Galloping Globalism ~ Bible Prophecy Today

Galloping Globalism ~ Bible Prophecy Today

What can I say? Well, I said it on Irk the Enemy
http://www.irktheenemy.com/2009/10/29/so-what-do-we-do/

Have you been IRKed yet?

I have another blog called Irk the Enemy. I got the name from a comment a friend made, "Smile! It IRKS the Enemy" I just thought it was a good concept for a blog.
A few of my friends contribute with me: bible studies, poetry, interesting emails or blog entries from elsewhere, even original rants about our political views (small govt, states rights, maximum liberty, low taxes, etc., not really party affiliated beyond that).

We have a bunch of readers in the US and Canada, not to mention 5 that popped up in Iran today, Australia, Malaysia, England, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Singapore, Kenya and some other places too.

Come have a look

bt

a trip to walgreens....

I left my razor in Georgia on a recent trip, so I went in search of a new one...

Apparently Gillette no longer makes the Sensor razor, though they still sell the blades. I had a coupon for a Gillette Fusion Power razor. Apparently it has a little motor inside that does something. The guy that helped me get the razor out of the locked case said he switched to that same razor from the sensor and really loved it. It was 9 PM and he had no stubble so I guess it works pretty well. I am still not real sure about motorized razor blades against my face, but I will give it a shot.

A smiley little teen age girl in cosmetics was walking by and said she would check me out. While I was standing at the counter I heard a familiar sound of rhythm blocks coming over the PA. I said "Magic Bus! I drove to California on that song." The girl's response was "Must have been a long song. They have been playing a lot of old songs lately and they all seem to be real long."

I am not sure what all of this means but I left the store with a sense of adventure, nostalgia and mirth, so I guess it was a good trip.

Riley Jean Thompson

Riley Jean Thompson was

born today at 1:50 this afternoon

.

8 lbs 1 oz

21 & 1/2 inches

apgars were 7 & 9

http://picasaweb.google.com/bradfoot/Riley

Update: What I really did on my summer vacation

My wife has been gone for several weeks and I was planning on getting a lot of studying done, both programming and bible study, working out every day, getting projects done, etc. I really did have plans to do some really good stuff.

Unfortunately, my body had other plans. I got a nasty sinus infection that dripped down into bronchitis and basically knocked me out for 2 weeks. I only worked out once, at the start of the thing. Buzzy was disappointed too. I did not even walk him around the lake during the time. I barely got out of bed. One good thing came of this sickness: I quit smoking, mainly because I could barely breathe ;-)

I did not go to the MD for this but got some herbs and stuff from the health food store my chiropractor recomended. That helped some. I switched to taking goldenseal root/echinacea capsules and almost completely got over it. There is still a lingering sinus infection, thankfully not gushing, just a mild drip. I had an appointment for a six month checkup with my endocrinologist last week. He gave me some keflex, which I filled last night. Hopefully this will clear up the last of the problem.

I was able to do some light bible study while on my back. I watched slideshows from K house or listened to the audio on my mp3 player. After about 10 days I started feeling merely bad, rather than "may I please just die and get it over with". This allowed me to play with java some for an hour or two at a time. Eventually I got to feeling pretty good, besides the nagging dripping sinuses, and got some projects done. I fixed a chair that has been broken for months. My friend Dana came over and helped me get started. I let it stay clamped for a couple days and finished it yesterday. It is solid, even holding my big body.

I also played with Glassfish and Apache Tomcat servers. I am going to go with Glassfish to learn server based java stuff, simply because it is less hassle to mess with. Supposedly Glassfish is more versatile than Tomcat in the services it provides for. I dunno, all these things are a sheer cliff face I need to climb. It is like you need to know a hundred things just to write a hello world app with a servlet or what have you. It is going to be interesting.

Add to all this my daughter in law is going to have my first grand child some time real soon. That is going to stomp on my study time, but Hey! That's OK! I can't wait to be a grandfather!

y'all have fun!

bt

What I did on my summer vacation

I got up, looked for a job. Then I went and hung out in front of the drug store......I got up and looked for a job. I found a job: keeping people from hanging out in front of the drug store!

I wish it was a simple as a C&C character. I have a specific set of qualifications. That specific set is a little different from the requirements most employers have. Vax FORTRAN jobs are few and far between these days. That is what I have been doing for the last 12 years, so that is my area of comfort. I know I can do a good job at that, only nobody cares. I love messing with web pages and all, I can hold my own with Java, Python, PHP, MySQL, etc. I have little work experience with those languages, so I do not feel qualified to answer those ads.

