Opining Online

Add computer and operating system to the title.

I hate it when my computer starts “acting up” and especially when I’m not exactly sure why, where, or when it’s going to.

List of current irritations:

Shockwave hangs when I’m using Chrome.

Facebook won’t load some profile or photo pages in IE.

Writing posts loses paragraph breaks in Chrome.

Ancestry.com is slow, their search options suck and navigation is a pain.

Shutterfly’s Family Pages don’t load correctly in IE, Chrome, or Firefox. I get the best results from Chrome, but get Java errors in all three. I’ve downloaded and re-installed Java several times.

Gmail is unavailable too often.

Yahoo mail keeps telling me the last session wasn’t shut down properly.

XP Pro (service pack 3) recognizes my printer as new hardware on every boot, but when I just cancel the box, my printer works fine.

It’s not only a pain, but painful for me, task to get to the back of my box to plug in my external harddrive to make backups. But I’m going to have to do it because I think I just need to reinstall everything. Well, not everything, because there’s a lot of junk on there, including 3 versions of Microsoft Office.

I need a new version of Acrobat. I’m getting too many things not readable by 5.0, but I’m also afraid the latest version will not have my favorite features and expanded ones of features I hate, and new ones I’ll have to learn.

Should I do a clean install of XP, spend a day getting a gazillion service packs and hotfixes… then spend another day (or two) installing my software and downloading all the upgrades for them?

My processor (P4, 2.2) and my harddrive (120 gig) are 8 1/2 years old, the motherboard is 5 years old. I’ve 1.28 gig ram. No DVD recorder (there’s one on my laptop, but I can’t type worth a damn on it.) Or should I beg for a new computer and new software?

And did I mention I’m out of wine? (Though, apparently well-stocked with whine.)

I am stuffed. Oddly, there wasn’t a turkey, instead a hen which made the dressing taste all the better, I think. The dressing is some of the best I’ve ever had. My stepsister deserves the glory and she also made the rolls.

There was so much food. The dressing, chicken, ham, sweet potatoes, english peas, bacon-wrapped green beans, baked apples, spaghetti and cheese, cauliflower and broccoli salad, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, a variety of homemade pickles, potato and cheese casserole, and probably a few things I didn’t even see, much less taste.

Dessert? ahh… pumpkin pie, pecan pie, coconut pie, pineapple cake, carrot cake, chocolate cake, and probably more. My memory is sluggish at the moment.

Why the surrey without fringe on the top pictured above? My stepbrother drove it to dinner today, but he got there before I did and I didn’t know about his new carriage and horse. I barely got this photo as he was leaving, the outfit being much speedier than I expected. I hope he didn’t get a ticket on the way home.

I hope everyone has as much fun today as I did!

Secular Right has been added. It’s a brand new blog created for conservatives. I hope that it does not devolve into merely discussion of evolution and whether God exists. We’ve got Pharyngula for that. (You’ll notice there’s no link to Pharyngula — it’s not because of his beliefs, it’s because he has a nasty hateful way of presenting them, which has made him very popular in some circles.)

If you haven’t read about it yet, Americans have failed civics. I specifically challenge my family to take this test. C’mon, it’s only fair! After all, the J.D.s beat the H.S. grads in Spades this weekend, so I challenge all my college graduate relatives to beat my H.S. score

Here’s the test link. There are only 33 questions, so it won’t take long.

Here’s what you’ve got to beat:

You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %

Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%

I’m not telling which one I missed until I get your scores! I will say that it was a choice between two possibilities, and true to form, I chose the incorrect one.

Have fun! And you don’t have to be family to participate in my strange desire to be outscored.

At least it makes a huge difference in how full our trash can is every week. This last week, we generated enough trash to almost fill 20% of our can vs. 80% before the city distributed recycling cans.

The recycling can (which is unfortunately a bit smaller) was completely full. Part of the reason is that the recycled stuff is bulkier, milk and juice jugs and boxes take up a lot of room in the can. We may have to start taking more care to break down boxes.

Scenes from chem lab - oh my. I am now worried.

Self-Control is a Muscle - read the comments to find out why that theory is possibly wrong.

