I’m going to stop asking questions like “why did you go this way?” when driving. We all know that question actually means, “I know a better way to go than this”. Who really cares? In life, I don’t want to be a know-it-all. So maybe you took the long way, life goes on.

I get so annoyed at work sometimes. Working in sales gives you a lot of in-site into what people are like. People will lie. People will talk like they know what they are saying, even when they have no clue what they are talking about. I’m not going to be naive or allow people to walk all over me but I’m not going to keep trying to catch people in the lie. People wait until the last minute. I get annoyed sometimes when people call me for a quote because their insurance will expire at midnight or because they are closing on a house tomorrow. I’m not going to continue to allow that to bother me. You want a quote? Great, I’ll be glad to work on that, whatever the reason. I’ll give you my advice and you can do what you want with it.

It all boils down to this, I’m going to keep my mouth shut more. I hate it, absolutely hate it, when people pull out in front of me in traffic. But getting upset about it doesn’t do anything except ruin my mood. I thought about that a lot while driving for over 24 hours to and from Tennessee last week. People in general are selfish and inconsiderate. Getting annoyed by it doesn’t change it. I can’t change others, I can only change myself and my own attitude. So  I will live and let live. You can pull out in front of me in traffic, run a red-light, change lanes in an intersection all day. It won’t change my life. I’ll do what I need to do to keep myself safe and get to my destination.

The last part of this is arguments. I don’t want to argue with anyone about anything, especially trivial things. People are different. They have different views and different methods. So as long as what you’re doing doesn’t hurt me or someone else, do it and do it however you want. I’m not going to tell you how I do it or try to explain why my way is easier/better/faster/etc.

So live and let live, that’s my new motto.

Christmas is 2 days away. I’m pretty excited. We are going to Nashville on Friday, the day after Christmas. We will be there until New Years Day. On New Years Day we’ll be driving to Tallahassee, FL to spend a little bit of time with my grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins there. That’s where my dad is from originally and much of his part of the family still lives there now. I think we may only be there one night but hopefully we’ll have enough time to see everyone.

Last night, I spent some time ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. I’ve never done that before but it was a great experience. Our Rotary Club does it every year. I especially enjoyed seeing the little kids giving their pennies and quarters and nickel and dimes. It’s so important to teach kids the value of giving and it just made me smile every time.

Well, if you’re reading this before Christmas, I hope you have a very merry one. I probably won’t write again before then and maybe not again until after the new year. It’s been a great year over all for me and Jessica. We are looking forward to an even greater one next year!

When I’ve done a white elephant gift exchange, you open a gift and then either keep it or trade it with someone else’s gift. Well the rules last night were, you either take someone’s gift (and they go get another one) or you get to open a new one. If you open a new one, you’re stuck with it, unless someone else comes along and takes it from you later (which doesn’t happen when you have nail polish). I’m not saying anyone was wrong, I’m just saying I’ve never seen it done that way.(Although Wikipedia says I’m wrong…but since when is Wikipedia right?) Oh Well.

The gift I brought was completely under-appreciated though. I mean who doesn’t want a light bulb that you can stick anywhere. Put in your car and have a super rad dome light. Or put it on your head and look really smart. How book is that? I wanted to say to the guy, “hey, you could have gotten nail polish. Don’t be so ungrateful.” (please understand I’m totally joking around about all this) It was all good fun.

I just wanted to share that with the world.

This morning they had a fantastic little segment on, well…let me just show you.

Regifting Rules

I just thought I’d share that with you.

Hey, I also wrote a little blurb about my new mobile phone. Check it out over at Jet the nerd. It’s the T-Mobile G1 or the “google phone” as some people call it.

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Dear Congress, please don’t bail out dinosaur companies like the Big 3 that have refused to make meaningful and profitable innovations over the past 2 decades. Let them die. The world would be a better place without Ford GM and Chrysler putting more junk on our roads. Now they have a plan? You are a decade too late guys. And what an insult for these guys to fly to Washington in their private jets to beg for money. Don’t give them a dime! In fact, fire them and their PR department for letting them get in those private jets.

All I can say is solar and electric vehicle could have been a reality years ago if these companies weren’t so deep in the pockets of Big Oil. Now they are going broke. They should beg their buddies at the oil companies for a bailout, not US citizens. Take your Hummers and your Expeditions, drive them down to the oil companies and say “look what we did for you, now you need to do for us.”

I don’t want your products and I don’t want to pay for your failure.

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Ouch! Not looking good for the GOP. #

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I’ll go ahead now and say. I have not and do not support Obama. If you can’t be ok with that, you shouldn’t bother reading any further. I respect the opinions of those who do support him and have many friends who do. I’ve tried not to twitter too much of my opinion or post it on my facebook but I will write it here. This is only an opinion. I’m writing it for myself, not for you. So if you read on, I ask for your respect.

I want to say first though that I am proud that our nation was able to make history and break a huge barrier by electing a black president. I’m sorry that it had to be a man that I disagree with on many levels. I know that our nation has a dark history in respect to “justice for all”. Years ago, that meant “justice for all who are the same as me.” Our world still has many issues to overcome in this realm. I’m happy to see this become more “in the past” and less “who we are”.

This election was an election of change, we all knew that. The people spoke loudly and now we will all have to live with the consequences. I am a conservative and I stand by my convictions. I feel that we’ve elected one of the most liberal men in politics today. I don’t trust him or his leadership, mostly because of his lack of experience not because I think he’s a “bad person”. I can’t believe that only 4 years ago he was merely a state senator. He got elected to the US Senate and immediately started running for the White House. I understand the argument that he’s not been corrupted by Washington. That doesn’t excuse a lack of experience. I only pray that Joe Biden was wrong, for every one’s sake, in saying that he will be tested in less than 6 months by a major event.