I am doing some homework to address this. I am going through a Java applications book from school to get my feet wet. After that I plan to do some J2EE work. There are some things I just did not get when I was exposed to it on the job. No one really had time to work with me, answering my inane questions, so I have to just do it at home.

My wife is going away for a few weeks to take care of some out of town issues. Sounds like time for a programming party.

The last six weeks have been nice and relaxing, but I need to get serious and disciplined, both with job related and health related things. I have been doing some working out and swimming, battling kidney pain and sciatica. I nned to schedule the next 3 weeks to exercise every day, spend time working on learning skills and some time doing job search stuff. Yeah, discipline, that is my middle name. I get into something and lose track of time. "Thursday? I thought it was still Tuesday!!"

We will see how this works out.

Obama is number 44, finally

It was a nice ceremony. The speech was ok. I did not like the digs at the previous administration, but it is what the people wanted to hear.

I do not remember a media frenzy like this over an inauguration before. It is like they expect him to solve all the world's problems.

We will see how it turns out

Inauguration day tomorrow, oh boy!

Well. it is finally here. Obamma is going to be sworn in so he can age 20 years in the next 4. It is a tough job, but at least he will have a Congress that is of his own party. With any luck they will actually do the right thing together. With any luck the CHANGE he keeps talking about will include the congress starting to do the right thing. They did everything they could to mess up the country and blamed it all on the republicans. Oh well, that is how liberals work.

I have nothing against blacks or arabs. Obamma is actually more arab than black, but the media does not talk about that. Actually the media is treating Obama as if he is the second coming of Jesus Christ. Obama is not the messiah and I hope he realizes that. I wish him the best of luck. I hope he is able to accomplish all the positive things he promised.

I am kind of looking forward to a president that had to have his Blackberry pried form his hands. Obama is net oriented and supposedly will let the people have a say in things very the web. Works for me. The fact that our elected representatives have been more in tune with what lobbyists want than their constituents might be counteracted by more communication channels between the people and the government. Let's see how that works out.

My main worries are

• how are the entitlement programs are going to be paid for
• how much is the government going to grow to administer those programs

Obama is talking about lowering the tax burden on the middle class. Great! I am middle class. The problem with this is the middle class is what supports the federal government. Directly by the taxes they pay and indirectly by the taxes that are part of the price they pay for everything they buy. If the new plan is to tax the heck out of businesses they will just add the increased taxes to the price they charge for everything.

TANSTAAFL, man. There aint no such thing as a free lunch. Liberals do not believe that TANSTAAFL is a fact of the universe. They love to spend other people's money. "Share the wealth" is something they believe in, as long as it is not their wealth that is being shared.

Increased government programs means increased govenrment machinery. This machinery consists of new government workers. Workers mean supervisors, who need to be directed by directors, layer upon layer. Government loves to pile on layers of management. Government programs are by nature very inefficient, costing a significant portion of every dollar given out to administer the giving out. Don't forget the wonderful benefits packages that all government employees get. It is all paid for by YOUR tax dollars and hiher prices from OTHER's taxes they pass on to you.

Any government program also means more regulations to make sure the money is spent "properly". More regulations means more paperwork, more lawyers, you see where I am going with this. TANSTAAFL!

Do we need a bigger government? Not really.
Are we going to get it? Count on it.

The problem with a democracy is that we get the government we deserve. Historically, democratic forms of government work well until the people find out they can vote themsleves a free lunch. We moved whole heartedly into this phase with the New Deal. Is the New New Deal going to sink us completely? Only time will tell.

I really wish Mr. Obama all the luck in the world. I really hope that he manages to turn this country around. It is possible. It is possible that Santa Claus will help him out. Who knows? The laws of thermodynamics might even be repealed.

I really hope Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi cooperate with him. I really hope that the world cooperates with him. The world press seems to think he is the second coming of Christ. Maybe he is. I am not holding my breath on that one though.

y'all have fun!

Support Wikipedia

Wikipedia Rocks!

The button below is a good thing to click on. Wikipedia is a source of information that in the long run is free of bias and as broad as the internet.

