Original Former Naval Person

I'm now using fixed wireless broadband and have an 802.11g local network

I now have my 902.11g network card installed (D-Link). We are using that, to eliminate the wires running across the floor that my wife so loathes. That is one new development. An other is that I am now home in Texas, rather than being off in the northland (the Minneapolis area). In preparation for my moving home, we got broadband internet access. The unusual aspect is that we have a fixed wireless solution from a local provider (that serves Southeast and East of Dallas). They have two towers. One is a mile or so from our old home, near a highschool. The other is already in place in Forney, or is about to be. For here, this is a new way to get over the "last mile" (or however you want to say it). The mainstream alternative was to go with Comcast broadband access via digital cable. Southwestern Bell hasn't been ready to build out to us, so DSL was out. I was really glad that we didn't have to go the cable route.

If John Kerry is elected, I suspect that he will reinstitute the draft

The Democrats are trying to scare young people and their parents about the draft. The administration and the Republicans don't want to have the draft. It is the Democrats who want to see it reinstituted. There are several reasons. One is for "social engineering". The other reason is that they want to use the draft to fan anti-war sentiment. They know the reaction that the draft got during the Viet Nam War era, and they are hoping to see simular results in the early 2000's. The Democrats are not interested in fighting the war on terror, but on gaining power and reinstituting their agenda.

It's hard to know what is true

I feel lost, because if you read, listen to, or watch the mainstream media, all you get is spin designed to elect John Kerry and the Democrats. From the center-right, we get too much wishful thinking, although they are thinking and wanting the "right things". The "right things" are "peace through strength", "fight to protect our country", "put our country's needs first", and "treat people well (as you would want to be treated)". John Kerry and the Democrats seem to be fighting for "a brave new world", "a one world government, with no countries", and "a world socialist government". Which set of views are similar to yours?

Mozilla blues

I currently am using Mozilla 1.6 as my primary browser. My main complaints are problems with resovling URL's and some major gaffes while trying to render a page. I am starting to lose patience with Mozilla 1.6 doing odd things when I click an item in the Bookmark Manager, and Mozilla responds with an error message. The other bothersome feature is when I try to preview one of my blogs, and partway down the page, I get garbage characters to the bottom. I'm sure that the characters are not random.

Since there is a Mozilla 1.7, perhaps upgrading will help. I'm still not prepared to go back to IE6 as my browser, so my only recourse seems to be to move forward to the newest release.

User Friendly the Comic Strip - The Daily Static periodically would promote Mozilla, talking about how great it was, but they must not have been using it in the same environment as I am, as I started to see anomolies from the first day.

The ultimate ticket: Bush-Kerry in 2004

The latest Fox poll says that Bush is better at security and the war on terror while Kerry is better on domestic issues. The perfect ticket: Bush-Kerry. They have all the bases covered.

It's always possible that what I saw was a different Toyota model

I still have some lingering doubts about my identification of the "ugly car" as a Toyota Echo. It could have been some other model from an earlier year with which I am not familiar. It sure seemed like the ends "slanted down", like a beveled edge. The Echo doesn't have that feature. Also, the ends seem more attenuated than the Echo seems to have. Any suggestions?

I just saw the ugliest little car

As I was driving home from the grocery store, I saw a really ugly little car. I glanced and saw a Toyota emblem on the trunk. I was just searching on the web, and what I saw must have been a Toyota Echo. On the road, it looked like it was all passenger compartment with a little at each end. The one I saw was silver. The picture I found is red, and it looks better than the one I saw on the road. Why should an inexpensive car have to look bad? You can be the judge for yourself. Maybe I just had a bad first impression.

2004 Toyota Echo

The Belmont Club on the death of liberalism

At the Belmont Club, there is a very amazing analysis of liberalism's demise in the era of the "new reality". The politically correct, liberal world of Jimmy Carter was killed on September 11th, 2001. Despite all of John Kerry's efforts, Humpty can't be put back together again. We are engaged in a war with the new barbarians, and while we could retreat into our fortress, they are coming after us. I would prefer to go after them, where they live. We are not doing everything right, but fighting the enemy in the Middle East and Africa is superior to fighting them in the United States.

I had wondered why an ad called Marilyn Musgrave "the hater"

There is a very simple reason why a Democrat candidate would call Marilyn Musgrave "the hater": she is against gay marriage. I guess we have a new leftist litmus test: you have to be in favor of homosexuality. It used to be that you had to be in favor of abortion. It was sort of like if the number of abortions was dropping, they needed to go recruit woman to get pregnant so that they could abortions.

Until this last weekend, I had not realized just what a polarizing issue homosexuality was on the left. Much of it seem to involve homosexual children and the parents who love them (a perfectly understandable emotion). The bizarre thing is the sort of reaction that has become very usual. These parents now oppose anything (with some pretty intense hatred) that would seem to oppose their children's choice of lifestyle.

Another unsolicted product indorsement: File-Saver

I am still trying to recover from having lost a hard disk in October 2002. I have a laptop and desktop computer that might have possibly still have deleted files from that period. I did some searching with Google to check out possibities. I went with File-Saver. I chose File-Saver on a combination of price and features. The price with just under $12 and it looked like it would do the job on features. I have to say that it lived up to my (low) expectations. It did well enough that I was able to find some of the files that I hoped might still be around. One of my requirements was to be able to work with a USB drive. That was where I was able to find many of the files that I wanted.