I’m very passionate in my beliefs. I believe in a small government that should stay out of my life and business. I believe in the right to life and I feel that Obama has one of the worst records in that regard. His response to the question of when he believes life begins was a cowardly one. Apparently, according to him it was above his pay grade to have a belief on this matter. Well, then I feel you are not ready to hold the highest position in the country. I believe in the right to own a firearm, which he also has a very strong record against. I feel his economics are socialistic and Marxist. I also question his past associations with extremists like Ayers and Rev. Wright. You can’t tell me that you attended someone’s services for 20 years and yet you somehow don’t agree with them. Sorry I don’t buy it and I’m afraid we may just learn what his beliefs really are, but it will be too late.

Keep in mind, he’s just a man not a savior. He seems to have some kind of superman status with people these days. His charisma and charm has captured so many. He’s set expectations high and I hate to see people get disappointed but I don’t believe he’s gonna save the world.

He was lucky though, his opponent was a Republican and I don’t think ANY Repub could have won this year. I don’t think McCain is the same as Bush but of course that’s the only point Obama had to make. McCain would not be my first pick as president but I agree with him much more than I agree with Obama. But I think people wanted something completely different. Well, they got different, they got change. Remember though, change for the sake of change doesn’t mean change for the better. I honestly would rather have had Hilary Clinton than this man. But what will be, will be.

I don’t see a United States right now. I see a very Divided States of America. I hope that his personal agenda doesn’t get in the way of bringing us back together. I just don’t think his policies are anywhere near the middle of the road. At least now it’s my turn to say, “hey, I didn’t vote for him”.

So to anyone who may be still reading this. I pray for only the best for our country. I’m sorry this has been rather negative. I just needed to say what I want to say. If you disagree with me, I’m proud to say that you have a right to believe what you believe. I respect you even if I disagree with you. I’m happy we have the freedom to disagree.

Feel free to comment but just keep in mind that it will be moderated and insults don’t mean anything to me. I seek approval from no one other than the One who created me.

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I started with a disk I’d made about a week ago. When I booted it up though I got an error “Could not find kernel image: linux” So I went back to Astaro.com and downloaded the newest version dated 31-Oct-2008. That time it worked just fine. The trouble I ran into after that was connecting to the WebAdmin. I didn’t read the instructions so I wasn’t aware that it needed to connect on port 4444. So I tried to figure out why I could ping the server but not connect via the web browser. Once I read the setup guide, I connected with no problem. I have one other minor issue to resolve, but I won’t go into that here. For all intents and purposes, I’m connected and our home network is useable and very secure. I value security.

Enough with that. My tenant had moved in at the duplex. I’m pretty much done over there now. I planted some new shrubs in the front. Hopefully she keeps them watered over the next couple days so they don’t die. I’ve asked her to help me with that, but you never know. Luckily it rained a little yesterday and it’s supposed to rain a little bit today.

I also bought a battery charger and maintainer yesterday for the scooter. It stays plugged in to the battery and maintains a good charge when the scooter isn’t in use. So by now, it should have a really good charge. Unfortunately, the ignition switch broke again though.

You can see here just under the seat the broken switch. It’s a plastic switch and this is the second time it has broken, so I’m not buying another plastic one. I went by Lowes last night just to see if they have one but they didn’t have any “momentary” switches. I’ll try to find one Monday. This switch was installed by a prior owner when the main ignition button went bad. Apparently it’s a couple hundred bucks to replace the main one, so he installed this. But this plastic one, purchased at Advanced Discount Auto Parts isn’t quite sturdy enough. After all the trouble I had getting it running this past week, I think the battery maintainer will help. I also bought some more starting fluid, which will hopefully help it get going a little quicker on cold mornings.

Today we’re skipping church. I’m actually very sad, for the first time in a long time, that I’m not going to church. Jessica hasn’t been feeling well at all this weekend. We’re supposed to go to see her brother this afternoon. I know she really wants to see him so I do hope she’s feeling better and up to it in a couple hours. So for now, we’re taking the morning slow and just being lazy.

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Well I’m gonna go hang out with my wife now.

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Just to update, that other plugin that claimed it was better was not better, it was stupid. The one I’m using is called Flickr Photo Album. If you don’t use Flickr, you should because it’s awesome.

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I haven’t worked on my Linux course in a couple weeks. I’ve had plenty of things keeping me busy. I do plan on getting back into it though. I’m also hoping to find time soon to switch my security gateway or UTM (unified threat management), which ever you wanna call it. Currently I use Untangle and I want to switch to Astaro.

Untangle is great, I’m not saying I’m unhappy with it. I uses many of it’s great features. It’s open source and free for anyone to use. I’ve been glad to have it. I run this computer without any anti-virus (yeah, I use windows…don’t hate) and I’ve never had to worry. I run frequent virus scans just to see how things are going and I must say I’ve had no problems. I also use the VPN to connect my office computer to my home network and access my FreeNAS server. I also use that in order to backup my server daily to a hard drive at my office and to back up extremely important work files to my home servers as well. That way I always have 2 copies of every file and both copies are at different locations. So if my house burns down, I still have my files. If my office gets burglarized, I have my files backed up. Ok I won’t preach at you about the importance of backup files.

Astaro uses open source and non-open source software so it’s not free for commercial use. Astaro is free for home users though. You have to install it on your own hardware (which you also must do with Untangle). I’m not changing because I think Astaro is better, not at all. I’m changing to check out Astaro. The guys I know who have used it, swear by it.  Ok, I also won’t preach at you about the benefit of gateway security over local security. (update - if you are interested in reading more, go to Jet the Nerd.)

I thought I’d throw that at ya. Since I spent so much time fixing the problem with posting pictures on our blog, I had to post at least one picture. So remember, Don’t Panic.