Currently, many schools do not allow students to cite Wikipedia. The way I see it (as a recent student), this is due to jealousy from the traditional encyclopedia companies. A free source of information keeps people away from paid sources. Most paid sources also have paid PhD's on staff that write articles. Pay for writing an article does not equal interest in a subject. Interest leads to deep investigation and accurate reporting of a subject. On the Wikipedia more people than the one that gets paid are interested, and they all have their own viewpoints, this leads to a wider discussion and less bias in a mature Wikipedia article. There have been some deliberately misleading articles about celebrities and such, but that fortunately does not apply to technical subjects. I mean, when was the last time you heard about somebody making fun of Gadolinium or an internet RFC?

In short, Wikipedia rocks and deserves to be supported. Please drop a few bucks from your PayPal acccount by clicking the button below.

My kid got married!

It was actually a bit of a shock. He called to say that he proposed to his childhood sweetheart at a company picnic. At the end of the month they came down to get grand ma's ring to mark the engagement. His mom and I were not fooled. At lunch we both guessed they eloped. Since we both knew they had to tell her parents early. The next night, when the were planning to announce it we had a nice party.

I cannot say how happy I am for them or how proud I am of him. Way to go Joe!!

Yahoo sports is better

yahoo sports is close to what I am looking for.For instance, here is the Barbados team. You can click on the athletes and go to a bio page that includes races they competed in. If they are going on you can get to the scheduled races also.

The best part is my browser never bottoms out like on the NBC Olympics site.

nbcolympics.com is top heavy

It might be because I am not using a Microsoft (Macrosplat??) browser or OS, but nbcolympics.com just does not do it for me.
First off is the behind the scenes data transfer that keeps going on. Yeah, AJAX is a great thing, but when there is so much background activity that it takes five minutes to get a TV listing something is wrong. In Firefox under Linux when the browser is waiting the window goes gray. I sat for five minutes not touching the mouse after clicking on a tv listing. The window went in and out of gray. Of course this was a busy time, Sunday morning at 10:00, so the site was busy.

The way I have to get a tv listing is pretty dumb. They have this grid with times across the top and stations on the side. So you have to click on a box that corresponds to a time and a channel. Eventually I got my tv listing for the local NBC affiliate for the whole day. Wonderful, totally worth waiting five minutes for :-P. It was hard to see it because it kept going in and out of gray. When it is gray there is no scrolling or clicking or anything that works. Why is there data transfer taking place?? I am not doing anything, just trying to look at what I called up.

besides that, why do I have to click on this time grid to get the whole day for one lousy channel. Why not have all the channels in a list folded up. If they are going to give you the whole day, you might as well be able to choose the channel you want unfolded, more than one to scroll back and forth to see what you are going to watch.

This is just carping,of course. What I am really upset about is the fact that designed the sight to show off Flash and AJAX. As usual, NBC forgot that the Olympic games are about the GAMES. I don't want eye candy, I want information about the athletes and the competitions they are signed up for or already competed in. It is next to impossible to trace an athlete through an event.

You would think You could click on a country and get a list of athletes, at minimum. Go ahead, click on a minor country like Barbados. Not much there except that they are not expected to medal in any events. Yeah? So? They are HERE are they not??? Show us who is here under their flag and what they are competing again. It would not take much to add a list to the bio page.

How about events? You have to know what days an event is to see the results. Why??? You should be able to click on an event and follow it through the heats and semifinals to the finals. That is not how it is. Click on Sports. Somewhere there after all the little videos you might find results and schedule. Then, after waiting for all the stuff to load on the next page you have to unfold the days and try to figure out where the event you are tracing is. Go ahead, Figure out what events Bradly Ally from Barbados was in and what happened. I watched him come in 3rd in his heat and qualify for the semifinals. I lost it there.

I have an idea for NBC. Hire some athletes to help you with the website for the next games you cover. Figure out what the games are about. Give people the ability to choose between eye candy and information. NBC has gotten better at broadcasting the games. Well, a little better. The website sucks

whatever. Like I expect NBC to do anything that makes sense.

Enjoy the games

I finally got it!!

When i first posted about loading Ubuntu Hardy Heron I said that one problem I had was connecting my Netgear SC101 to my new linux box. This is where I store all my important files like a million mp3's, videos, old files from various PC's, resumes, whatever. I really wanted to have a connection.

One thing I noticed was that it was dirt simple to use windows networking from my linux box, much easier than when it was an all windows network, go figure.

