I had to add to a Samba configure file.  Two tries latter after tweeking for specifics for my computer, and the drive was shared.  Much easier than moving the drive over, as I would have had to pull out both computers every time I ran into this problem.  But no more.