Political Behavior through the Lens of Behavior Genetics - it’s not necessarily wrong, just not as informative as supposed.

The ingredients in the melting pot – maps of the U.S. by ethnic group, culture regions, religion, language, politics, and socio-economics. The demographics of where you live might surprise you.

Corn, corn, everywhere there’s corn.

Assistant Village Idiot has over the past several months intrigued me with references to this author and I finally ordered one of his books.

A not-so-random quote from p. 19:

Almost no one can conceal his emotions. Behavioral scientists believe that one of the main reasons why people become leaders is not from what skills they seem to possess, but rather from what extremely superficial impression they make on other through hardly perceptible physical signals — what we call today “charisma,” for example. The biology of the phenomenon is now well-studied under the subject heading “social emotions.”

Meanwhile some historian will “explain” the success in terms of, perhaps, tactical skills, the right education, or some other theoretical reason seen in hindsight. In addition, there seem to be curious evidence of a link between leadership and a form of psychopathology (the sociopath) that encourages the non-blinking, self-confident, insensitive person to rally followers.

(paragraph break added for online readability)

Back to the book now… I’m sure I’ll find more to share with you later.

One of the internet sites I actually pay to use is Ancestry.com. I haven’t looked into the ownership, but I suspect it is supported, if not owned by the Mormon church.

Census records are public domain, but indexes and databases derived from them are not. It takes an incredible amount of work to digitize and index the census records. I am grateful that it has been done and is accessible in a format that allows me to track my family’s history easily.

I said easily, not perfectly. There are a lot of areas where Ancestry.com can improve; their search engine is #1.

Keep that in mind while I’m telling you that I’ve never been a fan of the Mormon church and actually got kicked out of their education classes when I was 14 because I asked ‘uncomfortable’ questions.

Forgive me, I’d just read Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I was also a bit of a jerk. It hit home when my good friend was no longer allowed to associate with me and that damped a lot of fire in my protest. I wondered if I’d inadvertantly done harm where none was intended.

In some ways, it would be fine with me if all organized religion were to disappear. Much human blood has been shed for what I see as minute theological differences. But I’d be a bit of a hypocrite for taking advantage of the work of an organized religion for my personal needs (and paying them for the privilege) wouldn’t I?

One of the few persons that I have shared the deepest, darkest, and brightest moments of my life with was a gay man who shared the same with me. Our friendship was short because he could not flourish in a small town environment in the early 1970s. I miss him because it’s not easy to find that kind of friendship regardless of gender. He’s the girlfriend I have never quite had since.

So… I am left wondering if I am betraying his friendship by financially supporting a church whose theology I have never accepted and which uses those finances to support an agenda that might hurt my friend.

At the same time, I wonder why any gay or lesbian person would want to participate in a religious sacrament that specifically excludes them, or to subscribe to a theology that classifies their desire and love for another human being as a sin.  

Marriage and committment are a state of mind. Frankly, one does not need a paper or a ring to love and commit. That these symbols are relevant is a desire to proclaim such, not a requirement for their existence. These symbols are not meaningless, far from it. But they do not have to be issued by the state.

The real sticking point for me is that without some changes in laws, homosexual partners do not have protection from spousal abuse. That is where I think the state needs to intervene. Homosexuality does not confer one with sainthood, and there are those, both male and female, who are abused by their partners, but not welcome at domestic abuse shelters because of their gender and/or sexual orientation.

For a rambling essay with random thoughts, this is a pretty good one, eh?

I’m not ready to boycott Ancestry.com because of the Mormon church’s stand on marriage. I may disagree, but I’m willing to to pay for a service I consider valuable. (Don’t raise the price, I could change my mind.)

I am ready to say that if you do not agree with a particular religion, do not join that church. We hear so often that this country was founded because people wanted to have freedom of religion. That includes not joining any religion. So don’t join. Establish your own. I won’t join if I disagree. But we can still be friends, can’t we?

UPDATE: a commenter corrects me:

Donna, you are completely incorrect about Ancestry.com being owned by the LDS Church. I know because I am an employee of Ancestry’s parent corporation, The Generations Network (www.tgn.com) which is in turn owned by Spectrum Equity Investors.

http://www.spectrumequity.com/investments/index.html

This is more a technique than a recipe and should be called Southern Steamed Potatoes because the only way you can really ruin them is to use too much grease.