It finally occurred to me that the SC101 drives look just like regular hdd's to windows. They even have a sharing item on the right click menu. I shared the network drives and looked from my linux box and there they are!!!

All my problems are solved ;-)

Next I have to get my webcam working.

25 years? I can do that standing on my head ;-)

June 18th, 1983, a day that will live in infamy! No, wait, wasn't that Dec. 7th, 1941??
Yeah, that is right; June 18th was a nice day! :-)

I remember standing up front, feeling a little dizzy and confused, looking back, waaaay back to the back of the hallway, seeing this really beautiful girl in white, wondering who the heck she was, then figuring out "Oh Man!That is my Julie!! Never saw her all dressed up nice. That is definitely not a Denny's uniform."

The music started and people started moving and Dr Jimmy came up and said some stuff. I had rehearsed it a couple days before so I knew what to say and did not screw it up and then i got to kiss her (Do NOT mess up her makeup!! There are pictures to take!!!!) and we went outside and inside everywhere and took pics and finally the food came.

We had a reception in the church and I found out that tons of people knew who I was and my name and all (Who was that? Does she go to church here??) The cake was neat: Julie's little brother's fiance's father had known Julie forever, so he gave us a WWII Japanese bayonet to cut the cake. I heard some comments about it being in bad taste, but the did not hear my mom every Pearl Harbor Day - "Beware the wily Japanese!!!!! Never forget what they did!!!!!" I just thought it was kind of fitting, using a spoil of the Big War to get started with our marriage. We got a whole lot of great gifts. One, a needlepoint from Carol Werner that is hanging on my wall upstairs. Another was a plunger, with the handle painted white with little hearts on it and a little corset hanging on it for decoration might be around somewhere, or it might have been lost in one of the last 2 moves. I still had it in Margate and I remember it at the apt before this one. That was from one of the people that new my name but I did not know her. I guess Julie knew her.

We went from there to my mom's townhouse. She had moved like two day's before to a new apartment but she left the furniture downstairs for the party. There was lots of food and family and all that. My Aunt made the Champagne Punch mom usually made for parties. I don't know what she did too it, but I was tripping on that stuff. It was a bit tense for a party: my mom and Julie's mom did not get along very well, yeah, that's right, they did not get along very well. We were talking about leaving soon, so Julie's sibs and friends went out and decorated the Cadillac that was sitting in the driveway. Ooops, I drove a Toyota Starlet. The stuck a few things on it and we bugged out for Parts North!

That was Fort Pierce at the Holiday Inn just off the turnpike. Julie was upset that I just signed my name to the receipt instead of Mr and Mrs blah blah. Sorry, it was not a hotel register, just a credit card receipt, oh well. I did carry her over the threshold. She did not like the fireman's carry I used. Sorry. I did not want to drop her or smack her head. I think we went to Red Lobster for dinner.

The next day we headed up to Disney World!! We stayed at the Howard Johnson's on the property so we could park and use the buses to get to parks. It was a great honeymoon. We are heading out tomorrow for a few days in Orlando. Not at Mouse World, this time it is at Fish World. I can't wait!!

It has been a long run. There were 5 couples married that summer in our church. We know 2 split, but the other 2 could still be together, though we have not heard from them in like 10 years. I did not hear it but Julie said the pastor that married up told her we would not last a year. It has not been easy, but we beat his prediction by quite a margin. We have a wonderful son in the army that will joining us this weekend.

Twenty Five more years? We will try, but Jesus will probably get back before then. We will see...

bt

Gizmo was great but his big brother was a bit stressed

Yeah, that was fun but it is now over. We have had Buzzy for about 14 years and I don't think he was ever as playful as Gizmo. We live in a townhouse and lucky for Buzz, Gizmo never figured out how to make it past the fourth step. Whenever Buzz came downstairs Gizmo was all over him. In the last few days they were together BUzzy would growl at him, then nip and finally chomp. Then he would runupstairs because Gizmo never got it. He was having fun and buzz was looking like a heart attack was possible, sooooo....

When we first got Gizmo my wife took him to Pet Supermarket to get shots and supplies. The manager fell in love with him and kept asking if she was ready to give him up. It turns out he has a female chihuahua a bit older than Gizmo (1/2 chihuahua, 1/2 boston terrier) so he is planning on breeding them in about two years.

