Google does evil…

Posted by Scott Hraban

Google sinks a little bit lower – I used to be a big fan of Google, but as the years have gone on, my respect for them gets a little bit less every so often. Today is one of those days.

If you visit the site often, or even if you don’t, chances are that you have heard of the Google Doodles. Google likes to mark some occasions with a different “Google” image that is relevent.

But of course being the bastion of liberalism that they are, someone somewhere decided that Memorial Day and Veterans Day are not worthly to get a doodle.

So far as I can tell, the official response is:

Google celebrates a wide variety of holidays with Google Doodles. Doodles are generally reserved for international holidays and famous birthdays.

Which all sounds well and good on the surface, but the more that I think about it, that does not cut it. Last time that I checked, Chinese New Year, Persian New Year, National Library Week, Bastille Day, and others – not international holidays.

I do realize that it is Google is a company that serves the world, not just America, but they are based here, and make lots of money here (just ask the Menlo Park Real Estate Agents), and I would think they could find it in their corporate hearts to pay some tribute to those that have given their lives for the freedom that our country takes for granted.

And yes, most of their doodles are light hearted and fun, but then so are most holidays. Every once it awhile it does us good to give some thought and tribute to others who have made our lives a whole lot better.

What kind of family are you?

Posted by Scott Hraban

Found at Villainous Company:

Are you a Democrat Family? Republican family? Marine Corps Family? Here’s a little test that will help you to decide :

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a Glock 40-caliber, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

Democrat Response:

Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question! Does the man look poor? Or oppressed? Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack? Could we run away? Should I just ignore him and hope for the best? What does my wife think? What would my French cousin think? What about the kids? Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand? What does the law say about this situation? What do the European courts say about this situation? Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it? Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children? Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me? What would the United Nations do in this case? Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me? If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me? Should I call 9-1-1? Why is this street so deserted? We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day and make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior. This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for few a days and try to come to a consensus.

Republican Response:

BANG!

Marine Response:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! click….. (sounds of reloading). BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! click

Wait, a democrat packing heat?

I know Linux is better, but…

Posted by Scott Hraban

Sometimes I just don’t have the time for it.

I realize that some of the reason that it takes me so long to get anything setup in Linux is that I am not a Linux guru, but it is also just plain hard and time consuming sometimes, and I consider myself reasonably competent when it comes to working with *nix OSes 😉

Once a box is setup, it is great, will run forever, doesn’t need in the way of maintanance other than to keep up with security patches, but that intial setup always seems to take forever, specifically when I want to do something in the laptop/desktop/user realm.

For example, I have a Linux print server that I setup, and I added a new printer to it the other night. Took me 5 minute to set it up on the Windows machine, took over an hour to setup on Linux. Find the RPM, oh wait, this is Ubuntu, that doesn’t work. Find a version with src, try to compile, doesn’t work with my version of cups (missing cups-config, I have cupsconfig, but that does not do it). Figure out how to make an RPM work on Ubuntu, install all the different things that are needed to make that work, and the install still does not work. Dig through what the RPM installed, find the .ppd file, unzip it, upload it through the web interface, now it works.

Network cards. I know, I should figure out ahead of time if the thing is supported, but when I am putting something together from a bunch of scavenged parts, that is not in the cards. I installed Fedora Core the other weekend, spent more or less the whole blankity blank weekend trying to get a PCMCIA network card, a USB network card, then a different USB network card, to work. It did not help that USB was not working out the box, and it took 3 hours or so to work through why that was not working.

At some point I gave up on that for a bit, and tried to get the sound card to work, and that would not work either…

Once I got those working, I was going to have to install and get working the UpNP music server, and that was likely going to be an adventure in itself, I am sure.

Again, freely willing to admit that a Linux guru could probably have had it up and going immediately, but I am not, but I am competent, and a pretty good Googler, so this stuff should not be impossible.

I finally gave up and installed Windows, and 1.5 hours later, I had sound working, I had network (with any of the 3 different NICs), I had the application humming along, ready to go, and WORKING!

Like I said, I really like Linux in the abstract, when it is already setup and configured, and as a server, but in my experience, using it for things in the user space that require things like wireless networking, sound, graphics, that sort of thing, I just always seem to strike out.

Please don’t kill me for being critical of Linux, I really tried 🙁

Golden Gate Bridge

Posted by Scott Hraban

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California, USA

We took my family that was visiting from Minnesota site seeing in San Francisco after my brother Steve’s wedding, and since I rarely go up to the city myself unless under duress, I took a few pictures.