You can use lard, oil, Crisco, bacon grease… whatever you have handy, but you are not going to need very much.

Peel however many potatoes it’s going to take to feed your family. I’d guess that one medium potato per person should do it. Cut these into cubes of approximately 1/2 inch.

Chop up some onion. I like a proportion of 1/2 as many onions as potatoes. Onions are optional, but I like them.

Cooking these requires a reasonably tight fitting lid. I have a cast iron skillet with a lid that weighs more than the skillet and it works perfectly. When my aunt cooks these for large gatherings she uses large electric skillets.

Coat the skillet with your choice of grease. Seriously, just coat it. We’re not deep-frying. Heat the skillet for a minute or so, then pour in the potatoes. Spread them out evenly, then spread the onions on top of them.

Cover with lid, and let cook — without stirring — for a while. I truly don’t have any idea how long! That helps you a lot doesn’t it? What you want to get is a nice brown crunchy crust on the bottom of the potatoes.

You still don’t want to stir these, but you do want to turn them. Using a sharp spatula (or turner or whatever you call it) to turn them over as much as possible. You probably won’t get them all turned evenly. Don’t worry about it. Scrape deep so you get all the crunchy goodness off the bottom of the pan.

Cover and let cook for another while. I’m thinking maybe 10+ minutes the first side, then 5+ minutes the other.

Add salt and black pepper to taste, and serve. Preferably with pinto beans and cornbread, but they are tasty for breakfast too.

Soldiers’ Angels is one of the best all-volunteer military support groups and their Project Valour-IT is my favorite project of theirs. It provides laptops and other technology that supports physical and psychological recovery for severely wounded service men and women.

The fundraiser is fueled by friendly competition among the services, but all the money goes to same cause, not to a specific service. I hope John and Al understand why I’m putting up the Marine Corps button instead of Army or Air Force.

Kick in a few bucks, OK?

The Few, The Proud are celebrating their 233rd birthday.

This is one of the days I honor my Uncle Willie. He joined the Marines before Pearl Harbor and was either in or sent to Manila immediately after the raid and ended up on Corregidor.

After the fall of Corregidor, he spent the next several years in the Japanese prison camp at Puerto Princessa on Palawan and was one of eleven to escape the massacre there on December 14, 1944. You can read the story of the prison camp and the escape in Last Man Out by Glenn McDole.

My grandmother’s three sons all served during WWII. Here they are, Uncle Willie in the middle:

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UPDATE: GoDaddy sends a birthday card to the Marines. Also on an old blog of mine, my 2005 Marine Corps birthday post.

Morons who put up websites that hijack your mouse and turn it into a silly moving flag or jumble of letters or anything else but what you’ve already selected for yourself are on my shitlist today.

Unfortunately, it seems some amateur genealogists have decided this is the way to make their family history pages flashier. What is does is make me automatically distrust everything I find on their site — even if it is well-documented.

I call them amateurs because anyone professional about anything would never dare do such a cutesy, moronic, imbecilic, and annoying thing.

Thank you. I feel better now.

Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds.

That gives a whole new meaning to a Top Shelf margarita doesn’t it?

My husband is cooking and it’s really smelling delicious. Tonight he’s trying out Emeril’s Filipino Adobo-Style Chicken Thighs. This is a wonderful recipe because all we had to buy was the chicken. Everything else is stuff we generally keep on hand.

The dish is supposed to be served over Emeril’s Aromatic Jasmine Rice. My son-in-law got me hooked on jasmine rice a few years ago. I don’t think I’d want to go back to the plain white rice. We don’t have all those ingredients on hand. No fresh lemongrass, no fresh lime leaves, no coconut milk, no crushed peanuts. We’ll be improvising, but jasmine rice is so good, the dish will still be great.

So, what are you eating tonight?

The longest campaign is almost over and surely both sides and even third and fourth sides can agree on one final cheer:

WHOOPEE!!

Barack Obama’s grandmother, Toot, has died. The report said her death was peaceful. May she rest in peace.