Buzzy is getting old, so maybe the pick of the litter will not have a big brother to contend with. We will see how it works out....

ubuntu update

I love Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It is so stable it amazes me. Occasionally I have to reboot because an update requires it. More often I have rebooted because I did not know how to do something and my stupidity requires it.

One of the things I wanted to do was be able to use my Netgear SC101 server with it. The workaround was to put the files I want on a windows partition and then copy it to the linux machine. Surprise! Windows networking works so easily with linux, so much better than it ever did as a windoze box. Amazing!

I found a package on the net to let me attach the sc101 to Linux. I can see the device and the drives. I can't mount it yet because it is not a vfat partition. I am going to mess around and try some others. One note says it will not work with it when the device is setup for windows use. I hope that is not true because that would kind of defeat the file transfer purpose. We will see. Oh well, windows file sharing is working better now so that is easier. Workarounds are fun to come up with.

I spent the weekend figuring out how to write some AVI movies onto a DVD. I never did manage to do it with windoze; Ubuntu hack #36 tells about a system of scripts and a gui interface called tovid. The menu looks crummy but the vids play. Now I can watch Burn Notice anywhere on my portable dvd player. Yeehaw!

I still need to hook up my vpn client so I can get on the network at my job. That is not a high priority since they hate it when anyone needs to work from home. Oh well, who cares. I am working with linux servers more on my job so I have more reason to mess with linux at home. Like another thing I did last weekend was to set up apache, mysql, python and django.

I still have not found anything like Dreamweaver so I will have to install Studio 8. If I cannot get it to work on virtualbox I will have to pay $40 for CrossOver Linux. I miss Dreamweaver much more than i miss windoze freezing up and puking.

I have a feeling I will be using Ubuntu for a long time - and loving it!

bt

like the rabbi said, "Life begins when the kids move out and the dog dies..."

Unfortunately, life will not begin for me for quite a while it seems. Our old dog Buzz is about 14 years old. Just about ready to go. Then I get the phone call...."oh, this puppie is soooooo cute...Can I bring him home???"
Oh Boy! Here goes another creature with a shelf life of fifteen years or so.


He is a boston terrier-chihuahua mix (my wife says they used a pillow) named Gizmo. He is cute but he is seriously a puppy. He can't quite hit the paper, he has needle sharp teeth and is not afraid to use them. He drives Buzzy nuts trying to play with him. Yeah he is cute. I guess it is ok. We need a creature so it might as well be Gizmo.
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I had one nerve left...and Windows got on it!

My windows machine was moving insanely slowly. something was going on behind the scenes that was crippling the machine and I could not take it any more.

My first step was to try to reinstall windows. After getting it installed I ran the windows updater and installed several "critical updates". After installing Xp service pack 3 no other updates would install. All it would say was that "some problem on your computer is causing installation to fail". I went through this several times and finally said Enough.

Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron sounded like the way to go. I have messed around with Linux before and wanted to see what it would do on a decent machine. I have to say my Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop is running better with Linux that it ever did with Windoze. I have a few things that are not working yet, but I can probably work around them.

There is a Netgear Storage Central server on my network that has no linux drivers. I tried installing it in a virtualbox vm. It looked like it installed ok, but I could not attach any network drives. I read about an app called crossover that is supposed to allow windows apps to run under linux. That will be my next try. If that does not work, maybe somebody will write an opensource app to use the server. My fall back is I hedged my bets when I wiped the HD and set up a 5 gig Windoze partition. I can dual boot into there, get the files I need from the server then go back into Linux and grab the files from that partition into Linux.

I need to learn a lot, but Linux is the future, so I need to move in that direction. I have a lot of windows apps, like Office, Project, Visio and Dreamweaver/Studio 8. Hopefully I can figure out how to make them work with Crossover or find something different to use, like OpenOffice.org suite.

We will see how it turns out.

bt

Whoops - forgot this was here!

Since my previous post I have finished my BS in SW Eng and MS in IT Mgmt, been really sick several times and had lots of crazy stuff going on.

God got me through it all, in spite of me. This morning Joanie reminded me of this place by sending me a link to her blog here.

maybe I will remember to write here more often

bt

Nothing Matters But God

Not only that, but nothing would be matter without God! Ask a physicist if he understands the Strong Nuclear Force. betcha he won't say much more than it is what keeps the nucleus of atoms from flying apart and it only works over extremely short distances.

Col 1:16
For by Him all things were created, {both} in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him.
Col 1:17
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Good thing we matter to God, or we would not even be matter